Resistance 3

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why out of 3 stars?)
Genre: First person shooter
ESRB: M (this is a hard M due to gore and some profanity)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/6
Developer: Insomniac Games
Wiki page

If you haven't heard of this series, that might be because it's a PS3 exclusive. Also, I think it's possible that it gets mixed in with another PS3 shooter, Killzone. They are quite different, though. Mainly in the way that Killzone is best described as "utter trash" while this game is rather good. Obviously not too outstanding, though, as you may have noticed I did not give this game 3 out of 3. And I don't think it's strong enough to warrant a desire to own a PS3, so don't worry about that.

This does! And uh... well, it can play Blu-Rays! Ah ha!

But I did say this game is good. And one of the ways is the story. HOWEVER, not in the way you might think. The characters and plot aren't particularly clever or interesting, but it really feels like an individual game rather than a series. This is mainly because you do not play as the same character from the previous two games. And for some reason, this game does a better job of feeling like an alternate reality. I'd say level design helps a lot with this since it relies more on visuals than dialogue. The previous games, the first one especially, contain some rather shoddy level design. So much so that I'd probably give both of them one star each. The second one does have much better levels, but the settings are so disjointed and random that it's hard to really grasp what the hell is going on. In this one, it is made pretty clear where you are going and why. And each level features both modern design techniques and has fitting visuals for a world torn apart by Chimera. Also, Joe Capelli seems like an entirely different person.

Resistance 2 and Resistance 3, respectively. Clearly the same person, right?

Nathan Hale may be the main character in both previous games, but this guy was just a side character. All we really know is that he yells a lot and wears a beanie. He doesn't do either of these things nearly as much in 3, so he kind of feels like a new character altogether. I guess what I'm saying is: skip 1 and 2. The first one is very outdated and the second one doesn't have a weapon wheel.

Oh yes, a weapon wheel. A good part of this game's charm is this piece of FPS nostalgia. Two guns? Fuck that. Joe can carry 12 guns and 4 types of grenade all at the same time, unencumbered.

The US military could learn a thing or two in tactics here. Just carry 12 weapons! Duh!

I do enjoy being able to carry every weapon for every situation on me, but not every gun is created equal. For example, the shotgun is nowhere near as good as the Atomizer in terms of close quarters combat (the opposite may be true in PvP).  This might have been fixed by making the shotgun semi-automatic instead of pump action. You can even upgrade all the guns in the game, but that is not an available upgrade. The upgrade system is kind of nice, though. The player only has to get kills with said weapon to have it magically level up (it changes aesthetically right in your hands). And the upgrades do an okay job of giving the gun more functionality, instead of just adding damage. This goes along with the design choice they seem to have made to focus more on creativity than balance. In the end, I probably relied on the Auger and Marksman the most: the first for shooting through cover and the second for sheer accuracy and damage per second.

Another piece of nostalgia is the fact that your health doesn't regenerate on its own. At all. You have to hunt for health packs. This is at the very least a change of pace. It will sometimes force you to rethink a level by charging desperately to new cover to find supplies or providing tense moments where you survive on just a sliver of health for ages. At best, it is a breath of fresh air. I do dread games where I find myself spending most of my time hiding behind a wall, waiting for the regen to kick in. But personally, I don't know that it really adds much to the game. Maybe if Joe had a shitload of health and/or if enemies had slower projectiles. I still found myself playing a modern shooter for the most part; staying the hell in cover.

Multi-player:
I got this game used, and the code on the booklet was already used. But the shady pawnshop-... ahem, I mean GameStop... that I got it from apparently gave me a free code on the receipt. Not sure if this is standard practice, but thanks! Once the Playstation Network was done being hilarious, I tried out the multi-player for a day.

Same thing.

I stuck with team deathmatch, though, because objectives are stupid. But seriously, any FPS should be able to be judged solely by this mode. If it can't be, then there's something weirdly wrong with it. You know, because shooting things is kind of the main draw in an FPS. Maybe if Portal had some kind of head-to-head mode... hm.

At a glance, I was pretty sure that this was not going to be a well-balanced, competitive game. You can choose to use a sniper rifle or missile launcher (that's right, missile as in "guided") in your loadout, both of which are capable of a one-hit kill. This is not Call of Duty-type health levels, either. An assault rifle can easily take half a magazine to kill one person (less if there's head shots). There's also a perk, Hazmat suit, that makes you invulnerable to several types of damage. Invulnerable! It makes 5 of the 12 guns and 1 type of grenade either useless or almost useless. And after a day of play, I'm pretty sure I made an accurate first glance.

