Read Dead Redemption Zombie Nightmare DLC Review

PROS

• The best value you will get for a video game this year
• Zombies done right in a video game
• Genuine terror added to an already amazing game
• More addition to the story

CONS

• I’m drawing a blank here

After you are done reading this go and write Rockstar San Diego a big thank you letter for showing people how DLC is supposed to be done. This piece of downloadable content priced at $10 has content that will rival (and in many cases surpass) full $60 retail games.

You Don’t Need Braaaaaaains to Know This is Awesome

Where could I possibly start with this one, how about the fact that Rockstar San Diego took one of the best action/adventure games ever made, with one of the greatest most thrilling narrative drives, with some of the slickest gameplay ever crafted and adds mythical creatures, sasquatch hunting, hoards of undead and manages to turn one of the greatest action games ever into one of the greatest survival horror games ever.

The writing, acting, animation, gameplay, every bit of this DLC is as top notch as RDR, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on to explain all the details that make this game great. Like the fact that the fantastic story missions lasted me nearly 7 hours. As a point of reference, I spent $60 on the new MoH game, and playing the single player through to completion as well as the multiplayer I only spent about 6 hours in that game, RDR Undead Nightmare’s single player (not including all the multiplayer goodness) lasted me an hour more than that whole game. I could mention how there are 27 towns that you help survivors clear of zombies, which could then come back to raise hell again. How about using parts of the undead as ammunition in your brand new blunderbuss. That’s all just the single player.

On the multiplayer side you have 4 player co-op that would make the Left 4 Dead series proud, an all new hoard modes places you and three friends against waves of undead that (much like L4D) you will actually need to play cooperatively to survive against.

No More Clever Headlines Needed, Go Play This

Undead Nightmare starts off with John Marston finding his wife and son Jack infected after being bitten by the now zombified “Uncle” after hogtying and locking your family in your house you’ll be off to help qualm the zombie menace. You’ll meet familiar faces throughout your journey, oh and did I mention that you’re now going to be taming the 4 horses of the apocalypse as your mounts, yeah, awesome!

The best part of Undead Nightmare is that it is genuinely terrifying, there was more than one occasion I had to turn the lights on in my game room and walk away to regain composure. 

The single player is the star of this DLC but everything else is just icing on the proverbial cake. This is one of the best values in the video game medium I have ever seen. If turning the best western game ever into one of the best horror games ever for the low price of $10 isn’t enough for you, well then you need to take a look at your life. Now I’m going to go peacefully over this way on my magic death horse go and enjoy this…. OH S**T ZOMBIE COUGAR!!!

Dead Rising 2 Review

PROS

• Combo weapons are cool
• Vast improvements made over the first game
• Plowing through hoards of zombies in creative ways is still incredibly fun

CONS

• Survivor AI (while greatly improved) is still pretty stupid
• Most boss battles feel incredibly cheap
• Save system (again while improved) still sucks
• Time limit will cramp fun exponentially

Four years ago the original Dead Rising shuffled onto the Xbox 360 introducing gamers to one of Capcom’s new poster boys, Frank West (as well as one of the greatest lines ever delivered in video game history (you know the one)). Frank had to survive in the “Willamette Mall” for 72 hours with a bunch of human survivors, a handful of crazy people, and of course thousands upon thousands of undead.

I don’t think there is one person, gamer or critic, who didn’t love the premise of Dead Rising. Take the classic zombie flick “Dawn of the Dead” and make a game version of it, be stuck in a shopping mall and use anything as a weapon to slaughter the zombie hoards; however, even though the game received high scores from nearly every gaming outlet and high praise from those who played it, there were still quite a few problems with it. The save system was brutally frustrating at times, allowing only one file to be used at a time, no checkpoint system, and placing save points so far apart resulted in sometimes hours of gameplay being lost. The survivors you were trying to help sucked at surviving making the escort missions frustrating as can be. The boss fights with survivors gone mad (aka psychopaths) were also incredibly difficult due to the flawed control system. Yet people played it and loved it, I myself remember spending an entire summer trying to get the achievement for killing 53,594 zombies. Still these problems did make the overall experience better than the actual game.

Thankfully Capcom, and development partner Blue Castle Games listened and fixed almost every complaint there was to be had with the first Dead Rising to make a powerful sequel.

How Did I Get Here?

