Video Games

Review – Portal 2 (PC)

Probably one of the most anticipated games released this year, it was proceeded by a gimmicky and ultimately disappointing Augmented Reality Gaming blitz, loads of hype, actual television commercials, and generally, a large bit to live up to. People love Portal 1, and they should, it’s an amazing game that did a lot to make us rethink what an FPS game was supposed to be. Specifically the idea that you must run around shooting and killing things. It also gave us the amazing Portal Gun. i remember first hearing about Portal many years ago in a magazine and an explanation of how the Portal Gun would work and it seemed really really intriguing.

Portal 1 also had a great narrative to go along with it. There is only one real character, the demented yet sympathetic GladOS. She starts off encouraging but as time goes along she becomes a bit meaner but she still keeps up her robotic test obsessed demeanor for most of the game while still trying to kill you… in the name of SCIENCE! It’s a great concept, the game itself is a test, even after the twist, you still kind of get the feeling that it’s all part of the same test. In fact even after the game is over, you get the sense that the whole thing was all part of some planned out plot.

Portal 2, picks up essentially where Portal 1 left off. In fact, the plot of Portal 2 pretty much doesn’t work unless you play through Portal 1. At the end of Portal one you get dragged back for more testing, Portal 2 starts off with you locked away in your small Aperture Science apartment. Some time passes due to a malfunction of the equipment, likely caused by the lack of a central controller due tot he actions taken by the player in Portal 1. After being “rescued” by the drone Wheatley, you start off, once again, navigating test chambers.

One of my favorite aspects of this entire game is the ruins of Aperture Science. Early in the game, you revisit almost every area from Portal 1 in a revamped depressed state. In fact you start off early in the very same glass chamber from the first game. Fairly quickly you end up in the same regions from the end of the first game as well. This whole experience is greatly enhanced by familiarity with the first game as it’s very recognizable and you see it and know “GladOS is there…” Or was there. You don’t really know until you make it back inside. It gives a great sense of suspense and creepiness knowing that this is where you were before, last time it was all a test, tests and test and tests, is it still a test?

Of course the game wouldn’t be very much fun if it were just “Portal 1 with more trees”, so after some more plot twists, the player will embark on a whole new adventure through the history of Aperture Science.

This too is handled pretty interestingly. You escape from the ruined modern era Aperture, and find your way to the ruins of the very early Aperture. Guided by the recorded voice of Cave Johnson, founder of Aperture you must traverse some very rough early test chambers. This also introduces another Aperture product, the Propulsion and repulsion gels. One type of gel will cause the player, or other objects, to travel at great speeds, like some sort of super grease. The other will cause the player to be pushed off, useful for jumping higher or bouncing from one location to another.

There are also some new devices to content with called Hard Light Bridges. These can be positioned using the Portals and are essentially clear platforms of light that you use to travel over chasms, stop objects, or protect yourself from Turrets.

Other new devices, in addition to the plasma balls used previously to power equipment there are now also lasers which can be directed using prism style mirror cubes.

All of these new tools are pretty unique and interesting and make for some interesting new twists on the old Portal Gun puzzles. The puzzles are of course the main driver of the gameplay. The interesting story and plot going on in the background i just an excellent bonus that helps solidify the game as a whole. I’m doing my best to avoid any real spoilers here but sufficed to say, the game climaxes out pretty well and you’ll have to use most of the tricks you’ve learned in the end to escape destruction and ‘save the day”, or at least save yourself.

To top things off, the game includes a multiplayer Coop mode. The player and one other companion can play a 2 player mode where each controls a robot instead of the human Chel. These courses are pretty cleverly designed to require both players and it is quite a bit of fun. The real issue seems to be finding people to play with as there isn’t much replay incentive on the multi player Coop.

The game really does live up to it’s hype. I do have two main complaints. Firstly, there is a serious lack of Turrets in this game., Granted, for the most part, the turrets are kind of annoying to deal with sometimes but they do add some difficulty to what is otherwise a “think for a bit and go” style of gameplay. Things shooting at you help keep you on your toes and force you to think more quickly. The lack of turrets is more or less explained by the plot but it’s kind of disappointing, especially when Old Aperture could easily have had “Old Turrets not affected by the plot gimmick.

