Xbox Dead

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

    X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a fun goretastic romp through the comic book universe and is quite an enjoyable game, but has a few problems with bugs and has quite a few limitations and shortfalls.

    Gameplay-wise, the controls are a bit sloppy and you don't really need to know anything other than how to button-mash. Getting creative rewards you with more rage (think of it as a special move meter) and stringing kills together fast enough will eventually reward you with more experience, allowing you to level up faster. However, if you really want to enjoy the full game experience, there is a large array of moves to slice and dice your hapless opponents. I wouldn't be fulfilling my job as a biased, somewhat dickish reviewer if I didn't mention the platforming / puzzle bits of the game. Expect to be jumping around a fair bit of the time along with climbing up and down ropes, hazarding happy-go-lucky jumps, and attempting to beat timed jumping sections. Some of the puzzles really got me frustrated from seeming impossible, then, once I finally got it, I facepalmed. Then again, I'm practically a certified idiot, so I guess that shouldn't surprise anyone.

    Combat deserves its own paragraph. Combat in this game is fast-paced, brutal, and blood-tastic. Seriously, the game makes an Eli Roth film look conservative. Wolverine is typically covered in blood from his own wounds, and I've had the equivalent of a meat-covered skeleton running through the halls from the amount of damage sustained. One interesting feature if only for distraction value is watching the wounds slowly close up, which is a fun little activity, especially after a particularly damaging fight. Speaking of the fighting (LOL SEGUEWAY)…

    Fighting some of the battles in this game is…frustrating, at best. Some levels are designed with areas to go to and take a breather while your health regenerates, but some areas do not, and so you're left being cheap-shotted by enemies who have attacks that somehow break through both your Adamantium-coated claws and rather substantial musculature. Boss fights are a particular offender in this case. The final boss, Deadpool, is the worst, who magically teleports away from you and fires a laser from his eyes that is unblockable (even with an object such as a taco) and insta-hits. This shoop-da-wooping is extremely annoying, especially when the game glitches, Deadpool gets knocked off of the side, and magically appears directly across from you, blows away a section of the thingy you're fighting on, sending you to your doom. Almost all of the boss fights involve cheap fighting tactics by the game, so I advise you fight as fast, dirty, and damaging as possible, even if it involves not letting your opponent get back up, because they'll do the same thing to you.

    Sound-wise I have to say I wasn't impressed by the music. The music is…okay. It's not fantastic, it's not horrible, it just is. The voice cast for the main characters are masterfully done, with Hugh Jackman playing as everyone's favorite anti-hero superhero. No complaints in the main character department, but some of the lines espoused during Wolverine and his boss fights get tiresome, and a lot of your soon-to-be puréed enemies have the same sound bytes, but honestly that's a small problem that you probably won't notice laughing with maniacal glee as you blender your way through level after level.

    Graphics aren't shabby, and the level of detail on some of the things borderlines on perfectionist OCD. The mass-produced soldiers probably could have used a bit of work, but blood ribbons around and the blood decals on the ground look fantastic, but being the psychopathic I am, more on the ground would have been appreciated (especially when I, y'know, take someone's arm off). Most of the robots are somewhat imaginatively designed (specifically the predator bots and the big huge robot) and the guys with the electronic-robo-arms are fun to toy with.

Mutagens are fun little additions to the game, making Wolverine even deadlier than the standard model, something that I thought was awesome, as the fully upgraded Wolverine is something that's stupidly powerful and a thing of power at your fingertips. There are several Wolverine action figures scattered throughout the game as well which will unlock a challenge. Beat the challenge, and you get a new costume! The ability to get Wolverine in different costumes is a fun addition for the hardcore comic book enthusiast but superhero costumes aren't really my thing, I'll stick to Wolverine's street clothes.

Alas, I did mention this game has its faults, and there are plenty. Some are harmless little glitches that you can chuckle to yourself with, but others are of the rage inducing "I broke the goddamn controller in half" glitches. Three of my biggest gripes are as follows.

1. Characters disappear. This happened to me on no less than three or four occasions. The first time was when Gambit disappeared during the fight outside on the casino side. Gambit just poofed out of existence. Maybe he went with the letter that fell. Regardless, he disappeared. The second time was when Wolverine was fighting Deadpool, and Wolverine was nowhere to be found. The game automatically counted it as a fail and rebooted the boss fight, but the checkpoint system is very merciful and reloaded the game and everything was hunky-dory. The third time was a short time afterward, both Deadpool and Wolverine fell over the side of the tower and obviously fell into a stygian abyss as it auto-failed again. The fourth time was when Deadpool fell over the side, magically reappeared on the polar opposite side of the tower, and proceeded to use his death-ray on the area I was standing on.
   
