Payday 2: A 4-man job to steal my heart.

So my utter loathing of the FPS genre is fairly well documented. I only played 3 of them  90% of the time I won't give an FPS the time of day, 8% of the time I try one to see what the hype is all about. But oh so rarely, but the slimmest of margins I will get a FPS game because its one that I enjoy or really want to try. 

And since I watched the guys at Achievement Hunter make a let's play of this title and have been purchasing more games through Steam lately, I have been keeping an eye on this one. The Steam holiday sale marked the price down, but I wasn't ready to jump in just yet. Then on Xmas morning, a friend of mine saw one of my threads mentioning how on the fence I was about getting it. So out of the blue he purchased a 4 pack and gave me one, thus giving me the opportunity to sit down with.....

PAYDAY 2

There really isn't very much of a story when it comes to Payday 2 at least from what I've seen. You play one of four professional thieves brought in to do some scores from some of the local areas crime lords. They characters have names and minimal backstories, but ultimately they are completely irrelevant. This must be some kind of record for this blog, because I am already done talking about the story.

So typically the game fires up with you being introduced to your safe house. This I think was intended to be used as a character's online showing off space because there are places to show how much money you have amassed in the game, and places to display your custom masks and modified weapons. But after your first walk through you will probably never end up coming in here again. I certainly didn't.

Your first trip through the safehouse basically will give your instructions on how the controls work. I am not an active PC gamer but from what I have been told the controls are fairly standard PC FPS. So if you are a fairly active PC gamer you probably won't be lost here. WASD controls, R to reload, F to grab and interact, G to put down or use items, Shift to run, crtl to crouch. That essentially appears to be it as far as controls go.

I am Super Kawaii. Judge me.

When you wish to start a mission, you will need to go into Crime.net (or Crime.net offline). This brings up a map of the available lobbies set up by other players currently in. You will get washed by a LOT of available missions so it probably couldn't hurt to get your feet wet in the offline modes.

When selecting a mission they will be signified with white and yellow dots. White marking how well that job pays and the yellow marking its difficulty from 0-3. All of them missions have a specific code name so when you select it the goal and location are always the same, just some of the internal pieces move around such as safe location or locked doors. After completion of the missions, you earn your daily pay rate and whatever bonus loot you pick up during the mission.

Shouldn't have a problem finding a game. Finding a game with jerks though, there in lies the challenge.

At mission completion, the majority is moved to you "offshore account" which allows you to choose your own mission with its own difficult (but selecting them on the map as they appear are free). The remainder is your spending cash, which you can use to purchase better guns or use with skill points to advance your character. And that shit is expensive, so expect to play a lot to level your skills up.

So the majority of the actual missions may have different themes or winning conditions, but most generally follow the same lines: Go in, Steal what you are after, fend off the cops till your escape gets there, then escape with the loot. Oh sure, at the start of almost every mission you can walk around the joint, find where the cameras are, where the guards patrol, and try to concoct some clever way you can loot the joint without even being seen.

You can shill some extra cash before a mission for intel or extra gear. 

That, Never, Happens.

Nope, be it your own mistake or one of the jackasses you are playing with, someone will trip an alarm, let a pedestrian get away, or be seen by a guard. The alarms will sound and the cops will be coming. It's at this point in the mission the game will quickly turn into a game of survival mode. A good majority of the time you will either be waiting for a drill to bust into a large safe or vault so you can go in and loot the materials, so you can take this opportunity to loot the small goods or barricade entry points to fend off the police assault.

The police will tend to move in waves, so every time you see the yellow warning in the upper right corner, that means they are coming after you. Starts off simple, regular street cops with handguns. But then they will start to bring in SWAT teams. Then some kind of black and yellow shock troopers, sometimes with some blue Judge Dredd looking guy who can tazer you. The worst leading up to these incredibly heavy armored slow moving bulldozers who are just designed to eat bullets.

Your level of success is really determined by how many people are playing the game. I have played a number of missions single player with 2 AI partners, and almost every time I would start to fail at the point where I have to move the gained loot from the source to the van. It gets exceptionally harder single player because as the level increases so too does the number of bags you'll need to steal, which means more trips to the van, which usually means more bullets in your body.

And while I'm at it? The AI partners in the game are fuckin' retarded. They do not help carry the loot bags, and they really take their time shooting anything. They don't zip tie any of the hostages, and a lot of the times, they just kinda wander around instead of helping fend off the police. The only reason to use them is they are typically close enough to you that when you get shot down, they will be able to pick you back up. Unfortunately, even you have a hostage if they don't get to you in time the game is still over. In mulitplayer hostages can be negotiated to bring players back into the fray.

Crowd control will NEVER go like you want it to.

If I had to make a complaint about the game and this is really a nitpick, is that the number of missions is pretty low. There are 4 crime bosses with a select number of missions, some of them are duplicates of other missions just on a pro job level (which basically means no continues and more XP). By the time you reach a decent level, all of the first few missions are a not even worth doing on the hardest levels because you will fly through them so easily. There is an extra DLC mission for 7 bucks, that seems a tad pricey to me for just one level.

I suppose this is more of a personal gripe too, but the other problem I have is actually getting multiplayer games together. I have friends who have the game, I keep asking people to play. But I usually only get one out of 6 friends to actually jump in the game with me. Playing it with a group of people is really the way to do it.

The assaults are when the action picks up, and the Police can be pretty relentless.

