Silent Hill: Downpour (PS3/XB360): Caught out in the rain.

Last July, when I was trying to get some content into this school project of mine, I did a small preview piece for this release, but more than that it was more of a reflection on one of the greatest games I've ever played in Silent Hill 2. The major crux of the whole preview was that I wanted the folks at Konami to stop promising me that their next game will be as great as Silent Hill 2 was, because they just hit on almost every point they could with the game and its proven to be near impossible to repeat the magic. Well they have finally released the new title, and as a die hard fan of this series lets see how this one stacks up to the legend.

SILENT HILL: DOWNPOUR: (PS3)

The game opens with our protagonist Murphy Pendelton, who is currently serving a sentence for stealing a police cruiser, is being guided along the hallways of Ryall State Correctional Facility by an officer by the name of Sewell. As they approach what appears to be a showers, this officer clearly doesn't seem to be operating on the best ethics, as he informs Murphy that if all the showers are going it gets so steamy in there that the guards can't see whats happening on camera in there. Enter a fat, naked, and sequestered prisoner by the name of Patrick Napier, whom after a brief exchange with Murphy finds out they used to be neighbors. After this brief exchange of pleasantries, Murphy violently beats the shit out of Fatty McGee and murders him in the shower. The game cuts to Murphy in his cell, being taken out for transfer to a maximum security facility for his actions. On the drive to his new location the bus approaches the Silent Hill city limits, and because of the destroyed roads that surround them, the bus tips and tumbles down a ravine. Murphy awakens outside the bus with his cuffs removes and starts to make his escape into the town of Silent Hill. 

In my earlier preview of this game, I had made a comment about how great I thought the character models looked and how highly saturated the colors were. Well Konami has addressed this issue by making you view the entire game through a burlap sack of threshed grain. Look, I totally get that the theme of the game is supposed to be dark and grainy. Its meant to build the atmosphere of it being dark, cold, and alone. But there are ways to execute this and have it look good. Downpour only succeeds in making all of the visuals look faded and blurry. Regardless of how I adjust my TV, the game just looks like shit. It doesn't look grainy in a cool cinematic way, it looks like they programmed this game for the Gamecube or Wii and they upscaled it to play on next generation consoles. it just looks bad and underdeveloped, which is a real shame because the characters themselves have probably never looked more lifelike than they have in this installment of the game. All of the up close and clear images of Murphy look really good. To me its almost like they motion captured using Ashton Kutcher (which isn't a great marketing point, I'm just saying it looks impressive). But when you in the thick of action or any outdoor scene you have to watch it in blurry vision. I've been told that it looks better on the 360 version of the game, but that's not a valid excuse as far as I'm concerned. It is really annoying and should not be acceptable with the graphical abilities of today's consoles.

Murphy Pendelton. The character models are incredibly lifelike.
Maybe when he gets out of Silent Hill he can deal with the Butterfly effect.

The water effects are very cool. And when lightning cracks you immediately
start to panic because you know baddies are coming for you. 

One of the greatest and most notable strengths of Silent Hill franchise is the creepy and terrifying monsters you get to fight. More so than that, many of them went along with the theme of the games and the characters you play. In the first game Harry Mason is looking for his lost daughter, so you find yourself in the school fighting scary little skinless children in a demonic version of the school. In two, Jaaaaaames Sundtherland is followed by a sexier representation of his terminally ill wife so he would find himself in hospitals, fighting off twitchy deformed nurses and sets of legs joined at the waists as he's hunted by an executioner for ending the life of the one he loved. In the third installment, Heather Mason is forced to face her previous lives as Cheryl and Alessa and subsequently her role to become the rebirth of a god, so many of the monsters have very effeminate features or religious symbolism attached to them. They started to get away from this form of thematic  monster in the The Room and only really went back to it during the boss fights in Homecoming to represent the children sacrificed, but the monsters were all still kind of cool and still creepy looking. They were able to compliment the theme and tradition well. In Silent Hill: Downpour they really phoned it in and gave us some very lack luster "monsters", If you can even call them that. The enemies in this game that I have encountered so far are: A woman in rags with claws on her hands, A shirtless gimp in a ring gag with MMA fighting abilities, the same shirtless gimp guy only this time holding a knife, a giant skinless gorilla a giant mouth for a face, A blowup doll that sends transparent versions after me, a large man in a trench coat and gas mask, and a large glowing sphere that makes me disintegrate. Yeah ok, some of them are called prisoners and Murphy is a prisoner, but that's the only real connection and even that is lack luster. None of them are interesting or creepy, almost all of them humanoid. No originality to the monsters at all, so it just feels like I am fighting other people. This isn't Condemned, this is Silent Hill. Give me some cool deformed fucking monsters.