The story of Dead Rising 2 is a touching one, the series new protagonist Chuck Greene a former Motocross star, is on a mission to save his daughter Katey from turning into a flesh-eating monster. He does this by giving her a daily dose of Zombrex a new drug that holds off infection for 24 hours. Zombrex isn’t cheap though which is why Chuck and Katey have ended up in Fortune City, the new Las Vegas, and why Chuck is slaughtering zombies on a reality game show “Terror is Reality” which is under protest from zombie rights activists CURE, but generally accepted by the populace.

Well it all starts off well enough but then wouldn’t you know it, an explosion in the zombie holding pen frees all of the undead and they start wreaking havoc. Chuck grabs his daughter and runs to their new safe house barely making it past the swarms of undead. As if things weren’t bad enough for ol’ Chuck shortly after arriving at the safe house a news report shows him planting a bomb causing the explosion which let the zombies out. Now we all know Chuck wouldn’t do that, the military doesn’t though and you now have 72 hours to prove Chuck’s innocence before the military arrives and executes you and your daughter.

While the last game had you in control of photojournalist Frank West who’s weapon of choice was a nice picture of a zombie with a servebot mask on it’s head, Chuck prefers to get down and dirty and create some new zombie killing weapons. The original Dead Rising had around 250 weapons to kill zombies with, a drop in the bucket (which by the way can be combined with an electric drill and placed on a zombies head for a one hit kill) compared to all the zombie killing utensils in the second. The combination aspect is the biggest addition to Dead Rising, box of nails + baseball bat = nail bat, car battery + wheelchair = portable electric chair, bowie knifes + boxing gloves = Wolverine claws. It is incredibly fun to find a bunch of combineable items (marked by a wrench icon) and seeing what you make.

With all these tools at your disposal you need something to use them on, and that isn’t a problem as Dead Rising 2 has lots of zombies. While the original game was able to show a few hundred zombies onscreen at a time Dead Rising 2 can show thousands at a time making them easier to spot. They’re also a bit dumber meaning you will and survivors (who are smarter and less prone to run into the middle of a zombie circle and get munched) can run past them with relative ease.

Time, Time? We Don’t Have Time!!!

 For the most part though the way Dead Rising 2 plays out is similar to Dead Rising with some small changes, and unfortunately this is a big problem. As I mentioned you have 72 hours (sped up 12X) to do a bunch of case files that will help clear your name, find and administer Zombrex to your daughter, and find survivors and help lead them to safety. Now I’ve talked to others who enjoy the time limit, they say it helps deliver the tension of a zombie apocalypse, and I get that but for me the time limit is a real deathblow to this game. In the first game if you wanted to ignore the case files, ignore the story and just kill zombies then it was a free for all in DR2 however, fail to complete a case file and you have to start from your last save or restart the save with all your stats carrying over.

Because of the strict time limit I felt all my time was spent running past zombies rather then killing them which is what I want to do. It’s really unfortunate that forcing the case files was an aspect because I ended up frustrated easily. Having to constantly drop what I was doing and rush back to the safe house to receive a mission, going through a load screen each time I enter a new area or cutscene made this game feel “last gen” at times.

Another aspect worth mentioning is the psychopath battles, you will find most of these while on survivor search and rescue missions. Now the battles are a mixed bag, the enemies you face are mentally broken and in some cases downright terrifying, one actually had me scream out loud at 1:00 am in terror, which was awesome. However, some of them are insanely difficult and are easily the hardest part of the game. Since they’re (mostly) optional this means only the hardcorest of hardcore will be able to beat them, but simply experiencing them is worth trying.

Bring a Friend

Everything is better in pair’s right? Well zombie killing is no different, DR2 really shines when you bring a buddy in to help slow the hoard. The game handles this a bit differently, story wise nothing changes your friend will also play Chuck Green and the story will just pretend he’s not there. So you can bring a buddy in to help you level up and finish the story. When you bring someone into your game they don’t progress in the story they will retain all the experience and weapons they got while helping you when they jump back to their profile though. The co-op definitely adds a much needed breath of fresh air into the gameplay.

