I'M A GAMER: 2011

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Why I like Spider-Man 3 more than Arkham Asylum

I keep seeing all this ranting about Spider-Man 3 the game and describing it as a bad thing for gamers and Spider-Man/superheroes/comic book fans. Two years after the release of it came Batman Arkham Asylum with all the praising it received as the best comic book game ever, and that was before the release of Arkham City

Before playing Spider-Man 3 myself, I expected to find crap, after I played it I really enjoyed it, and saw plenty of things I wished to have in a Spidey game there, was surprised to find it my favorite Spider-Man game, but thought the quick time events pure useless nuisance.

After playing more video games with QTE's I actually admired Spider-Man 3 even more, cause QTE's in this game are actually basic and straightforward, you don't get a request of pressing punch to shoot a web like other games do, instead you are requested to press web attack to strike with your web, simple.

I tried to relate to complaints I kept viewing of the game, so I played it more, instead I found the grand majority of complaints are over the top and retarded, keyword most, stating there are some decent criticizing points, or complaints, and saying it's a dumbed down Spider-Man 2, or saying it's Spider-Man 2 with different coat of painting is just wrong, the game is far from that

Before playing Arkham Asylum I looked forward to this game to a great deal, I was kinda let down when I played it, the game is great, but it's not the "AWESOME GAME OTHER COMIC GAMES NEED TO BE INSPIRED BY". Atmosphere fits the game, story is great, combat and gadgets are a blast, but beyond the combat, gadgets and handling titans this game and X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged are pretty much the same

But so I won't get too far, here is a list of reasons why I think Spider-Man 3 is better than Arkham Asylum as a game, and I speak more in observation and testing rather than plain opinion, but I won't deny my opinion influencing the entry

1. Mobility: It's better in SM3, plain and simple, it allows one to cover more distance with more speed, and even with quite a sluggish swinging (the lowest swinging in free roam games), it's more fun than just running. And wall crawling is even an extra plus

2. Combat: Both are button mashers, if you want to call them that way, SM3 combat system is Square & triangle for two kinds of attacks, the more upgrades you get the better, and it gets easier and faster in fighting gangs, there is also the use of webbing to grab and jump for other moves in combat, like jumping on thugs you grab, hit and throw. Different combinations make different moves, and that is not a plain button masher everyone keep saying it is.

Batman plays with one attack button most of the time, rotate stick to follow enemy with your attack, and the counter attacks and stun attack buttons for times of need making various moves.

If you try to convince me the first is plain button masher and the other is strategic, read this note please: "The beauty in Spider-Man 3 combat system is the player building personal strategies as needed against character to be handled, it's you who build the strategies, you need to understand how to build them, when and where. In Batman combat strategies are given as instructions for you to follow, that doesn't feel like strategies to praise"

This is what I found, and this is how it is

3. Handling thugs: You know the stealth methods and the head on combat in Arkham Asylum, simple and straightforward given to you in the face, and combat is all grounded. In Spider-Man 3 there are more ways to handle thugs, not just hanging them on poles or hitting them on ground, thugs you can't pull on ground are easy to pull while sticking to walls, and you can defeat some without touching them by fists or feet

4. Boss fights: Only good boss fights in Arkham Asylum are Scarecrow confrontations (no fight) and Croc chase while getting the ingredient for an antidote (not a fight either), they are good and fun. Rest of the boss fights have the needless amount of toy soldiers for you to bash constantly, what a pain. In SM3 they took a good take on boss fights, only time where there are others to fight along the boss is in Kraven's second fight, when he's invisible and you could find him using one of the lizard men for widow-maker, only 3 lizard men at a time, not annoying 10++ at once. You can defeat all bosses by just beating them up, or you could build up strategies to help you defeat them, it doesn't simply stick you to one move you have to do repeatedly or as the game says now (excluding tossing mega lizard at generators)

5. Variety of things to do: BAA is repeated, same pattern over and over again, with a few things here and there. SM3 displays extra things to do, it is made to be more than beat 'em up, and it was done nicely in that way

