Gears of War 2

Well this review feels like a long time coming.



Gears of War 2: The more heterosexual Gear-named franchise.

Story : Surprise Surprise, it’s humans versus aliens! Or mutants, or some kind of grotesque monster that happens to speak English and have mastery over human guns. This new game’s plot elements include one squadmate’s missing wife, a city that is supposedly humanity’s last refuge, another enemy leader whom ranks above the enemy you killed in the first game that you mistook for the leader of the group of monsters you thought you rendered extinct in the first game, and a plot twist that feels a bit too blatantly ripped out of the Halo games. There are a handful of groan-inducing elements too, such as the cowardly teammate whose voicework would’ve fit in perfectly in an episode of Scooby Doo, and the preachy, bizarre computer AI character that’s trying really hard to be mimic the artificial intelligence characters from Portal and Halo, but the story as a whole suffices without being too offensive. For what its worth, despite being the middle chapter of a planned trilogy, the game doesn’t end on a cheap cliffhanger like oh so many other games seem to be nowadays, and protagonist Marcus Felix and his main squadmates from the first game, once reunited, are appealing enough to give the otherwise dull world some personality. I guess to sum it up, as good as a game about four guys single-handedly gunning down an army of enemies can get.

The storyline is the weakest link of Gears of War 2, or at least the link that’s the least-thickest in a twenty-ton chain strong enough to imprison Godzilla. This game is a beast alright. This is your big-budget game equivalent of a summer blockbuster, with all of the cutting edge graphic technologies, physics engines, sweeping orchestral musical scores and end-of-humanity themes that you normally equate with high profile shooting games. It’s the proverbial pissing contest, where all the major game companies (or at least the ones that made PC games back when making big-budget PC games was a profitable business) compete to make the prettiest shooter of them all. However, Gears of War 2 is also a smart beast, one that knows that there’s more to a game than a press release bragging about how many enemies you can fit on-screen or how this game is the first to feature “meat physics.”

In this regard, it bears mention that single player campaign (which can be played co-operatively with a buddy, online or off), is particularly strong. Unlike the Halo games, or any number of other major shooters, you never feel like you’re merely walking from one corridor to another, fighting one respawning wave of enemies after another. Rather, the game does a surprisingly strong job of throwing one unique scenario after another, all the while finding small and subtle ways to mix up the standard gunfights. Considering how the core gameplay mechanics consist of hiding behind something, poking your head out and shooting back, it’s amazing how this never actually gets old. There’s a potent variety of enemies to hack up with your chainsaw-gun Lancer, and a healthy variety of weapons to use in the event that your Lancer runs out of ammo. Just be sure to never drop that Lancer, ever, or even toy with the idea, or else you are going to either run into a wall that needs to be chainsawed-down or enemies that, after the first game, have learned about the tactical advantage of guns with chainsaw bayonets and intend to use them on you.

Throw in plenty of cinematic moments (usually consisting of something blowing up) and you have a story mode that extends well beyond the typical “showcase of things you can do in multiplayer” campaign that most shooters feature, though the game does introduce its share of new features. Gears of War 2 doesn’t reinvent the formula of the first game, but elaborates on it enough to make going back to the first game an awkward experience. Like in multiplayer, an ally can revive you should you approach near-death, and the enemies can do the same, throwing you in some tense situations where you’ll be crawling, begging for help, and developing a new appreciation for Dom. There are vehicle sequences that don’t feel tacked on, Halo 3’s utility weapons like the giant chaingun, chainsaw duels and a litany of other new features that you’ll barely notice but appreciate once you see them. The game doesn’t rewrite the formula of the first Gears, but being as there has been a surprisingly low number of games trying to rip off Gears of War, there’s nothing about this game that feels stale, other than the concept of muscular men in giant, armoured suits shooting down monster invaders.

Speaking of trends, Gears of War 2 does follow what appears to be an emerging new trend in gaming; the multiplayer mode where people mindlessly battle waves of respawning enemies. Horde mode actually works out to be a pretty fun diversion, to tell the truth. Granted, I could just be saying that because of all the multiplayer modes, this is the one that’s the easiest to start up a session with.

The game borrows its matchmaking concept from Halo 2 and 3, where you choose what style of gameplay type you play through and the game looks for allies and opponents of similar skill level. However, the matchmaking in Gears 2 is surprisingly slow, and I often found myself just sitting there, waiting for minutes on end as a game kept looking for an opponent group, only to stop because a member of my group left in frustration and thus needed to be replaced. Now, once you actually start a game, then the game starts to pick up. While the entire multiplayer game is team-based and you don’t necessarily need good allies to thrive, you will feel it if your opponent’s team is a more well-oiled machine.

The game’s matchmaking seems to prefer committed gamers looking to spend all-nighters bulking their ranking and trying to unlock the game’s obscenely demanding achievements than someone who wants to play a game for a few minutes. You can’t leave a game unless you boot out of Gears of War 2 or turn off the system, and likewise, people can’t hop into a game in progress; if you want to play, you’re going to wait for the matchmaker to find ten other players and you guys are going to play together, whether your team is good or not. I know that people who quit games because they’re losing are hated by all, but I’m not one to play a multiplayer session for hours on end, and there’s this thing called real life that’ll sometimes call me and interrupt my gameplay session. Do the developers at Epic know about this life thing?

