The Georealm

So I finally beat Conan for the 360. It was actually pretty good. I had a lot of fun playing it. The game play was kinda off and on when it came to a few things, but I played on the hard difficulty to get the special bonus gamer points, so I cant bitch much about it being hard. The fighting style was much like the old Onimusha, or you can relate it to God of War, but a bit slower. It was significantly faster than Viking, so if you played/liked it you will enjoy Conan.

I thought the story line was a bit whack, but then again who cares… just a game. Turns out Conan was going to raid some temple, and he released some big dog wizard who steals and imbues his armor with some magic powers and gives it out to various creatures. In turn you run around killing these guys and getting your armor back with the help of some Amazon woman. You save naked women along the way and smash up various bad guys from Spartans, to Egyptians.

The thing I liked the most about the game was the actual build of Conan. You had different weapon options, and the environment provided plenty of interactive weaponry. You could use a single weapon, a weapon and shield, a two handed weapon, or two weapons. This was pretty cool, as you had to learn the weaknesses of each type of enemy and try to utilize your skills against them. You got experience for each skill as you used it, and up on master some of them gave you bonuses for a successful completion of that skill. That turned out to be pretty handy when you were low on life, and you could do a back breaker or shield smash to get some life orbs out of a baddie.

All in all pretty cool, and I enjoyed it. I would say if you like hack and slash games this is a good one to pick up cheap at the local game store. Think I payed about $10 for it.

I must admit first off I only made it through what appeared to be 50% of this game before I finally said it was time for another game.  I got all my goblins and played for a while with em all, but then it just got too demanding. 

The good:  this game is very funny, and has some pretty decent graphics.  Very intriguing storyline, but not enough to keep me happy on my game time.

The bad: The game is very intense in the fact that your must rely on your minions.  You go through the game doing quests to clean up (defeat good and sometimes evil) your dark domain.  I was not able to run around anywhere by myself because the hand to hand system is very unstable.

The ugly: The reliance on your minions is very difficult to control.  You must swap what groups you are controlling and make sure they don’t kill themselves and other very aggravating items.  Lack of items and overall in game help makes for some difficult long battles.  Of course if there is a difficulty setting then I would have chose hard, so one of these days I’ll either finish or start over.

If you have the time and patience then this might be a game for you.  I feel awkward rating a game I didn’t finish, but then I’d have a post I didn’t finish.  On what I played I rate Overlord a 3 out of 5. 

As in all of my reviews I am going to just move from the bottom up.  In this game the lowest point was the graphics.  By no means were they bad, especially if compared to early Playstation and Playstation 2 games. When I compare them to the graphics of God of War and FF7: Dirge of Cerberus they get blown away, so in turn that is why I chose this as the lowest point of the game.  The still frames are beautiful and the load screens can make you drool, but the block figures of the characters is unbecoming.  The flow of the game is pretty good, but a few graphics chops and bugs will leave you a bit uneasy. 

There are a few graphic bugs that cause the game to lose value, but nothing to keep you from playing.  One of such problems is some of the maps have drop points (a spot where you fall off and die), and these are not by any means highly noticeable.  So you can walk around a corner and lose half your team to a drop point.   Now I know your thinking any noticeable eye will catch a drop point, and so what if you die?  First off not everyone will catch a drop point, and I think everyone should be able to play this game.  And two no one wants to die, because the save points are about 15-30 minutes of game play between one another, so you could lose a lot of time on an untimely death. 

That brings me to the save points.  These are quite frequent and like the potion system very plentiful, but I still think that any game should allow me to save it at any point in time I wish.  Just my thoughts. 

On this game I had a unique experience since my wife decided to play a bit with me.  The multiplayer system on this game is very interesting, and provided quite a bit of time we could sit together and hack and slash our way through levels of Morlocks, Sentinels, and even a healthy helping of humans.  The only problem we had with Multiplayer is that some parts cannot be done in multiplayer due to the split team feature.  If your single player and you jump onto a moving rock to get across you split your team and they rejoin you later.  If you’re in multiplayer everyone just falls into the drop point and you again lose half your team.  Other parts require you to fly and if the 2nd player cant, you’re screwed.  So turn the 2nd player off, yes a cool feature as you can turn 2nd on and off at any time, and continue in 1 player mode until you get past it. Other then that it’s a great multiplayer game.

Next, on to game play features.  Following my usual form the worst part of the game play was the time that must be invested to finish the game.  I played this hours upon hours across months to finally beat the game.  Sure it’s a fun game to play, but when you only have time to play one game at a time spending months beating it can get boring.  Stick to a good story with some good game play and you can keep the play time down to about 12-24 hours… not 60+.  Next part of game play will be the controls.  I must say I had fun running around as Wolverine hacking everyone to bits (or knocking them out since you really don’t kill anything living).  The controls were typical of this type of game, and by the 3rd hour you’re actually pretty good at homing your special attacks in on that one point they actually hit.  Finally I would like to talk a bit about the skill system.  It was great and the skills were very interesting, but everyone had the exact same setup with different names.  Sure some X-men had projectile attacks and some were melee, but they were all the same style.  One big attack, one small area effect attack, one super, and one stat altering skill were about all they offered.  Then add on the fact that everyone has the +HP/+MP skills, and blah blah blah.  I DID like the fact that most of the characters had skills that added damage to their melee attacks, so Jean Grey wasn’t COMPLETELY useless when you HAD to use her. 