2. Laggy cutscenes. The CG rendered cutscenes played fine for me, and they were awesomely goretastic with enough blood to shame a slaughterhouse. However, the in-engine cutscenes were horribly slow, and they'd play fine for a few seconds, stutter, then load again. Sorry, if I wanted jerky animation with laggy sound I'd visit Youtube with a 56k connection. The disc even says "streaming" which to me seemed rather shitty. I got the initial run of Xbox 360s, I don't have the hard drive space required to install the entire game, and I don't feel like paying an arm, a leg, and signing a contract in my own blood to give away my first-born to get the super-huge hard drive, not to mention all the time involved with migrating my files over to the new one.
   
3. Appearances are not what they seem. The areas you visit are, at times, wide open, and are begging to be explored. Only you can't. Some giant invisible wall is blocking the areas where you'd LIKE to go, but game designers apparently love fucking with people's expectations and put in a wall to make you unable to climb on rocks rather than put up a wall on the final boss fight to keep you from plummeting to your death (which is odd considering Wolverine is nearly invincible and survived a hell of a lot worse than a simple fall).
   

Wolverine, for all of its faults and rather short story mode, is a blast to play. Assuming Ravensoft releases a patch for some of the major glitches (hint: they won't), I will gladly revise this review. Until then, X-Men Origins: Wolverine will have to make due with a respectable solid B.

Sticky's Final Grade: B

+ Violent

+ Fun!

+ Plentiful checkpoints

+/- (somewhat) Replayable

+ Lots of hidden things for you to find

- Some enemies are retardedly difficult

- Cheap-tactic boss fights

- Linear when it shouldn't be, wide open when it shouldn't be

? How does a spiked wall or punji stake kill Wolverine but when absorbing several AK-47/M-16/Shotgun rounds he's still able to dish out a beatdown?

Civilization IV

Ah, the classic series of Civilization games. Always fun, always addicting, always frustrating; but in a good way. Civilization IV (Civ4 for all of you with problems with Roman numerals) is a fun open-ended approach to the empire-building genre. You control nearly every aspect of your civilization (without the downside of getting too far into micromanagement) and your job is to make an empire that will stand the test of time, from 4000 B.C. to 2050 A.D. And for the most part it's good fun.

Gameplay wise, this is where Civ4 shines with the brightness of a supernova. The game is completely open-ended. Don't like where your civilization starts? Move to a different area. Hell, move to the other side of the continent. It's all good, man! It's also important to strategize, gaining control of vital resources (copper, iron, oil, uranium, etc), and picking your fights VEEEEEEERY carefully. Going to war with a smaller nation is always a smart idea, but keep an eye on your troop levels. And absorb their empire into your own! This will give you more cities to play with, and after you modernize their 15^th century asses, they'll be useful assets to your empire. Monitoring your money levels and adjusting your research levels accordingly is also important. Relations with diplomatic leaders is also important unless you want to be fighting a war with everyone on all sides, which will surely end in you getting raped, although the world leaders in this game are quite fickle and are quick to anger at the drop of a hat. War in this game, much like in real life, is a hell of a lot more difficult than it sounds. Units however are oddly balanced against each other. Why can an 18^th-century era rifleman kill off one of my main battle tanks when .50-caliber anti-material bullets can't do so? Before going to war with any country, I would recommend a massive troop buildup, because you aren't getting far with a small force. At all.

Sound is nothing impressive, although I did enjoy the ambient music that reflects the period of the time you're in and also shifts around to suit whatever nation's leader you're conversing with. I also really liked the Celtic civilization's music, probably because I like Celtic music. The occasional sounds of battle are okay, but nothing to write home about. Probably the highlight of the game is LEONARD FUCKING NIMOY, MOTHERFUCKER. They took away Leonard in the subsequent expansion packs, which is kind of sad, but I guess he didn't feel like making more quotations. Every time you finish a new technology Leonard would show up and in his awesome authoritarian voice give you a quote related to the technology you just got done discovering.

Graphics are a bit "meh" as well, but the sheer size of the world (considering what sized earth you picked) more than makes up for it once you've gotten satellites, which keeps you in the know for EVERYTHING goings-on in the world. Models are nothing special (most units are kind of blocky and textures are kind of smudged) but the game supports a LOT of units on screen at any given time. Plus, you're looking at it with a birds-eye view anyway. If you want detail in people go play an FPS or The Sims. But really, if you're playing Civilization for the graphics instead of the amazing gameplay I'm going to have to ask you to find a section of rope and hang yourself for being such an idiot.

