Wolfenstein Review

You ask any gamer what the first FPS was, you generally get the same answer: Doom. Sorry, brah. Wolfenstein 3D was id Softwares first game, which essentially put them on the map and allowed for Doom to be developed. The original Wolfenstein 3D laid forth the formula for the series that continues all the way up into 2009's Wolfenstein, boiling down to a bunch of Nazis that gain control of a relic that empowers them with some sort of super powers, which is ultimately taken down by B.J. Blazkowicz. How does it measure up, all these years later? Is it still fun to take down super nazis? Read on to find out.


Gameplay - 7/10

While all the previous games in this series took an incredibly linear format, this most recent release goes for a much more open hub world system. Although it's a refreshing change to the stage-to-stage format every other first person shooter goes through, ultimately it ends up with you running to an area on a map, getting a mission, then going there anyway. It's a nice alteration, but ultimately doesn't make any real difference to how you'll be going through the game. Another change I feel was made to be console friendly that probably isn't present in the PC version is that when you go into the menu to switch weapons, you set it so you can switch between your two favorite weapons, but if you want to pick a completely different one, you're going to be staring at what is essentially an equipment menu, which takes you out of the game a bit. All of these are minor issues, and I'm sure we're all wondering how this games nazi blasting formula deviates from World at War or the previous Wolfenstein games. Thanks to the fact that you're traveling through a much more believe war-torn Europe, there are tons of things in the environment that are entirely appropriate to use for cover.
These elements hold up well for the standard soldiers you come across, but it's the supernatural forces that might make you want to eat your controller a few times. After a certain point, you start coming across the trademark sexy female ninja nazis, cloaked enemies, and a lot of other things that you've got to see to believe, including one of the most frustrating end bosses I've seen in a game in years (excluding Killzone 2). While there is a multiplayer component in the game, I was unable to find anyone playing online when I tried it out, which was probably in March or April 2010, so I can't say how enjoyable that is. The last thing that needs to be mentioned is how insane the weapons get towards the end of the game. Other games settle for giving you a badass rocket launcher. Wolfenstein? Sure, feel free to take this hand-held Tesla Cannon.


Graphics - 8/10

While I was going through this game, I was wondering why some other games don't have the attention to detail in the textures that this has, specifically God of War 3. A lot of games give you decent texture work when you're playing the game, but under closer examination, such as when there are lulls in the action, it's hard not to notice blurry textures. Another thing that surprised me, considering that I'm sure a lot of people skipped this title, was how imaginative a lot of the models and environments become, especially in enemy design towards the latter half of the game. Early on, you'll be facing hordes of generic soldiers, but as the adventure progresses, you start seeing some of the things that seem like they could only come from the minds at id and Raven.

Sound - 6/10

Most of the time, you're going to be hearing the same gunshots you hear everywhere else. The voice acting is nice, although some characters feel like they might be overdoing the foreigner-attempting-to-speak-english dialect, but it's functional and probably won't bother you that bad unless you pay special attention to it. Although they're nothing new, the explosions tend to create a real sense of tension, as well as that familiar tinkling sound of a grenade rolling slightly too close. Let's also not forget how satisfying it is to come across a horde of enemies, ignite them, and hear/see them screaming in agony. It's a bit demented, but it feels like that sound is one of the hardest for any voice actor to portray right, and its more than adequate in Wolfenstein.



Overall - 7/10

Part of me wants to score this higher just to encourage people to give it a chance, but another part says that there are probably better things to spend the cash on. The sci-fi nazi twist is a nice change up from fighting terrorists in a first person shooter, not to mention how awesome it is to be using fictional weapons again instead of the standard pistol/sniper rifles that fill so many other games (don't worry, those are included in this too). The story isn't exactly full of unpredictable plot twists or anything, but it's nice to pick up a game for once and have an idea of exactly how it's going to start and how it's going to end. Out of all the overlooked shooters from 2009, this stands out as one I encourage everyone to try, especially if you can find it for 30$ and under or possibly a weekend rental.

