Author - Ripper71

The Dark Knight: Golden Dawn Deluxe Edition (Graphic Novel/DC Comics)

2012/01/30

It really isn’t too surprising that with the success of the Dark Knight movies, the incredibly well done Batman Arkham games and the cancellation of Batman The Brave and The Bold for a darker Knight animated series in development that Dark Knight graphic novels and comics would start to take a grittier, darker approach than previous incarnations of the caped crusader. As a result, a lot of jewels of the writing world got to shine in this element. A couple of the more notable being the dynamic duo of David Finch and Jason Fabok who were given the reins of the Batman: Dark Knight series in which we get to feel the pain that Gotham inflicts on it’s citizens, villains and superheroes in this modern world.

Gone are the days of the smooth skinned, perfectly painted Joker and the laughable bumbling Penguin and in its place are villains wracked with disease and addiction, a Batman whose lines have definitely blurred between hero and villain, and a Gotham where hell is closer than anyone would like to think. The story concentrates on the disappearance of one of Batman’s oldest friends, Dawn Golden, who is one of his only good links left to his past before his parent’s murder and runs through Gotham’s usual list of suspects with some surprisingly strange twists. I have read a lot of Batman over the years, particularly the darker ones such as The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, and I have seldom seen the question of villain versus victim so well and deeply explored or had the lines between the heroes and the villains be so thin. Gotham has damaged all its inhabitants and none feel truly safe from the street folks to the socialites. Going into any deeper detail would spoil parts of the storyline but I can say the artwork is exceptional, as dark and gritty as the story itself and I often found myself stopping to just take in the detail of a panel or a page.

The Deluxe Edition is a collection of the first six issues of Batman: The Dark Knight and also includes Batman: The Return “Planet Gotham,” a short tale by Grant Morrison in which Batman realizes the best way to protect Gotham is to protect the world and start fighting terrorism in the Dark Knight way. The story is really well written with excellent artwork and sets up a concept that bridges several previous Grant Morrison Batman stories together and defines new roles for the different individuals who have taken on the bat logo as well as Robin. It was originally published as a one shot a year ago so it might have been easy to miss but is a solid read on it’s own. There is even a two page story called “Eternal” by David Finch at the end of the book that tells the story of two of the inheritors of the Batman and Superman names walking toward the statue dedicated to their mentors and discussing what it means to be these iconic superheroes. When all this is put together in a nicely bound hardcover format this is really a “deluxe edition.”

Last Call:

I am really glad I got the chance to read this graphic novel. The main story is so well-written I want to go out and pick up more copies from the comic series right now and the additional Grant Morrison story makes me want to read a few of the stories I have missed from other graphic tales. It is a true “deluxe edition” and is not only a great read but if read carefully can bestow the reader with a better understanding of how thin the line between good and evil really can get.

Yesterday Preview (PC)

2012/01/30

Ripper71

News, Previews

Yesterday recently came on our radar so it was time to give it a look and see how the company that brought us the Runaway series and The Next Big Thing did when they took on a thriller. Pendulo Studios maintain their excellence in 2D animation with this work though the mood from the opening animation is one of creepiness and occult. After the first animation it plays like a standard puzzle game, introducing the quirks of a couple of likable characters who it is soon revealed have some very unlikable quirks. In New York City, beggars are disappearing one after another later to be found burnt alive. Meanwhile, a Y-shaped scar forms in the palm of the hands of seemingly unrelated people. The police and the media give little attention to these deaths so Henry White, a young and rich heir dedicated to a charitable organization, and his friend Cooper are the first to investigate these disappearances. The preview is fairly short but tantalizing, giving us a chance to see that the gameplay is very much like that of the Runaway series but the subject matter might be a bit strong for the squeamish, even when rendered in amazing 2D. Here are some screenshots to get an idea of what to expect but you will have to wait until March to get your hands on the game!

Screenshots

Dustforce! Review (PC/Steam)

2012/01/14

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Games are usually an escape from life and so often have strange and unusual premises but you don’t find a whole lot that have you play a janitor armed with your push broom. Even fewer have you play as part of a janitorial team working to clean up the forests of leaves. That however is the premise of Dustforce and in it’s format the theme works just fine.

