Now Playing: Darksiders

 This game I like.

 Know how people have been clamoring for a "Mature Zelda"? Well, by mature these people mean "it's dark and gritty and has blood and stuff", well, this is their game. Joe Madureira conceived the art for this game and oh boy does it show, it's like an Image comics come to life, it's gorgeous.

 As for gameplay, Devil May Cry meets God of War meets The Legend of Zelda, it's so much fun! On my first session I played nonstop until Tiamat's defeat, and it was glorious. I've nothing bad to say about the game, maybe that the music is nothing to write home about(A metal soundtrack would've fitted this game so much better, it just screams of Metal!), but that's just a minor, minor issue.

Review #128: Assassin's Creed III

 The best Assassin's Creed since 2!

 Ever since Assassin's Creed became a yearly franchise it suffered from a steady decline in quality. Storylines became shorter while side activities grew repetitive and obnoxious. And now we have Assassin's Creed 3, the number isn't just for show as the series went a rather large overhaul.

 As per norm, the story focuses on two time periods, present-day has Desmond and his assassin allies trying to save the world from a catastrophe, and Ratonhnhake:ton aka Connor, an assassin of Mohawk blood trying to do right for his people during the American revolutionary war. Unlike most recent games, Desmond's side of the story is a bit more fleshed out, with three present day missions set around the world, plus, the actual conclusion to Desmond's story. Connor's has two parallel storylines going on at the same time, the optional Homestead missions which feature a ton of rather cliche'd, but endearing, storylines and the main storyline itself. The story is pretty good, but it does have a couple of oversights(Some which are explained in the novel, some which have no official explanation at all) regarding Connor and Haytham. Characters are a strong point in this one, Haytham in particular standing out as one of the best characters in the series so far, and now all your Assassin recruits have been fleshed out via optional conversations that flesh them out neatly. All in all, a decent story line, although it takes a bit before it gets going, Connor doesn't get to wear the Assassin robes until Chapter 5!, with great characters and a lot of optional depth.

 The very first thing you'll notice is that the controls have been streamlined for the better. Basically, you can do as much as you could, but with less button presses. For example, running and sprinting are now one and the same, tied to the R1 button, while Parrying doesn't require holding the R1 button anymore. At times, muscle memory will fail you, but after getting used to it, the new controls feel much better. Gone are the shallow bombs, tower defense and Borgia/Templar influence liberation missions, replaced by much meatier side content. For starters, hunting, there's wild-life living on the Frontier, some are harmless, some yearn your flesh, and in order to end them you get tools like bait or traps. Another new addition is Naval combat, which is much more fun than it should. It does feel a bit out of place, like the tower defense mode from Revelations, but unlike that mini-game, Naval combat is incredibly fun and there's over a dozen different missions to partake in.

 Borgia/Templar Influence has been replaced with liberating forts from the British, however, these are completely optional, not getting in the way of your income, besides, each fort is completely different from the other, while they do all play out the same in the end, they at least offer some variation in how you must approach them, besides, there's only seven of them. Finally, we have the whole tunnel system, probably the worst side-activity in the game, which is used to open up various fast travel stations throughout Boston and New York. It wouldn't be an Assassin's Creed game without collectibles, and the game offers them in spades, from  Feathers in the Frontier and Almanac Pages, Chests and Peg Leg trinkets around the cities, there's no shortage of stuff to find.

 AC 3 finally gets the economy right! Previous games either gave you too much money(2, Brotherhood) or too little(Revelations), but AC 3 makes it so that the amount of money you earn steadily increases as the game advances and you can buy more expensive stuff. The whole renovating mechanic is gone, changed by improving the Homestead. Improving the Homestead consists of over a dozen of optional side missions which see Connor recruiting people into his homestead. These people set up their trades in the homestead, allowing Connor to buy materials for cheap, and then you can either sell these materials or craft them into better stuff and sell them for more money. Homestead missions open up as you go along, so that you can't craft the really good stuff(Which includes the better weapons as well) until later in the game. The game has a very neat pace at which you are allowed to do stuff, which is something Brotherhood and Revelations really needed, unlike Revelations, you can no longer get the best stuff by chapter 3! Which reminds me, the whole armor system is gone, which is a shame, but in the long run it matters little.

