all games are not created equal

Both these games play out more like an interactive movie than a game.  However, unlike many traditional RPG's and point n' click adventures, you can control the outcome of the story.  These games take slightly different approaches, however.

Indigo Prophecy (of Fahrenheit, as it is known outside of my self-involved nation) has you controlling several people during the course of what begins as a murder mystery.  You play the roles of both the killer AND the cops looking for him, which is very interesting.
There is a sort of psyche meter for all the characters.  Simple actions like washing hands and drinking a beverage wlil raise psyche, while witnessing terrible events like finding a dead body will lower the psyche.  When the meter goes to zero, your character gives up and you fail.  Well, they put it a bit better than that, but there's the gist.

Heavy Rain is another murder mystery that controls similarly to Indigo Prophecy.  You control four different characters throughout the game, and everyone is involved trying to find a serial killer.  You play the role of a P.I., an FBI agent, a journalist, and the father of a recently kidnapped victim.  You see all sides of the story and it all eventually ties together at the end.  Some parts are slow, but it's definitely worth it for the finale.
Gone is the psyche meter.  Instead, Heavy Rain takes a much more direct approach.  Got your character killed?  Tough, live with it.  The story moves on.  NOTHING in this game halts the story in any way.  The main characters can die.  The victim may or may not survive.  The killer may be found, or he may not. 

I much much MUCH prefer Heavy Rain for one main reason.  Indigo Prophecy starts out excellent, playing out just like a murder mystery.  However, it suddenly takes a very stupid turn about halfway through and gets absolutely ridiculous at the end. 
Heavy Rain's plot stays consistent through and through and doesn't try to flavor the story with stupid plot elements out of thin air.  And with it's multiple endings and multiple paths, it's definitely worth replaying.

Neither of these games are for everyone.  The controls are definitely weird, especially for Heavy Rain, but it's also a great story to play through.

Curse of Monkey Island is generally considered to be the best Monkey Island game by many (I personally prefer LeChuk's Revenge myself).  So how does the new episodic adventure fare in comparison?

Curse was fresh by bringing in higher resolution characters, more lively animation, and voice acting to the series.  It gave a much needed facelift to the series and had pitch-perfect voice-acting that really brought the characters to life.

Tales isn't the first Monkey Island game in 3D, but it's easily more fun and designed better than Escape was.  You get a slew of familiar characters, and a few memorable new faces as well.  The game comes in five episodes, and they are all pretty entertaining.  Guybrush is as charming and occasionally dimwitted as ever, and there's a new spin on LeChuk that's definitely a treat, and even Stan the salesman returns with yet another business prospect under his belt.  The series has been handled with great care and Telltale did Monkey Island justice.

As far as length, Curse and Tales are about equal.  It's hard to judge the length cause everyone's playthroughs will be different.  Some will have harder or easier times on puzzles, and some will spend more time examining every nook and cranny, and exhausting every conversation option with every character.

Tales may look a little dated for today's visual standards, but it still maintains that pirate-y charm and humor that fans have come to expect from the MI series.  That being said, Curse still holds it's own with retro but beautiful 2D hand-drawn visuals that look copied straight out of a Disney film.

Personally, I believe Tales (and Telltale in general) does a better job of pointing out the puzzles that you need to solve, and a general idea of how to go about solving them.  When playing Curse, it sometimes gets so overwhelming that you start wondering around with little sense of what you should be doing.
It's important to note that neither of these games will allow you to die or get stuck to the point that you have to restart your game, so you never have to proceed with caution, so to speak.

I pick Tales over Curse mainly cause it's a fresh take on a long beloved series.  Nothing feels too out of place, the dialogue is as witty as ever, and I personally thought the climax was much better.  The only thing I could fault it for was that there was a key location from the series missing in Tales.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but it's pretty obvious.

FIRST VIDEO GAME REVIEW OF 2010 ??!?!

It's that time again, yes that time that I review games that the casual video game player probably has never heard about (well they might have heard about guild wars).

Runes of Magic and Guild wars are both free to play games. Except Guild wars requires you buy it. so technically what I mean by a F2P game is that of no monthly fees.

Runes of Magic is, dare I say it, a clone of World of Warcraft. And dare I say again that Runes of Magic is a much better game than Guildwars IN my opinion.

Level Cap: RoM: 55, GW: 20, personally I like a larger level cap than 20, level 20 isn't very intimidating.

World: Unlike guild wars, RoM's world outside of cities and forts are not realy "disconnected" from eachother. In GW you would leave town or a fort, and then unless you had a party you were pretty much on your own, no other characters out there. RoM (and like a million other mmo's) does the classic everyone goes everywhere scenario. except for a few areas I believe, I haven't gotten that far to find out about those area's, I keep dying. The fact that it is open world makes it so much easier to find help on the spot with a quest.

Quests: The quests in RoM aren't what I expected they would be. the fact that you can do more than just kill things in this game really does add to the entertainment value of quests and continued playability. some quests have you gather materials such as herbs, some of course have you kill certain creatures, and some have you help a fallen NPC.

equipment: there is a larger amount of usable equpiment in Runes of Magic as compared to Guild Wars, but who am I to talk that way. I never got all the expansion packs for Guild wars all I got was Eye of the north.