But that said, Gears of War 2 is visceral, exciting, enjoyable, a shooter that finds a way to stand out from the crowd. If the multiplayer process was a bit more gentle and B. Carmine wasn’t so much of a tool then I’d feel a bit more inclined to rate the game a little higher, but I doubt either of which will keep the 15-28 year old male demographic away from thinking that this is the greatest game ever made, or at least until Gears 3 or the next big shooter comes out. I’ll attest to being a jaded snob that needs a bit more than bleeding-edge graphics to get excited about a shooting game, but at least Gears of War 2 does just enough for me to not label it as another flash in the pan.

Pros : In the absence of having something less rational to say here, I’ll go so far as to claim that this one game’s campaign is better than the combined Halo trilogy.

Cons : As visually impressive as the final sequence is, it’s far too easy for my tastes. Call me old-school, but I like it when a final boss puts up the toughest fight out of all the obstacles the player has faced in the game, not the easiest.

4 stars

Okay, the game does leave a few loose ends, and there’s a bit of a cliffhanger after the credits, but you can practically guess how it’ll all unfold in the next game.

Castlevania: Judgment

Castlevania : Judgement : A fighting game comprising of assorted Castlevania characters. An odd concept, to be sure, considering that most people can only name about 2 or 3 actual Castlevania characters.

Story : Judgment uses an old cliché of Saturday morning cartoons and comics, bringing in some kind of all-powerful being from another dimension to unite characters from different fictions together for a battle. This figure in question is predictably enigmatic, but he also looks like a cross between an outcast from A Clockwork Orange and a pussy.

The game has a story mode, but it may as well not have one, since “story mode” is the same as arcade mode, except with the occasional cutscene of dialogue between fighters, which generally comprises of fighter A saying “Hey, you! Lets fight!” and fighter B saying “Yeah, okay, lets fight!” That the game has this story mode, along with an arcade mode, seems like a petty attempt to give the game more gameplay modes than it really has for the sake of the game’s press release.

Speaking of, one of the game’s most advertised points of notice, it seems, is the addition of famous manga writer Takeshi Obata as the character designer, a man most famous for the series Death Note. I know this because Wikipedia knows this. A lot of Japanese games seem to do this, bringing in a supposedly famous artist or composer to work on something in the game, just as how American games often bring in a famous celebrity to half-heartedly do voicework for a game.

For the last decade or so, Castlevania games have been slowly progressing towards a more anime-influenced direction in terms of art-style…or at least a more sexually questionable art direction. Male and female characters have become harder to tell apart. Clothing comes and goes with the tide. Style coming light years ahead of substance. The concept art for a new character will take prominence in a magazine feature over, say, actual content about the game. However, Judgment takes the cake here in terms of creating the most sexually-confused posers in all of gaming.

Once apon a time, we thought Simon Belmont looked like this.



That was the box art for the very first Castlevania. Here’s Simon on the Castlevania : Judgement boxart, which I’ve neglected to post until now for a reason you’re about to see.



Way to butcher a part of our memories, Konami. I’d like to think that going from ripping off Conan The Barbarian to ripping off Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children is a pretty jarring shift for people who have been with the series for a long time. I know that the characters in the Castlevania franchise didn’t have much integrity to begin with in order for me to proclaim that the series’ integrity has been compromised, but there’s still value in trying to be nostalgic instead of trying to be Guilty Gear. As a somewhat-longtime fan, I’ll admit that the idea of pitting Simon Belmont against Symphony of the Night’s Alucard or the little girl from Castlevania 3 is rather intriguing, but all of these characters have been redesigned to a point where no one can recognize them anymore. Look at Super Smash Bros; part of the appeal is that the series relishes in the idea that these recognizable characters are together and battling each other; that the player can have Pikachu challenge Mario, and have the two beat the shrooms out of each other. Now imagine some famous artist, say, Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, was hired to redesign all of the Nintendo characters. As cool as it might look like to see Pikachu transformed into a grotesque, human heart-devouring monster, he just wouldn’t be Pikachu anymore.

Instead, the new art direction just leaves the player the impression that the game is ridden with Soul Calibur rejects. Considering how most of these games are set in the 1800s, it’s amazing how these “heroes” don’t get cast out as witches and burned at the stake. To avoid having to play as some kind of androgynous punk who’s more concerned about their victory pose than their fight training, I connected my DS with Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia to the Wii to unlock that game’s protagonist, [Shanoa]. While she comes off as less obnoxious than the rest of the cast, her previous “sexy but tortured” look has been replaced by some kind of stripper-nun hybrid and…

…okay I guess I should talk about the gameplay.

The game is a 3D fighting game, akin to the old Dreamcast game Power Stone. Players move around a trap-filled arena, jumping around, slashing each other and cursing at the camera. Credit should be due for not trying to clone Soul Calibur more than the game’s art direction was already doing, but too many basic elements feel flawed. There’s no punishment to blocking, and the only unblockable attacks in the game have such a long charge time that they can easily be evaded or countered, so most battles will devolve into either two people taking turns hitting each other or just straight button-mashing. It’s a shame too, being that there’s some potentially interesting ideas here, like the ability to pick up and use vintage powerups from the series, like the cross boomerang and the evil holy water of burning blue death.

Oh, and make sure you play the game with either the Gamecube controller or the Classic controller. I actually appreciate that the game gives you the option to play with traditional controllers, unlike most games that force you into using the Wiimote controls for no good reason than to continue Nintendo’s two plus year quest to justify the existence of the Wii controller as functional for anything but Wii Bowling. Apparently, the concept for Castlevania: Judgment was conceived in an attempt to create a Castlevania game with Wii controls; to let the player use their remote like a whip perhaps…and I just can’t fathom the logic in such a statement. As predicted, the Wii controls are inaccurate and tiresome.