Dustforce is a 2D platform aerobatic action game in which players have to sweep, swipe and jump their way through multiple levels cleaning up leaves while avoiding thorns, destroying leaf clumps and saving woodland creatures from leaf possession. I honestly didn’t fully understand the last part of leaf possession but it did make for more interesting play as you cook through the levels trying to keep combos going, make smooth jumps and avoiding death by thorning or being beaten to death by poor possessed possums. You move on to cleaning leaves, dust and grime from other locations but with similar play. You get 4 characters to choose from though they don’t appear to have any real difference between them except appearance.

The graphics are cartoonish and simple but also nicely stylized and works really well for the 2D platform game style and the music is calming and a little old school sounding trying to offset the often hectic action. There are over 50 levels in the game, most of them only unlockable by getting an extremely high score on one of the lower levels. This results in usually having to play a level a few times to beat the necessary score even if you complete it so the game does require patience and an understanding that a learning curve is necessary for working your way up through the game and though the levels will become more challenging you will still be working your way up using the same moves and weapons just perfecting them more and more. That kind of repetitive gameplay may not be for everyone, I actually had more than one player try this game and someone who was good at it got bored and someone who had a hard time got frustrated.

Luckily if this winds up becoming a problem you can invite a friend to play with you and try multiplayer mode where one team makes a mess and one team tries to clean it up and you see who winds up having the mad mess or crazy clean up skills. This could be good for a pretty decent amount of playtime since some gamers get so competitive. There is also a level designer that is currently a work in progress and that too might make the game more interesting, especially if friends wind up challenging each other to their own devious level designs.

Last Call:

Dustforce! is a solid example of a 2D platform aerobatic action game designed with challenges that are necessary to overcome before level advancement, completion is not enough. This game will probably appeal mostly to the hardcore platform player due to the level of excellence required to advance and the skill at the jumping, wall hopping, and broom swiping that has to all be timed perfectly to pass obstacles and if they aren’t passed on the first try you won’t be able to advance past the level. The music which can be calming and has subtle differences in the scores may also become a bit repetitive so playing some tunes in the background might be a good plan. If it genre which if you love, like might not be strong enough, at $9.99 it is a bargain with hours of challenging game play. Dustforce will be available for download on Steam starting January 17th.

(Correction: It was originally-stated that there was a demo available for this title. That is incorrect. The game is not out until Jan. 17th)

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All Zombies Must Die! Review (XBLA)

2012/01/08

Ripper71

News, Reviews

I’m an old school gamer as avid readers know, so as soon as I heard this title and saw how it was made my first thought was “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” that blasted onto the Super Nintendo and into the hearts of old school zombie hunters as you ran through 50s style camp saving the neighbors and killing the zombies. So when I saw a trailer for All Zombies Must Die! I figured we were in for this generations version of the same game, just with updated graphics but what I found was a very well made game which while paying homage to the old game also pays homage to pop culture in general and doesn’t forget to be a good play.

The game starts with you controlling a video game junkie named Jack who in the opening moments of the game says “Strange things are afoot in the town of Deadhill.” Upon realizing the strange things afoot are zombies he says “cool!” and dives right into the fray. In no time he has a shotgun and starts making “Campbell Combo”s with his Boomstick and kicking Ash all over the place. All the pop culture references in the last couple sentences are nothing compared to the ones stacked all through the game, homages to camp, horror and the zombie genre in general. Even a well seasoned zombie hunter like myself had to catch a couple of them more than once to get them. The game even pays homage to video games themselves as Jack realizes slowly that everything happening in Deadhill seems a lot like a video game. Missions seem like quests to him and when he has to fight a big zombie he mentions how much it feels like a boss fight in a video game. He continues to break down the game while fighting his way through it and running into such characters as Rachel who upon seeing Jack points out “Apparently restraining orders don’t apply during the Apocalypse.” Both the storyline and the dialogue itself is all camp and good fun, not taking itself seriously for a single moment. The wonderful campy soundtrack helps reinforce the whole thing as well as the cartoon like graphics.

