Hey all, sorry for the long absence in blogging activity, I've been pretty busy with university although as of yesterday I'm finished forever and even have my grade! I managed to get a 1st which I'm very happy with. 
 
Anyway, here is just a quick run down of what I've been playing lately and my thoughts on them.
 

Just Cause 2

The original Just Cause was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me when it first released in late 2006 and when I heard Just Cause 2 was on its way I assumed the sequel would be to, and well, it is.

The graphics in Just Cause 2 fall between impressive and pretty mediocre, with the view of the islands while flying, or more likely falling, being a highlight. There are some odd graphical issues however, try standing Rico next to one of the heavier enemy types and you’ll see that he doesn’t even come up to their shoulders, or the texture that is overlaid on rico’s clothes when he is in either the snow or sandy environments.

The grappling hook is the best part of Just Cause 2, and with enough practice and application it can make getting around very easy, it comes in especially handy when you piss off the AI, which is very easy to do. This is because Just Cause 2 has no proper scale of determining cause and effect and by this I mean, blowing up a single item will usually result in an overkill of constantly spawning enemies and a sky full of attack helicopters wishing to rip you a new one.

The enemies themselves however are beyond stupid, never taking any cover and very rarely making a dash for an armed vehicle or mounted gun. Instead they chose to stand and take the brunt of any onslaught you throw at them, which always results in their demise.

Currently I sit at around the 65% completion mark and have only races and a lot of villages/bases left to concur, when I sat to write this blog, I began to question if I thought I had got my money’s worth with Just Cause 2, after all it is criminally basic in its game play and incredibly repetitive. Having you stomp from base to base destroying anything with red and doing the same few faction missions cant stay entertaining forever, but then I realised I’d spent almost 40 hours playing it, 40. That is more than I even managed in Final Fantasy XIII.

Skate 3

Skate 3 shares a lot of remarkable similarities to Lost Planet 2 in that both games were built for what seems to be exclusive online play. Depending upon how you approach the game and your fondness of online play this is either a great choice for them or a bit of a misstep and for me it’s the later.

I was really excited for Skate 3, it’s easily my favourite sporting game at the moment and when it came out, if I’m being honest I was a little disappointed. The game feels underwhelming, like it was rushed out to make it to market on a yearly sports cycle. The graphics and engine are identical to that seen in Skate 1 and 2 and have seen very little tweaking.

I was looking forward to exploring the new city of port caverton, especially as it would be the first game in the series to take place outside of the original city of San Van, however, rather than another exciting and expansive city, what we have been given is 3 very small areas that have no connection with each other what so ever, the difference in style is nice, and it’s nice to see the game attempt to take on the more grimy element of skating with the docks area but the city feels dead, with a lot of annoyingly empty areas that could of been filled with things to skate. Far too often you’ll find yourself on a piece of flat land, with only about 4 benches between you and the horizon and it’s just depressing. It’s also annoying to navigate, in previous Skate games the city was for the most part a large hill, with a lot of variation from top to bottom that could be worked into a very long run, if desired. Here it’s essentially just navigated by a series of menus that take you from challenge to challenge. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that it stops you ever getting a sense of how the city fits together in anyway.

The story is one of the worst aspects of the game, with very little effort put in at all. They set you up with the premise of starting your own board company and with the goal to sell 1,000,000 boards. This seemed like an exciting prospect at the start but you quickly realise nothing you do has any relationship with the increase in boards. There is no decision making to be done, no logo or deck designing to be done, unless of course you wish to hand over your email details to EA and use their awful and 9/10 broken logo creator. Once you’ve set up your company Redda, the camera guy from skate 1 and 2, immediately leaves the game essentially and hands the camera over to Shingo who remains almost silent for the rest of the game, sure this is a welcome change, especially as Redda can be one of the most annoying voices in video games. But it all just reeks of no effort.

 It’s also criminally short. I managed to rack up 1,000,000 board sales in around 5 hours, and the rewards given were not what I had hoped for. It’s also incredibly glitchy, with your skater falling all over the place at a moment’s notice. In the short time I’ve been playing I’ve lost count of the times I’ve managed to hit a pedestrian and immediately fly 30 to 40 at speed away from them. This also comes into some of the challenges as well, with some gaps in particular registering even when you fail to make them, or in more annoying cases, the other way around.

The playlist was flat out annoying to listen to, not because the music is bad, but because anytime you start a new challenge or teleport to a new area it decides to change the track, after about 3 hours of listening to the first 30 seconds to a minute of each song I decided to just turn the music off entirely. 

 
The final, and most worrying problem I had with Skate 3 is that it felt a lot more arcadey than previous games. A lot of the challenges required you to perform mamoth leaps and high speed jumps that would of killed most real skaters, and while these can be fun and very rewarding, they are best suited to the end challenges of the game as they were in Skate 1 and 2, this way they feel special still, rather than the norm. Because to be fair, if it becomes the norm, Skate becomes the new Tony Hawks.

Over all, Skate 3 is a bit of a letdown, it sounds like I’ve been very harsh in this review but only because I can already see Skate turning into Tony Hawks, and when you see a game that came onto the scene to basically end a monopoly of a bloated and past its prime game begin to go the same way... it’s frustrating. 

3/5
 

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