But let’s say you don’t want to be friendly, let’s say you want to play against others for cash prizes. Well then Terror is Reality is right up your alley and arguably the best part of the game. In the terror is reality mode you compete in a bunch of competitive and incredibly addictive games against other players. There are a bunch of games to play my favorite being the “Pounds of Flesh” game where you wear a moose head and knock as many zombies as you can onto a scale, whoever has the heaviest scale at the end wins. The games are fun as can be and when you win the money you earn carries over into the main game.

Have I Done This Yet

Between the unforgiving time limit and no autosave/checkpoint system you will be replaying portions of this game. Depending on how diligent you are with your saving this may range from having to replay 5 minutes of game or if you’re like me and forget all the time you’ll have to replay sometimes up to 4 hours of game (insert my non sensical hate filled rant here). This can lead to a “I don’t want to do this again” and shutting off the game which is never good.

There are also a lot of recycled story elements from the first Dead Rising. Fortune City is honestly just a larger version of Willamette Mall, there is a cutscene showing how zombies become more aggressive at night, and the cutscene where we find out the zombie killing power of the queen wasp feels like it was copy and pasted from the first game and just replaced Frank with Chuck.

Overall though DR2 is an improvement over the first game, with many if not all of the issues of the first being addressed. If you loved the first Dead Rising you’ll probably love this one, and there is definitely stuff to love, but there are still to many issues holding it back from being the ultimate zombie game it strives to be.

Halo Reach Review

• Platforms: Xbox 360
• Publisher: Microsoft
• Developer: Bungie
• Genre: Shooter
• Release Date: Sept 14, 2010
• ESRB: M - Mature

 PROS

• The best story of any Halo game
• New weapons all feel like they are useful
• Beautiful to look at
• Incredible soundtrack
• Multiplayer will pull you away from MW2
• Forge mode is improved
• Space Combat

CONS

• Never ever let your AI partners drive

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It’s every game developers dream to have a successful franchise. Making something that you can sustain for years to come, many developers would kill to have something like the Halo franchise. Back in 2001 when Bungie released “Halo: Combat Evolved” people’s heads were asploded by what had happened. Someone had made a first person shooter that worked on consoles. No mouse and keyboard required a revolution at the time; Bungie brought FPS’s to the controllered gaming masses and crafted one of the most influential games of all time. Each game after that Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST all added new revolutions that made them stand out. And now they’ve delivered their “swan song” in the form of Halo Reach. The best Halo game of all time.

That’s What Friends Are For

When you first start Reach you get to customize your character. You choose between a male or female Spartan, which is a first for the series, and I’m sure that’s a welcome addition for some who wanted a break from the testosterone-laden characters from games past.

The one point that Reach wants to hammer into your head is that you are part of a team. It makes that very clear when during the first mission “Noble Team’s” (your squadron) leader Carter tells you “We’re a team. That lone wolf stuff behind. Clear?” You’re playing with a squad, and you’ll find out how to work with your fellow Spartans.

I Like Goodies

The beta earlier that was released earlier this year gave people a taste of the new armor abilities. The armor abilities add a lot to the single player, giving you things as simple as a quick sprint, all the way to jetpacks and holograms. The hologram will cast a double of your Spartan “Number 6” to distract enemies giving you a nice chance to hit your enemies from behind (which is especially helpful for the Hunters). The jetpack is self explanatory, the armor lock makes you invincible for a few seconds but leaves you vulnerable for a few seconds after its down, and the drop shield borrows from the bubble shield of “Halo 3” but also recharges your health. Aside from those additions this is still the same Halo you know and love, at least as far as controls go. You can choose from up to six button layouts to fit your play preference.

The weapons get a nice upgrade too; the Needler is better than ever before, the Needler Rifle is perhaps the greatest thing I’ve ever used, the DMR replaces the Battle Rife, snipers, lasers, rocket launchers, etc are all par for the course. Vehicles are great as expected, all turrets though, even ones mounted on Warthogs overheat with time ending the endless spray of bullets that previous games had.

Sit Down Young Spartan, I Have A Story To Tell You

I am in the camp that story is very important in gaming, and this is where “Halo Reach” soars high above all the other games in the series. The whole time I was playing Reach I constantly felt the hopelessness of it, playing all the other games you know what happens to the planet Reach and how it all ends up, yet I kept on fighting through feeling like I may be able to change the future. The truly epic and tragic narrative is delivered to you through 10 missions spanning roughly 10-13 hours.

