Category Archives: ps3

Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds - Review

posted by Ryan Davis on April 3, 2008 – 6:08 pm

Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds for the PlayStation 3 is a game out of time. While the technical sheen of the presentation and the robustness of the online component feel modern enough, the cutely Japanese characters (complete with poorly matched English voiceovers), the all-too-familiar swing mechanic, and limited number of courses and gameplay modes make it feel like 1997 all over again. While the new subtitle might suggest that Hot Shots is finally going to let its hair down, break some rules, think outside the box, incite a paradigm shift, etc., this is about as traditional as video game golf gets. Despite the dearth of much genuine evolution, though, Out of Bounds still manages a pleasant game of golf.

The most daring thing that Out of Bounds does with the gameplay is introduce a new advanced swing system, which isn’t much more than a new coat of paint for the three-click swing mechanic that dates back to Golf for the NES. You still hit the X button once to initiate the swing, a second time to determine swing power, and a third for accuracy, it just does it without cluttering up the screen with various meters. This requires you to play a little more by feel, though there are still plenty of hints provided to help guide the timing of your button presses. During the back swing you’ll see a yellow glint on the club when you’re at 50% power, then a red glint when you’re near 100% power, and as you swing forward, you’ll see a shrinking circular meter around the ball, and the closer to the center the circle is, the more accurate the impact is. If you’re a hardcore traditionalist that wants no part of all these scary, newfangled mechanics, the traditional, meter-based swing system is still included. It gets the job done, and there’s something to be said for going with what you know, but even the new advanced swing feels like a bit of throwback.

Out of Bounds doesn’t take many chances with the modes of play, either. The challenge mode represents the meat of the single-player game, challenging you to win a certain number of 9- or 18-hole tournaments before you can go head-to-head against a ranked pro. Win this match and you’ll advance to the next rank and begin the process all over again. Ironically, the challenge mode isn’t really that challenging through most of it–not to brag or anything, but I got to the fourth rank before I actually lost a match–though once the game decides it’s not kidding, it starts coming hard with heavy winds, convoluted putting greens, and opponents who can put up a real fight.

It’s in the challenge mode that you’ll unlock the lion’s share of the 15 playable characters and six different 18-hole courses the game has to offer. The characters are all ridiculous in that filtered-through-Japan kind of way, with my personal favorite being Fernando, the cocky salesman with rolled sleeves who will occasionally leave the course via helicopter. Everyone still has the oversized anime look that has defined the Hot Shots look, and though the PlayStation 3 allows them to look more detailed than ever before, there’s a woefully limited number of animations and voice samples. Additionally, the added detail, coupled with the exaggerated art style, gives everyone a weird kind of living-doll feel.

Characters are ranked, and each has unique stats, but individual characters will improve the more you use them, and the clubs and balls you unlock in the challenge mode can have such an adverse effect on performance that you’ll likely end up sticking to one or two characters. You’ll also gain access to new caddies, who do absolutely nothing. Watching the caddie run like a lunatic between shots is mildly amusing, but their advice when you’re on the green is usually painfully obvious, and occasionally downright inaccurate. The six courses in Out of Bounds aren’t quite as outlandish as the players, though expect to see plenty of wildlife on the course, as well as the occasional rally race or hot-air balloon. The courses are well-designed and tend towards a more subtly exaggerated realism, but even with mirrored and long-tee versions, there simply aren’t enough. This is especially apparent in the challenge mode, where you’ll play the same two courses over and over again for the first several ranks.

Live opponents certainly help spice things up, and you can play Out of Bounds locally against friends in either match or stroke games, and you can apply a few custom rules to your matches as well. There’s a rule that increases the size of the cup, a rule that adds strokes for landing in a sand trap, and so on. The online play has these same features, but is far more involved, with custom avatars, a full lobby system, and a tournament structure that allows you to reserve your spot in tournaments that happen at specific times in the day, as though it were a tee-time at an actual country club. But, in another turn that reinforces my theory that Out of Bounds was actually developed in the late 1990s, your character and course access in the multiplayer is determined by what you’ve unlocked in the challenge mode, which sucks if you’re just interested in some golf with your friends.

Hot Shots fans will probably be getting exactly what they want/expect from the series with Out of Bounds, which is a very tradition-bound golf game whose playful exterior belies some fairly sturdy and familiar gameplay. I’ve personally been pretty cool towards the Hot Shots series for a while now for these exact reasons, and while Out of Bounds has done little to change my mind, there are worse ways to spend a lazy Sunday morning.


systems: ps3 games:

Seismic Activity Detected

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on April 2, 2008 – 11:09 am

If you’re extra cool (or just extra impatient), you’ve probably been rocking an imported DualShock 3 on your PS3 for a few months now, at least. But if you decided to do the sane thing and wait it out, the wait is going to be over sooner than previously thought. Sony just posted up on its official blog to let the world know we’ll be seeing the $55 controller in stores as early as next week.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the controller Sony should have shipped with in the first place. It’s a little heavier, which gives it a substantial “this won’t disintegrate in your hands” feel, which is something I always feel worried about when handing a standard Sixaxis.

MTV’s king of the east coast game coverage, Stephen Totilo, did a little follow-up work and discovered that the Sixaxis, unsurprisingly, has been discontinued. Once the existing stock of old controllers has been sold out, they’re gone for good.