Secondly is the pricing. The original asking price for portal 2 was $50 bucks, it’s now down to $30. I hate complaining about pricing since I know I am spoiled to death by sales and cheap indie games but $50 is WAY too much. $30 is more reasonable. Generally speaking, the game takes 10-15 hours to complete, max. The original is about a 5 hour game, just for a comparison. $30 is more reasonable though it still seems a little steep.

So here’s the deal, Portal 2, is pretty much everything it’s expected to be. It looks great, the story is fun, the puzzles are interesting, etc etc. It’s essentially, Portal 1, plus a lot more, in a sense, and it continues to carry over the fun of Portal 1. The real problem, like Portal 1, is there isn’t much incentive to replay it at all. Kind of a disappointment there. Even the multiplayer, by design, isn’t really replayable, once you’ve figured everything out. This is the only real drawback I found with the entire game, other than the related secondary problem of game length vs price. there has been promises of some DLC or map editors or something to help extend the value from Valve but as far as I can tell they have not even added anything new to buy to the Portal 2 store, which brings them in bonus money.

Portal 2 is available via Steam.

Review – Pokemon Diamond and Pearl (NDS)

Jun 19th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Oh Pokémon, how conflicted you make us. On one hand, you’re a lot of fun. Your simple system of battling animals is easy to pick up somewhat difficult to master. On the other hand, you’re such a huge blatant marketing whore that we can’t help but hate you for it.

Pokémon is a franchise designed to sell… stuff. Lots of properties do this but only someone like say, Disney does it bigger than Pokémon. Ironically, both Disney and Pokémon use a mouse as their mascot, coincidence? Probably.

Anyway, Pokémon sells too. Kids eat up all of the toys, the card games, the peripherals, the games, the game systems. I am pretty sure this series didn’t pioneer the dual game version format but it certainly perfected it. This encourages people to own multiple copies of the same game for the sole purpose of being able to capture and control maybe a dozen additional virtual creatures. Well, it also encourages social activity among children so they can trade these creatures around. Unfortunately, no one wants to do an even trade for anything, they all want level 100 rare “Legendary” Pokémon for worthless normal types. That’s greed and a complete lack of how economies work that a million ten year olds will create for you.

And millions of ten year olds are out there to trade with. Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (D/P) is the first of the series to feature the ability to trade via the internet thanks to the Nintendo DS’s WiFi capabilities. See a neat or cute Pokémon used by an in game trainer that you’d like to add to your party. You can look for one on the WiFi network to trade for. Unfortunately you’ll likely not possess or be unwilling to give up the powerful Pokémon being requested. This is where the aforementioned balance issue comes into play here in force. Everyone is looking for Dialga, or Mewtwo, or level 100 Milotics. No one wants your Gyarados for their Murkrow. WiFi trading is not a good alternative to straight out hunting and catching things on your own.

This brings up a point I’d like to push about how broken the WiFi trade system is. It could really use a “Search for what’s wanted” sort of feature. Let’s say I have an extra Psyduck. Being able to see who out there wants a Psyduck then deciding if I want what they are offering would be much more useful than the current system. The current system being that I offer up my Psyduck for a specific Pokémon then hope some person comes along wanting to trade for my Psyduck using that specific Pokémon. Most of the time, I don’t care what I get for it just so long as it’s not something I already own.

WiFi isn’t just used for trading; it’s also used for battling. I think. Once again, the multiplayer options are a bit flawed and confusing in this game. There seems to be dozens of variations of two player battles going on in this game varying from fighting friends over the internet or fighting local players to team based battles. There’s supposed to be a way to fight other player’s champion teams as well though the teams become computer controlled. They all get initiated via different options and in world locations and what does what is not particularly clear due to conflicting in game terminology.

The key word here is friends. You can only battle people whose friend code you’ve entered. Anonymous random battles over WiFi would have been a totally awesome option in this game. Especially if there was some sort of server side algorithm for determining a balanced battle so you don’t have someone fielding a bunch of level 1 Pokémon against a party of level 100 legendaries. I suppose this would have made is possible that the other player had named his Pokémon “Penis” and some kid might get exposed to this but the simple act of not showing names would have fixed that. Besides, there’s no filters on the trading end of things and it’s not possible to rename traded Pokémon.