Lets just make a Human bigger and just put a big hole where his face is, that'll work
Really friggen phoning it in this time, Konami. you can do better than that. 

Yeah ok, they look weird, but their  just human. And that takes away from the ability to scare.

Another misconception that I had is that is that I thought we were going to go back to the fast paced frantic combat from Silent Hill: Homecoming, but in reality its actually a hybrid of the combat systems of Silent Hill 3, The Room, and Origins. The controls go back to that feeling of tank controls without actually using them so my grip on the combat feels kind of loose. The dodge roll from Homecoming is gone now and in its place is the block move from 3 and the charge up swing from The Room. With the controls being as clunky as the are, getting your lock on and timing your blocks always feels like a chore. They also brought back the weapon degradation from Origins but you can only hold one firearm and one melee weapon at a time. One one hand, this is super annoying because when you find a good weapon like a double edged axe you know its only going to be with you for a short period of time. However, it works really well where you in a in the thick of combat and you land a solid blow or block an attack and your trusty axe or pipe breaks in two, since you can't block attacks without a weapon in your hand, it leaves you with this moment of extreme tension where you are thinking "oh SHIT. I gotta get the hell out of here and find a weapon NOW." I usually hate weapons that break but in this case it really does work to make moments more tense and thankfully when you are near monsters you get an increase to your run speed so if you need to escape quickly you have the ability to do so. I can't think of how many times I've gotten stuck between two or 3 enemies only to have my axe break and the only weapon around is rock or a brick. My recommendation for the combat is this: Play the game for like an hour or two first. Then after you have a small handle on the controls, restart the game. You will breeze through the first area's again much more easily and you will be sitting on a pile of med-packs instead of trying to scrape by with one and hoping to last till you find the next one. They do a really nice gesture in the statistics screen where they give you the actual percentage of health you have instead of just a vague change of screen color or damage on your body so you always know where you are health wise. The combat is a bit loose but after a little while with it you'll get the patterns down and most of the enemies won't present you with much trouble.

The moment you start to think you have the combat down: you don't.

There is a severe lack of boss fights in this one too. I've been playing the game for well into double digit hours now I can only really think of one single fight that probably qualified as a "boss" per say, and even that was over so quickly that it didn't feel like much of a boss fight. That is kind of a disappointment because although Homecoming's fighting system wasn't perfect, it had a number of interesting looking bosses and different patterns to defeat them. I have no idea why boss fights are disappearing from gaming but its a damn fucking shame. Having tough, interesting bosses at the end of sections are incredibly satisfying and it gives you the opportunity to use all you have learned up to that point. I was sad to see them disappear in this one.

The game is glitchy as fuck as well. Right out the gate there are a fuck ton of frame rate issues that seem to come and go at random. Whenever you are trying to cam up or down you can almost always count the frame rate to glitch and find yourself starting up that the ceiling for no real reason at all. This hopefully is something that can be fixed with a patch and hopefully they do so soon.

I also mentioned in my prior review that I was not happy that Akira Yamaoka wasn't going to do the soundtrack and score of this game. If you haven't heard the music from the previous games, its so fucking good that I feel I need a change of pants afterwards. The music is just that good and sets the tone well. In this one, we are treated to the musical stylings of... ugh.. Korn.. To its credit, the game is not playing "freak on a leash" while I am fighting monsters. The tones are generally set well, but you are treated to a terrible song during the opening cinematic. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn is still there for two songs, but both of them are instrumentals, and to be honest I have become kinda attached to her a bit so I was unhappy to not get to hear her sing. I suppose it could be worse overall but now the team, artists, and now music of the original series is completely gone. Nobody who worked on the original Silent Hill's are here anymore. That should be a sign that this series should probably come to a close.

