I still cannot comprehend how anyone could find Resident Evil 5 as anything but a massive letdown. If there were a video game that could be pegged as having an identity crisis, Resident Evil 5 would be it. Is it a survival horror game? Not really, when so many areas are outdoors in sunlight, with a lack of trepidation or legitimate jump scare moments from well placed and intentional scares. Was it an action game? There really wasn’t a sense of thrill with what went on, Chris and Sheva controlled like a pair of tanks and the lack of shooting on the move made it feel like a classic Resident Evil game, but with no fear and no fun. The fact that each area was separated by sub chapters made it seem more like an action game, yet the action was severely lacking.

Sheva’s AI was completely incompetent as well. Most people will complain that this was meant as a co-op game, but the fact of the matter is that there’s a CPU controlled partner for when there’s no one else to play the game with, so it comes into play. Sheva’s most potent form of attack was emptying clips of ammo into your back for no apparent reason, and being a liability any other time she wasn’t actively wasting ammo. It was an addition to the franchise that wasn’t needed at this point, and degraded the experience even further.

To this day I still cannot comprehend why so many people felt this was a viable installment to the franchise. While I do agree that the series needed a deviation from the norm, Resident Evil 5 was still a complete bastardization of what I once knew. It couldn’t pull off survival horror right. It couldn’t pull off action right. Co-op with the CPU or another person wasn’t that thrilling. It was all just a pretty picture and nothing more to me.

Today’s focus will be on Justice League Heroes.

Executing an Action RPG with a comic book license can be difficult. With such a loot centric genre, how would you apply this to the DC Comic franchise, and still make it plausible? One way of doing it is by creating gear that isn’t visually present on your character, but giving them some sort of stat boost. Marvel Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends too this route and managed to deliver a worthwhile experience, without over-saturating the player with items. So could it be possible to replicate the same success with Justice League Heroes?

Definitely. It’s a shame the rest of the game should have been caught in Zero Hour.

Lets tackle the most glaring fault of all – the AI as a whole. This is a two part problem — first part being the inane, no real competence AI provided by your adversaries. There’s nothing tactical nor intelligent about the way they come at you. They just do. Literally. On top of that, the damage output by any enemy or obstruction in your path is absurd. Damage calculations need to be readjusted, as it’s often unfair that even the most minor of minions can take down someone like Superman without breaking much of a sweat.

Then there’s the issue with your partners AI routine. Boy, oh boy….where does one begin with this? Sheva from Resident Evil 5 has the single most asinine partner AI in this current console generation. The Uncanny X-Men on the NES has an AI that literally breaks the game, thanks to its inability to follow elementary routines. Justice League Heroes combines the worst of both worlds, and give you an AI routine that’s not only abhorrent, but pretty much hilarious. They cannot open doors. If you walk through a doorway and the door closes before they make it through, you’ll witness them walking into the door non stop, totally halting your progress, as you need both characters to be in the same portion of the screen in order for the game to advance. You have to literally open the door up for them. They will not avoid any deadly obstructions that lay in font of them, walking through it and either becoming severely injured, or even knocked out completely. They barely even help you against any foes on screen. Bar none, Justice League Heroes take the cake for the most broken partner AI that I have ever witnessed.

Not pictured -- your AI partner completely breaking the experience.

Everything else is a step up, but then again, when you’re already in the basement, you can’t go anywhere else but up. The graphics are not bad, but at the same time, don’t really have much of a life to them. Everything looks the way it should, but nothing stands out, despite its sue of the DC Comics license. Definitely not an eyesore like Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, but not a world of imagination, like Champions of Norrath. The audio has no semblance of life to it, offering bland music with sound effects that, while they are fitting, have no power or poise to them. Control wise, everything functions without much of a hitch, unless you’re the AI, then you’re pretty much screwed. Being able to “purchase” alternate costumes was a novel idea, especially since they did provider some stat changes here and there. This was a manageable way of working loot into the game, without it being considered loot, or having weapons that do not fit into the characters arsenal.

The unfortunate truth to Justice League Heroes is that it was a sloppily constructed title. The AI issues, along with the difficulty woes cripple anything worthwhile. But then again, there’s really nothing worthwhile about the experience as a whole. The Marvel universe has been better represented in this genre than DC Comics has, and having the minds and engine behind such titles as Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath work on a franchise with this much potential, it’s hard not to consider it completely squandered.

Who Won The Battle Of….