Seriously though, there are shooters I like, there are a LOT of shooters I hate. But I think might stretch to say this is the first shooter I love. I am almost always willing to jump into a game of this. The longer 3 day missions are an absolute blast with friends, and I'm already considering to restart my character just to play it over again with the increased challenge. I got the game for free thanks to a very generous friend, but I'm seriously kicking myself for not picking this up sooner. This game is an absolute blast and if I had played it sooner this could have seriously been in the running for my 2013 game of the year.

Payday 2 is fucking awesome. Play it.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - No Trace of Scurvy here.

I said I wasn't gonna do this. Said I wasn't gonna buy or play another Assassin's Creed game. After the slap dashed never ending disaster of the previous games, I was completely sick of it. The Desmond story that never seemed to end until its car crash like sudden closing. The Ezio pissing around for 2 games pointless fluff of story. Connor Mcdouchington's emo trip through US history. I was fed up. I said the only way I'd get a new one is if they made some sort of pirate themed game, because I liked that aspect for Assassin's Creed 3.

And those mother fuckers..... Ubisoft not only made the new one a pirate game, but a launch release for the shiny new consoles. So here we go, another fuckin bout of soft science stabbiness in....

ASSASSIN'S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG

So after the abrupt end of Desmond Miles after pushing the magic button of destiny, we take control of his great, great, great unrelated silent protagonist. He's working for Abstergo Entertainment to make fancy interactive movies, and thanks to the "donated" brain meats of Desmond thanks to Abstergo's retrieval team this new guy gets to live his memories instead.

His first project is to assume the memories of Edward Kenway, a welsh commoner who married way out of his league and took to a life of piracy to make his fortune to bring to his lady fair. After coming across a shipwrecked assassin, he pursues the man and kills him to loot a reward. Kenway assumes his clothing and identity in the hopes of claiming the reward the assassin was looking to get for giving a valuable artifact to the Templars.

Unable to hold his cover, Kenway becomes mixed up in the battle between the Assassin's and Templars in their race to find a place called the Observatory, which with a drop of blood allows anyone to spy through the eyes of the blood's owner. Kenway has no allegiance to either side though, as he wishes to claim the observatory for himself and sell its powers for a profit.

Maybe its a matter of preference, but I found it very easy to like Kenway.
Practically zero angst in comparison to Conner. 

So I can tell you, all of my anger and reservation from the previous was almost immediately crushed right out of the gate. The connection to the Desmond story seemed minimal at best, and right out of the gate you start the game as a guy with swagger (which is the correct use of the term, you yolo spouting fuckwits) without being arrogant like Altair or cocky like Ezio. He also establishes right out of the gate that he's not "a good guy" by basically trying to kill the guy who offered a reward to help him.  So pretty much right out the gate he connected with me as a player, because I wanna stab some shit, I wanna get rich, I wanna drink, and I want to sink ships on the high seas.

But what I found interesting with Edward as a character that despite dressing like an assassin and eventually getting his hidden blades, he remains generally neutral in this chapter of Assassin's Creed canon. Which I suppose is good since the story has drug on too long and become so convoluted I don't really care which side wins at this point. So while Kenway dresses like an assassin, and moves like an assassin, and becomes embroiled in their mess, he's not technically one. Works for me.

No, Edward Kenway makes it very clear right from the onset that he is a pirate, and naturally if he is a pirate you would expect to spend some time on a boat. Very early in the game Kenway plunders his own ship which he dubs the Jackdaw, and this is where you are going to spend a large portion of Assassin's Creed IV. If you remember, they introduced the ship mechanic back in Assassin's Creed 3 but really didn't know what to do with it other than to build money that serves no purpose.

The perfect form of the Assassin's dive must be genetic if its lasted this long in time.

The controls to the ship feel functionally the same from their previous incarnation, but there were a handful of tweaks to polish it up such as varied ways to attack (these might have been in AC3, but I couldn't tell you). Typically you get assets for your ship by sailing the seas and ransacking other ships. This was easily the most fun of the game. You can pull up aside them and start unloading cannon fire, you can fire mortars from a far, or if you are like me you will put a ram on that ship and T-bone fuckers in two. I love that last strategy because if it doesn't sink em the moment you turn you are at point blank and can unload heavy fire for massive damage, given you can take the return fire.

Once a ship is near defeated you have the option to ransack them. Suddenly the game switches back to Assassin's Creed. You rope swing across to the enemy ship and you can start hidden blading fools and dropping 2 or 3 before you even get into close combat, and if you fill enough requirements you then take control of the ship. You can strip them for parts you use to sell or upgrade your ship, add it to your fleet, or use it to lower your wanted level against hunter ships.

You build a fleet because like previous AC games you have that timed mission mechanic where you can send your fleet on trade runs. Its a good idea to get a decent blend of them because sometimes you need to clear our the danger before you send your fleet off on missions. They are done in this kind of JRPG autoplay kind of combat, and you can see your chance of victory going in so as long you bring 1 light and 2 heavy ships to the table, you basically can't lose.

In doing this you can build money, which unlike the pointless city building in the previous AC games, you need in mass quantities if you want to get your ship ready to tangle with the brigs or frigates sailing the high seas. You need to complete a lot of the side quests for the best upgrades though, which seem necessary for tangoing with the legendary ships. But much like the Weapons in FF7, that was too much of a hassle to see through for me.