Through all these complaints I've made though, there were two big saving graces that turned a game I was very sour on to start into a game I couldn't wait to finish: Story and Atmosphere. The nature of Silent Hill both in game play and the town itself, hinge on the fact that you are completely alone. And it goes back to the feelings of the first two games, where you can spend hours wandering around the town from location to location trying to find the path you need or solve the number of side quests you find along the way. You might occasionally have a monster creeping on you but the city on the whole feels completely devoid of life, leaving this looming sense of dread that something bad is going to happen as you play through the game. Typically in the realm of Silent Hill, people who wander into the city are generally being haunted or punished for some atrocity they have previously committed and as you play through it you learn about what it is they did. In Downpour, you pretty much know what went wrong right out of the gate because it opens up with a murder, but as you play through you slowly learn what it is Murphy did that got him locked in prison and the truth about what really happened there. It starts off a little bit sluggish and yes, unlike previous games there doesn't seem to be much connection between the protagonist and the town of Silent Hill itself like other versions of the game, but the longer your press on the more engrossing it becomes. By like 3-5 hours in, every complaint I had about the controls or graphics were crushed by my need to see what happens next or figure out whats going on. It really has been one of the better stories in the Silent Hill mythos in recent years and it definitely is one of the first games in this series in a long time that set a generally scary atmosphere.

You will ALWAYS be looking over your shoulders. Enemies really sneak on you.

Definitely hit on atmosphere. Low light, eerie music, and that dread of being alone

Silent Hill: Downpour has been met with fairly average reviews from the major outlets. I suppose that is fair, the game is not doing anything to break the Silent Hill mold, and it definitely is not the 2nd coming of Silent Hill 2 like that has been promised over and over again. But they did take some steps in the right direction to try to bring back some of the feel to make the series feel scary again. I think with a few tweeks the game could have been much better than it is, but if you are a fan of the series as I am, I think you'll enjoy one more trip through Silent Hill.  Until they start bringing back in the people that made this franchise great, it will never bring back that charm that made is special again. The game is definitely worth a play through or two, but this franchise is probably on its last legs. I can't imagine another Silent Hill is on the horizon.

Course if there is I'm sure I'll be getting it cuz I'm a sucker. Just stop promising me Silent Hill 2.

Mass Effect 3 (XB360/PS3): Reaping our emotions.

I've never been a big fan of sci-fi. There is a small number of games, movies, or comics that take place in space that holds my interest at all, and those that do the space aspect of it is fairly marginal at best. So it was a bit odd that I took a chance on the first Mass Effect. However, after forging through a VERY sluggish beginning, it ended up proving to be a pretty solid game with likable characters and probably one of the best dialogs for a create-a-character ever. Following along with Mass Effect 2, it contained almost everything I liked about the first and vastly improved the combat, I had become completely entrenched with the series. Now we hopefully finish the trilogy.

MASS EFFECT 3:(XB360)

Two years after the events of Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard (who for the sake of this review was a she in my game) after going into the collector base and saved her crew by thwarting to the collectors attempt to build a new Reaper, was rewarded by being forced to return to earth, relieved of duty, and kept under surveillance. Quite the thank you for saving the world twice, huh. So after two years of trying to warn everyone about the impending disaster,  the galactic council did nothing to heed Shepard's warnings about the Reapers, which are giant squid-like machines who's sole purpose is to purge organic life every millennium or so, and begin to panic and scramble as the Reapers have chose to start this time at earth. As they begin to lay waste to human civilization, Shepard gives the earth council a big I told you so and takes to the sky to try to assemble the entire galaxy to stop them in a massive man vs. machine war to determine the fate of the galaxy.

You'll have to forgive that bit of a in a nutshell intro to the story of this series, but I would be hard pressed to give a accurate full synopsis of the deep story this game actually has. Mass Effect's biggest strength is it's incredible storytelling and it continues again in this installment. Usually when I play a game with multiple sequels, I have to piece together what happened between them or anything I have done in the prior games is only marginally acknowledged. Mass Effect does an excellent job of linking together your decisions in the previous games and adjusts the cast and situations based upon them, and they do a great job of putting some weight behind some of these actions. So if you are like me and you like to slut around in your Mass Effect adventures, some of the people you come across during the course of your adventure might have something to say about it (Liara was mad I cheated on her with Garrus, but she forgave me. She didn't forgive me when I had lesbian fun time in the shower with Traynor. The Asari are such prudes). There is one decision involving the Geth and the Quarians that I won't spoil that my actions of Mass Effect 2 directly effected, and left me with a real "Sophie's choice" on how to a approach it because there really wasn't a win/win. It really is one of the few games where every little decision that you make in previous games affects how things play out in the new versions. The conversation wheel it uses is still probably one of the best mechanics for RPG discussion I've seen used to date and I was glad to see a series give a created character a voice and actually have it sound good. To the games credit you can skip a lot of text if you want, and you don't have to go through all the side quests which would drastically cut dialog times.