One of the missions that stood out was a mission where you travel into space and engage in space combat. It is absolutely brilliant, this mission could’ve been a simple cutscene but instead gives you a section of game that could (and should) get a spin off game all itself. Other missions will have you planting explosives, recovering intel, holding positions, and other militaristic fare.

There are nice little nods to the other “Halo” games such how the ending dovetails right into the beginning of “Halo: Combat Evolved” and meeting characters from the other games in later missions. It feels like a true fan service and the last mission after the credits is one of the most powerfully emotional moments of a game I’ve ever played.

You Look So Beautiful

The graphical overhaul that Reach received is something to be marveled at, Halo has never looked better, the large-scale battles are all detailed and flow beautifully. Vehicles and weapons are flashy and enjoyable to look at and more details have been added to the game, trumping all those that came before it.

The flashlight has been abandoned in favor of Night Vision goggles, which are activated using the D-Pad. Creature’s native to Reach such as rats, emus, and giant sloths will litter the landscapes. You’ll gain partnership from not only fellow Spartans but from marines as well, they unfortunately don’t tend to live as long and you will feel terrible and at fault every time they die. The game doesn’t stop because these guys die but you then have to go on without the added help. And you will need it.

Even Better With Friends

Let’s be honest a lot of people who buy Reach are never going to touch the campaign. For a lot of people Halo is all about the multiplayer, and as foolish as I think that may be I can’t say that they’d be disappointed. Bungie took the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach but instead made it “if it ain’t broke give them even more of what they love”.

Multiplayer is absolutely massive there are 12 multiplayer game modes and 18 variations on those. Three playlists, and a staggering 13 multiplayer maps and eight FireFight maps, as well as having even more you can download through file sharing.

Everything has been improved ten fold, Forge mode in Reach blows Halo 3’s out of the water, offering more ways to customize, letting you adjust gravity, make objects float (an absolute hassle in the last game), block of sections of map etc, I have a feeling that there will be some really cool maps to come out of Forge World. FireFight is now more tweakable and has more parameters, oh and matchmaking, that took way to long to get.

We all like customization, this is just human nature, we all like upgrading, we all like showing off. Reach makes sure this is taken care of with their armory new helmets, shoulderpads, FireFight voices, visor colors you name it. As someone who loves another widely popular online FPS Modern Warfare 2 and has a similar system of multiplayer upgrading I vastly prefer Halo’s. In MW2 when you improve in multiplayer you get better weapons, this is cool yes but some people are a lot better, they will get better weapons before you, and they will use this to make life difficult for you. In Reach it’s all purely cosmetic, you still want to play better to get the cooler looking stuff, but you’re never placed at a disadvantage.

So how do you get these upgrades, you buy them via credits. How do you earn credits, a better question is how don’t you earn credits. You will get them for everything, playing the single player campaign, playing FireFight, playing Multiplayer, creating Forge maps, create a single player game with yourself, it’s near impossible to not be getting rewarded.

Is There Anything Wrong Here

Very little, I mean very little, the only real thing I can hold against this game is that while your AI teammates are invaluable in shootouts they are the most frustrating thing ever when behind the wheel. I’m serious it’s that bad, if they’re driving in a straight line you’ll have no problems but throw a rock or turn in the road and you’ll be flipping over like nobodies business. This is only a issue mainly because when you have a vehicle you’ll want to be on the turret. But fix that by playing through the campaign with some friends.

This is truly one of the greatest games ever made, Bungie could’ve ended their run on this series by pushing out Halo 3 with some updated graphics and a new weapon and it would’ve made millions. They decided though to go out with a bang, they completely changed what the Halo series could be and left some pretty big shoes to fill. This is one of the greatest games of our generation and will keep calling people back for years to come. Good luck with future endeavors Bungie if what you come up with next is half as good as this game we’re in for a real treat.

Mafia II Review

Publisher:2K Games

Genre:Action, Adventure

Developer:2K Czech

ESRB:M - Mature

# of Players:1 player

Release Date:Aug 24, 2010

Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

PROS

·      Incredibly detailed game environment

·      Well thought out and articulated world

·      One of the most engrossing stories to ever be told in a video game

·      The soundtrack is my favorite of all time.

