Review #552: Disney Infinity 2.0

 Create your own fun.... or have none.

The cover is as boring as the game without the online servers!

 Well, after playing Disney Infinity I can safely say... that I understand why they went under so fast. Welcome to Disney's second foray into the toys-to-life craze that Skylanders started. The big addition are Marvel characters and a few tweaks to the toybox mode. Is it worth it? No, not now.

 Here's Infinity's biggest pratfall, one that should've been addressed here, one that should've been addressed on their third and final game: This is not a game, this is an investment. Firstly, unless you buy one of the three 'Playsets' there won't be any story mode content for you to play. And there're only three of them: Avengers, Spider-man and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you have no playset, you have no pre-made content for you to play. Infinity 1 had even more playsets, but none of them are compatible with Infinity 2.0. Why? Nobody knows, but that means that there's very little premade content for you to play. And the cherry on top? Only select characters can play playsets. Only the Guardians may play their playset, only the Avengers may play theirs, etc. New characters like Stitch and Malificient? Too bad, no story content for them. There're a few 'minigame' hexagon toys that you can buy, but... it's pure luck since they came in blind packs. Now a days you can just buy them off ebay, but it still, you have to pony up more cash if you want actual content to play.

Even the Hulk can ride vehicles!

 Alright, so if there's no content, what can you do? Create your own in the game's signature 'Toybox' mode. Here you can select from various pieces and create your own world, your own minigames, like racing, your own battle arenas, etc, etc. The tools are relatively in-depth, allowing you to connect a few objects via trigger-logic and what not, but you have to sit through various explanations or read online to get the full gist of it. Back in the day you could download other Toyboxes, some made by Disney itself, but the Servers are gone. There're a few quick templates you can generate to get you started, but it's still quite boring. Plus, most stuff in the Editor must be purchased with sparks, and grinding for sparks can take a while, it's easier if you go through playsets... but there're only three of them, and you can only use so many characters on those. So, yeah, the Toybox can be a source of fun if you like playing things you created, but otherwise? There's none to be had here, you can't even share your creations with others!

 As for the Playsets, they are well made, open-worldish adventures with quite a few missions each. The worlds are fairly large, the missions are entertaining and the cutscenes are neat. It's a shame only select characters can play these. Characters also act as lives, if you die on these, you can simply put another toy and continue until your previous character recuperates.

Donald duck has no playset. Have fun figuring out what to do with him.

 I think what hurts the most is how good the base mechanics are. Characters are similar, but have their own quirks. Some can fly, and boy is it fun to fly around as Iron-man! Others can climb on walls or what have you. Each character is also able to carry objects, like enemies, guns, wands, etc or get on various vehicles, from cars to helicopters, and have simple parkour abilities that make traversing the environment a blast. Each character also has their own exclusive skill tree, in which you can spend points upon leveling up to tailor characters to your liking. It also helps that the toys themselves are very high quality and look great, it's a shame not many of them get story-content to play. And that's why Skylanders is infinitely better: you have proper stages and levels to play through, your fun doesn't depend on wasting time toiling with an editor.

 Lastly, the game runs very poorly on the PS3. Toyboxes begin to underperform faster than I would've liked, so build complex worlds at your peril. Playsets suffer too, sometimes sound may lag behind because the PS3 struggles to process everything that's happening. It's no Xenoverse(Ps3), but boy does it struggle. At the end of the day, I'd advise people to stay clear of Infinity, only purchase it if you want an excuse to buy the toys, because they are very cheap now a days, and they make for great decor.
 4.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Tomb Raider II

 Now with less tombs.

Those breasts look weird.

 Tomb Raider II was my first Tomb Raider game, and one I liked even more than the third one, although I clearly remember thinking The Last Revelation was the best one. Before playing it again, I learnt that the game is considered to be very hard, making for an uphill climb all the way until Chronicles, when it gets easier. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I just got through the first level and had little to no problems.

 The ability to save anywhere, something that made the PC version so much better, is present here which is a godsend. And boy, am I gonna miss it when it's gone in 3. It's kinda awe inspiring just how much better this game looks. The controls have been tweaked a bit, and I keep accidentally wasting flares when I want to sidestep!

Review #551: Enter the Matrix

 No, do not go inside, stay out! TAKE THE BLUE PILL!

The cover doesn't look as good as they thought, I bet.