There are so many wacky unlockables and unexplained features that I found myself just yelling, "Huh?!" at the screen fairly often. For example, "killstreaks" are referred to as "berserks" in the perks section but are indeed called "killstreaks" in-game. I had to stop a number of times to examine some of these menus to try to figure this shit out. Since there's no kill cam, some serious sleuth work had to be done. Even then, I had to look online to find answers to some things. Like, "Where the hell is the Auger!?" It was in the campaign, and it was in the multiplayer for Resistance 2... what happened? Apparently it's the reward for getting a 6-kill berserk. Oh. Okay then.

You can also choose stat-less skins like "the easy to hit guy" or "the harder to hit skinny girl".

The match-making is improved from Resistance 2. For one, games are put together really fast and have no marring lag issues (keep in mind, there's always SOME lag in an online game no matter which game). Although I'm betting many will say they are much worse. In 2, players created the games and chose the game settings. This means you'd sometimes get never-ending games because the host chose ridiculous settings. And by "sometimes" I mean "all the time". I know stupid people think this is a good idea (which is why Treyarch made different systems for the PC and console versions of Black Ops) but you've got to understand this: most people make terrible game designers. This is why the designers, who are hopefully some kind of non-morons, should force what they consider optimal settings on players.

Respawning is completely fucked, though. Even in deathmatch, there is a spawn timer forced on you that serves no other purpose but to piss you off, since the game either chooses to spawn you either "as far as possible from everything" or "directly in the line of fire". I'm not even kidding. I've probably complained a lot about the spawning system in CoD every time I've played it, but at least I can tell it's trying to come up with logical places to spawn me. I might be fine with this if there was no respawn timer or if I could watch a kill-cam while I waited. But no, Resistance 3 doesn't give a fuck. Did you just get wasted by a guy using an over-powered berserk? Here, spawn right in front of him with your back turned. Have fun! But mostly I find this infuriating because the design here seems to lean towards "wacky fun" rather than competitive, so why limit players?

Despite all this, I think this multi-player is actually kind of decent. It's not my cup of tea, and I have better polished games to choose from. But I think all the wacky weapons and powers mixed with quick games and customization might be really enjoyable for some. Hell, PSN has no monthly fee. So if you have the game you might as well try it!

Conclusion:
By far the best game in the Resistance series so far. If you have been a fan of shooters for a long time, this will be a fun trip through history. There's even a level where you get captured and lose all your guns! What is this, Dark Forces? Marathon 2? Wow! Anywho, if this game had a better designed multi-player, a longer/more in-depth campaign, and good writing it would be a 3. As it stands, just a solid 2.

In Resistance 4, the game will be even more old school by removing the ability to look up and down!

Mass Effect 3

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why out of 3 stars?)
Genre: Third person cover shooter; Sub-genre: RPG
ESRB: M (this is a medium M due to some gore, profanity, and some discussions on "the birds and the bees" with hot alien broads)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 40/20
Developer: BioWare
Wiki page

You've likely heard the outcry over the ending by now. So maybe you saw the 3 star rating and are confused. Well, I refuse to treat games like movies and let the ending be so ridiculously weighted in my judgement. If you want to hear my take on the, eh, "differently able" ending then you can find that at the bottom. I'm here to talk about the full experience of the game, and not just the last 5 fucking minutes of it.

I do have some disappointments, though. But this just comes from expectations I had playing through the first two. The first game had these boring vehicle sections that everyone hated: the car was awkward to drive, you spent hours on end driving up nigh vertical walls, and the thing fought like a sniper rather than a tank. But the experience of going down to inhospitable planets and walking around and exploring was something I really wanted to work well. It was bringing the Star Trek into this Star Wars-esque universe. And having both things at the same time is like some kind of nerdish wet dream, you know?

And rather than improve on the vehicle sections, BioWare simply removed them. In Mass Effect 2,  they released some DLC with a new and improved vehicle. I thought the idea was that they didn't have time in the development cycle before release, but "here it is now!" And that thing didn't make it into ME3. So this latest installment becomes just a bunch of third-person shooter levels without that full feeling of immersion around your surroundings, lending it more to the feeling of being in a shooting gallery.

Weee!

There was also a statement BioWare made that ME3 would have a few more "RPG upgrade thingies" (I think that's a direct quote). But I didn't expect it to have as much depth as Mass Effect 1, and it doesn't. Because of these things, I might say that Mass Effect 1 is the strongest game in the series. Although I'd probably rate it a low 2 out of 3, maybe even a 1. Funny how that works, huh?

