Resident Evil Retrospective: Resident Evil 3 Nemesis (PSN)

Counting backwards, we continue with the Resident Evil Retrospective with the most fun, tightly coiled and enjoyable Resident Evil experience I've had so far. Providing an incredible amount of innovation to the "classic" Resident Evil formula, as well as one of the most terrifying and effective villains in the RE-verse, Resident Evil 3 is an action-horror masterpiece. But is it flawless?

Jill Valentine has had a pretty shit week. After being sent to investigate a mysterious mansion in the first game, she now finds herself trapped within a zombie-infested Raccoon City and desperately searching for a way out. To complicate matters, she's being relentlessly pursued by a seemingly invincible killing machine and racing the clock against an impending nuclear cleansing. Despite this incredible premise, the story falls on it's face right from the beginning. Jill is just an uninteresting character. Outside of generic badass chic, she really has nothing that resembles a personality. Joining her is Carlos Olivera, Mr. 2D Hot Latino Guy, and his team of "russian" mercs with secret motivations. Thankfully, the Nemesis is such an effective character and plot device that it stops things becoming boring. The incredible tension and horror this relentless machine creates is reminiscent of Resident Evil 2's "Mr X" (who I'll talk about him in my Resident Evil 2 Retrospective), but retains an originality all to his own. There's no real explanation for who or what he is, or why he is relentlessly pursuing any remaining STARS members, which only layers on the tension. Every other aspect of the story just doesn't work. The voice acting is as awful as ever, but now without an interesting script or at least well-written characters to counter it. The only real ingenuity in the story are these "live trigger" moments, where you can make a binary decision at key story points that supposedly affect the story, though after only one playthrough I can't really comment on how much this does affect things. Such a thing seems run-of-the-mill these days, but was innovative back then and still provides a fun distraction now.

On the gameplay front, Resident Evil 3 really shines. It feels like the perfection of the mechanics. The tank controls remain, but now there's a quick 180-turn (which would become a staple of the series from now on). Jill seems to move faster, too, and all the animations (doors opening, stairs climbing etc) play out much faster, keeping the pace way up. The real strength of the gameplay comes from a seemingly tiny thing - the dodge move. If you press the 'action' button at the right time while holding your weapon, Jill will perform a context sensitive dodge move. This one simple thing makes combat much more fun, especially against the faster, more vicious creature. No longer do you stand around uselessly shooting and then desperately try to rotate and run away from their attacks. This not only makes combat more interesting, but balances out the boss fights a lot better. Nemesis especially is relentless and powerful with his attacks, especially some of his later forms with tentacles and spikes and ranged attacks. The puzzles remain, but are way more streamlined and way less obtuse than any previous games in the series. The inventory management, health management and saving system remains exactly the same. There are only 8 inventory slots, so excess items must be stored in item boxes scattered around the place and traded in and out as necessary. Saving is limited by however many ink ribbons you have (although easy mode provides unlimited saves a la RE 4) and health is managed by a variety of different healing items. Nuts and bolts aside, it's damn fun, really balancing the feel between action and tension. I played through on easy mode, which has more of an action feel with more weapons, more ammo but hard mode still retains a very survival horror feel. Not to mention it is damn hard. You really have to nail the dodge move, as well as managing every single bullet, every single healing item and every single save.

Graphically, Nemesis could easily be mistaken for it's predecessor. Character models are blocky and aliased, their mouths don't move when they speak. Gun models are kind of blah as well. The backgrounds are well designed and all pre-rendered, but the textures are very muddied. This PS1 game after all, but it is disappointing that there's been no improvement since 2. The locations are bigger, though. You really get the opportunity to explore Raccoon City, and a lot of locations within it. The hospital and the clock-tower are especially creepy. CAPCOM is really great at telling the story through the scenery. The city is in ruins, and it's often fun looking around at the wreckage and trying to work out exactly what happened here. Locations change occasionally, too, on return to them. An extra dead body, or more junk, just little subtle things that can shake things up. The colour palette is a bit more varied, too, with some brighter primary colours. It all seems slightly less blurry and murky than the original.

The soundtrack remains strong, with a lot of recognisable themes returning, such as the save room, but also a lot of original work. The music blurs between industrial, electronic and classic B-grade horror cliches. Sound effects have improved slightly, but are still very low-quality. Weapons sound rather weak, especially. The voice acting ranges from bad to awful. The zombie and monster sound effects are very good, though, especially the Nemesis' creepy mantra of "STARS". It chills you every time you hear it, often just before he appears sprinting wildly at you, fists swinging.

Despite the strength of it's gameplay, Nemesis is ultimately let down by bad characters and a badly told story. Nemesis himself remains probably the most effective and terrifying RE villain, but none of the main characters are strong or interesting, especially Jill and Carlos. That said, the gameplay is tight, tense and incredibly fun and I can recommend this on it's gameplay alone. If you can look past the story and all it's flaws, there is a tonne of fun to have with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

Resident Evil Retrospective: Resident Evil 4 HD (PS3)

With Resident Evil coming out soon, I felt it was high time to go back and check out what it was about this series that incites such passion in the fan base. So I started at the one game I tend to hear the most about, the 4th entry in the series. Often hailed as the best, and credited with single-handedly revolutionising the survival horror genre (for better or worse), with it's recent HD re-release I figured it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about.

