Review #457: Gladiator - Sword of Vengeance

 There're many chinks in this Gladiator's armor.

 Before Sony took us to Ancient Greece, with its gods and copious amounts of blood, we had Gladiator - Sword of Vengeance, a similar game in concept but with a much different execution, and set in Ancient Rome. This is a hack and slash action game that tried to do its own thing, to varying degrees of success.

 Arruntius has come to power, turning Rome into a city of... even more blood and more malice, and to celebrate he promises Rome the blood of a champion, the Invictus Thrax, a Gladiator that remained undefeated... until these games happened. But it's not all that bad, Thrax gets sent to the Elysium Camp upon which he learns that Arruntius is being helped by the gods Phobos and Deimos, but he too will be aided by gods, given a second chance and a mission: Kill Arruntius. The story takes a backseat to the gameplay, so don't expect interesting dialogue or characters, but it's an interesting set-up to have you, Thrax, slay both mythological creatures such as Cyclops and... Spartan Skeletons as well as other Gladiators.

 The game takes place throughout 6 stages, but each stage is relatively long and offers bonuses for exploration, so it'll take you between 6 and 8 hours to do everything and collect everything. The game is a bit weird, but it's mostly competent, R1 initiates locking onto enemies, and L1 can be held to target a secondary enemy. This is a rather important mechanic, y'see, Thrax can only perform three-hit combos by mixing Square and X attacks together, with no way to juggle enemies or create your own combos, but you are rewarded for switching between targets as you perform your three-hit combos. Rapidly switching, and successfully hitting different enemies will fill a gauge on the top of the screen that rewards you different bonuses, just as double strength, defense or even invulnerability, but do be careful, as the bonus only remains as long as the gauge is over its icon, and it will drop rapidly if you fail to hit enemies. Lastly, circle can be used to dodged, Thrax can't block, and triangle to use magic, three types that build upon each other, which grant you bonus strength(Easily the most useful), life-leeching or splash damage.

 For the most part, it's a competent system that's relatively fun. For the most part. There's a few kinks that keep it from being great however. For instance, you can't dodge or attack unless you are locking onto an enemy, which can throw you off when you are fumbling with the R1 button, since sometimes the game will autolock, and sometimes it won't, so you might accidentally turn it on or off, and while you deal with that you'll get hit with no chance to dodge. And if an enemy starts blocking... you can't do anything about it but wait until it gets bored and does something else. Certain enemies, the ones with black life bars, can be 'executed' in various, gory different ways, but I found no advantage or reward for doing so except having to go through a short loading scene, so they are pretty lame.

 You are given three different weapons: Sword, Axe and Gauntlets, and to be fair the do have different attacks, strength and speed, but, BUT you can't switch between them mid-combos, a huge missed opportunity. Combat could've been made more rewarding too, although to be fair exploration IS rewarded. Peppered throughout the first five stages you'll find challenge rooms that will bestow you with: Gauge enhancers for every weapon, new weapons(I didn't notice much damage improvement between them, but hey at least they look different!), combat gauge extenders, life bar extenders or one of 20 collectibles. These collectibles can be used to unlock the fourth combat gauge extenders for each weapon and collecting them all lets you choose one of the three ultimate weapons. These are instantly rewarding, which made searching throughout stages a fun enterprise.

 Not that they don't come with a few caveats, however. These fourth combat gauge challenges are unlocked somewhere inside levels you've already been into, and going back to a previous stage means having to endure every single cutscene, even the ones that introduced enemies and solving most puzzles. Not my idea of a fun time. Speaking of cutscenes, they can't be skipped and, to put a cherry on top, the game can get rather challenging, so have fun watching those cutscenes again. And did I mention that there's no manual saving? Hopefully there was a checkpoint close by, lest you have to replay and rewatch much! And I forgot to mention, you can unlock all three final combat gauges after clearing stage four, but don't go after the gauntlets' , since you'll backtrack all the way only to be told that you are missing the third combat gauge power up... found in stage five. Brilliant.

