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Gangstar

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Games in the Air

By Gangstar 1 Comments


Dark Sector

I got this one from Gamefly a few weeks back and it's taken more time than it should to get through it. Dark Sector seemed to get a lot of hate for being a Gears of War ripoff, but it shouldn't be dismissed just on that. It rips off Resident Evil 4, too. Dark Sector really is its own game though, even if the run, cover, and shoot gameplay has been done very well in other games already. And Dark Sector makes an honest attempt in trying to bring something new and cool to the action-shooter. The result: ...Meh.

The story is minimal from the beginning, giving you a boilerplate military superagent background to give you a reason
Roastin' Russians
Roastin' Russians
to be killing dudes and finding more dudes to kill. There's a biochemical infection turning everyone into mutants in some Russian locale. Then weird stuff happens to give our protagonist supernatural powers so he can continue killing people. The characters provided to explain things for you do it in a very uninteresting way, so the fact that those cutscenes and story elements are minimal is really doing the game a favor.
 
It manages to keep the action pretty heavy, and the combination of the Glaive, which is a flying blade disc, used alongside standard weapons makes it a good amount of fun. A slow motion, 3rd-person camera control of the flying Glaive allows precise shots able to take off limbs or heads, which is not only cool but it makes the fights more interesting and involved. Add elemental powers into the mix and you'll have some entertaining incinerations and electrocutions. The game also gives you more powers at a steady pace- a temporary shield, invisibility, etc- that does prevent the fighting from getting too tedious and repetitive.
Glaive/shank
Glaive/shank

The enemies do get  repetitive, though, as there's a limited variety, and the AI gets pretty predictable as the game goes on. The creatively detailed level design manages to keep the whole package together, making one battle different enough from the next. The gun and Glaive battles work fine, but the game's melee combat is totally broken. Certain spots in the game cruelly punish you with getting tackled by one buggy enemy  takedown after another.

The game paces itself well as you progress through 10 chapters, though there are weak spots that you can get held up in. For example, not understanding which parts of the environment the game will allow you to effect, or a boss that offers no threat as well as no clear way to hurt it. These couple very dumb and frustrating parts of the game managed to leave a bad taste in my mouth, despite a good majority of Dark Sector being entertaining.


1 Comments

Pure Impressions

By Gangstar 1 Comments

Just played the Pure demo on 360. Have to say I was pretty surprised and impressed. I'm not really a fan of the racing games, usually because I'm awful at them, but apparently I still have some nostalgia for the arcade style boostin' around the track racing game. I remember having a good amount of rental fun with Freekstyle and a couple other similar games back in the day, and Pure has brought that back and made it fun again.

Pretty.
Pretty.

The demo starts out with a solid tutorial, giving you simple objectives to learn the mechanics of the game. First, a lap around the track, next learn to get air by flicking the left stick down then up (similar to skate's board control), and finally performing tricks in the air to earn boost. The trick system works great, as you have to start out with simple but cool tricks with A, and after earning enough boost from that you can perform more complicated moves with B and Y, then eventually an ultimate trick with LB and RB. It's a fun and somewhat strategic system of having to wait on using that boost to pull out bigger and better moves, resulting in monster boosting opportunities. Plus the bigger tricks are worth saving up for just because they're so fun.
Check out ripple effects on the shirts.
Check out ripple effects on the shirts.

The game looks great, with gorgeous and huge environments. The racers and vehicles look pretty good too, so you can enjoy the show while you're doing insane stunts in the air. The demo track had a good amount of alternate routes resulting in shortcuts or big jumps, so figuring out the maps and going for these strategically could add a lot to the race. The actual competition with other racers wasn't much of a consideration when playing, it was more so a self-absorbed journey of earning the big boost and using it when appropriate. Driving didn't feel that real either, as most of the time you're just sliding through turns as though you were on ice. But these things could actually be what makes the game work well- that it's not so much an ATV racing simulation as it is a fun arcadey racer.
1 Comments

Facebreaker Impressions

By Gangstar 1 Comments

"FLRBBBBB!"