I'll briefly mention the pros and cons of the HD dressing here, as it's barely relevant to anything I want to say. If you've ever played any of the earlier releases, there's really no reason the buy this. The "HD" only means they upscaled the resolution, all the original graphics are left entirely untouched. Characters look alright, and the environmental designs are interesting, but the textures themselves are very blurry and stretched, and the whole aesthetic and colour palette is very washed out. Sound is an issue, too, with a lot of the audio and music coming across low quality and grainy. Outside of the upscale, the HD re-release bundles together all the post release content, including the Ada Wong side missions and the Mercenary mode, which I still haven't had much of an opportunity to check out.

Story wise, RE 4 plays out like a B-grade horror movie, filled with bad dialogue, over-the-top voice acting and ridiculous plot contrivances. Leon S. Kennedy, no longer the cocky, young cop who survived Raccoon City, has grown up and joined the Secret Service. His first job is to protect the president's daughter, who is conveniently kidnapped. And so Leon is sent to an unnamed European location, coming across as a weird blend between Transylvannia and South America. It turns out that the locals aren't to friendly here, and are in fact being controlled by a mysterious parasite called Las Plagas, providing faster, more intelligent "zombies" for Leon to fight. The plot jumps around from ridiculous, to terrible, to insane as character motivations are revealed, plot twists fly fast and furious and villains posture and pontificate all their wonderful plans for world domination. And with both Leon and Ashley, the president's daughter, both infected, it soon becomes a race against time to find the cure and escape. Leon delivers a suitably action-hero performance, rife with one liners and sardonic dialogue. Paul Mercier is a much more competent voice actor than the original Leon, providing some nuances to a basically one-note role. During story moments, Carolyn Lawrence manages to convey a sense of strength and sophistication, mixed with vulnerability to Ashley, but during gameplay her dialogue devolves to a series of shrieks and incessant squeaking of "Leon! Help me, Leon!". Potentially the most frightening part of the game. Ada Wong is a stand-out again, both character and voice-over wise. Her motivations are more clouded than ever, and the femme fatale relationship with Leon is well fleshed out. Outside of voice acting, the sound fx are decent. The guns have a decent weight to their shots, and the "zombie" dialogue, although low quality and repetitive, feels sufficiently alien and creepy. The music is horror cliche, but effective within the setting.


Gameplay, however, is where the game's strength lies. The camera locks over Leon's shoulder, and pulling your gun pull up a laser sight for precision aiming. Moving and shooting is non-existent, forcing you to dispatch enemies quickly, but precisely, before they close in on you and force you to move again. For the modern gamer, it can be a bit of an adjustment. The quick turn, pressing "X" while moving backwards, is the greatest tool in your arsenal. Once you learn to use this properly, the pace can actually be quite fast. Gameplay is constantly tense, with many different types of enemies often rushing at you from all directions. Some enemies carry melee weapons, while later ones carry ranged weapons from crossbows all the way up to rocket launchers. There's also mini-bosses, like the hulking El Gigante, or the creepy flying insect types. Thankfully, Leon is armed with an ever increasing, fully upgradable, arsenal. A lot of fun lies in choosing and perfecting your arsenal. A new game + mode allows you to carry all your inventory across, with bonus cash and items, allowing you to upgrade and perfect your arsenal to your heart's content. There's also boss fights, but these suffer with age. The often employ cheap tactics, and always devolve into avoidance and repetition. They're big, flashy, but unfortunately probably one of the worst parts of the game. There's some basic puzzle solving, too, but more of the push block, or fetch quest variety. Consider yourself warned, however, that the sections with Ashley are escort missions. There's not a lot of them, thankfully, but they can be very frustrating, You need to manage her health, protect her from enemies and basically do everything for her. See, enemies won't only just attack her, but also try to kidnap her as well, meaning you can never stray very far from her. Friendly fire is also a big problem, meaning you have to be even more careful with your shots and anything explosive is basically out. She won't move out of the way of explosions, but at least she ducks under shots. Mixed in is the mid 2000's quick-time events that Capcom loved so much. While normally a small annoyance, there are some that fly by crazy fast and are often instant failure, bumping you back to the last checkpoint, however far away that was.


I found myself enjoying the game much more the second time around. As I got used to the controls, and started to understand conserving ammo and health, I finally started to uncover why everyone praises this game so much. The gameplay is addictive, and a lot of fun. The story, provided you don't take it too seriously, is a lot of fun. It's a shame the HD uplifting didn't extend past the upscale, but the game itself is still pretty good looking and at the end of the day, horror games shouldn't be all squeaky clean anyway. This is a game that appeals to both survival horror fans and third person shooter fans. It's only $20 on the PSN, it's really worth the download. I can whole-heartedly recommend this one.

Dragon's Dogma Review

It's pretty rare that I don't know what I think about something. My thoughts are rarely concise and entirely logical, but 9 times out of 10, I know what something means to me. Dragon's Dogma, however, has left me completely confounded. Even now, days after finishing the main quest and hanging up my adventurers hat, I'm still not entirely sure what just happened and how it makes me feel. So, I'm left with a lot to talk about, but maybe no final conclusion, which is kind of a cardinal sin when it comes to reviewing. Here I am, trying to offer you a clear and concise guide to what to expect for your money, and I can hardly even tell you if it was worth my money, a rare, almost extinct species. I'm hoping that by the end of this article, after finally getting all my thoughts on page, together we can reach a conclusion. It's quite serendipitous, in a way, as this feeling of journeying without really knowing where I'm going or how I'm going to get there, almost sums up the experience of Dragon's Dogma. But the quest is given and excepted, we need only follow the marker and hope what awaits us is an answer.