Sony’s also put together a logo that’ll live on the back of rumble-ready games, but I bet that logo goes away pretty fast, because now that it’s the standard, you can safely expect just about every game coming out to support it. Here’s the list of currently-available games that already have (or, if you see an asterisk, will have as soon as it’s patched) shakin’ support.

SCEA - Formula One Championship Edition* (PS3)
SCEA - MotorStorm* (PS3)
SCEA - PAIN (PSN)
SCEA - High Velocity Bowling (PSN)
SCEA - MLB 08: The Show (PS3)
SCEA - Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3)
SCEA - Resistance: Fall of Man* (PS3)
SCEA - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
SCEA - Go! Sports Ski* (PSN)
SCEA - Folklore* (PS3)
SCEA - Heavenly Sword* (PS3)
SCEA - Warhawk* (PSN / PS3)
SCEA - Super Stardust HD* (PSN)
SCEA - Snakeball (PSN)
SCEA - Toy Home (PSN)
SCEA - PSOne Emulation (PSN)
SCEA - Piyotama (PSN)
SCEA - PixelJunk Monsters (PSN)
SCEA - Blast Factor* (PSN)
Sega - Condemned 2: Bloodshot (PS3)
Ubisoft - Lost: Via Domus (PS3)
Ubisoft - Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2* (PS3)
EA - Burnout Paradise (PS3)
KOEI - Dynasty Warriors 6 (PS3)
Capcom - Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
Atari - Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit (PS3)
Disney Interactive - Turok (PS3)

Yes, friends, Piyotama has rumble support! The world is officially a better place. Hug someone you see on the street today.

systems: ps3 games:

Top Ten Weapons We’d Like to See in Condemned 3

posted by Ryan Davis on March 29, 2008 – 8:01 am

Feather Pillow

Blender

Ice Cream Scoop

“Back Massager”

Rake

The Stanley Cup

Booger from Revenge of the Nerds

Sarcasm

Busted Xbox 360

Piñata

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Condemned 2: Bloodshot - Review

posted by Ryan Davis on March 27, 2008 – 4:03 pm

Bowling pins. Toilet seats. Drive shafts. Deer antlers. These are just a few of the makeshift weapons that you will beat your deranged, uncontrollably violent opponents to death with in Condemned 2: Bloodshot. This first-person action adventure game is far and away the most unflinchingly sadistic and gruesome video game I’ve ever played, outclassing its predecessor in virtually every way possible. This is a game that puts faint hearts and weak stomachs through a battery of tests, but if you’re up for it, Condemned 2 is thoroughly and brutally entertaining.

Special agent Ethan Thomas, the two-fisted protagonist from Condemned: Criminal Origins, is in bad shape after the events of the first game. Having quit SCU, the law enforcement agency he was previously working for, Ethan now spends his time drinking in dodgy bars, hiding from the creeping darkness and twisted hallucinations that haunt his every waking moment. However, it would seem that the case from Criminal Origins still has some loose ends, and you end up getting dragged back into the investigation of the nefarious forces behind the widespread madness that chokes the city.

While the story in Criminal Origins was deliberately disorienting and brimming with unanswered questions, Bloodshot makes a point of explaining the seemingly unexplainable insanity that has been a driving force in the series so far. It’s not necessary to have played Criminal Origins to appreciate the grimy setting and relentless brutality of Bloodshot, though the story revelations probably won’t resonate if you haven’t. If nothing else, the conclusion of Bloodshot leaves you with the promise of something exciting and different in Condemned 3.

Like Criminal Origins, the action in Bloodshot is an 80/20 split between hand-to-hand combat and forensic investigation, though it expands on and adjusts both in a number of meaningful ways. First-person melee combat is an exceptionally difficult concept to pull off convincingly, due to the disconnect from your “body” that’s felt in most FPS games, where your presence in the world is defined by the barrel of your gun. While there are a handful of firearms in Bloodshot, ammo is usually scarce enough that you’ll be using your fists, along with whatever else you can pick up, to take on your enemies most of the time. Even when there are firearms at your disposal, you’ll likely opt for the hands-on approach, just because it’s so damn satisfying. The mechanic of guzzling bottles of hard liquor to steady your aim with firearms is an entertainingly morose idea, but you just can’t beat caving in a dude’s skull with a rod from a foosball table.

The basic combat assigns each of your fists to a different button, and pressing both at the same time will allow you to block or parry incoming attacks, almost making it feel like a no-holds-barred boxing game. There’s a new combo system that rewards you with more punishing attacks when you’re able to land a number of consecutive blows without getting hit yourself, encouraging you fight somewhat intelligently, rather than with pure, blind rage. You can activate chain attacks by double-tapping one of your attack buttons, which will slow down the action and prompt you with a string of button presses which, if done successfully, can result in some exceptionally savage attacks.

Opponents will drop to their knees when they’re at the verge of death, at which point you can grab them and execute them using an environmental kill, which can range from tossing them in a dumpster to crushing their head in an industrial press. Save for an awesome–if shamefully underutilized–late-game addition, the core combat in Condemned 2 doesn’t really change that much over the course of the game. The constant change of scenery and the regular introduction of new objects, new combos, and new chain attacks with which you dispense your murderous justice, however, are just enough to keep your attention throughout.

