Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (XB360): A Torn Review

As many of you know and have heard from previous reviews, I am not a fan of first person shooters. I never have been. I liked Wolfenstein 3D because it was it was the first FPS game I'd ever played. Then I got to play Doom and Doom 2 and those were excellent. But from there on I just kind of faded away from the genre.

Pretty much for then on that genre did zero for me. There were a handful of good shooters that managed to hold my attention like Bioshock, Resistance 3, or Left4Dead but ultimately the genre as a whole bores me to tears. They all feel the same to me so I typically don't waste my time and money on them. However, in an effort try to broaden my horizons I stepped way the fuck out of my comfort zone and Redboxed the unstoppable juggernaut of the FPS genre....

CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 2: (XB360)

Now if there is anything that bores me about FPS games, its the same old stodgy military ones. You'll note the titles I mentioned above do not fall under that archetype. Because of this, I'm probably going to do a very bad job of explaining the story here but I'm gonna give it a crack.

From what I gather, the story jumps between alternate time lines between David Mason and his father Alex. David leads a special forces unit in pursuit of Raul Menendez, the leader of the populist movement Cordis Die. We learn in the Alex chapters that Menendez chapters that his current war stems from the death of his sister who was inadvertently killed by Alex's partner Frank Woods (who narrates the past chapters) because Menendez's group captured woods and tortured him.

The chapters as Alex depict war from 1986 and cover the rescue of woods, the murder of Menendez's sister and the subsequent chase. The David chapters are modern in 2025 and frankly all I know is that they are still chasing Menendez. Menendez uses cyber terrorism to cripple the Chinese stock exchange and it causes a ban on the the release of rare earth elements and Alex basically works covertly in this new era cold war between China and the US. All of this eventually leads to gaining control of the US unmanned military drones and robots to be turned against the US.

Woods narrates the 1980's chapters and is your support during those missions

Shitty explanation? Well that's about all I understood from it. The game after one cut-scene immediately dropped me off in the middle of a desert battle with gunfire flying and shit blowing up constantly. Clearly, this game was not intending to hold my hand while I tried to figure shit out. I also find it difficult to sympathize with any military protagonist because I can't stand that Jarhead mentality. I'm willing to support em when their fighting to keep me safe, but they tend to be the biggest douche in a bar.

Really, out of all of the characters shoved into my face in this nonstop rush of military rhetoric the only one that I found genuinely sympathetic was the villain, Menendez. Does some bad things to try to care for his sister, she gets killed in a conflict she has nothing to do with, and he seeks revenge for it. Simple, easy to understand.

Seems to be the only guy in this game with any legit justification of his actions.

The controls for the most part seem intuitive enough, but then again there are is really little strategy to a game like this. There are really only 2 buttons you need to know in order to really play this game: the Aim and the Trigger. Pretty much everything after that from what I found is useless. Maybe you can duck behind some cover, or if you are as impatient as am I am learn that the L3 button dashes. But what this game instilled in me is if you aren't running and shooting you aren't doing it right.

Speaking of being patronized the game has a pretty shitty level of respect for your intelligence as well. Lots of games will give you checkpoint markers or small instructions. But COD:BO2 really seems to go out of the way to remind me that I don't know what I'm doing. "Follow this asshole, blow this up, go this way, no not that way stupid, boom." The second I deviate from where it is it thinks I should be going that's pretty much the moment a cheap kill hits me.

There was one desert scene where I was supposed to follow two guys on horseback. My first 4 attempts I followed them outright and it resulted in me getting shot to shit and restarting the mission. My next two I tried to slow down and fight who were shooting at me, but if I did this for longer than 5 seconds the game screamed at me for not keeping up with them and failed the mission and made me restart. I tried to maneuver in other directions and it failed me for not following my team. The game was pissing me off.

I hated this mission so much

Not to mention if you aren't active military or you spend your evenings masturbating to NRA magazine, the weapon load outs are going to make you feel retarded too. I can identify the following guns maybe: An M16, an AK47, a Desert Eagle, and maybe an UZI. But the guns in this games could be barcodes for all I know. So when I am presented with like 30 weapons with names such as "SDFK1269869" or the ever sexy "Mpoumhasedhi14789632KSUN41" just put the fucking word AUTOMATIC on the top of the screen for the uneducated idiots like myself so I can just get to the fucking game already.

Despite all this, there were a handful of things that I did like about the game (which kind of surprised me). The first thing that grabbed my attention is how smooth and clean the graphics looked. Maybe its because the xbox has a better frame rate, or the makers of Call of Duty are really good at producing their product, but I literally marveled at how smooth and clean the graphics looked. It really did go a long way in slipping into the immersion of the game. I'm usually one that says graphics don't make a game but they certainly helped here.

And for a guy who doesn't like first person shooters or basically anything military related, I found myself getting more into this game than I figured I would. Pretty much from the moment I sat down with it I was able to crank out 4 or 6 hours of it without ever really noticing the time passing. Once I got the controls somewhat  down, I found myself flying through the missions and slipping in and out of iron sight aim like I've been playing FPS games my whole life.

The zombie mode was pretty fun as well. It has a survival mode which was simple enough but I tried the Tranzit mode and the only thing I can really complain about it is doesn't really explain what the fuck you are supposed to be doing. I came to find out that I was supposed to pick things up so I could build something to open a door, but it doesn't really explain how to use it or what my ultimate goal was. I definitely think that COD:BO2 probably has some of the worse conveyance I've played in a game, which is pretty impressive considering it tries to hold your hand but still doesn't manage to tell you anything.

I've played enough zombie games. When you headshot, they fucking drop.
They don't in this. I call bullshit.

However, this cheeky change of pace did bring up one major issue. Something I didn't want to do. The reason this game is as huge as it is, is because of its multiplayer. So I decided if I was going to be as objective as I can about this, I have to play all its aspects. So I used one of my one month cards to renew my gold account and I logged into the multiplayer. Decided to start off with something simple and jumped into a team death match. This is exactly what happened the first time I tried to play an online match:

-Finding game.... Game found. Entering Lobby.

-CannonMan: Hey everybody. How are we doing tonight?
-Shitdick12 year old: (Screaming) THIS GUY IS FUCKING LEVEL ONE. SOMEBODY KICK THIS NIGGER JIZZ BUCKET.
-CannonMan has left the game.