The voice acting for the most part is a cut above average. It's not Uncharted series level in how good and natural the acting sounds, but for the most part the emotions of the characters are conveyed well. Its only real faults come into when Shepard tries to raise his voice, it just comes out forced and hokey. "Ok male Shepard? You a really mad here so read this line like your doing a high school play."(and next time happier and with your mouth open). They don't hit on the all of the voices though. Some of them sound a bit samey after a while, like one voice actor is doing multiple character voices. But its definitely better than say Elder Scrolls: Skyrim where they basically had one male and one female to do every voice in the universe of the game. And the chief screw up in the voice acting comes in the play of the DLC character Javik. While I don't have any problem with his character or his portrayal of the Prothean *spoiler alert* he speaks in a what sounds like an incredibly thick Jamaican accent, and I can't help but think of or make a "Cool Runnings" joke every time I hear him talk regardless of how serious the conversation at hand is. It just comes off as goofy to me.

Mordin's voice is annoying, but is probably one of the more interesting
characters in the series. Shame he's not playable this time.

The game also rewards you for continuing to play and keeping your saves as well. I got to start off my Mass Effect 3 starting off at like level 25. The enemies tend to scale with you but it was nice to have a lot of abilities right out of the gate. If you are playing the game from scratch you essentially can be one of three starting classes (Combat, Tech, Biotic) or a hybrid of two of them. They can call them different all they want, but essentially the only thing that changes from class to class is what weapon you are better suited with and what abilities you get with them. My Shepard was an infiltrator so I used mainly pistols and sniper rifles. Those two coupled with a fireball ability and two well picked teammates, I pretty much didn't need anything else for the duration of the game since I could headshot an enemy from a mile away on a whim. That being said, they really polished up the gun combat that made Mass Effect 2 so much fun. I still find some trouble moving in and out of cover and the run can be kind of finicky when it wants to, but the game has never been more polished than this version.  I would still say its a little behind the true third person shooters like Uncharted or Resident Evil as far as fluidity and control go, but those games don't splice in the RPG and team controls into the scheme so I'm willing to over look it. Basically after one mission in I was running and gunning and smashing husks like I never put down Mass Effect 2. 

There are a couple of things that bother me about the game though. Most annoyingly to me was the load time issue. I thought this was something we've worked through? Open ended sandbox games I can cover huge maps seamlessly without ever having to stop game play. Every single little change of map you have to wait through some stupidly long loading time. Its particularly annoying when you are on your ship, the Normandy, and you are trying to change floors to talk to your whole team. You will often find yourself looking at the map first to see how many of your crew are on the same floor so you can hopefully do them all in one trip. Sorry Vega, your douchebag macho bravado can wait till I actually have to upgrade my weapons for me to make the trip to talk to you. I hate using the elevators. Really, it wouldn't be so bad if instead of just giving me some boring loading screen, they just covered it up with a small animation of my characters in the elevator like the did in the first installment. Hell, with the amount of time spent waiting at loading screens, it would have been a great idea to put in random dialogues between the team like you did in Dragon Age Some of those just made having certain party members together all the more worth it. 

While I just raved about how good the combat was, I do think that whole duck behind 4 foot wall mechanic a la Gears of War (IE: Gears of BORED) is getting incredibly played out at this point. I don't mind getting to use a little cover but this game of long distance whack-a-mole is being used to the point of nausea in literally every single 3rd person shooter in this current generation. Don't get me wrong, its a strong mechanic and still fun to play, but with regenerating health, med-kits, and no shortage of cover, the game didn't really present a challenge until the final missions of the game. I'd also like there to be a harder line in decision to use either regenerating health or the med-kid systems. Giving us both pretty much makes the game a walk in the park the entire way through it.