Just because a game is campy though doesn’t mean it is easy. All Zombies Must Die! makes sure to have a steady enemy strength progression that if you explore a bit and take in the joy of wiping out zombies then you should find your strength matching theirs maintaining a solid difficulty. If you find yourself hitting a level where you seem to be well out of you league you have the ability to go back a level and work at leveling yourself. One of the game hints on the loading screen even suggests a bit of farming for better level matching and weapon upgrade ability. Weapon upgrades and additions don’t miss their chance at camp either, such as when you get the cricket stick which was “made famous by a guy called Shaun.” Upgrades are upgrades though and you find yourself relying on different weapons to survive different zombies and getting sillier weapons to take on bigger beasts. Health boosts come in the form of cheeseburgers and cooked turkeys dropped by zombies, which goes into a whole sanitation and storage question that I think we will just skip in this review.

This game also requires the standard tactics of just about any zombie game, control of attack direction, watching your six while not getting cornered, all the survival skills you need for games that take themselves serious are necessary to surviving one that doesn’t. Tactics come into play even more during local multiplayer where each of the characters you can play have their own strengths and weaknesses that play into the battle plans. You can also use ability points to work on strengths and weaknesses of your characters as you level.

Last Call:

On the surface this seems like a simple cartoonish zombie game with tons of camp and pop references but it turns out to have a nice depth and a very solid level progression and enemy system. All the tactics and gameplay strengths you would need for a serious zombie game can be found in this silly top down arcade shooter which has finally replaced my zombie camp love “Zombies At My Neighbors” as my favorite campy game of any genre. As Jack says “a horde of zombies…a loaded shotgun…it’s Christmas!”

Yoostar 2 And Yoostar On MTV (Review)

2011/12/03

Ripper71

News, Reviews

I learned a long time ago that I have a face made for radio. Back in college, I studied being both behind and in-front of the camera and realized my place was “in the rear with the gear”. So, being there I got to know the gear pretty well – from taped together scripts rolling through a prompter which was little more than a rigged overhead projector to state-of-the-art, programmed HD equipment. When I heard a PC game had come along that had green screen clipping capabilities I got really excited. Commercial keying gear costs a fortune and is one of the harder expenses a start up television station has to invest in so if we could get the keying to clip well on our PCs then home workshops could be realistic at a fraction of the cost. Yoostar was the name of the game and it claimed to make people actually look like they were in the movie. Before I had an opportunity to pick it up however I heard there were major software and keying issues so I let is slide by thinking maybe I would try somewhere down the line.

Well down the line came in the form of Yoostar 2: In The Movies and so once again I told myself I would pick it up eventually – this time waiting on the money to pick up a Kinect for the Xbox 360, the new platform for the game. So more time passed and I found myself in a conference room at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, eating a sandwich and watching Snoop Dogg through a glass window as he gestured to the press who had made it into his viewing room with him. The sandwich was tasty, so was a cookie or two but we couldn’t hear a single word Snoop said. He came out, said a quick “Hi” to the folks who had been watching him like an animal in a glass enclosure at the zoo, then left quickly as did a bunch of grumbling journalists. I finished my sandwich, confirmed my appointment time and thought this may not be the best start to what I already considered the next step in party gaming. You can see my shoulder in the image below, right at the edge of the window with the beige strap on my shoulder, it was when I got my sandwich.

I arrived promptly for my appointment later that day and the mood in the room did not seemed to have improved, if anything they looked deflated. The story was all about Yoostar On MTV and their partnership with such individuals as Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga as well as having clips from pretty much every MTV reality show including the infamous “Jersey Shore.”

The tech op who took me in for the demonstration was showing some tiredness from the long day as well as rumors that the Snoop Dogg interview hadn’t gone so well. When I immediately started talking clipping and the “halo” or white area around him in the clip he said they were working on it but he personally thought it was fine. With assurances that it would have a much less obvious halo, I wrote it up then gave it little thought until I picked up my own Kinect and, with it, Yoostar 2. It is hard to truly appreciate the fun of Yoostar until you do it in your own home with someone else. Acting out the scenes, messing with props, changing the dialogue, with Yoostar 2 I could see this game might be the next evolution of party gaming to take the place of the music karaoke games. The greatest part is that there is no setup. Step in front of your Kinect and away you play!

You first choose a clip then you will be asked to frame yourself into an outline, once you are matched up with your location in the shot you can start performing.