Stupidity: RoM has walking/talking dog npc's that controll the portals... kinda stupid. guild wars takes the cake here against stupidity.

A lot of backlash arose when L4D was announced to be out about a year after the first one was released.  Did L4D2 really deserve to be it's own stand-alone title?  I say yes.

L4D2 really tickled me when it included a gameplay mechanic that I always thought would be awesome.  I'm talking about the dubbed "gauntlet mode" that occurs in some levels.
In L4D1, events usually consisted of hitting a button, finding a corner, and holding out until your door was opened.  Thankfully, L4D2 changes it up.  Some events required hitting a button and mad-dashing through horde to another button.  Others may include scavenging gas cans to fuel a car.

There's also new threats this time around.  Sure you have a couple new boss infected, but the surprise to me was the uncommon infected.  These are generally the normal horde, except they have special properties which vary between campaigns.  Construction workers can't hear pipebombs, riot officers are only vulnerable on their backside, etc.

The one disappointment is the L4D2 survivors.  Ellis is definitely my favorite, and Coach occasionally has some good lines, but Nick and Rochelle are incredibly forgetful and boring.  I honestly couldn't even remember Rochelle's name until I remembered Ellis speaking about her before.

I hate to say it, but I can't really think of a reason to go back to playing L4D1 now that I have L4D2.  It's really everything and then some.  Plus, I HAVE to mention how epic the Hard Rain campaign is on L4D2, especially the second half.  If you played it, then you know what I mean ;)

Despite what many hardcore fans of the series may try to prove otherwise, Shattered Memories is best interpreted as a stand-alone spin-off game with no real connection the the canonical story/setting of the original games, other than some vaguely familiar characters and basic basic BASIC storyline.

These games start out the same, more or less.  Harry and his daughter Cheryl or driving and get into a car crash.  Harry goes searching for his daughter.  The similarities stop there, pretty much.

Shattered Memories makes great use of the Wii's capabilities (no, really!).  First of all, controlling the flashlight with the Wii's pointer is a treat and really helps immerse yourself into the game.  Creatures will pounce on you and latch on, and it requires you to actually shove the wiimote and nunchuk in the direction of the creatures, and it feels natural. 
My personal favorite is the implementation of the Wiimote's speaker.  Instead of a radio, Harry has a phone.  All noises from the phone come through the wiimote speaker, including calls, static, message notifications, and ringtones.  You may actually find yourself holding the wiimote to your ear without even realizing how silly you look.

The Silent Hill series always seemed to pride itself on being very psychological with it's horror (especially apparent in Silent Hill 2).  The team behind Shattered Memories know this, and they almost took the concept too literally.  Periodically through the game, you cut to therapy sessions with Dr. K, who will give you psych tests once in a while before moving on with the rest of the game.  These tests can change characters' behavior and outfit, and even change the appearance of the monsters and some graffiti and messages.

In the original Silent Hill, creatures roamed the streets and buildings.  You would fight them off with guns and melee weapons, or possibly flee if you so chose.  Occasionally, Silent Hill would transform into the "Otherworld" form, with wire meshes and bleeding walls and rusty metal forming the structure of the town.
In Shattered Memories, you encounter no enemies until you reach the Otherworld, which is actually called "Nightmares" in this game.  You do not fight.  At all.  Period.  Instead, you run and hide.  You charge through doors, topple objects to block your persuers, climb ledges, and hide under or inside of objects.  You can press down on the d-pad to look over your shoulder and see a small swarm of creatures persuing you, which really gets the adrenaline pumping.  Personally, I really really like the spirit behind this mechanic, but I do think it's very flawed.
For starters, the fact that you only encounter creatures during the nightmare sections really keeps you from being scared during any other portion of the game.  Also, when you get taken down, there's no game over, no death.  You just restart at the beginning of the section.  Finally, when you're running through these sections, there's rarely a reason to stop or observe something.  You're just constantly running til you find the exit to end the sequence, which means there's little reason to "hide" from these things.

Overall, I really enjoyed Shattered Memories, but it doesn't even begin to compare with the original.  I won't spoil the storyline, but there is a nice twist at the end of Shattered Memories worth playing for.  I really really like the spirit behind it, but the original had a much better atmosphere and much more to actually scare you with, plus it gives you more to think about than Shattered Memories does.

This is such an easy win for Uncharted that it's not even funny.  We'll, it kind of is.

Killzone 2 has some of the worst voice acting I have heard in a while.  The soldiers have totally empty dialogue whose whole purpose is to make you think "man, these guys are tough".  They swear a bunch and say a lot of tough guy things, but they do it very unconvincingly, as if there is a convincing way to do it?  Anyway, I've learned to ignore practically every word that comes out of any characters mouth because it probably will only annoy me.

Uncharted.  Oh, Uncharted.  You are an amazing game.  You have great voice acting that, when I look back on it, just added to the feeling of playing a live-action movie.  Some really good stuff.  The lip-syncing too was great, from what I can remember, which just makes the impact of the voice acting that much bigger.

