Reviews

Review – Saints Row the Third DLC Part 1: Genki Bowl VII & Shark Attack Pack (PC)

Jun 5th, 2012

I’m pretty torn on the Downloadable content for Saints Row the Third here. On one hand, I really love this game, and more is good. On the other hand, a load of it is costumes that SHOULD have been built into the game to start with. At the very least they should run closer to a buck each and not the standard $2-$3. Yeah, yeah, $3 is not much but consider that at this point, buying all of the DLC will cost you MORE than the game itself. It adds up.

I did get some of the DLC off of a recent sale through GamersGate though, so I’ve been hitting the streets of Steelport once again. Specifically I picked up the Season Pass, which includes all three of the main mission based DLCs, the Explosive Pack, which was basically a spiffy Grenade launcher, and the real winner of all so far, the Shark Gun, which is a gun that summons a shark to obliterate your enemies.

… and then I was all BAM! SHARK!

I mean seriously, that one is awesome, I really can’t get enough of it.

Anyway, the meat here is the Season Pass, which includes extra missions from the three DLC packs, Genki Bowl VII, Ganstas in Space, and The Trouble with Clones. You can buy these individually but it’ll cost you about the same as the Season Pass and you won’t get the pretty neat looking NyteBlade car. Let’s see how they all stack up here…

Genkie Bowl VII

Murder Time Fun Time! Genki is basically a game show sort of mascot of the Saints Row series. He is a lime green and pink cat who gets off on slaughtering people. There are some Genki related missions in the main story, and Genki Bowl VII adds some additional missions of a similar nature. These missions are somewhat similar to some of the existing missions in the game but only the Apocalypse Genki is an EXACT replica, contrary to popular opinion. Apocalypse Genki is essentially just more of the indoor Genki levels where you must battle mascots in a maze, gain a specific level of money and escape alive. It does twist things up a bit, there are less fire and electrical traps and the environments are more jungle themed and nicer looking.

Sexy Kitten Yarngasm is comparable to the Tank Mayhem missions though it kind of feels more like a rampaging Katamari round that anything. The Tank missions are more focused on shooting than running things over, The Yarnball is a more designed to chase down the Genki trucks. Also, the yarnball has an area attack that works sort of like a Tank shot, except you only get so many of them and they have to be earned. These sort of seem like nitpicky differences but they are enough to make it feel like a different mission. Similarly, there’s the Super Ethical PR Opportunity, which is similar to the escort missions, though you gain score by fueling Genki’s desire for murder.

The most unique is the Sad Panda Skydiving events, which involved skydiving between buildings to take out swarms of Mascots. It’s actually a little confusing at first but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it.

Of the three DLCs I’d still have to rank Genki Bowl the weakest depending on how much you enjoy Genki missions. I prefer the more story driven missions. The real benefit to this is probably the end prizes. You get three useless Homies, (Homies being useless in general), but you also get the Yarnball vehicle and Genki’s car, which still functions as it does during the escort missions and lets you drive around spewing fire all over the place.

Review – Battle Arena Toshiden (GB)

Jan 28th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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1-2 Players

Fight to be the ultimate fighting master in this uh.. fighting game! I haven’t played any other Battle Arena Toshiden Games, so I can’t really comment on how close this comes.

Graphics: 8/10
Super deformed anime characters all around plus the occasional cut scene sequence. There’s even a nice little animation of Ellis at the beginning. It’s easy to tell your fighter from the other fighter and when a character fights himself the opponent is darker in color. I haven’t played two players ever so I don’t know if the player controlling is always normal colored to themselves. It’s also Super Game Boy enhanced with it’s own border!

Sound: 7/10
A good selection of music is nice, and the sound effects are pretty good. No digitized voices or anything though, all blips and beeps.

Game Play: 7/10
Each character has strengths and weaknesses as should be expected for a good fighting game. However like any good fighting game it can be repetitive as it’s the same thing over and over and over. It’ not too hard though and is fairly easy to get to the later bosses, who are quite a bit more difficult. The text speech between battles is cheesy. There are 8 normal fighters and at least two boss fighters (probably four). I forget if there is a way to play as the bosses.

Overall: 7.3
This is one of my newest Game Boy games, I bought it so I would have a fighter besides Mortal Kombat 2. I’d say it’s pretty good, if you need a Game Boy fighter I would recommend this game.

Tip: I have no tips for this. I don’t even know any moves.

Review – The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (PC)

Jan 16th, 2012

by Ramen Junkie.