Visuals: TIE – Champions of Norrath & Champions: Return to Arms

The attention to detail might have cost both titles in terms of a stuttering frame rate when the action gets hot and heavy, but outside that blemish, both games look quite detailed. Environments and character alike hold a plentiful amount of detail, with no sloppiness to them whatsoever.

Audio: TIE – Champions of Norrath & The Bard’s Tale

The moody musical score and passable voice acting of Champions of Norrath could not totally surpass the whimsical voice acting and charming enough audio package that The Bard’s Tale provides. Both games will offer some pleasant auditory experiences.

Gameplay: Champions of Norrath

Without prior knowledge of the Everquest universe, Champions of Norrath is engaging enough, and structured in such a way that you’ll grow quite an appreciation for what it offers you. While not the most challenging of the seven titles featured this week, unlike its sequel, you won’t encounter frequent bouts of unbalanced difficulty portions.

Replay Value: Champions of Norrath

The loot, classes, areas, bosses visuals and gameplay are just too well constructed for you not to play through them well after you’ve completed your first journey. It’s a shame that the online portion never took off, as that may have even further strengthened the replay value.

Justice League Heroes Rating: 3.0

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Rating: 5.1

The Bard’s Tale Rating: 7.4

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance Rating: 7.5

Champions: Return to Arms Rating: 7.6

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance 2 Rating: 7.7

….And Your Winner of This Comparison Series Is….

Champions of Norrath Rating: 8.7

Final Notes

The genre has plenty of options for gamers to choose from. While you don’t need a working knowledge of the Everquest lore (especially since some aspects are changed up a bit), having any semblance of it helps immerse you even further into the experience of Champions of Norrath. Without any prior knowledge, the gameplay, core mechanics, variety of loot and overall structure far and away sets the bar high for the genre. While its sequel failed to garner as much appreciation, it’s still well worth the time invested into it, as with the Dark Alliance franchise. The Bard’s Tale manages to charm players with its witty dialog and solid gameplay foundation, making it a definite must play. But the thing you need to keep in mind is to stay far, far away from Justice League Heroes and its embarrassingly piss poor AI, as well as the bland, uninviting world of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. There are many more games within this genre, but five of the seven reviewed this week deserve your attention, and combined, they have the ability to keep it for a couple hundred hours.

Now that’s not to say that all we had were cooperative games. We weren’t so stubborn as to avoid the countless great games over the years that didn’t have cooperative modes. Instead, we found ways to make single player games cooperative. I will share these in the hopes of expanding the range of games that you co-op gamers out there can enjoy. We had different skills, so we could pick up each other’s slack, in action or platforming games this usually happened by trading off on deaths. RPGs were split up by calling characters, we’d each have characters that we had absolute say over. Hell we even played the Harvest Moon games co-op, we’d divide the tasks and management. I still remember my brother’s friend Ben sitting on the bed writing up a 2 year financial plan for our fictional farm as my brother ordered around our pack of magical, unpaid, farmhands, and I tracked what was needed for the upcoming social events. Fighting games with any kind of tag element are perfect for co-op, as long as you have quick hands when your partner switches or gets knocked out. Strategy games can be played co-op in a couple of ways. Over the shoulder advising can be immensely helpful and irritating at the same time, someone else may notice something you miss or they might just yell out suggestions wholly incompatible with your style. There’s also our unorthodox favorite, everyone bring your towers over and go online for some pickup games. The amount of coordination possible when everyone is in the same room may be unfair but I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun too. Most of these suggestions are pretty oldschool but I find they’re still handy when you’re strapped for cash and still want to do some co-op. Now with increased online gaming and distance we’ve had to change the way we play co-op…mostly.

As the years have gone on there have been co-op games but not nearly as many as the competitive or single-player games. This may be a product of the co-op dynamic me and my brother have built over the years but we are very forgiving of any faults of a game if it includes good co-op. We forgave those ridiculous linked collars in Destroy All Humans 2 because we got to lay waste to cities as a team. Games like Borderlands, Kane and Lynch, and the Gears of War series would be unremarkable on the merits of their story (or lack thereof in the case of Borderlands and Gears of War) and gameplay but having someone at your back to share the experience with goes a long way. However, this isn’t a free pass to tack on poor co-op or make single system co-op unbearable to force people to buy more copies. I mean I bought my own copy of Call of Duty World at War, Borderlands, and Resident Evil 5 because for some reason they butchered the simple process of dividing the screen. I recognize a company’s right to take more money from me for a co-op experience, but don’t tempt me with single system co-op and then drive me to get my own through disgust. If your single system co-op is going to be terrible or if your split screen is going to remove 1/3 of each player’s screen for absolutely no reason, then don’t waste the time and the resources making it. Which brings me to my thoughts on online co-op.