I'm not usually one to judge on first impressions, as I tend to make bad ones myself. This is fortunate for Dragon's Dogma, as it's first impressions are hardly, well, impressive. After a gorgeous, if confusing, cutscene of a mighty dragon being birthed form the sky admist a sea of harpies (of all things), we are then greeted by a small seaside village (yes, it's one of those stories) and the ugliest graphics engine I've seen in a long time. Now, I'm going to make this point fast and early, becomes I'm going to talk about graphics a lot and want to make my position clear. I am not a graphics whore, I often believe that graphics are not integral to the enjoyment of a game provided they don't interfere with the mechanics. I'm wholly unaffected by the turgid graphics of such games as Deus Ex, or Duke Nukem 3D as they have nothing to do with the overall enjoyment of the piece. However, in Dragon's Dogma, my problem is not with how awful the graphics are (and trust me, they're bad. This game would've looked awful running on the last generation of consoles), but with how often they interfere with not only the enjoyment of the game itself, but with the core gameplay mechanics. But more on that later. You step out of your brown and lifeless seaside village after getting your arse handed to you and your heart ripped out by the dragon, who then brings you back to life and challenges you to seek out and destroy him. You're guided on the first part of your journey by a pawn, introducing Capcom's attempt at a unique multiplayer, perhaps in an attempt to borrow some more from the Souls series. The pawns are a mercenary race, which exist outside time, within the Rift. The Arisen, that's you, has the power to summon them, as well as create your own, who shall follow you permanently. Your main pawn levels up with you, you control their skills and class, and you create them with the same amazingly detailed character creator as your main character (seriously, the character creator is awesome. i spent the majority of my time with the demo just messing around with it. Still, I did manage to make my poor Arisen look totally drugged out). The other two pawns are drawn from the rift, and provided you're online, are the main pawns of other characters. you select the ones that suit your playstyle and current quest best, and set out into the world, returning them once you've leveled up and picking some new ones. You can often trivialize combat by picking way over leveled pawns, but this is incredibly expensive and the currency required to do so is very rare. Once your pawns are chosen, you get your first taste of the next "unique" twist of Dragon's Dogma, the giant creature battles. Remember Shadow of the Colossus? It's basically that, but thankfully just as fun. Most of the time. Scaling these beasts are the most effective ways to fight them, and often the most fun. Specific creatures, like the stone golem, can often only be killed by reaching specific spots, either by scaling or with ranged attacks. These fights are easily the best within the game, but sadly there's very few of them, and the main hordes just can't quite match the excitement.

Combat is crafted by the team behind Devil May Cry and its wicked fast and meaty, and it also ties into the one thing the Dragon's Dogma really nails - the RPG systems. Skills are weapon-based, as apposed to class-based, meaning you pick your classes less on what skills are available, and more by what weapons they can use. The rogue classes focus on bows and daggers, while fighters and warriors focus on either sword and shield, or two hand combos. Once that skill is unlocked for that weapon, it's unlocked permanently, meaning any class that uses that weapon can also use that skill. Class-specific skills, referred to as augments, remain even if you switch class, so you can easily pinch some warrior augments to boost health and strength, then mix it with some magic damage reduction mage augments and some dexterity increase rogue augments, crafting your perfect character. Change vocation is cheap and easy, but not sticking with one vocation for too long means you'll never unlock the high level skills and augments. The leveling up feels incredibly rewarding and the RPG aspects are the deepest since the D&D based games. Status ailments and buffs are the name of the game, but far less confusing than they were in the D&D games. Each status ailment has an obvious visual clue, and they all have an item or two that can combat them. Pawns warn when they are ailed, or what ailments certain enemies provide or are weak to, so if you catch one and are unprepared its your own fault. The combat itself just feels so good. Each class feels different and satisfying. Each weapon type has its own moveset and feel. Daggers are fast and brutal, while sword strikes are powerful and deliberate. The ranger's massive longbow can send enemies flying, but can be outdone by the faster short bow. No one weapon beats any other. Two handed weapons may send you flying, but they leave the user incredibly open, and often weighed down to a slower speed. The weight of what you carry, plus whatever is in your inventory, is crucial. Body shape and size affects how much you can carry, as well as your speed. Tall, heavy characters might by able to carry more, but they move slower and recover stamina at a slower rate. Small characters are light and nimble, but can't carry much at all and are more susceptible to knockdown and knockback. All of this creates fast, yet strategic combat. When the pawn AI works, which is most of the time, they work strategically, too. My rogue based character traveled with a Sorcerer main pawn as a damage dealer, a Mage as a healer and controller and a Warrior as a tank. This strategy worked for me throughout the game. How well the pawns fight is mostly based on their knowledge of a beast. The first encounters, they will experiment a lot, calling out what works and what doesn't, but by the end, they work as a tight team., which makes things all the more frustrating when the AI fails and your left basically alone. Pawns can be revived upon death, but rarely, if ever, use any curatives provided, causing you to spend most of your fights with your pawns at half health, or less, meaning you have to spend too much time reviving them, and less fighting. But Dragon's Dogma has much bigger problems. Let's talk about them.

