Friday, July 26, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Quick & Painless Reviews: 2games1film
Remember when I said I wanted to focus less on reviews and get back to posting more art? LOL, I lied. Not that I haven't been drawing up new material, but back in December I bought a new gaming PC which doesn't have an input for my old ass scanner from 1999.
Remember Me
The year is 2084, and a century later Big Brother is back to claim mankind. He has created an implant called the Sensation Engine (Sensen) that allows for the digitization of memories. This has enabled humans to pick and choose what memories they keep and delete, or perhaps even create a completely fresh identity by downloading new artificial memories. Big Brother, for the most part, has built a monopoly on human thought. The player takes control of Nilin, a powerful, racially ambiguous woman who don't need no man, except for the one named Edge who guides her throughout most of the game.
Throughout Remember Me, you explore the futuristic city of Neo-Paris via automatic platforming where you are lead by the nose with a small orange arrow. Every ten jumps or so, you run into some retards, robots, or government baddies who want to kick your ass. Combat in this game is basically like that of Arkham Asylum... if it was dropped on its head. How enemies approach and attack is heavily RNG-based, so if the game rolled a 1 for you, you basically have already lost the fight unless you feel like evading attacks until the AI decides to chill out for three seconds. When you do find some time to fight back, you'll just be mashing the same few combos ad nauseum. You can input new moves into these combos, but they'll always be the same patterns of Squares and Triangles.
You'll be given the ability to "remix" the memories of other characters, something that was advertised quite heavily in previews leading up to the game's release, but this actually only happens a handful of times throughout the game and is a trial-and-error time filler at best.
Remember Me is a textbook example of a 5/10 game that barely scrapes together enough graphics, audio, story, and gameplay to call itself a game.
The Last Of Us
So this game has received 10/10 reviews from just about every website and blog worth mentioning. Even fucking Eurogamer gave it a 10/10! If you're still unconvinced on whether you should go buy this game now, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of another lengthy review to try and tempt you further. Instead I'm going to rant about the haters for a little bit.
Can you believe there are people who hate this game? They seem to think that the "cinematic experience" is the cancer that's killing gaming. I'd like to know why they think it's suddenly The Last Of Us that's killing in industry, and not Half-Life 2, The Walking Dead, The Witcher 2, Alice: Madness Returns, or the thousand weeabo JRPG's they love that favour story over gameplay. Don't get me wrong, gameplay is very important (and is constantly present in The Last of Us), but a well told story will see just about any game pass the test of time after its graphics have become dated and its gameplay has been copied a hundred more times.
World War Z
After a huge debacle of shame, and like two years of delays, the so-called film adaptation of Max Brooks' novel of the same name has finally come out. If you already know about the book, there are two reasons to go out to theatres and see this film. Either,
1. You want to pay to see how bad this movie can be, or
2. If you're like me, you can justify paying $7.99 as long as you are able to push the fact that this was once based on a book completely out of your mind for almost two hours.
If you can manage the latter, and pretend it's just "another fun zombie movie" like the rest of the general public thought, you'll at least be able to resist any urges to walk out before it's over. WWZ contains zombies that not only run, but also leap head-first at their victims, and can also scale two hundred foot walls in minutes. If that doesn't have you shaking your head, there is some seriously cringe-worthy dialogue and character logic sprinkled throughout the duration at the film that is almost physically painful (I WANT MY BLANKET!).
Everything was given a hardy amount of Disney Treatment, so in case you weren't able to find a babysitter for the night, you probably won't feel too bad bringing children as young as ten along with you. Despite being a film where zombies and survivors alike are constantly being mutated, the headshots and cannibalism are assumed, and little gore is present.
WWZ, however, does do a good job to occasionally remind you that this story is actually about a global war between the living and the undead. There are a few sets that genuinely look like they were taken out of Saving Private Ryan, or Black Hawk Down that inspire at least a slight amount of awe at the scale of destruction the zombie virus has brought upon modern civilization. I'd dare say it does this better than almost any other post-apocalyptic zombies movie, but it certainly doesn't redeem everything else that was done wrong.
