The Sequel’s Prequels (and more)

As anyone reading this is going to know, this fall/winter/coming spring is full of new releases. As you may have noticed, many of the “big name” releases are share a title with another game, and may or may not be followed by a number right after it. In other words, its sequel time. In respect of the upcoming sequels, I’m starting a new category of reviews, called Sequel’s Prequels, to review the games that have just recently had sequels come out, or will have those sequels in coming months. A quick list as follows:

1.) Halo 3

2.) Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

3.) Bioshock

4.) Mass Effect

5.) Battlefield: Bad Company

6.) Assassin’s Creed

7.) Crackdown/Left 4 Dead (already reviewed, but fit in the description.)

In other news, previous reviews have been labeled under the header “Retro Minute” (Crackdown, Super Mario/Duck Hunt) or at least should have been. (Prince of Persia, Mercenaries 2). In retrospect, no pun intended, that header is also the title of a segment on MSN news, so the header will be replaced by the phrase “From The Bargain Bin” Games coming up for this section include:

1.) Condemned: Criminal Origins

2.) Guitar Hero Aerosmith

3.) Call of Duty 2/3 combination review.

NCAA Football 10

 

Here we are with the 13th installment of the NCAA Football series. This is a series (along with Madden) accused of being a monopolizing aspect of EA Sports’ exclusivity deals. Many claim that EA just puts out the same game with a new feature and roster every year to do nothing but make money. Those people will love this review.

Let’s start off with the exciting part! There are two brand spanking new features in NCAA 10. Team Builder is EA Sport’s new Create-A-Team feature, bringing back the beloved feature not seen since NCAA ‘06. EA claims that this is the deepest Create-A-Team feature in history, which is true, but it’s very misleading in how deep this actually is. The creator is entirely web based, meaning you can’t edit rosters, appearance or anything on the system (besides in Dynasty, but this is talking about in general). And if you aren’t on Xbox Live, then you can’t even use your teams, dynasty, or anything associated with Team Builder.

The second new feature is Season Showdown. This is a unique new mode to the EA franchise that puts gamers’ true fan-dom to the test. At the beginning, you will select your favorite team, then every time you play a game you will earn points into three categories. The categories are: Skill (catching passes, user tackles, etc.), Strategy (using set-up plays) and Sportsmanship (Kicking on 4th down). You will continuously gain points for your team until the Season Showdown challenge is complete (which I imagine is at the end of the 09-10 NCAA Football season) and the final points leader will be announced as the National Champion.

Now to the old features. Road To Glory is the new revamped version of Campus Legend. The features of RTG are the same as Campus Legend was: start out in your high school playoffs, get signed, become a starter, become awesome. The new feature is Erin Andrews reporting on events in your career. After a big event (winning State, signing day, Heisman winning, etc), she (and sometimes Kirk Herbstreit) will appear and talk about your career. While this is minor feature overall, it does add some originality and excitement into everything.

Now for Dynasty mode. You can now create Custom Conferences, such as moving Ohio State to the ACC or whatever you prefer. Besides this minor feature, there is not a damn thing that has changed. Oh yeah, Online Dynasty is back too. It’s like Dynasty, except online with your friends.

Game play-wise, although there’s still not much change, a few new tweaks have been added. EA claims to have added 1000 new animations ranging from tackling to catches. It usually only takes a play or two to take notice of some of these, and to be honest the game feels a little more realistic than back on 08 and 09 where the ball jumps into the receiver’s tuck instead of him actually bringing it in with his hands.

Your beloved Chase Fisher and his Maysville Panthers created team.

An interesting add-on to single player games are the Player Lock feature. If you like the single-character perspective of Campus Legend, then this should thrill you immensely.  Another add on is the game planning function. Whatever you choose on this function will determine the actions of your AI. They will either play “Aggressive” (causing bigger plays but more drops and fumbles), “Balanced”, or “Conservative” (the opposite effects of Aggressive).

Ok. So this is where I’m going to get somewhat temperamental. This game is the most true example of monopolizing off of the sports game market that has ever been created. Every single mode has a way for EA to make money. In Road To Glory, an option on the bottom of the High School screen allows you to buy “Unlimited 5 Star Prospects” for 100 points. An option on the Dynasty preseason screen is to buy an extra Pipeline state for 150 Microsoft points. But the most extreme and  ridiculous part is the Team Builder feature. To unlock use of Team Builder teams, you have to enter a code found on the back of your game manual, and each code is usable once. So, renters and buyers of used games, enjoy either completely missing out on this feature or paying 800 Microsoft points to use it.

