Mashing buttons since 1984
Alright, I know I’ve posted some video of Dawn of War II already and all, but I mean come on. After seeing this video I had to post it.
Any RTS/RPG (whatever you want to classify it as) that let’s some of your units trample through the level trashing things in the way and bashing through walls is good start to any game in my book. Add to that the Warhammer 40K universe and story, and I think we have an early running for the Game of the Year for this new year already.
Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! = )
Some people talk about having a game on their radar when they are looking forward to a certain game.
My radar just blew up!
I stumbled upon this multiplayer gameplay video of Dawn of War 2 and had my eyes opened. I knew this game was in production and the screenshots that I had seen for it were spectacular, but wow! (Oh yea, make sure you watch the high bandwidth version) This game looks like it’ll have the elements of an RPG with character progression and a major part of the gameplay being an RTS from its roots in the first Dawn of War. With all the awesome games coming out soon I think 2009 will be a good year.
Everyone else feel the same? What’s on your radar?
Who will win in the brutal face off between bitter riva…um actually it’s just an awesome video. Check it out!
When the announcement was made about this game, the first thing that came to mind was that it was a complete hoax. There was no way that the brutal and sometimes comical violence that was everywhere in the Mortal Kombat series would be paired up with the DC Universe Characters.
After playing the game….you know what?
It actually works.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the DC characters actually out shine the MK roster. Now if that’s only because they are the new guys in the neighborhood or if they actually made a good game with comic book heroes in it, I don’t know(could be because I love comics too). All I do know is, I like what I’ve seen. So let us begin with the story shall we?
The story mode is the best part of the game for me. I was Impressed to hear that they actually hired a pair of comic book writers to develop a story for the game, it kind of needs a good story in order to merge two universes together. At the beginning you get to choose from which side’s perspective you want to see the story unfold. Then you play through the story of that universe with only the characters in the respective universe. There is a chapter per character but not all of the characters get their own chapter, but everyone shows up and plays a part in the main story of the game. From the very first cutscene I felt like I was watching a movie the whole time I was playing through it. Here’s a taste:
The only draw back is that I wish the story would have been longer than it was. Since after you’ve already beat both sides to the story mode there’s really not much of a reason to go back through it.
However, the story mode isn’t the only reason to play the game. The gameplay is great, it’s solid, and just feels like a Mortal Kombat game. I’ve felt that the recent additions to the Mortal Kombat titles have been different form the original concept of the series, the new games just felt too different than the earlier games that got me into the series. With this new addition of MK vs DC I feel that the gameplay has gone back to what it was somewhat. Sure, there are a few new fighting mechanics like
Free-Fall Kombat
Klose Kombat
but they feel apart of the same idea as “test your might” was. In the old games test your might was a clear cut stop in between the endless fights you went though, but now test your might is partly the same, it’s only in the middle of a fight. Whenever your close enough to the edge of a certain stage you can hit/kick/whatever your opponent through the wall and as you buttonmash all four buttons on the controller you smash him through wall after wall racking up the damage. Now your opponent can do the same thing in order to reduce the damage which can be reduced to zero if you don’t work for it or as much as 17% or more.
The other two mechanics actually make a big difference in a fight, especially the free-fall kombat. I have been on the losing end of a fight (online) a few times where a free-fall kombat was the thing I needed to swing the round in my favor. The free-fall kombat and klose kombat features are both pretty random in nature, you press one of the four face buttons and your opponent tries to guess which button you press and match that button press. If you match the button pressed you either switch places in free-fall combat and become the attacker or you counter an attack with your own in klose kombat and end it early while doing some damage in return.
A big part of the story mode is something called “The Rage,” which also is a new component in the actual game. After you’ve beat someone up enough or taken enough damage your rage meter builds up. There are two bars that need to be full in order to trigger rage mode.
There are also pro-moves which I wrote about earlier.
The roster includes a decent amount of people from both universes totaling 22 fighters evenly split from both sides.
The MAJOR downside is there are only 2 unlockable characters, considering this is a Mortal Kombat game I expected more characters to be available. There is the possibility of downloadable content/characters which could add some more playability to the game. The characters that they did put in the game are definitely polished and you can tell there has been a lot of work done on them. Which speaking of the characters they look awesome(well most of them anyway)! You can see the fabric of their outfits man! The Unreal 3 engine is pretty sweet, there’s no doubting that.
Now for probably the biggest let down for Mortal Kombat fans…….the lack of real fatalities. I never understood why when your game is known for something, something special and unique, why would you go and mess it up? Now I realize that they wanted a T rating for the game, that’s fine, what I don’t get is the real lack of imagination for some of the fatalities. Take for example: Baraka the guy is a beast and the best thing they can come up with for a fatality is to have him slash someone two times stab them in the gut and throw them over his head to land on the floor behind him. ???? Seriously??? I’ve seen more brutal things on cartoons on T.V. probably for kids who are 7yrs old. Now that’s not to say that some of the others aren’t that bad. One of Superman’s is a pound the other guy into the ground heroic brutality (call it what it is, a fatality) is reminiscent of the old Superman movie.