 I don't know if I've made it clear yet, but there is a lot of content in the game. There's a ton of Naval combat missions, homestead missions, a ton of activities and minigames and other really interesting sidequests. There are assassination missions(Very simple "Assassinate X target"), courier missions(They are not even timed!) and Brawler missions in which you have to fisticuff your way through various opponents. Then we have the really good ones, the Frontier Tales and Hunting Missions. Hunting sees you tracking special breeds of animals and then hunting them, while Frontier Tales have Frontiersmen telling Connor about a folktale(The headless Horseman, a Kraken, a UFO, etc) and then you have to find the origin of said rumor, these consist mostly of going from one place to another and then pressing circle on certain spots, but it's really cool to see where the mundane origins of these rumors! And if you thought you were done, you'd be wrong. Instead of recruiting random NPCs and getting them into Assassin's robes, you know must complete a certain set of missions to trigger a "Recruit Mission" in which you recruit an NPC, up to six, for your assassins. As previously stated, all six of them have different personalities, backgrounds and designs, which is a step up from the generic NPCs from the older games.

 Assassin recruits have also received a major overhaul. Sadly, the extremely overpowered "Arrow Storm" attack is gone, kinda. Instead of simply summoning your allies, you now get a lot of different functions for them. You can have them escort you, as if you were a prisoner, in order to enter guarded areas, you can set them up to attack anyone who dares step into a certain area, you can have them follow you as bodyguards, you can have them attack from afar(Similar to Arrow Storm, but not as good). As cool as all these functions are, it would've been neat if they forced you into using them, as the game is still quite easy as not to need the use of these. There's new weapons as well, rope darts, guns and the bow, besides the gun, there's no real reason to use any other as your sword can get the job done just fine. To be fair, combat is now harder than ever, with a lot more enemies that are only vulnerable to a certain form of attack(Counter attacking, Disarming, crushing their guard or using environmental attacks), and with enemies swarming you dying is now easier than ever, however, as a whole, the game is rather easy, just not AS easy as previous installments.

 It seems to be a recurring thing, but graphics are once again, much better than previous installments, at least when it comes to details on the character models. Boston, New York and the Frontier are all beautiful to look at and a refreshing sight, and the new weather system(Snow, Rain, Fog, Summer) is pretty neat. HOWEVER, neither Boston nor New York have as many high buildings as Italy or Constantinople, a minor loss, but it's quite noticeable. But, as per usual on AC, there is a lot of pop in and clipping. For some reason, character's clothes still clip through the horses, but even worse, during cut-scenes character's clothes will try to overlap each other, which is pretty jarring, not that seeing a ton of foliage just pop up in front of you out of thin air isn't. Music is fairly good, although not as memorable as previous games, and the voice acting is really good for the most part, with Haytham standing out(Not only is the character is extremely engaging, but the voice actor performed an outstanding job at delivering his lines).

 Before wrapping up, it's worth mentioning that the game houses a fair amount of bugs. The least offensive being people disappearing in the distance. There's a couple of big offenders that are hard not to notice, one being that music will stop playing for no reason what so ever during certain missions and the other being the Percentage tracker getting stuck. I understand that pushing a game every year is a must for Ubisoft, but they could put more effort into quality testing.

 Not since Assassin's Creed 2 had I had this much fun with a game in the franchise, heck, after Revelations my interest was waning rapidly, and then AC 3 came along. It's a fantastic game in every regard, it might not have the same impact as AC 2 had, but it stands on its own legs just fine. And Haytham is the best character in the series. Just saying.
 8.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi

 I am now officially playing the worst DBZ ever created. Maybe not the worst, but it's down there...

 So, for some reason I decided to give it a chance. Because it looked gorgeous, it was dirt cheap and when I gave that weird SNES card-based DBZ RPG it ended up being really, really good. This is not the case. I'll admit it's not as terrible as I thought, but that's, probably, because I just started it, I can see the whole system growing old very fast.