I am very thankful for online co-op as it has allowed my preferred method of gaming to continue despite any distance between me and my friends and family. However, I play virtually exclusively with people I know, so I can’t wrap my head around playing co-op games with strangers. In my experience the online gaming world is overrun with foulmouthed, selfish, petty, children and the idea of putting my life in their hands makes about as much sense as setting my clothes on fire because they’re dirty, in a way I’ve resolved my problem but is my new situation any better? I’m more than tolerant of stupid behavior in a co-op game. As any co-op gamer knows, there’s the endless fun of acting out any friction with your partner through timely betrayal. I have many fond memories of splitting my brothers head open in Halo (Combat Evolved, before the series jumped the psychic squid that speaks in trochaic heptameter) when he took ammo for my favorite gun…or when he blew up my ghost…or when he was just asking for it by turning his back to me. But this behavior is only acceptable because there is an existing relationship, that and the potential for immediate or future physical retribution. Whenever I bashed my brother I fully expected to get thrown over and/or into something, or if time was a factor, to be socked in the jaw. I can’t joke around with a random player, I don’t know what might set them off, and I honestly wouldn’t want to push my luck beyond them being halfway competent and not constantly spewing a stream of nonsensical racial slurs. For me co-op gaming is about doing something with people I have fun with, more than half the fun of co-op games is the company.

I would say without reservation that my greatest co-op experience that can be considered remotely recent was Tales of Symphonia. It took a bit of time for us to figure out how co-op worked but once we did it was everything we had been waiting for, action combat with inter-teammate assists and a genuine RPG system. Even though Tales of Symphonia had such a genuinely enjoyable co-op system it did not sacrifice story or aesthetic. It was so enjoyable that our third party member stuck it out right through the end despite *SPOILER ALERT* the loss of his favorite character and his temporary replacement with a pink vested douchebag in a belly shirt *SPOILER OVER*. Now you would think that a character like that could ruin the game but the truth is that all the characters were real, cliché at times, but real. The person’s personality makes sense given circumstances and their relationships within the story you can’t expect to like every character within a story anymore than you can to like every person you meet. The closest thing I have to a complaint about this game is that the computer was too good at playing as the healer, there was no need for a fourth player. In fact a fourth could be a hindrance given how completely that game consumed us. I recall one occasion, we were on maybe the twelfth hour of another all day binge of that magnificent game. Our cousin was filling the fourth seat and was a perfectly competent healer, despite his tendency to waste juice on his feeble attack spells due to boredom. In the middle of a particularly crucial battle we noticed that we had all just stopped getting healed, as one we turned to the right to see what was wrong with our healer. He had the controller firmly grasped in his hands but his head was slumped backwards and his mouth was wide open with a trail of drool leaking out, our healer had fallen asleep at the damn helm. A swift blow to the stomach brought him round but we learned an important lesson: if you’re going to put someone in a pivotal role make sure they share your degree of commitment/obsession. Now only the combat in Tales of Symphonia had everyone playing, at all other times the control was in player one’s hands. Which is fine if the story is enough to keep the other players engaged, except when player one has the navigational skills of a lobotomized messenger pigeon. I don’t know what it was about that game, but we could lose hours if someone didn’t take the controller from my brother when we were in the overworld. But it’s problems like this that make co-op gaming memorable, all your game experiences are shared and can be brought up in the future to humiliate your closest friends.

I’m hopeful for the future of co-op games, of course this optimism may be overly influenced by the announcement of a cooperative emphasizing Lord of the Rings game followed closely by the release of Splinter Cell: Conviction and Monster Hunter Tri. We co-op gamers must remain hopeful to continue to walk our path, given how often our hopes are dashed. I still remember the first time I read that Prototype was going to be two player cooperative and the first time I read that they were pulling that feature. I remember the terrible camera angles in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. I remember gathering star bits in Mario Galaxy as my brother flew through an interstellar wonderland. And I remember the countless iterations of Dynasty Warriors I’ve played just to get a co-op fix. In spite of all these memories, I will persevere and hope that co-op gaming will become a larger part of gaming. If it doesn’t, then I’m back to making sure my brother doesn’t pass out at the Harvest Moon wine festival.