Anyway, enough about the broken WiFi capabilities of this game. Let’s get to the actual game play. If you’ve played any other game in this series, you’ve played this game. The only Pokémon game I have experience with is the original Blue, and I was amazed at how similar this game was to that game. There are a few new options and extras such as Pokémon breeding and shinny Pokémon and multiple hidden Legendary Pokémon that have been added over the years but the core is still the same.

You start out as a kid with his/her first Pokémon, you battle through 8 themed gyms and against an evil enemy “Team” while building an army of cute fighting critters, then you face the “Elite Four” and the current Champion.

The maps are 3D now but they are stuck in an overhead position and look essentially just like the old ones. The battles use the same cornered menu driven look. The newer games occasionally have 2vs2 battles but for the most part it’s 1vs1.

One of the main new features for the DS is the use of the lower touch screen as a Poketch (short for Pokémon Watch I believe). This takes up the entire screen and looks like an LCD wrist watch that your character would wear in game (it’s all grayscale except for the border watch part). It’s an extremely gimmicky way to present useful information on the fly while helping with the immersion feel of the game. They could have done the same thing with a pretty color interface but this simplified look helps give it some interesting charm. My only complaint is that once you get a lot of applications loaded into it, it takes forever to navigate. A “Previous app” button would have done wonders to help this. As it is designed there is only one “button” for switching applications.

The Applications range from a simple clock that keeps real world time, to a radar for finding hidden items, to mini maps that tell you where berries or markers are located. Some are extremely useful and required for finding everything. Others, like the customizable roulette reel are ultimately useless.

Now, I know I’ve been a little hard on this game, but the parts I’ve been hard on are a small and mostly unnecessary part of the game. The core game play is a lot of fun, especially if you like RPG style game play. Well, I should clarify that as “old school” RPG style game play. Modern RPGs tend to be a bit different than the simple turn based menu driven combat used in Pokémon. There is also the massive collecting aspect that can appear to a person’s obsessive need to well, collect things. The core game has 150 Pokémon in the “Sinnoh Dex”. After you complete he Sinnoh dex by seeing (not catching) all 150 Pokémon you unlock the “National Dex” which includes all Pokémon from every game in the series. We’re talking not quite 500 of the little critters.

This National Dex is of course empty until you fill it up by seeing or capturing all of the Pokémon. How do you do this if there’s only 150 core Pokémon in the game? After you unlock the National Dex additional Pokémon start showing up around the world. There will be daily swarms in certain areas, the master of the Pokémon mansion will import more exotic types into his garden, a whole new Battle Island will open with lots of Pokémon being used and to be caught from other regions. Also, you can trade Pokémon up into Diamond or Pearl from your previous GBA versions of the game. Unfortunately, this is a one way trip for your Pokémon and annoyingly, you have to do it 6 at a time to satisfy the Pal Park mini game requirements. The real challenge of this game actually comes AFTER you “complete” it.

Ultimately, Pokémon is an experience that a player is either going to love or hate. There’s not much of an “Its ok” or “I guess I like it a little” ground. It’s a concept that appeals to kids and obsessive collectors and not much else. Fortunately, it still does a pretty good job of it. Now if only I could import my Pokémon Blue army into my copy of Pokémon Diamond.

Review – Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)

Jun 12th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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So who hasn’t played Grand Theft Auto III? Ok, probably a lot of people. It was a game that really redefined the idea of what a game could be back when it was first released ten years ago in 2001. I like to brag that I came up with the idea first personally, though it’s probably a real stretch. A bit of some history.

I played quite a bit of the first Grand Theft Auto with it’s more open ended top down game play. The older games were less story driven than the later 3D titles, you generally just had to collect a certain amount of money before proceeding to the next city. There were a lot of similar elements, the cities were named Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas, names which were later reused in the subsequent PS2 titles and based loosely on the real life cities of New Your, Miami, and Los Angeles. You would drive around getting missions from phone booths, steal cars, shoot random pedestrians. It even had the radio stations which were pretty decent though pretty much unknown music.