Now that I'm done with that, I'll say what BAA did better: Game is more polished and well ironed of faults, that's really it, if you want something else you can go with the story, nothing further. Don't go with graphics cause there is a huge difference in scale of locations, and the time each one of them was released

Sunday, 21 August 2011

ALL MY FAVORITE FIGHTING GAMES pt.2

A Mortal Kombat Fest, almost
The first Mortal Kombat was a huge success that spawned many follow ups, getting back to the classic titles today the first MK feels redundant and mediocre, if I start the list of video game franchises where you should start from the second installment be sure MK would be one of them

Mortal Kombat II was such a huge success, it's one of the most legendary games, and one of the top fighting games to ever hit gamers everywhere, it's so awesome you can almost find it available for every gaming system from the NES to the PS3. Motion and action became smoother, combat is fun, characters are great, finishing moves updated so each character would have 2 fatalities instead of 1, a friendship, and it introduced the concept of bablity. Photos got cleaner, details given more attention to, it was such a pure win, plus this poster is a real ASS-KICKING AWESOMENESS

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, I skip the regular 3 cause I love masked characters, especially Scorpion & Sub-Zero, the first version had no Scorpion and Sub-Zero wore no mask, kind of sad. Home consoles version of UMK3 introduced us to other ninjas like Rain & Noob Saibot as playable characters

Best version of MK3, end of story

As an MK fighting game this one is easily the best installment, storywise it's so-so

Guilty Gear XX/X2 reload is how I got introduced to Guilty gear series and loved it, never liked the sound of the electric guitar before listening to GGX2 reload tunes, and got so impressed. Combat is great, best side scrolling anime like fighting game that is not Street Fighter or King of Fighters

ALL MY FAVORITE FIGHTING GAMES pt.1: CAPCOM

I'll set this now, my favorites, ones I played and love the most, not placing as best or whatever, when I do my favorite sidescrollers fighting games won't be included, so let's start

P.S: For the sake of keeping posts readable, I'll post 6 games at a time, there are many great and highly memorable fighting games, this section is for the Capcom ones only, and the only Capcom fighting games there

Street Fighter Collection 2: Compiling all versions of Street Fighter before turning the series SUPER mode. 3 versions of one game released in 1992, they were ahead of their time for having smooth animation, great tracks and sound effects, not only is it memorable, it's fantastic, I still have a great deal of fun playing all of these three games

Super Street Fighter 2: The game got two improved releases with 4 extra characters in 1994, character designs changed a bit, tracks changed mildly and became continuous through both rounds 1 & 2, bonus levels remained, combo and first attack became important. SSF2 Turbo edition had the special of adding special attacks to the characters. KICK-ASS even to this day

Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3: I always looked at Alpha as a reboot, can't look at it differently now, Street Fighter Alpha/Zero one seemed to retell the tale of Street Fighter 1 by making Sagat the Final boss for Ryu at least. Continuing with this reboot lead to this awesome achievement. Story mode for each character is a pit cause switching characters make you restart the ladder, but I managed to get over this

Marvel vs Street Fighter, I don't give it the title it was labeled with cause you can select a few of Marvel's supervillains, they aren't heroes, why say it as if only heroes from Marvel fight Street Fighter characters? Doesn't make much of a sense

What X-Men vs Street Fighter started continued, a track for each character with different backgrounds not a background exclusive to the character, this time having more Capcom characters than from Street Fighter franchise, it's a great win

Great sequel, loved the insertion of three players tag-team and inserting Jill Valentine as a fighter, also Iceman was upgraded from mere sidekick to a fighter, it's great

Haven't played the third installment of MVC, Street Fighter 4, or Super Street Fighter 4, I cannot judge any of those, so none of them is in part 2, or any later part of my top fighting games of all time

Friday, 12 August 2011

BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM, THOUGHTS

This image looks like it has Batman sulking

Since this October we will be treated by a sequel apparently superior to this one, I figured it's time I state what I think about this game, give my general thoughts

Story:

Batman caught Joker, took him to Arkham island (as always) to see him escape capture (as always). This time Joker's capture and transfer to Arkham was uncomfortably too easy for Batman, so he decided to tag along with the guards to check Joker being placed in his cell, the bastard escapes, kidnaps Drs & gurards, kills guards, and unleashes terrors

