Reviews Thread - Page 3

BabeSlayer · 09-05-2007, 03:15 PM

Table Tennis Review by Volsky

Quote:

My second attempt at a review:

Rockstar Table Tennis

I would have never thought that I would actually get this game, but after seeing it cheap, second hand, I found the sudden urge to pick it up and buy it. I start off by saying that it is not worth the full retail price, but if you do find it cheaper, I would recommend adding this title to your collection.

This game is as simple as any game could get, you might think bouncing a ball from one side of the table to the other rather tedious and boring but that is were you are wrong. There is something in this game that attracts you to keep playing it, it’s not the graphics but it is its simplicity. You choose your character, maybe change his/her clothes, then you select a tournament difficulty and then that’s it! The tournament begins and you are straight into the game. The controls in this game are not challenging and they are rather straight forwards, and for those who are having trouble, there is a quick and fun tutorial for you to run through.

Unlocking clothes, characters and levels are easy enough. You can either play a certain amount of games with a chosen character or pull off winning tricks, it’s your choice. The levels themselves, along with the characters, are beautifully crafted although the spectators do at times seem like cardboard cut outs rather than actual humans. This game does also lack game types, you can only choose to play a tournament or an exhibition game, which is basically a one on one game with your preferred settings.

The online is enjoyable but at times it can be laggy and I must also warn you now, there is not a large online community for you to play with. But putting that to one side you can still have some fun playing with random people or your friends in either player matches or ranked matches.
Again I am afraid to say this game is not one for you to pick and blast through and unlock all the achievements, it takes time.

Pros: Graphics are impressive, a simplistic game, an enjoyable play through.

Cons: All Star tournament is extremely hard, online is laggy, not enough depth.

Ratings:

Graphics: 8/10 I was thoroughly impressed with the graphics in this game.

Gameplay: 5/10 It is enjoyable but at times it can seem extremely hard and frustrating.

Sound: 4/10 The commentator is dull and the crowds lack enthusiasm, although they have captured the ball noises rather well.

Replay: 4/10 It can be fun the second time through but there is not enough depth to keep you clinging onto it.

OVERALL (not an average) 5/10 This game can become addictive to some, but to others it will take time and patients.

BabeSlayer · 09-05-2007, 03:17 PM

Dead Rising Review by LogicalEye

Quote:

First Review by LogicalEye
Dead Rising

What is it?
This game is where you are a photo journalist and you are in a helicopter that got dropped off at a mall in a town that was blockaded. Soon the Journalist was to find out that there were zombies everywhere in the vacinity of the building and town.

In the game you can, get any type of weapon you please, and dress any way you please. The game goes on for 3 (GAME) days. But depending on what ending you get you will have more to do.

Most people who have played this game think that it is just a run around slash and hack type of game but it really isn't. It has a story line which most tend to forget. Get a bunch of different endings, and can go on for more days.

Pros
Ok so in this game, you can pick up anything you want in the mall well almost anything there’s plenty of stores to go to and wear anything you want. Dead Rising is one of the better games with true replay value. You always level up to gain something, wether it be stock, life, and or skills to use.

The story line of the game is a typical zombie story line, but Capcom does something to the game to make it more interesting, something that you guys should play to find out.
During the game you will find out, there are little bosses here and there. They are called Psychopaths, they are special ways to kill them and they have some cool movie clips before and after the killing of the psychopaths.

Achievements in Dead Rising is are my personal favorite, it makes the game more fun. What more fun dressing up zombies to get an achievement? Or jumping of a sky scraper, most of the achievements you get you will unlock some sort of good. Like if you kill 53,000 some odd zombie and get the achievement, you will get the original Mega-Man buster, it is definitely something to look at in the game while you are playing.

Something to look-forward to in the game is after you defeat 72-hour mode (and do everything completely correct and get true ending A) you still need to go on to something else OVERTIME MODE, where the swat team has taken over the whole mall trying to kill everything. It adds a little taste to the ending.