Firstly, the map. It only fills in as you visit areas. Promotes exploration, right? Well, yes, but without much of a fast travel system, only a single item that warps you to one spot and is stupidly rare and expensive, it makes exploration kind of sucky. As does the level locked areas. Nicking another page from the Souls series, Dragon's Dogma often points you int he right direction by dropping massively overpowered monsters on your head. Throw an almost non-existent autosave system and few replayed half hour long treks later, you'll have just about had it with exploration. Also, the paths to objectives are often long a convoluted, leaving you wandering helplessly lost more than once. If you're lucky your pawns know where to go and give general, and I do mean general, directions. There's also no indication of whether you're a high enough level to take on a quest, and a lot of quests have weird time-based fails, or fails that I can't even work out why they failed. The loading screens (of which there are far, far too many and often of the over-long variety) tell you to try other quests if you're stuck, but I've had four quests fail or be rendered un-continuable because I followed other quests to level up. So there's that. Also, I hate to beat a dead horse, but I need to rag on the graphics for a bit. Firstly, the draw distance ranges from awful, to non-existent. My pawn may tell me to survey the area from a high point, but when enemies often spawn literally right in front of your face, what's the point? Honest to god, I had an ogre spawn right on top of me in a cave once. This was after I ran into its invisible form and suffered an attack or two before it spawned in. It's honestly horrifying and destroys not only emotion, but tactics. Then there's the lip syncing, or more truthfully, what lip syncing? There's been no attempt at all to sync the lips. Hell, the faces barely even move, outside of a main character or two that may widen their eyes or smile or frown. if you're lucky. Hair is atrocious block textures that would have looked out of place 10 years ago. Hell, Mount and Blade's character design looked better than this, and that was made by an indie developer. At least the monster design is interesting, and the environments are about 2008/Oblivion level nice, if completely derivative and mostly uninteresting, barring a few atmospheric, creepy areas - which are basically pinched from the Souls series again. If this was someone's first game, an indie team even, I'd be more forgiving, but this is Capcom, for Christ's sake. What are they doing with all that money they've robbed from us with DLC? Graphics this awful (and I haven't even mentioned the awful framerate throughout, the unwieldy camera that often interferes with the climbing mechanic, or the general murk and bland colours) are completely unacceptable in this day and age, when even small companies can make gorgeous games. Actually, let me rag on the camera a bit. If I'm climbing someone, don't bind my movements to the camera if its just going to swing about wildly. Either lock it in like SotC, or make my movements independent. If I'm hanging on the front of an ogre, while the cameras looking at me from above and its flinging about, which way do I press the stick to climb up? The amount of times you'll end up uselessly stabbing a cyclops in the balls is ridiculous. Not to mention the inside fights when the camera insists on clipping through everything. Alright, I'm done. And I think I'm done with the bad, too. Oh wait, no there's more.

Voice acting: Ranges from barely tolerable to awful.
Soundtrack: Some cool J-Pop songs, but mostly derivative, distracting or non-existent.
Writing: I don't want to sound racists, but English is not your first language, don't even attempt to write something in faux Ye Olde English. Aught is not a word, stop fucking saying it every fucking sentence. Just say something. Also, 'tis is short for "it is", not "is". And just because its "olden times" doesn't mean grammar didn't exist. I honestly wanted to tear my ears off listening to some of this dialogue. It renders the majority of the story, and a lot of the quest instructions, completely nonsensical, which is a big no-no in a game with as little hand-holding as Dragon's Dogma.
Story: Actually had some potential. Mostly derivative, yes, but the relationship between the Arisen and Dragon is very interesting, and the character of the Dragon is very well written, but any impact the story has is lost thanks to terrible delivery, bad cutscenes (broken, even at times, I had an entire cutscene take place without any character except my own. A crucial cutscene, too, which instead consisted of various bad camera angles and no sound for a few minutes) and a complete lack of connection to any characters, which renders the late game choices meaningless as they have no strength within the world.

There's more that's wrong, a lot more, but I'm going to stop for a few reasons. Mainly, this is getting way too long, but also because you might start to think I didn't enjoy this game. But that's the thing that's left me confused. Despite everything that is wrong with this game, I enjoyed it. Even really enjoyed it at times. I was often enthralled beyond reason. Every time I thought I'd given up, I found myself back again, soldiering on. A lot of this has to do with the inherent depth within the game, even by the end I was still discovering more intricacies to the gameplay, or the economy, or the leveling up and combat. Its incredible challenging, sadly unfairly so at times, a lot of the horde human enemies you face are the same classes as you, but aren't governed by the same stamina rules and instead just spam their overpowered attacks, making some fights very unfair. But then you'll throw someone off a cliff, or bring down a mighty griffin, and you're captured again.

And so, here we are, at the end of our journey. And I now know what to say. Buy this game. Play it. Make it through the huge learning curve and make up your own mind. There's so much potential here, marred time and time again by inexperience and a lot of great ideas that just don't mesh. With Capcom announcing their intent to make this a franchise, I am filled with hope. Hope that the team can iron out the flaws, because Dogma has the potential to far surpass even the Souls series, if - and this is a massive if - it can focus on only what makes it so deep and innovative, and forget about all the external trappings and trying to make it like everything else on the market. If Capcom has the strength and bravery to follow through, then we may be witnessing the birth of the next great RPG franchise and I for one, am very excited. Now go, buy this game. That is all.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition Review

Well, this has been a long, long time coming, but 93 hours and 5 playthroughs later, I finally feel ready to review this monster. This review is both for people who have never played the game, and for those who played the original release and are wondering whether the upgrade to Enhanced is worth it. There is a chance of spoilers, but I will tag what I can, just consider yourself warned.