 My favorite moment regarding this game so far? The Tutorial. I spent more than 30 minutes trying to clear the Recovery tutorial, I wound up going to Gamefaqs, turns out I wasn't the only one. Turns out there's input lag, so the button prompts are basically a lie and you have to press the button before the cursor says so. So. Much. Fun.

 At least it's beautiful, graphics look drop dead gorgeous, one my favorite uses of cell-shading so far. And the remastered anime cutscenes are amazing. The music is also not half bad, some tunes are really, REALLY good and some don't fit at all.

 Overall? I don't like it. Not that I expected to, but still....

Review #127: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

 Remember when games didn't take 'emselves too seriously?

 The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series was sort of the golden child of the late 90s, the first entry was released on 1998 on a plethora of different consoles, and it proceeded to spawn 8 different games, from the PS1 to the PS3 era. While some would argue that Activision milked the series to death, THPS4 was sort of a landmark for the series, the first game developed with the next generation of consoles in mind, although it did receive a PS1 port, but that's for another time. Actually, it's not, I don't plan on playing it any time soon!

 The easiest way to explain what this game is about, is to call it a platform game on wheels with a trick mechanic. The game made skating seem easy, X performed an Ollie and gave you more air when you let go of it off platforms, the square button plus different directions performed flips, while circle and directions performed grabs, then you had the triangle button to perform grinds and lip tricks. New to the series, is "vert transfer", by tapping the R2 button you can now reallign yourself while on the air in order to fall on a more favorable angle, skitching cars and now you can perform different tricks while on a Manual.

 Previous games in the series would set you off on a stage, give you a time limit and a list of objectives, which you had to try to complete before time expired. Not anymore, now you are set off on a stage, no time limit, and you must find people that will give you missions. It sounds novel at first, but these people give you the same kind of objectives that the previous games had! Like finding all SKATE letters, or getting all COMBO letters in a combo, achieving certain high scores, however, alongside these rather mundane objectives, the game has a lot of crazy missions, like skitching on a elephant while it defecates on you, setting off bombs by grinding over the detonators, holding a lip trick over a crane while it moves around... there's a lot of off the wall situations that are both amusing and fun to attempt! This game doesn't take itself seriously, and it's all the much better for it.

 The game offers a good amount of different skaters, while all of them have the same basic tricks at their disposal, they do have different SPECIAL tricks, and there's four secret characters that are highly amusing(A Zombie skater, Jango Fett from Star Wars! to name a few). They also have different stats, but as you clear goals in the game and earn stat points, by the end all of them will have the same stats. The game also has a create-a-character mode, while it was awesome back in its day(Believe me, I played it back when it just released!), nowadays it's very limited and lacking, but it's something.

 There's a nice amount of stages with 21 goals on each(14 on the 2 unlockable ones), and most of them being pretty good, with at least two that I'd call classics, then there's also the Shipyard which I'd call the weakest stage in the game, and one of the worst in the series. The game also has unlockable cheats, back when cheats were actually fun to use, you can use Moon Gravity, Disco Lightning, Fire while Grinding, Perfect Grinds and a lot more. There's also a "Create a Park Mode", which, frankly, you'll use once or twice and never touch it again. Finally, the game has a ton of 2-Player modes, including Free Skate, which allows you to just chill around the stage with another player, and other competitive modes in which you must perform better combos than the other player, or earn more points total, they are all pretty fun.

 The game hasn't aged very well when it comes to visuals. It doesn't look particularly bad, but other games that would come later in the series would blow it out of the water. The overall presentation is also a bit dry, it went for realism a bit too much, which means colors lack a bit of punch. Regardless, stage design was pretty swell, with a lot of interesting landmarks on which to skate. Music is, easily, the second best thing the game has going for it(The first being the gameplay!). There's a ton of licensed hip hop, punk and a few rock tracks, they fit the game perfectly, and are great songs on their on right.

