Reviews

Review – Rock Band 2

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Rock Band 2 came out this past weekend, with an odd Sunday launch to be precise. You’d have been hard pressed to learn this from Harmonix’s site, which was oddly devoid of fanfare about the release. Fortunately, the local Gamestop was plastered with signs indicating that Rock Band 2 was in fact available, and they didn’t even give me much shit when I told them I hadn’t reserved a copy. A moderate line of 7 people made me feel like less of a loser, particularly when most of the people in the line were young, hip, and attractive. Truly times are changing when the person behind me was a cute girl in her twenties (with her boyfriend) demanding Rock Band 2.

What you weren’t able to get was the full bundle: new guitar, new drums, new mic and game. That won’t be available until October. News to me. Apparently the new guitar was pushed back as well, leaving me to just get the game and the new drum kit. →  It was the best of games, it was the worst of games

Review – Spore

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I am not sure how to introduce this review so I am going to start gently. If I were the kind of guy that was into fellating people to get what I want, there would be a short list of people that I would be willing to drop to my knees for. Right off the top of my head, I can only actually think of two men, the first being Trent Reznor if he promised to give me another album equal to or greater than The Downward Spiral; the second guy is Will Wright.

I can’t think of what I would ask Will Wright for in exchange for orally pleasing him but if he were into bartering, I am sure I could come up with something. I have always liked Will Wright because, thankfully for my succulent lips, he gives me what I want without forcing me to choose to spit or swallow. I loved all of the real SimCity games before they got all politically correct and became SimCity Societies. →  An article approaches.
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Review – Silent Hill Origins

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Over the years Silent Hill has gone from being a cult classic that all the cool kids preferred, to a media darling that the cool kids still preferred, to a struggling franchise that no one seems happy with. This is because no one can agree on what Silent Hill is all about. The basic idea has been that it offers a deeper, “psychological” style of horror that the proles playing Resident Evil may not understand.

As the series has gotten older, the people making it seem to believe the games are defined by increasing amounts of gooey penis and vagina monsters. Diehard fans often pin the spirit of the series to the original Team Silent. If you ask me, the meaning of Silent Hill is apparent. The problem is that no one really wants to use it. To be clear, Silent Hill is about a creepy little town that manifests its horrors based on the minds of troubled protagonsists. It is an interesting idea that is limited by the insistence of certain choices. →  I got served!

Review – Final Fantasy IV

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Let’s be honest kids, it’s not a real Final Fantasy game until I review it here on your favoritest ever videogame site videolamer (tell your friends). Of course, as it turns out, Final Fantasy IV actually already was a real videogame, like, a billion years ago back on the SNES when we Americans called it Final Fantasy II because we didn’t know any better.

Now, full disclosure, back on the SNES, Final Fantasy IV/II was the first RPG I ever beat; I was in Kindergarten, my older brother beat it first, and to this day I lord over him the fact that I found the crystal sword (best sword in the game, now retranslated as Ragnarok) before he did.

I also beat it on its PS1 rerelease, and again as the GBA game, Final Fantasy IV Advance. So yeah, I like FF IV, kind of a lot. Given that I imagine a large portion of the audience has played the game in one of its iterations, this review is going to focus primarily on the changes this game makes to the original. →  Article Kombat

Review – Soul Calibur IV

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Ever since Soul Calibur 2, it has been clear that Namco decided that their once experimental, more serious fighting game series could be another cash cow, if only they made a few tweaks. Thus we have been getting sequels that continuously emphasize style over substance, chock full of nerd bait for people on both shores.

True, the classic combat engine has always been there, but without any real dedication to the arcade scene it has become increasingly useless to the veteran fighting game fan. By the time Soul Calibur 4 was coming ’round the bend, the series was facing bugs, confused single player modes, and balance issues. When the early screenshots indicated an increasing focus on titillation, I was ready to write off the series.

But old habits die hard, and the allure of online play was strong. So here I am with yet another Soul Calibur, and I can safely say this is best one since SC1 (though that is a bit like saying Revenge of the Sith was the best of the Star Wars prequels). →  Castle Readigami 2

Review – Braid

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We can spend a lot of time talking about Braid, trying to interpret it and stamp out a definitive idea on what it is and what it says. There isn’t much of a point in it though. Braid, for all its flaws, is literature, something that has meaning. Anything I say about its message or its power may be quite different from what you would see on a playthrough. What we can do is look at it as a game.

Braid is a puzzle platformer. Some have called it “just a puzzle game with platforming elements.” We saw it with Portal, where people called it a puzzle game and forgot is was also in the first person. I’m not sure why that happened; Portal’s puzzles often thrive on how the player moves and positions himself, so the perspective (and the controls inherited from it) cannot be ignored.

The same is the case with Braid. Like any platformer it has laws of physics that govern the protagonist’s movement. →  Sly 3: Honor Among Reads

Review – Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2

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On Gameplay: the battle system, the law system, and quests

Golden Jew
Before you pick up a copy of Tactics A2, there’s a simple question you need to ask yourself. “Do I love SRPG battles?” It’s really quite simple because this game is basically a lot of tactics battles. For the most part, random encounters have been eliminated and are instead replaced with 300 quests for you to complete.

Augmenting pixilated slaughter, there are run and fetch quests, and a few “dispatch the right person” quests, where the fun lies in trying to figure out what the proper class/race is. For example, an intuitive one asks for a sexy barmaid – so of course you send a viera. But others are slightly more obscure and can be irritating (and therefore FAQ-worthy).

The law system, as I already ranted about, is really a detriment to gameplay. Over the long haul, the number of retarded instances of the law system decreases, or you care less about the loss of a few loot items (largely overrated after the first five hours) and bonus AP points. →  Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Bore me and I sleep.

Review – Seven Kingdoms: Conquest

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Imagine throwing the major pre-gunpowder empires in history into a grand free-for-all. The Japanese would have samurai and ninja, Vikings would have axethrowers and berserkers, Normans would have crossbowmen and knights, and so on. Now imagine adding in random demon lairs that attack human settlements. This is the setting of Seven Kingdoms, an RTS with several fairly deep mechanics, including unit loyalty, economy balancing, and a great espionage system. Its sequel would go on to refine each of these, adding more civilizations and the ability to play as the demonic races of the Fryhtans. Both have a deep complexity that keeps me playing when other RTS games start to feel too shallow.

Unfortunately, I am reviewing neither of these games here.

Seven Kingdoms: Conquest appears, at first glance, to be a continuation of the first two games. It adds a storyline in its campaign, which adds realism to the world so that instead of being thrown all together, the races are divided into epochs (i.e. →  Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Authors, Nine Articles

Review – Alone in the Dark

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Apparently, it is becoming the rule rather than the exception for games to be rushed to release, rather than given the time to properly simmer. There are a slew of factors causing this, such as soaring costs, tricky console hardware, and the fickle, tiny window of attention that the hype machine grants.

Of course, a rushed game can come in different flavors. In my last review, we saw how Army of Two lost most of its grand cooperative aspirations, but still managed to ship as a stable and competent action game. From a business perspective, this is acceptable as gamers will buy something derivative if it is polished well enough.

Another result is something like Alone in the Dark, where the grandiose ideas remain, but are held together by duct tape and the hope that bugs and glitches are not severe enough to cause the game to crash out from under the player’s feet. We here at videolamer appreciate new ideas enough that we try to give these games a fair chance, but Alone in the Dark reminds me of just how hard it is to assess a game that treads on the slippery slope between genius and basic playability. →  Read, you fools!