I spent some time this weekend catching up on some demos on 360. One that I was surprised with a good deal was EA's Facebreaker. I guess the reason it surprised me is I didn't know what the hell to expect. But after giving this demo a whirl, it seems while Facebreaker has some neat features, it doesn't do a great job of putting the arcade fighter into boxing.

 This game is a pretty far off from a EA's Fight Night style of boxing. I got the impression from the trailer a few months back that it was going to be a boxing game with goofy and wacky cartoons. Facebreaker does have the wacky cartoons, but isn't so strong on the boxing side of things. Facebreaker steps away from the realism and is essentially an arcade fighter, somewhat similar in mechanics to Soul Calibur IV (of which I have been playing plenty lately... I'm terrible at fighting games but that one has sucked me in). The fighting is broken into rounds, first to 3 wins, as well as health bars, all of which confirm it for me as an arcade fighter.

The action is really  fast, definately qualifying it as a buttonmasher as you attempt to string together punch combos.  There's very little break from throwing punches all the time, except for an occasional useless grab or the computer pulling out a special beatdown on me. One button for low hit, one for high, and another for a strong Haymaker punch. You can charge up a punch, but the whole system is so limited you'll just be going back and forth on the punches as fast as you can. Parrying can be done by blocking appropriately high or low- you'll interrupt your opponents punch for opportunity to throw your own. And that's mostly how the game works, get an opportunity to interrupt, get as many punches in as you can before they do the same to you, switching back and forth. Granted this is the idea for most arcade fighters, but Facebreaker just seems really empty as far as what you can do.

One really neat feature in the game is the use of Xbox Live Camera that I conveniently received this past week as compensation for having to send in my broke ass 360 for the 5th time. And I was pretty happy to actually bust it out since I was wondering when I would have such an opportunity. So just by taking a straight on and a profile picture of your face and waiting about 10 minutes for it to process your beautiful mug, Facebreaker can do a pretty impressive job of slappin your face on a boxer. I must say, Facebreaker me was accurately quite dashing. And if you're not entirely satisfied with how it's looking there are a slew of detailed options for customizing them further. The demo has Kim Kardashian
Imagine your face doing this.
Imagine your face doing this.
and Peter Moore available as custom boxers, and both of them look pretty good. The only weird thing I've noticed is how small the males' heads look. Especially Peter Moore's weasily little head on a giant muscular body. You can upload any fighter you make on Xbox Live, check out others people have created and download them for yourself. Seems like a really neat idea; the options are pretty unlimited, even more so with how much detail can be put into character creation. As dumb as it sounds, I'm looking foward to seeing more celebrities boxing.

Facebreaker didn't offer a whole lot to impress with other than the character creation and sharing. The fighting is exactly the kind of boring buttonmashing I'd rather stay away from. But I still would like to see if they have any kind of story or career mode, which I'm sure could be pretty nuts with the roster of bizarre boxers they have. Just being to create and share such detailed fighters should be a reason to spend at least a little bit of time with Facebreaker, but I don't expect the poor gameplay is going to keep many playing.
1 Comments

Evel Knievel is a badass.

By Gangstar 1 Comments

Been watching this History Channel bio of possibly the most interesting guy ever. The life of a ridiculously popular daredevil is indeed a crazy one. And I think he had to have been actually insane. Or just the biggest genuine badass ever. He beat the hell out of a guy with a baseball bat for writing some trash about him. Escaped from jail. No big deal. His son Robbie was pretty nuts too.


Where are our daredevils? What do we have? Criss Angel or David Blane? We're living in a depression of both daredevils and badasses.

American Icon Evel Knievel- you will never be forgotten.
The Last Gladiator
The Last Gladiator
























And of course an American icon deserves a roller coaster.
The Legacy
The Legacy
1 Comments