 Before wrapping up, I must mention just how boring and repetitive bosses are. There's one boss for every stage, kinda. The second stage has you fighting Phobos, which is easy as pie but takes a long while since you need to build your magic meter. The third stage features Phobos again, with one new technique, but is basically the same boss. The fourth stage has Deimos that fights similarly to Phobos, but at least beating her is slightly different. The five stage has Deimos again, only a bit different. The last boss is a bit different too, but once again, repetitive and boring, since it's very easy, but takes too long to defeat.

 Gladiator Sword of Vengeance is a mixed bag. The basics are competent, stages are vast, pretty and fun to explore, with a lot of rewards waiting to be earned. Combat is very simple, but I'd lie if I said that I didn't have fun most of the time. But it falls short in other areas, combat needed more polishing and more depth, replaying stages or segments shouldn't have been such a pain, and the bosses desperately needed more creativity. It's a decent weekend game, if anything, one that's easier to remember as a huge waste of potential.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Gladiator - Sword of Vengeance

 Before God of War there was...

 Gladiator - Sword of Vengeance, before God of War took us to ancient Greece, Sword of Vengeance had as slicing and dicing in ancient Rome. I used to play this game back when I was younger and I actually liked a lot, but as I grew up I always wondered why people forgot about it.

 And I think I kinda, sorta get it. By today's standards the game is pretty dated, combat consists of 3-hit combos, no juggles, no linking, no nothing fancy and dandy that other, future games would implement. But still, I must insist that at the time of its release it was pretty dope, even if less involved that Devil May Cry.

  Well, I'm midway through the first level, and it gets better the more power ups you unlock, so here's to looking forwards to what the game can offer!

Review #456: X-Men - Mutant Academy(Playstation)

 It features costumes from the movie, in case you didn't read the overexcited note on the game's cover.

 X-men - Mutant Academy came out of the left field when the X-Men movie came out, as sort-of a tie-in game. Sort of, because despite featuring costumes from the movie, sorta, it has nothing to do with it, and it's a 2-D fighting game of all things!

 The game offers a few different modes: Arcade, Survival, Training and Versus Player, which are all self-explanatory, as well as a 'Academy Mode' that teaches you every move your character has. And you might as well go through it, since there's no in-game movelist and the booklet is no help in this regard. There's 10 characters in all, Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Phoenix, Gambit, Beast, Magneto, Mystique, Sabertooth and Toad, each character featuring their comic book costume, an unlockable alternate costume as well as a costume based on their looks from the movie, Gambit and Beast gaining entirely original outfits, since they didn't appear in the movie. By the by, finishing the game rewards you with a 15 second long CG movie... which are used in the opening movie, so it's a bit of a waste. The Outros for clearing the Academy Mode with every character are very short and unrewarding too.

 The game runs on the very popular 6 button set-up, with three punches and three kicks of varying speed and strength that can be used to string combos together. Characters can also block, by holding back on the joystick, perform throws and use counters, although you only get three per round. The combo system works well enough, but each character only gets about 3 special moves and 3 super moves, which is very lacking. I also felt like the controls, when it came to inputting special and super moves, sometimes were a bit unresponsive.

 The game has a very original set-up in how Super moves work. By dealing damage you build energy on a three-tiered gauge each tiered tied to a different super move. Each tier requires more energy than the next, the weakest super being a simple super move, the second tier being a 'Stringed super move', which lets you boost its damage by pressing the appropriate directions on the D-Pad and lasty, the Xtreme Move, which is the strongest super and... is just another simple super, but one that deals major damage, most of the time anyways. You can transfer energy between tiers, which is brilliant, but in order to perform the Xtreme move... first you have to mash the X button to form an X on the gauge. Seriously. It's pretty idiotic considering that the X is a weak kick, so they expect you to mash X as you press other buttons? When the enemy lies down? What's the point of this mechanic? It's the only blemish on an otherwise great idea.