One final point of potential wasted, the game has what looks to be a solid online play mode…or at least one by Wii standards. A lot of that friend code nonsense can be abandoned and you can befriend strangers you’ve fought online as rivals. However, I was never able to apply any of this in practice, as nobody seems to be playing this game online.

Which could be attributed to the game’s bad art style scaring away players, or that most any gamer can look at the game from a distance and think “yeah, this game can’t be good.” Castlevania: Judgment is indeed a lackluster title, one that had the potential to be something special. However, fighting games are finicky titles in nature, where milliseconds can make or break the experience, and Judgment is way off the mark. Castlevania fans have it rough sometimes, it seems.

Pros : I guess if you’re the type of gamer that freaks out over an orchestral score in video games, you’ll pop for the one here.

Cons : Even Death falls victim to the artist’s need to redesign all of the characters. Yes, someone felt the Grim Reaper needed to be envisioned as a He-Man villain.

2 ½ stars

Contrary to the Overture review, I’m actually quite the fan of the Guilty Gear series. In fact, that I actually reviewed Overture should be a testament to this.

Wii Music

Wii Music : Apparantly, the next big thing.

Story : No story applicable. Other than “this game was a freaking joke when it was presented at E3 in all it’s hairy glory.”

But despite all that, Nintendo continued to proclaim that this was their big holiday game of 2008. Wii Music was going to follow in the footsteps of the absurdly popular Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit, whether we liked it or not. Well, the former two only became such unusual hits because of how they were bundled with hardware and became easy to love when played at short bursts at social events, prompting party-goers to yearn for a Wii of their own (and only to get sick of their new purchase minutes after.) I have no personal experience with Wii Fit, but I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt being that it has somewhat honest intentions (but make no mistake, as a certified personal trainer, I very much look forward to reviewing that fitness fad.) But with no bundled hardware, Wii Music has only the E3 video of doucheman to motivate people into running to their store to check in on the latest craze.

Perhaps I shouldn’t review Wii Music as Nintendo’s straight-faced answer to the likes of Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, LittleBig Planet, Fallout 3 and the like. Though doing so would result in me rating the game an “EPIC FAIL” out of five stars. No, maybe I should look at Wii Music’s potential for just straight up fun, for that’s what all games should aim for.

Except it’s still something of a failure there too.

So when you boot up the game, a very annoying instructor who looks like a hybrid of Bach and a Muppet, explains the game’s basic mechanics in a very long-winded tutorial that feels like he’s less trying to explain the gameplay mechanics as much as he is trying to justify the game’s existence. In a nutshell, you bang the Wiimotes to play piano and percussion instruments, bang one remote while you hold out another to play guitar-like instruments, bang the Wiimote horizontally to play violin, and alternate pressing the one and two buttons while supposedly holding the Wiimote near your mouth to play wind instruments. Imagination is the watchword here, as the game is banking on you closing your eyes and imagining yourself jamming in an orchestra to not notice that the remote only picks up the motion of the Wii moving in general. You’re essentially playing Guitar Hero without the five buttons and just the flipper; that’s what playing Wii Music is like.

The only instrument that grants the player control of what note they’re playing is drums. If you actually thought the E3 demo was impressive in its use of the Wiimote technology, well you’re in for a gross disappointment. You actually control what part of the drum you hit on by what buttons on the controllers you hold, not by some kind of sophisticated Wii controller technology. If you have the Wii Fit balance board, you could use that as a kick pedal, but that feels like such a petty use of a $90 adaptor.

Otherwise, all you’re really doing is moving remotes around and making loud noises. Unlike Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Singstar, Amplitude, Frequency or any actual music game, you’re not trying to match notes with the song playing in the background. Rather, the game automatically matches whatever notes you’re playing with the song itself, with the sole variation being how many times you opt to play notes and make the song sound like more of a mess. I think “cluster****” is a good way to describe any composition you can conceive. Jam mode is the game’s main mode, where you and 5 other musicians play a song. The game gives you an unusual-yet-useless amount of variety. Unusual in that you can re-dub any instrument with multiple playthroughs, create an album cover, and record a full-blown music video that can be sent to other Wii Music owners. Useless because no one owns Wii Music and no one should announce that they own Wii Music. Also useless because, despite a large variety of instruments that includes everything from cow bells and “guy in a dog suit barking” to “galactic drums”, the audio quality of each instrument is so poor that when so many instruments are mixed together, they all blend together poorly and leave the song sounding like an old ring tone. Though I guess some people dream of creating their own ring tone version of “Wake me up before I go-go.”

I should talk about the setlist itself; a combination of classic music compositions, children’s bedtime songs, 60s-80s pop songs and Nintendo game theme songs, begging one to ask the question “why do I want to play these songs?” Nintendo did the exact same thing with the Donkey Konga games on the Gamecube, focusing primarily on free-to-use tracks. Other music games feature a hybrid of classic and contemporary hits, as well as often-solid tracks from little-known acts. Nintendo’s choice of music here comes off as the equivalent of Marge Simpson trying to fit in at Lollapalooza.

Wii Music isn’t a game, it’s a toy. One that should be marked as targeted towards people aged 3-5. Little kids might have some fun with Wii Music, but like any flashy toy, it’ll be quick to be discarded for the next big toy. Anyone with a semblance of an attention span will otherwise get bored of the game before the tutorial ends.

Pros : Mildly amusing mini-games. In particular “Mii Maestro”, where the motion of the remote dictates the gusto that the orchestra plays their music.

Cons : Only five songs for Mii Maestro.

1 ½ stars

Shiguru Miyamoto has apologized in the past, for claiming that Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine weren't up to par. The former I don't understand, the latter I kind of see why. But he should be busting out a U2-calibur "I'm sorry" parade to gamers for Wii Music.

