What You (We) Have Missed...

So, here is the deal, kiddos... We sucked at blogging this semester. I don't know what caused it, but school really blew up, and the blog somehow fell to the side. Now, it is summer and we have no excuse. So, in order to make it up to you, we are going to compile a catch up article. In this very article, on this very page, The Outlaw and myself will give minor reviews over the things we thought were important whilst we were away. Little baby reviews, if you will. Here is what is in store!
-Portal 2
-Brink
-Gears of War 3 Beta
-Pokemon Black/White
-Mortal Kombat




Portal 2

I don't think it is possible for me to be happier with this game. It is literally everything I would expect and more from the guys who brought me the first Portal. Upon Portal's (first one) release, it was hard to even call it a full fledged game. It quickly became an internet sensation, and was even put on XBLA with additional levels and leaderboards. I loved Portal. The puzzle system was unique enough back in the days of the flash game where I first encountered portal puzzle solving, and applying that idea to the 3D world, I fell in love with the concept. I could not wait for a full game. Here it is! Being critical.. there isn't much I can say. The puzzles fall into the perfect difficulty level. Some puzzles took me 2minutes, some took me 30. Different people react to the testing rooms different. Puzzles that took me half an hour to solve, my roommate solved in 5, and vice versa. The Portal charm is still alive, and stronger than ever, with character like Wheatley, and Cave Johnson to add new hilarity, and something else for the internet to take and run with. The game looks fantastic, and I never encountered any game breaking glitch or bug. The plot is simple but engaging, a step up from the almost plot-less Portal, you spend the first half of the game on one objective, to encounter a twist that makes M Night's "shockers" seem even more pathetic, that sends you down a nearly opposite path for the remainder of the game. The Cooperative Testing Initiative is absolutely awesome. Having to work with 4 portals in addition to the new features (The Excursion Funnel, Repulsion and propulsion gel) gave the game thousands of new puzzle solving opportunities.
The one and only thing I can say that needs to be done in future installments to the franchise, is a level creator. If valve implemented a sort of "forge world" like is used in Halo:Reach, where players could build their own levels, and then share them over XBL, that would lend the game to infinite playability. In a sort of Little Big Planet spirit, users could log into the custom level editor, build their own puzzle, share with other players online, who could scroll through, look at what puzzles are highly rated, or what have you, and play portal forever. That... that would be a dream come true.

Mortal Kombat


I'm not the best at writing fighting game reviews, which might of had something to do with why I got half-way through the main review and gave up, but this was a big surprise. After years of mediocre releases, this reboot of Mortal Kombat came along and fixed nearly everything. As far as story goes, it's a retelling of the first three games and puts things together like no other fighter does. I never played the story mode of the originals, only the occasional versus match with friends, so I don't know if they did the same thing, but the story mode is ACTUALLY a story. As the game progresses, you go through chapters controlling different characters, which is something I feel more fighting games need. There's a huge cast of characters to choose from, all with new and gruesome (even by today's standards) fatalities, stage fatalities, and the hilarious babalities. Sure, it's still the same dial-a-combo system which is easy to make fun of when put next to the deepness of Street Fighter, but it's still a fantastic, fun game that does take still to learn and looks amazing, I might add. A month later and I'm still playing the hell out of it. Plus, the PS3 version has Kratos. WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT!?


Brink

Ohhhh Brink... what are we going to do with you... You are like a partially baked cake. You look really delicious on the outside, but once we start digging in we find you are actually very incomplete and useless in quenching our desires and fulfilling our hopes. In deciding not to go with a premature birth joke here for the sake of being tactful, I am actually slightly stunned. That analogy is almost perfect. Brink, is an awesome idea. New ideas that change the way we play FPS's will always always get a thumbs up from me. That comes with an assumption, however. Splash Damage, while I am impressed with your game, and excited to see work from you guys in the future, I have to make a request. FINISH YOUR FUCKING GAME BEFORE YOU RELEASE IT!! Gah! It is almost unforgivable how much needs to be done to make Brink playable. The concept of the game is fantastic. Four different classes make up the foundation of the game. Soldiers, Engineers, Medics, and Operative (kind of like a spy). All four of these classes can be selected at any point during a mission, given that the player is near a special outpost. You run up to it, change your class, and you are now ready to use your new unique abilities to meet special needs for the objective. Example: You are a soldier, you are a demolition master, you plant bombs and blow up doors. Well, now your enemy's objective is to blow up your door. You, being one who blows up doors, are very useless (save for just killing people, which is sometimes what you need). So you run over to your fancy computer, switch to an Engineer, and now you are ready to go a disable their bombs. Neat-o.


The game looks very unique and very distinctive. The characters have a huge range of custom-abilities, as do the weapons. So whats the problem? Well.. the game is very team oriented. If you know anything about video games, you know that bots are completely brain dead, and that in objective based missions, you might as well be playing against your own team. That could not be more true than when trying to play the single player campaign by yourself. Bots suck. So, you think to your self "I should play with my friends! We can each have a class in which we specialize, so we can destroy anything that comes our way! .....Now.... how do I invite my friends into one group so we can all join a game together.... you know... at once...?"

GOTCHA!! You can't!
That's right. A game based on multiplayer has nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo party lobby system at all. The only way to play with your friends is for one of you to join a game and hope there will be room for all of you, and then invite them after you are already in the game. I'll let you stew over that for a minute.

Oh right. Did I forget to mention that the online multi-player is unplayable due to how inefficient and lag ridden the servers are? Oh.. well.. you can't play online... unless you want to play through 15 games of the worst lag you have ever seen to finally find that one game that runs a little bit smoother.

Finish your game, and then get back to me. Hey, at least Bethesda is giving us a free DLC to apologize.



Pokemon Black/White

Well, there is not actually too much I wanted to say on this. Mostly I wanted to make a point to those who were maybe wondering why you would even consider buying yet another Pokemon game. Well, this is, in my opinion, nearly perfect. Take a trip down memory lane would you? Back to Pokemon Red/Blue? Remember how the game almost never told you where to go? Yeah. Walkthroughs were fun in those days. Now, the game at least points you in the right direction almost immediately, which I'm okay with, because I'm not playing this game to enjoy figuring out where to go. If I want to explore, it's to find trainers and Pokemon, not to wander aimlessly through a town trying to find out who the hell the Pokemaniac is. The game looks fantastic, the obvious upgrade when moving to a more powerful system, but an upgrade nonetheless. The cities are much more "alive" and are a much more exiting. The new Pokemon sprites look fantastic, etc. etc. The long and short is that I was downright flabbergasted by the changes and renovations to a childhood favorite.

Gears of War 3 Beta

Loved it. It was everything I could have wanted from a multi-player beta. It gave us sneak peaks at some of the new weapons (good and bad) and some of the new maps (also, good and bad) My two complaints about those are pretty petty. I hate the Sawed Off shotgun. It requires little to no aim, and as long as you are close enough to your target, you'll win every time. It requires a seriously declined learning curve from the more skill oriented Gnasher. Personal preference, I just dislike it. Next, the map Trenches felt very incomplete. It was far to easy, and happened far to often for a team to trap another team in one of the two spawns. The spawns would not switch to the opposite side until the team doing the pinning ran into the spawn which, as you can imagine, never happened. The spawns need escape routes. The dedicated servers made worlds of difference as far as connection issues were concerned. The game still has problems from time to time, but the new servers they are running for GoW3 are definitely doing boatloads to get rid of lag and rubber banding. Overall it was a lot of fun, a great sneak peak, and got me all the more excited for the game's release in September this year. Only wish it had lasted longer...