CONS

First and fore-most the save system is horrid to some people, but I just look at it Capcom made it this way because if some one could save anywhere and some one saved the game when there time was about to run out during a mission the game wouldn’t give you the same ending. So that’s something to look at (also cant forget you can save in bathrooms which are located all over the mall)

Another bad thing about this game, THE AI system for the victims you have to save. I absolutely hated it, but as I got to play the game I learned some techniques around it, You can aim your victim to go where ever you want and you can give them a weapon. So for the most part they should be ok, unless they get swarmed with zombies and they don’t accept weapons…

Otis constant calling during the game to save people, at first it is very annoying but it is nothing important to save people, you can to get some PP but… nothing to get all crazy about. Make sure you answer his phone calls to get the Psychopath missions they aren’t mandatory but I do think everyone should experience all the psychopaths in the game.

Last but not least, the text problems for the non-HDTV’ers. The text is to small for HDTV, Capcom has said that the game was made for HDTV, and they will not release a fix for the text, but a little light at the end of the tunnel for SDTV owners. All you have to do is hook it up to 480P and then make sure the XBOX360 is on widescreen and your problem should be fixed, I know my TV / TEXT problem was fixed on my SDTV.

GRADES:
Graphics – The faces are some of the most detailed faces I have ever seen 9
Sound – Nothing to special 7
Gameplay – 9
Overall (not averaging it in) 8.8

BabeSlayer · 09-05-2007, 03:19 PM

Guitar Hero 2 Review by Masta Shake

Quote:

GUITAR HERO II
by Masta Shake. (Let me know what you think.)

Q: Who wants to be a rock star?
A: Everybody!

Enter, Guitar Hero II, for Xbox 360. The new music game complete with guitar shaped controller from Red Octane puts players center stage in their very own rock band.

With obvious similarities to other music games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Frequency, Guitar Hero takes the concept of matching button presses to colours to a wole new level

First off is the new controller. Shaped like a Gibson X-Plorer, the controller feels just like a real guitar, albeit a bit smaller and lighter. Players must sync the coloured buttons on the neck of the guitar to the notes on screen, at the same time as strumming, an action replicated by the novel strum bar. Four different levels of difficulty allow the player to customize the game to their own playing level, from easy (only 3 buttons and no chords) to expert (all five buttons and three button chords.)

Musically, there is something for everyone. The soundtrack is largely classics (Alice Cooper, and Black Sabbath), but with a fair mix of newer songs (think Foo Fighters, and Wolfmother) Red Octane has said that the songs were picked based on their playability, and levels of fun. This means that every song has great riffs and fun guitar solos.

While the game has no Live capabilities at this time, except downloaded content and leaderboards, GHII makes up for this with it’s amazing co-op play. Simply plug in a second guitar to go head-to-head with a friend in competition for points, or play co-operatively, with one friend playing lead and the other playing rhythm or bass in an effort to maximize points.

While playing gigs, the player earns money as well, allowing you to buy new characters, new guitars and even new songs. On top of the 64 songs available in the original set list, players can buy an additional 24 songs to play for fun, points, and achievements.

Speaking of achievements, GHII does not pull any punches. There are the obvious easy achievements (beat a song on easy, fail a song on easy, etc…) to incredibly hard songs (Champagne Room VIP = get 500,000 points in a song) and even achievements that can only be had by playing in two player co-op.

Guitar Hero II has something for everyone, and short of buying a Wii is probably the most fun party game to be released on any next-gen console.

BabeSlayer · 09-06-2007, 02:52 PM

By BabeSlayer

Stranglehold Review by BabeSlayer

If anyone knows anything about John Woo than you pretty much knew what to expect from a John Woo video game, I mean this is the guy that made that awful movie mission impossible 2, and other such unbelievable poor acted movies. That being said wouldn’t mission impossible 2 make a fun video game? Wouldn’t all that action he seems to pack into a movie with cool moves, intense gun battles, and hero’s that are untouchable be fun for a video game? HELL YES IT WOULD! And it is pretty dang fun. A word of warning however if you are prone to motion sickness avoid this title like the plague. I’m not at all a motion sick person, never have been but this game for the first little bit felt like I was on a rolling ocean in a little boat, once I got used to it, it was not that bad but I can see where some people would have a serious issue with this game if prone to motion sickness. Anyway on with the review!