[Castlevania] Order of Ecclesia

I don’t normally do these big “history of the franchise” deals in my reviews because pretty much every video game site does them already and they always wind up sounding like some kind of major sales pitch, like the review was written not by a person but by a company marketing team. But upon seeing me play the Nintendo DS game I’m about to review, my coworker went on to ask me “what is Castlevania?” which caught me off guard, since this is one of the more older and popular licenses of the video game industry, or at least in my biased mind. So here it is, my brief “history of Castlevania” feature. Feel free to skip on to the actual review if you’ve heard this bit a thousand times before.



The original Castlevania was released in America in 1987 (according to Wikipedia) on the NES. It was a basic platformer starring a dude with a mystical whip going through Dracula’s castle, battling skeletons, zombies, flying heads, the grim reaper and every horror movie archetype ever conceived before battling the Count himself. The art direction was distinctly gothic for the time, the mechanics were sound and the game was challenging (often unfairly so, in regards to the threat of frequently respawning medusa heads) and the game became a staple of 2D platforming. Assorted sequels would follow, the protagonist’s integrity would be compromised in a bad 80s cartoon, but the one constant in the franchise was that there was always a member of that guy with a whip’s bloodline beating up monsters, and there was always a Dracula whose arse needed to be handed to him.



The series hit a monumental turning point in 1997 with Castlevania : Symphony of the Night. The linear series of stages was replaced in favour of a giant overworld, Dracula’s castle, where the player’s progression meant obtaining access to more and more sections of the otherwise free-to-explore area. (Perhaps an easier way to say that would be “ripping off Metroid”.) Also, whip boy was replaced by Dracula’s son, who probably had a bone to pick with his dad for his disapproval of his son’s bisexual attitude. As well, the game obtained RPG elements in that the character could be outfitted with different equipment, learn new abilities and level up from grind… beating up enemies as he went. The game still holds up fantastically well by modern standards and is available for purchase online for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners at a reasonably great price.

Told you these things always end up sounding like sales pitches.

Since then, there have been two kinds of Castlevania games being released. The console Castlevania games that attempt to bring the series to 3D and always seem to wind up being terrible, and the Game Boy Advance/Nintendo DS Castlevania games that try really, really, really hard to capture the same lightning in a bottle that Symphony of the Night had, with varying (but usually respectable) results. Which brings us too…




[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] : The latest attempt at a modern day Symphony.

Story : [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is based around a young woman named [Shanoa] who was chosen to bear some kind of almighty power capable of bringing down [Dracula], only for fellow cult-mate [Albus] to steal the power for himself, forcing [Shanoa] to go after him. There’s a good twist or two here and there but the overall story in [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is by and large predictable. You know you’re just going to wind up fighting [Dracula] in the end anyways. It’s like the series is sometimes held down from evolving due to its own tradition, yet even I’ll admit that I’d be disappointed if a [Castlevania] game didn’t end in a bout with [Dracula].

[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] isn’t so much distinct for its most heavily advertised features so much as it is for more of its’ subtle changes. The only reason I appreciate [Shanoa] as the game’s protagonist is because she distinctly looks female, which is a change of pace from the usual androgynous main character that stars in these [Castlevania : Symphony of the Night] knockoffs, otherwise she’s not a particularly likable individual. The addition of a [village] with [civilians] that need rescuing isn’t too big of a deal, as they merely provide [fetch quests] for the player to…

Oh, and if you’d like to know why I’m talking with [brackets] around words, it’s because the game likes using them too, with the upmost demand it seems. I’ve seen numerous games do a similar thing, using underlines or colours to highlight names or quest related items. Order of Ecclesia is fond of the bracket, to highlight seemingly every noun in for the player. A villager may ask you to collect 3 [iron ore] (no plural form here) or another character will have a major speech proclaiming that [Dracula] is the embodiment of all evil. I can’t help but find that this sucks out a good deal of impact or immersion out of the storyline. I don’t quite understand why; trust me when I say that the target audience of this game is not stupid enough to need important parts of the sentence to be highlights so abruptly.

I say that because this game is not meant to be played by anyone but the most determined of platform gamers. Bosses are all tough, with large chunks of health to chip off and difficult, random attack patterns to figure out. You’re going to die repeatedly in the process of trying to beat one. Even many casual enemies will tear you apart if given the chance. Save points are infrequent, so you’ll find yourself using the magical escape item to retreat to the village often…or die a lot. The game only keeps track of the hours you’ve spent playing and not dying so while my game save says I’ve put in a mere 5 hours into the game, the real number is embarrassingly much, much higher.

In part, that’s due to how infrequent stat-boosting armour appears in the game, as in order to improve your meager defense rating, you’ll find yourself having to do a fetch quest or two from certain villagers in order to make available armour you can’t afford at the store. There’s another issue of difficulty; money is scarce, and you’ll rarely find yourself equipped with necessary potions, meaning that you’re going to really EARN the right to progress.

Another aspect that only the diehards are going to mind is the game’s slap in the face false-ending. Once you do beat Albus, the game sets you up and basically says “you can’t go to the real last level and fight Dracula unless you rescue EVERY villager.” Well this certainly ticked me off, especially considering the number of lives I needed to beat Albus in the first place. It’s even more frustrating how you’re going to need some kind of internet strategy guide to find some of the villagers, since some of them are hidden behind walls that are supposed to be broken down but otherwise untraceable without either some kind of internet assistance or trying to hit every wall in the game until something breaks, like you’re some kind of game tester. This may be fine for the Gamefaqs.com crowd of gamers, but not the average Joe.