In closing I would recommend anyone with the time to play this one to do so.  I must say, since I don’t have the time, I don’t plan on picking up X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse any time soon, but from what I’ve seen and played of it before it’s just like this one.  So if you have a few days to dedicate or don’t mind a game spanning over months then pick this one up and give it a shot.  It is a typical RPG with team fighting and good AI.  I’ll give this one a good 4 out of 5.   

I decided to hook up my different console systems in different rooms to provide a wide array of uses during different times of the day.  I was left with the need to play some games while waiting for the good ol’ zzzz’s to kick in so I hooked up my Xbox in the bedroom.  I whipped out this one to give it a shot after hearing mixed reviews from it.  I’m going to cover the 3 basics of video games: Storyline, Graphics, and Game play.

The Chronicles of Riddick made a fantastic movie, and this was a meager attempt to capture some profit in the gaming world (seems to be a movie fad these days).  They did a so-so job on the attempt.  The storyline of this one is prior to even Pitch Black where Johns has Riddick and is trying to cash in at Butcher Bay for his bounty.  You start off getting dumped there and taken down to the prison cells.  From there you have to work your way through a few cons (verbally and physically) to get to the next section where you are actually working the escape.  Once you get to the next section of the game you are helping wipe out the prison staff.  Always fun to whack a space guard.  Then on to creating a diversion so you can actually get off that rock, and you’re left fighting some creatures cooped up under the prison grounds.  After all that fun is done you make your way to the space hanger where your disappointed by Johns who gets shot, and the warden comes and takes you back to jail.  After you kill the warden, you just make your way back to the ship and take off.  All in all decent story, but there was nothing spectacular.

Now let’s talk about the graphics.  Pitch Black and the Chronicles were both visually spectacular movies, and with Riddick’s sense of humor they were just awesome.  They did not carry on this concept for the game.  You are left with block like graphics that almost remind me of top end N64 games.  Actually now that I think about it just remember Perfect Dark from the N64 and you have your graphics engine for Riddick.  Nothing at all to brag about, but hey… it’s a playable video game so if you got the time check it out.

On to game play, the actual bread and butter of this game.  You spend most of the time in a first person shooter mode, and from there you have a few options as to “view”.  You can drop into stealth mode where you move a bit slower and the world gets a bit of a blue hue that adjusts as you get closer to objects that may “notice” you.  This is a pretty sweet gig as you can sneak up on guards and give em the ol’ neck crack.  The other view option is “black out” mode.  This is where Riddick uses his power to see in the dark and the lighting is reversed.  If you accidently activate this in a well lit room you’re going to get smashed, however in the dark caves or vents its pretty damn useful.  In the game you get to use a variety of weaponry from your fists, to a screwdriver or shank, all the way to guard’s automatics.  The shotgun was my personal favorite until you get the minigun.  All in all great game play.

I will give this one 3 out of 5.  The game was fun and didn’t take too long, but the graphics were a killer.  Consider it an older game and a movie spin off and you can understand the diminished quality.  Worth a shot if you got a few bucks to spare and want to waste some time.

You have all seen it on the shelves and some of you have picked it up, but for those of you that have not listen up!  This game was awesome.  I am going to go ahead and talk about a few high points in this game in my review here, and hopefully you folks will enjoy.  Ill give you a rundown on game play, skill usage, control, difficulty, and cinematics. 

First off game play and this was a seer among the blind.  This game handles a lot like Onimusha, and for those of you haven’t played that either don’t worry Ill go more into detail.  The skill system runs off of soul points which you collect from chest, breakables, and dead things (Onimusha fans perking up yet?).  You are Kratos this mortal that struck a deal with the God of War Ares, to become this great fighter.  Any who Ares tricks you into committing some pretty awful things and you finally figure out that’s not what you wanna do so you set out to kick his ass for it.  But how can a mortal beat a god?  Well there’s the entire game for you.  The handling is pretty smooth, and I will go into further detail in the 3^rd section of this review.  It’s a 3^rd person hack and slasher that has already earned its rightful place among PS2’s greatest hits.  The one downside is that you cannot save whenever you want.  You have to use save points which is a pet peeve of mine, because sometimes you just don’t have time to get from one point to another, but you do have time to play.  Its no where near as bad as Frontline, but it is a bit bothersome.  All in all this game is sweet and it will be played for decades.  On to skill usage.  