If I was a judge, Child abuse cases would have much lighter sentences
if the term "Xbox Live" showed up in the case. I hate children.

Xbox Live and its community can go fuck itself. It is hands down the worst community of people on the face of the planet (which is impressive considering how shitty the Gunbound community was). I don't give a shit how good some players are, and I don't even mind a little bit of smack talk when you play a game. But I will tell you something that I constantly told the parents who would shop for games when they come into buy their kid a game like this: There is absolutely nothing a developer can put into their video game that is more offensive then the entitled trolling little shit dick kids who play these games. 

Go and log into YouTube. You will find hundreds of videos of kids and teens saying saying some of the most disgusting vile shit I've ever heard in my life, and this is coming from a guy who says the word fuck a lot. They just ruin the game for me. The constant screaming, the constant swearing, the constant racism and sexism. Where the fuck are the parents of these people? It is completely intolerable.

So seriously, I've said this before and I'll say it again that two things need to happen. One, Xbox and PlayStation need to put on age filters one profiles so I have the option to not play with kids. Two, whenever you hear a kid screaming obscenities for no real reason. Do not engage them, Report their name, try to get everyone in the room to do so as well. Start banning these fucking accounts.

Alright, got that out of my system. So after removing my headset and changing the audio settings, I tried again, this time only playing a regular death match. I found immediate aggravation because in these games you don't have regenerating health. Oh the game says you do but its bullshit because if you get shot once, its too late. You are already dead. My first game went embarrassingly poorly. It was a lot of me running around looking for something to shoot and being put down almost immediately.

But I started to get the hang of it. While I feel having some medium of a life bar is better for games like this, being able to put someone down quickly did work a little to balance the game for me. I never could break out of the bottom three of each death match I played, but my kill count generally rose with every game I played. I do feel its kind of stupid to give all the best players the best gear. Yes its a reward for leveling up, but it just makes the new players that much more at a disadvantage.

I will say however, it was very nice to see that I was able to log into the game and play the multiplayer without the need of a "Season Pass" or an "Online Pass". I understand companies like EA don't like not getting a cut of the used sales, but I really think nickle and dimeing the player is going to just hurt the gaming industry more than help it. Make us pay for maps and DLC, the online should come with the game new or not.

I picked this game up with the full intention of going off about how right I was, and that this game is stupid and is right to be called Spunkgargleweewee. But god damn it, it really wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It did confirm most of my suspicions for me. Military does nothing for me in story or game play, the online community pretty much deserves a massive genocidal purging, and that this game is strictly designed for its fan base.

But I do find myself unable to call it a bad game. I want to hate it, I really do. But the fact is I was able to sit down with it and was able blow a whole day off playing it. Of the multiplayer games I've played, I really did kinda get into this one. Would I buy this game? Fuck no. But if a group of friends were getting together to do like a Black Ops 2 lan party, I would probably show up to participate. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was its chance to try to sell me on the genre and this franchise of games. It failed to do so, but it did give me somewhat of an understanding of why its so popular.

Odin Sphere (PS2): The Last Great Game of a Generation

As I haven't had much to play of late, I find myself to be introspective. In this age of high tech hardware and top of the line graphics and cinematics in our video games, I have always been a massive advocate that high end life like graphics don't always make the game. Just take a look at some of the simplistically designed titles such as Limbo, Braid, or Disgaea. None of them have 3d out the ass and I've played those a lot more than I have some ridiculous cover based shooter. All a game really needs is solid core mechanics and is fun to play. Everything after that is bells and whistles. 

One game that truly emphasized this was one of final games to be released during the era of the Playstation 2. It came out with practically no hype that I heard behind it, and I picked it up completely on impulse knowing nothing about it. What I ended up purchasing was a game that I spent well over 120 hours to play through and was such a hidden gem I know am willing to throw my money at any product they intend to release in the future. I am speaking of course, of Vanillaware's loosely norse based mythological adventure......

ODIN SPHERE:(PS2/PS3)

The story of Odin Sphere is expertly crafted among 5 separate tales. When you start the game you take control of a young girl in her library attic. You pick up a tomb and sit down to read. In the world of Erion, Demon King Odin wages war against against the Fairy kingdom of Ringford to the south for control of a Crystallization Cauldron that has the ability to produce pyspher crystals. The war is waged in the wastelands of the former kingdom of Valentine, who's remaining survivors are cursed and trapped in the form of anthropomorphic rabbits called Pookas.

As the war wages, you take control of 5 characters and play along each of their adventures during this sorted timeline:
-Gwendolyn the Valkyrie, who is caught up in Odin's plan to distract one of the faeries agent's and is torn between the duty to her father and the love that develops to the agent.
-Cornelius, the prince of the neutral kingdom of Titania who is in love with the princess of the former kingdom of Valentie, and is cursed to become a pooka and sets off to reunite with his love and find out the truth behind his grandfathers death.
-Mercedes, the fairy princess of Ringford who is ill-prepared to lead and is caught up in an uprising of her cousin Melvin for the throne. She must quell the usurping before she can lead her people into war.
-Oswald, the Shadow Knight who was orphaned and adopted by Melvin, but is betrayed the Fairy kingdom when he falls for the valkyrie, Gwendolyn.
-Lastly there is Velvet, one of the two remaining uncursed survivors of Valentine and its former princess. She fights to stop Odin from using the cauldron because it is the reason Valentine was destroyed, and piece together ancient prophecies to try to stop a foretold Armageddon.

The game can best be described as a side-scrolling hack and slasher with RPG elements. Levels are broken up by story chapters where you get exposition about the character and the situation. Then you go into various levels of the game. The maps are all basically a series of combat challenges of varied difficulty. All of the maps are completely circular so you can't really get lost. If you continue going one direction it will eventually bring you back to where you started. The objective is to clear the map of enemies as quickly as possible.

When you defeat enemies, they drop phozons which you can absorb into your weapon. These allow you to use your various magic attacks but the more you collect they more they level your weapon as well. They are also used to grow seeds you can plant for recovery items. So there are many instances where you may want to release the phozons you collect, and while you don't get as many back when you release them, their experience does stack when you absorb them again.