The original Witcher was an interesting, deeply engaging, yet hugely flawed experience. It told a riveting story, with meaningful choices, but tripped in the un-intuitive combat and the lackluster graphics. Severely limited by Bioware's aging Aurora Engine, CD Project RED decided to build The Witcher 2 completely from the ground up, and boy was that a fantastic choice. The RED Engine remains one of the most jaw-dropping engines of this generation, exploding with colour, life and some amazing animations and character models. It's still hard to find a game that looks better than the Witcher 2, even on it's low settings. It has been fiercely well optimized since release, and my ASUS G73jw laptop can keep her above 30fps at almost max settings. There is, of course, a lot more to the Witcher 2 than graphics, but it's thanks to not only the graphics, but the superb art direction, that The Witcher's world not only feels real, but feels like a place you want to explore and spend time in. From the vicious forests of Lobinden, to the dwarven city of Vergen and the infested sewers beneath Loc Muine, each location feels vibrant and alive, and intrinsically designed around it's inhabitants.

Everything you do in The Witcher 2 can have a permanent, and often surprising, effect on the world, making you truly feel like what you do matters. It's often the little choices you barely realize you're making that have the biggest ramifications, ramifications that often don't appear until many hours later, removing the "oops, I made the wrong decision, quick load" gameplay of more recent choice systems. Mixed throughout the adventure are critical decision, causing the story to branch along its two main routes in Chapter 2 and 3. It takes a brave game to completely shut off half of its content based on one decision, but it takes many, many playthroughs to experience everything this game has to offer. Even at my 5th playthrough I was still surprised by the subtle changes within the story.

And it's thanks to the strength of the story and its characters that you actually feel like you are making a meaningful choice, not just an arbitrary Paragon/Renegade points hunt. There is no morality system, though how you act will not only affect what people think of you, but potentially cause you to lose friends, or even cause their death. Even by my 5th playthrough, I still agonized over some decisions, such was the connection I still felt to the characters and the world they inhabit. Things are going from bad to worse for Geralt. Someone is killing kings, and thanks to some severe bad luck, he ends up framed and ready to hang. Aided by an unexpected ally, he flees in search of the real killer, as well as answers to his still patchy past. See, Geralt has amnesia, brought on by his supposed death. However, CD Project RED utilizes the amnesia cleverly, as Geralt still remembers most things from his life and past and it never becomes all about trying to restore your memories. However, the way Geralt's mysterious past ties into the events of the game are often surprising, and sometimes horrifying. Especially the final revelation. Along his journey, Geralt must fight to protect Triss, his sorceress love interest, as well as aid or crush a non-human rebellion, battle monsters both massive, small and human and finally attempt to stop the decent of an entire nation into an all out war. The story is carried through beautifully crafted cutscenes. as well as dialogue driven sequences, gameplay and books. New to the Enhanced Edition is some animated cutscenes preceding each chapter, and as an epilogue, narrated by Dandelion. These make a huge difference to the story, summing up some of the more convoluted plot lines and constantly reminding you of where the rest of the world stands. (SPOILERS) Also new is an epilogue, an immensely powerful scene showing the march of Nilfgaard down through the south. The final image of the massive Nilfgaardian army and the fire spreading throughout the map leaves you yearning even more for the sequel.(SPOILERS)


But even the best story would be let down without a brilliant soundtrack and fantastic voice-acting. The voice-acting is much better this time around, even Triss' performance feels more nuanced, even if she remains the weakest element at times. The American accents of Geralt, Triss and Letho, the Kingslayer, can feel a little out of place amongst the sea of British accents, but I feel it suits their characters. Geralt's dead pan approach cracks at times, he shows genuine concern and affection towards Triss, and even comes close to rage at times, especially towards the end of the game. Saskia, the Dragonslayer and leader of the non-human rebellion, is another stand out performance. The soundtrack is one of the best I've heard, improving from the amazing soundtrack from the first game in everyway. The combination of stirring orchestral tracks with rich and haunting vocals, as well as folk instruments and screaming electric guitars somehow seems to suit the Witcher's world. It's a mess of medieval, folktale and the modern world, filled with filth and grime, but also great beauty and mystery, each element captured within its sound track. The main theme and the night theme for Vergen remain my favourites.

But of course, it wouldn't be a game without gameplay, and here some of the cracks begin to show. CD Project RED is still an inexperienced studio, relatively independent when judged against the American and Japanese studios, and at times their inexperience shows. Combat is heavy and satisfying, highly tactical and based around clever evasion and combos, as well as tactical use of bombs, potions, traps and Signs, the Witcher's version of magic. There's no way to heal yourself in the Witcher, instead you must brew and drink potions to buff yourself. You can speed up health or stamina regeneration, buff your attacks, or your defense. Potions can only be taken before hand, not throughout battle, so scouting out the area and reading up on what you might face is critically important. For the most part, the combat is fair, though the learning curve can be steep. However, some enemies gang up on you, pumelling you with block-breaking and stunning attacks. Also, when combat is initialized during dialogue, Geralt almost never draws his sword. Also, it takes a second or two for you to gain control again, which can lead to some cheap deaths on higher difficulties. Signs and bombs sometimes don't fire straight away, and the targeting can be wonky at times, too, with Geralt flying at someone off screen instead of hitting the guy in front of him. However, there are a lot of improvements in the Enhanced Edition, to the point where nothing really breaks the flow anymore. There's no fast travel system, and levels can be massive at times, but there is a lot of fun in exploring it, and missions rarely send you running from one end to the other. The boss fights still feel underdeveloped and cheap, but it's the mini-bosses that really shine. These encounters are tense experiences, I still remember my first fight against the Endrega Queen. The best part is, a lot of these encounters are entirely optional. Questing is refined in the Witcher 2 as well, with event he side quests and jobs feeling like an expansion upon the law. Geralt is a monster hunter after all, and chasing down that contract will provide you not only with money, but valuable information about the monsters you hunt and often times, the eradication of that monster from the area, making it much easier to explore. A simple fist-fighting competition might reveal shadowy backstory to some main characters, or lead to encounters otherwise unavailable. Side quests are often surprising, such as a late night drinking party that goes all kinds of wrong. The main quest itself is expertly paced and crafted, driving you on with a sense of urgency when it needs to, but leaving you open to explore at more quiet moments.