I also for a short while in 1999 played a decent amount of the title Midtown Madness. This is a title that never seemed to get a lot of attention though it’s notable for being the first real sandboxy style racing game. In addition tot he standard tracks, there was a free roam mode which let you explore the relatively large city of Chicago. Ok, mostly it was just “The Loop” area and Interstate 90 was altered to create an outside barrier to the city. You could still pick out where the game took place by looking at a map of Chicago. It was pretty neat.

One thing I remember most about playing Midtown Madness was that it reminded me a bit of GTA’s free drive experience only more three dimensional. I always thought it would be pretty awesome if you could actually get out of the car in Midtown Madness and run around the city. They could even have missions where you were like a cop or a hitman. Maybe you could have an apartment where you keep your junk and possibly even an online aspect. It would be totally awesome.

Then Grand Theft Auto III happened 2 years later.

And so I bought a Playstation 2. Three titles drove this purchase, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto III. Here’s a bonus fun fact, I bought my PS3 in December/January near the end of 2001, I had those three games alone for it until roughly a year later when I added three more titles, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X-2, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

I have played a LOT of GTA3. Probably more than any other game I have ever owned. I once figured up based on how many in game days I had on my save file and how many save attempts I had made and how long an in game hour took to calculate I had played around 300 hours of the game, and this was back in like 2001 or 2002 soon after the game had been released. I’ve explored every nook and cranny of Liberty City countless times. At one point I could locate every one of the 100 packages without a guide. I’ve completed the game to 100% completion without being arrested or killed or failing a mission (the game keeps track) and without once doing a “save and reload because I had “messed up”.

It really is an amazing game. It gets a lot of flack for the violence and crime aspect but even that is only as bad as a person makes it. Yeah, you can go around shooting pedestrians and hookers and make it a complete gore fest. Or you can play the story and get an interesting mobster plot. Yeah, there is some violence but not any more than your average R rated action film. Hell the whole series is really just a series of movie parodies strung cleverly into a crazy plot. The problem only comes up when you get players who can’t manage to get anywhere in the story that just run around randomly shooting things. The first game is even pretty tame, especially next to Vice City which takes it’s Scarface homage pretty seriously.

From a gameplay standpoint it was pretty revolutionary. For years, games were about doing what was required, the way it was required. Sure, you had your warp zones and some games like Castlevania or Metroid would let you roam a bit but never before was there a game so encouraging of doing… whatever. It wasn’t just the freedom to wander around the city that made it work either. The city itself was a massive living creature. You could just stand on the sidewalk and thugs or businessmen or old ladies would just wander around. Cars drive around, sports cars, taxis, cops, delivery vans. People would get in the taxis they would argue with each other, they’d talk to you as you walked by, it was like being in a real city. The whole game just reeked of atmosphere and you didn’t have to interact with it to trigger activity.

This was coupled with exceptional cinematic fully voiced cut scenes to drive the plot. Sure, many of the plot points were lifted from movies like The Godfather but it worked so well as a whole. There was mystery and betrayal and vengeance and even subtle nods within the plot to earlier events. This wasn’t just random events happening. Characters interacted with each other, they referenced other events, it was cohesive. Even things that you don’t even really realize like the Asian Guy with you at the start of the game in the jail car. The Columbians kidnap him and thus you end up free and the game starts, but later, you effectively end up taking out the Columbians in your quest for Vengeance.

These minor points just help the whole things feel so much more cohesive. It creates a great universe that works with itself, which is part of the whole reason the game works so well.

There was also the openness of the missions themselves. Sure, many more or less required one path to completion but many of them were very open to the player’s preference. Say you’ve been asked to kill some mob guy. If you’re the gung ho type you can charge in and assault his guard and the character with pistols and machine guns blazing. Want the more subtle route, just find yourself a sniper rifle and pick him off from a distance. Maybe you’re the kamikaze type and want to just plow through his posse in a speedy sports car and hope none of them are carrying shotguns or rocket. You were very often just given a general objective and a map marker and the gaps are something the player gets to fill in. Even if you were terrible the game also didn’t really have any lives. There was no real penalty to dying, you would just wake up at the hospital or police station minus guns and some money. No lives, no continues, just a simple “Try harder, PS, also you’ll have to find a pistol”

So here we are, it’s been ten whole years since GTA3. A game that spawned many sequels and spin offs, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, GTA4, Chinatown Wars, The lost and the Damned, The Ballade of Gay Tony, hell I’m probably forgetting some. Then there are knockoff series with the same gangster sandbox concept, Saint’s Row, True Crime, Mafia, Just Cause, Simpsons Hit & Run, The Getaway, there are a lot of them. It’s a game that inspired many and crated a whole genre of gaming. Not many games can claim this title. It also holds up pretty well to time, even with it’s sequels, playing through it again can lead to new methods and a whole new experience.