In perhaps a sign that the series is going full-circle, there’s no giant overworld in this game, but rather a series of smaller stages, connected by a basic world map. This cuts on the backtracking, and at the same time, each area is interesting enough to make you want to explore, though there’s perhaps one “straight line filled with enemies” type of level too many in the game.

Another small change that I wound up appreciating is the glyph system, where Shanoa takes advantage of her scantily-clad powers and absorbs certain magical artifacts into her bare back. Absorbed glyphs can then be assigned to certain buttons, and end up manifesting themselves into weapons attacks or certain abilities. For the most part, this comes off as a repackaged version of the weapons and spells equipment system, but there are some unique twists. A select few enemy attacks can be sucked out from right under their noses to unlock new abilities. Magic attacks can lead into changing your character’s super attack, and there’s a great variety of spells once you approach the tail end of the game. It’s a small gameplay tweak that you wind up appreciating after you make yourself stick with it long enough.

And that really is the key to enjoying Order of Ecclesia; gutting it out. Truth be told, this is the most fun I’ve had out of a Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night, and likewise, it’s also the most frustration I’ve gotten since the very early NES games. It’s a great purchase for long-time fans and in particular, the ones that like to search far and wide to collect every power-up and compete for the best time in the obligatory “Boss Rush” mode. But if you’ve never played any of these games before, be warned. Go start with Symphony or even one of the other DS Castlevania games. Build up your tolerance for beating giant monsters with sexually-questionable characters.

Pros : Great-as-always art style, without leaving the impression that the game is trying to be more stylish than it really is (i.e. the other Symphony clones). Will greatly amplify your tolerance for Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii (review coming soon) Plenty of post-game extras.

Cons : A few too many enemies were ripped out of Symphony of the Night.

4 stars

Breaking from the tradition of making bad 3D games and uninspired 2D games, the most recent game in the series, Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii, is a fighting game!

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe : A fighting game featuring characters from both the Mortal Kombat fighting game and DC comic book franchises, in a combination that could only make sense to fellow gamers who’ve seen Capcom do it before with Street Fighter and Marvel. For all intents and purposes, all of the franchises involved are being riding on the coattails of The Dark Knight, as evident by Batman’s prominent appearance on the box art over actual DC mascot Superman.

Story : …will sound very familiar to anyone that has read a comic or watched a Saturday morning cartoon at any point in their life. Two parallel universes are merging and a bunch of guys from both universes are going to put a hurting on each other before realizing they have to unite to fight the real bad guy. Spoilers be damned, I’ll tell you right now that the final boss is Darkseid and Shao Kahn merged together to form DARK KHAN. Along the way, they’ll throw at you one hackneyed excuse after another to explain certain anomalies, like how Superman developed a weakness to fists or why there’s this new gameplay mechanic called “Rage” or why Batman and Superman are yearning to hurt each other. The whole damn story is hokey as hell but its better presented here than in most fighting games.

That story, by the way, has its own mode. This mode lets you choose either the Mortal Kombat or DC side and presents the storyline from said point of view. In a nutshell, it’s just cutscenes thrown in between fights, but that’s really all you can hope for out of a fighting game when you think about it; the more you try to tinker with the in-game engine for the sake of a single-player campaign, the more things get screwed up (think Soul Calibur). There’s also the typical arcade mode where you just wail on a bunch of guys before you get an ending comprised of still shots. To be fair, you can only choose to fight enemies from one franchise, so it’s entirely possible to play most of the game and not have to look at a Mortal Kombat character.

And to also be frank, I don’t think anyone out there was laying on their lawn chairs, soaking in the sun, sipping a martini and thinking to themselves “I wonder what would happen if Sub-Zero fought Catwoman.” This does feel like too much of a page ripped out of the Capcom playbook. Not that the logic behind any of the Marvel vs Capcom games made a world of sense either, but the justification in those games was that Capcom had already made Marvel-based fighting games, as well as games that were actually …well, you know, good!

The good news for DC video game fans (and if you actually are one, you must be a masochistic fellow) is that your precious heroes have been done justice. This isn’t Justice League Task Force all over again; Superman will actually fight with laser eyes and ice breath and Captain Marvel will yell out “Shazam!” a lot. For better or worse, the DC characters will fight like they’re DC characters and not a generic fighting game character archetype with tights on. All of the game’s 23 characters are certifiable fan-favorites; no Shuma-Goraths here, so unless you’re an avid supporter of Kabal or the Wonder Twins, no one is going to be whining and complaining about so-and-so being absent. Yes, that means that all of the Mortal Kombat characters present are from the first two games, and considering how lame the last couple of MK fighters have been, that’s just fine in my books.

Speaking of which, one of the game’s strongest points is that it acknowledges that the last three Mortal Kombat games had a lot of excess crap. All that nonsense about multiple fighting styles that made no difference is gone, along with the unnecessary puzzle mini-game, chess mini-game, kart-racing mini game and lame-duck story mode. All of that is gone. Each fighter has one single fighting style and basic dial-a-combos now only have 3 or 4 button presses. So on the surface, the game seems to be a bit more accessible.

However, Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon continues to struggle with the idea of depth in fighting games. It seems that his notion of skill comes from memorizing long combos, inventing combos the developers never intended the game to have, and otherwise finding ways to “break” the game and make a cool Youtube video out of it. This idea is even promoted in a separate mode, “Kombo practice”, where the game lets you rehearse several of these ridiculous, game-breaking combinations. Depth comes from trying to outthink your opponent, countering them and their fighter-of-choice’s tactics with your own. That’s not quite the case here, as just like in every Mortal Kombat game of past, every character has the same height, weight, attack speed, reach, strength and so forth. Every regular attack has the same properties, give or take, so if you have some kind of delusions of grandeur of playing this game at any kind of competitive level, then you’re in a shock as you find yourself bowing to whatever character has the longer combo or the slightly longer leg sweep distance. Even special moves have to be questioned sometimes; it seems that all of The Flash’s special attacks involve him just running forward.

