Too Human and Dead Space Review

As of late I haven't had too much time to play the games I've borrowed, so unfortunately these are incomplete reviews.

Too Human is an interesting game built on a good system of game play but it has some clear and crippling flaws. Right off the bat, the plot was entertaining, but there didn't seem to be enough background to know what the main issues are. You are some kind of god character and you are fighting a bunch of robots maybe? I didn't get far enough in to learn more and the new plot elements of the fates was just annoying rather than more interesting.

There are a lot of options for RPG like development for your character. You upgrade weapons, armor and different skills in a tree similar to Diablo. You also choose a character class much like Diablo or Mass Effect. The combat was pretty straight forward as your character would jump from bad guy to bad guy, slaughtering whatever current one you are facing.

The biggest issue I ran into was that some bad guys actually seemed to require a strategy, which was hard to do after being so use to just random button pressing. When you die, you will regenerate at the beginning of the section you were just at after a long unskippable cut scene. This seems completely pointless since you lose your experience but all the bad guys stay dead and you just end up running right back to where you were.

I ended up playing the game for about an hour, got sick of it and had no motivation to play it anymore before I had to return it.


Dead space is awesome. I only played it for about an hour and barely got into the meat of the game, but I can tell you that it is fantastic. The environment the game creates for you will creep you out. After the opening I was sitting, muscles clenched, freaked out at every turn. There is just this overwhelming sense of inability to know what is coming next.

If you are into being scared and that thrill of adventure and danger, then you won't be able to put this game down.

Viva Pinata

This week I'm borrowing Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360.

There is a very Zen beauty to this game. Not only is the attitude of the game colorful and fun, but the simple, repetitive actions are very soothing. If you don't know much about the game, it reminds me of Harvest Moon since you are essentially creating a garden and "raising" animals.

There are numerous elements to the game. First is just general land management, breaking up dry soil, planting grass, growing trees, creating a pond, putting up fence. There are plenty of options for creating a certain look and feel to your garden area that will make it aesthetically pleasing to your tastes. Some of the pinatas are attracted to certain elements, so by creating a mix of all the options available you will slowly pull together a large ecosystem of creatures.

The second element are the pinatas themselves. They are essentially animals, just in pinata form which makes the food chain more child friendly. They visit and then will reside in your garden if you meet certain requirements. Then you can find ways to "get them in the mood" and they will breed and an egg will be delivered that will hatch a new pinata of that type. There are some mini games associated with this, one that is like operation in that you have to guide one pinata to the other without hitting any of the bad guys that line the perimeter.

Third are the towns people. They offer advice and services that will benefit you as you create your garden. One runs a general shop, one will build homes for your pinatas, one will find pinatas in the wild for you, another hosts an Inn where you can hire laborers. There are more that provide a variety of other services as you continue to progress.

The game is more addictive than you'd think and I found myself saying, "I'll just do this one more thing before I stop playing..." over and over again. It appeals to the perfectionist inside of us who always sees more potential and another thing to do, giving us a garden filled with opportunity to craft and create to our own liking.

If you're looking for something playful and fun to kill some time, this is the game for you.

Lego Batman Review

Again, one of the best perks, if not the best, of working at GameStop is that I get to take home games and try them out for free. With this privilege, I feel like it is my responsibility to also share my thoughts on the games with the world. So here goes.

Over the weekend, I borrowed the new Lego title, Lego Batman. If you've played the other Lego games (Indiana Jones and Star Wars) you know what to expect with these titles. I had not played them, so while I had some clue as to how playing with Legos was going to work, this was still new for me.

The game is broken down into 6 main Chapters. The first three have five parts each and you play through them as Batman and Robin. The second three are the flipped side where you play as the villains. Over the weekend I only finished the first three Chapters as Batman and Robin and then played one of the villain missions where you are the Riddler and Clayface. I imagine with the other missions you will rotate through the different villains as well, but didn't have the time to get through all of them.

Some of the main game dynamics are general fighting, item collection, collection of Lego "stubs" (which is basically the currency for the game) and destroying objects in order to open up Lego pieces that are then built into objects that allow you to advance or operate some new device. Along with just your normal operations, you can also change suits which gives you a new ability such as being able to glide or dive underwater. Each Chapter also has a mission where you use a vehicle, such as the Batmobile or the Batplane.