You’ll occasionally take a break from all the bone-crushing violence to do a little crime-scene investigating. You’ll use a UV light to turn up blood trails, take photos of evidence with a digital camera, navigate serpentine environments with a GPS unit, and sniff out the sonic emitters that are driving everyone totally bananas with a sepctrometer. The most interesting aspect of the forensics stuff is the way you’re rated on the quality of the questions you ask Rosa, your in-ear contact back at SCU, and the accuracy of the evidence reports you submit. The separation between the combat and the forensics still feels a little odd, though by forcing you to do a little quiet meditating on the net results of all this violence, it keeps the game from feeing too relentless.

A lurid, rundown atmosphere is a significant factor in what makes Bloodshot so engrossing. The environments are consistently filthy and busted, with either harsh lighting that creates lots of unnerving shadows, or no lighting at all, forcing you to rely on your flashlight to make your way. Bloodshot sounds as nasty as it looks, with a static-washed, screaming soundtrack that creates a perpetual sense of dread, sickening thuds and crunches punctuating the intimately punishing combat, and some of the most convincingly rage-filled epithets you’ll hear in a game. You’ll hear muffled movement and muttering from rooms away, reinforcing the sense that there’s someone (or something) right around the corner, ready to tear you to pieces.

The single-player game in Bloodshot is probably about as long as Criminal Origins was, though Bloodshot definitely maintains a better momentum throughout. Bloodshot also features some multiplayer modes that are interesting in theory, but in the plainest of terms, the melee combat just doesn’t work well in a multiplayer context. While I’m generally not much of a fan of gore-porn like Saw or Hostel, I loved Condemned 2 start to finish, despite it coming from a similarly depraved place. This game is all raw nerves and bloody fists, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty of both in the equally damaging Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Condemned 2: Bloodshot.


systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - Review

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 27, 2008 – 1:07 pm

With a campaign that’s more of a different take on the first game’s story than an actual follow-up, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 feels more like a mission pack with minor corrections than a full-fledged sequel. While that will probably leave some players feeling disappointed, the tactical action formula still works just fine, resulting in an occasionally-clunky but still solid tactical shooter.

The gameplay consists of the same sort of tactical shooting action that was found in the first game. You roll from checkpoint to checkpoint, taking cover behind objects and telling your AI-controlled dudes to bust through doors and gun down people for you. You’ll occasionally encounter a hostage situation, which requires you to be a bit more careful with your fire. But the game doesn’t rely too heavily on the tactical aspects of play, letting you solve most of your problems by shooting quickly and accurately. That’s not to say the game is especially easy, though. It requires a lot of patience, because if you go charging around, you’ll get laid down pretty quickly. Instead, you need to think about your squadmates, consider what’s behind every door, and act accordingly.

A lot of that slow play is removed by the game’s two-player co-op mode. While the game tells more of the story in co-op mode this time around, it’s still a very different experience. When a player goes down, he respawns in ten seconds, provided the other human player doesn’t get dropped during that time. Weirdly enough, the two AI squadmates are also present, and only the host can control them. This makes the second player feel disconnected from the action because he has no real tactical involvement–he’s just a shooter. He’s also weirdly silent–even though the second player can tag enemies while using the snake cam, there’s no dialogue to say “hit him first” or “he’s priority two” or anything like that.

The respawn feature makes the game way easier, as you can just run through blasting guys without any real care as to whether or not you stay alive. Depending on your personal enjoyment of stealthy tactics, this can either dumb the game down a bit too far or make things way more exciting. As long as the other player knows to back off when you go down, everything is fine. Making matters weirder, your AI squadmates still have to be manually revived. Seems like making the human players revivable the same way the AI guys are would make more sense and help maintain some sense of discipline, but then again, I had a lot more fun just running around blasting dudes without having to worry about a serious death penalty.

Regardless of how you play it, the story mode is tough to follow, especially if you didn’t finish the previous Rainbow Six Vegas game or don’t pay attention during the first mission. The game opens with a five-year-old flashback, then fast-forwards to the same timeline as the previous game, with most of the game running concurrently to the first Vegas. When I reached the end of the game–a dopey encounter that didn’t feel as smooth as the rest of the opposition–I had no idea who this guy was standing in front of me, or why he was giving me some long speech about why he turned out so evil.

With the difficult-to-follow story, it’s a good thing that the shooting itself is so much fun. Popping in and out of cover is easy and handled very well, making it more about lining up your shots and putting bullets into terrorists, rather than fumbling around with cover. Ordering your team around is really easy, too, with plenty of context-sensitive moments for getting them to use ropes, stack up on doors, and so on. There’s a real sense of satisfaction that comes from breaching rooms and taking out the opposition before they can even figure out what’s going on.

That said, it’ll take new players a little while to get used to all of the controls, especially because some buttons have multiple functions depending on if you press and release a button or hold it down. Plus, if you’ve been playing copious amounts of Call of Duty 4, expect to toss at least one inadvertent grenade at your feet when trying to duck. I learned that the hard way.

Beyond the campaign mode, there’s also a terrorist hunt mode, where you, either with your AI teammates or up to three human players, fight off a posse of terrorists in the game’s multiplayer levels. You’re stuck with limited respawns, forcing you to be pretty careful. There’s also a full-on online mode for up to 14 players on the PS3, and 16 on the Xbox 360. You’ll find the typical assortment of objective-based modes, as well as deathmatch options. The 360 version has a ranked game option that locks down the options to limit respawns. Unranked games on 360 and all games on the PS3 give you plenty of options to play around with, including the ability to limit what weapons players can use, should you decide that the game’s auto-shotgun is way out of control and overpowered.