At this point in the series, I didn't really see the need to introduce us to a bunch of new teammates. The game was already feeling pretty epic enough with the cast we have already established, and it was kind of heartbreaking to see an old face come back only to let you know you aren't going to get to use them. Most namely the Jack character as she seems to be going through a major point of development where she's trying to change her image and outlook, and has grown attached to people now, but you only really get to learn about this during one mission. Which is a real shame because she's a billion times more interesting than the aforementioned Vega asshole. Some of the new ones are good though, once EDI became playable she never left my party. Bottom line is you spent two whole games letting me become attached and empathetic to characters in your universe, least you can do is actually let me use them. Quit sticking me with Tali, Tali sucks.

This is actually a Photoshop, because nobody uses Kaiden.

The last thing I should probably address is the ending of the game. If you have access to the Internet (which you should, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this), you no doubt have already learned that fans were not at all happy with how the game ends. I don't intend to spoil anything but to give an idea of it, I felt there's a bit of a lack of epilogue or closure. However, they entire course of the final missions of the game began to feel like one very long extended ending. Everything that took place was so crazy and intense it was really difficult to put down. It was all capped of with an incredibly difficult moral choice that was so iffy for each option that I had to pause the game, sit down, and take several minute to reflect what was going to happen to the rest of the universe. That to me is sign of excellent story writing and immersion, the fact that I had to have a serious argument with myself to make a true moral decision without being able just shoot from the hip. I became Commander Shepard in that moment, not just playing her/him. I can see how people would be upset by the ending, but I don't think I was as outraged as everyone else was. What DOES bother me however, is that all the bitching of whining and online petitioning that took place has actually forced Bioware to address the issue, and they intend to change or add on to the ending. This to me sets a very bad precedent because now the artistic creativity can be compromised just because the fans can raise a big enough stink about it. I loved the first Grudge movie (fuck you, I did), but I thought the second one was complete and utter garbage. Does this mean I can continue to write Sam Raimi letters and raise petitions to get him to come up with a better ending for the movie? No, of course not, and gamers shouldn't do it either. Somebody took the time to write out a complex and long tale for Commander Shepard and one would assume that they had the time and finances to see it through without cutting corners. So I take it as this is the way they intended to end the story. People may not like it but that's why we get to have an opinion, but we shouldn't be able to change a finished work.

Ultimately, I have to say I was incredibly satisfied with my experiences with the Mass Effect franchise and that is pretty impressive for a guy who gets bored with almost everything space related.  Each of these incredibly lengthily games I have managed to play through twice just so I can experience all the various different dialog trees if I was a hero or villain. It gave weight to my decisions and gave me a cast of characters to fall in love with. They continued to improve on the games mechanics to make a very entertaining and enjoyable 3rd person shooter. And most importantly, closure or no, it gives us a defining start and finish to this trilogy, and this day of DLC and numerous sequels, this is something I can really respect. You owe it to yourself to play all three of these titles but even if you play just one of them, you'd be hard pressed to not to enjoy yourself.

Oh yeah, and the Krogan are still fucking awesome.

Streetfighter X Tekken (PS3/XB360): Frustratingly Satisfying.

There was a bowling alley called Vine Lanes that used to be by my house when I was real little. My dad and I would go bowl and have a good time, but in between turns I would run up to the arcade machines to watch people play what would be my introduction to the Fighting Game genre in a game called Street Fighter 2. I just fell in love with the game. I thought the characters were great and it had a green monster who got covered in lightning, why wouldnt I love it? The game was awesome, and it would be a long time till I got an SNES to actually play it myself at home. Flash forward to high school and I come into the lunch room to see that they set up a Tekken 3 machine. I have dabbled with the Tekken franchise a little bit, but a group of 5 of us would fiercely do battle on that machine. Forced me to run out and buy the game and start practicing up. Between these two games I often wondered what a game would be like if these franchises squared off.  For more than 15 years that never seemed to happen, the Street Fighter franchise only ever wanted to tango with other 2d fighters. But on fateful comic-con teased a tag battle with Ryu and Chun-Li vs. Kazyua and Nina. I checked every day to reserve my copy and finally after this long wait, I get to sit down with.....

STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN:(PS3)

A meteorite made big headlines in the news as it became one of the first interstellar debris to hit the planet earth within last 400 years. It was estimated to burn up in the atmosphere in the planet fall and to do no damage to the environment. But when it struck in Antarctica, all the government found was a peculiar looking box in its place. They couldn't figure out how to open it or what its purpose was, all they knew is that it reacted to conflict around it, releasing a liquid of some type that caused a massive increase of power. Because this box seemed to cause conflict and fighting among the scientists there, they named the box Pandora. The two major entities, Shadowloo and the Mishima Zaibatsu, both realized the potential for such power and both decide that they want Pandora for themselves. In addition to these two groups, both universes characters all have individual motivations for acquiring Pandora for themselves as well.