No sooner did I realize this than when I started playing the game online, against other people fighting with DC characters (and sometimes Scorpion.) When I was playing with fellow novice players, the experience was actually pretty solid. The game rarely lags and the matches actually sometimes seem like dynamic battles. But when you fight someone that knows what they’re doing, then the fight is over sooner than it took for you to find an opponent in the first place.

Though I guess this game is meant to be a visceral experience rather than a tactical one. Get knocked over a ledge and the characters will fight each other in a completely dumb mini-game to simulate punching each other during the fall. There are indeed a couple of small and silly mini-games like that within the fighting arenas, and they all look cool, but looking cool only goes so far when you considering the hundreds of rounds that someone will play in throughout their time with a fighting game, or at least a good fighting game. And just in case you haven’t heard yet, since it seems to be the biggest news story emanating from this game, the trademark Mortal Kombat violence is slightly toned down, as there’s no gore in the fatalities. You can cry foul if you like, but the shock and entertainment value of the Mortal Kombat fatalities evaporated a decade ago, so I don’t consider this to be much of a loss.

For what it’s worth, this is the best Mortal Kombat fighting game devised since the series went 3D, and the best DC-related video game that I can think of. The mash-up isn’t as unintuitive as one might think. The game makes a decent weekend rental for most people, unless you thought the last three Mortal Kombat fighters were great and in that case, you’ll find a shower of bliss in this game. Or perhaps you’re the type of person that likes to “defy” the system and look for hidden, game-breaking combos to exploit. You’ll find something to tamper with here too. But in my mind, and the minds of others, fighting games are meant to be learned, practiced on, and ultimately pit against other players in what can legitimately be considered a test of skill. And in that arena, Mortal Kombat vs DC’s might doesn’t test itself well.

Pros : Hearing the trademark Mortal Kombat announcer proclaim that GREEN LANTERN has won the match.

Cons : The rage meter business is dumb. As you get beat up on, a meter fills, and once full, you gain temporary invulnerability. This whole idea breaks the flow of the fight, as the counter to this is to just run away until it wears off.

3 stars

I couldn’t think of a better title for this review.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

Guitar Hero : World Tour : The latest installment in the inanely popular musical rhythm game, expanding the range of playable plastic instruments to include plastic drums and USB microphone singing.

Story : The in-game story is just the usual bits about cartoon musicians going from a garage to the big time. The out of game story is the one people seem be enamored with; original Guitar Hero developers Harmonix were bought out by MTV and ditched the franchise to produce Rock Band, leaving the development duties of the Guitar Hero franchise to Neversoft, the team who helped create, popularize and bring down the Tony Hawk series (though the downfall may just be more due to Activision’s insistence on milking the series for every possible drop.)

And thus the music video game pissing contest was born. It resembles the same pissing contest that most sports game franchises engage in. One company pumps out a game with virtual drums, the other claims to incorporate the same drums but tack on a music creator tool. One company boasts about securing content from AC/DC and the Beatles, the other scores Jimi Hendrix and Metallica. It goes back and forth, and looks like it’ll continue to go back and forth until one of the major companies pulls an EA and just buys exclusive rights to the plastic guitar in general or something ludicrous like that. In this year’s battle between Guitar Hero : World Tour and Rock Band 2, who pisses the farthest and who just squirts out random yellow splashes?

Indeed, Guitar Hero : World Tour expands on the range of instruments by including vocals and drums. This does make me a little sad on the inside seeing as I thought the one strong point of the first three Guitar Hero games (well, the numbered Guitar Hero games) was the guitar part, and how the setlist seemed to be based on what songs were the most fun to play on guitar and guitar alone, even if it meant the drummer had all of one type of beat to maintain, but alas, the bar has been raised and I’ll just have to deal with it. I can’t tell you how the World Tour-specific drums and guitar (with its newfangled touchpad neck) handle being as I don’t exactly have the kind of scratch that lets me afford buying the latest set of instruments for every annual music game release, but I can tell you that the game really wants its guitarists to use that seem touchpad neck, based on all of the loading screen messages proclaiming how cool you’ll be if you do. No thanks.

All of the instruments, on their own, handle okay. Singers can opt to have their words presented to them in a scrolling fashion ala Rock Band or in a karaoke-esque, one-line-at-a-time approach. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the note recognition, but you’re going to need to hold on to the Xbox controller and press a button to activate star power. For drums, the one difference between this game and Rock Band is you can activate star power by hitting the blue and yellow pads simultaneously; better than waiting for a drum fill and just mashing pads and throwing your band off, but bothersome in that if your timing is off, you can ruin your score multiplier.

Keep in mind, the only reason I know this is because I read it online, as the game doesn’t let you view the drum tutorial if you’re not using the official Guitar Hero : World Tour drum set.

The only new tweak for bass players is the occasional purple line that means “strum the flipper without holding notes”. Guitarists now have to contend with translucent notes that are supposed to be played with that bizarre touch screen on the new guitar controller, but I can’t imagine having too great results on that being that I’d have to keep an eye on the controller to make sure my finger is sliding on the right part. That new feature seems to be more for show-offs than any practical purpose.

