Tag Archives: City

The Hits and Misses of 2012: Part 2 of 4

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Hey everybody, this is James B. Boss here to both wish you all a Happy Holidays and bring you my picks of 2012. This year has been an interesting run for a lot of video game titles and many of them were great hits, while some of them were either a gigantic blunders and some were just surprising or tragically unsung. I can go on about how the WHOLE year in gaming went but that would just be boring and it’s late, so without further delay, here are my picks.

I’ll start off with my blunder of the year because I hate ending things with a sour note. I would start by saying that Resident Evil is one of the best survival-horror franchises that I have ever played in my life and the one thing that I always wanted was a good Resident Evil game with multiplayer mechanics, so when I heard about Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, I was filled with joy and I reserved my copy right away, but when I finally got my hands on it and started playing it, I was greatly disappointed. The game’s story brings gamers back to the Raccoon City incident of Resident Evil 2 and 3 but the time the story is told through the eyes of the Umbrella corporation’s Spec Ops team. You can choose from one of six characters of the team to play as, and each character has their own unique set of skills that they can use to their advantage on the battlefield.

There's no way this can be anything but perfect... right?

There’s no way this can be anything but perfect… right?

This is all fine and dandy but once you start fighting the more advanced enemies, (or B.O.Ws) some of these abilities become kind of useless. I honestly found myself using the Cloaking, Super Armor, Incendiary Bullets and Painkiller abilities most of the time. Speaking of B.O.Ws, I would like to talk about the zombies, because majority of the time, they are the only enemies that you encounter. It’s not until later one that you encounter the more familiar threats like Hunters, Lickers and the American Spec Ops forces. The Lickers are annoying because they can strike from anywhere and walk on the wall, while Hunters are the biggest assholes in this game, as they have attacks that can knock you down and once that you’re down, they can just maul and camp until you’re dead. B.O.Ws aside though, the most frustrating thing about this game was the stability of online play. This game is home to some of the sloppiest matchmaking I’ve ever seen. When you look for a game by yourself it doesn’t take that long at all but when you are in a group of four people, it takes an eternity. I once went to the bathroom for five minutes and when I came back, my party and I were still in the process of looking for a lobby. There were also times when I entered a game and chose my character but would spawn with a duplicate of my character. So I either mastered the art of the secret shadow clone technique or it was a bug. Spoiler, it was a bug. In the end, while had some fun with this game, it was fairly short lived. Even with the downloadable content to play as the American Spec Ops team, it still was not enough for this game to stand out as a memorable title. Playing this game was like buying a big tub of Strawberry ice cream that looked delicious  but finally tasting it and getting a mouth full of Salmon sherbet.

Alright now for my surprise of the year and a surprise it is indeed. My surprise pick hails from the  Nintendo 3DS library and it’s name is Code of Princess. The game has a simple plot; You are a princess who takes a legendary sword that was handed down through the royal family to destroy the forces of evil. The game play is a pretty traditional 2D beat-em-up-in-the-spirit-of-Final Fight game. You can choose up to four different characters in story mode but more characters can be unlocked by playing through the game.

get-a-sneak-peek-at-code-of-princesss-pre-order-bonus

Thankfully, this lends itself well to repeated playthroughs.

One of the most appealing features of the game is its Multiplayer mode. You can play up to four people wirelessly using the Nintendo 3Ds’s wireless function and play through either versus mode to beat each other up, or you can help one another in the games’ story mode. Code of Princess also has RPG elements that allow you to strengthen you characters but strangely, you can only use your powered up characters in Story mode. The only drawback that I can think of for this game, is that there is SOME lag when you play with others. This is game is quite fun and I am glad that I decided to buy this game on a whim, because if I didn’t, I would have missed out on a really good game.

OK! It’s time for my super-ultra-awesome pick of the year. My top game of the year is none other than a game that I reviewed earlier this year and absolutely gushed over: Transformers – Fall of Cybertron. I chose this game because everything about this completely satisfied me to the point where I was left speechless. I remember playing the prequel, War for Cybertron and remember it being a great gaming experience but I was left hungry for more. When I got wind of the sequel, the first thing that went through my mind was the question of which characters they going to put in the next game?

Hey cool, Optimus Prime and... wait, is that...

Hey cool, Optimus Prime and… wait, is that…

My first glance of the new roster of who they included was interesting to me but the one who got my attention as soon as I looked at the list was the Dinobot leader, Grimlock. This blew my mind when I because not only was I a Dinobot fan butI always wondered how they would portray his character, as in Transformers lore, he wasn’t an @$$-kicking cyber T-Rex until he got to planet Earth. When it came time for High Moon studios to show off gameplay footage for Grimlock, they pulled out all the stops. It was amazing to see him in dinosaur form on the planet Cybertron and seeing him slash and rip Decepticons to pieces. The Multiplayer feature in this game was also satisfying as well. Character customization was back and players were able to create their very own Transformers once again. On a personal note, since I reserved my copy of the game, I got to play as big rig Optimus Prime, which mad it even more awesome. Fall of Cybertron was the game that I was waiting for as a fanboy and as a gamer. It delivered on EVERYTHING it promised; A great story, improved online and offline game mechanics and a buffed character roster. It may have not been this year’s best game but in my book it is a title worthy of a gold medal.

– James B. Boss

13 Scares of Halloween – Day 1: Batman Arkham City

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Alright, I understand most of you, when you think of the second installment of the Batman video game series, you don’t think scary. I am not most of you. One moment in this game definitely caught me off guard and needless to say the rest is legend.

Now come close children, let me paint a picture for you. There I was the Dark Knight himself,  cape, cowl and all the associated awesome. I was tasked with saving the poor Cop-sicles and then kicking the ever living crap out of Penguin. Typical Batman stuff right? Well in order to accomplish this I had to cross a room of very thin ice, in the middle of a museum, but I am Batman what is the worst that can happen?

