[Gaming] Review the Last Game You Played

[Frank]

When reviewing something, try to at least have finished it before spouting off. Have more decorum than most of the gaming press seems to.

Batman: Arkham City: Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC

Now, before I start ranting about why I think this DLC is trash, because I am going to, I am going to preface it with a little heads up that I wasn't the biggest fan of Arkham City. I thought it was a step down from Arkham Asylum (which I adored).

Harley's Revenge is the first real DLC for Arkham City, real as in it continues the story (sort of) and isn't just a pack of challenge maps or costumes or cut content from the original game. It's also a huge ripoff at 10 bucks. For most veterans of the game it will only take a little over an hour to complete and other than some reskinned henchman, it's almost entirely reused assets from Arkham City. For 10 bucks I was expecting a portion of game at least as big as any of the larger segments presented in Arkham City.

If you can catch it again for 3 bucks during the Steam summer sale, it may be worth it for the about 20 lines of new dialog and because playing as the more agile and speedier Robin is fun, for the whole 15 minutes you play as him. It adds almost nothing to the overall story of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City other than to tell us that Batman hasn't been himself since the events of Arkham City, which is contradicted by when you do play as Batman and he's exactly the same as he was in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Just awful storytelling altogether. Fun fact, VA for Robin also voiced the God awful villain Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3.

It's terrible, trash, quick buck DLC at it's worst.

1/5

 

[Hailey Knight]

God of War II

I played and finished this in 2009, and this is the first time touching it since. While I still love the scenarios and story, I feel like the gameplay for these games is pretty tedious now and I'm pretty much just playing for my wife because she likes to watch Kratos kill things. I'm not even sure it's fair to be reviewing this in the sense that I'm comparing it to the first time after a 3-year gap.

 

[Bowielee]

When reviewing something, try to at least have finished it before spouting off. Have more decorum than most of the gaming press seems to.

Batman: Arkham City: Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC

Now, before I start ranting about why I think this DLC is trash, because I am going to, I am going to preface it with a little heads up that I wasn't the biggest fan of Arkham City. I thought it was a step down from Arkham Asylum (which I adored).

Harley's Revenge is the first real DLC for Arkham City, real as in it continues the story (sort of) and isn't just a pack of challenge maps or costumes or cut content from the original game. It's also a huge ripoff at 10 bucks. For most veterans of the game it will only take a little over an hour to complete and other than some reskinned henchman, it's almost entirely reused assets from Arkham City. For 10 bucks I was expecting a portion of game at least as big as any of the larger segments presented in Arkham City.

If you can catch it again for 3 bucks during the Steam summer sale, it may be worth it for the about 20 lines of new dialog and because playing as the more agile and speedier Robin is fun, for the whole 15 minutes you play as him. It adds almost nothing to the overall story of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City other than to tell us that Batman hasn't been himself since the events of Arkham City, which is contradicted by when you do play as Batman and he's exactly the same as he was in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Just awful storytelling altogether. Fun fact, VA for Robin also voiced the God awful villain Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3.

It's terrible, trash, quick buck DLC at it's worst.

1/5

I would have forgiven all in the Harley's Revenge DLC if they had opened up the entire world to Robin and Nightwing.

 

[Bubble181]

Grand Ages of Rome (incl expansion pack Reign of Augustus). Imperium Romanum 2 for the Spanish among us.

Citybuilder in the Roman era - Caesar-clone, really. In many ways it resembles Caesar II more than any of the newer iterations: a building's active in a radius around it, and not dependant on walkers, for example.
Graphically it's very nice (zoom in and some of the buildings are genuinely beautiful), though iit can get boring when you've been playing a long time. Even for the most used buildings, there are only 2 looks. Most buildings will always look the exact same. Not horrible and also in the case in most of the competition, but still. A couple of extra skins for the houses would've been nice.
Gameplay-wise, one of the bigger new things is your character - just like in all Caesars, you play some sort of consul/praetor/clerk overseeing the building of your settlements, with mild godlike powers. Unlike those others, in this one, your character levels up and can choose traits that'll improve your city in various ways. 5 families, each with 2 branches of level-ups in common, and one specific to the family. I've played through with 3 families (ok, one all the way through all missions and the expansion, one through the whole base game and one through the minimum amount from the base game + the expansion); they really do make a difference, depending on your style of play, but my favourite seems to be really overpowered...Unless that's just because it fits my playstyle so well. Your character can also buy estates, which provide useful bonusses to the cities you construct.
Biggest downside is that, like Caesar III and most city builders, the military component is pretty basic, and too many of the later missions depend on military difficulties. It's fun, but city-builders ought to get their difficulty from the city-building.
Music is fun but ultimately forgettable. Story is pretty standard fare.