But that isn't to say that AC4 has completely abandoned the land and sneaking. You will often find yourself on a number of islands throughout the game, and admittedly, a large portion of the missions here involve trying to tail a target. Or a number of times it simply a matter of trying to slide though a heavily guarded area unnoticed.  And of course, hunting down an assassination target.

Land controls are just what you'd expect: Completely Unchanged.

The thing is, while I've heard some complaints about having to do so many tailing missions, this installment of AC felt more like the older versions I used to love. Here is your target, go get em. There were a handful of these where I would dart from brush, to bush, to doorway and cover, hidden knifing guard after guard trying not to be noticed, closing in my target and actually getting an opportunity to make a STEALTHY KILL before getting locked into a cutscene.

This is a massive improvement in my opinion because AC3 and some parts of the Ezio trilogy basically makes you watch some extended cutscene where the target runs away and you get swooped by guards, which forces you to give up any pretense of stealth and pretty much makes you give chase else they will get away. Once you get the blow darts stealthing becomes that much more fun because you can start getting targets to fall asleep or kill each other without you ever needing to enter the fray. Who would have thought the guy who isn't an assassin would be the best one at the job?

I freak'n love the blowdart. You can get a targets own guard to kill them with berserk darts

Sticking to the weapons thing a bit, the number of ways to kill someone has been cut down from previous installments. AC4 would prefer you stick to swords or a hidden blade, Gun or Blowdart. No bombs or poisons or tower defense or various forms of hand weapons. Despite the massive cut down it seems, I actually kind of preferred this because it allowed me to focus on making my weapons better instead of giving me different ones to muddle around with, and with the pirate theme, a pair of swords seemed like the way to go anyways.

The combat basically hasn't changed since the first one, which is kind of annoying because I still think the combat in these games fucking blow. You can mash your attack button all you want, but  its better to just wait for one to attack, hit counter, then go on a streak of kills until you hit counter again. Predictable and boring. All the more reason to get the job done with the stealth kills first because I feel there is at least a degree of skill with that.

Tip: Use your ships minicannons to take out their crew first. It will make fighting them
on board that much easier since you'll have less to worry about. 

Like the previous installments of this game there are a butt-ton of collectibles and side missions to do. But at least this time around it feels like there is actually a purpose to a number of them. Hunting and Spearfishing give you goods to sell, but they also are used in crafting which you need for more health, better ammo capacity, and better armor (which I highly suggest doing). The collectible shanties are worth picking up because after a few trips to sea, you'll want them to have different things to sing to fill the travel gaps. (Anything to put more time between having to hear the Johnny Bulgar shanty again.)

I sort of went on about the story already, but I have to say I was pretty pleased with this one. Yeah the Desmond canon is still kinda hanging around, the rejected Scooby-squad are still poking their heads around, but for the most part its only mandatory to partake of a few times, If you want to learn more about it you can always drop out of the animus and hack other peoples terminals. It does an alright job in connecting the stories together, but ultimately you don't need it.

I really get the sense Abstergo is a gag on how Google is taking over the world. 

Actually, in all honestly, I kind of liked the idea that you were playing a character who was on the Abstergo side of things outside of the multiplayer. So while I really couldn't care less about what the hell else is happening in the Desmond story, I was interested in seeing what was happening with Melanie Lemay and how the Abstergo brass was pushing the Templar agenda without directly saying it.

Now that I am reflecting on it, this is probably the most interesting set of characters this franchise has ever had. Leonardo DiVinci making weapons to kill people is interesting in its own right, but the ensemble of James Kidd, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, Adewale, and even Melanie I just found to be a billion times more interesting than any of the side characters or villains in the Ezio trilogy. Perhaps I just don't care about medieval Italy. I dunno.

Oh Anne Bonny...  *Swoon*

What I liked about the Edward Kenway story is there is a clear and defined beginning, middle, and fucking ending. I was absolutely shocked because I didn't think Ubisoft had any fucking clue how to end a story. Granted, it wasn't one of the best endings to a game I've ever seen, but at least for once we got to see a story come to a conclusion in a fashion that made sense. While its true there is probably going to be about 13 billion Assassin's Creed games, at least this time we got a little fucking closure.

Lastly the multiplayer is still fun. They haven't added any kind of multiplayable sea or ship games, so its the basic set of Assassin's Creed online games you've played before, but they have added a series of wolf pack missions to play co-op with other people instead of against people. Sadly, it hasn't stopped being from being complete fucking assholes to newer players, and after a spat I had with a level 30 fucking shithead, I haven't really gone back to it. Thanks for trying to ruin the game for me asshole, I guess you succeeded because I'm not playing it anymore. I hope you grow a tumor on your spinal column.

Not a whole lot of surprises to the multiplayer, but its still really fun. 

I have to say going into this game I had some pretty staunch animosity growing towards this franchise, its unchanging nature and mechanics, its seemingly endless story, dislikeable cast and so forth. And while some of the aftertaste of the previous installments looms in the background, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag kind of brought the series back for me. They really do need to stop with the once a year release schedule though, because without more radical changes to the gameplay, people are gonna get tired of the series. With out the heavy ship focus on this one, I probably wouldn't have gotten it.

That said, after I played the story through to completion and have taken a number of weeks to reflect upon it, I can say that from my personal standpoint: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is the hands down best installment of the series. Ubisoft clearly has no intention of ending this series, but in my opinion this is a great place to do it. On a high note.

I highly recommend this one. If you've never played an AC game, this is the one to play.