I'd say after watching this motion picture, I wanted 4 blankets out of 10.
Remember Me
The year is 2084, and a century later Big Brother is back to claim mankind. He has created an implant called the Sensation Engine (Sensen) that allows for the digitization of memories. This has enabled humans to pick and choose what memories they keep and delete, or perhaps even create a completely fresh identity by downloading new artificial memories. Big Brother, for the most part, has built a monopoly on human thought. The player takes control of Nilin, a powerful, racially ambiguous woman who don't need no man, except for the one named Edge who guides her throughout most of the game.
Throughout Remember Me, you explore the futuristic city of Neo-Paris via automatic platforming where you are lead by the nose with a small orange arrow. Every ten jumps or so, you run into some retards, robots, or government baddies who want to kick your ass. Combat in this game is basically like that of Arkham Asylum... if it was dropped on its head. How enemies approach and attack is heavily RNG-based, so if the game rolled a 1 for you, you basically have already lost the fight unless you feel like evading attacks until the AI decides to chill out for three seconds. When you do find some time to fight back, you'll just be mashing the same few combos ad nauseum. You can input new moves into these combos, but they'll always be the same patterns of Squares and Triangles.
You'll be given the ability to "remix" the memories of other characters, something that was advertised quite heavily in previews leading up to the game's release, but this actually only happens a handful of times throughout the game and is a trial-and-error time filler at best.
Remember Me is a textbook example of a 5/10 game that barely scrapes together enough graphics, audio, story, and gameplay to call itself a game.
The Last Of Us
So this game has received 10/10 reviews from just about every website and blog worth mentioning. Even fucking Eurogamer gave it a 10/10! If you're still unconvinced on whether you should go buy this game now, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of another lengthy review to try and tempt you further. Instead I'm going to rant about the haters for a little bit.
Can you believe there are people who hate this game? They seem to think that the "cinematic experience" is the cancer that's killing gaming. I'd like to know why they think it's suddenly The Last Of Us that's killing in industry, and not Half-Life 2, The Walking Dead, The Witcher 2, Alice: Madness Returns, or the thousand weeabo JRPG's they love that favour story over gameplay. Don't get me wrong, gameplay is very important (and is constantly present in The Last of Us), but a well told story will see just about any game pass the test of time after its graphics have become dated and its gameplay has been copied a hundred more times.
World War Z
After a huge debacle of shame, and like two years of delays, the so-called film adaptation of Max Brooks' novel of the same name has finally come out. If you already know about the book, there are two reasons to go out to theatres and see this film. Either,
1. You want to pay to see how bad this movie can be, or
2. If you're like me, you can justify paying $7.99 as long as you are able to push the fact that this was once based on a book completely out of your mind for almost two hours.
If you can manage the latter, and pretend it's just "another fun zombie movie" like the rest of the general public thought, you'll at least be able to resist any urges to walk out before it's over. WWZ contains zombies that not only run, but also leap head-first at their victims, and can also scale two hundred foot walls in minutes. If that doesn't have you shaking your head, there is some seriously cringe-worthy dialogue and character logic sprinkled throughout the duration at the film that is almost physically painful (I WANT MY BLANKET!).
Everything was given a hardy amount of Disney Treatment, so in case you weren't able to find a babysitter for the night, you probably won't feel too bad bringing children as young as ten along with you. Despite being a film where zombies and survivors alike are constantly being mutated, the headshots and cannibalism are assumed, and little gore is present.
WWZ, however, does do a good job to occasionally remind you that this story is actually about a global war between the living and the undead. There are a few sets that genuinely look like they were taken out of Saving Private Ryan, or Black Hawk Down that inspire at least a slight amount of awe at the scale of destruction the zombie virus has brought upon modern civilization. I'd dare say it does this better than almost any other post-apocalyptic zombies movie, but it certainly doesn't redeem everything else that was done wrong.
I'd say after watching this motion picture, I wanted 4 blankets out of 10.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)