(ed. note: I love the picture)

This one of the first ones I did, yep I am pretty comfortable being an idiot if it brings people a good laugh and as you can see I gave it a run with this “300” clip. My actual profile will be linked at the bottom of this article so you can see all the wonderful videos I have done so far. This was really a fun game and I could see it working in conjunction with games like RockBand but people tend to want to sing more than act so both would probably need to be set up. That was when I started looking forward to Yoostar On MTV coming out because not only would party goers be able to act along with the reality shows they could also sing along with their favorite songs and get keyed into them. So when the game arrived I was so excited to get it going, I figured a few test runs and I would be ready to have guests over.

It was at this point that I realized much like I had with Yoostar 2 there was a halo around me and though they had settings to try to help minimize it the only true saving grace is all about lighting. You need lots of good light, the closer to neutral colored bulb the better. In some it was just a couple spots like above, in others whole sections of clothing would go missing or the halo would turn into spikes.

Or on a few occasions the camera would place you in a certain location and the scene wouldn’t quite match up, you might look tiny compared to the others in the clip.

Or in others you might seem absolutely gigantic and terrifying to small kids.

Much like the music games you can play them for a score or freeplay and there is even a Challenge Mode that is pretty much the same as Career Challenge on music instrument games. The great part about this is you get stuck into the official videos. I would say my biggest concern with the game is that it came with over 80 possible scenes and only 10 of them were music videos. I guess I am more of the old generation but on a Music Television game I would hop that more than 1/8 of the scenes would be music. Since a good deal of their programming though is now reality shows it does make sense to pick its clips according to what MTV viewers are used to and let’s face it, some of the most notable popular culture characters are on those shows it is still pretty fun to act like The Situation and Snookie or somebody weeping on Road Rules Challenge.

Yoostar also has an excellent online community of like minded people having fun and being foolish plus they can vote on your videos and Yoostar 2 and Yoostar On MTV both interact through the same site so whichever game you upload from it puts them all on the same account.

Last Call

Let’s face it, you don’t need a clean “key” and perfect lighting to have fun with the Yoostar games, but it helps. All you really need is a fun group of people, a good collection of clips, which between the two games will give you over 150 to work with and a willingness to lose your inhibitions and be silly or serious depending on what seems like the bigger blast. These games are fun, they just need a bit more music in them to balance all their tv and movie scenes. I plan to take the games to the next party I go with that I know has a Kinect in the place! As promised here is a link to my account!

Afterfall: inSanity Review (PC)

2011/12/03

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Afterfall: inSanity is the a “what if” story that takes a moment in time where things really could have taken a different turn and changes everything we know today. During World War 2, right before the Nazis are at the point of defeat, Hitler gets his Wunderwaffe and the Germans finish the atomic bomb race first. He launches a V-2 rocket armed with a nuclear warhead at the Soviet Army poised on the Polish-German border. Peace talks commence with German dominance developing in Europe and American presence being reduced to covert operations and support. While the Soviets and Americans are perfecting their nuclear capabilities, Germany has moved on to greater weapons, weapons on a scale so massive their designers don’t even know their full scope. Called Entropy, the bomb is dropped over the La Manche Channel and as a result all the nuclear weapons start flying. World War III begins in 2012, survivors are driven underground and by the time the “Insanity” breaks out in 2035 there is a whole generation who has never seen the surface of the world. Believed at first to be a strain of isolation sickness which arises in the underground shelters, “Insanity” soon proves itself to be a new nightmare all together.

"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not killer!"

You play a psychiatrist sent to one of the lower levels to check on the behavior of some workers which have been behaving in an unusual manner. “Unusual” if you consider screaming, charging and beating the living snot out of anyone in sight not to be the norm, that is! Once down there, you don’t ask “what is causing these extreme feelings of anxiety?” Instead, you end up bashing their heads in then literally off their bodies in a bloody and gore-filled rage. Soon, you are shooting everything that moves as you pacify aggressive behavior. You are also better at it then dozens of armed security troopers who have trained their whole lives for the same task, as a matter of fact you are tasked with taking said lives. Once the action kicks in, the only head shrinking you seem to do is by breaking it into little pieces. There is one concession to him being a doctor and that is when things break or look scary you can get “fearlock” which results in your accuracy being worse but your damage and reaction time being better because you are scared. If you don’t look too deep into the story, it is an interesting and fun setting for a gory romp through levels of various nasties. The story is original but the action isn’t – it has the feel of Dead Space, Mass Effect, and other games down the third-person shooter line where a heroic figure steps forward to take care of business in horrific times. Not that there is nothing wrong with that!

