My Usual Spiel: Max Payne 3, another round of gun-slingin' mass-murderin' depressed-narraratin' action

Not time for hostage rescue, time however, for whiskey

Release Date: June 1, 2012
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar Studios
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Players: 1 and Online Multiplayer
Classifcation: MA


Depression, it affects all of us at some point in our lives, but none other than our good friend Max Payne, I never really imagined how the story would continue after this but it looks like it has, and after watching my brother play through the game, I had to have a go myself.

As in all Max Payne games the story starts with a flash-forward of one of the last scenes in the game, the we go back to how Max got there. This is a very different setting for Max Payne as to critical fan review most of the game is mostly set in Sao Paulo Brazil which is a Far Cry from the gloominess of Noir York. It's been eight years since the events of the second game, Max has been fired from the NYPD for collaborating with Mona Sax, a wanted criminal and is now working as a bodyguard with his police academy buddy Raul Passos for a rich Brazilian family: the Branco’s. I won’t spoil the story but important people get kidnapped, other people die, shit generally hits the fan and Max and Passos have to murder a lot of bad guys.

"I don't like the looks of this place"

We do actually find out how Max got to be in Brazil through playable flashbacks where Max meets up with Passos in Hoboken, New York where they end up killing a mob bosses son then have to flee for their lives. Max, who is now more of an alcoholic and pill-popper then ever is his usual depressed melancholy self and narrarates the story accordingly. I do agree with Yahtzee’s ranting that Max Payne should just cheer up a little but it’s not exactly his fault that nothing good has happened to him ever since the tragedy with his family (well almost nothing) he could almost be the most depressed protagonist in gaming history.

His shirt may be having fun but the rest of him is just as downhearted-killer as usual

A couple of things I was disappointed to see gone were the comic strip scenes and Max’s nightmares from the first two games. Seeing as Max Payne 3 actually had a comic made for itself I found it strange why it didn’t feature in the game, though this time the game wasn’t exactly set in “Film Noir” style so I suppose it made sense. One of my brother and I’s favourite parts of the first two games were being able to play out Max’s nightmares about previous traumatic experiences (family murdered etc) but I suppose he may have gotten over them by now, but seriously couldn’t he have a nightmare about something else? Anyway I could rant on all day about it butit's been awhile so I suppose things can;t be the same all the time.

The graphic-novel style storytelling and being able to play Max's nightmares in the previous games were a favorite of mine, sadly they are no more in Max Payne 3

I loved the previous two Max Payne games as there was something crazy fun about being Max and going on a violent gun rampages while slow-mo flying through the air and massacring hundreds and hundreds of (supposed) criminals. Though I knew eventually that as the series wore on it was going to get more serious, gameplay wise that is. There was not much humour in the first Max Payne storyline and it has pretty much stayed that way all the way through but the way you ran and jumped around with bullets and bodies flying everywhere just seemed comical. This was made even worse by the introduction ragdoll physics for Max Payne 2 where you were deliberately shooting enemies in certain angles and using explosives at just the right time to make both their death and where their body ended up after all that more spectacular and hilarious in stark contrast to the dark and gritty story.

I wear one of these headsets for work though it isn't quite like whats pictured and also no I'm not a telemarketer.

As I suspected Max moves a lot more realistically this time around, gone are the days where you effortlessly pivoted all over the place while running then did a suicide dive in the middle of a group of enemies and took them all out someway with only a shotgun, you are now constrained by (semi) normal human anatomy which is evident the way Max grunts when he performs a shootdodge and grunts as he hits the floor though this could just be old age. Strangely enough while I was flying crazy in the last two games the new realism basically deterred me from shoot dodging and I didn’t do it much at all throughout the entire campaign. Max is now able to aim and use cover, so with the combination of these two and bullet-time I had much more fun ducking in and out of cover and popping off the bad guys through timing and strategy. I found myself not bothering to use bullet time as much either it made things a bit too easy in some areas as unlike the cover-based shooting in GTA4 there is no crosshair when you are behind cover, and rightfully so as it was kind of silly in GTA the way you could line up your target and then headshot an enemy with a single blind fire, but in Max Payne 3 (and most other cover based shooters) it only appears when you duck out of cover so you have to be ready, especially without bullet-time and your aim has to be hard.

Ahh good'ol third person games, where you can peer around corners without your character even moving, none of that mirror-on-a-stick stuff

The weapons (and weapons system) in Max Payne 3 have undergone some big changes, unlike the previous games in the franchise, Max Payne 3 will limit the number of weapons the player can carry. The limit is two handguns and one larger gun. Max is able to carry up to two single handed weapons that can be mixed for dual-wielding, and one two-handed weapon; a total of three weapons at a time. Similar to Rockstar's other title Red Dead Redemption, Max's arsenal is accessible quickly via a weapon-wheel. If the player switches to a single handed weapon, Max will hold the long arm weapon with the other hand. However, if the player opts to dual wield, the long arm weapon will be dropped. There is a wide array of dangerous weaponry inc Handguns, SMGs, Shotguns, Assault and Sniper Rifles as well as the grenade-launcher type guns. What’s more is that in the cutscenes Max is holding whatever guns he had while playing (finally!).

The new weapon wheel, very useful as it's a staple of many other shooters. Also I really like this screenshot

As you can probably guess since the last Max Payne was released in 2003 this is the most realistic and bloodiest one yet, when you pump bullets into enemies their bodies flail and jerk around in the right ways. With every last enemy shot in the room you are treated with a slow mo kill-cam which you can slow down even more with the click of a button, this really lets you see the minor details put in this time such as the blood splatters, bullet holes and exit wounds. Needless to say the game is quite violent as well there’s some pretty disturbing scenes of graphic murders and executions which sometimes involve women.

A pretty nice gore montage for the game, this guy has quite a different playing style to my 'cautious duck-and-cover ammo-conserving' style though I suppose it's a bit more epic.