Now I should let you know that I had left the room for a few moments to get some snacks and allowed a friend to get half way across the ice for me. (Big mistake) I ask if I missed anything, they shake their head. I resume gameplay. The ice crunches ominously beneath my feet, tension mounts. Can it really be this simple. I just have to go slow? I really hate having to go slow… is this some ploy to make the game last longer… ugh… I decide… I begin to run… The ice breaks. Something isn’t right. I lose control. I am a sitting duck. What the heck is going on? OH BEJEEBUS!!! SHARK!! !@#$%^&” Game Over.

Needless to say I jumped and the controller almost went flying across the room. Now if I hadn’t left the room and my friend had informed me that there was a FLIPPING SHARK. I probably might have been more prepared for the ensuing death. But no, completely caught off guard and needless to say “EFF YOU PENGUIN”. Now if I had not gone on my snack run, or my friend alerted me to a previous cut-scene  I would have been confronted with a similar shark shock, just one where I didn’t end up all Quint-ified like at the end of Jaws.

I got ‘et.

None the less I just was not prepared for a shark to be chilling in the middle of a museum waiting for a late night Bat-snack. And thus this has gone down in my book as one of the scariest videogame moments of all time.

-Jessica grabs shark repellent-

Stoopid shark…

Day 15 of 31 – Resident Evil 2

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Day 15. Yes, I’m playing Diablo III. No, it’s not part of the 31 Days. In the meantime…

 

 

As I’ve said previously, I had a Nintendo 64 during that particular generation of the console wars, so I missed out on the original Resident Evil and its successors. I knew from friends and reviews that the games were pretty amazing, so when Resident Evil 2 was ported to the N64 in October of 1999, I jumped at the chance to check it out. I had a pretty rudimentary idea of the story: a city was being besieged by a virus that turned its inhabitants into Zombies, a girl in search of her brother who was the main character of the first game and a cop who was looking to survive the situation he was in. All of these are now widely regarded as set pieces for this particular genre but this game was my first experience with them. When I first dove into the game, I was a little jarred by the control scheme (why is UP always Forward?) but it wasn’t too steep a learning curve and within a few hours, I was dashing around corners and putting the undead down every which way. This was also one of the first games that I ever played that made me jump in fright. I’m serious, when you walk into that interrogation room and that dog comes crashing through the two way mirror? If you tell me you didn’t pee yourself a LITTLE, you’re a dirty liar. Ammo and healing items were in relatively short supply and the game itself had a really eerie feeling to it, like something was going to come out at you even if there was nothing going on anywhere. I look back on this, my first foray into the survival horror genre, with a lot of fond… and frightening memories. It doesn’t quite hold up today as well as it did back then but in my opinion, it really doesn’t need to. It made its impact on me and then some.

- Evo out.

 

Ah yes, Resident Evil 2. This game was indeed a game that scared me stiff (at the time of course). I remember the ruined streets of Raccoon City and the many zombies “lived” there. This being a horror survival game, I have to say, Capcom did a really awesome job. The feeling of being alone and having to deal with the undead at the same time by yourself, made the game quit thrilling. Of course you did not just fight zombies in this game. You also enemies such as, dogs, birds, Lickers (those b@$t@rds) and just about any advanced type of zombies they can throw at you.
You are also armed with a bunch of guns that you find along the way and herbs, to heal you whenever you take damage (and you will). However, while all that seems pretty simple and such, I can’t say the same for the controls.
SERIOUSLY, when I first started to play the game, it was hard for me to move at first, because I never played a game before, where pointing the control stick up, was the only means of moving forward. Since ammo is very scarce in this game, I usually find myself running most of the time, but when I’m being chased by an enemy that can run and when I have to turn a corner, I have to stop, turn in the direction that I want, wait for my character to finish turning in a clockwise motion and finally resume running. Mostly when I go through this annoying process, I end getting my @$$ handed to me, especially when I’m running from those zombie dogs. All in all, Resident Evil 2 was a great game, but today, it does not live up to the hype of the newer Resident Evil titles, but needless to say, it was one of the titles, that got the franchise to where it is today.

– James B. Boss

Day 11 of 31: Batman Arkham Asylum

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Hello everyone and welcome to Day 11 on the at the same Bat-time, on the same Bat-Channel.

 

 

Awesome, we finally get to talk about a superhero video game and what a surprise, it’s a Batman game. Batman; Arkham Asylum from my point of view, has got to be the best superhero video game in existence. Reason being that every single detail that was put in this game was made to compliment the darker of the Batman series that’s been more popularized lately through the recent films and books side and I find that to be quite awesome. I loved how the combat system always threw a bunch of enemies at you, as having Batman face a bunch of criminals by himself and being able to beat them one at a time, was indeed a satisfying experience. The whole package came together so well  that players had almost NO difficulty feeling like the were in the shoes of the Caped Crusader himself. You also have access to some of Batman’s trademark gadgets, such as the batarang, his cape, smoke pellets, grappling hook and his hacking device. The game also put you up against villains such as, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc (this battle was awesome by the way) , Harley Quinn and of course the big daddy of all villains, The Joker. All in all, Batman Arkham Aylum was a great game and it has earned it’s place as being a classic on both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. It’s a no brainer in terms of finding this awesome title either, just walk into your local game store and I guarantee you that you will see it on shelves. No Bat-Signal needed.

– James B. Boss

 

^ What he said. The only thing I have to say to detract is I practically played the whole game in detective mode.  I probably shouldn’t have as the graphics while not all too fantabulous were pretty enough to merit looking at. Anyway boys and girls it’s been a long week, and I’m tired.

-Ninja…Van…meh-  -saunters away-