Grim Beauty

The scene is not a pretty one, but the graphics and details are so good that there is a certain beauty to this torn and destroyed world. It is a grim atmosphere and the graphics and audio really bring that home. Thanks to its gameplay and atmosphere, it is really easy to get lost in this game and have hours pass without realizing it. There was love put into this game, so much so that items littering the ground from broken pipes, table legs and rebar to dropped firearms and tools can be picked up and used against your enemies. Additionally, there is great amount of detail in your enemies, enough so that you can have two that look very similar but you noticed one has a slightly lighter color clothing or skin and they will even attack in a different manner. The music is very well done, creating a tense atmosphere during the fights and being very quiet or even absent during the other times as you pass clunking pipes, dripping vents, or creaking catwalks and you listen for the slightest hint of danger. Atmosphere, especially if you play it at night in the dark can actually pull you in and have you jumping at what goes bump in the shadows.

Playing The Game

At first the melee combat, which is how you start the game, felt a little clumsy. My first thought was that the this clumsiness was due to bad game mechanics. Before long, however, I found myself doing more melee than shooting. Not that there is anything wrong with the shooting aspect, the shooting performs like most third person shooters and is without issue. There is just a certain satisfaction received from picking up just about anything in sight and beating an enemy to a pulp with it. The gore is great both ways but, if you fight just right, your melee ends with a dramatic rage-filled bashing in of your enemy’s head in a short cinematic. When it comes to fighting, this game is a blast and using WASD during melee you can make different combos.

There is one other aspect to the action and that is puzzle solving. These can be kinda tightly-timed and, until you fully understand what you are supposed to do, they can be a bit frustrating. After you figure them out though you can breeze by them pretty easily and it is back to smashing in skulls.

Last Call

This game started off as a fanmade project and became a professionally-polished third-person shooter you can purchase today. The storyline is different and interesting but when it gets right down to it is a horror/survival third person shooter with mostly the same action you would see in another game of the same genre. There is nothing wrong with that, mind you – give a person who likes the genre a good story, fun gameplay, and plenty of gore then drop it in a great environment and you will have happy players and I am definitely among them! This is a fun game I might play through a few times, simply because of the variety of weapons. I wonder how far I could get wielding a table leg…

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Battlefield Heroes CTF Mode Preview

2011/11/21

Ripper71

News, Previews

2 Comments

The Battlefield Heroes have a new way for the Royals and Nationals to duke it out that will have everyone more on the run than ever. The game mode Capture The Flag is being added to the play-for-free game so that, for the first time in the history of Battlefield Heroes, their objectives will be on the move. Previous matches have always been for set locations, whether it is four capture points or just one it has always been capture locations where this one is picking up a flag while under attack by defenders and trying to run it through the city streets back to your base to officially capture it. If the flag carrier is killed or drops the flag, there is a time limit in which it can be picked back up but you can bet it will be guarded while you try.

World of Warcraft players will immediately think of one of it’s battlegrounds and the similarities in the Capture The Flag mode but the fact that it has flag runners trying to capture the flag and the flag can’t be captured without your team’s flag being in your base is about where the similarities end. For one thing, class skills that might aid the flag carrier aren’t negated nor are any purchasable equipment (much of which can be be rented using in-game money as well). So, the right combination of weapons and strategy can both give the runner a fighting chance by using shields and health and speedy feet and yet he might get stopped cold by a sniper over half a map away with the right vantage point.

Terrain also poses a challenge as well as an opportunity. There are so many different directions you can run through a city map, for example, that setting up an ambush on the carrier can be a challenge and if flag defenders try to defend at the capture point they are right in the middle of the enemy base and re-spawn point. High ground can help the snipers but there are only so many open spots on a city map for example, places where the buildings aren’t providing cover. The lone gunmen may find these maps particularly challenging because they are designed to be a team effort of offense and defense.

I got a chance to try out the mode with the testers before it released and found myself using different items and ideas each run as I tried to make my way through the game with people who really knew both the map and the mode well already and it was a blast! Even though I was a lower level than most of them I used the items I had picked for the character and my own knowledge of the map from years of playing it and sometimes even held my own. I would also like to just quickly acknowledge that the testing and managing team for this game are a really fun group of people and if you ever get a chance to play them in a match jump at it. Not only are the good at the game, they are great people to talk to.