As stated just one paragraph ago, you can plant seeds to grow various fruits and sheep (yes, you and grow sheep. No, I'm not kidding.) which you can harvest and use to recover your health. But one of the first mistakes I made was trying to hoard my healing items. What you want to do is start stuffing your face because as you eat, your health has an experience gauge too and every time it levels you gain a larger health meter. Some fruit will leave seeds so you can eat the fruit, plant the seed, release your phozons, and repeat. 

Lastly there is an alchemy system as well. By combining certain items with material bottles you get new items that can help in battle, recover health, remove status ailments, and so forth. You can also upgrade the bottle levels through simple multiplication to produce extra phozons to collect. So after some stages you may wanna spend a minute doing some item creation.

People who are very familar with 2D fighting will feel right at home with the combat. But what makes it fun is each character has a different style of weapon or a different type of a ability unique to their character. Gwen is a valkyrie and is able to use a long float that can turn into a downward dash. Cornelius is fast and nimble in his pooka form and has lots of quick moving and flipping combos to hack enemies with. Mercedes is a fairy and can fly while using her bow and so forth.

The graphics of Odin Sphere are probably one of the games best selling points. In an era of games of shades of brown and gun metal grey with lifelike sweat and grime glistening effects, it was a wonderful change of pace to have beautifully illustrated characters with bright vibrant colors that pop out and contrast well. The animations of the character sprites are well done and many of the monsters are original to set this great fantasy piece together.

The music is classical, and scores well with the game. There are a handful of notable tunes in the game but nothing so memorable you'd catch yourself humming it later though.

But what is incredibly noticeable about the sound is how well voice acted it was. All of the characters manage to speak in their own style accent that feels "medieval" enough to fit in with the the games setting. None of it really feels awkward or hokey, and they stay away from some of the anime stereotypes of giving a character an exceptionally high voice. Sure, there is an occasional exception to this but their characters are sympathetic and tragic and really bring emphasis to the story.

Its not without its flaws though. Because all the maps are circular, there really isn't any real exploration to be had in the game. You can pretty much play the entire game only moving in a single direction and can probably complete it. While each stage is a map of different areas to explore the only thing that changes from map to map is what type or the number of enemies appear.

Because of of the lack of exploration, the game concept can get a little samey. You are basically plodding along from one fight to the next. Since the controls are fairly tight, I think a little platforming in the game could have helped somewhat and led way to some complex boss battles. Its fun to play but by the end of the game you are more pushing to see the end of the story rather continued excitement  Its fun but can be a bit much to finish all at once.

And on the technical side, I played this on the PS2. There are a handful of boss fights, and I would say Odette in particular where there is just too much shit on the screen, and the frame rate starts to chug way down. I suppose it helps with precision to beat the boss but it is annoying. However, I am told on the PSN re-release they have since fixed that issue. So that's great.

What really made me fall in love with this game is that it took aspects of games that I love, none of which are original, and combined them together to make something I felt was really special. It was easy to get behind and fall in love with this universe, and its all capped off by a clever bit of ingenuity on how to properly unlock the final good ending in the game.

I really don't know what else I can say about it. I had never heard of Vanillaware before this one, but they have made me a huge fan of their work from one game alone. I am eagerly awaiting their upcoming PS3 release Dragon's Crown and and somewhat crestfallen that I never got to play their Wii title Muramasa: the Demon Blade. They also released a title on PSP called Grand Knights Story. Supposedly the last two were supposed to get PSN HD releases but that was last reported in 2010 and they have yet to see the light of day.

Odin Sphere is 20 bucks on the Playstation Network under its PS2 classics. It was a total impulse purchase but I'm completely thrilled with what I got. I easily cranked out 120+ hours to finish it and even now I have the urge to go back and play it further. As far as I am concerned it was the last great game on the PS2.

Bird Week (NES): I was guilted into posting this.

So some of you may remember the first review to start Rage Quitter 2012 was Bastion (even though google has it listed as dec 31st). But as you'd also remember, I didn't write the review. Big Sister wrote that one. Well She sent me a review to put up for the site. After reading this, I thought she was kidding. She wasn't. I can't believe I am considering posting this. But since I probably won't have anything new to put up till after xmas I figure why the hell not? So kick back back and enjoy Big Sister's work in the first ever Rage Quitter Retro Review.

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The last few years, we’ve been bombarded with a particular casual game themed around birds. I won’t name it here, because I know you all know what I’m talking about. In the wake of 21st century graphics and hyper realistic in-game physics, it’s easy for us to become so engrossed in the now that many of us forget the past, and an even greater many have no awareness of it at all. It is for that reason that I’m giving you a dose of gaming history. For us to appreciate what we have now, we must appreciate what paved it’s way. Birds taking center stage in top-of-the-line gaming has come before, my friends, in a little game called Bird Week.

BIRD WEEK:(NES)

This 1986 Nintendo title is the true forerunner and matriarch of all bird based gaming. And don’t be fooled by the title. The game Bird Week features not one mere week, but a full year of riveting bird action. It is a desperate tale of danger, devotion, and the harsh reality that comprises the life of backyard birds. Our story centers around a delicate mother bluebird struggling to feed and protect her babies amid the threat of violent predators. Her deep, emotional struggle as she must leave alone her weak and vulnerable young ones to search out food, even at great risk to her own self. 

The game begins in the sweet spring, when life is simple. Butterflies are plenty, and the only real threat is a...uh..penguin? Flying around aimlessly. He’s not as menacing as you might think. He really just flaps back and forth, minding his own business, but, if you run into him, you die. Don’t worry, if the 5 star play control isn’t enough to help you dodge the flapping fiend, you are not without the bird’s natural defense: mushrooms.

You can easily pick up a mushroom from the ground, fly over the predator, and drop it on his head, effectively taking him out of the picture until you’ve had a chance to feed your babies all the sweet, succulent butterflies they crave. When the babies have had enough they fly away, and the level is over. Congratulations, mama bird. You’ve made it through your fist Bird Week.

Maybe it's supposed to be a hawk? I have no clue.

