Review – Dead Rising 2 0

by Adam Blue • Reviews

Despite my last post’s rant about load times, there is still a game here to be played – and reviewed. Dead Rising 2, now under development by Blue Castle Games, takes place after the first game, and in a Las Vegas inspired setting. Unfortunately the setting is too similar to the first. It’s really just a mall. But again, there is a game here to be played.

I might not remember the first as much, but this is very much survivor focused. You can get by without killing many zombies, although, that’s really the fun part. What’s introduced here is weapon crafting. Various weapons can be combined in maintenance rooms to create some badass weaponry that really helps out when swimming through an ocean of the undead or taking out psychos. Beside that crafting element, it is essentially the same game as the first. With some other tweaks.

Rescuing survivors is quite easy. I didn’t really have to worry about them getting lost or killed by zombies. Two I didn’t rescue were due to me accidentally defecting them. One, actually required a combo’d weapon of sorts that trigger a gameplay event. This is not as common as it could have been, but is used to also thwart psychopaths. Out of all of the psychos I found, one, I couldn’t find out how to get to (you’ll see), and another required said weapon combo of some kind that I didn’t figure out (I’m assuming. This guy wouldn’t die). Speaking of psychos, they were rather easy to kill. Just have health on you and take the heat as you melee up close. Make sure to use a weapon combo. Though, psychopath story lines were generally pretty lame, and I tended to just skip them to get to the fight.

Graphics are OK. The motion blur is gone, which I preferred. The textures also aren’t some of the hottest, but they sure did a great job with the ladies. Also, there were many times with frame-rate slow-down. I think it’s quite inexcusable that this occurs, especially coupled with the load times. It passes though. The story here is alright. Not as zany as a true Japanese-developed game would get, but still seems to be the type of game to introduce gameplay elements and try to explain within the plot down the road. No complaints. I got to ending ‘A’ on the first try. I think it was a good ending, and slightly emotional.

I think the game is certainly worth the asking price. There’s really a lot to do here and many things I have yet to do. It plays like the first game, just a lot easier. I not once had to restart the game. I played this three days in a row non-stop, addicted to what the game offers. I haven’t even touched the online mode to gain extra cash, or even co-op. I’m assuming co-op bumps this up quite a bit. I just hope the next game incorporates a unique setting, similar to Case Zero. The mall got old.

Load Loading 2: Loady Load Load 1

by Adam Blue • Impressions

I’m sure you know I’m talking about Dead Rising 2. If not, it has some serious load times. I hate load times to death, but DR2 has enough to make me speak up. I even installed the game to my harddrive in hopes of conquering these time wasting bastards. But, no.

Load times aside, DR2 is a lot of fun so far. There’s really nothing wrong with it, as it is exactly like the first game, what I consider a perfect game. But, I think the series could have used some things to set it apart. The 360 exclusive prequel, Case Zero, had a totally different setting which I enjoyed a bit more. DR2 is really just set in a mall like the first game. Yeah, it’s a bunch of malls with casinos…but it’s really just the same. The next Dead Rising game would do itself much good to be in a different setting. My idea would be a suburban area that goes as far as a school and grocery store. Being able to go into different houses would be great; finding survivors or various items (weapons) people would have.

One thing that has changed, which I don’t know if it’s good or bad, is the smarts of the survivors have greatly improved. It made the first game a lot more frustrating (to me, in a good way) but really gave it that survival horror feel. I guess you can say for the second game, it just made people as intelligent about surviving as they may be in real life. So, I’m cool with that aspect of making the game easier.

Anyway, this was meant as just impressions. I still have a little ways to go in my first play through, yet It has been pretty easy hitting all the missions. Maybe I’ll have a review up later.

My Good Bye to Modern Warfare 2 0

by Chad Blue • Editorial

Halo or Pave lows?
ACRs or DMRs?
Killstreaks or Killing sprees?
these choices are killing me!
sticky grenages and a symtex rage!!!
Oh today…oh today…
what do I want to play
Predator missles trump your swords and pistols
and a game of SWAT full of wannabe banged up cops
got nothing on the upcoming Black Ops
but my love for Reach just makes me speak
daily challenges to 30 matchmaking games a week
easy for me
but red and blue is all I want to see
so go file share like it’s child care
sign up at bungie
be a geek…..it’s funny
so now I lay Modern Warfare 2 to rest
for the next month or so
Halo Reach will get my love and respect

Enslaved Demo, Batman, Effing Halo 2

by Adam Blue • Editorial, Impressions

I tried out the Enslaved demo. This is the game made by Ninja Theory, the Heavenly Sword developers. While not a fan of story-driven gameplay, they do a good job of pulling me in while dishing out plenty of action. Now moving on to Enslaved, first thing I noticed is, yes, this is an UE3 game. No offense to teh engine, but 3rd-party developed UE3 games just don’t look that great. I still think Heavenly Sword looks better…especially the acting. Heavenly Sword was amazing in that way. I’ve never seen a game with such great in-game cut-scenes of voice overs and mo-cap. It’s certainly not here in Enslaved.

