[:plant:] The Game Review Thread - No Posts By Skills Because He Never Finishes His 10000 Games

Sacred 2 is fantastic, and I frequently think about going back to it and would like to; just a question of too many other games to play

8/3 Splinter Cell Conviction

Spoiler:

So I beat the single-player today in one sitting, hmmm. I never could really get into the older Splinter Cell games, I always felt like I was "playing it wrong" (similar to the older MGS games) and it was just frustrating. Decided to give this a rent since it seemed to be much more focused on the action. Also bashing a dude's head through a urinal is always cool.

From an Achievements perspective, the game's a bit rough but doable. I only got 280 points from my Normal playthrough; there appears to be a lot of Achievements tied to completing all of the co-operative and competitive multiplayer gametypes. I've heard some of them are a bitch on the higher difficulties, but overall the Achievements in this seem more grindy and time-consuming than anything.

7/30 Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

Spoiler:

Game was pretty awesome overall; the last case was ridiculous and crazy and awesome. The twist at the beginning of the last case where you play as Edgeworth was pretty great. Like all the PW games though, my only real complaint is that I found myself getting stuck from time to time. While occasionally it was due to me just missing something, often times I completely understood what I needed to do. The problem is that the game either wanted me to do something that was either inane or didn't make sense to reach that resolution, or I had made a leap in logic that the characters hadn't yet. Mildly annoying, but not a huge deal.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Stayed up super late last night to finish Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice

Spoiler:

Overall the game was a lot of fun. I have to agree with the general sentiment that Trucy was a waaaaay better support character than Maya was. While I'm still super interested in finding out what the hell happened to everyone else from the first games, Maya didn't have much of personality and Trucy had it in spades. Overall Phoenix is probably a better main protagonist than Apollo, but I wouldn't say by much, I could take it or leave it just in terms of being a main character.

A little disappointed that there was only 4 cases, but eh. As with all the other Ace Attorney games, my only big gripe is that oftentimes I will understand a revelation or clue either way before the game will let me acknowledge it, or the game will want me to do so in a way that doesn't make sense to me. In this regard this one was not nearly as bad as the first three games were for me though, I think there was only maybe 2 or 3 times where I was baffled at how they wanted me to prove or show something I already knew but in some batshit crazy way.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Some wrap-ups from the last week.

8/14 Sin & Punishment: Successor to the Earth (N64 original via VC)

Spoiler:

Not bad; once I figured out a control scheme that wasn't garbage (I think I used 3?) it controlled okay, but that was still the main thing holding it back the whole time. I guess I can see why people go apeshit for that game, but playing it for the first time now it's pretty dated. Eh.

8/14 Torchlight (PC)

Spoiler:

Pretty enjoyable straight-forward loot game. Worth the money, although it just got announced for XBL/PSN so I'd probably wait for that. Obviously it being single-player is the main knock against it, but I enjoyed my time with it for sure.

8/15 Sin & Punishment: Star Successor (Wii)

Spoiler:

Actually pretty awesome; especially going straight from the original to this, the controls are a billion times better and more accessible. Actually had a good time from beginning to end, except with one or two bosses that are bitches and/or force you to use the melee which is a bit awkward.

8/17 Trine (PC)

Spoiler:

It was alright. I don't really get the praise some people heap on this game; it's a fairly straight-forward puzzle platformer, but I never found any of the puzzles to be particularly challenging at all. It's main weak spot was the combat, especially with the enemies that like to respawn a billion times before stopping. It was gifted to me one on one of the occasions where it was on sale for either $5 or $10, which I think is a fair price for it.

How ya doing, buddy?

Hardly; I would just rather play it with a controller as it feels more like a Dark Alliance-type of game to me, probably because it's only single-player. Also since it's only single-player, I didn't really find myself having any interest in mods or anything like that. Also my desktop is old enough where it didn't run great on that, and our laptop ran it fine but I don't really like using a laptop to play games. Ultimately in all scenarios I prefer to play games on my big-ass TV, which is why I don't play a ton of portables, PC games, etc.

How ya doing, buddy?

Dude, what the fuck? Are you confusing me with someone else? I super rarely play anything for points, and I only work on getting all of the points in a game if a I really really like it, of which there have been very few (I think I have 100% on like 12 games). I've gotten probably less than 5,000 points in the last 12 months, and I never play a game I don't like just to get more points on it. You're crazy.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I don't think anyone would have to wish very hard for that

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I need to start abusing this thread, since I have shit for memory and don't remember a lot of details about games a few years later. I may actually start working backwards on recent titles.

Dead Nation:

The game originally came out in December, but about 2 or 3 weeks ago they finally came out with a patch that added online voice chat, different color lasers for the two players, an in-game brightness setting which it desperately needed (couldn't see shit captain), and some minor other things so I'm playing this post patch. It's done by the guys who did Super Stardust HD which I've always heard good things about but never played. As a twinstick zombie shooter it was actually pretty enjoyable. On Normal it was a pretty good length (about 5 hours) for it's intensity level which ramps up nicely.

They give you a good amount of weapons and tools that you unlock as you progress then upgrade with money found in-game. About halfway through the game encourages you to abuse the usable items like Flares and Grenades as they're cheap enough that buying more at the constant shops is negligible. On Normal though you can use the default Assault Rifle which has infinite ammo for the majority of the game. I kept expecting it to get harder than it did. Messing around with some of the later weapons like the hilarious Blade Cannon was pretty awesome.

The "story" and "dialogue" were ridiculous though. Apparently the characters are hardcore commandos who can kill thousands of zombies and tranverse huge areas on foot, survive car crashes, and fly helicopters. Also the ending is ridiculous and sort of nullifies the whole game. The artwork isn't bad though, and the music (what's there) is fine.

I'd say I only had two major complaints, the first being that the default weapon desperately needed to be automatic, or have that button press to be optional; I probably literally pushed R1 about ten thousand times across that 5 hours. Second, even with the in-game brightness options that they added, game is still DARK AS SHIT. This actually works really well for atmosphere, but really shitty for gameplay. It's also not only just that it's dark, but the zombies do a good job of mixing in well with the environment art, so sometimes even when it wasn't dark I'd start getting hit by a zombie that was right next to me which I literally couldn't see. Also, I wish the game "paused" when cycling through weapons or items. Mapping them to the D-pad works well, but late in the game when you have a bunch of different things and I'm getting mobbed by a ton of enemies being able to switch to the item I want without getting destroyed would have been helpful.

Overall the game was pretty good though; I think if it had been on 360 so I could have actually played it with anyone on my friends list we would have gotten some good mileage out of it, as there's a fair amount of unlocks and other things I certainly didn't get.

FELIPE NO