The Ragey's 2013: The Rage Quitter Year End wrap up

God what are you people still doing here? This whole gamer blog fad was so last year, nobody reads this crap anymore.  Well, Since you're here, might as well pull up a chair. Because another year of video games have gone by and I've played a lot of them, so I might as welcome you to this year's year end wrap up of my best and worst games of the year.

The 2013 Ragey's:
Seriously So-Co, Who do I have to blow in that corporation to get you to Sponsor me?

10: The Picked last behind the Fat kid with one Leg in kickball award for "Game I wish I got to play" goes to....

Yakuza 5 (PS3)

Over the past year, I developed a burning fury for the people over at Sega. After three entertaining romps in the Yakuza franchise I have been eagerly anticipating the new installment. A year goes by, and Sega only responds to a western release with "no comment". They made a haiku in response to the inquiry about an announcement coming up. An announcement that says "hey we are making a new one, and you aren't getting that either! LOL." FUCK YOU SEGA.

Sega is sitting a on goldmine of slightly obscure but highly desired titles by people in the west, and they refuse to localize them because they don't think Americans "get it" and Yakuza 5 is the chief offender. The Sony Third Party Production division knows its one of the top two requests for western release. So yeah, just skip on the piles of money you could be making by releasing your actual good games. Keep putting out Sonic: Losing a Step so nobody will buy that either.   Fucking morons.....

And If you guys fuck up Atlus or me getting Persona 5? I will personally fly to your Japan HQ to suicide bomb the Sega CEO's office. (Facetious Satire, NSA)

9: The Trent Richardson 2.8 Yards Per Carry garbage award for "Biggest Disappointment" goes to.....

Assassin's Creed  3 (PS3)

I played this during the holiday launch window so I am counting it for the beginning of this year.  At the time of purchase, I was getting very frustrated the story wasn't going anywhere and I was getting sick of paying for new versions of the same game. So to cap off the actual 5th game of the franchise, I was treated to the worst protagonist in the series, most boring story, and the most slapdashed rushed climax to the Desmond narrative I have ever seen. Aside from the ship combat, there is virtually nothing good about this installment of the game. To be completely honest, this was a SERIOUS contender for my worst game of the year. However, as my pending review for Black Flag will tell you, there is still some hope for this series.

8. The Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards award for "Biggest Surprise" goes to.....

Payday 2 (Xbox Live, PSN, Steam)

Originally, I was gonna go with Battleblock Theater for this one, but I got bored of that and it got surpassed in the last moments of 2013.  Payday 2 could possibly be my favorite FPS ever, and I usually hate FPS. Grand Theft Auto V taught me that pulling heists are pretty awesome.

And Payday 2 is just that: You are given a job with up to 3 other players, you case your location be it bank, jewel store, night club, or whatever. Figure out where the guards are, where the cameras are, where the staff walks. Sometimes you can be in and out of a place, clearing out a safe before the staff even knows you are there.

But MOST of the time, it turns into a game of survival mode as someone inevitably calls the cops. Typically it turns into a firefight as you wait for your drill to crack into a safe. While the maps are usually the same they sometimes spawn things in various areas or ramp up the detection. But what I love about it is that is constantly chaotic and stressful, and you feel like a complete badass when the heist starts to go your way in a hairy moment. Payday 2 fuckin' rules.


7. The Oh my god, I didn't fuckin' care when the dumb British royal twat's got married, and I don't care that they had a stupid kid either award for "Most Overhyped game" this year goes to.....

BioShock: Infinite (XB360)

You just can't throw out a phrase like "as close to perfection as a game can get" and not expect me to be critical of it. Don't get me wrong, I love these characters and the storytelling was peerless. But my problem with BioShock: Infinite is that it was a dumbed down version of a shooter I actually kind of liked.

Gone were the myriad of fun weapons for 2 generic weapon slots, gone were the terrifyingly insane Splicers for generic troopers in 1800's coats. Gone was the creepy and dark settings of Rapture, for the bright and sunny streets of whereeversville, Gone were the Big Daddies and Little Sisters.

There were some good bits to Infinite and it was clearly better than Bioshock 2. But frankly, its even more watered down to the first Bioshock as Bioshock was to SystemShock 2. Great story, but game perfection? Hardly.


6. The Charles Ramsey 15 Minutes of Fame award for "Flash in the Pan" game of the year.

Tomb Raider (PS3)

While Squenix didn't think this title to be a success in the market, I really had some fun with it. Sure, it took the Tomb Raider original formula, made Lara Croft less of raging psychopath at the start (but barely), and put in a ridiculous sprinkling of Uncharted an produced one of my favorite examples of how the 3rd person shooter genre is done correctly.

I wasn't a fan of the Tomb Raider series, and I haven't been since the start. But I really did enjoy this game a lot. One of the few games where I actually looked forward stealthing around a picking off targets with a bow and arrow. Its story got a bit ridiculous at times and clearly wasn't the best written game. But it was fun and solid purchase. It basically met me half way to bring me into a series I didn't care for. Good show Tomb Raider.

I still hate Lara Croft though.

5. The 750 Dollar Photo of an Xbox one Ebay Purchase award for "Worst Value" goes to....

Beyond: Two Souls (PS3)

You know Quantic Dream, maybe you should sell yourself as an animation studio, and less of a game studio. You sort of had me interested in this game medium you were selling in Heavy Rain but you completely dropped the ball here by not learning from your mistakes. The Graphics in this are amazing, Page and Dafoe show that they are consummate actors and deserve proper billing.