That doesn’t mean Enslaved is bad though. It’s actually a ton of fun. It’s like Uncharted meets God of War (wait…isn’t that Prince of Persia?). Tons of platforming, but when there’s action, it’s awesome brawling. The demo trailer even showed a bunch of neat abilities. I’m down. It was fun.

I also got a chance to play Batman: Brave and the Bold on Wii. This is a 2D side-scrolling brawler that plays out as an episode. It does a good job of laying down a story while allowing you to progress through the gameplay. There are many abilities, upgrades, and great animation. Problem is, the non-HD really holds back what could be amazing. I haven’t played too much of this though; it’s definitely a co-op game so I’ll wait for some friends.

Halo: Reach has continued to be fun for me. Though, I’m hit with the bug that fucks up mission selection. Every once in a while the missions I have completed will disappear. I’m going through the game on heroic now, so I hope my progress is still there when I get back. If not, I am seriously done with this game. Which may be a good thing anyway, as…

Dead Rising 2 tomorrow, and Castlevania next week. Oh-em-gee.

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Addendum – Halo: Reach 1

by Adam Blue • Editorial

I’ve had a lot more time with Halo: Reach. After clearing the campaign I continued to play online due to all of my friends doing it. I then found a neat little section in the menu. Challenges. Oh yes, now I’m being challenged. This has brought me back into Halo full-swing. I love having objectives, and these meta objectives only satisfy that requirement even more. But with the additional playing of Reach, I’ve come to embrace the mechanics in a way so that I now know how to play this Halo. Some powers normally not used, I’ve found a use for depending on game-type or enemy play-style.

Melee attacks now have less usability. Either health has to be down very low, or you’ll be trading a couple of blows with your nemesis. The 1-hit kill assassinations have a few seconds of animation, allowing an ally to save you. It’s easier to sticky someone; there looks to be a hitbox over the models that, if looked at closely, will show a plasma grenade home-in on a target if off by a little. That’s fine with me, as splash damage has seemed to take hit. You can get away with close-range rocket attacks, and typically survive a couple close-range grenade explosions.

The game has certainly changed from Halo 3. I played a ton of Halo 2, and very little Halo 3. But Reach has redeemed itself, and even included a nice voting system instead of vetoing. Though, I have a HUGE complaint.

Picking a Team Slayer playlist, games typically end up being SWAT or Snipers – even on large maps with 4-on-4. No. No, no, no, no. This ruins it for me. This game type has its place, but not in a Slayer playlist. It’s a totally different type of game and not what I wanted to do at the time. I would QUIT games out of spite when the game type showed up more than once. Fix it Bungie. Fucking make SWAT/Snipers its own game type.

Quitting. See, that’s a problem. People that want to play SWAT/Snipers are then angered at me. But during game types I enjoy, people quit ALL THE TIME. This proved the playlists need to be narrowed down a bit. And the penalty for quitting? After a couple quits, it’s like a 15min temp ban. Once they fix the playlists I suggest removal of credits and ban.

As much as I’m digging Reach, that may change with the release of games coming up. Dead Rising 2, I’m looking at you.

PS3 Finally Cracked– Time To Dust Off My Neglected Console 1

by Adam Blue • Editorial

If you have been following gaming at all in these past few months you more than likely have heard the great news. The PS3 has been cracked.

I was a bit hesitant to jump on the bandwagon at first since it will of course take away your ability to use PSN(jailbreak methods only work on Firmware 3.41), but since I only use my PS3 for single player games and the fact that the PSN store does not really have much to offer I decided to take the plunge. From my first experiences with my new and improved system along with the daily announcements of apps from the homebrew community I can safely say this was the best decision I could have made.

This is quite possibly the easiest mod I’ve ever attempted. You don’t need to open your console and void the warranty, procure some expensive chip, or even worry that you will brick your console. All you need is a programmable USB dongle(Teensy++/Blackcat USB/etc), one of the clones(PSBreak,PSKey..etc), or use one of the many devices that the hack has been ported to(Android/Iphone/TI-84+ calc/etc.) loaded with some special code. Once your device of choice is good to go you plug it in to your PS3 and bingo you have accomplished what until recently has been unfathomable. The selling point here is certainly the ease of use. Not only is getting the hack in place easy as pie, but installing new apps and homebrew creations couldn’t be simpler.