Sticky's Final Grade: A-

+ Immersive

+ Tons of civilizations/leaders

+ Lots of stuff to research/build

+ Leonard F'in Nimoy

+ As a history major, is admirable in its presentation of the human race and it's achievements and advancement as a whole, although me completing a nuclear weapon in the 1700s was hilarious.

- Unit balancing issues

- Diplomatic relations could use tweaking

Set up ads

I set up ads on my site because I'm a greedy fucker, so there. Sorry.

EDIT: Also, please don't abuse it. Pretty pretty please. That gets me in trouble.

EDIT2: I should really update this thing more often even if it's an old review I did in the past. >_>

Red Faction: Guerilla

Red Faction: Guerilla, the third game in a series that is currently being re-milked on the current generation of consoles, takes place some 50 odd years after the liberation of Mars from those evil Ultor types. Well, as it so happens, those evil Ultor types are back, this time re-skinned as the EDF military machine. This review will not be very long, because there’s really not much to talk about. Go here, do menial mission, do plot-specific missions, blow shit up, do liberation mission, go to next zone, wash, rinse, repeat.

Gameplay-wise, I suppose the most interesting feature is the Geo-Mod 2.0 technology they dumped into the game to let you be able to destroy shit. I suppose it’s fun, but they were really stretching the limits of what I was able to believe. The buildings are remarkably resistant to gravitational forces, the gravity of Mars being one-third of Earth’s notwithstanding, but even I have a hard time believing some of the damage these buildings stand up to. My friend, who is majoring in mechanical engineering (and therefore must take a structural materials class) looked up when I asked if this building would still be standing in real life. He took one look at the screen, snorted, said no, and went back to doing his calculus homework. Yes, the physics in this game are fucking crazy. What’s more, they’re inconsistent. Why if I hit one rock, I go rocketing into the atmosphere, yet I hit a slightly different rock and I screech to a dead halt? And another thing, why is the EDF so keen on targeting ME and only ME when I’m out with a few guerilla pals blowing shit up? Why do EDF troops take so many shots to die from a high-powered rifle? And don’t give me that “THEY’RE WEARING ARMOR LOLOLOL” because I’m hitting them with rounds that break buildings apart and they shrug it off like I’m hitting them with snowballs. Why did they bother to call this Guerilla when you’re doing things all by yourself? They could have just as easily gone with Red Faction: Renegade or some other cheesy title so long as EA didn’t squall over the name being similar to Command and Conquer: Renegade, which nobody remembers because it was shit. The story was fucking retarded, with a thinly disguised tutorial mission and a too-demanding RPG aspect of turning in salvage for weapons. 2000 salvage to upgrade my thermobaric rocket launcher? Fuck off and die, kthx.

A few more gripes, what the fuck is with the Marauders? They’re this reclusive group of who knows what and their job is to fuck you up with no provocation at any given time. They attack you when it’s least convenient and somehow manage to just be a giant pain in the ass all the time and it’s never explained who or what they are or why they feel the need to fuck shit up all the time. If you’re holdovers from Ultor, pick a side. If you’re holdovers from the miner rebellion against Ultor, join our side. Pick one just so I can stop worrying about you coming in when I’m trying to get some salvage to upgrade stuff and suddenly my day turns into a fight for my life. One more thing to note: Swarms of constantly respawning enemies are bullshit. See: “Protect Sam – Eos Mission.” I finally rage-quit the last mission because it’s fucking ludicrous the amounts of enemies you’re supposed to kill.

Graphics were also not so great. Explosions look and feel powerful, but a lot more dust on collapsing buildings would have added a greater effect than large chunks of buildings disappearing into the ground. Character models are merely decent, and the vehicles are okay, but the damage modeling on them is spotty. Really the pyrotechnics here are the only reason that I enjoyed the graphics.

Sound is okay, with (almost too) quiet ambient orchestra, but some weapons don’t feel powerful at all. Given the damage they do to EDF, I suppose that’s possible. Explosions are, once again, the only thing of note. Overall, I didn’t enjoy Red Faction as much as I had hoped from the demo. The “protect Sam while shitloads of enemies swarm you” mission was complete fucking bullshit. Fuck you, suck my dick, I’m not going to continue this mission for the nth fucking time. No, what I’m going to do is get on the internet and write a review trashing your game that nobody will read. THAT WILL SHOW YOU, ASSHOLES.