But I play games to PLAY FUCKING GAMES. So watching Ellen Page be sad for 10 hours while occasionally knocking over some papers is hardly engaging game play. Every game dev should sit with their product and then ask themselves "Am I having fun?". A great story is one thing, but there is a good reason movies are 2 hours, not 10. If you are gonna stretch it out that long, you have to have engaging middle bits. Not worth 60 bucks. Should have done Last of Us, Ellen.


4. The "Just the Tip" award for "Best Value" goes to....

Dragon's Crown

Proof that simple still works. This game doesn't have CGI out the asshole. This game doesn't bring a load of complex mechanics to the table. Just straight up side scrolling brawly fun with fantastic art direction, fast paced combat, ratcheting difficulty, and loot gathering.

I was really excited for this game and it absolutely delivered on all fronts. The only real complaint is that it somewhat lacks a narrative, but that's really not what you are getting a game like this for. Its shows hands down that all the shiny AAA budgets and graphics doesn't exactly make a game great. But awesome game play always does.

3. The Consistently On Time Chinese Food Delivery guy Honorable mention goes to....

Tales of Xillia (PS3)

There were a lot of options to go for with the honorable mention, because there were a lot of really good games this past year. Saint's Row IV was a front runner here because it was just ridiculous.  Atelier Ayesha just because of the number of hours I dumped into it. Disgaea D2 for bringing back a group of characters I loved. Hitman: Absloution for polishing up the last true stealth game I've had in years.

But I have to give it to Tales of Xillia because the Tales of franchise is just always a beacon of excellence in the active battle JRPG genre. Great characters, good storyline, fun combat, and typically pretty good voice acting. Yeah its probably a pretty generic pick, but if you play any Tales game you can clearly see what I am talking about. Here's to the Symphonia HD Collection next year. 

2. The Ariel Castro Stay at home Dinner Date award for "Worst Game of the Year" goes to.....

Mugen Souls (PS3)

Dead Space 3's Co-op and micropayments made a strong case for worst of the year. Walking Dead: Survival Instinct's generic and bad game play really did too. But I had Mugen Souls locked in as my worst of the year back in May, and I'm happy to say that it hasn't budged.

Creepily oversexualized young characters, terrible soundtrack, choppy and broken animations, excessive text exposition, overly complicated battle system, overly complicated menu system, generic character creation, incredibly weak story, disgustingly cutesy j-pop sequences, constant ongoing fight animations, and the list goes on. It's absolutely remarkable just how badly this game managed to fuck up at almost every given area. I bought the game at discounted price, and I even regret that.

But whats worst of all is it had one decent idea for the character interaction animations that actually could have been put into better NIS America games, and they didn't even do that. Mugen Souls was just flat out terrible and a complete waste of my time and money.

1. The Johnny Malloy's 2 dollar Long Island Award for "Best game of the year" goes to...

The Last of Us (PS3) AND Grand Theft Auto V 

I really tossed back and forth here because both of these games were nothing short of incredible. And for a long time, it seemed like nothing could top The Last of Us. Sure, at times it felt like it was just a cut out of Uncharted but the added stealth elements with the dark atmosphere, the Cordyceps monsters, and a very well acted and likable cast made The Last of Us and absolutely fantastic experience and one of my must plays for the year. Ellen Page was pissing about how the Ellie character looked like her, and maybe she's right to be upset, because Last of Us was way better than her game.

But then Grand Theft Auto V came along. It's sales numbers alone tell the story, nearly smashing any single day record set before it. After taking a massive break in the development from previous game, GTA:V addressed nearly every complaint I had. Better combat, brighter colors, much less depressing story, more arcadey driving. But most of all, I fucking LOVED this cast of characters. I want Trevor Phillips as my life coach. But more so than that, the game was just a blast to play. I managed to rip through it twice in back to back playthroughs, and had a significant amount of fun playing the online mode.

While I can't consider either game perfect, these two come really, REALLY close. Since they were both so great and I felt I copped out last year with Silent Hill 2, they co-win my game of the year.

Maybe I've lost a bit of steam overtime, and the hit count as been dropping. But if I'm still playing games, I'm still gonna have stuff to say about them. See you in 2014.

Killzone: Shadow Fall (PS4): A purdy look'n, functional, but unoriginal affair.

There are usually 3 reasons I buy or play a first person shooter. Most of the time, its because its something I was genuinely looking forward to (See: Left 4 Dead). Other times its because a game has gotten so much attention, I have to poke my head in to see what the fuss is about (See: Bioshock Infinite). The third, and least common of the solutions is "well, I have this new system. I need something to play on it."

That's how I found myself with the original Resistance title and that actually ended up being a shooter I kinda liked. Well about a month ago when I got me a shiny new PS4 I found myself in that same situation. I had 2 games reserved but one of them got pushed back, so to give me something else to play I took a chance on a series that I have never played before in.....

KILLZONE: SHADOW FALL(PS4)

Shadow Fall takes place after the "Terracide" of Killzone 3 where the ISA basically render the Helgan planet uninhabitable. The ISA grants the remaining Helghast survivors refuge on the planet Vekta and allows them to colonize half of the planet. The relations are tumultuous at best as they build a massive wall to separate the Vektans from New Helgan, and covert military operation is rampant on both sides.