 It's a bit unfair to review games when taking into account future entries, it really is, but nowadays, having knowledge about other games in the series does change my outlook on Pro Skater 4. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 might be a great game in its own right, back in it's day it was amazing, but knowing how the series evolved, it'd be kinda misguided to ignore it, basically, if I had to get a single Tony Hawk game, I'd get Underground 2.
 8.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Assassin's Creed III

 HAYTHAM IS AWESOME

 Now THIS feels like a sequel. Brotherhood felt like more of the same, but not as much. Revelations was more of the same, but even in less quantity, if that makes any sense. Now this feels like something completely different, and better. Controls have been streamlined, Haytham moves like a dream, and I'm betting it will be the same for Connor. Combat too is much simpler, but that doesn't make it worse, not that I have fought much mind you!

 Graphics are phenomenal, and so far, the voice acting has been very good. Haytham is SO likable already, and I've only just met him an hour ago! He is suave, deadly and stern when he needs to, his lines are so good, and he has plenty of charisma. I was looking forward to playing with Connor, but I kinda want to keep playing as Haytham, he is so awesome!

 Speaking of graphics... Desmond now looks like Desmond, finally. He has more angular features on his face than ever, which makes sense seeing how rich his blood is, when it comes to lineage. Oh, and his scar is back, about time! However, now Rebecca doesn't look like Rebecca, at all, and for some reason he voice sound as if coming from a microphone... when she was having a conversation with Desmond, I'm guessing it was just an error on those interactions....

 Ah well, so far I'm very impressed, I'm liking it a lot, and I was a bit wary, everyone treats this one as the black sheep of the series, and seeing how the games kept going downhill since AC 2... I was a bit scared, especially since this one was the one I actually wanted to play! Still, there's still time for the game to mess up, Revelations was really good, at the start, but quickly grew tiresome.

Review #126: Assassin's Creed - Revelations

 And thus ends Ezio's Trilogy.

 Right after the events of AC: Brotherhood, Desmond falls into a coma, so his present-day allies decide that the only way to repair his psyche is to... plug him back into the Animus. Once inside the Animus, Desmond finally meets Subject 16, that guy that kept leaving cryptic messages since AC 1! As for Ezio, now he is older and wiser than before, and for the first time, his story is not about revenge, but about knowledge. This time around, Ezio's adventure is on Constantinople, with a cast of entirely new characters. I know I always mentioned how I didn't really like the present-day segments, well, there are almost none in this one, although you do get to hear them every now and then when transitioning through chapters, and frankly, it's a bit of a shame as I grew attached to Shaun and Rebecca! At least the new characters in Ezio's story are fairly interesting, some rather amusing personalities aid him through the game. The story itself is also fairly good, with the addition of five, very short, Altair sections that tell the story of what happened after Assassin's Creed 1 and Altair became a Mentor. And we never get to see Altair wearing "Altair's Armor", but hey, at least every assassin is missing their fingers now! About time!

 Gameplay is basically the same as AC - Brotherhood, with a couple of tweaks and gimmicks. As of Brotherhood, Ezio is now a mentor, and the game does a fantastic job as portraying him as one. Walking near ally assassins in the HQ will result in them paying their respects to Ezio, and just as it was in Brotherhood, you can recruit Assassin's for your Creed and then send them on missions or using them to aid you in battle. One of the coolest aspects is that you can assign them to Assassin's Dens, and then turn them into GrandMaster Assassins, these transformations come in the form of missions in which you can see Ezio actually teaching this Assassins in person, it's a really cool touch that helps drive the point home that Ezio is a mentor now.

 The game introduces a couple of new gimmicks to... varying result. The first new gimmick are bombs. Bombs can be crafted at benches spread throughout the town using the various materials that you find from chests or corpses. The fun comes in the way of the many different effects that you can create, smell bombs, caltrap bombs, explosive bombs, sound bombs and many, many others, they are very useful but at no point are they a requirement, you can get through the game perfectly fine even if you ignore them completely. The other new gimmick is... Tower Defense. Yes. They shoe-horned a turret sequence in the last AC, so they might as well shoehorn a Tower Defense mechanic now. These sequences are played when one of your dens are under attack, and they are obnoxious and feel out of place. They aren't even fun, and sometimes Ezio's position obscures places where you can place assassins, which is really dumb. There's absolutely no reason as to why they felt that this fit in the world of Assassin's Creed, and they didn't even make it fun.