Last Call:

Some people may bring up that this kind of game mode exists in WoW but they would be comparing apples to oranges. The gameplay is so different as well as the maps that the similarities end at the fact that it is a capture the flag mode. This will be a huge difference for the Heroes who are used to capturing stationary locations and haven’t had a mode where the requirement is to get an item from this point to the other while keeping the enemy from doing the same. It should bring out teamwork and comradery, something that isn’t missing from the usual game modes, but will definitely show themselves in this one. You can bet I will be there with my Santa hero, giving the bad boys and girls lead instead of coal.

Saints Row: The Third Review (PC/OnLive)

2011/11/19

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Certain games appeal to the “adult kid” in us, I know that sounds like an oxymoron but the truth is some games make us laugh and curse at the same time, some games make juvenile jokes not meant for children. Generally, these games are considered male-oriented because they are loaded with machismo, but I have seen women gamers laughing it up and kicking arse in these types of games just as much as the guys – though they may be a little slower to admit it. GTA 3 is a prime example of this kind of game, it raised a giant uproar for it’s senseless violence and adult themes yet it was the top selling game of 2001. It revolutionized the sandbox game and set a new benchmark, both in rude content and diversity of gameplay. As a result all games called “sandbox” or “open world” would be compared to the very high mark set from then on. In 2006 developer Violation Inc. and publisher THQ created a game called Saints Row which was successful enough to sell two million copies and create a sequel which due to technical issues only sold 400,00 units the first year. As a result it took a while to get Saints Row: The Third out and has brought up the question in many people’s mind: is it better than it’s predecessor?

The warning label for Saint's Row the Third

So you definitely get the feeling that the game is going to be both mature and immature at the same time. Which is good, it is what we have come to expect from these kind of games. You can have all of the above situations executed in a serious game but that would probably lose a lot of the fun factor. Sometimes at the end of the day these themes are really what you need, and what Saint Row definitely shoots for and delivers.

You start out with a lot of character customization as to how he or she looks and you can spend a good deal of time getting lost in just this element of the game. There are plenty of gamers out there that don’t care about this feature and can just randomize and be done with it but for those who plan to invest themselves in the storyline of the game as much as the gameplay taking the little extra time can make the difference between a generic thug or a finely honed avatar.

Whichever way you go with it be assured that eventually you will be able to have fun with this aspect too. If you pre-ordered you start with a very strange but fun mascot costume to get you started as well as the rather generic outfit you get to start with. As time goes by in the game you get to accessorize as much as you want, in fact it earns you more reputation, which lets you unlock more things which can include more accessories. You get the opportunity to make the most bad ass looking character to the most silly looking one and though it doesn’t really effect gameplay except for rep when you are running around just having fun in the open world having on some fun gear can add to it.

Graphics And Atmosphere

The graphics in the game look so good that sometimes they look more like concept art, especially during the cinematics. The shadowing and detail in this game help draw you in even with the third person perspective most of the time and the atmospheric sounds and interactions help keep you in it. You can stand on one spot on the street and watch all kinds of interactions between the different AIs populating the world. This isn’t a new idea, but it is a very important one to execute due to the high standards these kind of games are held up to now. You have to be able to interact with just about any part of the environment but it also has to have the ability to interact without you which gives it the opportunity to earn the Mature 17+ rating all on it’s own without the fun and senseless violence you will undoubtedly unleash upon the games’ world. Between the graphics and the atmosphere, from the sounds of traffic, arguments and distant gunshots on the streets to the muzak in the elevator every part of this game is detailed and thorough just as it needs to be.

The game controls are pretty standard for this type of game, actually the buttons are so similar that they are intuitive and don’t really require any practice to get the hang of. If you played the GTA games this will all seem very familiar in the movements of the characters as well as the controls. There are definite and distinct differences between the Saints game compared to the GTA, but at least the controls are quick to master.

Too Much Like GTA?

Some of the similarities of this game and GTA really can’t be ignored but there is also nothing wrong with that since when you get something right there is nothing wrong with keeping at it. Stealing vehicles is the same, beating up or gunning down people on the street, vehicles are mostly similar to GTA and all this makes it so that you can just jump in and play the game without training. Yet at the same time there are very different mini games than GTA so it is a refreshing change.

There are a whole lot of vehicles of all different types some of them are repeated between different gangs, as are the clothing with mostly a difference in color and each gang’s specialist – some snipers, some martial artists. There are plenty of everyday vehicles such as garbage trucks, semis, event little utility carts.

There are also some of the really strange ones like the one that came with pre-ordering the game that is a cat truck that sucks people into its face grill and fires them out a cannon with a bunch of confetti. I know that sounds made up but here it is in all it’s glory.

The set also came with one of the unique costumes in the game that I used for a while because it was a very strange and unique and just plain silly fun. Some of the mini games and extra content is designed to look like it would fit in with a Japanese game show which is another way that this game goes in it’s own direction. It really tries not to take itself seriously from the crazy weapons to the crazy vehicles, to the silly attacks this game is just darn silly fun.

Even the names of the achievements and missions are all double meaning and the banter is the kind of things guys might say to each other while they razz one another on headsets or on the couch. I laughed just about every minute playing this game and though I remember the wonder of GTA3 and it’s glory, I like that this game decided it was going to give you the third person shooter but was going to make every minute crazy machismo fun. It earns the warning posted earlier but not in the dark way that the warning could mean, it earns it in uncompromising over-the-top action and humor. Sure you get the serious mission when you are piloting a helicopter to cover a hacker friend as she tries to get information to help your gang survive, but you also get a gigantic mountain of a friend who jumps on the top of a hovering jet and starts beating it up to help you escape or a comrade who had a tracheotomy and uses an gold auto-tuner on the end of a cane as a voice amplifier.

Homages And Storyline

Most of the really funny stuff is definitely Mature 17+, so I won’t be dwelling so much on that in this piece, but it takes all those video game moments from over the years and pays homage to them to the point of ridiculous. Instead I will try to point out some of the ways it pays homage that are far more subtle that I can mention without giving away the storyline. There are references to Starship Troopers, HALO, Matrix, TRON, and even some MMOs. Heck, there is a joke that most younger players will probably never get involving text based games that older gamers will be laughing their butts off at.

Some, I guess, really are not THAT subtle...

I love those movies but I don’t remember her in them. It does show an example of how the absurd is combined with the slightly more subtle. It actually makes sense to the storyline and that is something that this game does well, takes a surprisingly versatile storyline that features several twists and turns to make absurdities possible and surprising results come up. It isn’t all linear either, there are certain moments in the game where you have to make decisions and those decisions sometimes have a small branching off and others decide what ending to the game you get. It is so well woven in that there are debates all over the boards discussing which ending seems like the more logical, the “right” one that will show it’s effect if another Saints Row game is made.

OnLive And Co-Op

The OnLive system has always been great with its Arena that allows you to look at all the different games people are playing and actually watch them play in a spectator mode that allows you to talk to them, cheer them and jeer them while they work their way through a game. OnLive also incorporates it so that if the game can be played co-op you can actually join the game you are watching. So the way OnLive works with Saints Row: The Third is when you sign in at the beginning of a session you can choose to have your campaign “private” or “co-0p” which makes it so that while you play a new player can join you in the game as long as you aren’t in the middle of a mission. If you are they have to wait until you are done with the mission then they can hop into the game with you and do co-op missions. It’s as easy as that! So if you see someone playing and you like their style of play you can jump right into the game with them and if that works out you can friend them and hop into their games no matter what it is as long as you both have it anytime you are both on. It really makes it so that you don’t just have someone you can enjoy a round with and maybe play with later, it makes it so that you can play with them regularly. You can make Brag Clips on OnLive at the hit of a button that records the last 15 seconds of play so if you just can’t stop laughing about what you just did you can share it with the whole OnLive community and give them a good laugh or cheer too. Also OnLive works with the Saints Row website which allows players to not just chat through its community, it also allows you to compare games and meet up with more people.

One More Mode To Mention

There is one last game mode I have to mention but I will be fairly tight lipped about because it really is just best to be experienced. It it called Whored Mode (Hoard) and it is a 30 level survival mode with a greatest hits from the game both weapons and enemies wise. It is one that is fun to play over and over and I can’t recommend it enough, though I do recommend playing it after the game or you will be spoiler-ed on who some of your opponents will be.