The adversarial multiplayer is awesome when you’re playing with a group of similarly-skilled players, and the game’s maps offer enough variety to keep you interested for a good amount of time. The cover mechanics don’t always work quite as well when playing against humans, since any exposed body part will immediately get hit by a skilled player, but this just forces you to be more careful when taking on real people.

Vegas 2 puts a fat COD4-like experience bar at the bottom of the screen as you play, regardless of mode. This works just as well here as it did in Infinity Ward’s shooter, giving you a clear sense of progression as you play. Ranking up unlocks weapons, armor, and new clothing for your character. A new system called A.C.E.S. gives you more ways to level up by tracking your progress in three categories: marksmanship, close-quarters battle, and assault. When you eliminate enemies in a way that falls into one of these three buckets–such as getting headshots, killing enemies from behind, or using grenades–you’ll earn points in that category. When you earn enough points in a category, it will level up and you’ll either get a big bonus for your main experience points counter, or you’ll unlock an additional weapon. These simple goals make it very easy for Vegas 2 to sink its hooks into you and get addictive. It’s also great that every game type, from the campaign mode to unranked online matches, all feed into the same pool of XP. So you’ll always feel like you’re progressing.

The differences between the 360 and PS3 versions of Vegas 2 feel pretty minor. Both let you use the camera to map your face onto your character, both control just as well, and both have the same achievement set–though, obviously, only the 360 version will contribute to an overall score, the PS3’s set of ribbons and awards are entirely self-contained. The PS3 version of the game also opens with a mandatory install process that places around 2.5GB of data onto your hard drive. If you’re the sort of person who gets all up in arms over installing console games, this will be the sort of thing that gets you all up in arms.

There have been a lot of reports about the PS3 version having serious online problems, but I didn’t encounter anything too game-breaking in either version. The game doesn’t respond especially well to lag, making the action jumpy and unplayable if the player running the server doesn’t have enough bandwidth. There seem to be a few sound bugs in both versions as well. Online, I ran into cases in both versions where some effect would seem to get stuck, resulting in endless looping gunfire. Offline, I also ran into cases where bullets that were fired nearby would sound more muffled than they should, or spots where my weapon, or the guns being held by my teammates, stopped making noise entirely. I noticed a bit more of that on the 360 version than on the PS3. So the game is sloppy in a few spots, but overall, it never felt like a huge deal.

I ended up enjoying Rainbow Six Vegas 2 a lot more than the first game, even though they’re pretty similar overall. The online options really give you a healthy amount of things to see and do, and the XP and A.C.E.S. systems constantly egg you on every time you get a headshot or kill someone at range. If you played the first game to death and are absolutely ready for more, Vegas 2 is right up your alley, but all those similarities mean that you’ll probably burn out on this one a bit faster.


systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Achievements We’d Like to See: Blood on the Sand Edition

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 26, 2008 – 3:38 pm

After eating a sandwich and taking a couple of hours to collect myself, I feel ready to deal with a world that will eventually see the release of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. To celebrate my newfound mental stability, we’ve compiled a list of achievements we’d like to see in this upcoming “banger.”

Take Nine and Smile - 45 points
Get hit with exactly nine bullets and finish the level without dying.

Get Rich… - 50 points
Collect 120 Vitamin Water stock certificates.

…Or Die Trying - 0 points
Die 20 times at the same checkpoint.

Currrrtiiiiis! - 55 points
Find the hidden pool area and smoke Cam’Ron.

Take Back Pun’s Rhyme Book - 50 points
Infiltrate Fat Joe’s apartment and leave with the key to his success.

Game Over - 50 points
Tattoo another butterfly on The Game’s face.

16+1 - 50 points
Time your Active Reload perfectly for a Fully Loaded Clip

Graduation Day - 50 points
Hijack 25 trucks to prevent Kanye’s new album from ever reaching store shelves.

Relevancy - 150 points
Shoot and get shot enough to maintain relevance with an increasingly-fickle music-buying public.

Real American Hero - 500 points
Take down Osama Bin Laden and shut down his CD bootlegging factory.

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

My Mind!

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 26, 2008 – 12:28 pm

We talked about the EGM cover on yesterday’s podcast, and today MTV has the details on the next 50 Cent game. The game will be called 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Vivendi will handle publishing on 360 and PS3 this fall, and development is coming from Swordfish Studios, the company that brought you Cold Winter, World Championship Rugby, and Brian Lara International Cricket 2005.

I had started to steel myself upon seeing that there would be another 50 Cent game. But I was not prepared to deal with it so soon. I was also caught totally unprepared to deal with the game’s details, which actually make it sound kind of cool and as ridiculous as a 50 Cent game would need to be to work in 2008.

Here’s a quick burst of poorly-organized facts. According to the MTV story, the game will run on Unreal Engine 3 and will allow for online co-op with drop in/drop out capabilities. 50 will wear desert camo. Player 2 can play as Tony Yayo, Whoo Kid, or Lloyd Banks.

I know what you’re saying, you’re saying “what about Young Buck?” I don’t know, friends. I just don’t know. Maybe all those rumors from last year about Young Buck leaving G-Unit will come to pass in ‘08? Or maybe they just don’t have him confirmed yet.

The game will have cover mechanics. It will have a story that the game’s producer describes as “Three Kings meets Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” It will have vehicle missions where one player mans the gun on a Humvee while the other drives. And so on.