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Aside from Saints Row the III, I’ve been spending a decent amount of my gaming time playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I have made it no secret that I am a huge fan of this series of games. I like free form games in general, Skyrim is no exception. While it is very enjoyable, there seems to have been some core focus shift in the design of this game, especially when comparing it to Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout, and New Vegas.

Here’s a few general observations…

The game seems to be much more story focused. Or possibly the story is just more interesting than Morrowind or Oblivion were. I have played a lot of Morrowind. on the main quest, I think ONCE I delivered the letter or whatever, that was involved in the first quest. I have never done anything else quest wise in Morrowind. For Oblivion, i did stick somewhat with the quest, but I took an approach I like to compare to the old Xena and Hercules TV shows, where I’d do little side jobs and missions as they came up, you know, to help people out, and maybe make a profit. So I did pretty well on the quests, then, after destroying a Black Gate i happened across, I stumbled upon the Shivering Isles.

I mentioned this once to someone who said they thought the idea of just stumbling in was kind of funny. Anyway, I rolled with it and set a rule that, even though I could leave, I was “trapped” there until I completed it. I may get there eventually. I think I’m maybe 75% of the way through.

In Skyrim, so far I have been fairly compelled to stick to the main quest. At this point though it’s become a bit hard since I’ve been put on a quest to find some junk in a cave clear across the map by these monks (Davokin or whatever). This is so I can become the Dragon Born Master or some rubbish. Basically, it’s starting to become a chore, and so I’ve started heading after other quests.

Combat is pretty epic. This is not a hard and fast rule, but combat in this game feels better than the previous games. My chief complaint with all of the Bethesda games is that the combat sucks. The enemy AI is dumb as hell and everything is very similar and stiff. This is very obvious next to say, Saints row III, which has people ducking and dodging behind cars and peeking around corners etc. I’m not saying SR3 has the best combat engine or anything, it’s just not “most of the guys just run at you blindly”.

Skyrim seems to have improve this quite a bit. It is still kind of weak but at the very least all of the humanoid characters don’t feel like direct clones of each other with different faces. Also there are interesting enemies, like Giants, and mammoths and Giant Spiders and Giant Dragons. You know, BIG ENEMIES.

The Dragons are a central focus to the plot and have very fun combat. They will swoop off and around and dive down to land nearby and snap at you as you get close. It’s very cool. It’s also a little creepy. I’m not sure if there are a set number of dragons but so far I have faced three. The first is scripted for the introduction. The second seemed ot be a scripted attack on a tower for the plot, this was the first one you actually get to fight. The third, I was simply exploring and suddenly i hear a low roar overhead. Next thing I know, I’m being assaulted by a dragon. i got killed due to the combat being outside some temple and me being pretty restricted in my movement area. I reloaded and left the place assuming that the Dragon was a scripted event I wasn’t meant to face yet. Still, the dragon apparently followed or something because soon out in the field I was attacked a second time. This time I had more room to maneuver to shoot arrows and whatnot, and I was victorious.

Like I said, it’s pretty epic.

The Level system is streamlined. Skyrim seems to have done away with stats. I’m sure the planning session behind this used the term “accessibility”. People who play Modern Warfare all day don’t want to screw around with picking strength or Dexterity. They just want to kill things. You still naturally improve abilities as you use them and you also get to buy perks themed around different abilities based on level. For example, because I shoot a lot of arrows, I have leveled up my Archery stat. As a result I have unlocked Zoomed aiming and bonuses to damage.

They also, thank god, removed the need to “sleep and rest on what you’ve learned” when you level up. This was probably the most annoying feature of the previous games. There’s nothing better than leveling up early in a dungeon, now you’re stats are stuck until you burn your level off, but you can’t sleep because there are enemies everywhere.

On a related note for “accessibility” they need to dump the random useless loot gimmick. Back in Morrowind, when I found out i could pick up every cup or pitcher or cracked plate, I loved it, it was neat and gimmicky and I quickly amassed more crap than I could carry. Now, it’s tired and pointless. This stuff isn’t even useful to sell off for quick cash.

Everything looks nicer. My second complaint about these games, is how vanilla all of the characters are. Because there has to be this “one size fits all” aspect to armor and helmets and clothing, every humanoid in the entire world is the same height and build. They also have some of the ugliest face meshes around and they are topped off by worse hair. I have modded Oblivion fairly heavily for visual appeal and it’s still fairly iffy in some points. I have yet to apply any mods to Skyrim. It’s not perfect, but it is better. Even the clothing itself seems a bit better. The armor looks like armor, and it’s kind of ornate, but not garishly so. I always hated that the better armor in the previous games was ugly as heck. This actually is part of why previously (not in Skyrim) I play these games in “god mode’. So I can wear some of the earlier better looking armors.