After the walls construction, Lucas Kellan and his father are trying to escape New Helgan and come across a Shadow Marshall named Sinclair, who tries to aid their escape. Despite being promised safe passage they are spotted by the Helghast and Lucas' father is killed in the scuffle. Sinclair takes Lucas in and in 30 years trains Lucas to be a Shadow Marshall as well.

Tensions are extremely high between the Vektans and Helghast, and Sinclair uses Lucas as his shadow operative to infiltrate the Helgan forces and retrieve classified information, pertaining to a bio-weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar. It then becomes a race between the VSA and the Helghast to get to the weapon first.

The opening could basically be futuristic Nazi Germany its so locked down.

Why do shooters always have the most complicated and convoluted fucking story lines? I just wrote that shit and I still don't understand it. Fuckin' Left 4 Dead makes it easy: Here are some zombies, fucking kill them. I can get that. Resistance was like that too: Aliens are attacking, fucking kill them. No problem.

But with games like this, I'm reminded of when I tried to review Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  I had no eff'n clue what it was I was explaining if I even bothered to understand it. It had Micheal Rooker in it, that's all I really remember. 

So the first thing that comes to mind when I play a shooter is what kind of shooter is it? Since I don't often play very many FPS games I try to narrow them down to one of two categories: Classic FPS or Modern FPS. Classic I consider games like Bioshock, Left4Dead, Resistance 3, etc because they are one that usually don't require scope aiming, cover, and have fixed health meters. Moderns are like Call of Duty with one to five hit kills, regenerating health, two weapon slots, and required scope aiming for any accuracy.

And I would say that Killzone: Shadow Fall is in the latter category of the more modern shooters. Not typically the style of FPS game I really enjoy but it suppose necessity makes for strange bedfellows. I will say because many of these games follow very similar control schemes, it didn't take me very long to find myself familiarized with what buttons do what. Generally if you have played a shooter in the past 5 to 10 years most of this game isn't going to be lost on you. 

Before I get too far into the game, something I feel I should address is that this was the first PS4 retail title I loaded up into my system. There was a bit of buzz about the fact that the game took up almost 45 gigs of space right out of the box. Since the PS3 is notorious for long install and load times, this was a concern. 

Thankfully, it wasn't an issue here. It installs a bit right from the moment you pop the disc in, and say about 30-45 seconds later you are able to start the game. The installation process continues and does so while you watch the opening cutscene and the first level. It was a very expedient process and I was very happy about that. 

Back to the game. Since it falls under the category of modern shooter, naturally there is some concern over the game having a pretty shitty palette basically devoid of color as you go from dilapidated location to dilapidated location. And while there is no shortage of these locations, it does spruce up some of the locations with a few splashes of color (such as the forest or modern city), and the Helghast uniforms usually have some vibrant glowing red on them so they are somewhat easy to make out.

I will say that this game certainly doesn't feel linear to me. I can't say it feels as wide open and vibrant as say some of the Halo maps are, but they do feel very big in their own right. Quite a number of times I found myself just completely lost in a level. I'd be following what appeared to be a natural path to my object to find myself nowhere near the location I needed to be at, and to further explore the map to figure out exactly which way I needed to be going. While it's occasionally frustrating, I would much rather do this than deal with a series of short linear maps.

When you get away from civilization, the environments are beautifully done.

The weapons in this game are a fucking snoozefest, and this is massive problem in almost every modern shooter I have ever played. You can give all the weapons in your game fancy UPC code names and its not gonna change the fact that I have automatic rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and pistol. Fucking, Snore. At least Bioshock gives me plasmids to use, at least Resistance has crazy alien weaponry that can shoot through or around walls. Hell, even Halo has the goddamn Needler. I couldn't tell you the specific weapon names in Killzone,but they break down to the 4 majors I mentioned in this paragraph. 

You are given a little kind of helper bot though. you can sort of select your options for that on the touchpad and it allows you to fire ziplines, give you covering fire, stun your opponents, and hack terminals for you. So it sometimes works to provide distractions but more often then not I would forget to use it. Its really the only future-y thing about combat. Actually that's not true, you also have this Sonar Pulse kinda thing where you can see enemies around walls and floors, but if you hold it too long it screeches and alerts your enemies.

You probably saw this section at E3 already, but I can't capture until HDCP protocols are removed.

You would think something like that would make the game too easy. Nope, not the case. Killzone: Shadow Fall did not hold my hand going into this game. I died, and I died a lot. You pick up adrenaline packs along the way so when you drop, your little helper bot can bring you back. If you go into iron sight everything slows down to bullet time for a few seconds and you can mow down your offenders. It took a little bit of getting used to, and didn't save me from getting my ass kicked thoroughly every few levels.

There is one particular shard of glass in my urethra late in the game where you basically have to drop from pace and then glide once you've entered the atmosphere. You have to maintain swooping motions while avoiding collapsing buildings. The amount of times I screamed fuck trying to get past this fucking portion was ridiculous. I cannot fucking stand it when a game throws in a brand new set of mechanics late in the game with an unreasonable set of difficulty. Its infuriating. Have it at least scale so I can sort of get a handle on it first you fucking pricks. (I captured this sequence on the PS4, but unfortunately, I can cant pull and edit it, and I can only share it to Facebook. A massive oversight in this internal capture process.)

I feel the character design is a little wonky, but I'd say that's really my only visual complaint. Usually every humanoid character is completely covered in armor, so you barely get to see any actual people to begin with. I was surprised to find out that this game was Mo-Cap'd as well. I guess I have been spoiled but Uncharted, Last of us, and Beyond. Aside from that I think the visuals of this game are very impressively done and from what I have read, they actually didn't even use the full memory potential of the console.