If the game has one nagging flaw, though, it’s that when you’re playing with more than one person. Namely, when one person fails, everybody fails the song. No chance to rescue your buddy with star power, and no “no fail” option as seen in Rock Band 2. So this comes off as, at best, inconvenient, and at worst, crippling when you play with not particularly skilled (or sober) friends.

World Tour’s career mode should be commended, not for what it brings to the table, but for what it doesn’t, including:

• Hiring promoters or agents for meaningless bonuses
• Halting your progression until you complete a setlist comprising of songs you’ve played already
• Requiring a set number of “fans” to progress
• Numerous extra setlists that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, except as an alternate means to grind more stars, “fans” and money needed to progress.
• In essence, none of that extra crap from Rock Band 2’s World Tour mode.

My idea of a good campaign in a music game is one that just lets me play and unlock all the songs in order of progressing difficulty, so that I can later go back and just play the songs I like. Essentially, what we originally had in the first Guitar Hero. However, World Tour insists on grouping the songs into setlists and making you play through the tracks in groups to advance. However, the issue with this playlist approach is that many of the game’s songs are of the more…lengthier variety. There’s a decided emphasis on concert anthems over singles in this game; the type of songs that would get over huge at a live event and would thus get over huge with people that imagine themselves as rock stars while playing these games (the type of people that bought the Rock Band STAGE adapter perhaps) but playing 4 or 5 of these, along with an out-of-nowhere encore song, is draining on the psyche. One particular setlist ends with a five minute guitar duel with Ted Nugent, followed by the 8+ minute Ted Nugent track Stranglehold.

Speaking of which, here’s a game that does what Guitar Hero 3 : Legends of Rock misled you into thinking it was doing; provide more than two actual legends. There are 8 iconic performers within the game, including such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Zakk Wylde and…Hayley Williams? Is anyone really willing to put the singer of Paramore next to Sting or Ozzy?

In addition, you can create your own character, and the creation tool is fairly robust in terms of appearance. In terms of animations, you’re limited to about ten preset stage movement sets. I bring this up because it seems that the previous cast of characters from Guitar Hero games are limited to the same animations. Gone are the days when Lars Umlat breathed fire or Clive Winston busted out a solo on his violin.

At the end of the day, everything about Guitar Hero : World Tour rests on the music itself. I found myself being more compelled by the oddball track picks than the headbanging anthems. Songs like Michael Jackson’s Beat It and Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again proved to be shockingly fun to play, moreso than the obligatory Metallica track, and I can’t imagine that bodes well for the upcoming Guitar Hero: Metallica. The highlight of the entire game is an unlockable three song set from Tool, which replaces the canned animations that normally accompany each song with a moody light show provided by a floating eyeball surrounded by scenery associated with Tool album art. It’s a hypnotic set piece that matches the tracks perfectly and makes you wish for more songs in future music games to take this kind of abstract approach to accompanying visuals. Even more satisfying is that once you unlock it, you can use the eyeball as a stage to accompany any song. So you can get that eyeball to perform La Bamba if you felt so inclined.

However, as mentioned above, your enjoyment of Guitar Hero is going to depend on your enjoyment of lengthy rock anthems from the 70s, as it seems like they outnumber the more contemporary songs. While that isn’t statistically the case, many of the more modern songs come from lesser known groups like Silversun Pickups (well, lesser known in comparison to The Doors I guess), as well as a large number of international acts like Tokio Hotel, that are popular in Europe. Likewise, 12 songs (15 if you count downloadable tracks) are already in Rock Band 2, so if you played Rock Band 2 first, your experience here will feel a bit more underwhelming. I can understand certain staples like Eye of the Tiger popping up twice, but I’d like to think that the Smashing Pumpkins have a beefy enough discography for both games to not have to feature Today. The difficulty of the songs scale at a more reasonable pace than in Guitar Hero 3, and you can swap difficulties in career mode at any time without having to start all over, a much needed improvement over the previous game. That said, unless you’re playing on Expert, the notes you play on your controller don’t always seem to match with the music you’re hearing, and even Expert will sometimes throw more notes at the player than the musician himself would actually be playing. I tend to think that this would only bother guitar players, but the track listing itself seems to be catered to that very audience…

And finally, should you feel so inclined, there’s the song editor. To actually make a song takes an incredible amount of time, patience and many, many, many tutorials. However, the fruits of your labor will not be so sweet, as the audio quality of original songs is below par and you can’t lay down vocals. A handful of the songs that you can currently download from other users are mildly interesting, and perhaps someone will become some kind of YouTube celebrity for making some kind of breakthrough hit or an obscenely challenging track for expert players, but I’d tend to think that real musicians should stick to real instruments for producing real music.

Going back to the toilet analogy, Guitar Hero: World Tour aims to out-urinate Rock Band but comes up against the wind. I’d recommend renting it if just to check out some of the more interesting songs, but whether or not to purchase it depends on your enthusiasm for the playlist as a whole, whether or not you’re playing on Expert and if you have 3 like-minded buddies to jam with. However, Rock Band 2 is the music game of choice for me now, the one that I’d rather be busting out to parties with people that never heard of Fleetwood Mac. A music game lives and dies on its setlist, and Guitar Hero : World Tour’s is more of an acquired taste, or perhaps a result of trying to please too many people at once and ultimately leaving no one satisfied.

Pros : For more giggles, get Ozzy Osbourne to sing La Bamba.

Cons : It may be too early to make an official judgment, but while the World Tour online music shop is already better than the purchasable songs from Guitar Hero 3, it’s nowhere near the level of the Rock Band store.