The last thing that need be mention with The Witcher 2 is that there is a lot of sex, nudity and violence in this game. It is mature in every sense of the word, with a dark and adult tale. Still, almost all the nudity and sex is optional, barring one scene at the start and one towards the end. If you want to see tits and sex, then you'll have to either work or pay for it. However, there is a tasteful and beautifully shot love scene between Geralt and Triss that rewards your hardwork wooing her throughout the first chapter and acts as a consummation of your love for each other, as well as motivation for what is to come after. It's certainly more tasteful than the first Witcher's sex cards.

Okay, for the lazy guys, here's the summary. The Witcher 2 is the one of greatest RPG of the last 10 years and just about the best games of last year, only just losing to Dark Souls in my Game of the Year list. It provides deep and rich lore and story, with stunning graphics, a moving soundtrack and mostly satisfying gameplay. It's few flaws have all but been resolved with this, the Enhanced Edition and best of all, the upgrade is entirely free. CD Project RED continues to support the game with patches and updates, all completely free. It's DRM free, as well. If nothing else, CD Project RED should be supported for being so loyal to their fans and consumers and not following the insanity of the larger publishers. I can guarantee you, you will fall in love with this game. It even has an easy difficulty that trivializes the combat for those that only want to experience the story, as well as an insane difficulty that adds permanent death into the mix, for those gluttens for punishment out there. There's also an arena mode, for those who want to fight up the leaderboards and hones their combat skills, as well as a new tutorial level that fleshes out the basics in more detail than the original game. I find it hard to believe that anyone out there hasn't played this game yet, but if there is, then what are you waiting for? Go and buy it and prepare to experience something wholly unique and amazing. You cant hank me later.

Lollipop Chainsaw Review

Oh, Mickey, what a pity you don't understand
You take me by the heart when you take me by the hand


Sorry, there's no way I'm ever getting that out of my head, so now it's in yours. You're welcome.

So, here we are again. Another year, another explosion of madness from the one they call Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture. Armed with a cornucopia of cult hits, including Killer 7, No More Heroes and Shadows of the Damned, Suda has made a name for himself for providing bizarre and totally unique gaming experiences. Flawed,, frustrating, titillating and completely mad gaming experiences. Despite owning both NMH and Shadows, this is the first Suda game I've made it all the way through. This is probably because it's short. Not as short as Juliet's skirt, sure, but if that thing was any shorter it'd be a belt. You're looking at about 5 to 6 hours on normal difficulty for this one, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Speaking of heads, Lollipop has a thing for decapitation. Want to get the most points and medals? Decapitate at least three zombies at once. How do you play basketball with zombies? Decapitation, straight into the net. Oh, and her boyfriend Nick has found himself ahead in life, too. Literally. Decapitated by his frankly insane girlfriend in a weird magical ritual to stop him becoming a zombie. Bummer. Still, it doesn't stop Nick from talking, which is good, as nearly every line from his torso-less mouth is comedy gold and a lot of the laughs in game come from him. The rest are split up between Juliet and her batshit family, consisting of her ditzy mother, horny father, manly elder sister and off-the-wall insane younger sister. I feel I should warn you, Juliet is probably going to annoy most gamers. Whether or not you enjoy her is going to depend on how funny you find blond bimbo, airhead cheerleaders. Personally, I found her quite amusing and never annoying, but her comedy works best when offset by Nick's disarming, dry straight guy routine. Had she not had him there to compliment her, a lot of the humour in this game would fall flat. He is the Abbott to her Costello, and both Suda and James Gunn (credited as Creative Consultant and Adaption, whatever the hell that means, but his influence is undeniable) understand this relationship. Also handled well are the zombies themselves, from the off-colour one liners from the general horde, to special quips for special zombies, all the way to the Rock God Dark Purveyors, each one more mad and over the top than the next. From a punk rocker that literally shouts words at you, to a psychadelic zombie who trips you for a whole level, and a final boss I'd be criminally liable if I spoilt.

But games aren't all story. There's the graphics, too. Lollipop goes for the ever reliable Unreal 3, the workhorse of the games industry. Sure, it brings it's old friends screen tearing, shit draw distance and the worse pop-in since your gran was last in town, but Suda gives everything a nice cell shaded look, and works in more than enough colour and variation to keep things from falling into the usual dirt and grime. Also, zombie explode in sparkles and rainbows, shoot out Gold and Platinum medals and activating super mode makes you go all Mario rainbow magic. And unleashes Hey Mickey upon the world once more. Thanks, Suda.