Last Call

Saint’s Row the Third manages to succeed at nearly everything it tries to do, from telling a good story while giving you all the things you love in a open world game and a whole bunch of silly adult fun. It is not for kids, they probably wouldn’t get many of the jokes anyways, but it is a brutally-fun game. Worth owning!

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Rochard Review (PC/Steam)

2011/11/14

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Rochard is one of those hard to describe games that crosses over so many game genres. It is a puzzler disguised as a side-scrolling action game with graphics like Wallace And Gromit and a gravity gun. I guess it wasn’t that hard. Rochard (pronounced “Rock Hard”) is an astro miner whose crew is one job away from the intergalactic unemployment line when they strike pay dirt in the form of a strange element in the middle of an isolated asteroid. It is at that same moment that a bunch of thugs arrive on the ship with laser guns and motion turrets and start taking hostages. It is up to Rochard and his trusty gravity gun to to throw crates, open hatches, re-arrange force fields by pulling fuses and doing his best to get his crew back and still get a payday.

John Rochard is a loveable animated character, an exaggerated cross between a miner and trucker who defies gravity with his gut. He is composed of family friendly graphics that even stay friendly and blood free when he takes out his enemies. Due much to the fun but very decent quality graphics you find yourself rooting for your character and wanting to keep helping him get past challenge after challenge. The voice acting is well done too and very cartoonish adding to the charm and overall family cartoon feel. If you are looking for a side scrolling action game where you shoot everything in sight or a gore filled horror fest this really couldn’t be further from those games. This is meant to be fun, silly, and challenging in its puzzles, though people who pride themselves on really hard puzzles may find them a bit too easy. Everything, even the difficulty of the puzzles, really yells family fun. The controls are pretty straight forward and intuitive, though players may want to check Controls just in case there is a surprise not mentioned in the game’s hints. The game never had a glitch or a hiccup and there was almost always more than one way to solve a puzzle.

The music is one of the only parts that diverge from the family fun feel but it is so well done that I honestly would really like the soundtrack. One track sounds very much like something out of Firefly/Serenity, another sounds John Carpenter-esque and yet another sounded like something right out of Tron. It all screamed sci-fi which does work with the location of the events but not so much the mood of the game. I love the music but I think I would have gone with something more cartoonish for this and saved the great music for a few other actions titles.

Last Call:

I really liked this game! It was silly and fun and cartoonish but the puzzles are decent, the music is excellent and it would be a great game for adults to play with their young kids. Something about the gameplay is addictive and just makes you want to keep helping the guy rescue his crew, get the pay dirt and just generally win the day after which you can just imagine him putting up his feet, opening his favorite beverage and watching… well probably cartoons. At $10 on Steam you may feel you hit pay dirt as well.

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InMomentum Review (PC/Steam)

2011/11/12

Ripper71

News, Reviews

1 Comment

I have played a lot of different indie games over the years and I find something to like in a game even if I find I don’t like the game itself. I can figure out why some people will rave to me about it while I end up with the urge to immediately log into one of my favorite FPS and tear through a few maps. That was definitely the case with InMomentum.

InMomentum is made up of 12 parkour-inspired, timed courses with throwback 3D graphic blocks and lots of ledges. There is some shooting to be done, about 5 times per level to lower obstacles but, otherwise, it is about running and jumping with perfectly timed precision to complete the course in the shortest time possible. Some sections can only be cleared by multiple jumps with multiple buttons, generally one to put you onto the side of a wall and a second to shoot you to the top of it. Errors in jumping result in going back to the last checkpoint of which there are only a few.

The musical score is a nice instrumental with a nice upbeat tempo to get you in the mood to run and jump then run and jump some more. The bars and boxes that comprise the course are multicolored reminding me a bit of Q-bert and some of Rubik Cubes. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 so there never seems to be any issues with the throwback block graphics and game physics. InMomentum has a single player and a multiplayer mode, single player you are racing against a preset time and in multiplayer you are racing others and can get powerups to use to mess up your enemy, very Kart style in that respect. The multiplayer at least does have the fun of messing with your friends using weapons combos and such and could get very competitive.

Last Call:

I can see where people who like running and jumping games, especially with the extra challenge of wall parkour and kart style weapons to take out your friends, would find this game a great deal – especially with a $10 price tag. I just think the audience is fairly specialized and this would have limited appeal to a general audience.