Now, I’ve played a decent amount of matches online and it’s pretty fun. When you play a ranked match there’s no talking allowed, but for regular player matches there is, which can be cool to talk to someone while your playing it’s like you have a buddy right there playing with you. After you win or lose a player match you can choose to play again or not, it’s up to the both of you. There are also chat rooms where you can challenge someone to fight and they can politely decline or you load into a fight. It’s pretty basic and simple to get into. Playing online has made me seriously think about trying to get a 360 arcade stick controller because the D-pad on the 360 controller can be in-accurate at times. I’m proud to say I have a winning record in ranked matches which is all that matters right?
Over all, if your an MK fan I think you’ll like the throw back to the older style of gameplay with the addition of new mechanics. Most of the core characters are included so you should find someone that suits your style/tastes. For anyone who’s a DC fan I think you’ll love the game even more, this game is a great comic book game in my opinion. There is a decent spread of characters from the DC universe and they all have moves that are specific to that character which makes each character unique. So for anyone interested in the idea of being Scorpion harpooning Superman in the chest or Batman opening up a can-o-you-know-what on Sub-Zero then this is definitely the game to pick up. Absolutely a must buy for any fan.
(Plus Midway could use the $)
Freaking awesome!!!
That about sums up my first impression.
I played through the DC story line and started up the MK side tonight. The story really works and the way it’s layed out is great too. The fighting mechanics are fun fun fun. The new klose kombat and free-fall kombat are a new and fresh addition. I’ll write up a more in depth review of the game after I’ve put enough time into it. For now I’m just enjoying it to the fullest.
HOLY AWESOME TRAILER BATMAN!!!!!
That’s what I thought to myself after I saw this thing.
Wow. That was a really great trailer. It made me think of Braveheart and The Lord of The Rings movies all at once. Game wise it resembles Viking: Battle for Asgard which is a good game, but the trailer makes this look way better. I would hope that more and more game trailers can be of the same caliber as a movie trailer. Some are already and have been for a while, take any of the clips from any of the Blizzard games. That huge monster at the end gave me goosebumps! It will be interesting to see how the the game actually plays.
I bought the first game of the series that came out on the 360, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom
And the graphics were sweet and the gameplay was sufficient for a 20$ bargain bin game. I just hope that they take the gameplay to a new level and improve on what they had. That would make this game one of the great ones.
(as a side note for those of you who have played KUF before: I wonder if the corn rows haired guy is Kendal’s son or something? If anyone who has KUF wants to tear up some monsters on LIVE let me know.)
You get this brand new fighting game. You play some of it to where you feel comfortable in your abilities. You have some friends come over in hopes of showing them the cool things that you’ve been able to pull off in the game. Only to have all your so called “abilities” mocked by all the cool stuff that your friend can do because of his Buttonmashing (shameless plug) skills.
Not anymore! The new mechanics of the MK vs DC game seems to make a focused effort in the separation between the two. You are able to either do a standard super move: a harpoon from Scorpion, a ice blast from Sub-Zero, a heat vision blast from Superman, or a Batarang from Batman. With the new “Pro Moves” you can do the same super move and with either a second button press, holding the button down longer, or by mashing the buttons as fast as you can, and you get an extra special attack or do more damage.
In the clip there is an example of Superman hitting the ground and staggering the opponent. When the pro move is used Superman smashes the ground twice with a bigger radius of effect on the second punch, a more prominent visual, and the opponent is launched into the air.
This new mechanic makes it obvious that taking the effort to learn how to actually do a move would be more beneficial than just randomly hitting the buttons. Hopefully giving everyone the desire to develop their skill. This isn’t a sure fire way to cancel out the buttonmashing crowd but it does give the player more options. If your into a more casual version of the game it’s there and if your looking for something deeper and are looking to get more out of each character then you have the ability to do so.
I was going through my Google reader feeds as I usually do everyday and came across this new marketing video for Gears of War 2.
I don’t know if I like it better than the “Mad World” video or not.
I feel that the “Mad World” trailer had a darker tone to it and that you couldn’t help feeling alone. Plus the music was awesome. With this new trailer entitled “The Last Day” it seemed more like the calm before the storm, at least this time Marcus has his bros to go with him. It’s kinda cool if you think how you’d feel if you were in their position. You and a couple of other guys are about to drop down underground and take on a HORDE of locusts with just your lancer. (Even though the lancer is a beast of a weapon.)
Kinda makes you think, at least it did for me.
I guess I’m just glad that they try and add some emotion to the game which is mostly about blowing stuff/people up.
Good marketing.
When I first saw some single-player gameplay of Damnation I thought to myself, “Meh, just another shooter.”