The reason for this high rating is that this simply is just an amazingly full game that's well-refined. As opposed to the first game, which felt like half a game with a bunch of filler mixed with some of the sloppiest gunplay you'd see in a game from a Western developer.

The story is coherent and full of understandable characters with personality clashes and quirks with a range of different types of people. This is generally BioWare's strong-point, so expect a lot of talking. So the best parts are the interactions between the characters, but the overall plot is a bit generic: save the universe from killer robots. I've come to like this type of storytelling since it allows for casual players to understand what the fuck is going on while still giving the more involved player a lot of cool stuff to dig around in.

Probably one of the biggest improvements I've seen in this section of the series is the enemy design. Previously every enemy was mostly the same, only with different amount of health and damage. In ME3, the enemies are both visually and tactically distinct. This means you can readily identify what kind of enemy you are fighting and will have to change your tactics to fight it. This is a pretty big deal to me. One of the main reasons I hate "realistic" shooters is that all the enemies die in 1-2 hits and carry different sizes of machine guns; no variety, no strategy. Here you might run into a large behemoth with armor plating trying to punch you and you'll start circle-strafing and hip-firing. Next you might see some laser sights from a weird bug that starts shooting rockets and you'll take cover. These are the most obvious examples, but the point is you have to react and change your strategy depending on what's going on.

Each thing does a different thing!

Keeping these new monsters in mind, a fun surprise for everyone is the new horde mode. I call it that because it's simply called "Multiplayer" in-game (I thought this mode was called "Galaxy at War" at some point. I have found out that I was mistaken.) While you can tell this new mode was just slapped together quickly and was likely created out of desire to get some kind of extra profit from optional micro-transactions, it's still very fun! Hell, I lost track of the hours I've spent on it. It would probably be measured in days at this point! The easiest way to compare this would Gears of War 3 (especially since that is where "Horde Mode" actually comes from).  But... I forgot the details of how that works. One thing that really makes this mode work for ME3 is the fact that you can win at it. As in, the waves are not limitless. This sounds like a petty difference, but it really is an immeasurably better design. Matches will take about 18 minutes to complete on Bronze setting. Also, instead of the upgrades only existing within that match, they are carried onto your account. Being able to choose your favorite class with your favorite upgraded weapon is also a stupidly better design choice. I'm actually most excited to see more DLC for this game mode than the single player! To be fair, though, some of that is because there are a number of bugs and flaws that I'd like to see fixed (For example, a lot of the UI relies on the actual XBox Live interface. This means XBox Live has to load to get to that interface). And I'd like to see more features like challenges, stat tracking, re-balancing, etc. For those interested, here's a tier list I've been working on for Gold matches (for those who don't "believe" in tiers, have fun sucking at video games your whole life!):

S: Salarian Engineer, Human Engineer
A: Asari Adept
B: Asari Justicar, Drell Adept, Salarian Infiltrator, Geth Infiltrator
C: Turian Sentinel, Human Sentinel, Human Infiltrator, Geth Engineer
D: Krogan Soldier, Quarian Infiltrator, Turian Soldier, Krogan Battlemaster, Human Adept, Quarian Engineer
E: Human Vanguard, Asari Vanguard, Krogan Sentinel
F: Drell Vanguard, Batarian Sentinel, Battlefield 3 Soldier, Batarian Soldier
G: Human Soldier

Big robots are best fought with teammates!

Do note that multiplayer requires a one-time code that comes for free in new copies of the game. So right now I do not recommend renting, borrowing, or buying this used.

Conclusion: I've already talked too much about this game, but I don't think I've covered half the things I wanted to say. Simply put, there is so much good game here that it makes me question paying $60 for other games. This. This right here is the benchmark for when I or anyone else feels bad for buying a 4-8 hour single player game. Just beware: there is a lot of talking!

Extra rant about the ending (slight spoilers)

So the ending is stupid. Like, stupid in a lot of ways. It's illogical because characters just appear places they have no business being. It's going against the style of the game since you get in some kind of Silver Surfer-ish philosophical argument with a cosmic being. And finally, it's stupid because bizarre things happen that are not explained (IE the planet the Normandy lands on). My point is that video games are about gameplay and RPG's are about the journey, both of which were outstanding. When the stakes are as high as "the entire galaxy", only bullshit can happen. Also, there's little room for a creative ending: either the galaxy is won or it is lost. So I suppose I never expected anything that enlightening, and having appropriate expectations is a big deal.