The year crawls on. Sort of. The next level is Fall, even though it should be Summer, then even more Fall, with extra trees, then Winter, and then Summer. But who has time to nitpick over the awkward passage of time when you’ve got babies to feed. Each level bring new menaces and every one of them is hell bent on stopping you from doing what you were born to do. Feed those motherfucking birdlets.

Level two “Fall”, bring a jumping ground squirrel. Think it’s not much of a threat? Guess again. If the game is to scale, that squirrel can jump 9 feet straight up into the air. Just enough to, say, KILL A MOTHER BIRD WHO TRYING TO NAB BUTTERFLIES. The hawk is still present as well, but the squirrel makes a deliberate attempt to harm you, just like any squirrel would. You have your trusty mushroom, if you can manage to get it without the ground dwelling villain knocking you out of the sky in the attempt.

Upcoming seasons bring other antagonists too. Flying squirrels, woodpeckers, something that looks like a panda coming out of a hole in the ground, bats, bees, owls. How can one survive? IT’S UP TO YOU. There is even a bonus level, for the highly adept who can make it that far, allowing you a seaside vacation where you can spend a carefree week nibbling dragonflies. Hope you got a sitter. Those babies aren’t going to feed themselves.

Don't Worry. Butterflies are plentiful year round.

The real drive when you play bird week is the sense of desperation and urgency that you feel. You have to survive. You HAVE to get that food. Because if you die, those babies die. That’s it. Game over. You’re cold in the ground and your precious little ones will be ripped apart by the violent predators that lurk ever near. What decent human being could let that happen? I challenge you to find another game that bring such a sense of intense emotional responsibility to the player. You won’t find it. It exists only in Bird Week.



Beastie Bay (Android): Falling back off the Wagon.

What the hell is wrong with all of you? On several occasions on this site I have given a cry for help. I have an addiction.  Sometimes I stave it off for a while but eventually fall back into a bad habit and it consumes my life for weeks, sometimes months. It takes a lot of effort to get the willpower to stop but after a while I find a new version of it and BAM, I'm right back off the wagon (a phrase I have never really understood).

My drug of choice comes from delightfully 8-bit smack addictions that come from the fine people at Kairosoft, in yet another one of their goofy simulation titles. Now as I had mentioned in my first omniderp video their last one I played, Kairobotica, I noted that they started to get the knack of making the games more engaging by making the battle like a turn based JRPG instead of simulation. Now I am actually participating instead of watching. So naturally I was like a moth to a flame when they recently they started advertising a free game called....

BEASTIE BAY(Android)

So how do I explain a Kairosoft simulation without it coming off exactly like all the other ones I have previously done? Well, I suppose I can't in a way. The games always have a functional similarity between all of them and the major thing that changes between them is usually just the setting. In Beastie Bay, you're little Kairo-doofus finds himself stranded on an island with his faithful Dog/Cat/Duck. With not much else to do, naturally you decide to make it the best resort ever. You do this by building houses for you and your pet, and then scavenging for food and lumber.

As you play and progress, areas become unlockable for you to explore. In typical Kairosoft fashion this is done by sending your character to investigate which is done so automatically, but occasionally you will be attacked by the wildlife. In this situation your faithful companion will take to the forefront and fight to defend you. Each of the beasties break down into various elemental types such as normal, fire, water, lightning, ground, wind, and I believe ice. As you battle there are various types of bait that you can use to befriend them and have them join your team.....

Wait a pocket monstering second, did this come off as a bit like Pokemon to anyone else? Well, yes. The game's RPG mechanics borrow heavily from the core basics of the Pokemon franchise but I will say that the there are plenty of differences too. First off all, the beasties are fairly original in design. You may be able to trace similarities to monsters in other games but there weren't very many if any I could immediately trace to a Pokemon game.

And unlike in Pokemon, your beasties serve more of a purpose than a listing in a pokedex and a taken up slot in your computers box or whatever it was. When you build a house for your beastie on the island, they will continue to harvest wood and food which you need for building and exploration while not in your party. Depending on their surroundings, they will build various style of homes or attractions for the visitors to your island to spend money on. Money you can use on supplies, building, weapons and items for your travel.

The combat in Beastie Bay as I just mentioned is fairly similar to Pokemon in it is traditionally turn based with beasties only getting a handful of special attacks but its got a major difference to it as well. In this you have a party of 3 that can be out at one time, as can the enemies. If you set up of team of similar typed beasties, they will get a stat boost. Also, when you flee combat it takes you all the way out of the map you are exploring. The plus to doing this is if you come right back, you maintain your treasures you found along the way and may pick up at the spot you left off. So if you make it 70% in and find a particularly rough enemy you have to option to flee, rearrange your team, come back and get right back to the fight.

I found the simulation aspect of this game much more difficult than previous ones because its harder to figure out how to make different varieties of buildings. I know you want to build things with higher civilization and nature bonuses and get power to them, but I've never really found a way to include all these things and then have them laid out in a manner that visitors can reach them. I only ever make the same few buildings because I'm not sure what I need to change to get better housing or attractions.

When you complete the game (IE: get through 16 years of game time), you have the option to purchase a carry over data that allows you to start your new game with the majority of your unequipped items and exploration item levels in tact, as well as one of the beasties in your current party as one of your new starters. Its handy because you breeze through the beginning, but it makes capture hard because you kill them too easily. Actually, that may not be true since I haven't tried to catch one with full health. But it does give you a visual indicator when they are near death, which seems to lead into the theory that it affects capture.

I really can't really go into much more detail about the game without rehashing things I've already said about other Kairosoft titles. But this does have me thinking about them. Many of these, if not all but this one cost about 5 bucks on the respective marketplace for full versions. As far as apps go, that's not cheap. Yet here I am blissfully throwing them another 5 dollars every time I notice they sling a new one at me. And I think I might have figured out why.

You know when you think about an old game you used to play on your Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari, or  Commodore 64 (god I'm so old) and you get these warm fuzzy feelings about your favorite titles? Some of us dust off the old console and fall right back into blissful happiness getting back into it. I myself can always pick up River City Ransom and shred that bitch in 16 minutes. Now think about some of the newer games you have. How many of your dopey new FPS's do you go back to after the new one comes out? How many of you play a newer RPG again after you've beaten it? New games are fun, impressive looking, but have like zero lastability and most of them get traded.