After dismissing the game I promptly forgot about it.
THEN, I saw some gameplay for the multiplayer and I thought to myself, “Assassin’s Creed with guns?!?! sign me up!”
Granted the weapons don’t look like anything to write home about the gameplay looks pretty solid. Especially when you can shoot while you are hanging. There are a couple of instances in the clip where the player is either hanging off of a railing or the edge of a roof and taking shots at someone who has no clue where he’s being shot from.
Ahh… I can see the frustration now.
I have been humbled and promise to never cast aside what may appear to be just another game.
Has it happened to you before?
What can I say?
The people over at EA did a great job. This game shines with polish. From the writing on the walls to the dust particles in the air to lens flare when you look towards a light. From the opening cinematic I could tell that the game was going to have quality visuals. When you can see single fibers in the clothing of the main character it’s a good thing. ; )
You start the game as Issac Clarke who is sent to the ship Ishimura (“rock village” in Japanese) to fix a total communications blackout. Your assignment is to repair the ship and get gone. Sounds easy enough right? Well things start to go wrong as soon as you get there. No survivors, power is running low, and you’ve been cut off from everyone else. Great! And that’s when the aliens attack, which is where the fun actually begins.
The thing that is blatantly shoved down your throat at the beginning of the game is that you need to take off the limbs of the aliens in order to kill them quickly. Since your not a Master Chief or a Marine from Doom, you need to use whatever you got to do it. And what you have are mining tools. They pretty much work the same as a regular weapon and get the job done, all of the weapons have an alternate firing mode. Take for example the first weapon you get: it has a regular attack that is a vertical 3 shot and the alternate firing mode changes the gun to shoot horizontally. Of course making it easier to take the limbs off of certain types of aliens. My favorite weapon is the ripper >) ask me about it if you want to know more. The death animations for the main character are great, sometimes I catch myself dying just to check them out. Not to worry though the save points throughout the game are everywhere and the game saves surprisingly fast.
I love what they did with the HUD….there is none! Everything you need to know is visual on the character, how much health you have is shown by the tube on Issac’s back as well as other abilities described later. Another great thing is that your ammo is shown as a hologram projection off of the weapon that you are using as in the picture above. Along the same lines when you pull up your inventory or map screen it’s a projection as well but the game doesn’t pause while your looking through your items. The game is great at keeping the experience seamless.
When you get close to the monsters (which isn’t something you want to do) they usually grab you and do quite a bit of damage if of course you don’t get them off of you by hitting the A button repeatedly. I think that aspect of the game adds to the tension of the game. Your fighting one alien and then you get attacked from behind and have to fight the alien off of you while the the other is still approaching you. Once you get that alien off of you then you need to make sure he’s not going to get back up again. They added a melee attack and a boot stomp attack. Issac’s boot stomp seems to have a lot of umph behind it so when you stomp he really means it.
Another ability you get is Telekinesis: this lets you move bigger objects in the level so that you can continue further into a level. It handles like the Force Unleashed force grip, attaching to one object and you hold onto it until you drop it or throw it across the room or at some baddies. Fun fun fun. Some areas have no oxygen and you have to be quick about what your doing because you’ll run out of air. The more you upgrade your suit the more air you can have.
Speaking of upgrades!
You can upgrade your suit with more health, air, or inventory space via “power nodes” these little disc’s are the way you “level” up. Regarding weapons you can also upgrade the capacity of the weapon, the damage, or even reload speed. Once you have a node you can take it to a bench and upgrade your stuff there, again trying to actually put the player in Issac’s place. And on top of all that there is the zero-gravity areas in the game where you can aim across the room and do a zero-g jump across a big room to the other side of the room. The aliens will of course be able to attack you in the zero-g areas as well, fun stuff shooting at someone in zero-g, the body parts you knock off of the aliens just float along in limbo.
But enough of the game. What about the story?
The story is reminiscent of Doom 3, now if that’s just because it’s in space and your fighting monsters or what I’m not sure but it sure does feel along the same lines. The game does very well at keeping the player tense at all times. I always expect a monster around every corner but sometimes it’s not from around a corner that the aliens pop out but from the ceiling or from the floor even through a door. There is a lot of variety involved, when you backtrack through a level (you don’t backtrack much – fyi) there may be a monster that wasn’t there before. Keeps you on your toes. The No Known Survivors website that can fill you in on most of the story.
Dead Space has one of the better perks for a game that I’ve seen in a while. That is those who purchase the game at launch will get an exclusive in-game suit. You have to visit the Xbox LIVE Marketplace within two weeks of the game’s release in order to download the Xbox or PS3-themed Elite suit. Both suits will have advantages over regular armor and it will give you more inventory slots and better protection. They look cool to boot. Overall dead space is a winner in my book the visuals are great, the game mechanics are plentiful yet not overwhelming, and story isn’t half bad. Definitely pick this one up if your into the space horror genre.
