Deadly Premonition - Full Review - 6.0/10

Summary

Survival Horror murder mystery set in a small town. Kinda like Shenmue meets Resident Evil 4 meets Silent Hill. Could have done much better Just sticking with the Sandbox aspects.

Synopsis

This game seems to be very polarizing at the moment. You either love it or hate it and neither opinion makes much sense.

On the one hand, we have those who hate it. Who look at a 20 dollar title and say "THIS MUST BE GREATEST GFX EVER OR TIS TEH SUX!!!!". These are mostly graphicwhore gamers who are probably better off with a blue ray player and a CG movie with a very well thought out interactive menu. Whether or not they hit pause is the most complex decision they feel safe making.

On the other hand, we have gamers who love things that are not mainstream, just because they are not mainstream. Forgiving whatever flaws this game has based solely on the fact that it didn't come from a big company. This is a form of unqualified elitism that can be best surmised as "Everyone but me is dumb. So if everyone likes it, it must be crap. I like things nobody else likes to be Awesome."

Of course, applying either of these All or Nothing Philosophies to Deadly Premonition is a great way to make yourself look the fool. You either seem like an easily distracted 12 year old with unlimited access to mommy and daddies Credit card. Or you seem like you're freakin crazy when you get caught saying things like "this games gameplay is better then RE5's." or "The combat isn't that bad." So taking a valid, Middle road (ie realistic) approach to this game is really the way to go.

To start us off, lets talk about the worst part. The combat sequences. Their just a heaping helping of horrible suck that all begins with your camera. The game pretends that the rightstick is a camera control right up until it snaps back to the default position upon letting go of the stick. Like some messed up practical joke. Jesus, that is freakin disorienting. And why do this? Leftstick move, rightstick look... why is this so goddamn hard for developers to not play around with. Did they really have to make their over the shoulder gameplay that different from RE5? Did they honestly fool anyone? We all still know where you got the gameplay from so don't make it almost unplayable. And it's a minor gripe, but breaking up the exploration and combat camera's in the options menu meant moving the camera up instead of down my first battle.... (thanks Swery :/)

Speaking of which, the cameras movement itself is finicky as all hell. I ended up aiming at the ceiling half the time. Then the damn floor the other half. Until, of course, I started using auto target. But because of the shittacular camera, going for headshots is pretty much tapping the leftstick in the general direction you want to shoot bullets at. Hoping what you aimed at didn't move too much. (Sometimes they randomly stand there.....) Then tapping back into the correct position. Then hoping to hell the camera decides to cooperate through the whole ordeal. An exercise in tap and pray gameplay. If you are praying to the trickster god Loki of course.

Once you have mastered the intricacies of tap and pray, you realize that the combat mechanics themselves suck ass. Most of the time it feels like you are hitting air. There is very little feedback to let you know you are actually causing damage. Sure, headshots feel like you actually did something, but body shots, for the most part, splatter purple paint all over till something drops.

And what the hell is with all the QTE going on here. There are entire sequences of nothing but QTE. Like the game decided I can't figure out how to runaway on my own. I crap you not, there is a 5 minute long Quick time event where you have to run from the "Raincoat Killer" (tm?) that requires you to waggle the leftstick the whole damn time. Broken up occasionally by some of the most unhurried animations possible for opening doors or climbing obstacles. Picture it, Desperately running away. Followed by opening a door, looking left, looking right, walking past door and waiting for it to close behind you. Then, DESPERATELY RUNNING AWAY AGAIN! I can't tell if the Gameplay needs consistency or York needs bipolar Meds.

And finally.... and this is the last bad I have to say about the game, the shadows.... for something I was so damn impressed by at first (See here) These came across sorely disappointing. They sound horrid, they move horrid and they just come across as utterly thrown together. Like something that needed to be shoehorned into the game at the last second.

And that pretty much sums up the combat experience, shoehorned in to appease somebody. It's almost as if the developers just weren't confident in there oddball detective game and decided they needed to add survival horror elements in there to make it into a game. And there is very little survival (Infinite ammo weapons to start?) nor Horror (are you older than 5? than you can't be afraid of the shadows.) But, as I will get into in the second section, there is a perfectly fine oddball detective game in DP. No Silent-evil-tower (Resident-clock-hill?) needed.

Mass Effect 2 - Full Review - 8.9/10

Summary

Kinda like Oceans Eleven Dirty Dozen Gears of War err... an RPG in space.

Gameplay 93/100

I was going to write about how people need to stop complaining about inventory screens. Changed my mind half way when I re-read what I had and realized how much venom was posted in that. I also realized these people are obviously deficient in some mental faculty and therefore I should "be nice". I'll just leave it at "If you can't read properly, don't make life worse for those who can" and call it a day.

That being said, I like what BioWare did to the inventory system :D ....almost. Part of the problem with ME1's inventory was people who needed more realism in their video games. You know, the ones that complain about monsters dropping loose change. So RPG developers have been coming up with all sorts of gimmicks to explain how you are getting your money. Body parts, gear, items you can later craft into more expensive doodads. The list goes on and on.