Right, because Kazuya needed to be more of a bad ass.

Street Fighter x Tekken is the merged brain child of the Capcom's and Namco's major franchises. While the game has a strong resemblance to Street Fighter 4 most notably in its design, SFxT does a wonderful job meshing aspects of the two games together into one.  The rules in its actual game play rule structure is closer to Tekken Tag Tournament: each player makes a team of two characters and the first player to lose one of them loses the round. There are buttons and combos to allow you to tag out mid combo or at a cold stance, and the character who is currently resting will recover a portion of their health back, much like how it works in the Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Matches like most fighting games can be best of 1, 3 or 5 rounds. It also features a scramble mode where all 4 players are on the screen at the same time for just sheer mayhem.  SFxT controls will definietly feel more at home to the avid Street Fighter player, as it uses the same three strength punch and kick system they are used to.

Heavy Punch: Because sometimes a bitch doesn't get the message with a Light one.

Because of this the controls definitely have a more Street Fighter feel to it and team SF moves are generally unchanged and familiar (except you can't mash Chun-li's lightning kick anymore), team Tekken's move sets have been pretty overhauled. Some of the motions still feel familiar but there definitely has been a SF transition to them. I was alright at Tekken but jumping into this game with characters I was very familiar with like Lili, Julia, and Xiaoyu I would find myself getting whipped around until I actually studied the move sets. Many of the Tekken characters incorporate some kind of sidestep/dash move that allows them to pass through fireballs, but I still end up getting whacked when I try to use them. The game also borrows some of Tekken's recoveries when you hit the ground, giving you a chance for temporary invulnerability to get up quick or roll out of a corner after you hit the ground. There are some new mechanics too, like using the Pandora. Basically what this does is if your partner's life drops to less than 25% you can activate Pandora and bring out a pretty bitch'n looking evil version of your partner. You get a full super gauge and a massive boost to power, but you only have a small amount of time to finish off your opponent because if you don't your character loses. It looks cool as hell but it's never saved me from a fight. There is also a gem system that you can customize for each character. Adding gems will allow power, speed, defense or gauge boosts that trigger under certain conditions to help win fights. I haven't played with them much myself because I'm more concerned with learning the moves.

There are a few things about this game that piss me off though. Again to make things more comfortable for Tekken players, you are able to wall and ground bounce your opponents to string together your combos. This infuriates me to death, because if you ever have to play one of "Those Guys" like Ive talked about before, you are going to get combo'd up and then your character will never hit the ground. Its happened to me dozens of times already and it makes me so fucking mad I have to walk away from the game before I'd smash my tv. This of course brings me to my other problem. Combo's have incredibly tight window, and the average gamer like myself will probably find themselves able to get through about half of the combo trials. Often I've found myself losing my shit because I can't chain together a LP + LP + Roll forward MP combo because it doesn't think I've timed my LPs right. And there is no option to see the combo performed so I can't even figure the timing out. Perhaps this is done to discourage the button masher, but I do feel it makes the game very difficult for those who don't play a lot of fighters. I've played a lot of Tekken and Street Fighter 4 and my very first play through the game on medium, My team of Lili and Asuka was getting relentlessly destroyed by the computer in the last 4 match ups of arcade mode. It wasn't till I started spamming a sweep combo Asuka has that I was able to muscle my way to the finish. On a side note: When playing the computer? Balrog is the worst match-up ever. He will fucking predict any move you make. It automatically goes to hardest difficulty.

I am really happy with the character selection for the most part. Both sides took a group of the games most popular and notable faces. The Tekken side specifically has a very good mix of very different styled characters and a lot of my favorites made the cut (Lili, Xiaoyu, Kazuya, Julia, Hworwang) and the Street Fighter side thankfully didn't over load on the shotoken fighters. I was kinda bummed to not see Sakura in the game or the return of Karin, but I suppose that's a small price to pay to not have to deal with prick's who like spam kick with Eddy Gordo or Christie. Or any of the doofus characters like Dan (Dan is the fucking worst, get over it). The SF side is basically filled with the mainstays you know and love, with some new and returning faces such as Poison or Rolento. There may be some minor balance issues (everyone online plays Rolento and Ken)  but otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the characters turned out.