My immediate sense of disgust at the concept has already given way to cautious optimism. The preview builds of 50 Cent: Bulletproof tricked me into thinking that game could be good. Have I already been tricked again?

Please, just leave me alone. I’m going to be in a fragile state for the rest of the day while I try to pick up the pieces. Go over to MTV for the original story, as well as a handful of screenshots of Polygonal 50 Cent poking out from behind cover to smoke fools.

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil - Review

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 22, 2008 – 10:45 am

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil takes the classic dual joystick shooter formula founded by games like Robotron: 2084 and repopularized by games like Geometry Wars and gives it some superficial RPG elements. Its best feature is that it allows for four-player co-op, locally or online. But the game itself isn’t much fun, regardless of the number of players. With its plodding, monotonous pace and scattered presentation, Rocketmen doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the seemingly infinite number of other dual joystick shooters available via Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network.

The game goes for a retro-futuristic vibe, and it often feels a bit like some old radio play brought to life in video game form, with some occasional humor thrown in for good measure. The story, which is told through comic-book-like panels that move a bit too much for their own good, pits the good guys (Earth), against an evil empire of martians and terrans–which if I’m not mistaken, also refers to Earth. The whole thing comes from some sort of kid-friendly table-top strategy game, which I had never encountered before I sat down to write this review. So I can’t really tell you if fans of the cards-and-plastic-ships game will be into this at all.

But I can tell you that the gameplay starts out fairly standard, and the first level was decent enough to make me feel OK about investing in the full game. But after that, the game’s rough spots really start to show. For one, your default weapon is complete trash. Later on in the game, even the basic enemies seem to take 20 hits to kill with your default piece. Of course, you can pick up additional weapons, and they’ll usually clean house, but they don’t last very long, even if you upgrade them. You also have an arsenal of secondary weapons at your disposal, but beyond the standard dumb-fire rocket, most of these never felt very necessary. Your movement speed is also really sluggish compared to the bullet speed, making it a little more difficult to dodge shots than it is in other, similar games.

The weird thing is that most of these problems are things you’d expect would go away as you upgrade your character. You can pump up your weapons, buy armor, and use your experience points to jack up your character’s stats in a handful of categories like life, speed, and damage. But even with these stats raised to their maximum, you never feel especially tough. It doesn’t help that you fight the same handful of enemies throughout the entire game, yet as you go from level to level, those same, bland enemies somehow take more shots to kill.

Rocketmen has ten levels, and you can tackle them alone or as a group. You’ll see the story sequences in multiplayer, so this is a perfectly viable way to play on your first run-through. The game doesn’t feel like it scales the difficulty much when you’re playing with others, though, so if you want to raise your character’s levels quickly, you’ll probably want to do it by yourself.

Not that it matters too much if you die. When you run out of health, you fall to the ground, lose ten percent of the experience points you’ve collected in that level, and respawn, good as new.

I have a deep, weird thing for dual joystick shooters that goes all the way back to Robotron. I’ll obsess over the good ones, and I’ll give the bad ones more of a shot than they probably deserve. But aside from offering co-op, some occasionally-clever dialogue, and the generic, Diablo-like thrill that I get from any game that lets you build up your character, Rocketmen: Axis of Evil doesn’t have much going for it.


systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Hey Man, You’re a Rock Store

posted by Ryan Davis on March 21, 2008 – 11:09 am

The DLC in Rock Band has been both one of my most and least favorite features. While I find the continued inclusion of the occasional cover (rather than the original master track) as well as the pricing for said covers to be irrational and irritating, Harmonix has generally done a pretty smart job of releasing a good variety of songs, and it’s unafraid to explore some odd musical fringes. Perhaps as much as the whole bandaoke thing, Rock Band’s commitment to DLC is key in differentiating it from Guitar Hero.

That said, actually buying songs for Rock Band has been more of an ass-pain than it ought be, and it’s only gotten worse as more songs have been introduced. The Xbox Live Marketplace is good for a lot of things, but it’s terrible for getting much at-a-glance info about the various downloads. This inevitably means that, once you’ve selected a song (or worse yet, a song pack) that you’re interested in, you have to sit and wait for all of the ESRB and legal info to scroll through the tiny text window before you can even find out simple artist info. That it’s more than possible to re-buy individual songs that you’ve already bought in a song pack is infuriating, and kinda shady. I won’t even get into the fact that you have to leave the game entirely to make these purchases.

But all that changes with today’s Rock Band patch, which introduces a new in-game music store that alleviates nearly all of these issues. You can now easily view new releases, individual songs, song packs, and at some point in the hopefully near-future, full albums. By default, it sorts everything by band, though you can also sort by song, song difficulty, genre, or year of release. When you buy a track pack, the individual tracks appear as being purchased as well! Whodathunk! On a personal note, I’m a bit of a maniac when it comes to album art in iTunes, so it does my soul good to see that stuff in here as well.

I feel kind of like a bit of a fool for praising Harmonix for patching in features that probably should’ve been there when I bought the game back in November, and Frownie Frannie that I am, I still have some beef with the implementation. The inability to queue up downloads means that when you’re downloading a sizable song pack (or in the future, downloading full albums) you just have to sit and stare at the progress bar, rather than perusing the other songs on offer, and I feel like the (COMING SOON) next to the full albums menu option is just there to mock me.