Though the thought had to cross the minds of many gamers which system to purchase the games for the Xbox360 or the PS3. Each system has its own unique benefits for each particular genre.

Some people may have chose to purchase Street fighter 4 for the PS3 because the controller is better suited for the execution of the moves. While others may have chose to purchase Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox360 for the same reason, the controller is better suited for a shooter game.

While these reasons are very clean cut and seemly simple sometimes the lines can get blurry. Not everyone has both systems and have the luxury to chose. What if some friends only have the Xbox360 or the PS3 but both equally want to play with you? What will you do? Will you shell out a whooping $120 dollars to play with them all?

This is when I began to think why doesn’t Sony and Microsoft make one system? It would seem that no one could lose. Right now in the present economy even though game sales are still soaring there are still losers and there are bound to be more.

Why should gamers have to shell out $120 to play with all of their friends? Why waste many company employee hours and funds creating 2 versions of a game when one will sell mediocre because of the other? Why not use all those resources banging out one version of an awesome game to be sold to the masses.

I think the battle of the Systems war was fun while it lasted but truly it’s time to combine efforts Microsoft, Sony you both do some things better than the other and could benefit from merging into one.

As the world of exclusive titles become extinct it seems to be no point in having two very similar systems within a suffering economy. Lets branch out to the future Sony, Microsoft let make the new next gen system ONE.

What do you think about this idea? Let me know I would love to hear your feedback!

Sonic’s Sega Geneisis Collection (over a month old but well made) – 360/PS3
Street Fighter IV (durr) – 360/PS3
Star Ocean: The Last Hope (slow first two hours, phenomenal 40+ hours, really bad end dugeon that killed the game for me) – 360
Grand Theft Auto: The Lost & Damned (my review can be found here)- 360
Resident Evil 5 – 360/PS3
Suikoden TierKreis (playing through now, and it’s blowing away any RPG I have played over the last five years) – DS
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume – DS
Retro Game Challenge – DS
MadWorld – Wii
Killzone 2 – PS3
Pokemon Platinum – DS
Resistance: Retribution – PSP
Phantasy Star: Portable – PSP
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars – DS
Halo Wars - 360
PuzzleQuest: Galactrix – DS
FEAR 2: Project Origin – 360/PS3
LocoRoco 2 – PSP
The Godfather 2 – 360/PS3
Legends of Wrestlemania – 360/PS3
Guitar Hero: METALLICA – 360/PS3/Wii

Oh my GOD!

The amazing thing is that I know I’m missing a few titles, especially new releases that are coming out within the next few weeks (please feel free to fill in the blanks). You have a lot of genres represented here. You’d be hard pressed not to find at least TWO things that have recently been released, or are being released, that don’t excite you enough to make you yell like a little school boy. Everything I listed, other than maybe Godfather 2 (was very unimpressed at my Comicon play testing) and FEAR 2 (only really liked FEAR when it was on the PC) I want to play bad, I own, or plan on buying. Well, not Killzone 2….helps if I had a PS3 first!

I can give a thumbs up to the following — Sonic’s Sega Genesis Collection, Street Fighter IV, GTA: Lost & Damned, Suikoden TierKreis and Resistance: Retribution. MadWorld, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Legends of Wrestlemania and Valkyrie Profile are on my radar right now, and possibly Pokemon Platinum.

I can’t remember too many short time spans where there was a wealth of gaming goodness being released all at once, and it wasn’t the holiday season. A part of me wishes some of these games were held off until the summer, when we can all use a relief from the typical summer time drought. But hey, I can’t really complain right now. I’m too busy with all these games, and I hope (and know) you all find something from this batch that tickles your fancy!

Halo 3 FFA Tournament

First Place- $150.00
Second Place- $100.00
Third Place- Free Hugs
Entrance Fee- $15.00
Start time is tentatively 12 noon, but more than likely 1PM

March 14th, 2009

Gears Of War 2 Tournament (2v2)

First Place- TBA
Second Place- It’s less money than first obviously
Entrance Fee- $15.00(Per Person) $30.00 (Per Team)
Start Time- 1PM

March 12th, 2009

Street Fighter 4 Tournament
(CONSOLE- Possible PS3 & XB360)

First Place- One FREE Copy Of Resident Evil 5 (XB360,PS3)

Second Place – TBA
Entrance Fee- $5.00 ONLY!

March 21st, 2009

Street Fighter 4 Tournament

Details- TBA

Address Of These Tournaments!

137 east 13 street. (Between 3rd & 4th ave)
New York, NY

new york, ny.