Poison has a very interesting background. Definitely a great addition to the franchise.

I do have some issues with the characters through. First off? Why the fuck does Cole McGrath not get a storyline? You guys went and got the voice actor who played him in the game, why the hell not give him a story line so he's not just grunting? I felt cheated. But not as cheated as I felt when eagerly took the game home to find out that Fat Dopey Mega Man / Pac-Man were locked out? Why the hell were they locked out? You guys promoted that they would be in the game and even caused a bit of controversy because of it. why did I have to arbitrarily wait two weeks for the stupid unlock code? They were already "exclusives" that were free for me. I cant think of any reason for it. And lastly, the DLC controversy.. I don't want to get too in deep with this rant because I've already done it before, but the fact that Capcom got caught with their pants down with fully playable DLC on the disc and cut a bullshit excuse about it saving space and not being an obvious cash grab is just infuriating. They refuse to show loyalty to their rabid fan base, and that's pretty insulting. Everyone knows the characters are in there and their gonna have the nerve to charge more for them. It would have been a nice act of goodwill to just own up to it and say, "OK,  you got us. Were sorry about that. Here, we are giving out the unlock codes for free." Pffft. Fat chance.

Seriously, Why didn't Cole get a storyline? You suck, Crapcom.

Through all my complaining though, this game is everything that I wanted it to be. Just a wonderful mix of two cast of characters that I've been fantasizing a cross over for well over 15 years at this point. They actually implemented a story so its fun to play single player and the multiplayer is everything that it should be. The controls seem to be very natural to the average player but also seems right at home for the hardcore "that guy" gamers as well.  It makes me very excited to see how the upcoming Tekken X Street Fighter will play out with the SF characters on a 3D plane and possible the removal of their projectile attacks. If you are fan of the 2D fighters I see absolutely no reason why this game shouldn't part of your collection.

SSX (PS3/XB360): Not the king of the mountain, but still a wild ride.

When I first got my PS2 I remembered reading an old Gamepro magazine giving me reviews for some of the best launch titles to come out with this system. One of ones it mentioned was a snowboarding title called SSX.  I used to be a fan of Coolboarders on the PSX so I figured that might be a good starting game. But alas, I couldn't ever seem to locate a copy of it at time of purchase so I settled on another great game in Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore (I still have no fucking clue why project epsilon was a failure, or what it is). Some time had passed and a game called SSX Tricky came out which was essentially an expansion but with much more polished and entertaining characters (and voiced by some big name actors for the time) but what made the game great was the over the top gravity and logic defying special tricks the characters could perform. I got my hands on a copy of this one, and this is where the addiction began. After a strong followup with SSX 3 I dropped off with this franchise and after a lack luster following releases, the game faded away. But now it makes its grand return from a 5 year absence on the next gen consoles in....

SSX:(PS3)

So its a few years out of the SSX tour and Zoe, Mac, and the rest of the SSX crew have formed a team with a vow to conquer the 9 deadliest mountains in the world.  But one of their teammates, the wealthy Griff Simmons, has broken off of the team and decided to do it all himself and taking his massive amount of funding with him. So to try to outdo him and complete the descents first, they are "streaming" all their attempts live to raise funding. Its a race to conquer the mountains first.

I'd only sponsor Mac if the video is him boarding right into a wall at 70.

And sadly, that is pretty much the extent of the story line for this SSX game. You start off the game playing as  Zoe, who's basically the captain of the SSX team. For each location you travel to, Zoe goes on a 1 on1 trip down the mountain in either a race or trick course. When you complete it, it gives you a small vignette about what they have done after the SSX competitions of old. Its done in comic book format but is done with basically a generic rock soundtrack in the back, no voices though. It is kinda nice to go back and see what became of some of the characters, but much like SSX 3 and the subsequent releases after, it comes of as very lacking. In SSX Tricky the game contained elaborate back stories for every single character. Every character had a mock interview where you learned more about all the very different characters. All of them were voiced by a notable actor or musician. They all had different mannerisms that made them interesting and notable. At the beginning of each event if they were racing with a friend they would banter with them and be encouraging, if they were up against a rival they would trash each other. All these little aspects add interest to the game and allow you to develop a story in your head. For me, I liked this system much better than what is in this new SSX.

Elise is a bit less of a twat and more of a team player this time around.
Probably because Lucy Liu is no longer her voice actress.

