Review #450: Mortal Kombat Trilogy

 Now I remember why I didn't like classic Mortal Kombat.

 While Mortal Kombat was free of Street Fighter II-style upgrades, it all changed with Mortal Kombat 3. And then Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. And finally, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a 'dream' game of sorts, compiling every single character from previous games, for a total of 32(Plus 4 bonus 'retro' characters) playable characters. And it sounds like a dream come true.... for Mortal Kombat fans exclusively.

 You boot up the game and... there're only three modes: Arcade Ladder, 2 on 2 and 8 man battle. Don't be tempted to go into anything but Arcade Ladder unless you've got another joystick, else you'll be stuck in the character select screen for all eternity, or until you reset the console, since those two other modes require another player, no ifs or buts. It's a pretty silly design flaw, if you ask me. Even for a fighting game of its time, the mode selection is pretty lacking. The Arcade Mode is an absolute nightmare, since the game becomes unbearably hard pretty early on, with the CPU reading your inputs and reacting with uncanny reflexes to your moves. Which kinda sucks, since unless you've got another joystick lying around, there's no way for you to try to figure out your character since the CPU will pound on you over and over and over and over and over and over again. And there's no moveset anywhere, not even on the instruction booklet, so you're on your own.

 ....but let's assume that you persevered, thanks to unlimited continues, so that not even the cheap Endurance round(2-round battles in which you have to defeat two opponents on a single life bar) could stop you, and you defeat Shao Kahn and... the game freezes. Unless you're playing on an original Playstation 1, this game will have issues. On the PS2 the game will freeze after beating the final boss, it will freeze if you let the timer run out on the Continue screen and the music will stop if you pause the game. It kinda sucks. While the PS1 version has more character than the N64, you also get loading times, which are mercifully short, unless you battle as or against Shang Tsung, but the game lets you pre-pick a couple of transformations, if you so wish, so as not to have the game load mid-match. As for the exclusive retro characters... they suck. They have a few new moves, but performed with pre-existing frames, so they look awful, and their Run animation is just a sped up walk. Lame.

 As for how the game plays, it's your classic Mortal Kombat, two punches and two kicks as well as a block button. Mortal Kombat 3 introduced the run button and dial-up combos. Every character has a few special moves as well as a few unique dial-up combos, which are pre-scripted combos performed by tapping a specific string of buttons. Most MK fans hated those, I'm alright with them, since they help add variety to the characters beside their special moves. The problem with Dial-up combos is that they are way more convenient than most combos a player could come up to, so the name of the game is to learn a couple of those and perform them ad-nauseam. Trilogy introduced a new 'Aggressor' meter, which increases as you deal damage, fill it and you'll temporarily deal extra damage.

 What I will grant the game is that, as much as I hated and still hate, to this very day, digitalized graphics, Trilogy looks pretty baddass. I mean, Liu Kang, Shang Tsung and Johnny Cage actually look cool in the game, everything looks serious, dark, slim and trimmed. Mortal Kombat had never looked this cool, and while the new post-apocalyptic setting might not be to everyone's liking, the stages had never been this intricate or appealing before. I also love having like 7 palette-swapped Ninjas, and them too are the coolest and badassest they've ever been.

 Mortal Kombat Trilogy reminded me of why I didn't like classic Mortal Kombat. Say what you will, but if you remove the violence factor, the game becomes a subpar fighting game. I've no doubt that the game could potentially be fun against another player, but if you're on your own there's no way for you to enjoy the game. The CPU will kick your butt, and will do so so quickly that you won't have time to learn how to play your character or how to experiment with his moveset, and there's no training mode to facilitate that either. Still, for Mortal Kombat fans, this game will re-ignite nostalgia, and the large character roster, encompassing the entire series up to that point, is a huge selling point.
 4.5 out of 10

Review #449: War Gods

 A game that raises a lot of questions. Not good questions, but questions non the less.

 What is an intro? What is a Mode? What is an ending? What is a combo? What is a movelist? Such are the questions that this game raises and doesn't answer. Welcome to War Gods, a fighting game released to test the waters before fully committing to bringing Mortal Kombat into the third dimension. It has blood, it has fatalities and it has terrible pseudo-realistic character designs but it's no Mortal Kombat.

 The game has a set-up involving 10 pieces of an orb that turned 10 humans into gods and blah blah blah, it's not interesting nor does it concern us, for even your reward upon finishing the game is a measly 3-paragraph long ending text. Lame. There're 10 terrible looking characters as well as 2 even worse-looking bosses(Which you can play as by inputting a code) that are the cheapest you'll ever play against. You thought Goro, Shao Kang or even Rugal were bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. The game has a grand total of 1 mode, an Arcade Ladder, or 2 if you count pressing the Start button on a second controller to battle against another player, as well as an options screen. Lamer.

 The game's crowning achievement is looking worse than it plays. Character models look terrible, warp and twist weirdly when doing victory poses and having some of the stiffest animations ever. Each character has a decent, albeit a bit small, assortment of special moves as well as a single 10-hit combo. Producing combos in this game is devoid of any freedom of creativity, so don't expect much out of the engine. And if you want to see a movelist, tough luck, even the game's instruction manual refuses to aid you, so it's gonna take a trip to GameFaqs. Lameeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 As for the game's key mechanics, there's a 3D button that let's you move around freely, which is a bit wonky, Left and Right rolls, which come out a bit too slow, as well as a shove move, by double tapping the block button, that breaks guards... but why would you if grabs deal more damage and come out quicker? There's also a single fatality for each combatant, but they are relatively good looking, surprisingly, most fit the character's respective deity theme pretty well.

 War Gods is pretty bad. Like really, really bad. I don't think I've a single positive thing to say about it... except maybe that it's not broken. Everything works as intended, collision detection is fine and... well, it's not broken. But it's devoid of good, fun mechanics, the overall aesthetics are lame, it lacks fluff to make it worth playing the game after you finished the arcade ladder one.... it doesn't have anything that other games don't do better. I still have a rather soft spot for War Gods in my heart due to nostalgia, but if you take the rose-tinted glasses off there's nothing worth looking at in there.
 3.0 out of 10

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