While technically an enemy, Echo is the only real "Good Guy" in the game.  She's the only person who
really understands the gravity of the war, and is willing to fight against her family for the greater good

And much like the actual campaign section, the multi player for the most part seems pretty generic too. There is no shortage of 24 player team deathmatches to hop into, and the war zones basically cycle through stages of CTF, Assault, King of the Hill and team deathmatch. Performing certain accolades will allow you to unlock different add on to your weapon types.

Whats fucking annoying about this is you will no doubt get lumped in with a group of assholes who have grenade launchers on lock down. And I have to say it was infuriating trying to do anything in a multi player game because I would just constantly be blown up out of no where. It was really starting to infuriate me.

But at one point, I had a eureka moment. At some point I realized I wasn't a good enough shot to snipe, and my usual charge in, pray n' spray routine wasn't helping here. So why not try the support class? If there is anything I am good at in a shooter, is getting from one point to another. So I opted for a support class that can create spawn points and I make a habit of dashing to key hot zones on each map. To compliment my unsteady shot, I opted for the shotgun. Shit range but maximum damage potential.

In Deathmatch you will find popular spots people go to in nearly every map.

Worked like a charm. I get points every time someone uses my spawn (and usually I'm the only one), points whenever I revive some one, and once I get into a good position I can mow down enemies as they leave their base for at least 3 or 4 people till they figure it out. All of a sudden I am in the top 3 of nearly every game I am in. I guess sometimes you just gotta figure out what you are good at.  Grenade launchers are still cheap as fuck though.

So anyways, rating I guess. Well, the consensus on Killzone: Shadow Fall seems to be on of: "Hey this game is really pretty, but its nothing original." I'd say that is a pretty fair assessment. Nothing in this game really blew me away. The story was a bit above average, it was interesting when it really got going, and the ending was definitely a step from the norm. I find myself dropping into the multi player a bit now that I have a knack for what I'm doing, which is better than most shooters have fared with me. For a shooter that has no horror elements, its been worth the 60 clams.

All in all, I have to say that Killzone: Shadow Fall was a solid release for a launch lineup. It'll certainly scratch your shooter itch but if you are one of those frothing "I can only play Call of Duty/Halo" types its probably gonna leave you wanting. I got it on a spur of the moment impulse, but I overall I wasn't dissatisfied. 8 out of 10.

Would have liked the chance to be the Helgast girl more though....

Beyond: Two Souls (PS3): My Sad Haunted Life Simulator 2013

It's easy to get taken in by some shiny graphics. I mean ultimately, that's really what the game industry has been pushing for the past twenty years or so. And no game truly tried to sell the point that you only need graphics to sell a game as much as Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain did. While the game was severely lacking in actual gameplay elements and just gave us quick time events, the story was still pretty good (although heart wrenchingly depressing). But now Quantic Dream has upped their game by making their graphics even shinier, and brought in actual actors to play their parts in....

BEYOND: TWO SOULS(PS3)

The tale of Beyond: Two Souls follows tale of lonely girl Jodie Holmes (Ellen Page), as we go through her life. Since the moment she was born, Jodie has been linked to some form of supernatural entity who she refers to as Aiden. We jump around in the story from various points of Jodie's life from her troubled upbringing, her troubled childhood, her troubled teen years, and her troubled young adulthood.

The jist, without spoiling too much, is that her adoptive foster family leaves her at a military research facility under the care of Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe) and Cole Freeman (Kadeem Hardison) who make her live in a bit of a sheltered off life as they monitor Jodie and her connection with Aiden, and attempt to teach her how to control him. As she adapts to this lifestyle, she is eventually drafted into the CIA.

After being abandoned by her foster parents, Jodie is actually has a pretty
affectionate upbringing, its just incredibly sheltered.

Its hard to explain the story any further because they way the story is present and you jump around the timeline, different points of the plot are given away at different times. And since this game's whole bread and butter is based around the story, giving you a detailed synopsis would really defeat the entire purpose.

Now I should probably stress right off the bat, that if you are picking this game up you should probably alter your expectations for the game. If you have never played Heavy Rain or even Indigo Prophecy then you are in for a real change of pace. During the course of this review I will probably refer to this as a game, but that's probably not wholly accurate. Quanitc Dream's big focus has always been to produce "interactive storytelling experiences."

Willem Dafoe: For when monster design isn't quite scary enough.

Unfortunately, therein lies the inherent problem because that's an awfully flowery term to use instead of game, which by definition is an interactive storytelling experience. The original Mario has like zero correlating text and no cutscenes, and that still weaves a tale you control the narrative. Now, in Quantic Dream's defense they do paint a hell of a picture. Heavy Rain through all its depressive scenes was still a very gripping story, and their technical demo for KARA had more compelling story in just 7 minutes than some movies do.

The problem is the Playstation 3 is a GAME console and when I use a game console, I use it to PLAY GAMES. And on this front this is pretty much where Beyond: Two Souls falters and falters hard. Heavy Rain was a game that suffered from some of the worst movement controls I've played in a game, and all of the actions that take place happen with quick time events or extended button presses or controller waggles. The bar was set incredible low for their sequel.

The game cleverly fools you into thinking this might have some stealth opps involved. 