I think Kairosoft realized that many of us have a passion for retro style gaming. They commit to focus on simple 8-bit sprites and sounds trigger a nostalgic charm that easily hooks anyone in their 20-40's. Their simple character design style is interesting, charming, yet familiar. And even though the majority of the games they produce are simulations with very little game interaction, they all have a highly addictive quality about that makes them engrossing, engaging, and very difficult to put down.

Now they are taking their titles and while not abandoning the style that created quite the fan base, now they are incorporating simple aspects from games of that past era to make their games feel new and familiar at the same time much like the original Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior. Its actually rather genius. But if stupid games like Farmville, Diner Dash, or even the more popular Sim City has shown us anything its that you can pretty much take any premise and make a game out of it.

With no shortage of western and Japanese culture to draw from or parodies like this one to produce, Kairosoft is obviously not dry on the idea well. And I can say without doubt that if their next title is something ridiculous like Waste Management Story, Antique Store Story, or Gay Bathhouse Story those rat bastards will find a way to make me love it for 5 bucks a download. (Please don't make that first or last one Kairosoft, I was kidding and don't want to have to explain why I have Gay Bathhouse Story on my phone).

That being said, I will say it was pretty cool to throw out their most in-depth game yet for free. Kudos, Kairosoft. So since it doesn't cost you a dime, I definitely say its worth a download. The only fault I can really think of is if this is your first Kairosoft game, it may set the bar too high for the past releases to compare.

Hasn't stopped me though....
Good lord it hasn't....
Somebody help me...

Resident Evil 6 (PS3): Taking Cues from the Movies.

I used to love Resident Evil. Actually, that probably isn't fair because I'd like to think I still do. When I go back to reflect on the series on the series as a whole, I can honestly say that there weren't any major disappointments. Sure, there were some bumps in the road (See Resident Evil: Survivor, Dead Aim, and Outbreak) but all and all the main core of the Resident Evil series was consistently good.

1, 2, 3, and Code Veronica continued to improve on a format I enjoyed. Then Nintendo of all people threw us a curve ball and threw us a nice glossy remake of this first game and prequel in Resident Evil Zero, both of which I loved.. Things were looking great and then they shook up the whole industry with Resident Evil 4, which stands as probably the best game on the Gamecube. Completely shook up the formula on how its played and was hugely successful. 5 tried to follow suit and throw in co-op but it never took off like the 4 did. It wasn't a bad game it just wasn't as great as 4.

So it was with somewhat of a heavy heart I picked up my version of Resident Evil 6. I was pretty excited to pick the game but the week before the game was released, a number of pretty credible review sources started unceremoniously smashing the game with poor reviews. I still picked the game up, but now its with the curiosity if this series truly could have stepped so off the mark. 

RESIDENT EVIL 6 ANTHOLOGY (PS3)

Its usually at this point in my reviews I like to give a recap of the story. But really that is becoming exceedingly more difficult to do as each release in this series comes out. This series has never really been known for its excellent story telling, but I'll try to give it a shot. The story takes place near the end of 2012 and tries to interweave 3(4) stories to Resident Evil 6's complex tale. It bases of crossing events of Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and Jake Muller.

Leon is currently at the side of fictitious 2012 president Adam Benford. He planned to release the truth about the Raccoon City Incident of so many years ago, in an attempt to try to quell the influx of bio-terrorism. However, they are attacked by a group called Neo-umbrella and basically the Raccoon City Incident is repeated. Leon is forced to shoot down the now infected president, and secret service agent, Alena Harper (who looks like Lori from Walking Dead but is about 8 billion times less of a cunt) tells him if he follows her to the cathedral, he will find answers.

"I don't give a shit that you lost Carl again."

Chris is spending his days getting shitfaced in a dive bar in Europe battling a colossal depression (at first, I thought this was a game starring me). He is confronted by his former BSAA subordinate Piers McNotfuckingimportant for abandoning his unit. You come to learn that Chris lost a squad of soldiers in a mission gone awry thanks to the betrayal of Ada Wong, whom at the time they thought they were saving. Chris then takes up his gun again in vengeance with sole goal of finding Ada and killing her.

Finally, Jake we see actually starting this story (in a chronological perspective) working as a mercenary in Edonia. He is given some kind of injection by Ada Wong that doesn't affect him, but mutates his colleges into BOW monsters. He's then confronted by special US agent Sherry Birken (the same little girl from Resident Evil 2). She is tasked to bring Jake to the US because he has the anti-bodies that might be able to provide a cure to BOW terrorism, and Jake goes along with her under the expectation of high compensation.

So ok, we start out hopeful. Lots of story campaigns and hopefully starting tie this series together a bit. But my first question is, where the fuck is Claire? After they tried to turn Jill Valentine into Nina Williams from Tekken I am terrified to find out what happened to one of my favorite protagonists in the series. You know what? Nevermind, I'd rather just imagine her chilling on her couch watching tv then have her get dragged in this mess again (the writing, not the situation).

Which one is Jill again? I can't fucking tell anymore.
Get a new character archetype, gaming industry.

So to keep this as brief as I can I won't go through every chapter, just shit that really stood out to me. To start off, You get to choose which of the two characters you can play as in the campaign which I thought was a nice gesture. But also before you start the game, you can choose to turn off the online settings and play offline with an AI partner, which I couldn't do fast enough. You all  by now should know my feelings on Online multiple player communities, but if you don't here's the cliff notes: Fuck multiplayer up the ass with a salt covered wicker dildo.

Leon's chapter starts off incredibly sluggishly. After cinematic you are treated to slowly walking a survivor through darkened abandoned corridors. I almost would have looked past how slow the segment took to do if they were trying to set a legitimate horror pace. But no, right after the appearance of the first zombie all sense of pacing is thrown right out the goddamn window with a stream of nonstop zombies. Cool, but not Resident Evil.

The J'avo are a billion times more annoying the Palagas were.

I picked up the game with relative ease, the controls all felt pretty familiar. I just had to get used to the little quirks to navigate the menu as you can't really pause the action to browse your inventory. I was fighting I noticed that it wasn't using the laser sighting system I remembered from Resident Evil 4 or 5. It was using the recital system. That alone didn't bother me, but the recoil of gunshots was ridiculously off. Every two shots you were completely off target. In addition to that, there's no guarantee you can hit the head shot because the red dot in your recital doesn't hold still either. It was fucking annoying.