All in all, if you like city builders with a historical tint (Caesar, Pharaoh, Zeus, you name it), this one's worth checking out. It's often found in big sales on Steam (€5.99 and less), which it's certainly worth. Don't pay full retail, obviously.

If you go looking around on line, you'll find a lot of comments complaining aobut the punishing difficulty. Don't worry, as that has been toned down quite a bit. It's still hard in some places (a lot of the later levels have very low maximum housing numbers, for example), but definitely quite manageable. You'll find some small numerical discrepancies between what they say they want and what's actually needed (Objective of build minimum 5 temples, but it's completed at 3, for example), which point at where the difficulty was before.

 

[Piotyr]

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy (3DS)

As tired as I am of the Final Fantasy RPG formula, one thing I never got tired of is Uematsu's music. This game takes that music and incorporates a souped-up "Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan" rhythmic game play to go along with it. The match works so well, I haven't been able to put this game down in a week.

Gameplay
Like Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan, Theatrhythm's rhythm based gameplay centers around tapping/sliding/holding the stylus in time with visual cues. There are three primary triggers: small dot to tap the stylus, an arrow to slide the stylus in that direction, and a green dot/line to hold the stylus until the end of the line.

Using this basic gameplay system, the game has three main types of themes, in addition to two sub-themes. The sub-themes are the opening theme for each game and the credits theme, for which you simply tap the stylus at the right time to pop bubbles. You can't fail, but it will net you bonus points to upgrade your characters (more later). The main themes are Battle Theme, Field Theme, and Event Theme.

For Battle theme, my personal favorite, you select four characters to participate in the battle for a given game. That game's particular battle music will play, and each character has a trigger. For that character's trigger, if you time your rhythm perfectly, that character lands critical hits. If you string together enough critical hits, the character performs a special move (like a summon). If you miss, the character will take damage. You lose when all characters have taken damage to go to 0 HP total. It works so well I wish actual FF games implemented it.

For Field Theme, your character traverses the map of a particular FF game, with its field music playing. As the character moves along, the rhythm score also moves, and you need to move the stylus up and down on hold triggers to follow the movement of the hold line. If you mess up, the character will be slowed and lose HP, and if the song ends before you complete the journey, or you lose all HP, you fail.

For Event Theme, the game's signature song will play over an FMV for that game (for older games it's a game overview FMV, it's pretty neat), and the rhythm cues look almost exactly like EBA this way (except the cues aren't on the touch screen, they're on the 3D screen, so placement isn't so important as timing).

At the start, the only mode available to play is Series Mode, for which you select an FF game, select a four-character party, and you play the Opening Theme, Battle Theme, Field Theme, Event Theme, and Credits Theme for that game (during which the party characters maintain their HP numbers from theme to theme). As you complete specific themes, they become playable in Challenge Mode, which is simply a way to play just one theme at a time to try to improve your score. As you complete challenges and score high enough, you'll unlock Dark Notes which you can play at the Chaos Shrine, which are harder versions of existing themes, and completely new themes for each game. I haven't cleared 100% on the game yet, but there are a ton of things to do at the Chaos Shrine even after you clear every game in Series Mode.

If there is one drawback about Theatrhythm in comparison to EBA or Ouendan, it's that the rhythm cues aren't actually on the touch screen, they're overlaid over the action on the 3D screen. That makes the gameplay slightly simpler, as you don't have to focus on where on the screen you tap the stylus (although for Field play you do need to move along with the holds). On the plus side, you actually get to see more of what's going on at the top screen (when I played EBA, I almost never saw what was going on on the top screen).