Achievement-wise, as with most other EA Sports games, this game isn’t too difficult. There are a few achievements that are a little time consuming. There are four achievements for reaching Level 10 on Season Showdown, 3 for the different categories and one for altogether. To reach level 10 you need ~1000 pts, which will take some time to build up (2 pts per catch, 4 per user tackle). Difficulty-wise the only toughie will be the Interception and Touchdown while using player lock, which may not even be a problem for Campus Legend pros. Achievement Difficulty: 2/10

Overall, NCAA Football 10 brings somewhat improved game play and pretty decent modes to the improved graphics system that 09 improved on from 08. Road To Glory adds a uniqueness with Erin Andrews’ cut scenes but is really just Campus Legend with a new interface. Dynasty is practically unchanged. Team Builder is a great add-on but could’ve done without all the monetary exploits imposed by EA, and Season Showdown could end up making NCAA a bigger game on the market like Madden has been since the early 90s. But, the monetary exploits seemingly featured around every corner makes probably the game’s coolest feature unavailable to those who didn’t buy the game new. 7/10

Scorephoria Hits The Arcade: Braid

That’s right folks, yours truly won himself a copy of the 2008 arcade hit “Braid”. Now, I’m going to be honest. In 2008, I was a score-hoarding achievement whore who played games to milk every point I could out of them as soon as possible, and I never would have taken a look at a 15 dollar arcade game. I’ve changed since then, and now I take more of a critical look at games when playing them.

Braid is a puzzle platformer on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade.  It is a game I found similar to Portals in the way that you have to use an extreme amount of logic to solve each puzzle. The difference from Portals here is that instead of a portal gun, you are given the ability to control time.

The game has 6 “Worlds” which are divided up into rooms of a house. In each room there is a door which leads you to a small room with books that give a background story to the game. Then on the other side of the room features the doors that take you to each world’s 5-6 levels. On each level there are 1-3 puzzle pieces that you can collect (I would recommend it for the points) en route to finding the exit door on the other side. There are 3 enemies to watch out for: weird human-cat hybrids, meowing rabbits, and fireball machines.

The control scheme is very simple here as there are only a few commands. (X) sends time in reverse, (LB) makes time go faster in reverse (speeds of 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x), (A) jumps and (B) performs actions like opening doors. The game automatically does things such as picking up keys and opening doors with them.

An interesting feature of this game is that every level features different gameplay. Your abilities change in each world. While you always have the ability to reverse time, on one world you can cast a shadowy partner to re-perform actions you recently did, on another you can use an object to permanently slow down a portion of the level, and on another everything moves in reverse.

The gameplay has a minor plot revolving around a man named Tim that we can assume is the character we play as. Tim is looking for his long list love “The Princess” that he is trying to win back. I won’t go much deeper so I don’t spoil it, but things become much darker than they normally appeared.

Achievement-wise, this game is fairly simple sparing one achievement. The achievements are given for completing each level and solving each puzzle, which you should do anyways. The final achievement is to beat the game on a “Speed Run”, which requires you to complete all 6 puzzles in 45 minutes, and that my friends is a toughie if there ever was one. Achievement Difficulty: 1/5

Overall, this is a great game that unless for certain people, I never would have played. I can say that this game has changed my perception of platformers and XBLA games forever. 5/5

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s Mindblowing Packaging

I’m really stunned by this guys. Acclaimed developers Infinity Ward released a video on their Youtube page showing all three of their CoD:MW 2 packaging and I have to say the Prestige Edition offers something I don’t think anyone would have imagined.

That’s right folks. The Prestige Edition includes not only a real working pair of Night Vision goggles, but also includes a custom sculpted Soap McTavish head to set the goggles on. No doubt this edition will cost more than $100, but night vision goggles? Wow, Activision, you really outdid yourself here.

Red Faction:Guerrilla

In this post GTA world that we live in it’s often easy to forget that open world games can be decently original and fun to play at the same time. Red Faction: Guerrilla isn’t groundbreaking by any means but it does offer up some fresh gameplay that will keep you satisfied for hours.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is the third Red Faction game in the series. Guerrilla is played from the third person perspective rather than the first person which fans of the series are used to.  As the others, Red Faction:Guerrilla takes place on the planet Mars.