Skate 3 Review

Skate 3 is the sequel that Skate 2 should have been. That's not to say that Skate 2 was bad or inferior to Skate, but there are a lot of additions that I'm looking at in this game that feel like they should have made it into the second game, but possibly didn't do to time constraints. All of that aside, the third game in this series worked its way into retailers on May 11th, bringing with it a hosts of improvements and alterations to the tried and true formula. Read on to find out how well the overall package came together.



Gameplay 8/10

With the original game, the skateboarding game genre was forever transformed, as evident by the number of sales against its rival that year, Tony Hawks Proving Grounds. In addition to that, the realistic gameplay, creative control scheme, and size of the open world was met with tons of critical acclaim and cemented the namesake into the hearts of gamers everywhere. The sequel improved on this formula by setting the game in the same city after a major disaster occurs, which alters the landscape a bit, giving you tons of new areas to skate, pros to meet, and an even more in depth replay and photo editor. This, coupled with more open areas of online freeskate, not to mention the addition of walking, made this sequel more than deserving as its title of successor.
Now, here we are with Skate 3, which in every way feels like the game Skate 2 would have developed into had there been more time between releases. Major changes to the game include the fact that now every single player challenge can be played online in co-op, meaning any thing you're having issues with is made a lot more tolerable by possibly bringing someone else in that is better than you or functions better than your new AI teammates. While Skate 2 had the option to drag items around and set up your own unique spots, Skate 3 allows you to use an object dropper anywhere in the world, not to mention an extensive park editor that allows for in depth customization of every single rail, ledge, ramp, or even elevation change on your own park, which can be shared with other people online (provided you buy the game new!). The fact that the entire game is entire co-op has its weaknesses, primarily coming from the team challenges that feel like its necessary for someone else to be doing with you instead of relying on the AI provided, which might be a deal-breaker for some.

Graphics - 8/10

For the first time, the game is running at a steady 60 FPS throughout the entire city. While the graphical style looks similar to Skate 2's, the fact that everything is consistent the whole way through makes a huge change in how fluid the game moves. The camera work this time around gives you a much more clean view of the world, since the series ditched that dirty looking filter and fisheye effect from the previous games, but if you desire to have them back, you can turn them on in the options, at the sake of reducing the framerate. Another huge change in the graphics is the fact that now, if you fail at doing a trick, instead of going into an automatic bail animation, there's a possibility that your skater will stumble and attempt to regain balance, which looks exactly like you'd expect it to if you've ever been the victim of this or witnessed in real life. Not only does it serve to immerse you in the sim like experience, but it helps from a gameplay perspective, as this makes it a lot easier to recover your momentum than faceplanting into the cement.



Sound - 8/10

While the previous games offered samples of other genres, it feels like Skate 3's soundtrack offers more of whatever it is that you're looking for. I can't name another game off the top of my head that can take you from Young Jeezy to Neil Diamond, then back over to The Pixies or Joy Division all within the course of 10 minutes. If there's anything in the soundtrack you don't want to hear, you can go into the menu and disable it. The PS3 version implements custom soundtracks right off the disk, meaning you don't have to wait for a patch to skate to that Rod Stewart cd you've secretly hoarded on your hard drive. For anyone that had been annoyed with the cameraman in the previous games, he's gone now and replaced with a new guy that rarely ever says anything unless you come across a really awesome spot, have an incredibly harsh bail, or pull off an insane trick. The score only gets an 8 here mostly because the sound effects from the actual skateboard just don't sound as satisfying as they did in earlier games. Maybe it's just me, but everything sounds a lot more muted now.



Overall - 8/10

While I can easily say Skate 3 is a much more refined game than Skate 2 was, it's a bit harder to recommend if you're not able to play online, and you should also be aware that if you buy it used, it disables your ability to share parks, logos, and pictures online. If you've never played a Skate game in your life before, however, the addition of difficulties, variety of landscapes, and refinements to the overall gameplay mechanics makes this easily a welcome starting area, probably even more than the first two games! The last thing I feel needs to be mentioned is that as of May 28th, 2010, it's been increasingly hard to find games online, especially considering a lot of players are probably on one of the other games that's come out this month. I'm hoping the community returns maybe during the post-E3 pre-fall down time, but I'm no psychic and this makes it a lot harder to get the full enjoyment out of the game due to the increased attention to online play.