 Enter the Matrix was a very ambitious third-person shooter that did something to stand out among other licensed games: The Wachowski sisters(Then brothers) wrote the script for the game, and, alongside the cast and crew from the movies, filmed exclusive scenes for this game. If that doesn't give it brownie points I don't know what will.

 The story takes place at the same time as Matrix Reloaded(Matrix 2), but follows Ghost and Niobe as they work behind the scenes, and a few times alongside Morpheus and his crew. Neo makes but a few, unvoiced appearances. The story itself is nothing to write home about, but the 40 or so minutes of exclusive footage were, and still are, a fantastic treat for fans. Ghost and Niobe have pretty much the same stages, but there're a few variations here and there, Ghost even gets to spar against Trinity. Still, these differences aren't enough to make two playthroughs worth it, so playing as just one character will suffice for most people. There're plenty of audiovisual bugs all the way throughout, there's an audio glitch exclusive to the PS2 version that makes dialogue and sound play twice at different speeds, which is very grating to the ears, and thankfully, not too common.

Melee combat is the best thing about this game.

 There's no way to hide it, this game is an obvious beta. Besides the audiovisual bugs, you'll notice how janky the entire game feels. Melee combat consists of characters flailing their limbs about, which is hilarious, running and climbing animations are awful, and things like targeting enemies with guns being very awkward, as guns are very inaccurate. Stage transitions can be weird, some stages may even last a few seconds and consist from going from a door to another.... This is not a well made game, but the publisher is to blame as they rush development. Not to worry, as Shiny would redeem themselves a few years later with Path of Neo.

 As far as melee combat goes, looking so hilariously bad actually makes it pretty entertaining. You have punches, kicks, disarms, throws, counters and a few other neat manouvers. The animations for the attacks are almost good, you can tell that with a few polishing it could've been great, and removing some of the jankiness, like kicking a fallen enemy making him fly backwards a ridiculously long distance, or how hitting dying enemies makes them get back on their feet. It's a mess, but it's a fun mess. You can take out your guns at any time, but they lack oomph and their accuracy is suspect, so I didn't use them too much, and when I did, I wasn't having as much fun as I was with the flailing limbs. It's probably one of the first games to feature regenerating health.... and it also has medkits, which makes dying very hard. You also have a recharging focus gauge to use bullet time, which makes dodging stuff and delivering pain very simple.

Focus makes dodging bullets and shooting enemies all too easy.

 There're a few dumb racing segments, in which you'll drive as Niobe or shoot as Ghost. It's more fun shooting as Ghost, but Niobe is such a poor driver that she may cost you the stage, since some enemies are indestructible and shooting at them does nothing, so you depend on Niobe pulling through. A few other stages consist on running away from agents, since they are too tough to take down, and this can range from fun to dumb. If Agent Smith catches you it's possible to get stuck in a loop in which you can't get away from his grabs until he kills you. A few other stages even have infinitely spawning enemies, so you might as well just run anyways.

 And the level design isn't very good. Some stages go on and on, and they reuse assets within themselves oh so much that it feels like you are going in circles or through identical passages. The camera can be a big pain in the butt, a few times you are expected to go down a few levels, but unless you enter the awkward first person camera mode, there's no way to check below if there's a platform. A lot of times the camera will zoom in on awkward angles for no reason what so ever. Don't even let me get started on overhead cables, twice your character will need to grab from cables above in order to cross chasms, but it always feels unsafe since you can't jump in place, but rather, do a forward jump and if you don't angle it right, you will fall to your doom.

Or you can use your focus on 1-on-1 fights, your choice.

 There's also the then-praised hacking mini-game, through which you can use cheats or unlock halfway finished stuff, like a fighting minigame or art and extras. Honestly? Too much of a drag, and you must go through it every time you want to use these 'rewards' again. I didn't care for it.

 There's a certain 'The Room'-like quality to it that makes the game enjoyable in all the wrong ways. It's poorly designed, looks awful, is glitchy and, clearly, is unfinished but there's a little bit of fun to be had when flailing your limbs against other flailing limbs. I can also appreciate how they went with side characters instead of Neo, which helped make the side cast more endearing, and the fact that they filmed stuff just for this game is something to be commended. It IS a bad game, but if you like so-bad-it's-good games, you might get a kick out of it.
 3.5 out of 10

Review #550: InFamous - Second Son

  If we're gonna keep making the Good ending canon might as well call it Famous.