Rhetorical questions I must leave for later though, I have another problem.

Is it yet another complaining EP post? It might be, but bear with me.

I fired up the RE5 demo on the PS3 last night, expecting to have a rocking good time. Having played the demo back in December for the 360, I already knew what to expect. Stunning visuals, a gameplay style that was almost a little too much like RE4’s (not that it was a bad thing, mind you) and all the intensity with a side of mayhem that comes from being chased by a horde of bloodthirsty parasitic Africans. I was ready. Having lost my 360 two weeks prior, I was ready to jump into the hordes once again, hopefully with a friend in tow.

I fired up the game, and nearly dropped my Dualshock.

The screen was washed out. The textures didn’t seem quite as sharp. I moved Chris a few steps forward and gasped. Something happened to the framerate. It went from that generation standard PGR/Lost Planet/Gears of War (1, not 2) rock solid 30-45 frames per second and was clearly, by my eyes, dropping into the 25 range at random. These were all minute differences, and the average player wouldn’t be any the wiser if they’d never played the 360 version, but they stuck out like a sore thumb for me. Mind you, the game is every bit as exciting and tense as the developers intended, but it’s technically inferior to its Xbox counterpart.

This is not an isolated problem.

If I may be allowed a bold statement, I am practically convinced at this point that the PS3 cannot handle multiplatform releases. The console simply excels when a game is made specifically for it (see my nomination for Killzone 2 as the best looking game I’ve ever seen), but whenever it comes time for a release across the board, the PS3 versions always suffer from the above mentioned problems. Framerate drops, color problems, clarity, even the screen resolution of the PS3 versions takes a noticeable hit for anyone paying enough attention to notice. I hold the Framework Engine (Capcom’s next gen engine powering Dead Rising, Lost Planet, DMC4, etc) in very high regard, up there with Unreal Engine 3 (Gears of War), and RAGE (GTA4, Table Tennis), but it seems that even Capcom’s juggernaut can’t undo patterns.

I hear you asking, is it the developer’s fault? Sony’s?

It’s a little bit of both.

Sony has crafted a powerful machine, a media based, audio/visual juggernaut, a future proof marvel of technology….that no one understands or cares to. On Sony’s end, this is a winning strategy, they’ve already got their popularity in the bag, as long as developers get to their system first, they’ll be the standard environment, however difficult the transition may be, and they’ll get the best of the best. It certainly worked for the PS2, even though the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox were much easier to develop for, with more power on hand, devs were already used to the PS2 by the time they rolled around. That, and the hype machine fueled their tenacity to succeed on the lead platform. The only problem with that strategy this time around is this:

They aren’t in the lead anymore. This is the kind of thing that killed the Saturn.

Let me explain. Hardware failures and red rings of death be damned, Microsoft got to market first, got their technology into the hands of developers first, and as such, became the lead platform in a way that literally changed the face of third party development moving forward. Every engine I described a few paragraphs up was tested and flexed on the 360 first, then modified to suit the PS3’s needs. This is what leads into these inferior ports. Not every developer has the time, or money to sit and custom craft their game to suit the PS3, and while I would love to sit around and entertain the idea of a benevolent developer, the truth is that only publishers with deep pockets like EA or Activision are up to the task. Even then, they occasionally slip up.

In the face of a tricky system to program for, the easier to develop for 360 has become wholly more attractive to those looking to get the best result without having to sink a ton of money and resources. Being a developer, would you rather spend twice the amount of effort to make a game that is visually indistinguishable from a 360 title, or would you rather just make a 360 game? Rather than jump through hoops and try to wrap their minds around the Saturn’s dual processors in order to make a Playstation-quality game, everyone decided it would simply be easier to make Playstation games and port to Saturn if necessary. Did it matter that in some cases, the Saturn was more powerful and it occasionally shone through? No.

Show me a bike with four wheels and three pedals and I’ll learn how to ride it, but, if it goes no faster than a normal bike, what’s the point?

I’d hate to say that this is going to the the major sticking point moving forward, this lack of prowess, but it seems that with two years into the system’s life, this is only going to keep happening more and more. While there’s no doubt in my mind that the PS3 is an extraordinary console, it seems that its exclusives are the only way we’ll ever come to realize that. Multiplatform wise, it has the public stigma of being equal or inferior to the 360, and this isn’t to say that the 360 is a wildly inferior console, but it screams aloud another stigma that perhaps, the PS3 isn’t worlds better like we assumed.