The game opens with main character Alec Mason helping his brother do a little Red Faction destruction. After the destruction Alec’s brother is killed. While attempting to return to his brother’s home Alec is greeted by the EDF (Earth Defense Force). The EDF have taken control of Mars under marshal law and are doing so in a tyrannical way. The EDF threaten Alec and coming to his rescue is a group of Mars inhabitants with the goal of liberating Mars known as the Red Faction. After killing the EDF, Alec is essentially forced to join the rebellion and fight alongside the Red Faction.

Mars is broken into six sections that need liberating. The player moves to a new section after one has been liberated but is free to roam about the different sections . To liberate a section the player must bring down the EDF control. To do so the player can complete the main missions in the section, complete Guerrilla actions or destroy EDF buildings. Since Guerrilla is an open world game the player can do these missions in which ever order they see fit. The game has an EDF control meter and a morale meter. The morale meter measure the morale of the citizens living on Mars. The morale is brought up when missions are completed and is dropped when citizens are killed. Citizens will come to your aid as morale is gained.

The main focus of Red Faction: Guerrilla is destruction. The player can destroy nearly everything, whether to create a path, destroy important enemy buildings or pass time. There are different options when it comes to choosing your destruction methods. A few of these options are remote detonated bombs, grenade launchers, a particle obliterater or the most powerful sledgehammer you will ever use. The destruction in Guerrilla really feels solid. Destroying buildings and other objects is satisfying to say the least. Guerrilla also features your standard pistol, shotgun and assault rifle. Gun freaks rejoice! Its easy to dismiss these weapons at first glance but they are effective and they don’t feel out of place. You can purchase new weapons and new upgrades, such as more armor, with salvage.  Salvage is obtained through the destruction of objects. Transportation is a vital part of all open world games. Red Faction sticks with the option of vehicles to do your transporting. The vehicles are very bland Mars takes on standard open world vehicles. You have fast vehicles that aren’t designed to withstand much abuse, heavy, slower abuse tolerant vehicles and everything in between. The map in Red Faction: Guerrilla allows you to set waypoints and then provides the player with arrows pointed to the selected destination. This feature is very helpful and keeps the game moving, never forcing you to wonder aimlessly in an open world looking for an objective.

Other game modes can also be found on your Red Faction: Guerrilla disc that aren’t the story mode. One of these modes is Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew is just what Red Faction: Guerrilla needs. It’s a mode entirely devoted to destroying crap. One of Wrecking Crew’s modes gives you 60 seconds to rack up as many points as you can by destroying buildings. Wrecking Crew certainly lacks depth but it makes so much sense in the context of the rest of the game. Another mode of Red Faction:Guerrilla is something called multiplayer. Apparently its this thing that lets you play with other real people over this thing called the internet. It’s crazy, I know. The multiplayer is essentially what you would expect however. It’s modes include Anarchy and Team Anarchy (Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch), Capture the Flag, Damage Control (King of the Hill), Destroyer (VIP) and the most original and contextually fitting Siege Mode. Siege Mode has one team protect a structure while the other team attempts to destroy said structure. This mode proves to be the most fun by far. The other modes feel like standard issue multiplayer game types. That’s not to say they aren’t fun but while they can provide some entertainment you aren’t likely to return to these modes often.

Red Faction: Guerrilla does a lot of things well that other third person open world games fail to. It offers a fresh take on a genre that is overloaded with the sludge of mediocre games. The destruction and combat is satisfying and the overall gameplay is rarely frustrating or weighted down with nonsensical design decisions. Red Faction: Guerrilla is a smooth play start to finish. 8/10

Mercenaries 2: World In Flames

In Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, (Mercs 2: WIF) the player runs through the game as a freelance mercenary, one of the three mercenaries from the original game. I played as Mattias Nillson. In the beginning of the game, the main character is seen helping an old friend from the first game, and then proceeding to be betrayed by that same friend. The player continues the game in an attempt to find information on the ‘big players’ in the game to get your revenge. Early in the game, Nillson gets shot in the rear end by a gangster, a recurring joke through the game. Throughout the game Nillson (or whatever character you choose) goes through the town fighting for ‘factions’ in an attempt to get favor and information in the hunt for your main target.

Your mercenary character spends the game performing routine missions, stealing trucks, drugs, and raiding towns held by opposing factions. Every mission completed increases your favor with that particular faction, unlocking more weapons and information. The issue here is, the factions are often opposed, and so most of the game is spent attempting to balance missions for each faction to gain information for both.

The game play is where Mercs 2 falls so horribly short. The game play is typical of low quality third person shooters. Run in, shoot some bad guys, and maybe throw a grenade or two while searching for health before you take too much enemy fire. Any sort of stealth in the game is ruined by motions sensors that immediately alert enemies to your presence. Surprisingly effective, however, is calling in your helicopter pilot to drop off supplies or weapons, or (later) your jet pilot to have air strikes against the enemy encampment. Most of the major defects in this game involve the repetitiveness of the missions, leaving players agonizing for something new until the familiar ‘beep’ comes up: achievement unlocked. Many of the missions also involve driving some sort of vehicle, made difficult by the fact that the game’s systems don’t handle fast action well.

As an early release 360 game, not much is to be said about the style of WIF. The lack of detail in the game makes the game uninteresting, to say the least, and the obviously rushed (or perhaps financially independent) game leaves a lot of shortcomings and holes in both the graphics and the entertaining portions of the game.

The achievements are also typical of the early 360 games: get so many kills with this weapon, destroy this many things, piss this many factions off, beat the game. The achievements aren’t terribly hard, just usually time consuming, and with as poorly as this game is designed, that time is better spent, say, watching grass grow. Achievement Difficulty: 6/10

The game is a basic, cheap, game for those who are bored with the major blockbusters, or those who can’t afford to shell out $45 on a used copy of COD 4. It has an overused story line, a lack of innovative game play, and cheap graphics. Only hardcore achievement whores will want to finish the game, much less find any replay value in it. 6/10

Prince Of Persia

In Prince of Persia, the player goes through the game as (gasp!) the Prince of Persia, completely removed from the rest of the Prince of Persia games in the series. Early in the game, your big sword wielding character gets forced into a companionship with a mysterious, magical woman named Elika. (Literally forced, she jumps off a cliff on to your back…because that’s how all good friendships start) Early in the game, Elika introduces her to her wacky religion, which she acquires her magical powers from. Elika’s father decides, for some unknown reason, to unleash the super-demon that conquered the world with darkness before the light-god imprisoned him in the temple. (Sounds familiar, right?) The player spends most (all) of the game running around, fighting the demon’s minions and slightly more powerful bosses, in an attempt to reach the ‘fertile lands’, which can consume the demons if Elika can use her magic to heal them.

The basic objective of the game is to escort your new magic friend to the fertile lands to help her defeat her crazy father. And even though she’s a nearly all powerful witch, she still needs your sword and random jump moves to defeat even the most basic of enemies. Once the enemies are defeated, Elika can then use her magic to heal the lands. Be warned, however, this action makes her extremely weak and special magika orbs must be collected to return her strength.

The game play is where this game can claim it’s ‘uniqueness’, shared with Mirror’s Edge and 90’s arcade games. The game is based off of ‘wall running’ and other ridiculously acrobatic moves to get around, something that can be ridiculously frustrating to those who don’t have fast enough reflexes to jump and flip at precisely the right time. If the player happens to miss the right button combination, he falls, but Elika’s magic saves him. (The same applies if the player ‘dies’ in a physical battle) While this cheapens the feeling of dying, there is an achievement for completing the game with her saving you fewer than 100 times. Therefore, dying is technically impossible, making the game really easy. And for those of us who can’t follow the brightly marked path, and the map, Elika’s magic includes an orb to help us find our way.

Even though the game was released in 2008, the graphics still are not up to date by any means, even by the standards of comparable ’07 games. The style comes entirely from the wall running and acrobatic moves, which can become slightly boring, considering nearly all of the moves are the same button, turning the game into a repetitive button masher in some spots. Some of the magic moves are flashy; temporarily blinding the player into thinking he’s playing a good game.

Joking around with Scorephoria’s Norton, I faked a ‘beep’ noise and said “10g, Started the Game”, completely kidding. Literally, the cut scene finished loading before the real beep came. “Congratulations, you’ve started the Journey” next to the 10g. I continued the game to Norton shaking his head every fifteen minutes when the beep came up, sometimes for useless or easy things. Achievement Difficulty: 4/10

While Prince of Persia seems to remain strong as a series, the 2008 rendition falls short with the lack of any sort of innovative gameplay, or even a plot that’s not halfway ripped out of the Bible. Any sort of replay value is immediately de-valued with the lack of achievement incentive, and a repetitive button masher doesn’t serve well for much more than a two night rental. The game teeters on the edge of boring, with the only thing saving it is the occasional bad ass hack-and-slash-magika combo. 6/10

Fallout 3 DLC Part 1 – Operation: Anchorage

Welcome Scorephoriacs (I just made this term up)! This is Part 1 of a 5 part review dealing with the downloadable content updates for the 2008 Xbox 360 Game of the Year, Fallout 3.