Still, this is all good news for Rock Band owners. Now Harmonix can get to work on a patch that allows for an online band world tour, and makes it possible for my drummer to play other instruments! I mean, if Phil Collins and Don Henley can do it, why can’t I?

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Tom Clancy Sells His Name: What the heck are we supposed to call him now?

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 20, 2008 – 11:51 am

This isn’t exactly the sort of thing that will have any real impact on you or I, but Ubisoft just sent out a press release touting that the company has “acquired the Tom Clancy name for games, related books, movies, and merchandising.”

From there it devolves into a sweet mess of words like “brand” and “leverage.”

Anyway, this means that Clancy (the man, not the brand) has taken one fat payment from Ubi, rather than collect royalties on every single thing they put out. Perhaps, now that he’s in his 60s, he decided he’d rather have it all right now, rather than keep getting smaller regular checks.

Then again, now that I’m reading the man’s Wikipedia page, I’m not sure what to think. Apparently even his books are licensing deals, with several lines actually being authored by different writers, yet it still has the Clancy name on it. Sounds like the guy wrote some stuff early on, made his name, and has been coasting ever since. At some point you have to ask why, exactly, Ubisoft would care enough about this brand to spend all that money on it. It may have made sense in the beginning, but now that Ubi’s established itself as a leader in the world of tactical and stealth action, they could drop the Clancy name, start a set of new franchises that don’t involve rainbows or Sam Fisher, and do just as well. Maybe now that the company also controls the book and movie action, it makes more business sense or something.

To turn this into a question, do any of you even care about Tom Clancy? Does the Tom Clancy “brand” attract you to games like EndWar? Or could Ubisoft have saved all that money and come up with some other name that they could use as shorthand for “realistic tactical game?”

Maybe I should start working on Jeff Gerstmann’s Book About Three Guys With Guns Who Fight Terror In Nevada so that, someday, I can trade my name in for a new one and get paid in the process. I think I’ll go with “William Mitchell.” That sounds pretty tough and patriotic.

systems: pc, ps3, xbox 360 games:

A “Variety” of Maps

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 19, 2008 – 5:23 pm

Details on the upcoming pack of maps for Call of Duty 4 surfaced today on Microsoft’s site. The pack of four maps will be available on April 3 here in North America and will run you 800 points on the 360. That’s ten bucks. Details for the PS3 version and worldwide availability weren’t announced.

Along with the Variety Map Pack–which is a really bland name, I might add–there will also be a new retail release of COD4, called Game of the Year Edition, which will come with a download code for the new map pack. So if you haven’t got on-board with this stuff yet, there’s a chance to get it all and save ten bucks in the process. But looking at how well the game has been selling, I’m just going to assume that you already own it.

Head on over to Microsoft’s page for the pack if you want to see some dinky screens of two of the four maps. I’ve actually never purchased a map pack before. Usually, by the time the maps come out for a shooter, I’ve moved on to a different shooter. But I’m definitely getting these. No doubt.

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

My Ten Games That Would Benefit From the Inclusion of a Rodeo Clown

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 19, 2008 – 4:13 pm

So we’ve been talking a lot about site features for the full site launch today and, at some point, we started talking about the lists feature. This, naturally, led to me talking about rodeo clowns and games that should have them. Much like Ryan’s top game ghosts list, here’s my list of games that, for reasons I will keep to myself, would totally benefit from the inclusion of a rodeo clown.

Street Fighter IV (arcade)

Army of Two (360, PS3)

The Guy Game (PS2, Xbox)

Silent Hill 4: The Room (PS2, Xbox, PC)

World of Warcraft (PC)

Chiller (NES, arcade)

Uno (360)

Time Traveller (arcade)

Star Castle (arcade)

Night Trap (Sega CD, 3DO)

…and yeah, we’ll talk more about the lists at a later date.

systems: arcade, pc, ps3, xbox 360 games: , , , , , , , , ,

Hittin’ the Pipe Again

posted by Ryan Davis on March 12, 2008 – 11:09 pm

OK, so I bludgeoned my way through the first level of Sega and Monolith’s Condemned 2: Bloodshot earlier today, and I’m pretty satisfied with the way it just amps up both the felony assault and the mental illness like it was a county jail. There’s an early scene where our protagonist, a broke-down and paranoid rummy in the wake of the first game, throws a couple nefarious-looking pills on a bar, crushes them with the bottom of his lowball glass, and then sweeps the remains right into his drink. So yeah, it’s like that.

I’ve honestly always been a little fuzzy about the significance of the ending of the first Condemned, specifically the whole OH GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIS FACE thing, though the crux of the first level is that our protagonist’s mental health may not be as strong as his right hook. But judging by his sweet new beard, floppy haircut, and propensity for savagely beating strangers for no apparent reason, I’d say his Metal Health is just fine. I relish the idea of playing a game as an insane person, and this guy’s potentially the best kind of insane person–the kind who thinks it’s everyone else who’s crazy!

Maybe it’s just the result of faded memories, but my first impression of Bloodshot is that the hits are harder and more visceral than before. There’s immediately more depth to the combat, with these crazy combos that make your already wince-inducing blows that much more brutal and environmental kills that let you execute unfriendly guys with facial piercings in more creative ways.

The weapon selection is still on some caveman trip, and over the course of the first level I beat men to death with 2×4s spiked with nails, lengths of electrical conduit, pipes, bricks, prosthetic arms, crutches, and arm braces. I did see one shotgun in the first level, but seriously, why would you ever use a gun in Condemned? That’s kinda missing the whole point.