CONS

 ·     Combat system can grow tiresome after a while

·      Female character models done poorly

·      Little to no reason to explore the city outside of the main missions

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Mafia II has joined the ranks of Red Dead Redemption in 2010’s category of incredible period piece games. Both are taking the visions we have of their respective timepieces and turning them into a reality we are able to experience for ourselves. Where as Red Dead Redemption gave us the opportunity to live out our childhood dreams of being a cowboy back in the wild west, Mafia II lets us finally feel like the Tommy Gun wielding mobsters we’ve come to know through stories of Al Capone or movies like The Godfather.

YOU COME TO ME WITH A FAVOR…

You play as Vito Scaletti a young Italian-American man from Empire Bay (New York) who leads a young life of petty crime straight into being sent off to Europe in WWI, only to be injured and shipped back in 1945. As soon as you set foot back in Empire Bay you meet up with your childhood friend Joe who gets you out of the service and starts you off in the criminal underground. From here the story could branch off and have you running odd jobs for various people tracking the rise and fall of the American gangster much like Scarface.

Mafia II takes a very different approach while still holding true to this mobster image. Almost every game released has something major at stake, whether it is family, home, city, country, or the entire world. Mafia II is simply about the choices that Vito and Joe make and the ramifications that come with those choices. This take on story telling allows the story to play out in a more mature natural way allowing Vito’s facial expressions and uncertainty in his voice to broadcast his own concerns with his career choice.

WELCOME TO EMPIRE CITY

Mafia II’s real differentiating point from Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto is in the way the story is delivered.  While Empire City is fully traversable there is no reason to do anything besides the main story, side missions as well as buying new weapons and clothing are there for little if any reason. Each mission is doled out in order as you complete them, this allows the story to be more tightly woven and delivered to the player.

Empire Bay serves as the perfect backdrop for the tale being told and gives every event a sense of place and context. This daring approach will not appeal to all though and a lot of driving later on in the game with no type of fast travel option may drag on.

The same attention that was given to the games story has also been given to the incredible detail of the games presentation. Taking place from the late 1940’s to the early 1950’s you will get a glimpse back into the time that our parents and grandparents lived in. Your first drive through of Empire Bay, it’s a dark, snowy night, with Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” on the radio. This will eventually turn into driving in game equivalents to ’51 Chevys while listening to Buddy Holly and Bill Haley. The cutscenes which are used to deliver the games story have a deep level of detail as well, the lighting, music, settings, and overall tone sets up the feel of what is on screen and delivers foreshadowing in the “Ah oh I know what’s going to happen why doesn’t he see it” way.

Mafia II tries so hard for the realistic feel and for the most part excels in every way you could imagine. However since the realistic style is so prevalent minor gripes, which would be unnoticeable in other games, shine through glaringly. For instance male character models are well detailed and fun to look at, female models on the other hand don’t fare as well and look as though someone took a belt sander to their face. Many scenes also involve characters eating food, which end up being flat textures. As I said this would be a non-existent thought in other games but in such a detailed world where you will accumulate dirt and rust on your car as you drive through the snow it is something you’ll notice.

BADA-BING BADA-BOOM

The gameplay portions of Mafia II consist mostly of cover based shootouts which (for the most part) are plentiful and fun. The destructible environments really add to the battles as you’ll rip apart buildings, shattering bottles, and putting holes in the walls with your tommy gun.

The enemy A.I. is by no means stupid, however the enemies use stop and pop method which doesn’t allow them to switch from cover to cover or perform flanking maneuvers as is possible in other games of the same ilk. The aiming does not give quite the precision you need to hit targets at a range.

The heavy cover based gameplay means that if you aren’t behind something heavy, solid, and at least waist height you will soak up bullets like a sponge and then proceed to die. Your health will automatically recover as is common in games nowadays, but when you take damage the screen will turn black and white, which can be hard to notice since many of the games battle areas are already dark. I can see why the devolpers wanted to use this method for their health system but it only seems to at time lengthen the firefights which could at times benefit from proceeding at a speedier pace.

Cars handle as well as you would expect, not racing game good but not quite GTA4 bad. One noteworthy addition is the speed limiter, which is exactly what it sounds like. It will keep your vehicle driving the speed limit, now that seems like a drag but once again serves to add to the level of realism the game delivers.

While the combat leaves a little to be desired the story and atmosphere that Mafia II delivers is well worth the price of admission. If you have ever wanted to see the “realistic” side of the mobster life you can not go wrong with this one.