Now with smoke powers. Which behave pretty much exactly like electricity did.

 InFamous was one of the three big successors on the PS3, running alongside Resistance and Uncharted. Uncharted went for realism(Kinda), Resistance went after a sci-fi war setting and InFamous went with the super hero genre. The first game was alright, but it wasn't until inFamous 2 that the franchise hit it big. A new generation of consoles later and inFamous returns to hit the scene, with a new protagonist, smooth framerate and a new... nothing else, really.

 Remember Cole? Not many people do, but after his sacrifice only a few Conduits survived. Delsin Rowe, the new protagonist, soon discovers that he is a conduit too, with the power to copy other powers, which makes him a prime candidate for the DUP forces to capture him, like they do with other Conduits. Not that it matters, since Augustine, head of the DUP, and a very sadistic lass that uses Conduit powers to capture other Conduits, is trying to capture three escaped Conduits, even if she has to torture Delsin's entire tribe. So now Delsin, and his normie brother Reggie, join together to copy Augustine's powers in order to save their tribe from the effects of Augustine's powers. I actually really liked the story and the characters. Delsin is a bit of a prick, a delinquent that usually gets into trouble, a stark contrast with his cop brother Reggie, and they butt heads a lot, which makes their relationship quite endearing. It's interesting, because I think neither character would be all that interesting by themselves, but together? You want to see them interact and follow their journey. Secondary characters, like Fetch, are a bit 'safe', displaying somewhat cliched personalities you've already seen before, but they are decently written.

Enemy DUP forces are armed with with Concrete power, but they are no match for smoke.

 The game plays a lot like Infamous 2, maybe a bit too much like it. It's a big, open-world game that has you doing heroics, or villainous deeds, as you hone your powers. If you played any InFamous installment before, you'll be right at home here. Square does melee attacks, R2 can be used to shoot your weakest proyectile power, R1 is your missile equivalent, L2 aims, the touchpad is used to drain sources for energy(ammo), regenerating health, yadda yadda. Even the way you traverse the world is the same, with X doubling as a jump or a hovering power, with the added skill of being able to climb almost any surface by just mashing X button against a wall until Delsin gets to the top. It's pretty much the same game it's been since InFamous 1. The Karma system is pretty much the same, kill civilians, or surrendered enemies, to increase your bad Karma, or restrain enemies instead of killing them to earn good karma. Higher levels of Karma unlock the ability to purchase new karma-appropriate enhancements by spending collectible blast shards, same old, same old.

 That said, the game has expanded in one area. Delsin can copy powers, and unlike Cole who only got to merge a few Ice or Lava powers with his Electricity, Delsin gets entire new movesets. You start with Smoke, which you can recharge by draining any smoke source, and the power works exactly like Cole's electricity, but with Smoke. Instead of EMP grenades you get a smoke grenade, the electricity 'shotgun' is done with smoke, etc etc. Buut then you'll unlock Neon, recharged by draining Neon from sources such as Neon signs, which is a slower power but with sniping capabilities, and gives you the ability to run at lightspeed. Video can be recharged from antenas, and gives you slower, but stronger, melee attacks, better aerial traversal powers(Delsin grows wings!) and machine-gun like proyectiles. The last power, which people treat as a spoiler but is oh so obvious, is Concrete, which... sucks. You get it in the very last story mission, and if you've already done all the side content... there's no use for it and very few ways to drain it. I bet all these powers sound great, and they kinda are, but... there's no easy way to switch between powers besides finding a source and draining it. It can be a bit annoying when you want a particular power but there's no source nearby, so more often than not, you will not have the power you'd like for the appropriate situation.

 Impressive drawdistance and smooth framerate makes it a treat to explore.

 The game offers about 20 different story missions, but they go by very fast. The side content is a bit more meaty, with two islands divided in about 13 different zones that you can liberate from the DUP. Liberating a city means doing every single mission, and collecting every blast shard, in it and then doing the DUP Showdown mission. Blast Shards appear on the map as soon as you defeat the DUP SUV in the city, so they are very simple to collect. As for the side missions, they are very repetitive. You'll be doing a lot of graffiti art, using the Dual Shock 4's motion sensors, finding 'hidden Agents', destroying cameras and hidden cameras and not much else. There are about 6 different mission types that you'll be repeating over and over and over again. Then there are about 10 different Karma missions, 5 evil and 5 good, that don't help liberate the city but help you raise your Karma gauge, and this are simple things like pressing triangle to save injured civilians or killing protesters.

