Reviews PS3

Review – Civilization Revolution Demo

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As the name might imply, it’s hard to make a full judgment of Civilization Revolution based on the demo for a few reasons. The game is time limited, you can only play on “pussy” or “Jay” mode (we’ll let the readers decide which is worse), both giving you bonuses significant enough that it’s hard to get a flavor for real balance. The Civlopedia isn’t full, so you can’t analyze all the techs without playing countless times, and you are limited to two civilizations. Despite these limitations, what you can do is get a good feeling for how Firaxis dramatically changed the game-style of Civ while still keeping it Civ–a paraphrased sentence you’ve heard over and over again about the game which is an excellent way to open up this review.

This is unrealistic.

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Review – Grand Theft Auto IV **

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Grand Theft Auto IV is the greatest game in the history of electronics. No game since GTAIII has revolutionized digital entertainment this awesomely (ok — maybe since Halo 3). I bought my copy the night it launched and have already put in over forty hours of play, merely enough to scratch the surface of this diamond in the rough.

For those of you who don’t know, GTAIV was made by Rockstar Games, a company made exclusively of the “who’s who” of game developers. Everything they touch turns to solid gold and the innovation they bring to the table is easily enough to drive dozens of smaller developing studios. I think their true brilliance lies in the fact that they’ve managed to keep all of that innovation from leaking out and diluting their unique IPs. →  Read the rest

Review – Lost: Via Domus

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This game is horrible.

I could finish the review there but I think I really need the warped therapy that you can only get by ripping into a game that’s tormented you for a week. Not one aspect of this game is redeemable (except maybe the easy 1000 gamer points — but even then I feel cheap). From inception to execution I can’t believe that Ubisoft Montreal had anything to do with this poor excuse for digital entertainment. On top of that, I can’t believe that ABC and the show’s writers signed off on it. Scratch that; I can totally believe ABC signed off on it. I’m a pretty big fan of Lost, the second season was less-than-stellar but I think the writers really picked it up during the latter half of the third season and aren’t showing any signs of slowing down this year. →  Read the rest

Review – Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer

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Throughout the history of Xbox Live there have been several games that have been the most played at any given time, but no one had a doubt as to which would eventually become the undisputed champion. Nothing, it seemed, could top Halo 3. Now here we are, in the month of March, and Halo 3 is in an almost weekly battle for number one. Its competition is one of the top games of 2008, a title that was a guaranteed success, but which no one thought would become a viable contender against Bungie’s Goliath. That game, of course, is Call of Duty 4, and after just a couple of rounds of play you will see what the fuss is about.

Developer Infinity Ward has been making quality multiplayer games since the original Call of Duty – CoD 3 was made for multiplayer enhancements more than anything. →  Read the rest

Review – Call of Duty 4 Single Player

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Like so many other people in the gaming world, I must admit that I like Call of Duty 4’s Single Player campaign a hell of a lot. There are the usual reasons, such as its high level of polish and a well built game engine, but the bottom line is that COD4 is one of the few modern shooters that both understands and implements the storytelling techniques of Half Life 2. This is important not only because it can make for a great experience, but it shows that Infinity Ward truly is a premiere developer, one who understands what a shooter can (and sometimes should) do.

When I discuss the “Half Life 2” way of doing things, I am referring to that game’s ability to use scripted scenes and setpieces from start to finish, and somehow make them feel like a massive, detailed, living world. →  Read the rest

Review – Assassins Creed

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From everything I have read online, it seems that gamers everywhere are split into two camps when it comes to Assassin’s Creed: those who love the game and those who find it painfully repetitious. After beating the game over the course of four days, I found myself graduating from one group to the other. For the first third of the game I was frustrated, annoyed, angry, and bored. (Incidentally, three is an important number in the structure of Assassin’s Creed. There are three cities in the game, each with three sections and three assassination targets – one per section. In order to complete an assassination the player needs to collect three out of six available pieces of information about the target. So, judging the game in thirds seems to be a logical way to go)

And yet, despite all of the initial boredom and general dislike of the game, my final verdict is that I like Assassin’s Creed. →  Read the rest

Review – Transformers the Game

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Before you get all doe-y eyed for the great video games that have come out in the past two months, and start swallowing the industry’s mandate that we can only have decent games around the pinnacle event of a religion that totally hates video games, lets take a minute and remember how fucking terrible the rest of 2007 was for video games. Starting with Transformers the Game.

Transformers the Movie was the cinematic equivalent of going to a space zoo and jumping into a pit of laser equipped alligators and beating them down with your cock. While on fire. While the Teen Girl Squad cheers you on. Transformers the Game is the video game equivalent of falling into the same crocodilian awesomeness, only to find your cock quickly chomped off. And you’re on fire. →  Read the rest

Review – Rock Band

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I spent the week of Thanksgiving on vacation, so I missed the debut of Rock Band. Thanks to .33 cents a minute shipboard internet, I was able to read Tony’s gleeful post about the scarcity of units available. Although I had reserved the game at Gamestop, bane of all video game stores, panic set in. Contacting my roommate, I asked him to see if he could procure my reserved copy from Gamestop, either through the kindness of the Gamestop employees (yeah right), or more likely, impersonating me.

Surprisingly, not only did my local Gamestop have enough copies, they also allowed my roommate to buy on my behalf (shout out to Sasha, the store manager of the White Flint Gamestop, for being 100x cooler than every other Gamestop manager. I hope corporate doesn’t find out and fire you). →  Read the rest

Review – Guitar Hero 3

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Guitar Hero 3 does a lot to make me question game reviews. Or should I say, it brings to light many of their problems.

As I expected, it loses out with much of the standard, value driven review sites. While it stays afloat in many reviewer’s minds by adding online multiplayer and more tracks, it has also been grilled for things such as lack of create a character (a criticism I actually agree with, if for no other reason than developer Neversoft has been doing this since 2000) or online co-op play. Once a good game becomes a franchise, the stakes become continuously higher, and nothing short of a disc filled to the brim with their checklist of standard game features will make a reviewer happy. It also makes me question how every tacky addition to each year’s Madden avoids getting clobbered the same way. →  Read the rest

Review – Lair

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So, the critics have called this game unoriginal and unplayable due to its extra 21st chromosome technology control scheme. Harsh. They say the game’s opening monologue may as well have been ripped from the Fellowship of the Rings DVD. However there is a significant difference which qualifies this as “not a rip off,” when I’m-supposed-to-be-Cate-Blanchett gets to the part of the prologue where she introduces the uber-evil force that we’ll be up against. It’s not the giant fiery eye of Sauron or even a giant fiery uvula, but rather a volcano. Holy shit, volcanoes weren’t even in Lord of the Rings for at least two movies. How can those dicks over at every other game review site say this is unoriginal?

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That’s right, the evil that has torn apart the peaceful world of Dragonslairville is – volcanoes.
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Review – Heavenly Sword demo

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Well, it’s come to this. The best offering for the PS3 right now is a fucking DEMO. After enduring months of postponed releases and crocodile tears over how “hard” it is to develop for the PS3 we finally have a kickass demo. Why not wait another few days and write a review for the full release, you ask? Because I have lost all hope that any PS3 game will ever be released on time. (See my nonexistent review of Lair dated Nov. 17, 2006) Since it’ll take longer to read this article than play the demo, I’ll take you through all the other unnecessary pre-release media as well.

The game’s controls and what’s really happening onscreen go together like Depends and a thong. On numerous occasions, I had to wonder if I had downloaded the demo or just a game video, and I was pretending to play along like a four year old who’s run out of tokens at Chuck E. →  Read the rest