The soundtrack is delicious, too. From perky cheer tracks, to death metal, and everything in between, each stages soundtrack is based around whatever musician its end boss is. However, completing a stage lets you mix and match its music for later stages, with more music available for purchase, so you can create your own BGM. Jimmy Urine, of Mindless Self Indulgence fame (they so totally don't sound gay, according to Juliet's little sister), handles the soundtrack this time around, with Akira Yamaoka listed only as Musical Consultant. The voice acting all around is stellar, with Tara Strong taking the lead, infusing Juliet with as much sugar, spice and all things nice as someone can manage. Michael Rosenbaum is fantastic as Nick, too.

Ah, the part you've been waiting for. Saving the best for last? Well, maybe. The gameplay is where most of the flaws of Lollipop lie, but this being a Suda game, this was to be expected. Surely. To be honest, this is their best combat system to date, even better than No More Heroes. There's a real sense of growth. When Juliet starts out, she's slow and limited in her attacks. Even basic zombie hordes can really eff you up if you're not careful. However, as more and more combos unlock, you start to really get into the groove, tying together pom-pom and chainsaw attacks in a violent frenzy. Combat is simple. One button for pom-poms, which are fast, weakening attacks. One for high chainsaw, one for low chainsaw. One for dodging/jumping around. Combining these in specific ways unleash combos, some fast and weak, some slow and damaging, others designed for crowd control. These combos can be easily broken, however, whilst most zombies, especially higher level ones, will be mostly unaffected by your attacks until they're dismembered, so the combat becomes about watching your enemies and learning what combo is best used when and where. There's a real arcade sense about the game, not just with the high scores and general arcade theme, but just from the way it encourages growth through skill. The more skillful you are, the more medals you get. The more medals you get, the more upgrades you get. How much upgrades you get is entirely tied to how well you play the game, which gives levelling up a real sense of growth. Gameplay is interrupted from time to time by the obligatory Suda mini-games, which range from mildly amusing to mind-breakingly frustrating to irritatingly dull, as is to be expected. You take to the good with the bad, as the 80s theme tune says. And yes, as I mentioned earlier, it is short. However, you're going to want to play through from the start at least once. Stages unlock as you go along and can be replayed in any order at any difficulty mode, or in the extra hard, score chasing Ranking Mode. All your abilities carry over, and the only way to unlock everything is to not only keep replaying stages, but keep improving your skills to rack up as many medals as you can. It's frightfully addictive, not to mention increasing the difficulty not just increases the zombie health and attack, but introduces new zombie types, new mini bosses, more zombies, or different combinations, and less pickups in more obscure places. Exactly the kind of good difficulty I mentioned in an earlier article.

To sum up, for those who skipped to the bottom: Playing a Suda game requires a few special abilities. The ability to laugh at yourself, the ability to realise you're being trolled most of the time and to go with it, and the ability to not take things seriously. You take this game seriously, even for one moment, and it falls apart. It's not taking itself seriously, not even once, so why should you? If you're a Suda fan, you'll love this, but let's be honest you've already bought it. If you're wondering just what the hell this all is, give it try, you might have fun. For the brain-dead, undersexed, hormone crazed masses - just cause there's tits on the cover and more panty shots than a japenese porno, this is not the game for you. Seriously, go back to CoD. Finally, the Suda haters, this one is not going to change your mind, so it's probably best to give it a miss. That's everyone, right? So now there's only one last thing to do...

Hey, Mickey, you're so fine
You're so fine you blow my mind
Hey Mickey!
Hey Mickey!

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Innovation Is Always a Good Thing

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've played almost every Call of Duty game. Call of Duty 1 was the first FPS I ever played and I still remember getting off that boat the first time and being handed nothing but a clip of ammo. Times have changed, sure, but there's still very few shooters on the market that can match the frantic twitched based combat of Call of Duty. That said, there is a lot wrong with the series as a whole, and a lot that has grown stagnant over time. The great innovator has become a sign of everything wrong with First Person Shooters as a whole, but Treyarch is looking at trying to change that.

Black Ops, the first, is my least favourite CoD game. It was first since CoD 2, which I'd played when I was maybe 10, or 11, about 5 or 6 years previous to Black Ops. I loved the zombie mode, however, mainly because you got to play as JFK, or Tricky Dicky, and hearing them spurting one liners while dispatching zombies is comedy gold. However I found the campaign lack luster. It tried to change and innovate, providing vehicle levels, subtle shifts to the formula and a bigger focus on a twisted and cinematic story. And it would have worked, except for one critical flaw. Sam Worthington and his soul-destroying overacting. Every word out of that man's mouth made me want to shoot myself in the face. But still, I respect it despite this mistake, an easy one to make, because it at least tried something different with the formula. And now Treyarch are looking to do it again.

The thing that really got me excited about this game was a single quote from its director, paraphrased: "When I hear people say 'I used to play CoD for its campaign', I think 'Why don't you play it anymore? What can I do to bring you back?'". Where everyone else has been thinking, "Well no one plays the campaigns anymore, so let's make it all about multiplayer", Treyarch is thinking "Why? Why don't you play anymore and what can we do to bring you back?". And so they're trying to mix things up. A new setting, new weapons and technology, but also non-linearity, branching story lines and a sense that what your doing has some importance in the world. There's still not much revealed, outside of Lamia's talking, but it's enough to get me excited. Especially working for me is the new Overwatch mode, an objective based, open world style game, where you can either play as an Overwatch, commanding your troops RTS style, or jump into the body of any soldier and chase the objectives yourself. This freedom and strategic thinking is what confirmed to purchase for me. Sure, the demos so far have all shown of the usual CoD big bang boom blam splat slow mo ballet of stupidly epicness, but there remains hope that this time, the innovation just might work. If nothing else, there's no more Sam Worthington, and that can only be a good thing.