Here are some other people's complaints that are dumb:

1. The decisions you made had no effect on the ending.

Gee whiz! If only the game remembered to reference the fact that I chose to punch that reporter! The decisions you make have effects that you get to see already. Not everything should affect everything.  How can you ask for the 8 bajillion combinations of endings to exist?

2. There's no final boss fight!

Does there have to be? It's a game of decisions and it ends on the biggest decision. Shrug!

3.  This is the worst ending I've ever seen!

You must not have seen very many things.

I think what I'm trying to say is "You're right in that it's bad. You're wrong in that you're overreacting." I mean, c'mon. It's not the Phantom Menace. And there will be more games in the series to take your money. You'll be okay.

I found this on the internet. Good job, internet.

Prototype 2

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why out of 3 stars?)
Genre: Beat-'em-up Sandbox; Sub-genre: Super Hero
ESRB: M (this is a heavy M due to extreme gore and excessive profanity)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 20/8
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Wiki page

I can't seem to talk about this without talking about another game: Infamous. First of all, it's not usually best to grade something purely based on something else. It's better to evaluate the merits of the individual thing. But we live in a world where Madden is still profitable, so fuck that.

Some years ago, Infamous and Prototype came out within a week or so of one another. And everyone said that they are the same game, but generally felt that Infamous was slightly better. Because of this I decided to try out Infamous. Also, I guess I felt like buying a reason for owning a PS3 since it's an exclusive. *cough* Uh, anywho...  Infamous turns out to be like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) except with electricity powers instead of guns. The main character can climb buildings like Assassin's Creed... blah blah, this isn't an Infamous review. The point is, it was just "alright". My main issue was that the game boils down to a third person shooter fighting different shaped and colored baddies carrying machine guns. Over and over. And there's no consequences for being a jackass and blowing up random cars and people. Still probably worth 2 stars, especially if you only have a PS3.

So gritty it comes with a "T" rating. Ooh.

I'm not even sure why I then tried Prototype. Must've been a dry season of gaming. But HOLY SHIT! Prototype is not even close! It's way better! Alex Mercer doesn't climb buildings, he runs up them! And he floats and and... well, here's a video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SM3EU_Hww

This solves one of my biggest peeves with sandbox games: travel time. It's actually fun getting places! Imagine that! And he can steal people's identities like a T1000 and jump kick helicopters-... but enough digression. Let's move on to the review itself.

Apparently Penny Arcade had to weigh in on this controversial subject.

Prototype 2 takes place in "New York Zero" which has been infected with a virus that turns people into zombies and various tentacled creatures. It is a "sandbox" game where you control James Heller. He's a lot less generic than the nondescript Alex Mercer from the first game. He's not the standard "white guy with short brown hair", he's a black guy. And as games get more and more corporate, that's probably going to be more and more rare. Marketing, bleh. At first I thought he was going to be tastefully written, but then at some point he starts saying things like "Hell yeah, mutha fucka!" So not so much. His story is that he's come to New York Zero to get revenge for the death of his family. He's a more sympathetic character in that sense, but he's just some random guy. This makes his place in the story forced. And as you rip apart countless innocent people (even by accident if you're trying to be a nice guy) your sympathy for him may diminish.

Sorry if you get murdered by my tentacles. Don't worry, I'm still the good guy!

James' powers are substantial. Rather than relying on shooter mechanics, he punches things by turning his arms into blades, whips, claws, hammers, and tentacles. And let's face it, the best super heroes are melee combatants (IE Batman, Wolverine, Spider-Man). Despite this, the game does throw powerful enemies at you. You can die; you're not Superman. Admittedly the game is somewhat easy if you use your powers correctly. James can also pick up guns and pilot tanks and helicopters as he doesn't limit himself. He can also steal people's forms, as I stated earlier. This is a pretty cool power, but the stealth aspect it brings can slow the game down. If you want, you can just go "all guns blazing" and skip getting stealth bonuses. Me? I enjoy stealing an old lady's form and then fighting a horde of bad guys using only my fists, nodding at the passing military soldiers as they stare in confusion. Well, sometimes they shoot you because they figure out you're "the shapeshifter". They don't always figure me out, but they try. Good for them.

Hi, other soldiers! Don't mind me. Just flying around like us normal soldiers do!