Keep in mind, this is still Condemned, and I’m pretty sure if you weren’t feeling the first one, this one probably won’t change your mind. We’ll see if it eventually starts to drag like its predecessor did, and if they’ve actually made any of the CSI business any more compelling, but so far it’s nasty and lurid the way I like.

systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Yes, There Will Be Another BioShock Game

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 11, 2008 – 4:52 pm

Take-Two busted out its latest financial earnings report. It’s typical stuff, full of terms like “GAAP,” “EBITDA,” and “EA needs to step the hell off,” but like any good business report from a publisher, they snuck in a few meaningful details about games.

The biggie is that the company has confirmed another BioShock game. They call it a sequel, list it as BioShock 2, and say it’ll hit sometime around November of 2009. The loose talk that’s been going around lately has proven true, as the game’s being built north of the Golden Gate at 2K Marin.

Now, the rest of that loose talk pegged this new BioShock game as a prequel. It still could be. I wouldn’t take a feature-less mention in a financial report as gospel for things like titles and plot points. Saying “BioShock 2″ is just easier to feed to investors and analysts. Personally, I’m pulling for the prequel angle, as I’d rather see how Andrew Ryan’s Ayn-Rand-fan-fiction-in-city-form vision breaks bad in the first place.

No platforms are attached to the announcement, but I’m going to go out on a very safe and sturdy limb and say it’ll be 360, PC, and PS3 this time around. I don’t know, I’m still sort of half-waiting for the first game to come to PS3 as some kind of Director’s Cut or something like that. But this would have been as good a time as any to let that info out, if it was going to happen.

The other breakouts in the press release include a new mini-golf game for the Wii, which is going to ship as Carnival Games: Mini-Golf, just to piss off everyone who thinks that Carnival Games is one of the dumbest things to happen to the Wii, even if it did ship a million copies. Get ready to hate on it all over again, it’s coming to the DS this summer. Also, the company bought the developer of Mafia II and renamed them to 2K Czech. Because they’re located in the Czech Republic.

Because they were nice enough to include a handy chart in their report, here’s what the rest of Take-Two’s fiscal year looks like:

Carnival Games (DS)
Carnival Games: Mini-Golf (Wii)
Don King Presents: Prizefighter (360, Wii, DS)
Grand Theft Auto IV (360, PS3)
Grand Theft Auto IV episodic content (360)
MLB 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars (DS)
Midnight Club: Los Angeles (360)
NBA 2K9 (”multiple platforms”)
NHL 2K9 (”multiple platforms”)
Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution (360, PS3, DS)
Top Spin 3 (360, PS3, Wii, DS)

systems: pc, ps3, xbox 360 games:

Army of Two - Early Impressions

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 5, 2008 – 8:53 pm

So I spent an hour or so with EA’s new co-op-focused shooter, Army of Two. So far, it’s making a pretty good impression. The key to the third-person shooter’s gameplay is the old MMORPG concept of aggro. You’re always working with a partner, and the game slaps a fat aggro meter right on the screen. When you’re shooting, killing, or doing other high-profile things, the meter swings your way. When your teammate starts bringing the ruckus, it moves his way. Enemies aim at whoever has the most aggro, which boils the game’s strategy down to a few steps…

1) Tell your teammate to hide behind something and start causing a scene.
2) Wait for all the enemies to start looking his way.
3) Run around to the side or back of said enemies and shoot them in their stupid heads.

Not the deepest game in the world, so far. I’ll be interested to see if that basic tactic is how the whole game works, or if things change later on. Either way, it’s been cool so far.

The weapons and, more importantly, the weapon upgrades also seem very cool. Being a mercenary-type, you earn cash every time you complete an objective. You can spend that money at various spots throughout a mission to buy or upgrade your weapons. The upgrade system goes deeper than most, letting you put on longer barrels for more damaging shots, sturdier stocks for more accuracy, grenade launchers for some additional firepower, or even silencers to reduce the amount of aggro you gain by firing your gun. Lastly, you can purchase a “pimped” version of your gun, which makes it all gaudy by covering it with gold and diamonds. It’s silly, and the “pimped” term is kind of played out at this point, but since it actually makes you draw more aggro when you run around with a diamond-encrusted gun, it’s sort of funny that it’s in there.

Content-wise, the game is sort of heavy. I don’t think I’ve played a game that had a pre-rendered version of the World Trade Center on fire before, and considering how touchy that subject still is for many people, I never thought I’d see that in a game. But yeah, it’s in there in the form of a news broadcast near the beginning of the game. It’s effective, and considering the game immediately sends you into Afghanistan and, later, Iraq, it makes total sense. It doesn’t feel like the developers are riding world events for shock value. Though if it ends with a fist fight against Osama, like Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror did, I’m going to demand my money back. Or laud it as the greatest game ever made, I can’t really tell yet.