The first DLC pack released for Fallout 3 a few months ago was the “Operation: Anchorage” pack. It was originally priced at 800 MSP ($10), but during a Deal of the Week special we decided to pick it up for 560 MSP ($7). It has since returned to the original price.

Operation: Anchorage is playable right out of the vault, although it is encouraged to level up a bit first. Once the pack is installed, a radio distress signal comes in. Following the signal takes you to an old Outcast Outpost where they are fighting off a wave of Super Mutants. Once inside, you meet Protector McGraw, who takes notice of your Pip-Boy and asks your assistance. He needs you to enter a virtual reality pod to defeat an army  simulation of the Alaskan Liberation of 2076 (better known as “Operation: Anchorage) so that you may retrieve a code to unlock the Outpost’s long locked armory.

 

Operation: Anchorage adds no new major game play features. The game play inside of simulation is pretty simple, the only difference being the health and ammo dispensers everywhere for your own use. It does add the “Covert Ops” perk, but unless you are at an extremely low level (Level 1-5) it really has no use. Anchorage does add some new enemies and equipment. The Chinese are now your primary (and only) targets, but most of them are only about as tough as Talon Mercs. However one special branch are called the “Dragoons”, equipped with Stealth armor, can be deadly if attacked while unexpected.

Achievements: Very simple. All of the achievements are linear and completeable through completion of the main quest. No extra work needed . . . at all. Achievement Difficulty: 0/5

Overall, this DLC pack is pretty fun. It’s nowhere near as expansive as the Capital Wasteland and is definitely more linear in progression, but for anyone who enjoys a good action or RPG game, it’s pretty fun. 4/5

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

I’m not going to lie. It used to be that just seeing the words “Guitar Hero” on a game made me anxious to play it, but not anymore.

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is another expansion/spin-off of the Guitar Hero series once again based off of the gameplay of Guitar Hero: World Tour, the most recent entry in the main series. The game features a selected 48 songs from previous Guitar Hero games (excluding World Tour and Metallica), and makes them playable over all four instruments instead of just one or two.

The gameplay is nothing different than if you’ve played the first World Tour spin off (Metallica). There are absolutely no new additions in modes, difficulties, game play elements or anything. It is exactly the same.

Yes . . .yes . . . hmm . . . seems to be Guitar Hero . . .

Career follows the same tier by tier format as most GH games, although unlike on ‘Metallica’, you actually have to beat every single song. And by every single song, that includes “Through The Fire And Flames”. The new, for lack of a better term, add-ons to career mode, referred to in-game as “artifacts”, really have no basis besides adding a small and useless plot to the practically nonexistent cartoonish story line.

So on to the part that is actually different, the set list. The list is compromised of user-selected songs that were voted for on the Guitar Hero website earlier this year, coming from every console game in the series besides the two most recently released. Besides just adding in playable parts for each instrument, they also re-charted every single note in every single song. For some this may increase playability, but it ruins the fun in playing simplistic repetitive songs like “Barracuda”.

I will give the game some minor props. It was good to finally be able to play some songs not yet playable on the 360, mostly the songs from the original and 80’s versions. Another plus is that some songs originally charted by Harmonix have been recharted to be more accurate, such as “Mother” and “Trippin’ On a Hole In a Paper Heart”.

The sad part about that, is the fact that the people re-charting the songs work for Activision. The re-charted songs, for the most part, cause the game to suffer from the same game play flaws as Guitar Hero III. The songs are recharted to be extremely difficult, star power is vaguely available, and power combos are placed in such areas that being good enough to get the combo would mean that you are good enough to pass the song.

Pic Unrelated . . . now that we have your attention . . .

Achievement wise, this game is like no other I have played. If there is a single song you can’t pass on Expert on any instrument, say good bye to 1000 or even close to it. Big gamer points come from doing things like passing all 5 careers on expert, getting insane streaks on insane songs, and all around just being a very socially deprived person. Achievement Difficulty: 11/10

I will now sum this game up in a single 3 word sentence that will more or less summarize the entire game without need for the rest of this review : It’s Guitar Hero. 3/10

Brutal Legend Gameplay

Brutal Legend lead designer Tim Schafer released almost 17 minutes of game play for the upcoming EA and Double Fine game called “Brutal Legend”, also known as that game with Jack Black in it.

Here are the sneak peaks:

Expect a full review around the time the game ships, which is set for an October 13th, 2009 release.