 Speaking of dens.... remember the Borgia towers from Brotherhood? They quickly grew old after the fourth one... and they are back, now going by the name of "Templar Towers". At least, they are not as high in number as before, BUT(of course there had to be a but) they were made more annoying than before. Now you have to find your target using Eagle Vision, and if your target escapes you have to wait a whole in-game day before trying again. Because waiting is so much fun to attempt this annoying sidequest again. It gets better, the "Notoriety system" is now called Templar Awareness, and if they become aware... they might attack one of your dens, so now you must fight to reclaim your den in the tower defense minigame, lose the minigame and... you must claim the tower. Again. Who.... who thought that this would be a good idea? No, really, who thought that it would be fun? The fun doesn't stop here, Templar Awareness now increases while renovating Constantinople again, because having virtual obstacles to prevent me from just spending my earned money is so much fun. Sure, you can renovate to your heart's content as long as you don't mind the risk of having to play that annoying tower minigame again. Oh, and posters are gone, so the only way to reduce the Influence is by completin certain missions, bribing Heralds, or raising the awareness so high that Officers spawn.

 The game is also rather light on content, there are less sidequests than previous Assassin's Creed games, and even the main story is short. They tried to compensate it by having a ton of "Guild Challenges", that actually unlock worthwhile rewards, but it doesn't help much. As for collectibles, there's chests, books(Instead of paintings), 100 Memory Fragments(The worthwhile unlockables stop at 40 anyways) and 10 Ishak pages(To unlock the Ultimate Armor, one of  two anyways). Constantinople is also rather small, and not as beautiful as Rome, at least the new architecture is a breath of fresh air. Speaking of new, there are five very weird unlockable first-person platforming levels as Desmond, just as with the Tower Defense minigame, this feels a bit out of place and aren't very fun. It also retcons Desmond's past, turns out he was trained as an assassin since he was young, funny how he didn't recognize the word "Assassin" during AC 1.

 Combat received further polishing, and it's probably the best it has been yet. You can equip projectile weapons to the Triangle button, which allows to mix ranged weapons during your fights much more easily. Guards now possess different weakness, which they always did to be fair, but now there are a couple that can only be hit by countering their hits, so mashing isn't the answer to everything anymore. Regardless, if you play the way I did, you'll have the best armor and the best weapons by chapter 3, making battles a trivial affair. The game also introduces the Hookblade, a nice tool attached to the right Hidden Blade that extends Ezio's reach and allows for some rather fun new mechanics, but hardly game changers, besides sliding through ziplines, you probably won't use them unless you are required to.

 Revelations is easily the best looking AC game so far, not only do character models, particularly their faces, look better than before, they also fixed a lot of the pop-in and clipping issues that the previous entries had, it's not perfect, but it's much better than any other AC game. They also removed Desmond's scar for some reason. The new soundtrack is fairly good, although sometimes it doesn't really fit the environment. Voice acting is also the most consistent AC has ever had, the most lackluster voice acting being passable at their worst. As good as the audiovisual presentation was, this was the buggiest AC game I've played, I had to restart at least three missions since the "counter" wasn't, well, counting what I was doing.

 Assassin's Creed Revelations is irritating at it's worst, it's shorter than other AC games and lacks as many activities as previous entries. The Main Story missions, however, are some of the best AC has ever had. When the game is at it's best, it really shines, it's a shame these moments aren't enough to carry the game by themselves. It's also very showing that Ubisoft worked on this even less than on AC Brotherhood, in many ways it feels like a step back from that game, and as far as the basic gameplay mechanics go, this is almost the same game.
 6.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Zenonia

 Eeeeeeeehhhh....

 I needed a new "pass the time game", since Crimson Gem Saga bored me to tears. and I picked this one. I hate it. Actually, I don't, but collision detection is spotty, movement is spotty and it looks really lame, its mobile roots are undeniable.

 Was the DSi store filled with this kind of ports of mobile games? The last DSDownload game I played(Soul of Darkness) was also mediocre at best. Ah well, not like I'm gonna be focusing much on this one.