Review – Contra (NES)

May 29th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Contra, why would we want to review a game that is like ten Twenty years old? I mean why not do the SIMs Second Life? or Lord of Destruction World of Warcraft? Or Half Life Half Life 2 – Episode 2, or whatever, the list goes on, the idea is why not something current. Well sometimes a game is just too go to be considered too old. When you can spend an entire night playing a ten year old game over and over you know it’s got to be a pretty decent game.

You see back before 3D everything there was 2D everything. Back before war games were all first person shooters, they were side scrolling platform games. The platform game is almost a lost art. Occasionally they still get released, great games like Strider 2, Silhoette Mirage or of course the immortal (literally) Mega Man series. Or you could also count the 1000 pieces of shit cranked out daily for the GBC (Trust only those made by Komani and Capcom, and sometimes not even those). Anyway Contra beget Wolfenstein, beget Doom, beget Half Life . When someone asks what the best game ever is be sure to reply River City Ransom, but when someone asks what the third best game ever is be sure to say Contra (Half Life being number 2 duh.)

So the plot for Contra is, you are the military’s elite commando and its your job to combat the entire Red Faction army. At least its probably something like that, I don’t have the instruction book around and there is no real in game story. For 6 levels you fight Red Faction forces and break into their main base only to suddenly be fighting a bunch of aliens. Where the hell did that plot point come from?

Anyway after killing the Alien leader, A.K.A. the “Obligatory Konami Brain Boss” you helicopter off the island (where did the chopper come from anyway?) and the island explodes. You can always tell a great game because at the end the hero will fly away in a helicopter or a space ship as the island or planet they were fighting on completely blows up for no real apparent reason. Then you’ll get a nice congratulatory message about saving the world then the credits roll then the best part comes. The game starts over. Back to level one.

There are literally hundreds of these Red Faction islands around, all of them identical except that each time the soldier will have a bit more ammo (as in they shoot you more). After blowing up one island where does the chopper go? Why it flies off to the next island. Good work soldier, you saved the universe, from one threat, now it’s back to work on the next island. This gives the game great replay value. Just put in the KONAMI CODE for 30 lives then see home many times you can complete the game before loosing all 30 lives and 3 continues (90 lives +extra lives from points). How’s THAT for a great way to waste an afternoon or a whole day.

But wait, what about your buddy, he want’s some of the action too? Well sometimes the military sends its marines in by the pairs. You can play two players in this game simultaneously. Which is twice the fun, expect when the Spread gun appears, because everyone always wants the spread gun.

Review – Transformers the Game (PC)

Mar 27th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’ve been a bit behind here on my Transformers themed gaming here. I have yet to really get into any of the latest 3D incarnations of Transformers video games until recently. i figure the best thing to do would be to start at the beginning. Unfortunately, Transformers (Armada) isn’t available on the PC so I’m going for the game based on the first movie game. Keep in mind also, while I played the PC version, I’m pretty sure it’s essentially the same as the console versions for PS2, Xbox360, and PS3. It’s probably marginally different than the DS version however.

This is a game with a bit of extremes going for it. I’ll start with the good extremes because, generally good = boring. The graphics are pretty swank. Everything looks really nice, there’s a ton of great particle effects and every character looks pretty much the way they should. As a bonus, the numerous cut scenes, as corny as they may be, are well animated and fluid as well. The action and Transformation gimmick is used fairly effectively as well, though more so for land based vehicles (more on this in a bit). My only complaint with the transformation gimmick is the “button” for how to do it is not in the controls options, which mean I had to putz with things until I figured it out (it’s mouse wheel up).