 And that's Mutant Academy in a nutshell, a good but unremarkable game. It adds some fantastic ideas to the fighting game genre, specifically how you can manage the energy gauge, but it's a bit lacking in other areas. Characters could've used more moves, the fighting could've used some more oomph behind it... and then there's the fact that Mutant Academy 2 makes it completely obsolete.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: X-Men - Mutant Academy(Playstation 1)

 No, there's no X-Menathon.

 I actually only wanted to play the second game, since it's basically Mutant Academy + extras, but... the seller shipped this one instead. I've put it up for sale, but in the meantime... I might as well give it a try.

 Issalright. I mean, there's a bunch of neat ideas that would be polished and expanded upon on future games, like different gauges for different special moves, or moving energy from one gauge to another. So it does have original ideas, which are rather welcome, while also playing it by the book: 3 punches and 3 kicks, blocking by holding back on the joystick, etc.

 I've played the game with a bunch of characters, and it feels rather... limiting. Each character has about 3 specials and 3 supers, which kinda falls short of what one would expect. Performing special moves feels a bit unresponsive, I switched to Street Fighter EX3 to make sure that it wasn't my controller acting up, and no, it wasn't, for whatever reason this game sometimes has issues with my inputs.

 On the whole, it's an entertaining little game. I'll be off trying out the rest of the characters.

Review #455: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2(DS)

 Well... it's an interesting experiment to say the least!

 While far from technical marvels, the Ultimate Alliance saga wasn't something I'd have thought a good fit for the Nintendo DS, yet Activision likes the smell of money and having had one of the largest installbases for a videogame console during its era, porting the game to the DS was a no-brainer. The end result is lackluster... but it's also interesting how they managed to cram the brunt of the game into a tiny DS cart.

 Ultimate Alliance 2 loosely follows the Civil War storyline from the comics, but only for a little while before introducing Nanites and it's zombie-like disease which forces heroes, villains, allies and enemies to work together and stop the infestation. The DS' version of the plot is very flimsy and little time and attention is spent treading each story thread. Heck, one of the home console version's selling points was that each path offered exclusive characters and stages, but in the DS version there's only one unique mission for each path and by the end of the game you'll have the full 15-character roster at your disposal... probably a consequence of having a single save-file and no New Game+. The DS version's noteworthy for being the only one to have the Sentry and She-Hulk as playable characters.

 The game deserves praise for keeping in-tact so much about the console game. You still play as a four-man team of your choosing and go from dungeon to dungeon beating enemies for experience points. The entire control scheme is kept intact: Weak and Strong attacks, a grab attack and the jump all done with the face buttons, press L to block and hold R and press face buttons for the four different abilities. Whereas the console game had four different attack abilities, in the DS version there're 3 attacks and 1 buff. As you'd expect, defeating enemies earns you experience which eventually lets your characters level up. With each level up you earn a single ability point to spend enhancing your four active skills or the two passive skills. Auto-assigning ability points is also set on by default. which sucks so bad, but it can be turned off. Sadly, Equipment/Boosts are gone entirely, so there's no way to customize your four man-squad.

 But not everything's perfect, as you'd expect having your four-man team on-screen is pretty taxing on the poor DS, and once enemies get into the picture... let's just say that the framerate is pretty bad, you'll play the entire game in sub-20 FPS. Since the DS has no analog of any kind, there's no way to turn the camera around, which you can get used to, but it's still pretty sub-optimal. There's also the fact that there's no mini-map of any sort, and while you can access the map by pressing select, it's pretty laggy. Navigation could've been even more annoying, but the devs took this shortcomings in mind, so levels are pretty straightforward, which has the inevitable result of making stages feel bland and repetitive.

 Beating enemies also makes them drop health and mana orbs, just as in previous games, but new, yellow blobs as well that serves to charge a new five-star gauge. You can use this gauge to perform 'fusion attacks'(Which look so bad and choppy on the DS that you don't even know what's going on, but it deals a lot of damage so who cares!) or revive fallen characters. The AI is pretty bad, one too many times I found them using their powers and wasting mana on thin air, and they seem to have trouble following you through doorways. The game's difficulty is pretty spotty as well, this one time I entered a double boss battle and was destroyed in a few seconds flat, tried again and I managed to defeat the same two bosses very easily. Regardless, expect to be reviving allies pretty often, either due to their own idiocy or because the game just decided to become hard for no reason whatsoever.