I must admit I played the entire game in normal mode and didn’t use anything but the starting swords and the big badass sword you get later in the game.   I didn’t use any of the special skills until I got to Ares which proved to be a lot harder than I expected, but he does make you use every skill you gain through out the game.   You start with the Blades of Chaos and these little bastards kick ass.  I must admit I regret not sinking points into them earlier in the game, because I didn’t top them out till I got to Ares (hit the final boss with 150+ levels of souls, hadn’t spent 1 soul yet).   These little daemon blades deal out the damage and when used properly have great crowd control.  Second you get the wrath of Poseidon.  This is the god of the ocean and what not but this water logged old man could use some perks, but he gives you a bad ass attack that serves as a stick of dynamite in a barrel of fish.  This attack is the best area effect attack in the game.  After that you get the head of Medusa… any myth masters out there can enjoy this one for its accuracy but other than that this skill is useless in my terms.  It works great against minotaur, but you end up losing out on the drops the give if you kill them in another fashion.   Then you get the power of Zeus.  His “mighty” thunder bolt.  Absolutely useless except the few spots the game forces you to use it.  This is a ranged attack that is useful when you got archers taking you out from a different bridge, but other than that I didn’t like this skill.   Further into the game you get the Big sword.   I can’t remember the name of this one but you’ll know what I’m talking about when you get there.  This thing is an ass kicker in fighting any mini bosses you come across and it has great damage and a few area effect attacks.   After you get the big sword you go to hell… literally, and after you fight your way out of Hades’ domain then you get the power of Hades and this is worth the effort.   This attack pretty much kicks the shit out of the others, but it does have a few down falls.  It only affects like 4 maybe 5 monsters on the screen, but it is almost guaranteed to kill them.  It adds to your hit bonus, but it doesn’t hit very fast.   That sums up the skills you get in the game.  On to the next section!

The control for this game was very simplistic.  Other than the special attacks you unlock by boosting the soul points in your weapons the button combos were pretty easy.  The timing on them was a bit finicky, because you could slow down and hit them in session or just pound the hell out of the controller and get the same result.  Movement used the traditional control pad which I personally prefer compared to the J-sticks.  The game utilized the use of the R and L buttons as well but not to the point where some combos could not be performed.  Pretty much you only did as much fancy work as you wanted to, but the simple stuff did the job. 

I played this game through in normal without spending a single point until the endgame, so I am convinced that anyone could beat out the GOD mode as long as they used the skill points through the game, and then just got lucky on the endgame because it is pretty hard.  God mode only changes the battle statistics of each monster so you gotta evade and slash  a bit longer in each fight, but there is plenty of opportunity to stay alive.  It is very well balanced. 

Cinematics, Ohh yes I have saved the best for last.  This game had the best game play and cinematic graphics in comparison to any PS2 and Xbox game.  Halo was on its knees enjoying the tasty treat that this game left when its graphics showed themselves.  The game’s internal graphics were superb in comparison to other PS2 or Xbox graphics, but it wasn’t anywhere near the 3d graphics of PS3 or Xbox 360, but who the fuck cares if the game is badass?  The lifelike CGI graphics used in the cinematics compare to those used in either Final Fantasy movie.   These clips have to be seen to be believed.  Yup short but sweet, but I hope you understand that the graphics in this game made sure it was worth playing just to see them. 

Enough rambling, I’m sure you understand this rating: 5 out of 5 fa show!

A close friend of mine has written a review on this one that I agree with 100%.  You can find this review at:  http://www.bonesnap.com/blog/?p=26

With that I will not waste your time with more glorious talk about how great this game is.  COD4: Modern Warfare is a definite 5 out of 5. 

So I picked up the game Bioshock a while back after I talked with a guy at work about it.  This game redefines the world we live in to a sad truth.  Bioshock is a new look into the world of FPS, and brings in the popular use of magic.    This combination of shotguns, chemical throwers, electricity from your finger tips, and the ability to control a swarm of bees will take you into an FPS experience that will flood you with stunning visuals, and smooth game play. 

Basic storyline of the game consists of you surviving a plane crash to enter this lighthouse that leads down to an underwater city called Rapture.  In Rapture you will encounter other users called “splicers”.  You and these other splicers get their power by collecting the magic commodity called “Adam”.  Adam is harvested from the dead by little orphan girls who have been corrupted into thinking the dead are Angels who can be collected and stored in a slug like organism implanted in the stomachs of the little sisters.  So your goal is to get this power no matter what it takes, but there is one small problem, Big Daddies.  Big Daddies are bums who are collected and fused into this giant suit of armor and equipped with the ability to kick ass.  Throughout the game you kill off these splicers and Big Daddies, and harvest the Adam out of these little sisters to in the end grow to an ass kicking machine yourself.  You go through the game solving the mysteries of Rapture and what has happened since its inception, and it’s a storyline that will sit on your brain and make you think for hours. 

Subtle drops such as “Look Mr. Bubbles an Angle” from a little sister, “Would you kindly” from good ol Atlas, and “The parasite has his eye on Rapture, keep your eye on the parasite” a classic advertisement in Rapture all add to the vast environment you are left to explore.  Based in the 60’s in a government free world Rapture will leave you longing for more. 

With a great storyline, stunning visuals, and great game play I give Bioshock a 5 out of 5.