But when you set the bar incredibly low, you don't have to jump all that high to get over it. The most recent E3 trailer teased that there would be some war situations and some stealthing involved in the game to bring up the pace and tone somewhat. And while this does in fact happen in the game? The overall control scheme doesn't really change that much. There have been some minor improvements but ultimately they just put quicktime events in a fancy new dress.

Movement controls have been simplified the the normal 3rd person movement we've all come to know. Why this wasn't used in Heavy Rain was fuckin' beyond me. When we get into the action sequences in Beyond:Two Souls we don't have the "Press X to Jason" prompts. Rather, when a combat sequence is taking place, the animation will drop to a super slow motion scene where you have to see which way Jodie is moving, and you need to press the analog stick in the corresponding direction. If you are successful she will land her punch or dodge a blow, if you miss she takes a bit of a beating.

My first playthrough, Jodie took a bit of a beating till I understood the controls.

This is generally how a majority of the action takes place and like previously stated, there are quick time events and controller waggles mixed in. For the most part, it works, but there are always a handful of awkward animations taking place where you have to really stop and guess if its meant to be one way or another. There were a number of times I kept getting it wrong, but it never really impeded my progress.

The other big control aspect in this game is one of the buttons allows you to switch to and control the entity following Jodie, Aiden. When cruising as Aiden you will usually find little indicators that allow you move objects or destroy things. When enemies are afoot you can use Aiden to strangle them or possess them to infiltrate areas. The problem with these sequences is the controls to fly Aiden around are kind of wonky, and your freedom to attack is somewhat limited. Anytime there are enemies around your options are pretty linear and when playing as Aiden, Jodie will often coach you along. 

As Aiden, you usually will just knock shit over. But there are segments where you can
possess and ghost strangle people. You just don't often get to chose which you do.

There is also a "multiplayer" mode that I use as loosely as I use the term "game" in this sense. Basically, it allows a 2nd controller to control Aiden, but since you can only use one character at a time, there really is no reason for it. You can easily switch to Aiden and then hand off the controller for the exact same effect. There is no point to it being there, and really it just takes away the fun half of the game and leaves one player being a very sad Ellen Page for like 10 hours. Nope.

And as far as game play goes, that really is pretty much all there is to it. There are a handful of sequences that will require you to do a bit of stealthing and sneaking while using Aiden to dispatch enemies, but it doesn't happen nearly enough for it to feel enough like an actual narrative based action game.

No, we are here because we want to watch a really, really, really long movie. So the question I suppose is: Did I like it? Well, its hard to say. Graphically, It might be one of the most impressive games I've seen. Like If I considered something like Uncharted or The Last of Us to have some pretty top notch motion capture, then Beyond: Two Souls is definitely a step above that. All of the notable actors in this game are nearly picture perfect digital images of themselves, and because the majority of them are legitimate actors I feel the delivery of the lines were a cut above. Definitely better performed than Heavy Rain was.

I love watching Mo-cap footage side by side with the finished product.

But what I'm not sure I care for is the way the story jumps around the timeline. To use a literary example, Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley delivers the story in what feels like two different story lines, where the big twist/climax appears where the stories timelines begin to intersect at a central point and fill in the gaps of each other's story.

This is kind of like how the Beyond story plays out. You find yourself constantly shifting between child Jodie and young adult Jodie. The constant jumps in timeline will often leave you thinking: "wait, what the fuck happened now?" and sometimes it can be exhausting to keep up with.

But nothing in this game is more exhausting than the relentlessly depressive tone. Literally NOTHING good happens to this chick. Any brief bit of happiness is overclouded by some kind of tragic event, or some haunting of her past, or some current haunting. Now granted, The game delivers a number of options for you on how you want to play things, but unlike Heavy Rain I don't think they appear to deviate how the story shakes out for the most part.

Ellen Page: Mall Goth Teen Angst edition.

There is an fairly early scene where Jodie goes to a birthday party and it turns into this uncomfortably heart wrenching disaster, and you are basically prompted with two solutions: Leave humiliated or commit unbridled vengeance. After (painfully) playing this scene two different ways, the game pretty much proceeded in the same fashion afterwards. Granted, one of the options was a billion times more satisfying to play out.

Through out all the scenes you have multiple ways to play out the conversations, so I guess there is a bit of replay value, and you basically get to choose your ending in the final scenes so I suppose there is reason to play more than once. Then again, you can easily jump to that scene and just pick the other options too.

Full Disclosure: I actually missed this option the first time because I was too busy
oggling digital Ellen Page in her shimmery red dress. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I find myself in the same position I was in for Heavy Rain. Did I enjoy my experience? I think I did. Do I think you should play it? Yeah, I'd say its worth your time. Is it worth 60 dollars? Ehhhhhrrrrnnnggg.... No.. it really isn't.

See Quantic Dream, here's where you have it backwards: You have some of the impressive graphics and some pretty good story writers, but the reviews to your game are mixed. You know who's game isn't getting reviews like that? Naughty Dog, because they take the good story writing and impressive motion capture, and slap that into a GAME. Into a game that is great and possibly game of the year, no less.

You however, after filming several hours of cinematic realized the player actually has to do something for it to count as a game. So the token effort is appreciated, but it really falls short. Beyond: Two Souls weaves a very interesting and engaging tale, and I will say there are marked improvements over the previous games. But it's too long to keep rewatching like a favorite movie, and there's too little interaction to keep the replay value high.

It is absolutely worth a sit through, but I couldn't blame you if passed on buying it.

A digital crying Willem Dafoe might be the most terrifying monster in a video game, ever.