Early word, though, is that the game is short and the multiplayer mode doesn’t hold up. So it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out from here and if the rest of the game can keep me entertained as well as its first couple of missions have. We’ll have a full-on review in the days ahead.


systems: ps3, xbox 360 games:

Burnout Paradise - Review

posted by Jeff Gerstmann on March 1, 2008 – 4:18 pm

Burnout Paradise is an amazing open-world racing game that stays true to the Burnout legacy, but you might not feel that way when you first pop in the disc. For the first several hours, the game comes off as overwhelming, with so many different things being thrown at you that you’re not sure what to do first, or what even matters and what’s just a bonus extra. Then there’s the city. Paradise City, too, feels a little daunting at first blush. But as you play more of it, everything starts falling into place. Once you’ve got the hang of it and learned the best ways to get into and out of the downtown area, the ways to progress through the game become clear. And there’s a lot of progression to be found between the 120 single-player events, the 350 online challenges (though due to repetition, there aren’t 350 unique challenges), and the “Road Rules” that give you a time and score to beat on every single road in the game.

The offline events give you the same sort of racing and raging events that you’d expect to see from the series, though the open world of Paradise makes things feel quite a bit different. Now, you have to focus on the world, which turns you should take, and if there are any shortcuts along the way to cut your drive time. In events with a set finish line, the game uses a basic navigation system to tell you where to turn. As you complete the events, you’ll raise in rank and earn new cars.

The online mode feels like a weird social experiment in video game form. That’s because the game’s online challenges aren’t really like anything you’ve seen before, especially in a driving game. Many of them are basic, like “use boost for 10 seconds” or “catch air for a total of 20 seconds.” But some of them have you using your head, trying to figure out which ramp and which approach will let you do a barrel roll through a hoop, or which car park’s rooftop ramp will let you jump onto a specific building. This is where the game becomes cooperative, and where communication becomes absolutely key, since some players still don’t even know what a challenge is, let alone how to whip a 360-degree flat spin off of a ramp.

Other challenges put all of the players (up to eight) in cramped quarters, like an expressway with thin ramps in the middle of it. You’re all trying to jump off these tiny ramps, and everyone is colliding all over the place–at the base of the ramp, upon landing, and if you’re lucky, in mid-air. The chaos these events add may make your task take a bit longer, but they’re also at least half of the fun. Only the extremely impatient among us won’t enjoy that aspect of the game.

All this communication and word-of-mouth information dispensing can get in the way, though. Joining random games rarely nets you a full group of focused, challenge-hungry individuals. And when any player quits the game mid-challenge, the task is failed. Having seven players do something tricky, only to realize that the eighth player is off on the other side of the city, totally oblivious to the action and unwilling to listen to the other players, gets old fast. You may never find enough people to finish all of the eight-player challenges, but with a focused group of friends, busting out the two-, three-, and four-player sets won’t be too tricky.

While the manual does briefly describe every aspect of Burnout Paradise, you get the sense that the game is deliberately vague on some topics. Power Parking, for example, scores you based on how well you can fling your car into a parallel parking space at high speed. The game doesn’t seem to prompt you to do it beyond a loose hint or two from the DJ. And unless you were to get online and encounter a challenge that required it, you might play through the entire game without ever doing it once or hearing anything about it.

Road Rules are the same way. Each road in the game has a fastest time to beat, and by tapping up on the D pad, you can activate the Road Rules timer to see how many times you can beat and how many roads you can rule. In addition to beating a base offline score, the times are posted online to a friends-only leaderboard. When a friend beats your time, the game notifies you, even if you’re playing offline.

The other Road Rule is the Showtime score. Showtime mode replaces the linear, puzzle-like Crash mode from previous Burnout games, and in keeping with the rest of the game’s motif, it’s more open-ended than its predecessor. Tapping LB and RB (or L1 and R1 on the PS3) slides your car out sideways and makes it start flipping. At this point, everything slows down and you have air control of your car. Your goal is to keep crashing your flaming husk into as many other cars as possible. The boost button lets you pop up off the ground and keep moving, and you’ll need to keep hitting cars to keep the boost meter filled. Once you run out of boost and come to a standstill, the game tallies up your Showtime score for that road and play resumes. Leaderboards are also kept for this mode. While it doesn’t require you to think hard and dissect each situation like the crash junctions of the past, it’s still a wild, great-looking ride that’s a great tension reliever.

If you’ve played the demo on PS3 or 360, you already know that the game looks great, but the full game gives you a lot more to look at, from more great-looking fictional cars to a variety of locations. All of it comes to you at a smooth frame rate that conveys the same sense of speed that you’re used to seeing in a Burnout game. In direct comparison, the textures in the PS3 version appear to be a bit cleaner-looking, and the higher quality of the PlayStation Eye camera means that the photos you send to other players during online events are better on the PS3. The differences between the two feel minor.

The soundtrack and DJ Atomika, who pops in during songs to give you hints and provide some general flavor, aren’t nearly as good as the rest of the audio. The DJ, while better than Stryker from Burnout 3, can get awfully grating over time. The music starts on a great note by playing Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Paradise City” every time you fire up the game. Perfect. The rest of the soundtrack sounds a little limp and, as with most EA Trax productions, it feels like it was put together by a marketing team, not by someone with the game’s interests at the front of their mind. At least there’s an LCD Soundsystem track in there before it assaults you with the same Avril Lavigne song that “premiered” in Burnout Dominator.

There’s more opacity here than there probably should be, but once you penetrate its dark shell and figure out what, exactly, is going on, Burnout Paradise is nothing short of amazing. The team at Criterion took a big chance and it’s paid off very well. The game revamps the stock formula in major ways without losing most of the high-speed racing flavor that you hope to see from something with Burnout in the title.


systems: ps3, xbox 360 games: