Just Cause 2

More is Not Always Better
Let me start by saying that this game is very addicting, and very fun...but it does lose its appeal a bit after a while. Why this is is because the game is HUGE and overwhelming. While this is cool to have over 400 square miles of real time sandbox fun, the game got a little redundant. The missions always started out the same, taking over the different factories and blowing them up was fun, but there are so many on the map, it just feels pointless to even try getting them all as well as collectibles. I think what this game needed was a little more variety.

Funnest Item in ANY Game
However, this game was a win in sooo many ways. The grapple is just about the funnest item in any game I have ever used, and you can do so much with it. It honestly made me feel like every game should have one. Parachuting at any time was also really fun too. Granted neither of these add to any realism, but who cares, it's a game and it was a blast! However I found myself grappling and parachuting more to get around the map more than anything. The way the cars handled sucked big time, and the heli-drop extraction could take you anywhere on the map, but took too long which I think both play a critical role in open world games. Also the camera is always in the wrong angle with every vehicle you use be it planes, helicopters, cars, or motorcycles and even parachuting. It got really agitating to not be able to see and constantly adjust the camera with the analog stick. I also thought it was annoying to skip a cinematic and get a loading screen every time you want to get an item drop and that you can only buy one item at a time and only one in quantity. 

A Good Game, a Weak Story
The game was really fun, but I really think what really would have made it shine was a decent story. The story was, well, weak. A lot of the voice acting and dialogue could have used some work too. There were honestly times characters said, go in there and download the information and blow up the factory. Once and a while the main character would make a quip or joke to how simple it sounded, almost like it was an in game joke how bad some of the dialogue was. Did they not have decent writers for this game or what? The grand theft auto series has the best games because each mission varies so much and they have a rich story and make you feel like a character taking over the city. I never really felt as if I was taking over this country and ultimately just felt like a worthless grunt mercenary.

Rating
Overall out of 1-10 I would give this game...
Visuals: 8
Animations: 9
Music and Sound FX: 8
Story: 5
Overall fun: 8.5
Pros: Smashing and destruction galore, cool grapple and parachute to work with, huge open world that looks beautiful.
Cons: A lot of redundancy, lack of good story and character depth, annoying quirks like vehicle operation and item drops.

Need for Speed: Shift

Shift is Leaning Towards More Realism
Need for Speed generally doesn't disappoint for a fun racing game. The games never generally establish a real driving simulator like Forza or Gran Turismo, but I think that is more of the appeal for me. I like the arcade style, while still keeping it real enough to give the player the feeling of being in a genuine race.  Although, this game still proved to be a great getaway from homework for the average college student like me.

N4S Always Has Surprises
This game really scores good ranks among me, but disappoints in ways too even though I bought it. The Need for Speed games are always fun because I never know what features the new game has. The older games leaned towards a bit of a story, maybe even an open world, and street racing. Whereas these newer titles are going more the track racing route. I liked a lot about this game because it kept it simpler than the others because it was more about the racing. However, I think that because it was so simple, it took away more of the arcade element that makes this game so fun. It lacked a lot of the different racing modes the old games had and strictly had battle races (which was stupid because you didn't win the rivals car), drift, and strictly racing. They took out the speed attack, hot pursuit, street tracks and jumps, and drag racing.

Need for Nostalgia
I personally kind of missed the open world, the build up your persona and knock out racer story, and the customization on the vehicles. They really limited what a person could upgrade on the cars, and that was a real downer for me. I could spend half an hour just customizing one car in the old game feeling like a designer. Now, they really just let you pick from 2 things, and a paint color or a default racing design. I really didn't like that feature because I like having a car of my own. I also thought selecting items on your car such as rims or paint was rather annoying because it did not show what it looked like on your car through the menu unless you apply it. This was not so in previous games.

Online Play is Awesome
The game is redeemed however because it has an excellent and fun online playability for Xbox Live. It was fun to compare races I had done with friends and how some achievements on the track or race I didn't have a friend had or vice versa. Or the online racing battles really added more to the competition and I liked it a lot. I still just wish that my car could be a little more unique instead of looking so similar to everyone else's. I also wish there were a few more cars to choose from instead of 12 or so from only about 4 classes.

Rating
On a scale of 1-10 I would give this...
Visuals: 9.5
Animations& racing AI: 9.5
Story: 0
Game-play: 9
Overall Fun: 9
Pros: Great competition and tournaments, fun AI and visuals, fun to try for track achievements and compete online in different modes.
Cons: Strays from their arcade fun and took a too simple racing track route, no story, got rid of too many good things like racing modes and car customization.

Review on Lost Planet 2

Don't Hold Your Breath
I never cared much for the original game story, so I had high hopes for the sequel to the Lost Planet series. I am sad to say that I think it failed once again. While the main character was not a Japanese wimpy boy, it didn't follow a solid storyline, but instead 6 different convoluted episodic story lines of various soldiers. It was hard to follow, but especially as a college student that plays this within their free time and gets it in bits and pieces. I would have thought that would be nice for a person that kept jumping into the action, but it really just proved to be annoying and I wound up skipping the cinematic scenes all together.


Clunky
Aside from story is the game-play, I really felt that the game was kind of clunky and not well configured controller wise. Everything seemed to be tap B button, or press B button and I often found myself performing a command I did not want done. I also thought that the game seemed annoyingly redundant in that you storm a base or planet-side, find 4 various area markers, and then move on. The levels all seemed too short and dull. It was also annoying how you would have to play through them ALL just to get to a point where you could save your game and each episode was at least an hour of playtime. The game did have some merit though. The visuals were stunning and great and the music was spectacular. It really immersed the player in a sense of action. The enemy Akrid and overall gameplay kinda varied through fun and repetitiveness. Sometimes it wasn't fun because they simply made it too hard to evade enemy attacks and they would often kill you in one blow. It did not seem to have quite enough music for my liking and often just had quiet parts. I also wasn't all to impressed with the voice acting and how every character had some kind of face mask so they could avoid mouth movement animation. This is something someone that has taken a Machinima, and various animation classes such as myself would take a particular notice in. Overall the game didn't strike me as something 2010 would be boasting.