There is also the introduction of “scripted” bullet time events where the game automatically slows down at a critical juncture where Max is sliding down rooftops or swinging from cranes so that you can pull off that critical shot on the kidnapper or floor a room of baddies which hopefully you successfully do as you can’t feel any stupider when you take that cool slow-mo dive then end up on the floor with no bullets left and just hope the enemies with their guns pointed at you will hold off until you can get up and reload. The graphics themselves are awesome looking, the character models are excellent, the environment looks great and reacts when you hit things, of course most of this is just expected nowadays, it isn’t really as groundbreaking as Max Payne 2 when most of us first encountered realistic objects physics and ragdoll and went crazy with it.

Scripted Bullet time: "Hang in there Max" "Hey guys just thought I'd swing by" oh there's a million of em

I unfortunately haven't played much of the multiplayer due to my brother owning the game not me though I must say it's pretty fun, especially the gang wars where you go through a story-like series of challenges such as a band of corrupt UFE cops trying to escape the town and being attacked by the local Comando Sombra street gang, and don't worry there's deathmatch, team deathmatch and 'capture the bag' modes too. I spose you might be screaming out the question "How does bullet-time work in multiplayer this article by Kotaku's Stephen Totillo should tell you all you need to know and he explains it much better then I could it's a great article that says why Max Payne 3's multiplayer is such a good move by Rockstar.

There's the bag, but is it safe to collect? also someone doesn't seem to like Yoss

Though with the singleplayer, I had a ball playing it, right up to the end the story keeps you so engaged, this probably wasn’t my favourite Max Payne though it was mainly the player-made modifications for them that were the source of much fun for me though I highly doubt that this game will allow that as modifications of new games go, maybe sometime in the future I guess. Bottom line, if you are a fan of the previous Max Payne games or a fan of third-person shooter in general, chances are you’ll like this it’s a great mix of story and action and although Max is a bit of a depressive bastard you can’t deny he’s an absolute bad-ass as well.

JD

The sad, sad hero

My Usual Spiel: Driver San Francisco, Story-driven, action driving at it’s finest

As I said in my previous post I do apologise for the lack of blogging, I just need to get on with it now it’s a bit quieter.

Release Date: September 1, 2011  
Genre: Driving/Racing
Publisher: Ubisoft  
Developer: Reflections
Platform: PC, PS3, XBOX360, Wii
Players: 1-2 Splitscreen and Online

It’s been awhile since I’ve played a Driver game, a long while. In fact the last time I did was Driver 2, I think back then it was before I got a Playstation 2 and was able to play Grand Theft Auto that I quit driver entirely. My experience with Driver 2 was fairly bland, it didn’t look too good even back then being on PS1, wasn’t too exciting and was quite hard in some parts. It wasn’t until my good friend Brok who is a huge fan of the driver series and I went to the Mana Bar on a Wednesday night for the Driver San Francisco launch party, well there wasn’t too much party but there was a lot of driver, we got there at 3pm and didn’t leave until 11pm though we mostly played the multiplayer which included split screen multiplayer for the first time in the series. I saw a bit of the singleplayer which looked quite fun and funny at the same time.

Driver SF is indeed intense

So then according to the chronology Driver San Francisco would be the 5th one in the series (disregarding the portable gaming device ones) I wasn’t really interested in most of them having played Driver 2 on the PS1 one of the main reasons for that was we didn’t have a PS2 and therefore couldn’t play GTA3 so after we did get a PS2 it was Grand Theft Auto all the way and I never really paid much heed to the Driver games after that. They were sort of a mix between the crazy driving of GTA and the (slightly) more civilised driving of Need for Speed and Test Drive Unlimited but when Driver San Francisco came out it looked good, it looked really good, it was possibly the most hyped of all the games since Driver 2 and was at least a once play. So when I finally got round to it I was excited to start the singleplayer and it sure as hell delivered, it did the usual driver thing which switched between game world and digitally animated cinema style and the whole thing went off with a bang. But almost immediately after doing the semi-playable opening sequences I ran into quite a big hurdle.

"Hey Jones, what's that huge yellow and black beacon in the sky?"

I found that after much fuffing around I couldn’t actually use my Logitech PS2 style controller for the PC the same way I did in a lot of other games namely Test Drive Unlimited, I couldn’t seem to use one stick to steer and the other to accelerate brake no matter what I tried, this was largely due to the game being a console port which being a mostly PC user, constantly filled me with rage. I knew what I had to do, I bought a Logitech PS3 style controller for PC which has the ‘bumper’ L2 and R2 buttons which are used to Accelerate and brake, wasn’t all that bad since I needed one anyway though with some dismay I realized after purchasing that only the wireless version of the controller had force feedback which I found incredibly stupid since if you were buying the wired version why wouldn’t you want the force feedback as it wouldn’t use up battery power. I could have used a wireless controller had I have known though the benefit of having no cord to mess around with might not have outweighed the annoyance of needing batteries all the time, well It’s a matter of how often you used it I guess.

The key/button controls are annoyingly hard to work with and also have no  secondary option.

But anyway once I had my controller sorted I launched into the game and I gotta admit it was entertaining the way the story panned out. Basically Jericho (the arch-nemesis of the game) has escaped from prison (possibly again) and it’s up to the hero cops John Tanner and Tobias Jones have to stop him, cue the one of many hectic car chases and Tanner and Jones car is smashed into by a truck. After this Tanner realizes that he has an ability to sort of move his consciousness into another person aka “shifting” and is able to take control of their vehicles, this leads to quite a few funny situations i.e. Tanner shifting into an Ambulance and a Learner driver on his test, I did laugh though when Jones made the comment about shifting into a woman’s body. The mechanic is very useful and fun to use though it’s obviously required throughout the whole game as you have to repeatedly shift around in order to damage/stop other vehicles, get back in the race/chase after crashing, perform stunts and just basically make things easier for yourself, it does make some interesting technical holes for example they don’t really explain what Jones does while Tanner is out of his body, apparently Tanner’s body just drives the car automatically, but I suppose there’s a lot of things overlooked for the sake of a fun game mechanic.