This game is not designed to be some epic revolution of game play. You're basically playing around with Legos, in Lego environments with a lot of smash and grab repetition. There is some humor and clever little environment combinations thrown into the mix to keep things fresh, but the bottom line is that there is just a lot of stuff to collect and it's going to take a while to do it. You'll have fun doing it for as long as you can keep interest, but inevitably the repetition will add up.

A few side features exist that reward you for your efforts. You can purchase information about the Batman franchise, you can buy access to new characters, you can do a mix and match to determine what you want your super hero to look like, you can wander around the "trophy room" to see what you've collected, and there seems to be some mini games scattered throughout like collecting money lying around Wayne Manor.

There weren't any real flaws with the game that I could think of as long as you understand what you are getting into. I ran into some confusion early on because it didn't do a very good job of explaining the controls to me as well as what options I had available in order to know what I could and could not do at the current time. Some of the stuff you have to come back to in the "Free Play" mode of the levels in order to collect (at least that's my assumption since I couldn't find any other way of doing it), so not knowing that produced some frustration in the beginning as I looked around trying to figure out what I was missing.

Overall, I played it more during the weekend than I thought I was going to because it was fun. There wasn't a lot of thought involved, and I imagine if you've got a buddy and want to play co-op, it can be a lot of fun to tag team the bosses and just go through the levels smashing stuff. The bottom line is that you're playing with Legos, so if you're cool with that, you'll enjoy the game.

Stars Wars: The Force Unleashed

One of the perks of working at GameStop is that you get to borrow games from the store for four days at a time. Apparently, it's so that we can do 'research' and be up-to-date with new titles and experienced with games that we are selling at the store.

In keeping with this, I've been borrowing a game each week. The first week I borrowed "Infinite Undiscovery" for the Xbox 360. I ended up playing it for 30 minutes, not really liking the controls and then not playing it the rest of the four days. I hear the plot picks up about four hours into the game and I imagine you get use to the controls but I didn't enjoy it and it doesn't get my recommendation.

Second, I borrowed "Mercenaries 2: World in Flames" for the Xbox 360. It seems to be very similar to Grand Theft Auto, except with the addition of being able to destroy different parts of the environment. I played this for a couple of hours, got bored and sick of completing the little objectives and that was it. Fun, but not a must play.

Finally, over this last weekend, I borrowed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Xbox 360. I feel obliged to review my thoughts on this game.

First of all, a disclaimer. I only played the 360 version of the game and I played through on the easiest difficulty, one because I had four days to beat it, and two because I'm lazy and wasn't looking to play something challenging.

The concept behind the game is that you are playing as Darth Vader's secret apprentice between the time frame of the third movie and the fourth movie. He sends you out to hunt down various Jedi and then through some plot twists you end up gathering together the Empire's enemies in order to start the rebellion.

This is a very linear, action game with some platforming elements tied into the game play as well as "button time sequences" when fighting against bosses or various larger enemies. As you progress you get "level ups" in a sense that allow you to unlock new combos, force powers (strengthen really since advancing the game unlocks the new powers), and status increases that enhance various categories. Also, there is a collection element to the game in the form of different power ups that will either give you force points, some item like a light saber crystal or a cloak, or a rank up point that can contribute to upgrading one of the three different elements I mentioned earlier.

What I enjoyed about the game was mainly the Force Lightning. Being able to shoot lightening out of yourself and fry everyone around you is one of the most enjoyable things a person can do. It's small and simple, but frankly, it made this whole game for me. There are lots of force powers available, like the force push, being able to pick up things and people and throw them around, a force lightning shield and this force shockwave, but the lightning was the main power I used because it is so effective. As you go through and gain access to all these abilities, I imagine you'll end up like me, forgetting about all but one or two of them for long stretches and sticking mainly with whatever is your favorite.

The only major gripe I had with the game was the platforming elements. They give you free control of the camera, so you can rotate it around, but it doesn't make it any easier to determine exactly where you are going to land. By "using the force" you have the ability to double jump, but it isn't always clear what is a platform you can land on and what is part of the background. I wish you could use your force grip ability to levitate or lift yourself onto higher platforms, but sadly this is not an option.

Overall, I enjoyed playing through the game. I don't think I'd buy the game, but it's worth a rental if you have 10 hours to kill and you're looking for something fun to do with the time.

Slack Effect ( Mass Effect Review )

So I beat Mass Effect on Wednesday. And then I beat it again on Thursday. There are two ending choices in the last 5 minutes of the game, so I figured I'd try them both out.