 Being a DS game, the developers introduced a few tap minigames. The most annoying one being the bomb disarm/computer hacking one, which the game doesn't properly explain how to perform. I had to look online for an explanation, and was happy to find out that I wasn't the only one suffering through the first one. And some bosses will have you tapping the screen too, without any warning beforehand, which is really dumb since I have to pop-out the stylus at a moment's notice. Or use my fat finger, which isn't always precise enough.

 While Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 on the DS isn't very good, I can't help but appreciate how well they managed to translate everything to inferior hardware. A few kinks needed addressing, making the AI allies less dumb, maybe allowing you to move the camera around by holding the L button, like the PSP did, allowing for more nuanced level design, maybe having a mini-map on the lower screen instead of having a needless HUD, and removing the touch-screen mini-games, at leas the ones involving bosses. I mean, the inferior hardware pretty much makes a direct translation impossible, but a lot more could've been done to polish this game.
 4.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2(DS)

 You didn't think I'd skip MUA 2, did ya?

 But there's a small caveat... it's the DS version I'll be looking at. Y'see, I've owned MUA 2 on PS3 for a while now and I don't really need to play it again, and since I already remembered MUA 2 as a step down from the first game, I didn't really want to delve into the subpar PS2 version so, instead, I'll be giving MUA 2 on the DS a look.

 Well, I'm midway throughout the first Doom level, and while I like how it already feels like an adaptation of the console game, since they even kept the prologue, the game's lacking in a few key areas. There's no way to move the camera around, which sucks, and there's no mini-map on a game that desperately need one. The framerate is garbage.

 But, BUT I will give kudos to the developers for managing to port the game into such a tiny, weak console. It's a rather impressive feat, even if the end result is a bit meh.

Review #454: Marvel Ultimate Alliance(Playstation 3)

 Finally the final port of MUA!!

 So you know the drill by now, I've already written about the game, twice in fact, so I'll spare me the trouble and only go by the things that make this port different from the Playstation 2 and PSP ports.

 2 bonus characters, Colossus and Moon Knight and... that's it. There're no bonus modes, no bonus comic mission bosses, only Colossus and Moon Knight. Colossus absolutely terrible, weak powers, uninspired moveset and has 1 less skill than your average character, which is pretty lame. On the other hand, Moon Knight is downright fantastic, he goes down in a few hits, but god oh go, his damage output is through the roof, his Nunchuck skill might be the best skill in the game, and his Staff passive ability is fun to play with, although he gets shortchanged too, being the only character who only gets three costumes instead of four. While Moon Knight is easily among my favorite MUA characters, the PSP had more bonus characters altogether, and none were quite as bad as Colossus, so as far as bonus characters goes, the PSP wins this one.

 The HD graphics are leagues above the PS2 and PSP, it almost looks like an entirely different game. Almost. However, the framerate is still pretty bad and at times it can chug almost as hard as the PSP version. Almost. On the flip side, this version has the shortest loading times which is a huge plus considering how long these could get in the PS2 version.

 So... which version is better? None of the ones I played. Seriously, all of them have their ups and downs, the PSP version might have the most content, but is it really worth it? The brunt of the game remains the same and you can easily live without them. Moon Knight and Ronin are fantastic characters, but do you really need them? If I had to, I'd probably give the edge, and only by a very slight margin, to the PS3 thanks to its shorter loading times. But, if you asked me, the best way to play Marvel Ultimate Alliance is... on PC. PC has, by default, the PS2 character roster, but, BUT you can mod it to get even the X360 characters, heck, you can mod X-Men Legends character into it, HECK, modders have created entirely new characters from scratch! If you want the best possible Ultimate Alliance experience, PC is the way to go.
 7.0 out of 10