Flyin' like Superman

Oooh yes that looks very nice

The story mode consists your usual open-city driving game romp through quite a large area of San Francisco with you hovering above the city as Tanner’s disembodied “spirit” where you can pick from various missions dotted around the city. Which include the storyline missions and the “required to continue the storyline” side missions  which involve things like street racing to protecting a Security van by smashing into the bad guy attackers using any vehicle available with trucks and buses obviously doing more damage so your consistently hunting for them if you need to stop anyone. Even in some of the street races you need to come both first and second which requires you to constantly shift between two cars. All of the main story missions and “main” side missions involve you shifting into someone else’s body and the ensuing dialogue between you and the passenger is hilarious. There are also other missions where you can random stunts and dares for money and "willpower" which allow you to purchase more cars and abilities. In these missions you drive a car that isn’t the famous Dodge Challenger, this part was fairly interesting as you have the main story car, then you have some other car that you purchase from different garages around the city for doing stunts/dare’s and other non required side missions. Apparently for the first time ever a Driver game has licensed cars to buy/drive and thus they are all lined up in brand order on your car select screen. I found it fun using the older slower cars then upgrading to some newer, quicker ones and seeing the difference when doing the challenges.

Most of the side missions involve breaking the law in as many ways as possible for material and personal gain,  nothing new I spose.

The story is pretty much what you’d expect, the game is largely as all Driver game are a detective mystery storyline with those great “last time, on Driver San Francisco” parts, it  goes through pretty much every possible way Tanner can use his newfound ability, posing as gang members and other cops in order to stop Jericho. I won’t reveal anything more about the story you’ll just have to play it.

"No Jones that's just wrong, besides it'll be me inside her"

I’ve already explain my difficulty with the gaming controls but after you get over that hurdle it’s easy enough though the Driver games as you’d probably know by now have one of the most aggressive police forces out there and sometimes it is seriously hard to evade them, you’re just tearing down a straight or round corners as fast as possible and sometimes it’s really frustrating to be just about to lose them then crash into something. The controls are still quite arcadey more then so Test Drive Unlimited but slightly less so then say the Need for Speed series, but their ok once you get used to them and you have heaps of fun simulating movie car chase scenes, powersliding and crashing all over the place which is where the movie editor mode really shines. I can’t tell you how many good scenes my friend Brok has done in this game but I’ll give you a hint which everyone will know by now anyway. Get the Delorean to 80mph and you’re in for a surprise. One of the few things that irked me though was that the way all the pedestrians just happened to get out of the way right at the last second which I suppose this isn’t GTA but I kind of missed mowing them down but that’s more then made up for with you being able to crash through most things on the street including bus shelters.

Dem cops be hard to lose, this is also a 70's style mission, where you have no  boost, ram or other special powers.  All the other cars in the mission are 70's too which is pretty awesome.

The story mode some great animation, the characters look very real and it’s great the way it changes in and out of the game world to the cinematic. Driver San Francisco’s graphics have got mixed reviews or so I’ve heard,  I’m not the best at judging graphics I’d gladly lower them in order to play more smoothly but the game isn’t exactly a rival for Crysis 3 so I don’t really need to bother (well not anymore with my current PC) I think the graphics look fine, the cars look great, the city looks great, the cinematics look great too even if it does look at bit weird when it transitions from them to the game world but meh it looks good enough and the atmospheric effects especially the sun glare look good too.

Using the in-car mode you are able to look around and there's full interior detail for almost every vehicle and when you do a sharp turn you actually see your self spinning the wheel all the way doing the hands-over thing which is pretty impressive.

The multiplayer, which includes 19 different games modes such as competitive tag and trailblazer was especially fun when playing at the Mana Bar with friends I didn’t do any online multiplayer myself but I suppose it could be fun for a while. There’s a real sense of fun playing someone else split screen as you hurtle and jostle along trying to keep in the slipstream of the player controlled car. I don’t really have much else to say, I wasn’t particularly interested in the multiplayer after that marathon session just wanted to finish off the singleplayer.

Trailblazer: Don't let him get to 80mph!

I would recommend Driver San Francisco to anyone, it’s obviously a must play for fans of driving games. Having not played the series for a while it felt refreshing to see what Driver had come up with and it was good, I usually like car games where you create your own character and start as a nobody with a shitty car then work up to being greatest racer in the country/world/universe etc though this was almost like acting out a car-themed movie which is awesome fun. This ain’t no cutting edge physics and graphical driving simulator, and it shouldn’t be this is a story-driven Action/Adventure driving game at its best.

JD


The road less travelled is fun for a while

My Usual Spiel: Motorstorm Apocalypse, and I thought it couldn't get any crazier

Release Date: March 17, 2011
Genre: Offroad Racing
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Evolution Studios
Platform: PS3
Payers: 1-4 Splitscreen, 2-16 Online

I like my Library, the Yarra Plenty Regional Library is cool enough to have Music CD’s, Graphic Novels and Magazine subscriptions one of which happens to be the Official Playstation magazine. I especially like it when they have the newest issue out for the month and it happens to have a slip for 1 months free access to Playstation Plus which hasn’t been used yet. I suppose you can see what I’m getting at, I obtained Motorstorm Apocalypse for free through the Playstation Plus site plus other things though I wasn’t really interested in what else was there, oh there was LittleBigPlanet 2 and Infamous 2 and Just Cause 2 and Bulletstorm… er 1 though I’ve some of them already on PC or otherwise and others I really couldn’t be bothered though I did get some cool ‘dynamic themes’ for my PS3 menu. I‘ve had a little bit of history with Motorstorm as I may have detailed in my Pacific Rift review.