Story does characters justice, it got the mythos properly, progressed finely, nice little changes for the game, a game I admire when it comes to storytelling, not as admirable as Resident Evil or Metal Gear, still admirable

Collecting tapes of patients interviews adds to the story some details not found in normal gameplay, so respect and collect them

One cliched line and reply are there, they irked me ever since I first heard them, they still do, it's the only flaw in this game story

Batman: It's over

Joker: It hasn't even begun

For that annoyance I give the story 9.9/10

Graphics:

Nice good looking graphics, clean, based on art of Alex Ross made it look highly admirable

Lips animation feels a little animatronic like, not as human as it should feel, so that is a minus

9.5/10

Miscellaneous: 9.9/10

Soundtracks: 10/10

Camera: It has some issues every 3rd person game suffers from, get your back to a wall and your character is hidden, not something to go all "DAMMIT" about. 9.8/10

Gameplay:This is the big one, I give 70% on game reviewing based on gameplay. How the game goes:

Combat: Smooth and fine, it's a button masher where you depend mostly on pressing one attack button, often you need to counter, there are times when you need to use stun attacks. Playing on Normal Mode after finishing the game on easy mode felt like Normal has a more aggressive fighter in Batman. Combat is fun, not the best combat system, but it's great, and lots of fun

Stealth takeouts: You will need to do that a lot to avoid bullets, Batman depends a lot on stealth in combat. After you get the "Hang from Gargoyle and pull henchman" upgrade stealth takeouts get more fun

As you progress in the game, more gadgets are collected to get use of, some of them are fun to use on henchmen and have a blast with, I love using the bat-claw to pull them
Shedding light on everything that is good about this game would make this post too long and unreadable, so I'll stop here
68/70

Total Score: 97.3/100

Saturday, 30 July 2011

SPIDER-MAN SHATTERED DIMENSIONS, THOUGHTS

As a Spider-Man mega nerd -and my full geekiness didn't see the light before I play Spider-Man 3 console games and enjoy them, followed by seeing the source movie an underrated fun movie instead of viewing it as a terrible one like I used to- I started to look forward to every Spider-Man video game I could lay my eyes on, I was even searching for them vigorously and playing them. Then I played Web of Shadows myself and got greatly disappointed, it made me think more carefully about getting another Spider-Man game, so thinking with my mind instead of my deep attachment to my main nerdiness

I played this game, finished it twice, thought it was better than Web of Shadows back then, was defending it and strongly advised people who ask which of these two games to choose to pick Shattered Dimensions, at least it shows respect to characters more than Web of Shadows did, used to despise that one a lot, only recently I feel the older one is decent, and great

compared to the newer one

STORY:

It opens in a museum in the world of Amazing Spider-Man (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, MTV Spider-Man), Stan Lee narrates, and the lines they give the Big Man are too cheesy, he sounds cheesy saying them, so cheesy I hope I don't listen to him narrates the upcoming game (Edge of Time), not at all, nil line

Going back to the main feature, Mysterio grabs a precious artifact known as the tablet of Order

and Chaos (why make a tablet like that?), Spider-Man somehow knows something is wrong at the museum that night, nothing is explained of his reasons or knowledge, kicks Mysterio down, and grabs the tablet pulling it away with his webbing, but instead of it going to his hands it falls down on the floor and Spider-Man

bounces about the museum dodging Mysterio's shots. The way Spider-Man kicked fish bowl for a head this should have been the result

Writers keep writing Mysterio too stupid to put unbreakable fish-bowl, and he spent so much money before, and behaved with great deal of intelligent, but this never happens because?

So Spider-Man web zips himself and punches the tablet Mysterio grabbed to sell in the black market, and the artifact turns to fractures flying out of the museum to unknown areas through the walls, one shard remains with Mysterio and he escapes, then Madame Webb from the 90s cartoon show up (cause she posses the power cosmic, not simply a blind old psychic woman like her -deceased- comics version)

Silver Surfer is so proud of you (his eyes look like the Human Fly eyes, why?)