So for all those CoD fans freaking out I saw calm down and give it chance. And to all the haters, I say the same. Whether it works or not, any attempts at innovation and change, especially in an annual franchise, is always a good thing. Assassin's Creed is also a great example. Sure, all the new additions didn't always work, but at least they were there, and for the most part, optional. As long as we don't get anything along the vein of Revelation's failed attempt at Tower Defense, I think we'll be fine.

Dead Space 3 Second Impressions

So I wrote a little about my thoughts on Dead Space 3 not long after its initial E3 reveal. At the time, I'd only seen about 5 minutes or so of gameplay, and had little information to go on. Well, today EA and Visceral have released a 20 minute gameplay trailer showcases a lot of what's new, and also what's old, with Dead Space 3 and I want to talk a little about what I saw. I'm going to embed the video below as well, so you can offer your own thoughts.

As I mentioned in my previous article, Dead Space 3 has kind of left me in two minds. I'm excited, there is no doubt, and I know right now that I will definitely be purchasing this game. However, I am also cautious. Change is not always a good thing, and it still remains to be seen whether the shift in focus will be effective or not.

So let's just get this out of the way from square one, Dead Space 3 is gorgeous. Visceral's proprietary engine has never looked better. Hell, the original Dead Space still looks better than most games these days, but it really shines in 3, with some mind blowing lighting and even more grotesque and imaginative character designs. It sounds awesome, too, familiar yet with some new elements, especially in the soundtrack. Isaac's voice actor still really delivers, further proving you can take a silent protagonist and give him a voice. I'm a little cautious about Carver at the moment, he seems to come off in the stereotypical overly macho, no-bullshit, aggressive Sergeant role, but we haven't seen much of him yet, so my opinion is reserved, for now.

The demo begins with Isaac waking up in a crashed ship on a frozen planet. Steve mentions that this is the second act, so it seems not all of the game will occur on this planet. Visceral has mentioned spaceship portions, like the original, so perhaps the first act occurs on the ship, explaining its current crashed state. Isaac is looking for Ellie, his partner and rescuer from the second game. Tau Volentis makes me hopeful. There is a great atmosphere to it, the snow can come down thick and heavy at times, obscuring the view and helping create a tense atmosphere. It's full of caves and abandoned mines, keeping the dark, claustrophobic feeling from the first. The demo showcases two new enemy types. A necromorph that splits in half when attacked, sporting three sharpened tentacles from it's now torso-less legs, and also the Unitologist human enemies, armed with a lot of similar weapons as yourself. This is where my concern arises. From the little shown, the shooting looks good. The controls are tight and responsive, and there's a lot of options outside of simply shooting them. You have Kineses, which you can use to throw back grenades, or Stasis to freeze. There's a cover system, by which I mean the good old magical chest high walls and inexplicably placed debris, but outside of being kind of jarring and out of place, the lack of sticky cover works in Dead Space 3's favour. As Steve says, the last thing you want to do is be stuck in cover when some necromorph is gouging your eyes out. However, the mix of viscious melee and shooting enemies reminds me of the first Uncharted, or even Far Cry, who both tried and massively failed at getting this mix right. Also new is what appears to be a new use for Kineses, a kind of Force Push ability. There's no mention of it, and it's only used a few times in the video so it's hard to see whether it's a secondary weapon fire or not, but it looks interesting a provides a nice failsafe for holding back the horde.

The real reason behind the demo, however, was to show off the new drop-in, drop-out co-op. I was worried about co-op, until I saw the words "drop-in, drop-out". That means no shitty partner AI, no requirement to have to play it with your friends. They have preserved the single player experience entirely, simply offering another approach, probably to boost sales for EA (though Visceral claims co-op was always planned, citing the infamous System Shock 2 which apparently is their main influence and also boasted potential co-op support). If you play the game alone, Carver seems to have very little to do with the story, only popping up once, briefly, off screen. Which could be a great thing if his character is as uninteresting as he seems. However, playing with a friend not only alters the gameplay, but changes cutscenes as well to feature your partner. For the most part, co-op seems to be divergent, there hasn't been any showings of the "two people required to solve this puzzle" or "defend partner as he does something slow and laborious", but it's still early.

The demo ends with an enormous boss, reminiscent of the Hive Mind from the first game, but with a far more viscous streak and some new tricks. The encounter ends with Isaac being swallowed, shown in impressive detail, and then an image of the final weak point int he creature's stomach.

So I'm left very hopeful, but still slightly cautious. I've been hurt by EA's meddling and money-grabbing before, as I'm sure many of you also have. Their ridiculous claims of having to sell at least 5 million games is troublesome, but if you ignore the great beast behind them, Visceral is saying a lot of promising things. And a lot of the new additions can be explained logically within the confines of the universe, which is good. Seriously, Isaac is no longer unprepared for these things. Like the player, he knows what they are and he knows how to fight them. He's clearly been training and it appears he is now working with people that know how to end it once and for all, so he's driven by a need for revenge, a need for closure. He's not lumbering around slowly anymore, he's trained with weapons because he needs an arsenal to face what is about to come. He can combat roll because slowly strafing around is not going to cut it against an army. So I'm popping the video right here, let me know what you guys think.