Since I saw Motorstorm as a launch title for the PS3 I always wanted to see what it was like, motorcycles and ATV’s racing against monster trucks and big rig’s? So when I finally got round to buying one I had three to choose from though I wanted to try out the first one as I think the Monument Valley canyon setting really suited the genre though I soon had to take it back as I hadn’t realized it was 1 player only which was pretty unacceptable for a game like this. So I bought Pacific Rift which was the second in the series and had a blast tearing up a remote volcanic island in the pacific and was even able to do it with friends and online once or twice.

Pacific Rift: "To hell with nature I've got a truck"

 I’d never intended to purchase Motorstorm Apocalypse as in my opinion one of these games was enough, though it was apparently said to be pretty exciting as it’s the first racing game I’ve come across where the track changes as you race. Apocalypse is set in a earthquake-ravaged city which is practically still quaking and has an ongoing war between the “crazies” who refuse to leave the city and an increasingly aggressive military security force. In case you didn’t realize, Motorstorm is in fact a racing tournament yes these people actually came to this place via some kind of unused aircraft carrier intending to build tracks and race around incredibly dangerous crumbling city, the logic is all there. The other two games were in at least believable places you could have a race tournament yet still incredibly dangerous but of course it’s just a game isn’t it.

This is what is a usual race is like.

There is a few new vehicles added to the lineup, the Superbike, Chopper, Super Mini, Muscle Car and Super Car are all new additions bringing the total up to 13.  The controls are slightly differently set out but are the same as usual, you basically go full bawl most of the time taking your foot of the accelerator and powersliding occasionally and sometimes actually braking though unless you do it perfectly the other racers always seem to overtake you. One of the most important features is the turbo boost which overheats your engine to get a temporary speed boost but you have to be careful to keep your engine from blowing up, you can also ram your opponents out of the way which also takes up boost. The graphics are largely the same but the racing is as hectic as ever this time with tracks set in the suburbs, the trainyards and subway, the shipyards and boardwalk, downtown, some place that looks a lot like the golden gate bridge and of course track set along the rooftops of buildings themselves.

Yep, Motorstormers are this crazy, though I'd like to know how quickly they got this track set up.

 You’ve got to wonder how they build these tracks but they all seem to have a hastily cobbled together sign proudly displaying the name of the current “track” that it’s the start of, sometimes the only way of knowing where to go is the yellow signs in the distance pointing left, right or sometimes down. But of course this is a major example of a game where knowing the track really helps especially with the multiple routes and chaos of the track as I’ve had to do some races twice cause I’ve needed the first race as practice specifically because this latest Motorstorm is possibly the hardest of all of them to see where the fack you’re going, it’s true I did feel sorry for anyone I got to play the game with me as if you’ve never played the game before and are racing at breakneck speed through a city that is sundering in itself with debris flying everywhere and the screen shaking all the while you’re playing 2 or 4 player split screen, not matter how big your TV is you’re going to have problems.

Actually it looks pretty clear in this shot.

 I only played this one split screen multiplayer briefly both at home and at a lan, and I didn’t see all that much difference. There was apparently supposed to be some kind of new singleplayer “story mode” but I wasn’t expecting much when I booted up my copy at home. In the singleplayer there is basically three different stages you go through rookie, pro and veteran,  there isn’t much in the way of story, in each section you just basically arrive to the city on the aircraft carrier and have an intro race then do races for a short two days (that’s all the adrenaline you need I spose) then you always seem to have this amusing outro race where you have to race the clock or someone else to the carrier, the end of the veteran one is quite epic. The singleplayer was fun and frustrating at times as usual and it didn’t take me long to complete, though the replay value comes with going for gold and completing all the extra events inc the Hardcore festival which pits you against a series of the same tracks except with faster meaner opponents and a time limit, needless to say I only did a couple of these before leaving it for some other time. There’s also time attack though the rules are interesting, instead of racing a ghost all you have to do is complete the course without crashing, which is sometimes a bit harder than it sounds. I found that this time around I didn’t unlock much by completing the story mode, only the hardcore events if I came first in them.

Well thats one way of getting back on the carrier.

 A lot of the unlocks are through playing Multiplayer, things like the Perks which allow you to modify certain things about your car handling, boost and combat for example: increased grip or faster boost cooling. There is also a “Weekly Challenge” where you complete 3 races of varying difficulty to unlock new vehicles and parts. You can fully customize your vehicles this time, not just change the paintjob completely you can spend hours designing the perfect vehicle even changing the parts to get a different look. With the drivers instead of random rough and tough looking individuals, this time around you get a selection of rough and tough looking named individuals some of which who you unlock in the story mode.

And this guy doen't even wear a shirt, seriously I do try to pick the most safety-conscious-looking person I can find.

 I felt a little discouraged that I didn’t unlock any more vehicles doing the singleplayer though it doesn’t really matter that much I guess. A thing I liked doing with Pacific Rift was to change all the colours of my currently selected vehicles to match my driver, I’ve noticed that they do this in the singleplayer mode and it looks awesome, though it’s hard to imagine needing 13 vehicles just to enter the tournament. I didn’t actually check out the numbers of who was playing online multiplayer but it would definitely be more than Pacific Rift, I’ll have to go on for a bash sometime as like Wipeout Fusion, playing against real people who have played the game before is a lot more challenging then both the AI opponents and random friends.

"oi, we're trying to have a race here"

I really don’t know what else to say that I haven’t said before in the other review, it’s really just a lot of crazy fun, this time especially. Apocalypse is the most feature-rich of the series so there should still be a few people playing it on the PS3 network, I wasn’t going to bother with it really until I got it as a freebie, but the experience has been fun, and extra fun with friends (who have possibly played it before) so if you’re in the mood for a cheap or possibly free game which is possibly the most chaotic and fun racing you’ve ever had where barrel through an earthquake ravaged city and crash spectacularly every so often then look no further.