Characters
To start, one character from each FF game 1-13 are available to select from. Characters have four ability stats: Strength, Magic, Agility, and Luck. Strength and Magic characters give more leniency in Battle Themes, and Agility/Luck characters make Field Mode easier. As you complete musical challenges at a high enough level, additional characters are unlocked (at least one per game thus far, not at 100% yet). When you complete a Theme, the characters you used for the theme get experience and level up. Each character can also use equipment to boost stats. The stats and equipment make a minimal difference to the actual rhythm gameplay, but the damage done during battles for successful critical triggers is heavily increased, and you progress further through the battle/field with better characters (which unlocks more stuff faster). It's a difficult thing to explain, but though the gameplay isn't affected by stats and equipment, the returns for the gameplay is.

Graphics
Square made a decision to put the rhythm cues on the 3D screen instead of the touch screen, and while it does simplify the gameplay a bit compared to EBA/Ouendan, it really lets the player see what's going on in the top screen. Whether it's battles, field, or FMV events, the nostalgia is so dense you can cut it. The classic characters have all been re-designed with a chibi art style that really does look fantastic, and the Battles in particular are a lot of fun to watch even while playing the game.

Sound/Music
The music is flat out amazing. Almost every classic FF track you can think of is included. If you like Uematsu's music, then...AWESOME. SO MUCH NOSTALGIA.

Game Life
And the ones that weren't included at ship are available as DLC. This makes it the first 3DS game with DLC, but there are enough tracks shipped with the game that you don't feel cheated with DLC tracks. If you never wanted to use the DLC tracks, there's enough content to keep you occupied for a long time. Each game of Series Mode takes about 20 minutes to complete at each difficulty level (Basic, Expert, Chaos), and perfecting a track can take days. You can even play multplayer over WiFi (but I haven't yet, so I'm not sure how it works) and connect via StreetPass. I've played the game for a solid week now (probably 25-30 hours) and haven't completed all the challenges yet, and haven't gotten close to 100% perfect on all tracks.

Recommendation
If you are nostalgic for the old days of Final Fantasy and enjoyed the music, and are a fan of rhythm gameplay like Elite Beat Agents or Ouendan, this game was made specifically for you. If you like rhythm gameplay but never cared much for Final Fantasy, it's still worth checking out, because the music is objectively fantastic. If you like Final Fantasy but aren't a fan of rhythm gameplay, it's still worth a look because the presentation is top notch and the nostalgia hits so hard. If you don't like FF and don't like rhythm games, then this game probably isn't for you.

 

[Frank]

I hear the problem with that game is when it starts getting into the newer games that aren't nearly as well loved as the older ones. That's when it doesn't have nostalgia there to prop it up.

 

[Piotyr]

I hear the problem with that game is when it starts getting into the newer games that aren't nearly as well loved as the older ones. That's when it doesn't have nostalgia there to prop it up.

Well, for me at least, the only games I don't really have nostalgia for (the music, at least) were 11 and 13. Every other game I at least enjoyed the music, and that's the aspect of nostalgia that gets affected the most. From the roughly 50 tracks I've played so far, then, there are only maybe 5 that I hadn't heard before.

 

[bhamv3]

Just finished Bioshock 2.

Before I got it, I'd heard that Bioshock 2 was inferior to the first game, and that made me wary. The Steam sale allowed me to pick it up for cheap though.

Firstly, I can understand why people say it's not as good as Bioshock. I think I agree. But that's more because Bioshock set the bar so high. Bioshock 2 falls short of the first game in a few aspects, but it's still a good, solid game. If Bioshock got a 9/10 from me, then Bioshock 2 is at least an 8 or 8.5.

Some of the gameplay aspects from the first game were streamlined. There's no longer any crafting, which didn't seem like that big a loss, to be honest. Hacking is now simpler and faster. Almost everything else in the gameplay felt unchanged. This isn't a bad thing, I find, because the gameplay from the first game was extremely solid, and I'm happy to have more of a good thing.

Some additions to the gameplay were a bit hit-and-miss though. I personally didn't like the Little Sister escort mission in the first game, but it's become a major mechanic in the second game. Fortunately, there's a strategic aspect to it, in that you can chose which corpses to harvest, and set up the battlefield to your liking before starting. As a fan of scuba diving, I quite liked the underwater sections, though I found it a pity there was never any combat in them. Some of the new weapons and plasmids were also nice, I particularly liked the Fountain of Youth plasmid. Never used the shotgun though, lol two shots before I have to reload? When there are half a dozen splicers trying to disembowel me? The speargun I liked, and drilling people to death is surprisingly fun.

