No More Game Blogs

Price: $4.99 | Release Date: December 2009 | ESRB: E | System: iphone

4 Stars - Brillant, Best 4.99 you can spend.

I would have never in a million years thought that apple would invent a portable gaming device that would take up more of my time then my Nintendo DS and PSP. But they did just that with the invention of the iPhone, with access to millions of games in seconds via a quick and easy to navigate store on the phone. Add the fact that most of the games feature demos or as Apple calls them “trial games”. Not to beat a dead horse but add the price point of 1.99 to 4.99 for full games and it's easy to see why my other portable systems have been collecting dust. That said a lot of these games don't have as much depth as say “God of War: Chains Of Olympus” but every once in a while you find a game that can easily justify the quality and 49.99 price point of a PSP game. That game is Plants VS Zombies.

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Friday

05Mar2010

Heavy Rain: An Interactive or Inactive Drama?

Friday, March 5, 2010 at 1:09AM |

Price: $59.99 | System: PS3 | Release Date: Feburay 23, 2010 | ESRB: M (mature)

3 Stars - Passable, a decent game (rent before buying)

(Extremely light spoilers, nothing "Heavy"...get what I did there:)

Heavy Rain is basically Seven: The Videogame. A crazy serial killer, a host of flawed characters, a horrible city filled with despair that's always raining, and the big crazy twist at the end. It plays sort of like an old school adventure game with a modern twist. The graphics in the game are phenomenal and besides which, the first two hours of the game are never boring. As you start the game it's pretty intense, thrilling even, as you barely escape dangerous situations, almost getting killed and shot at every turn. It's only once you fail do you realize you can't die and really don't have a lot of input. In fact you really can only die in about five different places in the game. The rest of the time the game gives you the illusion that you can fail; but really you can't. Sure, some times you can veer off the path, but no matter which direction you end up going, it will be the same direction everyone else who plays the game will go. Only the endings and a couple of little details change. Once you realize this simple fact, the whole “a game with millions of decisions” becomes "a game where only a couple of decisions really matter".

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Saturday

20Feb2010

BioShock 2: You've Always Been The Caretaker

Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 3:22PM |

Price: $59.99 | System: PS3,PC,360 | Release Date: Feburay 14, 2010 | ESRB: M (mature)

3 Stars - Passable, a decent game (rent before buying)

BioShock was kind of a fluke -- a first person shooter with a deep story, a moral system where you chose to kill or save little girls, and taking place in an alternate 1960's art deco underwater city. The game was to be the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, which Irrational games did not have the rights to. System Shock 2 merged RPG elements with an FPS: you would pick your class and then upgrade your powers via stations. You also could pick up anything from wine to rocks and use them or throw them as you wanted. BioShock took what System Shock 2 was and streamlined it for a mainstream audience, but still kept some of the RPG elements. But even doing that BioShock was still a kind of gamble -- it wasn't a Sci-Fi shooter (the space marine ala Doom) and it wasn't a military simulator (ala Rainbow Six). Even the game's creator Ken Levine was shocked when he found out BioShock was a hit. 2K quickly green-lit a sequel to a game that no one originally thought would appeal to a mass audience. The only problem was that the original team wasn't interested in making a sequel to the game, and so only a couple of original members worked on BioShock 2.

Please note that there are spoilers for the original BioShock after the jump ... You have been warned.

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Thursday

18Feb2010

PixelJunk Shooter

Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 4:10PM |

Mike van Gelder

Price: $9.99 | Release Date: December 10, 2009 | ESRB: E10+ (Everybody 10 and older) | System: PlayStation 3

4 Stars - Brillant, short length prevents a 5-star rating

What should by now be familiar to you, dear reader, is that the PixelJunk prefix to this game means quality. You may know this from playing PixelJunk Eden or PixelJunk Monsters, or you might have heard a friend talk about PixelJunk something or other.