 When it boils down to it, InFamous Second Son is slightly disappointing. Besides the new cast of characters, might as well play inFamous 2 and you'd play pretty much the same exact game. The repetitive side content didn't bother me too much because the game itself, like Infamous 2 before it, is a blast to play, and traversing the city with all your powers is so much fun. It's a shame the game is so short, which makes the lackluster side-content stand out so much more.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Enter the Matrix

 It's very glitchy inside the Matrix.

Two pills, one game/

 Enter the Matrix is a game I used to... love when I was younger. I don't remember if I knew about how badly it scored, but man, I had a blast with it. I just began a playthrough as Niobe, although I plan on doing both characters, and boy, is it janky!

 Movement is very spotty, it's impossible to move precisely, and the running animation is way too exaggerated. Combat is a mixed bag, animations are very smooth, but the feedback isn't very convincing... although it's still fun in a 'this is so bad it's good' kinda way. Shooting is just lame though. Oh, and the double-audio-at-different-speeds PS2 glitch is sublime.

 Basically, I know the game is bad, but I'm having a weird kind of fun with it. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's just so bad it's good, I dunno yet!

Review #549: Tomb Raider Legend

 Still no tombs to be found, but at least there's a legend or two!

Oh, this Lara is pretty badass alright.

 After the spectacular failure that Angel of Darkness was, mostly due to Eidos poor planning, Core Design got the boot from their prized Tomb Raider and Crystal Dynamics was brought in. Legend would mark the beginning of their new trilogy.

 In a strange twist, Legend's continuity takes quite a few pointers from the movies. Missing parent? Check. Yesmen under her command and in continuous contact thanks to headsets? Check. Even Croft manor was modeled after its movie counterpart! I liked this somewhat new direction, and Crystal Dynamics managed to make a sort-of-interesting tale. That said, the supporting cast wasn't very interesting. Lara's henchmen were lame and the villains tried too hard, but at least Lara had a very charming personality, plenty of snark and badass one-liners.

Puzzles are simple, but entertaining.

 Gun-toting action, environmental puzzles and platforming puzzles are all here and accounted for, with a bigger emphasis on the shooting. It's a more action-based take on Tomb Raider anniversary, trading the more complex puzzles for shooting-bike segments. The game itself plays pretty much like Anniversary, but without the Rage mechanic. L1 will automatically lock-on to the nearest baddie and R1 is your trigger finger. R3 lets you aim in first person. Lara always carries her unlimited-ammo dual pistols and can carry a single alternate gun, which is usually a shotgun, automatic rifle or a SMG. She can also carry up to three medikits, but enemies drop them pretty regularly and reloading a checkpoint completely refills Lara's health. Shootouts are fun, Lara is very acrobatic and these encounters are very fast-paced.

 The platforming is, for the most part, pretty entertaining. There're a lot of exciting segments in which Lara must jump from edge to edge, on platforms, columns or use her rope to hang-on to grappling points. There're a very few segments in which the camera might get in your way, but it works pretty well most of the time. There's a single QTE segment on every stage(Except one) and they are as unnecessary as QTEs have always been, but at least they are mercifully short. The horrid 'press triangle not to fall' mechanic is here too, sometimes upon grabbing onto something Lara will lose her grip and you must press triangle not to fall. It's a dumb mechanic.

As graceful as ever.

 While environmental puzzles are fewer, smaller and simpler than in Anniversary, there're still plenty of hidden relics to find which will reward the player with unlockable costumes, of which there are even more than there were on Anniversary. It's also a shorter game, clocking under 6 hours on my first playthrough.

 While most of the game is pretty darn great, you should be warned that the game is rife with glitches and bugs. There's a very famous bug in the Sea Serpent stage which can render the boss battle unwinnable unless you reset the stage. On the first snow stage, after activating the Tesla Machine, the broken doors might become impossible to traverse, which means there's no way back up unless you've got an earlier save or restart the stage. These are but a couple, there're more, and I came across the Tesla Machine one, so everyone will probably have their progress momentarily halted on a different glitch at some point on their playthrough.

Shooting mechanics are very simple, but work well.