The presentation is alright I suppose. The menus are pretty boring. You click around some text menus as a globe shows you all the mountain locations all around the world and shows you the general path of the tracks. you pick from 9 tracks and have to complete a character race and then a group race and trick course on a half slope then a full slope. Once you complete those you tackle your deadly decent. There is pertinaciously nothing special or interesting about it. Perhaps I am looking through rose tinted glasses but again, going back to SSX Tricky,  I remembered there being cool animation transitions between the menus and different character reactions and dialog when you picked the, its just a subtle thing but it was at least entertaining. This one I just have to listen to the same crappy techno song as I feed through the menus...

Ugh... The soundtrack in this game is just terrible. All of the previous soundtracks had a cool mix of rock, punk, rap, techno and dance. While DJ whoever in every game is kind of annoying but it had a handful of tracks I enjoyed like Yellowcard's "Way Away" or NERD's "Rockstar". This game is just overloaded with droning heavy base techno and fucking dubstep. Just a nonstop barrage of wubs and bass drops. I understand that there are new genre's of music and perhaps some of them tend to lead more to the tastes of people who actually snowboard but for fucks sake, a little variety would have been nice. Give me some things that sound drastically different or at least try to at least make the stuff sound a little different. I usually can only make it about 15 minutes before I cave in and play a cd instead. If Skrillex's track comes up before then then that 15 minutes is drastically shortened. To the games credit I can add my own music or turn off songs I hate, but its just adding steps that keep me from playing the game.

You need and online pass to do any of the online features in this game, but I don't know why. the game  has no multiplayer, but it does track your friends times and scores so you can try to beat them and earn additional experience and money when you do, but really EA? You are gonna charge people who get it used an additional 10 bucks for this privileged? Screw you.

The graphics are about what I would expect out of a snowboarding game. All the tracks are as open as a mountain will let you be and you are not overly penalized if you want to try different paths down the mountain. There are occasional pitfalls but otherwise all the mountains have their own unique design to them depending on what course you are doing. Alaska has the tendency of avalanches, the Rockies are a heavily wooded area, the African mountains are naturally less snowy. each of them have their own weather effects and the animations throughout the game are smooth with no signs of frame rate slowing down.

They did change the controls a bit from the previous ones. Instead of the boost being on the face buttons and the grabs being on the shoulders, they have been inverted for this game. It make more sense to keep the grabs by the thumb where gamers are have been conditioning their skills, but if you are an SSX veteran you'll find yourself going up there to grab and hitting more buttons than you need to and probably messing up your trick in the process.. Its not particularly frustrating and never is bad enough to make me stop playing it. They also added a rewind button for a small point penalty. You can do it a few times a race, to undo a mistake but it doesn't rewind the other boarders so be careful with its usage.

The last change is for each mountain you play a different character, each character has a unique ability or gadget that they need to make it down their deadly descent. Elise's course has a lot of long gaps so she uses a wingsuit to glide the distance to make them. Kaori is on a high summit with thin air, so you have to occasionally have to take a few breaths so the screen doesn't black out on you. When in the open explore mode you can give all the characters all the items so you can use your favorite to take all the descents with all the characters you like. Most of the tracks are pretty easy to get down but when hit the deadly descent the difficulty really spikes up. And boy does it, take a look at my video below for proof.  Aside from those small changes the game feels a lot like SSX 3.

I really fell right into the routine of gliding down the mountain and hitting big tricks to get the boost up. In the explore mode I would see another person on my friend list with a faster time and obsessively play the same course over and over trying to edge my time just a few seconds faster than him. Some of the descents are pretty fun and found myself looking to play them again after I beat them. I feel that this game is just going to be one of those titles that suffer from Silent Hill 2 syndrome in that they hit the game really well on the mark once and they have been trying to replicate its greatness since. The game is not at all bad and I really had fun with it as I played. Its definitely a good little time sink and I'm sure when I run out of new titles to play I will come out to this one. If you are new to the SSX franchise than this would be a pretty good entry to the series but for the long time fans of the game they will probably find themselves feeling nostalgic for the SSX's of old instead. It was fun to come back to this franchise and I had fun with it for the time I was playing it, I just don't know if will have the same level of success that their previous games had especially going up against all the other triple A stuff coming out this month. I would give the game a recommendation, but maybe not for 60 bucks.