Sticky’s Final Grade: C
+ Innovative destruction system
- That needs work
+ Powerful Explosions
+ (some) Creative weaponry
+ Nice orchestral score
- Bad missions
- Annoying missions
- EDF troops are FAR too hard to kill
- Wonky gravity

Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty: World at War

Okay, yes, I know this game has been getting a lot of flak lately, but it isn’t the shining beacon of horribleness that it’s made out to be…mostly. If imitation is really the sincerest form of flattery, then Treyarch must have been fellating Infinity Ward hardcore, because nearly every mission is in some way ripped from Call of Duty 4. The very first level? Sniper mission. Another mission? Eerily reminiscent of the AC-130 Gunship mission. The same CoD4 engine is used too, so it’s pretty much Modern Warfare with less sophisticated equipment and more Nazis.

The one thing that is really improved upon this game for me is they ramped up the gore factor by about a gazillion. Personally, I enjoyed it, being the bloodthirsty maniac I am. I felt it helped with the realism and seeing your enemy suddenly covered in shiny crimson gives the game a powerful punch in terms of the rifle you’re holding suddenly makes you feel empowered. Sadly, that’s about the only good point in the gameplay, because Treyarch managed to fuck everything else up.

My biggest gripe with this game is how fucking difficult it is. Comparing CoD2’s veteran campaign and WaW’s hardened campaign, WaW’s is, hands down, MUCH harder. Grenades are spammed ruthlessly, and enemies respawn. Yes, in the 30+ years that Space Invaders was released, we still have endlessly spawning baddies that pour into the room when you’ve killed enough of the Nazi war machine to build a skyscraper out of bodies and enough spilled enough blood to shoot a few Eli Roth movies. They don’t stop coming. Excuse me, but I’m pretty sure by the time the roof of the Reichstag was stormed, the last of the German troops were either so old they couldn’t keep up with the already-victorious Soviet Army or were getting their first pubes. And sadly, no, I am not exaggerating, there were 12 year olds with submachine guns and assault rifles guarding the upper levels of the Reichstag.

The sound is standard fare, your basic pings, pops, zings, and guns are done okay, but by no means well. The voice acting is hit and miss. All of the Marines sound like testosterone-fueled manly men (gee, thanks a bunch Sands of Iwo Jima) and sound like the cheesiest, lamest soldier voice ever. But Sergeant Reznov’s voice…holy shit, I would buy him a beer just to hear him talk.

This review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the reward for beating the game. Zombies. NAZI ZOMBIES.THAT SOUND YOU JUST HEARD WAS YOUR LID GETTING FLIPPED. Yes, the easter egg for beating the game is endlessly spawning zombies (NAZI ZOMBIES OMFGWTFBBQ) and even better, you can play it either solo or Co-op and shoot zombies (THAT ARE NAZIS) all day and night. Buy upgrades and weapons with points you earn for killing zombies (FASCIST ZOMBIES) and fixing fortifications, and use those weapons to kill MORE zombies (NAZIS! WHEEEEEEE!) and the cycle repeats. All in all, the zombie (HEIL GEORGE ROMERO!) mode is a welcome addition that makes a mediocre game at least shine for a while after you beat it (if you can stomach all the retries that you’ll be doing from dying).

Final Word: Let’s be clear, World at War isn’t a bad game. It’s a victim of trying to copy Modern Warfare, and simply fails to reach the bar set by undoubtedly one of the best FPSes ever. Taken by its own merits, World at War isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be. If you’ve never played Modern Warfare you’ll probably find a fun (and at times, frustrating) shooter with an active multiplayer base. However, as most people have played MW, it might end up just leaving a bad aftertaste in your mouth.

Sticky’s Final Grade: C+

+ Innovative in ramping up both the gore and difficulty

- Ramped up difficulty a bit too much. When Suicidal J3di can’t beat the game, it’s too hard

+ Admirably tries to mimic Modern Warfare

- Fails in almost every way

- Some of the shittiest checkpoints I have ever seen in a game, bar none

- As a weapons buff, there are many things wrong with how the game’s weaponry is presented

Fable II

Fable II

Oh, good old Pete Molyneaux. Has the tendency to promise the world and give you a hunk of sod. His latest endeavor, Fable II, takes place centuries after the original Fable, moving from the magicky, swordsy, dragony, bow-and-arrowy age into a magicky, swordsy, villain wanting to use an artifact of great powery, shoot stuff with rifley age. In terms of chronological age, it went from medieval period to the Highwayman age.