But moving on a little father in the level I reached a quick time event where I had to outrun an explosion. I died on it multiple times because up until this point, you had to mash a button to escape these. In Resident Evil 6 you have to just hold the button down and the "hey idiot" indication at the bottom did not really clarify that. By putting up instructions, I thought it was giving me different controls. Highly frustrating.

Then I was struck with a realization, and sour one at that. I was not playing Resident Evil. Sure, the box said Resident Evil 6 on it, and it had characters from the series. But nothing about this game felt like the formers of the franchise. Even with Resident Evil 4's overhauling, it still sort of felt like an RE game with the tank style controls, and core concepts still in place. With this kind of game mechanics, this game could have just as easily been "Uncharted 4: Drake and friends fight a bunch of zombies" and it would have been just as relevant and more tolerable.

Boss Fights can get a little clusterfucky at best.

But don't get me wrong, there isn't really anything wrong with these mechanics. Its why it felt so familar when I played it. But when I shill out 60 bucks to play the new Resident Evil, I expect to be treated to a new fucking Resident Evil. If I wanted to play a generic 3rd person shooter I could have picked up almost ANY fucking game on the shelf. Its so cookie cutter in its overall design I'm left with this complete disappointment that I've been ripped off.

Anyways, back to the game. I usually like to take a few lines to talk about the score or the music. But as is with pretty much every Resident Evil game, the music is completely unimpressive. None of it memorable, none of it lasting. Score fits great for each scene as they come, but none of them leave a lasting impression.

All of the campaigns in the game tell a different story, but nearly all of them follow the exact same format in have very similar puzzles. A massive indiscretion of this is ALL of them have a section where you have to escape like 3 unkillable enemies while trying to find 3 separate keys to unlock a door. The setting is different, but every character has to do it, and they are all chased by the same type of monster at the time. Its incredibly lazy.

Sherry has no idea what she's doing.

While I'm on the subject of unkillable monsters, this is something else they abuse this time around. Ok, so Resident Evil likes to have that one boss that's just menacing and non-stop.  Resident Evil 2 had the Tyrant and he'd appear in various rooms as your progressed in the game.  Resident Evil 3 had the Nemesis who would hound you for a few rooms at a time and was a thorn in your side nearly the whole game. Resident Evil 4 and 5 had difficult enemy types that would reoccur often. All of these are fine.

But Resident Evil 6, the bosses just don't fucking die. Period. Every single time a character would say "we got him!" or "It's finally dead" only to open one door and have that same mother fucker right back on your ass. It happens on nearly every significant boss in the game.  Even more frustrating is they keep mixing up what it takes to kill said bosses. Sometimes you just need to last a timer. Sometimes you need do enough damage. Sometimes you have just empty all of your ammo to trigger the end sequence. It makes it nearly impossible to ration your ammo properly and proves to be constant headache.

Ustanak is RE6's knock off version of the Nemesis. A tough kill,
 but not nearly the menace the Nemesis was.

I also love how true to the series it tried to be in this installment. Having to do such classic Resident Evil moments like Metal Gear Solid style stealth sections, an Ace Combat style dogfight, or trying to outrun an avalanche on snow mobiles. Wait, no. I'm thinking of other games, none of this shit happened in other Resident Evil games. SO WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY IN THIS ONE? I suppose for story, thematic, and theatrics they fit cohesively, but again: Its not fucking Resident Evil!

"Ok fuck this. If your going to force me to do stealth you can at least give me a chance."

So after all this ranting, you can basically assume I hate this game, right? Well not so fast. The game is loaded with flaws, but I'm not so quick to dismiss it, there are a handful of things that I like. By the game being kind of cookie cutter in its design, it was very easy to acclimated to the controls. Each of the campaigns had something I liked. Leon's story was best, Chris had the best boss fights, Jake had the best characters.

They brought back the Mercenaries mode, which was probably one of my favorite things in the franchise. I loved it in Resident Evil 3 and 4. Even with all my gripes about how this version of the game plays differently, when that clock is ticking on the top of the screen and I'm scrambling to find the best spot to hole up and shoot, all of the complaints are immediately forgotten and I work on boosting that score. It can be done two player as well, which I'm actually interested in trying.

They also have something called agent hunt, where you get to play as the crappy weaker monsters and try to take down someone actually trying to complete the story mode. This to me is a great concept because it really ups the challenge of the game, or allows you to just ruin somebody's day. It was very satisfying to watch some asshat have to waste both his first aid sprays because I keep tackling him with a zombie dog.

And graphically the game has never looked better. All of the characters (except for Chris's massive muscle tone) are life like and believable. Although, someone at Capcom must really be an ass man, because whenever you have to crawl through a duct or something the cam zooms in so far up ass of the player I'm actually afraid we'll need to wipe brown off the lens (When playing Sherry, That ain't so bad. When playing Leon.... Uh, not so much.).

I'm sure we all had this moment when playing Sherry or Ada.

Lastly, I paid the extra 20 bucks for the Anthology edition, so my copy of the game came with the codes to download the first 5 games, which does include the gold edition of 5 and HD version of 4. Which personally I thought was an awesome deal, since now I don't have to dig out the gamecube if I wanted to play RE4 again. I would have liked it have Code Veronica as well, but that one appears on the Xbox version.  Can't get greedy I guess. Still a great deal.

So I guess after all of this the real question is "How do I rate this?" I guess the best way to do this is to be as lukewarm as my feelings. The game is Average, cookie cutter, run of the mill. Doesn't deserve the hideous reviews its gotten but doesn't deserve the great ones either.

If you are looking to continue on with the Resident Evil mytho's baffling storyline they by all means pick it up. If you are looking for another shooter to kill your time until the next stupid Medal of Halo: Advanced Duty Black Cocks 3 comes out then I suppose you could do worse than Resident Evil 6. But don't expect this game to really wow you in any sense of the word.