However you've heard it, Shooter is the fourth title from developer Q-Games in the PixelJunk series of games. As with all previous titles, Shooter runs native in 1080p resolution, presents an enjoyable gaming experience in only two dimensions and is exclusively available to download from the PlayStation Network.

So what then, is Shooter all about?

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Sunday

07Feb2010

Mass Effect 2 (PC, 360)

Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 7:48PM |

Jake Handy

Price: $59.95 | Release Date: January 26, 2010 | ESRB: M | Review System: PC | Also Available: Xbox 360

5 Stars - Amazing, a must buy game

If you like, you can read Travis' impressions of the first ten hours of Mass Effect 2, before you get into the review itself.

BioWare's first game in the Mass Effect series was fantastic for the sole reason of how personal it was. You customized not only your character's looks, but their actions too – and these actions had a tendency to have a mass effect on the world around you. Your relationships, your choices; every word you said in Mass Effect changed things around you.

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Tuesday

02Feb2010

No More Heroes 2: A Better Game but a Worse Sequel

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 12:38AM |

Price: $49.99 | Release Date: January 27, 2010 | ESRB: M | System: Nintendo Wii

4 Stars - Worth buying but not perfect

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is a better game than No More Heroes. If I was recommending the game to a friend who had never heard of the series before, I would tell them just to play or start with 2. It's a more appealing, more polished game. But somewhere while making a better game Suda51 (the creator the series) forgot to put as much soul into it. It still has as much crazy, over the top violence, sex, otaku, video game and Star Wars references as the first game...it just feels like it's missing something.

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Thursday

28Jan2010

LTTP: PixelJunk Monsters

Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 8:32AM |

Mike van Gelder

Price: $9.99 | Release Date: January 24, 2008 | ESRB: E (Everybody) | System: PlayStation 3

5 Stars - Amazing, a must buy game

The PixelJunk series of games, which includes Eden, Racers, Monsters and the latest Shooter, has always been associated with quality products. They deliver innovative gameplay combined with cutting-edge original music. Monsters, the second in the series, has been around a while, and yet it's still fun.

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Sunday

17Jan2010

Borderlands DLC Review: Mad Moxxie and Dr. Ned

Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 8:18PM |

Price: 800 MS Points | Release Date: October 2009 | System:Xbox360

Surprisingly I haven't played all of the campaign of Left 4 Dead 2 or even started to play Modern Warfare 2 and normally I would be all over those games. The amazing art work, the millions of guns and the amazingly fun co-op of Borderlands has been taking up all my time and interest. I mostly play it with my girlfriend split screen, who, despite normally HATING first person shooters, she loves Borderlands and its thrill of leveling up or killing that next Skag to get a bunch of cool loot.

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Thursday

14Jan2010

LTTP: Mushroom Wars

Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 9:00AM |

Mike van Gelder

Price: $9.99 | Release Date: October 15, 2009 | ESRB: E (Everybody)

4 Stars - Good enough to buy

Describing Mushroom Wars as a Real Time Strategy game, while technically accurate in the sense that it takes place in real time, and requires strategic thinking, will deter a lot of people from experiencing the game. It's kind of like describing something like Uncharted 2 as a third person murder simulator; while some may see it as accurate, it excludes a lot of the game's subtle nuances.

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Monday

11Jan2010

LTTP: Far Cry 2

Monday, January 11, 2010 at 7:11PM |

Travis Wahlstedt

Price: 19.99 | Release Date: October 21, 2008 | ESRB: M (Mature)

Passable, a decent game (rent before buying)

Far Cry 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Far Cry that was released back in 2004. Far Cry has had many off shoots and ports but this is first official “sequel”. Surprisingly, Far Cry 2 has very few similarities to the original Far Cry. New character, story, environment, play style, and even a new developer are all parts of the new Far Cry. Instead of Crytex (makers of Crysis) continuing with the series they created it was handed off to Ubisoft Montreal, and I must say, they didn’t do a half bad job.

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