JD

Speeding in a blind rage.

My Usual Spiel: Way of the Samurai 4, Samurai Swords and Sexy times

Release Date: 1 October 2012
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Aquire
Platform: PS3
Payers: 1



When a friend first told me about a “Samurai RPG” for the PS3 I was enthralled, after all I’ve pretty much given up hope about a new Tenchu game being on the PS3, being a Samurai in feudal Japan,? yes please. As a practitioner of "Iaido" a brand of Japanese sword art myself as well as fan of any Samurai movie, I couldn't wait. Though after some research I found that this particular “way” of the samurai was fairly comical as it involved ridiculous dialogue, over-the-top swinging and bodies flying in the air swordfighting and mini games such as torture and “Night-crawling” where you sneak through a woman’s house while knocking out family members in order to find her and take her to the inn for some more erotic games. The game also did not review very well with Metacritic giving it an overall 59.

Despite this I still had to buy the game to experience what it was like “to laugh at the game or with it” as one reviewer said. Well I’ve done one playthrough of it already so I can come to a brief conclusion that it’s quite short, but there’s a reason for this which I will go into. You  set up your samurai before you begin the story with a name and clothing though there is little or no customization options available the first time you start and the NPC’s with voice dialogue never refer to you by name anyway. The game’s storyline consists of the age old formula of you as a Samurai from somewhere or other coming into a new town and immediately getting plunged into a conflict where you are forced to take sides depending on what actions you take.

So for example the game takes place in the period in Japan after the arrival of Commodore Perry’s black ships where British settlers have come to a fictional Japanese town of Amihama. The story starts with me being rowed to shore on a  small boat where the arrival of a British ambassador (who looks about 12 or 13 years old) has caused a local gang of Japanese nationals called the “Disciples of Pajna” to attack the British as they obviously don’t like foreign invaders. So you have the choice of helping the local Shogunate law enforcement defend the British or attack them, this main story carries over the entire game which lasts only 4 days. It splits into three different options you can take which starts events for example you can help the British ambassador and her people,  join the Disciples of Prajna or help the local Shogunate government act as a mediator between the two.

Your humble protagonist.

The movement and combat is pretty simple I do like the sheathing and unsheathing of the sword but the combat is just a bit too easy, there’s a button for fast attack and a button for power attack and you can just mash them until you opponent is dead, I found myself trying to be realistic (as I usually do) trying to do the button combination moves, blocking, dodging etc to make it a bit less cheap. There was a few helpful message screens stopping play and coming up on how to play the game i.e. fighting which I am sure would annoy the hell out of less-tolerant people who just want to button-mash and work it out for themselves. I myself am patient, but I am rapidly losing my patience with this move I can’t do, it’s like this slashing power move that you pull back on the stick then press triangle but it never seems to work when I want it. But anyway the fighting is pretty basic, I just get into the groove of basic and power attacks and if they get close just block them and throw them. Basically you just get the hang of doing forward stab moves and slice moves and dodging your opponents attacks, you can do several moves in the blocking stance including small dodges, a grabbing throw and a short kick which also acts as a quick way to pick up swords and other loot.

"What, you aren't dead yet?, let's fix that"

Most of your items you acquire from defeating enemies, and the way you do it is quite ridiculous. You seem to be able to get items in two ways, you can search them after they have been killed, though most of the time this isn’t preferable as often once all the enemies have been killed it switches to a cutscene where you end up in a different place unable to loot the bodies. So annoyingly you have to loot them while you’re fighting and the way to do this is by ‘kicking’ them which looks pretty funny, once I defeat an opponent I kick his sword up into the air (which conveniently disappears inside my “sword bag”) then move on to the next. Then after the  battle I sheath my sword all samurai-like then proceed to repeatedly kick the dead bodies until whetting stones or onigiri pop out. You can also acquire new clothes from shops and accessories such as hats and masks from playing different parts of the game. I’ve found with the short length of the game it’s pretty easy to gain money fast by both doing the story missions and doing odd jobs around.

Buying new clothes can make you look pretty stylish, and the accessories can make you look pretty silly as well.

 A large part of the gameplay revolves around your weapons and fighting styles, for example you have to make your sword is upgraded with strength and sharpness along the way and make sure it doesn’t degrade so far that it breaks, I’ve had to resort to martial arts against sword-wielding adversaries because my sword broke in the middle of a fight, so you have to either repair your sword with a whetting stone that you find from defeating enemies or from the Smith. The Smith himself is your best buddy, he can repair your sword, make it do more damage, make it last longer before needing repair and even put “inscriptions” on it which give it more powers such as unbreaking.

"You want some work done on your sword boy? it's gonna cost ya"

 The town of Amihama is split into 8 areas, the Harbor, the Town, the Main Plaza, The Magistrate, Little Britain, the back roads, the shrine and the cemetery. Different story events happen in the different areas and the three factions having their home bases in different areas., you do a lot of running and the wait time between switching areas and going in buildings is sometimes annoying but it’s bearable. Throughout the game you can interact with others and do oddjobs like a normal sandbox RPG which include random jobs which could be good or bad, for example there’s a level of crime in the city and you can do jobs that will either raise or lower the crime rate. You can also start a Dojo and recruit members or do a quite funny but useless thing called “Night Crawling”. In order to do the Night Crawling you have to first approach a woman say the right 4 sentences (which are always random) then at night you sneak into her house and have to sneak around while avoiding or knocking out their family members and pulling the blankets of futons until you find them, all the while trying to do it before your opponent (yes opponent) finds her first. Once you found her you both go to the inn where you have a playfight and try to throw her on the futon which once you’ve  done you proceed to do some wacky jump onto her and then it fades to black and horse and sword sounds ensue.