 I liked Legend quite a bit. The more purer third-person shooting, without the Rage mechanic, was fun and the bike stages were relatively decent, but something about the smaller puzzles didn't feel quite right in a Tomb Raider game. All the bugs and glitches are quite annoying too. All in all, Legend is pretty good, but I think Anniversary has a better mix of Puzzles, platforming and shooting which make it the superior game.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #548: Prince of Persia - The Fallen King

 The only thing that fell here was the Prince.

Sure, making a sequel aimed at kids is gonna sell well.

 I was wary when I approached Forgotten Sands on the DS, for I knew it was a stylus-only gimmick game that improved upon The Fallen King, but it wound up being pretty darn good, so I was cautiously optimistic when it came to The Fallen King. Sadly, all optimism was crushed very early into this game, for it's the Prince's most boring adventure yet.

 The game is set after Prince of Persia(2008)'s DLC's non-ending, with the Prince setting out to gather help in order to defeat Ahriman. Early into the game he comes across Zal, a mysterious wizard that's trying to defeat the land's King, for he has fallen under Ahriman's corruption and now threatens the world. This unlikely duo will travel together throughout 6 different worlds, and about 40 stages, combining their abilities in order to progress. The premise isn't too bad, but the delivery is dumb. And that's probably because, as you can see on the cover, they went for a very childish direction that's present in both the art and the script. Underwhelming, disappointing and senseless, why would you make a sequel to a game that was aimed at teenages and above but now shift the target audience? It alienates both audiences, children won't have played the previous game and the older demographic won't care about this one. Truly idiotic.

Oh, this grapple-blocks will be something you'll get used to seeing over and over and over and over again.

 But whatever, games aimed at children can be good games in their own right... this isn't one of those though. Firstly, the controls, everything is done with the stylus. Tap to walk, tap to jump, tap to attack, tap to slide upwards or downwards a wall, tap(and hold) to block... it's a lot of actions tied to tapping, and the game does a wonky job of recognizing what you want to do. The acrobatics just aren't very fun when the Prince isn't doing exactly what you want to do, and expect most deaths to come from sloppy responses to your inputs. Not that it matters, since stages in this game are BORING, it's incredible how they managed to make platforming in Prince of Persia boring, but they did so.

 It probably has to do with the fact that there's very little creativity in them. Most of it went to the puzzles, which are mostly done in the form of obstacles that Zal must clear for the Prince. Simply hold any button and tap to make Zal shoot energy, or rub against surfaces to put out fires, or turn on portals, etc, etc. Zal's powers should've added more depth to the game, but they don't. You'll have used so many grappling points by the game's end that it stopped being fun, and having to rub on stuff wears out its welcome pretty early into the adventure.

Twice the enemies, double the snorefest.

 What also adds to the tedium is how slow progress is. In every world, midway through a stage Zal will get corrupted and you'll be kicked out of the stage and forced to replay an older stage in order to rescue him and earn a new power. Sure, you'll be able to clear a few obstacles that you couldn't before, but it sucks having to replay a stage and then having to redo part of the staged you were kicked out of. Big, Yellow doors also hide health upgrades behind them and they require a ton of coins, so you'll probably have to replay a stage or two at some point if you want every health upgrade. The game isn't fun, and making the player have to retread old ground is not a good thing.

 Controls? Mediocre leaning to poor. Platforming? Boring with slightly unresponsive controls to boot. Puzzles? Equally so. What about the combat? Boring too. Just tap on yellow guys to defeat them, block red guys' attacks and then counter-slash them, tap on black enemies to push/defeat them with Zal. Later on you'll face bigger monsters that require both Zal and the Prince's abilities to defeat but they just act as time sinks. Wait for the Mole-monster to slam three times against the ground then freeze him, with Zal, and then slash him, twice, in order to defeat him. Tap on the flying eye to shoot at him with Zal until he falls over and then slash him with the prince, twice. Wait for the Wizard to shoot the fire ball and then shoot at him with Zal to deflect the fire ball so that you can slash him with the Prince, twice. These battles aren't fun, they're just boring. Just like the rest of the game.

The combat looks dynamic on screenshots but is anything but.

 Prince of Persia - The Fallen King is a bland, boring game that fails to provide anything of interest for fans of the franchise. If you want something like this but that is actually decent, go with Forgotten Sands on the DS, which follows the same stylus-gimmick but to a better result. If you want Prince on the go, the PSP's got you covered. Just avoid this one.
 3.0 out of 10