After Burner Climax review

Remember the days when games were based around a core mechanic and lived or died by said mechanic? During that period of time, Sega birthed an arcade flight action game under the name After Burner. While the original did fairly good, when most people think of After Burner, the memories are almost always associated with the second game; holding the flight stick in the arcade while shooting down countless enemy planes at insane speed. While there was an After Burner 3, the series hadn't seen a sequel since the 90's, but all of that changed in 2006 with the arcade release of After Burner Climax. The game succeeds in catching the attention and quarters of many in the arcade, thanks to it's blistering speeds and somewhat familiar gameplay with a few new tweaks, but is it worth the price of admission to play at home?

Gameplay - 8/10

Just like Outrun Online Arcade, ABC succeeds in taking one solid mechanic and making an incredible game out of it. The default control scheme might take a while to get adjusted to, but its well worth the dedication. If it's still not clicking for you, there's a few custom control schemes that you can select from as well, which are great, but it's a bummer that you can't fully customize the layout. Once you've got that out of the way, you select your plane and take to the skies. For those hoping for a free roam flight game akin to Ace Combat, you'll quickly realize that Climax sticks to its roots and forces you to constantly move forward, allowing you to use the throttle to accelerate or decelerate, which becomes vital in dodging shots and evading enemies behind you. Although the game is constantly hurtling you in one direction, you're free to move in a fairly large area using the left stick, all while using your machine gun to take down nearby enemies or locking onto them with your missiles before letting them go. The last thing in the controls department is the inclusion of the climax mode, where everything slows down, allowing you to lock on to tons of targets at once while making some dodges that would otherwise have been incredibly tricky, then firing off a volley of missiles, taking down all of the selected targets almost instantaneously. Unfortunately, that's about as far as the game goes in terms of controls.
Due to the unrelenting forward movement, the game also normally only takes between 8-12 minutes to finish, which would be a huge problem if this was an epic first person shooter or something, but despite its simple controls and short total gameplay time, chances are that you won't be making it to the end in your first few playthroughs (JUST LIKE IN OUTRUN!), since you're initially only given 3 credits to work with. In spite of what I said about the simple controls earlier, there's a surprisingly deep combo-chaining system present here that rewards you for continuously stringing together kills before a timer runs out, meaning that you occasionally need to leave one or two stragglers if you want to continue chaining between waves of enemies. After each mission, you're ranked on how well you did, along with getting letter grades after every 4 stages or so, which usually give you a chance to take a branching path to reach the ending.



Graphics - 7/10

When you first fire it up, you'll realize how incredibly well this looks for not only a downloadable game, but also as a next-gen game. All of this will be made more amazing once you realize the game was released in arcades back in 2006! As you blaze through the games levels, the variety of environments will continue to impress you, constantly making you wonder what the next level looks like or what the other path might lead to. The planes featured in the game all sport a surprising amount of detail and the explosions all look incredibly satisfying. The more you play, especially if you go for that achievement that requires you to finish the game with a D or E rank in speed (protip: hold the brake the whole game), you'll start realizing that under closer examination, the textures only look detailed if you're playing the game right (blazing through or just slowing down long enough to dodge enemy fire). This also brings to light that some of the effects are kind of...not as detailed as they look when you're going through faster, most notably the planes emerging from beneath the clouds, but as long as you keep your speed up, none of this will be an issue at all.

Sound - 6/10

ABC's biggest weakness is it's lackluster soundtrack. While I give Sega props for including the ability to use the Afterburner 2 soundtrack in the game, it still doesn't excuse how forgettable the soundtrack in this game is. It's appropriate considering this is an arcade flight combat game, but there's definitely not any jingles that are going to be left in your head or most likely songs that you really want to hear when you're not playing the game. The game does get an extra point for having some incredibly funny dialogue going on in the background, and I don't think that it's intentionally humorous, but it's almost campy for an arcade game "WOO! I MADE IT HERE FIRST!" There's just something really charming about the banter you hear between the pilots or the lack of concern in their voices as they take down an imaginary country's entire air force.