"Ah hah! she must be under here, good thing there are no family members around to see, and what the hell does that thing on the left mean?"

 The story though is the mainstay of what you’re doing as I’ve mentioned before the game is quite short as all the action happens over the course of four days and includes choices at almost every juncture that change the story inc who you are aligned to and what events you can do and which ones you miss because you chose a different factions quest. The first time I went through the story I found myself just going from one event to the next not knowing where to go or what to do and ended up having my sword break in the middle of an important fight and having to give up where I received an early ending and a ‘shameless’ rating for my finish. Luckily for my next run through my brother was away so I could use his laptop and read Gamefaqs (which is a very useful site I must say) while I was playing otherwise like before I would have had no idea.

It’s amazing how much you have to resort to the walkthrough to make sure you’re doing everything correctly as you don’t get another chance if you muck it up, that’s why I save constantly in case I take a misstep. My second play through went pretty well, I read from a gamefaqs guide that there was different endings you could get so I went for the one where I join the local Government to keep the peace but try and stop the evil Magistrate and to do that you have to make sure you do the right events in the right order. Managing your sword and your money isn’t too hard, with clothes I just bought a similar thing to what the local constables were wearing to fit in with my role. The whole thing ended pretty quickly I did all the right sequences to get the ending I wanted though the real ending where you unite all of the town against the evil emperor is obviously the hardest to get.

The British with their 14-year-old-looking-and-sounding "ambassador" All the main British characters are all voiced by Japanese actors speaking Japanese which is kind of odd.

Overall the game didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought, sure it’s kind of weird in parts and the writing and the combat is a little strange. The voice acting would annoy some people as it's all in Japanese with subtitles though I only have a problem with the British speaking fluent Japanese in Japanese accents which is really odd. But the story and replayability make up for it. You can be pretty certain that you’ll be playing through the game several times to see what different endings you can get , and as you play more you unlock more for future playthroughs as well as finding out new things each time. I’m glad I did buy it but if I can’t get a stealthy-ninja style game for PS3 do hope there is a Samurai RPG that is more authentic and historical and not quite as slapstick that can take its place.

JD


With a trailer like this, it's obvious the developer wasn't serious about the game either.


封建時代の日本を確認し、私が思っていたよりも滑稽。

My Usual Spiel: F1 2011, To strive for perfection or misbehave

Release Date: 23 September 2011
Genre: Driving/Racing
Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Codemasters Racing
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

F1 2011 was a game that was suggested to me to try out by one of my friends Aaron Simpson, a friend whose experience with Japanese swords I couldn’t question but with video games I really had no idea. Though I was only trying out the game free of charge this time around unlike the instances of Magicka, Diablo III and possibly Arma II which I purchased on the proposition from friends that it was a game I would enjoy and found I actually didn’t in the end. But anyway I’d never played am F1 simulator before and who was I to refuse a driving game. I found starting out with the game pretty easy, I thought It was going to be a nightmare settings up all the controls and options but it turned out to be pretty easy almost over simplified I think as it struck me straight away that this was not a serious racing simulator such as Grand Turismo and not a crazy arcade racer like Burnout but sort of like a middle of the road one like Test Drive Unlimited 2 for example which is what I’m used to.

Ah the very start of the race, quite chaotic especially in Singapore at night

The experience of being a new F1 driver is fairly thorough you get a full on introduction and media interview though they don’t actually react to your answers, you also get a laptop with emails from your Team Manager your Race manager your PR Manager and your Manageering manager of managerial services but this is just formality basically as you are told what your targets are for each race anyway, things like placing 18^st or under which is pretty reasonable for your first time. So you select the race (Australia is first up as usual) and then you get straight to the garage and in the driver’s seat and have options to configure all this stuff and view these screens with things like, tyre type, weather, engine set up etc, but basically depending on the difficulty level you have it set on the options should be picked for you and you can go straight out and start.


"C'mon let's go man! it's all good, I'm good! I'm fine! get this damn computer off my car! dunno what most of it means anyway, wait I think I need to go to the toilet!, is there a toilet in here!? errgh aargh eeg! oh screw it let's goooo! woah! sorry about that buddy almost ran you over! woah this shit is fast!

To my annoyance you don’t actually drive the car out yourself, it’s automatically done for you to stop any speeding through the pits, but the problem with this is that the car keeps accelerating and they only give you control back on the first corner and you have to really make sure that you slow down. I actually tried turning all of the assists off and faired mostly fine without them surprisingly though I had a hard time measuring the throttle to my joystick, I use a Logitech Playstation2 style controller for PC and I use one joystick for steering and the other for acceleration and braking unlike the new PS3 one which had the bumper pads for accel/braking.

These two turns couldn't have gone any worse, I was having trouble getting used to the throttle and was accelerating way to fast.

So I did laps, and more laps, it was pretty challenging to start off with even on the easiest setting (especially in the freakin rain) but I got reasonably used to it. Though in order to get the full experience you really need the whole force feedback steering wheel/pedals set up of course I reckon it does make things harder especially when you not used to it.

You can apparently buy an F1 steering wheel pheripheral

Not that something like this wouldn't be even better.

In order to do your first race you first go out for practice to do a specific amount of laps which I’m not sure how many and ended up leaving having done about 5 and just gone with that time. I then had to do qualifying followed by the actual race. The Albert Park scene was good, I was ready to do then I did the 3 lap race and came 14^th which was pretty good, you really notice  If you happen to run into a wall and lose parts of your car the difference that it makes and how fragile the damn cars really are. I then went back to my drivers “caravan” and selected the next race which was in Malaysia and came 7^th, which was even better. It was at that time I came to the realization that being a virtual F1 Driver was quite boring, the emails were boring the interviews were boring and the racing was quite boring. SO I had to shake things up a bit (as you do)

Lookin good for Albert park Qualifying

I like this shot too, I think their just used generic buildings though unless you can recognise one

During the next race (in Turkey) I could give two shits about setting a good time or qualifying, and got myself disqualified from both events. During the main race I started to ram the fack out of my opponents, I shoved them out of the way, I blocked them (illegally, yes there’s such thing as legal blocking in F1 apparently), I ran them into the wall, I threw my cigarette lighter into their cockpit onto their crotch, you name it I did it and eventually got black flagged with race director “Andy”  all the while calmly telling me what was going on with the stewards until very calmly telling me that “this is the end of the race for us” as I was booted from the track two minutes in.