The storyline, however, felt a bit patchy. Sofia Lamb could've been explored more. Did she truly believe the things she preached, or was it simply a means to grab more power? Similarly, did she actually care about Eleanor, or was Eleanor just a tool for the utopia she intended to build in Rapture? Was she really so blind to the fact that her actions were dooming Rapture? Eleanor, too, could've been fleshed out more, instead of just having brief glimpses of her, until the end of the game, when she becomes the BFG to end all BFGs. And what happened to Tenanbaum? I spared the lives of Grace, Poole and Alexander, what happened to them in the end?

There were lots of highlights in the story though. The stories of Nina Carnegie and Mark Meltzer, despite being told entirely through diary entries, were quite memorable. (Nina's in particular. I had to take a moment after finding her last entry) The introductions to the Big Sisters and the Alpha Series Daddies were nice "oh crap" moments. I wish there could've been a climactic boss fight, like in the first game, since the presence of Eleanor makes the final zerg rush quite easy, but still, the gameplay and the storyline flowed together pretty well, I found.

All in all, I don't regret my purchase. Bioshock 2 is a solid game, a good game. Perhaps it's not a spectacular game, but that's because it has to stand in the shadow of its predecessor. When its own merits are examined without an eye on the first game, then it's very easy to like Bioshock 2.

 

[Frank]

Penny Arcade's On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

The third installment in the OtRSPoD series and the first done by new developer Zeboyd Games, creators of Breath of Death 7 and Cthulhu saves the world. Like their previous games, Rain Slick 3 is done in a faux 16-Bit style. Also like their previous games, the writing is razor sharp thanks to Jerry Holkins' script. The game is funny. Really funny. I'm not one to laugh out loud at any game I play, in fact there are only a few exceptions where I have and Rain Slick 3 had me audibly chuckling quite often.

The meat of the game will be spent in combat with the many creative and trope mocking monsters littered throughout the world. You can see where they are on the map so you're never surprised by an upcoming battle, with the exception of an 8-Bit section of the game that mocks the random battles of RPGs. Like older Zeboyd games, the combat is all about offense as every turn the monsters get stronger and will eventually overwhelm your party. There are some clever twists to the combat system this time around, character's speed determines how quickly their next turn comes up and there are special attacks called interupts that push the targets turn back. These can be very important in a few of the bigger fights but most of the time you'll just find yourself hammering the enemies with your most powerful available abilities. As your consumables and health are restored at the end of every battle, you're never required to hoard special items or conserve anything at your disposal making each battle more of a puzzle sussing out enemy type's weak points rather than just hammering attack like most RPGs of this style.

Another clever twist on a classic RPG trope is the class system the game implements. Each character has a base class, Gabe is a Brawler, Tycho is a Scholar etc. and eventually get the option to add two more classes to their repertoire. They are of course ridiculous with names like Crabomancer, Dinosorcerer, Tube Samurai, Masochist and Gardenar (with the power to summon gardens). You'll learn through trial and error the gamebreaking ways these classes can synergize. Mastering all classes gives you access to a special class which I can't tell you about because I didn't master them all until the point of no return at the end of the game.

The graphics and sound are very charming and emulate the 16-bit era they represent very well, this could easily be a SNES game but it really is the script that makes the game worth playing through. The game picks up where the last episode left off and while they say you don't need to have played the previous games (you don't I guess) you won't understand an absolute shit-ton of references made to the older games throughout.

It's solid fun for about 8 hours and if you have any nostalgia to old school 16-bit RPGs there's no reason not to play it. It's a Zeboyd game too so it's dirt cheap.

4/5

 

[Hailey Knight]

Crabomancer, Dinosorcerer

Are these actually relevant to the classes or are they just silly names?

 

[Frank]

They are completely relevant to the classes powers. Dinosorcerer allows you to transform into different dinosaurs and Crabomancers empower you with the powers of a crab.