But if you are fan of Resident Evil.  And I mean REALLY a fan of the series, you may wanna sit this one out. Much like the Resident Evil movie they seemed to think it was totally ok to just come up with a generic 3rd person shooter, and just tossed in the Resident Evil characters and that was good enough. Guess what, it's not. Somewhere along the way this franchise lost its spark, and with the constant middle finger Capcom keeps throwing to its customer base? I don't think they care to find it.

Oh yeah, and the Bowgun still sucks bag of dicks.

Persona 3 FES (PS2): The fascination continues...

So as you read a few months ago, I fell completely in love with the Persona universe when I started playing Persona 4 Arena. Playing through the story really got me into the characters and I wanted to know more about it. As I played that I downloaded and watched the Persona 4 anime as well. A fun but somewhat cut down recap of the events of Persona 4 with some characters from 3 spruced in there. But as I watched it, I reflected on that I never actually finished Persona 3. The game had a crazy difficulty spike and because of it I set the game down and never finished it. But with this re-invigoration of mine with the Persona series I decided to dust off the ole PS2 and give it one more go.

PERSONA 3: FES (PS2)

You take the role of Insert Name (in my case Akira Mizaki since this takes place in Japan), a 16ish year old transfer student to Gekkoukan High who has lost his parents. While your are traveling via train, the animation cuts to a young girl holding a gun to her head, breathing heavy and trying to pull the trigger.  Exasperatedly she drops the gun and buries her face in her knees. Upon transferring in and coming into the dorm where you will be staying, you are greeted by a young boy in striped pajama's and he makes you sign a contract stating you will take responsibility for your actions.

After signing the contract you come across the same girl from the scene transition, and is in panic wanting to know why you are there. As she goes to pull the gun, another student named Mitsuru Kurijo stops her and informs her that you'll be here for a bit, and introduces you to her as Yukari Takeba. Cooler heads prevail and you all crash for the night.

The next few days you begin adjusting to school life until one evening there is seemingly a monster attack, as a large beast is chasing another dorm student. Yukari takes you to the roof to escape where you are cornered by the beast. And in a desperation move, she goes to use the gun she has but drops it as she brings it to her head. The protagonists picks it up with eyes dilated and holds it to his own head and pulls the trigger, unleashing a monster that lays waste to the one that was attacking you. 

You come to find out that you were actually being watched by this dorm, as they are actually a task force called SEES who assembled to fight these monsters called shadows, who only appear in a hidden hour that takes place between midnight and 12:01am called the Dark Hour. Only a select few can fight in this hour, and they implore you for your help to fight the monsters and end the Dark Hour by investigating a massive tower that appears during it.

Sorry that was a bit a mouthful. The game is essentially a blend of a Dungeon Crawler, JRPG, and High School simulation. During the day you have to attend school, keep your grades up, join clubs and maintain relationships. All of these social ties affect your ability to create Personas, which affect you characters statistics and what spells they can use. As you level you can create new Personas by mixing the ones you have together to create better stronger ones, and in some cases transfer abilities from one to the others. 

At nights you can explore the Tartarus, the mysterious tower that appears where their school is every night during the Dark Hour. An apparent nest of shadows, the goal is to go in and push upwards as best you can before the night of a full moon. In the tower you can grind for experience, items, money, or new personas. But you don't want to stay in for too long, your character can become exhausted or sick, which will effect your ability to perform during the day. So the whole game you have to strike a balance between all of these things in an attempt to maintain pace with everything.

While dealing with maintaining friendships in the game can be kind of tedious at times, many of the characters have some very funny dialogs about them when you hang out. Some of them have problems you need to help them through to help strengthen the bond, but you need to know their personality quirks to get the best results to evolve the relationship. My two favorites were Kirijo and Maya. Kirijo is funny because she's the rich heiress to massive conglomerate, so she is positively baffled at how to eat at a fast food restaurant since the food is so cheap and there is no silverware. Maya is a player you meet in an online game who just speaks in excessive l33t, and while those are funny, the best is the payoff at the end when you finally meet face to face. Its not often during a game I actually find myself laughing out loud, but it was totally worth it.

So if you haven't been able to tell up to this point, the game is directed to a very niche audience. I love the idea in concept, but some of its execution falls a little bit flat. For one thing, you actually have to pay attention to the lectures in school. Because getting good grades raises your academics and charm, which you need to befriend certain characters and make certain persona types stronger. Some of the lectures are fucking long and boring (just like in real high school!) and a lot of the time you don't even get a hint to the question before you have to guess at it.

This guy never shuts his fucking mouth. Just find a walkthrough with the answers.

Then when the school day actually ends, traveling from location to location can get a bit tedious. If I wanted to date Kirijo I would groan because that would mean I would have to walk all the way to the other side of the school. While the movement speed is fast there is at least 3 or 4 screen transitions. God forbid I needed to buy new equipment first because then I gotta walk my ass out of the school, ride to the mall, buy my shit, walk all the way back before I could go on my date. I can be tedious because its pointless walking. There is a place where you can jump right out of the school to the travel menu which is handy, but its only in one spot so that can be annoying.

The music has a handful of notable and catchy songs, and some of them are just awful. I am a big fan of the "Burn My Dread" song from the beginning of the game, its got a catchy kinda techno-y rap kinda thing going for it. But on the other hand, I would hate exploring the Tartarus because it has this dismally boring piano rhythm of like 3 to 5 notes. Make sure you have your own music on standby. Midway through the game you can change the dungeon BMG but none of the selections are all that spectacular.

I really like this f'n song.

The dungeon crawling is pretty well done. The map is constantly changing except for boss floors or section transition floors. You can travel as a team or split people up to fight shadows or look for treasures. Most of the time you will explore with the group because as I mentioned before, this game can have a huge difficulty spike and being caught alone if you are under leveled can be certain doom. Almost every level has an escape  which you can use to get out and recover your health and magic if you are out of items, but if you don't make it to the boss floors you have to do that same section you just completed over again (luckily, you don't have to beat the boss to escape down on their floors, so you should do so anyways to recover, save, THEN tackle the boss.)

I stuck with small swords, It was much easier to time preemptive strikes.

The combat follows the JRPG team leader format. You have full control of your character and you can give vague instructions to the rest of your team for how you would like them to perform. Players of the Pokemon series will feel right at home because it operates in the same way. Many of the shadows feature some form of weakness and if you can strike their weakness (or get a critical hit) you can knock them down and have an opportunity to attack again. If you can knock down all of the enemies, you can go in for a massive team bum rush for big damage.