Speaking of controls, let’s move on the the extreme of bad. The controls are mostly decent, except for the flying sequences. Controlling Megatron wasn’t so bad but Blackout and Starscream have extreme issues with the up and down precision. It’s possible this was just my machine or something but it makes flying anywhere almost impossible. Thankfully it’s never ever necessary. Even the mission where you have to shoot down 20 jets can be done by standing on the ground shooting rockets at them as they very slowly fly by.

Assuming you can lock on to them. The next major gripe I have with this game is the incessant military/police. You see, due to the nature of the film, creating things to fight and DO on missions was a bit tricky. Each side has like half a dozen main characters to choose from for creating storylines and missions. This leaves the pool of things to shoot at extremely small. This is “fixed” through two methods. Each faction gets a whole mess of Drones that show up in mass from time to time. Also there is an almost constant stream of military or police forces. This means you’ll constantly be chased by police cars and constantly being assaulted by Ospreys and Blackout style helicopters. The human attackers generally do little damage and mostly serve as an annoying nuisance than anything.

The drones help give a more formidable set of opponents but they aren’t without their issues either. They come in a variety of sizes and flavors however both the Decepticons and Autobots use the exact same drones. Also, each type has some gimmick to defeat it, two of which are extremely annoying. The two largest types require you to throw some sort of vehicle at them to remove their defenses. There isn’t any way around this and finding a vehicle can often be tricky. Once you find a vehicle getting it to connect just right among the mess of police/military and everything else going on can be tricky as well. To make things more tedious you will have to hit them 3-4 times each. If you try to straight attack or get to close they will fling you halfway across the battle area.

Which brings up another bit of annoyance, almost every encounter has a completely arbitrary “Action Zone”. Leaving this circle for more than about 20 seconds means instant mission failure.

The hero characters all show up of course. Through the course of the Decepticon missions you fight Bumblebee, Jazz, Ironhide and Optimus each to their destruction, which makes a nice twist on the plot of the film. Ironhide however is probably the most annoying boss battle ever as it involves a lot of drones, a lot of “kill stuff then fight the boss”, all while doing a lot of “stay away from the boss between rounds or he’ll fling you across the map”. I could understand this more if you fought Ironhide as say, barricade or Scorponok but you fight as Blackout, whom is considerably larger than everyone.

The Autobots of course showdown against the Decepticons with one major twist. Shockwave shows up as a boss. He’s even a triple changer transforming from a stationary gun turret, to robot to a helicopter similar to Blackout. This is somewhat odd for several reasons. First is that no other major characters were added. Sure we have the “drones” but they are all clearly called drones implying they are nobodies. Secondly, shockwave has never gotten a movie based toy. Even the drones are all based on toy designs, Swindle, LIST DRONE TOYS. Thirdly, Shockwave is rumored to be a major player in the third Transformers film. Will his design have any relation to the one presented here. Technically the game isn’t really cannon in anyway, but it is something to question.

There is one character conspicuously absent from the game. Ratchet is not a playable character nor do you ever fight him. He makes a few short appearances in some of the CG cinematics but he doesn’t ever appear in game. Bonecrusher shows up in an NPC role during one of Starscreams missions and Brawl is fought during the Autobot quest though you never get to play as either of them. This is actually somewhat disappointing as I was hoping to play as Bonecrusher. His articulated claw could have added some interesting dynamics to the gameplay. Also Brawl is extremely small compared to his movie counterpart.

Brawl was the tank, referred to as Devastator in the first movie. He’s correctly called Brawl in the game but in the movie he was several stories tall and it took a great deal of effort by almost everyone to take him down. In the game he’s the same size as Ironhide, who turns into a larger pick up truck.

The missions themselves are decent though fairly standard for an action style game. The Decepticon missions are probably the better set if only because the Decepticons are more varied than the Autobots and the Decepticon missions come off as less hypocritical. By Hypocritical I mean, the Autobots get penalized for “Destruction” while at the same time you have missions like “Drive around as Jazz blowing up gas stations to distract the police”.

Overall, this is an OK game, though not spectacular. The real issues ironically come from the more “Game” like elements.

NOTE: It’s almost inconsequential but I just wanted to note that while playing this game I took screen shots of my OWN all the way through of lots of great stuff using a program to do so only to find out the program had not saved ANY of them. So I’ve had to resort to picking up a bunch of random shots from around the web.