Cosmic powered old hag explains the tablet Spider-Man just broke controls order and chaos, now that it's broken fragments of it traveled to other three alternate dimensions (between the lines: Don't you worry, you are important as a playable character in this game, hence some fragments for you to collect in this world), and they are to aid him in his quest

Each of the four Spider-Men collects a fragment in his world before it's discovered by the unknown evil one and used for the unbelievable evil shenanigans they can do with it. All Spider-Men place the fragments they collected in the cosmic web of dimensional rip caused by the fracture of the tablet, then we move to Mysterio who just discovered the powers of his fragment, and wants the rest of the fragments to rule the world

-What is with these stories? Why such a powerful tablet stored in a museum of normal security with all the powers it contains? Why the heck did the main super-villain want to sell it in the black market not knowing what this is exactly? Heck (as cliched as this word is) why was such a piece even made? A tablet carrying a formula that gives one youth is acceptable, a tablet with a formula of poison killing specific DNA carriers is acceptable, but this?-

Well, I guess they needed the story to happen, something had to make reason for it to happen, like the main hero acting like a stupid clown instead of completing his job right

Every universe has 3 villains who obtain the fragment the next day directly, carries it, fights the hero, throws Spider-Man to a wild goose chase, fights him again, and it happens in 12 stages, the same pattern for 12 stages with minor differences from one to another. Kraven is the dumbest chapter, how did he know about the fragment to buy it online and place it with a 100 booby traps to lure Spider-Man and catch him? How was it sold online with full description?

Story is too stupid, the writer who had credit for making it is current writer of Amazing Spider-Man: Dan Slott, he's a capable writer, knows how to handle events and stuff in comics, I've been told by some the story had interference, so here's me hoping the new game had no interference and Peter David managed to pull the whole thing on his own and executed a well made story, which is tbh flawed from what I gathered about it so far.

Seeing how dumb the story is I don't wish this was an animated movie instead, unless it was well written and worked finely. One good thing about this game is how well it was received, it expanded the trey of Spidey-Fans a little, I appreciate that from Beenox, but hope for an actual good game to absorb extra fans

GAMEPLAY:

Stage 1 introduces gamers to how each character is played with and controlled, but only Spider-Man 2099 has combat introduction

12 stages between the first and the last with the basic following pattern: Fight boss, chase boss and fight chronies, save people and let them do you a favor, save people while they do favor for you, go fight boss again and pick the fragment. Some levels are free from humans to save, it's nice, but in the levels with people to save: WHY DO THE ONES WHO JUST PRESS A DAMN SWITCH TAKE TOO LONG TO OPEN THE DOOR?

What distincts Spider-Man 2099 from the rest in gameplay is the freefall, and the Noir guy is distinguished by stealth

Final stage: Use each Spider-Man to kick the hides of a large sum of bad seeds, fight mysterio, fight chronies, fight mysterio. Noir is the best one cause he rips the fight against Scarecrow from Arkahm Asylum, go stealthy all the way to do this one important attack only. Though this one there are absolutely nothing to fight before Mysterio, the road to reach him is tedious and too long, you'll have to shut Spider-Man up cause he keeps repeating the same two lines over and over again.

AUDIO:

Great use of VA's from Spider-Man cartoons only, and the voice director from the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series to assure great quality voice acting

Music is nothing memorable, but nice

Great quips

best thing about this game

GRAPHICS:

They are all the same, things vary in coloring system only

ASM: Comic-esque with too bright coloring

USM: Comic-esque as well, but this one has coloring a bit more realistic

SMN: Almost black 'n white, right coloring for the mood

2099: Too much like tron, bright neon lights on dark backgrounds, looks the most realistic, but I don't like Tron brightness

So:

Story 5/10

game Play 3/10

Audio 8/10

Graphics 7/10

Average 5.6/10

Game is overrated, all flash and no subtle. Batman Arkham Asylum is popular cause it deserves the success it got, that one is a well crafted game, sure is repetitive like every other game is, but it holds some values to play and replay, no missions where you have to do the same thing 2-3 times to finish one stage in half an hour all combat, and 12 stages with the main pattern