Gameplay elements: You know there are few things as satisfying as blazing duel pistols at loads of enemies with pretty intelligent hit boxes so if you take an arm the arm flies if you hit the head it’s a head shot and there going down, and if you take out there legs it looks like your taking out there legs. It is just fulfilling for some reason to know hordes of enemies are falling victim to your viscous onslaught of firepower. Now take all that and do it while grinding down railings swinging from chandlers and diving through windows over counters and under collapsible bridges. Then you’ll have a taste for Stranglehold. The element of this game that really gives it depth (because lets be honest not a lot of depth involved in blazing through level after level of extreme firepower) is the Tequila time and Tequila bombs. Tequila time is something that’s going to be very familiar to fans of Max Payne or any Matrix game, you can pretty much slow down time and dodge bullets aim better etc. Tequila bombs however are special abilities you can use when you’ve gained enough Tequila meter (you gain it by style points for killing in cool ways…like while doing a corkscrew dive off of a chandler onto a cart and killing 10 enemies in the process with dual wielding sub machine guns) the first tequila bomb is a sniper shot or pretty much one well aimed shot, that if you hit with kills instantly…well usually, just aim for the head. The animations for this are pretty dang cool and going into it is pretty fun. The second Tequila bomb is barrage, pretty much you have about 30 seconds of continues fire from any weapon you have without it using any ammo…so if there’s a ton of guys pull your shotgun turn on barrage and enjoy the carnage. The third the tequila bomb I’m not sure what its called but it’s the way your going to get your ass out of a bind when your completely surrounded by enemies…yes its sweet! You have another Tequila power but its not worthy of being called a bomb, its just a way you can heal yourself if you get in a pinch and can’t find a med pack. Another pretty cool part of the game is standoffs, this happens about 2-3 times per level (so far) and it is kind of like a mini cut scene the characters exchange small dialogue usually consisting of insults and whatever else. It ends with you having to dodge bullets and fire back at the up to 10 guys surrounding you all in slow motion and your stuck in spot so your just dodging and firing, usually there is some part of the environment you can use to your advantage like propane tanks that make big booms, or signs that come a crashing down! There are occasional boss battles to mix up the monotony of just annihilating brainless masses of enemies as well.
Graphics: The graphics in this game are about par for the course on the next gen. system but seriously this game never was a huge graphics pusher, its major appeal is gameplay. I’d rate this graphics about the same as I’d have rated Max Payne’s graphics on the last gen. box not great but not terrible, good enough to not be a distraction but not good enough to bump the rating up.

Single Player: The single player really consists of the same thing over and over again, which is killing lots of enemies and then killing some more enemies….blowing stuff up, occasionally flying around in a helicopter shooting people as well. The story line is pretty lame IMO but hey it’s a John Woo what’d you expect?

Multi Player: If there is one reason only to try this game this is it. Its not the best multiplayer experience I’ve ever had but it was enough to make go back for more…and more and more. It seriously was intense and comical at times. Its so fanatic, but at the same time organized and coordinated. The gun battles you get into are things of legend. There is massive amounts of weapons to be had, even the return of “the golden gun” which pretty much pwnz your face. Maybe it was just because it was first day experience but everyone on there with me seemed to be having a good time. One of my major concerns was how the Tequila bombs would work online, they actually work pretty well, ever now and then (which is actually pretty rare considering) when someone uses a Tequila bomb everyone slows down (its actually pretty cool) and that dude gets a chance to pwn the board, but its VERY limited not at all like single player and actually has to be planned almost perfectly to actually pull off a kill or multiple kills with a Tequila bomb. It really adds a pretty fun dimension to the multi player. Nothing like being in a glorious gun battle when time suddenly slows and you get that sickening feeling in your stomach as you watch your opponent take aim at your face and you press buttons franticly to try and dive out of the way…sometimes you’ll make it in time sometimes your brains will end up on the window, either way be sure to return the favor! I experienced ZERO lag yes I know shocking especially for something that new but literally ZERO lag played like I was playing way more intelligent fast paced single player was a great overall multi player experience.

Overall: Over all I enjoy this game its fun fast paced and a break for the regular stuff we have seen so much of (FPS TPS RPG) this one really just is unique and I appreciate that. I don’t think this is a game everyone will enjoy but I think it’s a game everyone should at least give a chance cause it is pretty entertaining at least. I don’t think this game is ground breaking in anyway its nothing really phenomenal, but it is fun.

I score it at a 8.2 fun, fast paced, chaotic action, but lacking the driving force of a strong storyline.

(I will include pictures tonight as I’m at work and unable to do so here)