Online Play Confusing
I also thought that the developers were trying a bit too hard to comply with the co-op online crowd. Sure this targets the "team player" demographic of my millennial generation. However, it really just all and out was poorly executed and annoying. To jump in on a game, there was always a waiting room and never an available game to get in on right away. So, I would always have to create my own game and never expect anyone to jump in. It has an option to not put any AI players into the battlefront with you, but it didn't work. I wish it would have because I find the ally AI system on your team in the way and annoying. I was often shooting them or they weren't there when I needed them. A simple command control on the D-Pad like most games have was a necessity.

Need for Innovative Weaponry
The weapons and gundam suits in the game were cool, but I think that they could have been much, much cooler. The suits only flew for a little bit at a time and were really slow and awkward. I also thought that it was stupid how most weapons took forever to reload or seemed a bit primitive and uncreative. I thought for a sci-fi game, they could have had more awesome and innovate futuristic weapons. The gundam suits also never seemed to be able to carry more than one gun at a time. It was also kinda lame how nothing in the game had an upgrade, ever. Which would have been nice considering that the ammo capacity was so limited.  

Rating
On a scale of 1-10 I would give this...
Visuals: 7
Animations: 5
Story:  4.5
Game-play: 5
Overall Fun: 6
Pros: Pretty good visuals, fun to play in short doses, proved to be challenging, may it be frustrating, supplementing an addictive quality.
Cons: Clunky controls, failure to establish functional online co-op, AI and animation was off, no upgrades, lame story.

Mass Effect 2

Worthy of the Buzz
I had read some good things about this game, and now I know what everyone was buzzing about. I came in fresh to this series, I haven't played the first Mass Effect, but I am now heavily thinking about doing it sometime this semester to blog about that compare the two. It would be interesting to play them in the reverse order and notice what was better about the sequel or what I liked better about the original that was changed.

Most Fun RPG?
This game was one of the most fun RPG games I have played since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. If one could call that an RPG, it seemed to be much more, that game wins my favorite hands down. However, this game had my attention right away. I know that game developers have really got the pressure of making a game fun within the first two minutes or they lose a lot of people. The game didn't necessarily kick off the gameplay right away, there were some cinematics to start. So, although this game was very very great and liked among many, I actually think gamers that are a little impatient would be bored quite easily with this game. Particularly because the whole game relies on gathering information and using it around the galaxy as a commander of the starship Normandy, and things tend to move slowly, even the character.

Sharp Story
But, if you can appreciate the game through and through, it is stellar. The story really takes fun turns because as the player, you can choose what to say from a HUD selection wheel. The game had a lot of replay value for me because you can go through it being a jerk, a middle grounded guy, or a really nice guy (or girl even.) That was the other cool thing is you could customize your own character or play as the default guy. I thought my guy looked a little silly when I played as him in the game though, and wished that they had an option to change him. Choices definitely was the draw in this game, and it was executed well from great story, dialogue, and acting. I had fun just chasing the galaxy for the ship's cook that needed supplies so the crew stopped complaining about the garbage he would serve. Even the ship had an AI that seemed to have character.

Quality Graphics
A lot of people drooled over the graphics in this game. While I thought they were excellent, I still think that there is need for improvement, but I suppose that is more a limitation with the XBox 360 platform. Some textures came off weird, a few times certain 3D parts in their bodies or in the environment would go through each other, and the shading still wasn't quite right. But being a person that has developed a game, I know these things are practically unavoidable in a game. There would be too much to render if there was a high polygonal count on the models and really detailed shading to master the look of, say, a Pixar film. Someday though, I think gaming will reach that level, and the cinematics definitely held the professional 3D film quality, however most of them were just machinima cut scenes made with the game engine.

Fun Extras

Lastly, I want to make mention of a few more things about what made the game so fun. They absolutely hit the nail on the head in making it themed to sci-fi and like you were really a commander in space. They even had detailed descriptions in the pause menu of every planet, weapon and species. I was often too lazy to go into reading them all, but it was a really nice touch to give it more depth. The game was even so vast from it's galaxies to explore that it was two discs. It was fun to hack vaults and door codes and earn credits. I also liked mining for minerals in various planets. This game made it so you really wanted the upgrades and credits too, so you were sure to take your time through the levels looking for them. Whereas some games don't really have cool un-lockables so that is usually when I have a tendency to blaze through the levels.  It was fun to use a team of two and upgrade their powers and earn their trust. Battling was very fun, and it was exciting to play among the different planet environments. The story held my intrigue and interest a lot too. You work under a company called Cerberus for the "Illusive Man" and the whole time you can't gather whether you, or even some of the crew mates trust who they work for, but they are in the mission to stop the "collectors" an evil alien race.


Rating
On a scale of 1-10 I would give this...
Visuals: 9.5
Story: 10
Gameplay: 9.5
Overall Fun: 10
Pros: Excellent replay value, great theme, neat player-interactive story, overall fun to play.

Cons: Can't change character throughout the game, might not be so fun for the impatient gamers.

What I am Blogging About

This is a blog setup for the class FA3600-2 Writing for New Media. I hope to learn to review games in a fun and creative way that I play in my spare time throughout the semester. I am an EAE (Electronic Arts & Engineering) major and I thought this would be fun. It is targeted to an audience of gamers, blog readers, and students of this class.