Overall - 7/10

After Burner Climax is highly recommended that everyone at least tries out, because it's a throwback to when games were pure and lived or died on one mechanic, this one being its combo system. Fortunately, it gets the combo system right, along with having tons of unlockables, and then you have the leaderboards and a personal high score board as well to encourage you to keep trying to do better. If you're not the kind of person that is addicted to constantly trying to see how much better you can do than your own previous best, the short nature of the game might make you want to leave it behind. Again, at least give the demo a shot, leave some comments, and let me know what you think.

My ode to the Dreamcast

When I was a young lad, I remember my brother and I went to this mystical place called "Blockbuster", along with a few other local rental places (does anyone remember when grocery stores had their own video stores in them?) to pick up these amazing arcade ports on NES, SNES, and Genesis. I'd sit there for hours in front of the TV playing these perfect ports of games like Street Fighter 2, NBA Jam, Joe and Mac, and tons of others. At the time, I thought nothing could ever get any better than that. You could practically play authentic renditions of the same games you would normally have to plop quarter after quarter into in your own home! Sure, maybe the graphics weren't quite as polished, they might have altered some of the sounds, but the core experience was the same! How could it ever get any better?



Things started to change once the move to CD-based consoles started. When the Sony Playstation launched, instead of playing these compressed arcade games, we were getting closer to replicating that very same experience without having to sacrifice nearly as much, thanks to the superior hardware and the increased storage capacity on CD's. Unfortunately, as with most changes in technology, there was a trade-off: insane load times. Mortal Kombat 3 on Genesis was the first time I really noticed how much less crisp its sound was compared to the SNES, along with the fact that the color pallet seemed lacking. The SNES version seemed to look closer but still lacked that definition that made it stand out in arcade. The PS1 port, however, looked and sounded JUST like its big brother. Enter the trade-off: due to the laser having to read data off the disc, whenever Shang Tsung morphed, the game would freeze for a few seconds as it loaded the new characters moveset, which kind of ruined the whole experience, not to mention the loading time between fights. As time went on, the Playstation would become the next home for arcade ports, but we were always forced to just deal with the loading. All of that changed on 9/9/99.



When the Dreamcast finally hit, we saw a significant difference between what had been available during the 32-bit era (Saturn and Playstation) in terms of graphics, sound, and the core gameplay experience. While previous consoles had to sacrifice something, Dreamcast benefited from being constructed on the same basic hardware as what was then available in arcades. This meant that everything you saw at the arcade was finally playable at home with no losses, going so far as to throw in tons of extra modes (Street Fighter Alpha 3 says "Hi"), allowing you to refine your skills at home without having to take frame rate or input differences into account.



As previously mentioned, this was not the Dreamcast's only strength. It definitely makes it easy to go back into if you feel like playing Capcom vs SNK 2 or Soul Calibur, but there were tons of amazing games that were exclusive to it that still hold up well today. Jet Set Radio is still a landmark title thanks to its introduction of the cel-shaded art style that games use to this day. Shenmue can be blamed for the origin of so many QTE events in games for years to come, even going so far as to be the primary control element in this years hit, Heavy Rain. While online console gaming technically existed years before thanks to the xband, Phantasy Star Online is the title people look back at and remember how excellent the netcode was, or that crazy night they jumped on to trade items with some guy from the other side of the world. With the creation of the 2k sports games, it felt like Madden and NBA Live had some serious competition, forcing them to seriously consider what their strategy was. Sure, there was NFL Xtreme, Game Day, NBA Shootout, and other franchises that tried, but none ever managed to really get the experience as refined as NFL and NBA 2k did, which also looked leaps and bounds better than anything we'd seen before. Last, but definitely not least, who can possibly forget their first time seeing the Ready 2 Rumble commercial?



I could go on and on forever about how amazing the Dreamcast was and still is, and there might be future posts nailing down specific experiences I had with the amazing, but for now, I'd like to bring this to a close. The Dreamcast is still my first choice for amazing 4 player split screen games and loading up amazing arcade ports, and while the PS2 is a close second, I really feel that this was the niche Sega carved out for itself in the hearts of gamers everywhere. The next time you hear that ridiculously loud beeping sound the VMUs made when starting up or hear about a new Cel Shaded game, or even when you're cursing out a game because of that damn QTE you missed, think of the Dreamcast and pour one out for Sega. Better yet, track one down if you don't already have one, get some friends, some controllers, and bask in the glory of one of the finest consoles of all time.