Some might think this is just something pirates will utilize and not waste their time, but give it a month or two and you will see just all the great things that are possible. Just like on the Wii and more recently on the 360(JTAG) the homebrew scene is in full force, making all sorts of applications to finally get the most out of your console.

Implemented features-
-Ability to run unsigned code
-Run back up games
-Small collection of homebrew apps avail so far… more to come

Things in the works-
- Reimplementing OtherOS functionality
-Loading PSP .iso’s on PS3
-Custom Firmware
-Emulators for your favorite systems
-A fully capable media player that would play .mkv’s/all other file formats without the need to transcode or use 3rd party software
-Homebrew games / apps

Dead Rising 2 Impressions 0

by Adam Blue • Impressions

I was very lucky to score myself a copy of this game a wee bit early. And already I have put a good deal of  time into it since I got my hands on it last weekend, I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed myself thus far.

This sequel doesn’t do much to set itself apart from the original, but the small changes do go a long way to spice up the game play. The greatest addition by far would be the combo weapons. While it was always good fun to pick up any old object and bash a few zombies with it is oh so more enjoyable to engineer yourself some weapons of mass zombie destruction. I’d say about 80% of objects in game can be combined in some way to produce some very nifty killing machines. From laser swords to oars mounted with chainsaws this game has a myriad of death dealing implements to discover.

Not surprisingly the game seems to play out in similar fashion to the original retaining the same mission structure and time limits. The time  limits have been a bit of a burden at a couple of sections in the game and can be kind of frustrating if you cannot find that next dose of Zombrex and you are out of cash.  Though I must say that the timed element of everything does help to ramp up the tension in the game and ensures that with a second or third play through you may get to experience or see something new as you will never be able to accomplish all missions with the time given. This is a big plus to me just as it was in the original, it really gives you a reason to dust off a title and give it another go.

The game looks surprising similar to the first incarnation, it seems that aside from the increased zombie population and some better lighting/effects the game remains mostly the same. Unfortunately these small additions are making my console chug and stutter like never before. I really hope this is not a new trend for the 360. It is sad to say that I have been finding slowdowns and fps drops to be almost commonplace in recent games (Halo Reach and .. Dead Rising 2). That in my opinion is really unacceptable, while the issue in Reach was a rare ordeal in DR2 this happens EVERYWHERE. I am really not sure what the deal is, but it seems that perhaps the devs have tapped out the ability of the 360 and are pushing the system a bit too hard. Whatever the reason it is clear that they need to fix this nonsense. No one wants to play games like that, it is just not fun and is actually quite frustrating. When the PC version comes out I will certainly be giving it a go there in hopes to avoid these game breaking fps issues..

I will hopefully be finishing this game up here very soon though time to play games these days is a bit limited, but I will get around to it eventually…

Quick break down:
+ Visceral action and very bloody(actually almost too much at times…wait did I just say that??)
+ Combo Weapons
+ Wide variety of twisted psychopaths to slaughter

- Combat is a bit clunky
- Constant FPS dips/slowdown
- Mission variety is lacking a bit – too many rescue missions hauling half brain dead AI back to the safe house(granted this time around they are not too dumb)

Kane & Lynch 2 Impressions 1

by Adam Blue • Impressions

I’m really only playing this to give impressions. The demo of the first didn’t do it for me, and there’s too much to play right now to devote time to Kane & Lynch. But there’s a reason I try out ever game possible, and K&L2 has one.

I’m only two levels in and enjoying it so far, but if I’m to take anything from this experience, it would be the presentation of the visuals. The game’s actual character models and textures seem to be of low quality – if you take the time to look. But, that’s all hidden away by an awesome hidden camera/camcorder look throughout. This look gives a slight grainy visual layering while there’s lens flare and light saturation abound. But, what really allows this look to achieve its amazing realism, is the constant high frame-rate. It’s gotta be 60 frames+ the entire time. It really makes the game seem like it’s being filmed by a tourist behind your back. I love this look and would like to see it more.

As for gameplay, so far it’s crazy. It’s just a ton of shooting, taking cover…and dying. I’m playing on the medium difficulty setting, and I’m dying quite a bit. Maybe I just have to get used to the style of play. It seems you need to spray-and-pray while constantly picking up new weapons around you. I don’t think my default tactical approach can work here; enemies will still come barreling at me as I put shots into their knees and chest. Again, you just pull that R trigger non-stop and hope you don’t get hit by them.

I think this is a co-op game anyway, and I might just wait and play it with someone as the entire time I’m feeling like a need to vocally express my fun with someone else that is experiencing the same thing. I’m going to hold off a bit though and finish up some other games I’ve already started, but so far, Kane & Lynch 2 is doing it for me.

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