And it's working... Almost. ME1's system was born of this mindset. Get weapons, ammo and armor drops from mobs and sell them back for credits. Problems arose from the sheer number of drops you got. Often times this clogged up your inventory, not allowing you to pick up anything new. And Jumping Jesus on a Jackhammer was it a bitch and a half to clear out your inventory when this happened. Especially ammo... (Do I need this? Should I gel it? What the hell was I just looking at 3 items ago?) So instead of trying to fix the mess effect (OK feel dirty now -_-) of the old inventory system, they just 86 the whole thing and start from scratch.

Sounds good... And I'm sure some focus group was involved with the new system. (Question one, how do you feel about inventory systems in video games: "Durp Hurt brain make words do Durp"{Smash head into clipboard till it's pried out of their hands by Volunteers At EA headquarters.}) So ya, we get a handful of weapons now and we get to upgrade them. Which is perfectly fine.... BUT CAN I PLEASE SEE WHAT THE HELL I JUST UPGRADED BIOWARE? PLEASE? WITH A GODDAMN CHERRY ON TOP? Would the durpapods seriously complained if each weapon had a status screen? They're probably too stupid to find the weapon locker on the ship anyway.(Remember "Be nice")
Yes I know they have an upgrade tab on your private terminal but it's an unsortable mess after you get 15-20 upgrades. Besides, doesn't actually show the stats of the weapons now doe's it?

Oddly enough though, I really have very little problem with the other changes made by BioWare. The streamlining of the XP system, the removal of the "HillClimber: Get up that Goddamn hill" Mini game (Yes the Mako) or the way they present the story like chapters in a book.(nice mix of linear and free form story telling there) It's obvious they realized they had a much better action game than RPG there. (Stat based aiming in realtime = fail) and adding RPG elements to an action game works just fine. Hell you can add RPG elements to anything and it will work.

The gameplay itself is constantly compared to Gears of War. (Cover based shooter) And fans tend to take serious offense at this. Which is silly if you think about it. Not like GoW was a bad game. And it's not like every game is new and original. We wouldn't have Silent Hill, Saint's Row or Half Life if the industry had an aversion to improving on previous ideas. It's probably the decades long polarization of RPG and Shooter fans. And since the industry is constantly mixing the two genres. We, as fans, should probably knock that Super Silly Shat off.

So yes, I (mostly) love the changes to the gameplay from ME1. Love the cover based gameplay ripped from GoW. :p And love the absence of having to slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly climb hills in the mako. They did replace the latter with a probing minigame...... OK so it's not all good. I guess probing was added to make even "1xp per mob, 10k xp to next level" grinders bored out of there skulls. Is this a preamble for excuses for further removal of RPGness from ME3? (Remember probing ya biatches? This is why we took this other thing out.) Or a halfhearted attempt to please ME1 fans? Only time will tell.

Bioshock 2 - Full review - 6.9/10

Summary

Been there, done that, rehashed to hell and back. Still fun though.

Gameplay 80/100

For those of you who haven't played the original Bioshock (I won't be so cliched as to mention things about rocks and living under them.... wait I just did) Bioshock 2's gameplay can be surmised as an FPS with light (emphasis on light) RPG elements.

And this worked fine in BS1. Run through a structurally faulty (more so this time around) underwater city. Pick off crazed, genetically modified, superpowered vagrants (most common superpower being "talk to yourself" apparently). Collect Adam (XP to you and me) from little girls protected by Mechanical deep sea divers. Use Adam to get useful powers and upgrades. Make moral decisions which can be summarized as "Are you a child murderer (Yes?|No?)". It worked well then, no reason it shouldn't now.

Unless you where expecting something new. In which case.... you have protecting Little sisters to look forward to I guess. See, you get to harvest Adam this time around from dead bodies. Not just from ganking sea slugs from deformed children.

Also, trap rivets and mini turrets... which is kinda part of the latter. Just cover the little sister with the damn things while harvesting and go hide in a corner. What, you where expecting to be an unstoppable hulk of an armored suit? Nope! Go hide in that corner! Hack some camera's and turrets while you are at it. Last thing you want to do is get smacked in the face by the handle of a hand gun. And die.... You hear that? That's the other Big Daddies laughing their collective asses off at you.

And this game really drives that point home... The point being 2k Marin couldn't decide if they wanted you to be a Big Daddy or average joe fps guy. They settled on subaverage daddy fps guy but forgot to take out all the bits for Big Daddy. This shows when you are swamped by splicers and end up running for your life to avoid bullet wounds. Yes Bullet wounds. And they made such a big deal about showing how indestructible Big D's where in Bioshock....

Being a Big Daddy (which is the rough equivelent of say, playing as M.Bison in SF2 Champ. Edition or playing as Magus in Chrono Trigger) comes off as massively unfulfilling in BS2. Least Drill rush makes up for this. Sorta.... Ok no, it doesn't make up for it at all.