I then saw a short animation of me swiping the camera away and storming off into what I think would be the locker room. And do you think after all this foul behavior, disqualifications and failure would I get a stern talking to by Andy? A negative interview about the results of the last race, an angry email from the Team Manager? telling me to pack up my stuff and get out? No, NOTHING I did the same thing two races and two different countries in a row and nothing happened apart from some animation of me being slightly moody, the interview was the same stupid supportive crap and I received absolutely no new email from anyone, and that my friend is not acceptable. What’s the fun on doing wrong when you don’t get at least some kind of negative feedback for it especially in an industry as freakishly competitive as Formula 1.

"Get that camera out of my face!, or helmet... damn car, damn race, damn sexual misconduct lawsuit, rrrgh mffrmggr mgrghrghrr...."

But anyway I’ll continue with the review, the graphics are reasonable though a bit cartoony, it’s almost like they used the same graphical style and engine from Vietcong 2  but technically this isn’t a game which needs detailed human characters and you don’t really need that much for an F1 game, the people look decent, the weather effects are pretty good, there’s a decent vibe going when you start the race not to mention the attention to detail including all the stands with the people during the main races. The singleplayer campaign should keep you going for a while but there is also the new “Proving Grounds” which you are given specific cars and settings to make a time in as well as the normal time trial. I didn’t really try the multiplayer mode as I don’t usually bother with most racing games though I have tried with a few games recently including Test Drive Unlimited 2, Wipeout Fusion and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. But if you’re a fan of F1 and want to play with and compete against people of the same liking then this will be for you where you can participate in the new Co-op championship mode, where you and a friend will be teammates/rivals for a whole F1 Season which sounds like a lot of fun, as well as that there also is the usual multiplayer plus a split screen mode which is rare for a PC version, there is also computer racers to fill in the gaps if you haven’t got the full 16 players on the track (imagine that)

Quite a good example of what would probably happen when you play multiplayer

Overall F1 2011 is a game mostly for fans of F1 or avid track motorsports fans in general especial the single and multiplayer co-up Championships you really get the feel of being an F1 driver, the learning curve can be a bit steep for newcomers  . I can honestly say that I’d rather be some rich bastard in Hawaii driving (almost) any car he wants any way he wants for some billionaire tournament rather than a chump who has to adhere to realistically strict rules. I can’t say I didn’t have a bit of fun, but seriously give me an open road and a Lamborghini anyday.

JD

F1 2011 Release trailer

vvveeeeeeoowwwwwnnn!....... rock'n'roll outro

My Usual Spiel: Diablo 3, Nothing more or less expected

 

Release Date: May 15, 2012

Genre: Third-Person Action

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo, possibly the only one of Blizzard’s three greatest game franchises that I had yet to fully experience, I remember delving into a bit of Diablo 2 in the past but it really wasn’t much at all. I was far too busy with Warcraft 2 & 3 and also Starcraft when the Diablo games came out so I paid little attention to them as I was much more RTS focused in those days. That said though Diablo has a lot in common with those games so much so that it almost seems like an offshoot of some of the single player campaign missions, the ones where you have no building units for the entire period and you usually have one unit who is the “hero” or named unit which is usually a different colour to the rest and you play through a semi-linear tunnel or landscape triggering events. To be honest the style of gameplay I found it most likely to be akin was none other than the Warcraft 3: The Founding of Durotar campaign featuring the famous Rexxar which I managed to finish for the first time awhile ago and do a quick review. In this campaign you predominately played as Rexxar and a few other companions while both completing quests, levelling up, obtaining new abilities and collecting items in basically the same way as Diablo. Of course this style of gameplay was also said to be introducing players to the WoW style of gameplay which was to come out after it. 

Diablo 2, never played it, but apparently it's still better than this one

 I must admit I fell in to peer pressure to get Diablo 3, but now that I do have it, it is a great game to play with friends. So far in my singleplayer experience of the game I have had sufficient fun, yes sufficient fun I may sound like I'm going into this with a lot of negativity though I think I’m just trying to resist becoming a fan of how awesome Diablo is which is kind of hypocritical since I went from not fancying World of Warcraft then trying it and realising it was the best thing ever in the space of 48 hours. So of course I decided to get Diablo 3 and try it out in the end I had made the right decision to wait since during the initial launch the game went through quite a few problems with its long list of servers errors some of which getting famous by their own accord. But still I wouldn’t have tied to play it on launch night or even day for that matter, I think the rule of thumb is to just not play the game until at least a  couple of days after it came out, I personally wait a week or more cause frankly I can wait. I don’t think there is any game I’d be so excited to play that I’d stay up late into the night to play, maybe if it was with friends and we were drinking but we’d still be just adding more people to the number by all trying to log on at the same time with the same Internet connection.