3 ½ stars

The Rock sings On The Road Again

Far Cry 2

To tell the truth, there are only two reasons why I convinced myself to give Far Cry 2 a shot. One of them being that Far Cry 2 was advertised on the asses of all of the winners on the last UFC card, so either advertising companies have the power to rig fights with enough money, or this game has karma on its side. In any event…



Far Cry 2 : A supposed open-world first person shooter that lets the player go anywhere and betray anyone, because these are the aspects that appeal to players apparently.

Story : The game makes you choose one of 8-odd playable characters, with no discernable difference between any of them other than appearance…which doesn’t mean anything either considering how you are playing a FIRST PERSON shooter. The goal of your mercenary is to hunt down a fellow known as The Jackal, who’s been giving both sides of some conflict in an unnamed African nation weapons. Either you’re trying to stop this weapons flow as a means to bring in peace or you’re stopping it because the weapons he’s sending to these people are shoddy and tend to jam, that much is never made clear.

In case you were wondering, the other reason I developed an interest in Far Cry 2 is hearing that it has nothing to do with Far Cry 1. None of that nonsense about a generic guy in a nice shirt with feral powers rescuing some lady from some mercenary group who just happen to be harvesting giant monsters. While Far Cry 2 has some presence of a story, your interest in it will depend on how interested you are in hearing monologues from a generic batch of mercenaries and other ethnic evil types.

Far Cry 2 stands tall and proud on two legs of promise: Reality and open-endedness. These seem to be two buzzwords that gamers get all excited about upon hearing. While I personally have nothing against games that are striving to be more unique than the last Mega Man game which I was completely jumping for joy with, sometimes one should be asking what makes these goals so significant, and if such goals make sense in the context of the game in question. In the case of Far Cry 2, these dreams seem to collide with each other a good deal.

In my mind, the challenge of having an open-ended world is to fill it with interesting aspects that the player wants to toy with. Grand Theft Auto made its reputation on giving the player a city filled with innocents to slaughter and cars to jack and smash. All the while, the cities were filled with fake restaurants, hidden weapons, hidden drugs, killing spree missions and so forth. It wasn’t realistic but that was the point; you were rewarded for examining this open space with fun.

The vision behind Far Cry 2 seems to be to recreate a believable rendition of a war-torn African nation. To this I propose the question – why do I want to explore a war-torn African nation? Most of this land is comprised of empty jungle, pathways surrounded by trees in areas with nothing of interest surrounding them. Villages, guard posts and anything of note are spread considering far apart, and trying to get from one area to another takes a long-as-hell time on foot. The game has some cars to drive, but they’re far apart, not very fast, and vulnerable to the occasional random attack from enemy insurgents. Your trip to your desired location will always be halted by an enemy attack, which forces you hop out of your vehicle and fight back, lest your ride be totaled by their gunfire and you find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I’d otherwise be cool with the attempts at realism, but most of them feel more like the developers showing off than anything else. For example, your character will develop a case of MALARIA. Why? To make the experience feel that much more…African? To force the player into picking up some pills every now and then? To show off the orange-like effect of your player having a malaria attack? Likewise, when you’re character is low on health, he’ll need to find some cover so that he can grab some pliers and pull a bullet out of his leg or one of his appendages. This is viscerally impressive, but it makes me wonder why the thirty other bullets in his head and chest aren’t as threatening to him. The enemies are fairly smart, and the game is realistic in the sense that going in guns blazing will lead to your death. In any other game, that’d be just fantastic, but this goes back to the whole idea of this game being open-ended…and making me wonder why I want to explore this game world when all that’s waiting for me is a painful death.

Alas, where this game shines, or at least where it could’ve shined, is in the realistic gun combat. Your character is by no means a walking tank that can regenerate all of his health by standing behind a rock for five seconds. Attacking an enemy stronghold requires a bit of planning, picking out the best angles of attack, plotting out strategic points like sniper positions and the obligatory exploding barrels before leaping in and making your strike. Because of this, this game operates on more of a trial and error type of mentality…which is completely negated by the absence of a checkpoint or quick save system. Once you lose all your health and die (twice over, as whomever your friend is at the time will come and make an overly-scripted rescue on your first death, which you will be completely sick of soon enough), you’re forced to restart from your last save point, which could be miles away from the mission objective. The open-ended dilemma strikes again! Your character happens to be a bit delicate too; nothing sucks like finally arriving at the mission objective, only to get run over by a car and have to make the journey all over again.

Apparently, the PC version of Far Cry 2 does have the quick-save feature that you’ll so badly need here. So if you opt to play the PC version of Far Cry 2, feel free to add an extra half star to the score, or full star if this concept of a malaria-stricken soldier who makes lengthy trips from one post to another, while praying he doesn’t get ambushed appeals to you. But the game suffers from bad design, being based on some bizarre combination of assorted gamers’ dreams of what advanced technology should do for a game, regardless of whether or not these dreams collide with each other. But ultimately, I feel that Far Cry 2 will occupy the same space as Far Cry 1, FEAR, Crysis, Doom 3, Quake 4 and many, many other first person shooters that existed more for developers to brag about their newest technologies and players to brag about their newest video cards. Impressive for their time, but long forgotten when the next big shooter came out.

Pros : An otherwise conventional online multiplayer mode is made more interesting with the addition of solid map editors that lets players design and easily upload new levels.

Cons : Whether you like it or not, all of the new levels will be set in the same African country setting as the rest of the game.

3 stars

At first, I was concerned that this game was going to be an all-too-late cash-in on the “trend” of being conscious about blood diamonds, and was ready to label this game as “missing the boat” as Kanye West had long since progressed from the days of Late Registration.