I imagine that's one of the main reasons I've been slacking recently. It's a very entertaining and engrossing game, so it seems to suck in your attention and hold it until you've completed it. I figure, since I spent so much time playing it, I might as well write out a review of my opinion of it.

I started out very slow. I think after Halo 3 and some other first person shooter games, the direction each stick moves you in seemed awkward or wrong from what I was familiar with. Once I got through that and started to be familiar with what each button does in each situation, things got a lot better and my progress really picked up.

Even before any of that though, is the fun of the character creation menu. There are some restraints, like hair type, so you can't necessarily get a perfect representation of you. Also, when you are trying to determine if you have the cheek bones correct you have to move the view from side to side so that you can see how you look from those in between angles, and that can be somewhat of a hassle. Another problem is that if you go by just the head alone, nothing is going to seem correct. You have to either upscale or downscale the ratio of the size of your features to match the body below, or everything will just look off. In the end, I actually ended up making the character look more like a likeness of my brother instead of me. Turns out that was a good move because I don't think it would have been good to watch myself (or a very close look alike) do some of the things I did in the game. Which takes me to the fun part.

The game gives you an enormous amount of choice options. I had decided to be evil on my first play through. There is a difference between evil and jerk though. Jerk usually just means not doing a side quest or just giving some curt answer that makes you sound like a rogue. The only real evil choices are when you use intimidation to get what you want versus the standard option or the charm option. That was a little disappointing.

The only other evil situations are when you choose to kill someone instead of letting them go. The first time I did this was by accident. I thought I was going to tell the guy that he had to stick around and help me. What the option, "I can't let you go" really meant was that the guy would be on the floor in a bloody heap in about 3 seconds. In the long run it was no big loss.

The variety of choices leaves you thinking that you missed something every so often, esp in high pressure situations where you are just taking your best guess. While I didn't do each of these situations more than once, there are enough non-high pressure situations where you can repeat the dialog that it makes me think that either choice will pretty much end at the same or very similar conclusions. So just have fun with it and don't worry about your selections too much.

The game offers the whole galaxy to explore. Usually this boils down to going to a star cluster and then selecting one of the available solar systems. Then you survey the available planets, check for lose asteroids and survey them and then land on the one planet available to land on and explore it. The exploration is done in a warthog like machine, also similar to an all terrain tank, called a Mako in the game. The Mako gets old after a while, esp when you're going up mountain after mountain to survey some mineral just like you did on the previous planet. I discovered way too late how valuable the map was in these planet exploration pieces, so don't make the same mistake. It would have been much more helpful if they had added rockets to the back of the Mako to make it move faster, rather than the rockets that propel it off the ground. Regardless, it gets the job done and there aren't so many situations that it just gets tedious to do these parts. Each time you're doing a side quest, the purpose of the mission is at least entertaining enough to make it worthwhile.

The powers and equipment for the game took a little while to get the hang of, but worked well enough. Some of the powers I found to be pretty useless since usually the fighting segments broke down into a similar pattern. I usually used the barrier power and then went at the bad guys guns blazing, using the shield boost when I took too much damage, marksman to prevent my gun from overheating and adrenaline boost to make sure I could repeat the cycle if I needed to. That was pretty much all I ever needed with some med gel used in emergency situations. The warp and throw powers were pretty annoying to deal with when the enemy uses them on you, but I didn't care enough to make them useful for me. I did enjoy that there was no magic meter or limit on how many times you use your powers. There is a cool down period you have to wait out, but again, the adrenaline boost power usually takes care of that.

The final thing to note was the "romantic interest" side quest. I was going to pursue the blue girl (asari) at first, but once she said that there idea of reproduction was some kind of mind meld thing, I was turned off. In the end I just went after the human girl. She wasn't very exciting and seems to be a bigot in this new alien populated universe, but I was patient and fed here what she wanted to hear. I feel like I should have gotten evil points for saying some of the crap I did since it was so obviously just to get her to sleep with me. In the end, my charming wit won out. The game gives you more of a reward than I was expecting, but this is obviously just a game, so don't expect too much.

Overall, it was a great game and definitely worth playing. I'll probably give it a rest and watch some siblings play through it, but there are enough options for you to want to play through it multiple times. Like any video game, there are some tedious parts that seems to repeat over and over, but they usually only deal with side quests, so you're free to skip them or stop them when you grow tired of it. Definitely worth at least a rental, if not a buy.