You might have figured this out already, but this isn't really a game you get for the story. Many of the cutscenes are these jumbled up flashing images where two people you've never met have an unrelated conversation about how one or both of them are giant assholes. I really hate the whole flashy-jumbled-images way of storytelling that games like this and Black Ops have. Are the developers trying to give me epilepsy? How about just making a story where "things I care about" happen? Is that too much to ask? Also, all but two of the characters in this game have the same personality: giant asshole. Even James gets angry at people who are helping him and gets frustrated using simple technology. Alex's motives have gone from "anti-hero with questionable morals" to "the fucking Devil". Literally, he lays on his side as James screams at him and answers with existential philosophy. I couldn't help but quote Brock Samson by exclaiming, "Please, not another 'we're not so different' speech!" At some point you meet some scientists that you are rescuing. They immediately belittle James' intelligence since he's not a scientist. Who are these people? This was clearly a nightmarish world before the infection hit.

And some people like tentacles. So... possible improvement?

The missions in this game are somewhat repetitive. A majority of them involve long bits of stealth just trying to get into a one-room building and very short combat. As an improvement from the first game, the side missions are written to tie into the story of the game. For example, instead of running races for no reason, there are crates you have to pick up in a limited amount of time. Why is the time limited? "Fuck you" I think is the reason.

As a sequel, this game doesn't improve too much. But it still has enough that I can safely recommend skipping the first game if you haven't played it already. In fact, the game comes with a nice little intro movie you can watch if you want a recap of the previous game's story. Which is additionally helpful since the first game is a bit incoherent. The controls have also been redone a little bit. As a result, James is MUCH better at melee fighting than Alex was. In the first game, I pretty much just jumped away from things and then used the overpowered blade-arm air attack to one-shot everything. I stayed the hell out of melee for fear of getting stun-locked. In the sequel, you can block! Sweet Christmas! Even better, you can counter! In fact, you can block and counter so well that you can stun-lock them! But for some reason, other buttons were changed around. Instead of dodging by tapping the sprint button, you do so by tapping the jump button. So if you want to jump away from combat like the first game, chances are you'll dodge instead. This is a completely terrible change. Tapping sprint pretty much worked perfectly. I sometimes wonder if this was intended to force you to fight in melee as you cannot reliably jump away from it. Also, gliding was changed from holding sprint to holding jump. Since you hold jump to jump higher, this results in James floating for a couple frames every other time you jump whether you want him to or not. Man, do I get pissed when machines don't do the things I tell them to. It's like fucking Skynet!

Today: wonky game controls. Tomorrow: the world.

One last thing: Prototype 2 comes with a one-time code for extra online content to try to encourage you to buy it new. A lot of games are doing this nowadays. For example, Arkham City came with a code to unlock Catwoman's levels. Without the code, you'd have to buy her as DLC. While Catwoman's levels were important to the story and gave you a complete and new character to play, Prototype 2's content amounts to a few small mini-games and some XBox avatar items (unsure what this means for PS3 owners). While nice, it's not that substantial. You can safely borrow, rent, or buy this game used.

Conclusion:
The game is generally an improvement over the first Prototype. And it's still a lot of fun if you enjoy superheroes, dragon-punching helicopters, and extreme violence. I can't give it a three star recommendation due to the story, controls, and mission design. I can see where some people might not be as enamored as I was with this game. I still look forward to the possibility of Prototype 3!

Turns out... The Man says "No."

Why 3 stars?

I felt this needed explaining.

I've noticed that generally the easiest way people can grade things is in a binary manner; good or bad. Siskel and Ebert coined the system of simply using "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". But that isn't enough for a thorough review. Even Siskel and Ebert would often say things like "thumbs WAY up" or "I'm on the fence, but I'm going with thumbs down". So obviously having a range is unavoidable. Here is my simplified system's range:

One star:
-This can be as low as "I put the disc in, and all that happened was I got an ASCII middle finger on screen. There was no game."
-Or it could be "There are some elements that are enjoyable. There might be a niche of people who enjoy this game. Overall this is not worth recommending."
-Finally, it could be as high as "There are a number of things I like about this game. I'll bet there may even be a solid fan base for it. However, there are too many flaws for me to ignore."

Two stars:
-At the bottom, this can be "This game is very boring and generic. However, there are enough things done right that there is recognizable quality."
-Midway could be, "This is a solid game. Nothing about it really excels, but it works!"
-At its best it could be "I love this game! There are some flaws that prevent this from being truly amazing, but it should stand as a strong recommendation."

Three stars:
-Begrudgingly, this might be "I can see that a large percentage of people will really like this game. There are some stupid things in it that I hate, but it is well done otherwise."
-Then maybe something like "This is a great game! Everyone should play it!"
-And ultimately "Game of the year, baby! Wooo!"