Anyway, it’s quite a bit of fun. I know there are some mixed reviews on comparisons, and I do kind of wish the world were a bit larger, but I would say Skyrim is probably better than the previous titles. I need to go back and replay Morrowind some probably, a lot of people still tout it as the best game in the series.

Review – Dino D-Day (PC)

Dec 13th, 2011

by Ramen Junkie.

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So I was pretty excited over Dino D-Day when it was first announced. The idea seemed goofy and it was accompanied by a campy campaign of fake WWII posters about Dinosaurs. Plus, few games let you really play as Dinosaurs that I can think of. Actually the only one I can think of is Jurassic Park on the Genesis, which was pretty awesome to play as the Velociraptor. This was back in the days when Velociraptors looked like bad ass mini T-Rexes and not this modern day “They have feathers and look like Dinosaur Chickens” bull crap.

SCREW YOU SCIENCE.

Anyway, the game seemed interesting enough that I picked it up when it was released. I may have even pre ordered it. I played it a few times and unfortunately… I got bored. Playing as the dinosaurs wasn’t nearly as exciting as it could be. The raptors are tiny, the big Anklyosaur looking tank is slow and the other guys are just boring. The 3rd person view makes aiming iffy and the controls were kind of confusing too which didn’t help. They also seemed to die pretty easily for a thick skinned giant killer lizard.

Aside from the Dinosaurs, you had some human soldiers to play as, and it was essentially a slightly bland looking Day of Defeat clone.

The creators have done some patching to try to fix some of the issues but it also suffered from another major issue, one that tends to fluctuate over time. There’s no servers. Dino D-Day is an online only Multiplayer game. There are supposedly plans for a single player campaign or some sort but they have not come to fruition yet. Due to it’s lackluster gameplay, the few servers the game had dwindled quickly. This is of course a death nail for this sort of game, no servers means you can’t even play it.

Fortunately the developers still seem to have hope for a revival. There are still patches and any time the game is on sale for cheap there is a related spike in interest by the game playing community. Personally I think even a weak Single Player campaign would help the game immensely, running around slaughtering idiot computer soldiers as a Velociraptor could be a lot of fun. They could even beef up the stats for Single player to make the gameplay more action filled instead of a constant die easily and respawn fest that it is.

I guess the bottom line is, the IDEA is neat. And the developers seem to really want to make it neat, so if you can manage to get it for fairly cheap and want to support the idea and maybe get the benefits later, then go for it. But if you’re looking for an immediate awesome payoff you may end up disappointed.

Review – Scoregasm (PC)

Dec 8th, 2011

by Ramen Junkie.

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Charlie’s Games | 10.07.2011

Hey look, another indie game pretty twin stick shooter full of neon lights and fast paced action. Scoregasm was included in the Indie Royale Difficult Bundle a few weeks ago, notable because it allowed gamers to get the game for Steam before it’s been officially released for Steam. The game still isn’t available on Steam, nor does it have a store page yet.

It’s still available elsewhere, just not on Steam. It’s made by the same guy who made Bullet Candy.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward, fly your ship around and shoot in different directions destroying hordes of enemies. It’s similar to Beat Hazard or Geometry Wars, or even, Asteroids. You do have the limitation of your movements being trapped within a small confined area. The game’s main draw is it’s progression system. The more enemies you shoot in a row without dying, the larger the combo you build up. Depending on the size of your combo you will unlock different stages to move on to. The fun part is, you can choose which stage to go to next. Each one is labeled by it’s difficulty so if you’re wanting to try something easier for a bit, you can pick the Easier stage, if you suddenly have a desire to challenge yourself, you can slip into a much more difficult stage, assuming you managed to unlock the higher difficulty.

This does lead to the game’s only real flaw, if you break your combo at all, there is a good chance you won’t unlock anything. The goals tend to be high enough that when your combo breaks and drops to zero, there probably aren’t even going to be enough enemies to make the stage goal combo. The stages are quick though so replaying them isn’t too hard.

It’s a good game all around, and certainly a fun game of it’s genre. The progression system is definitely pretty unique which helps make the game more enjoyable. It’s still probably mostly a game for bullet hell fans, which is a bit of a niche genre.

Scoregasm is available on the Scoregasm Website.