The story starts off innocuously enough, summarizing your life up to that point with a bird taking a lovely dump on your head. The first part of the game (childhood) is pretty much like the first Fable. Do a bunch of menial tasks to get money to buy a magical music box from some hack trader. The price? Five gold pieces. How many jobs are there to do? Take a stab in the dark. Some time later, you buy the music box, crank the handle, and make a wish. The wish comes true, but like finding the razorblade with your mouth in the apple only after taking a healthy chomp out of it, everything that was up til that point going right takes a left turn at the intersection of Unoriginal Avenue and Plot Device Boulevard. Your sister is killed, you’re (nearly) killed, and your furry four-legged friend (no, it is not an amputee spider) finds you and a twitch of your cold and grubby little orphan fingers lets the player know that your character is indeed alive and what appears to be the shortest game in existence is actually a bit longer than expected.

The game continues with you finding an interesting cast of folks, including a ‘roided up woman, a glowing guy who is good at making pretty lightning effects with his hands, and a rich guy who moonlights as a douchebag. But here’s the fun part, they made the three characters the embodiments of the three hero attributes! OH MY, HOW UNEXPECTED, HOW THESE PEOPLE ARE BROUGHT TOGETHER FOR A COMMON CAUSE! Honestly, if you didn’t see it coming, you’re mentally retarded and you’re lucky to be reading this review at all. And don’t bitch to me “OH BUT STICKY, YOU’RE RUINING THE STORY FOR ME,” because the plot-line is about as thin as you can get without it being transparent.

Okay, so the story doesn’t wow, but what about the gameplay? Well, that’s where most of the meat and potatoes show up for this game. The expression wheel has been reworked and it takes some getting used to rather than the straightforward mode of selecting things in the last one, but feels natural once you’ve gotten used to it. Combat has been tweaked and now has context specific combat moves, such as knocking someone off a ledge, and flourishes have been done away with. In its stead is a purchasable upgrade that acts as a charge-up attack that breaks through enemy blocks and generally produces some major damage if it connects with someone. Earning money doing menial work sucks though.

The major groundbreaking success of this project was in essence a pet. Fuck your pixilated Tomagachis and satanic Furbies, no this is a DOG! …Okay, yes, it sounds lame, but the idea works even if it is kind of simplistic. You can tell your dog “good boy,” and “bad boy.” You can throw a ball that your dog will faithfully retrieve (unless you chuck it into rooftops like I did to watch the dog go apeshit), and give him treats if he’s injured.

The marriage/love aspect works pretty much the same as in the old Fable and the only difference is now you can have Carl Sagan “beelions and beelions” of kids. Each one has their own personality and will respond to different emotions and has different favorite things. You can also get STDs, but those seem to be more for humor factor than any appreciable effect on your character. Given the time, STDs might be desirable. It meant you were “experienced.”

The main selling point like almost ALL of Molyneaux’s games is its sandbox aspect. Be a pure-hearted paragon of all that is good and pure. You could be Lord Evil the Asshole who enjoys murdering kids (haha, just kidding, you can’t kill the kids; I tried…), or anything inbetween. You can also own enough real-estate to be crowned “Emperor of Albion” but owning lots of land doesn’t do anything but give you more gold, and honestly, once you’ve bought enough real estate to make the Louisiana purchase look conservative and have more money than Bill Gates could ever hope to make, there’s not much more to do but gamble it away (Fortune’s Tower is my favorite) and buy (rent?) a lot of whores.

Sound is your standard fare with heavily-accented residents of the future British Isles. Sound is nice, but repetitive. The voice acting of the primary characters however, is done quite well.

Final Word: Fable II is a good, but by no means great, RPG. The spells list has been nerfed and removed a lot of the original spells that I enjoyed using and are usually so weak that it’s usually more useful to just focus on one spell (something destructive, like lightning or fireballs or something) and upgrade the hell out of that and use some kind of weapon. Relying on spells is easier (no “mana” limit) but they now take time to charge up to a lethal level. In conclusion, Fable II honestly, is the original Fable with a few tweaks and a dog thrown in. If you enjoyed the original Fable, you’ll probably enjoy this game, but I’d say wait until it becomes a bargain bin game.

Sticky’s Final Grade: B-

+ Dog mechanic is refreshing and interesting

+ Graphics are pretty

+ Lol, STDs

+ Reworked combat formula works, and works well

- Not much difference between the original and this one

- Predictable story, predictable plot, predictable ending

- Why can’t I kill children to get evil really fast?