5 Quickie Game Reviews

Here’s five bite sized reviews of several releases from the last 2 months or so, with a few being released within the last several days. Rather than be drawn out, I’ll just going to get to the point. Mostly.

Buggy and sometimes frustrating, Sacred 2 should be a game to avoid at all costs, but it is still one of the better games of the genre on a home console. Not since Champions of  Norrath have I been so entralled into such a Diablo clone. The world is huge and definitely won’t be fully charted for over a hundred hours if you just play through the story. You’ll encounter lots of enemies that drop lots of loot with various effects. It seems overwhelming sometimes, where you feel like you have to constantly check every little thing that drops to see if it is an upgrade, or vendor fodder. You gain the ability to unlock new upgrades and stat icreases with each level gained although it doesn’t feel as varied or useful as upgrades in a game like Champions of Norrath feels. The main story is a throw away, and the hundreds of side quests available to you sometimes seem useless, but there’s something about hacking away and progressing to new armors and weapons and charting new areas that gives Sacred 2 a huge boost of replayability. Multiplayer is a welcome addition, although PvP is a pointless addition imo. You can join with up to three other adventurers in joint efforts to take down the enemy, or go your own path while everyone else does the same. Luckily, you won’t have to run to them, as your map enables you to port over to them instantly….or rather once you load into the chunk they are in.

The bugs present are not necessarily game breaking, but an annoyance. One time, during the main story arc, I had to navigate through an underground maze to find an NPC to further my quest. The nav point ended at the cave entrance to the maze, and did not pop up in the maze. I spend an hour lost and frustrated. Came back to the game a day later, and magically there’s a huge dragon where there was once an empty space, and the game progressed. Other little nagging aspects are blank quests you cannot delete and rare times where you can’t attack or use anything offensive, and you’re not in a dizzy or stunned state.

There’s nothing good on the 360 right now to compete with Sacred 2 (Too Human was a waste of 10 years), so it’s either this (still a good time and worth trying) or go back one generation for Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance/Champions of Norrath, or just keep playing Diablo 2 until the third one is released.

One of the most average games out there. It’s not a great game, but it definitely isn’t horrible. It’s a short game with little enemy and weapon variation, with a Gears of War feeling to it. It’s also a little buggy here and there, as T-600 can melee swipe at you (instakill) from what seems like 20′ away and kill you. Sometimes you literally die with no explanation. Fighting off Wasps with 4/5 of my health, I’m ducking behind cover, reloading my shotgun. As soon as I’m ready to shoot them down, I die. I kid you not, it happened a few times in a few different situations. Health regen doesn’t begin until a complete aggro wipe, meaning if you’re at 3% health and a Skinbot is shooting towards you, you’ll stay at that health until it does, or it some how memory wipes and goes exclusively after an AI teammate (which are competent enough). With the fact that there’s no last boss, coupled with every other issue, make Terminator: Salvation a rental only. It is worth playing through once, just don’t buy it.

This is what Guitar Hero should be about — hardcore guitar jamming and drum blasting with fun vocals. The ‘story mode’ is a total throwaway, but who cares? The fact that you can play a couple dozen Metallica songs through guitar, drums, bass or vocals sold it for me. Lars, James, Kirk and Robert were all motion captured and the result is a very impressive performance that coincides with your performance. It seems as if they motion captured each song in its own distinct way, although there are a couple carry overs. The presentation is top notch, as you really feel like this should have been Guitar Hero 4/World Tour. Like Aerosmith, unless you enjoy Metallica in general (minus the whole crybaby argument about Metallica selling out, not being the same and other irrelavent issues) you won’t have a real appreciation of the game. There’s really little going against GH: Metallica.

Now if they can release a one time track pack with the Turn the Page cover, The Four Horsemen, Seek & Destroy live from Woodstock and Call of the Ktulu, then I can call this music genre nirvana.

Punch Out!! has not had a real seuqel since the Super Nintendo days. After what seems like 100 years, Punch Out!! Wii is released. For the most part, you feel right at home with the whole package. It looks marvelous, and the non motion controls a remeniscent enough of the old days that you can pick up and play it if you’ve played Punch Out!! before, or not. The problem is the difficulty ramps up in an overly steep matter after you beat King Hippo. You will be replaying most fights after Hippo several times, at the very least. I don’t ever remember Punch Out!! NES being this unforgiving. Ironically, Super Macho Man, one character I always had problems with in the older games, was easy as pie. Once you figure out what to do and how to do it, it becomes one of the biggest feelings of accomplishments ever in a video game. One other issue I have is precision in your evasion. It seems like some of the times you dodge, you still get grazed, which means a full contact hit. You have to dodge a certain direction for certain punches thrown at you and no matter what, it seems as if you don’t do it JUST right, you get punished. Blocking seems to have become useless as well, as later on it doesn’t seem to do anything but let you get hit with a full contact blow, right through your gloves. Finally, the lack of new opponents is disappointing. Disco Kid is actually a cool character, but you get nothing much past that. The Punch Out!! cast present still ooze personality, more than ever, but I’d like to see more new additions, and even a longer main mode (minus the absurd difficulty jump).

All in all, it’s still a very fun game, and a worthy sequel, that gives you a huge sense of satisfaction when you finally beat a boxer that’s been giving you trouble. Just be warned that this may be your first Wii game where you’d intentionally let a wiimore slip out of your hand and into your TV, like I almost did. Twice.

City of Heroes used to bore me to death. There’s no real point in progression, cause there’s no real end game. Also, leveling was slower than FFXI. I was a lvl 36 tanker for 3 1/2 years, although I only played 6-7 months total. Issue #14 was released, and allowed players to created missions and mission arcs. That got my attention and got me to resub for a month. Through the mission builder, you are given quite a bit of freedom to make your own story. Quite staggering really. You can do just about anything, including set mission timers, make your own boss, multiple mission requirements, set dialog for bosses when they reach certain health percentages, and so on. I created The Onion Ring King and the Gaseous Attack (please don’t even ask about my inspiration…) The first draft was rough but fun, and my near final build is a comical adventure (well, I’d say so….and I only did the first mission as well). Something about making a poo related mission with a boss named Number 2, with helpers I created called Clingons, that makes MMO’s much more fun. You don’t get any currency, though you get tickets to use to purchase ‘upgrades’ as well as new stuff to use in your created missions. Leveling still sucks, although some users did created Ritiki missions to farm exp (being an invul tanker means I’m almost invincible sometimes, making these farmings easy). I duo with a friend of mine and it’s actually a lot more fun than I remember, although the novelty is wearing off now.

If you’re looking for something original to do during your downtime, give mission creations a whirl in City of Heroes. It’s a very innovating feature to the MMO world, one I’d resub back to Everquest for if they ever enabled such a cool feature. Worth a resub if you have a dormant account, but not worth buying the whole game just for.