But you need to be careful because your own persona's have strengths and weaknesses too, which means you do as well. So its important to get a feel for what kind of monsters you are facing on a floor and what abilities your teammates have so you don't wind up getting floored every turn and crushed. You can revive teammates but if the main character bites it, game over.

My big tip is this: early in the game, you can fuse a demon girl called Lilim. She is probably the best personas to fuse early because she really only has a weakness to Light magic (few enemies use light), and has the ability to have all 4 major elements at the same time. With the right type of stat boosting items (like things that raise strength, magic, and luck), she can end up being a persona you can ride for most of the game, I made it nearly to end with her because while the spells may not have had the same power by the end, they still knocked things down for a massive attack. Figure out how to make them and make sure the fusion gives her all 4 elements.

She doesn't have Bufu, but if she did instead of Marin or the Rak's
this would be one of the best 4-Elements Lilims you could make.

I had to tone down the difficultly in this game to get all the way through it. But in hindsight I am glad that I did. Yeah the game could get a little slow from time to time, especially when I was waiting for full moons to proceed with the game. But it has a likable cast and follows a pretty tried and true JRPG format that I had a good deal of fun with. Story featured some twists and turns and had some pretty interesting moments. I can see why this game didn't take the world by storm, but I can also see why the Persona series has the cult following it does.

Persona 3 FES also features a bonus chapter that extends upon the ending staring Aigis, but I only played it a little bit to set that aside to move on to Persona 4 (and it kind of makes the ending of game a punch in the crotch). If you are looking to give this a try, you can try to find it on the ps2, they updated the game slightly for the PSP release, and looks like it can also be found on the PlayStation store under PS2 Classics. I believe the PSP version has updated combat which borrows elements from Persona 4 and a female main character as well, to change your dating options. If the PSP game can be played on PS3? Get that one.

One thing I can definitely say about this series is this: If the game didn't have my interest before, it fucking has me now.

If only I grew up in Japan...
Maybe I coulda grew up as popular as I was in this....

Dead Trigger (Android): I got zombie in my front pocket for you.

So, the summer drought kicked my ass. I had nothing to review. Now we're are getting into the fall months and aside from one new title, I haven't had much to go on. And since I felt a blog post about the Library Science crap I am studying would not make for an interesting read, I thought I would talk about something that caught my eye.

If you are like me, you have been following the potential new system coming out called the Ouya. The open source android console. But in the video found on the Kickstarter and the Ouya site in the interface screen there is a option for something called Dead Trigger. I did a little digging and found that most of the options on that screen were just games currently on the android platform, and since I was clawing for something to do, a new zombie game seemed great. The screens shots seemed impressive but how would it hold up on my phone?

DEAD TRIGGER:(Android)

There's a story in the game. But to be honest, I haven't read a lick of it. Why would I? Who in this zombie pop culture world we live in would need me to recap the story in this one? I bet it goes something like this: "There was one zombie, now there is a lot of them. Now you have to shoot guns at them to survive, get supplies, and save people" We all caught up to speed? Great, because if on my phone and it's not an RPG, I really could give a damn less what the story is.

Dead Trigger is a first person shooter designed for the mobile phone platforms. It was primarily a Android game but I believe it is available for the Iphone now as well. This definitely lends to play easier on the larger phones such as my HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3, or the Iderp 5. You can also play it on  tablets pretty well, although using my dad's 10 inch tablet it was somewhat hard to control even with my massive hulk hands.

The controls of the game were actually fairly responsive and intuitive. The left lower corner of the screen functions as an analog pad and allows your character to move and strafe with fairly regular FPS controls. On the right side there are a series of buttons: Fire, Reload, Iron Sight. All of them respond rather easily and fluidly to a level I got comfortable with them with ease. The blank area above these buttons you can use to turn the camera which allows you to strafe and circle enemies. What is also handy is while you are holding down the fire button, you can make subtle turns from there as well, allowing you to make adjustments to your shots as you fire.

The graphics in this game are VERY impressive for a game designed for a mobile platform. I'd go as far to say that the graphics look almost on par if not better than how games looked on the original PlayStation, Or possibly the PlayStation 2. Actually, I'd definitely say PS2, zombies in Dead Trigger were easily much more detailed than the zombies that were found in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, (I know that was on Dreamcast first, but I'm using it as a frame of reference. I played it on PS2 first anyways). 

The music is really nothing to write home about, but I don't really expect mobile games to have an incredible score. Which is kind of disappointing when I reflect upon it. I can think of a number of SNES games that have amazing soundtracks and they were incredibly fulfilling to the point that they are permanently ingrained in my head. I understand you can't put chiptunes sets into non sprite games these days, but I think if you went a little longer than some droning music loops that are featured in many mobile games, they might be a more satisfying experience. Sorry, I'm getting off track.

Generally, the missions have been broken down into three main categories: Hunt, Survive, Retrieve. Up to where I have played, the goals are simple and not usually much variety to the rules. All of them involve gunning down zombies, just sometimes you have a set number to kill, number of minutes to wait, or go to point A and back to B. I haven't been playing many of the story missions yet though so perhaps that will change. 

You can earn money by going to the casino or ranking well on the missions and that allows you to buy upgrades at the shop. Not all the upgrades or weapons are available though because there are two forms of currency. Money you earn during the course of the game. Gold you can win at the casino, but the real way to get it is to pay real money for it or sign up for promotions or surveys. I'll pass, thank you very much.

While there does seem to be a constantly changing blend of zombies, I have yet to come across any boss fights yet, which is a little disappointing because every good zombie game needs boss fights. Perhaps there will be some as do more of the story missions, but so far? No sign of em.

While I am not much of a first person shooter type of guy, I am really getting into this game. Its not frustrating to play and it the levels are the perfect length for the mobile platform. Its something you can whip out and play with for a few minutes and be able to come back to it. Yes some of the levels get a bit repetitive but as I said I haven't been playing the story mode so much so that could change. The best part about it the game is free to download on both IOS and Android so if you've got a newer smartphone that has the power to run it, I would suggest giving it a download.