Penny Arcade: Condensation

 I wasn’t expecting much personalisation in the character creation and there wasn’t, this isn’t a Bioware RPG after all, there’s not much in the way of character storyline as you just simply create your character, view the initial opening movie, then you view your very generic character classes opening movie I started out as a Monk as I thought they looked pretty cool and I liked the idea of using my fists and feet martial arts style. I soon found that Diablo 3 has a limited number of abilities that you can use at any one time, two abilities are bound to the left and right mouse buttons and 4 other abilities are on your action bar, which pale in comparison to MMORPG’s where sometimes you have enough abilities displaying to make an on-screen keyboard. For example for my right mouse button I started with “Fists of thunder” then got “Lashing tail kick” for my right mouse button, then a level after that I received “Deadly Reach” as an alternate ability for my left mouse button and in turn you acquire different ‘runes’ over time to make deadly reach more powerful this is how the mouse button abilities work basically one is straightforward hitting a single direction (most of the time) then the other is more AOE based. The action bar abilities like “Blinding Flash” and the Demon Hunter’s “Entangling Shot” are basically all round utilities to use at the right time. It’s not overly complicated to play but does require a bit of general rpg type common sense in choosing your items (which to keep and which to use) and which abilities to use at the correct time but of course that just comes with learning the game.

Character screen and my Monk

The auction house is one thing I myself could possibly do without, I’ve only dealt with auction houses in MMO’s where they are obviously needed, but with a mostly singleplayer game such as this, I don’t need the auction house whatsoever. I just think it’s an unnecessary feature for people to wheel and deal, especially the ‘real money’ auction house which is basically a post similar to this waiting to happen. I did feel a bit taken aback when my friends said that “you buy most of your stuff from the auction house especially in the higher levels as it’s so much better”  I’d digress on the higher levels but I really don’t think a primarily singleplayer game should have to rely on an auction house to have the best gear and/or to compete with other players.

Penny Arcade: Absolutely Not

I’m now up to the 3^rd act and to be honest I can’t really be bothered anymore, I’m sorry to say the game was only really mildly fun, the story was the only thing that kept me going. The first two acts were good enough and pretty suspenseful but now it’s all action just defending some damn castle and it’s the same old mass killing of monsters and demons and I just can’t bring myself to play it again so I don’t know how this review is going to turn out. For the most part the controls were fine, I didn’t really mind having fewer buttons to press. the graphics were good, especially the effects, . I enjoyed the storyline for as far as I played it, the difficulty curve... well it was easy enough, I didn’t really get very far but to be honest I really wouldn’t have bothered trying it on the higher level, I enjoyed  having followers and decking them out with the best items I could and I enjoyed killing hordes enemies with super kicks and punches and special abilities. I’d hate to say this though but the whole thing just felt a bit too linear and repetitive, and I know your all going to scream at me “Well that’s what Diablo’s about and this is the first time I’ve played it and I haven’t even finished it on normal difficulty and how can I say that when I play MMO’s like WoW and SWTOR”.

Your followers are quite useful, not to mention good company

The fact that I haven’t finished it on normal is because I couldn’t be bothered and have gotten bored and it wouldn’t be any better at higher levels anyway cause it’d just be too hard and also I’m not bored because of the easy difficulty, just running from one area to the next killing demons getting loot, going back to drop off the loot etc. The loot was also kind of a problem too, there was SO much loot and not just white and grey crap there was heaps of magic blue stuff you had to sort through, true it just meant a quick portal trip back to home but still I was doing that about once every 20 minutes, maybe I just pick up too much I dunno. I’m really trying to see the difference in my experience with this game compared to The Old Republic, I mean they are MMO’s whereas Diablo is a Hack’n’Slash but you do really the same thing in both of them. In both of the games you have a large continuous storyline with multiple smaller storylines running through them, you fight and kill enemies and bosses, you do quests, you get new spells and abilities, you have followers/companions with you, you pick up new armor/weapons and upgrade and enchant them or sell them, you have seemingly similar crafting skills and interface’s and you level up throughout the game. Maybe what makes me prefer MMO’s to this is the linearity and freedom of character. In Diablo you get to choose what kind of fighting style/image your player is but you’re pretty much stuck to going through semi-linear landscapes and caverns which really not much choice of how you go about it, whereas in MMO’s you have a lot more freedom of where you go and how you get there, you have more of a feel of being your own character. 

Penny Arcade: Recycling

 I think the main reason is that Diablo as I said before isn’t an RPG it’s a Hack’n’Slash I mean it’s got nothing in immersiveness, large gaming world, character detail and AI compared to Skyrim, and it hasn’t got quite the multiplayer element of MMO’s, that’s probably why it doesn’t tick all the boxes in my list. It does somehow remind me of why I didn’t like Magicka except that was even smaller still and plus everyone was wizards, EVERYONE can’t all be wizards it’s just not right, agh it’s worse than those games where everyone’s a Sniper, actually that’s not too much different from the modern EA Battlefield games I guess ahah.. People tell me now that the game isn’t as good as the 2^nd one and I don’t doubt them. Maybe I should have made the effort to play the second one more, I suppose I’ve never played Sacred, Titan quest or even something like Dark Souls, maybe If I did I would have known I didn’t like the genre, ah well I needed to find out some way.

Sacred

Titan's Quest

All in all, despite my ranting and whining about why I can’t enjoy it, Diablo 3 is still a solid game, it has most of the things that good hack’n’slash game should for example:

• Fast-paced combat, lots of enemies of varying difficulties to plough though.

• Rapidly draining, rapidly regenerating stamina bar. Button mash and you get exhausted and leave yourself vulnerable, but pull out for even a few seconds and you can regain enough stamina to keep going. This further emphasises picking your spots well, planning your attacks, and backing up or dodging when things get rough.

• High stakes. Attacks are extremely damaging relative to health, which means if you screw up it WILL hurt. But unfortunately death doesn’t exactly have that much punishment to it really you just spawn back at the last save point and most of the time you don’t even have to defeat the enemies again.

• 3rd person view, with well defined hitboxes, so that different weapon ranges are important. This makes awareness of the battlefield, how close you are to your enemy and how rapidly you or they can close the distance, very important. 

Man did you feel that?

So for any fans of the genre I would heartily recommend it, but unfortunately even playing with friends it’s just not for me that’s all I can say.

JD

Now I know for the future