Borderlands coop gameplay is simple, but for some reason, I just love playing it with friends.  L4D2 is fun too and also simple in its own way, but it's definitely not a relaxing game.

L4D2 requires a lot of focus to make sure you don't disturb a witch or set off a car alarm or are just generally aware of where your teammates are.  Borderlands plays more like an MMORPG, so you're questing most of the time and can semi relax while you play.  What that means is you can actually chat with your friends on a headset about whatever you like while you play.  It actually feels like you're playing a fun game with friends instead of some game where you and your friends dish out orders to one another.  It just isn't nearly as enjoyable.  When you're playing L4D2, your friend becomes just another player because of the way you have to play the game.

Kind of a weird comparison, but this really matters for me.  If I'm on a headset chatting with friends, it's kinda nice to be able to relax and talk to them about whatever you like instead of stressing out about the game.  I guess it's kinda like having a friendly conversation with a friend while disarming a bomb: it just isn't fun.

Both of these games are a lot of fun when playing online for totally different reasons.  It's cool to kill a bunch of zombies.  It's also cool to kill a bunch of people on the other team.  The one thing that makes L4D2 a big loser in my book is that there seems to be a thousand different ways to do something wrong.

Everything is going all nice and good and, whoops, a witch gets hit by one of your stray bullets.  We'll don't you feel stupid now.  Or how about accidentally getting trapped in a corner with a tank and you lose almost all your health.  Or maybe I'll use my medpack now but oh wait, I should have just died and let someone revive me.  Stupid me. Accidentally get stuck outside with the horde?  Ain't that a shame.

It can get pretty frustrating when there are a thousand ways to lose the game for your team. Everyone hates being the guy that screws it up for everyone else.  Like Chris Webber calling for a timeout and getting a technical because they were out.  Or Ty Law not defending the Colorado hail mary properly.  Sorry for the Michigan sports references, but I'm sure you know what I mean.  It feels like crap to be that guy and L4D2 makes sure that at least once a game, it can be you.

MW2.  You kill them.  They kill you.  You kill them some more.  Nice and simple and totally addicting.

I really wanted to do a breakdown of these games category by category, but the honest truth is that Uncharted 2 may possibly the best cinematic video game I ever played and wins in nearly all categories.

The graphics are probably the best the PS3 has to offer.  And it's not just the graphics, but the way they look WHILE YOU'RE STILL PLAYING!  The developers did a great job of blending dynamic and pre-rendered physics and events together to really draw you into an action movie.  It's hard to forget the train ride, the helicopter chase, or climbing through the ice caves.

AC2 has great visuals too, though.  The architecture looks beautiful, and they are absolutely filled with townspeople to really bring the environment to life.  However, it isn't nearly as colorful or dynamic as Uncharted 2.  The voice acting and story is still good, but again, it's just not that memorable.


I greatly appreciate Uncharted 2 because it shows us that a game doesn't have to be an open world sandbox to be good.  There's definitely a distinctive charm and presentation with linear scripted gameplay.  Sure, the ride is the same every time, but it's a damn good ride.

This is actually a really hard comparison.  Both games brought something new to gamers and both were and are a lot of fun to play.  Both take a new angle on the puzzle-solving game and made it fun.  Braid has a lower price point, but price point really doesn't matter.  What really tips the scales to Portal is one simple thing.  Portal has personality that Braid doesn't quite have.

Throughout Portal, GLaDOS talks to you as you complete the levels and it's hilarious.  I'm sure some of the driving force behind some people finishing the game was just to hear more from her.  And not to mention the finale of Portal during the credits, which will probably go down in gaming history as one of the best songs ever written for a video game.  I hate saying broad statements like that, but that song really was something special.  It fit the personality of the game perfectly and left me with something I'll never forget.

Braid is a fantastic game, yea.  But it just doesn't have that GLaDOS charm that Portal has.

Braid is just incredibly refreshing to play.  Killzone 2 is, at best, a totally typical FPS game.  It's a good one, but we've all played a game like that before.  It doesn't bring anything new to the table.

Braid is all new.  We'll, it did come out a little while ago, but it's fresh, just like when Portal came out.  Totally new way to play a game.  And totally awesome.  Worth the 15 bucks to play something unlike anything you've ever played before.  Try to find a friend that owns it though, because once you beat it, you're done and probably won't touch the game again.

DJ Hero is a clear win on this one.  I never had fun playing GH by myself; it's just meant to be played with other people.  DJ Hero isn't like that though.  It's actually almost the exact opposite, where group play isn't really worth it. 

DJ Hero is a ton of fun to play and it's one of the only music simulations that actually made me feel like I was controlling the music and not just playing along.  GH is still cool, but just doesn't connect to the music nearly as much as DJ Hero does.

DJ Hero is also pretty challenging in a very new way, which is extremely refreshing given how long guitar controllers have been around. 

Biggest point against DJ Hero though is that it's pretty expensive.  Despite the price point, I still am glad that I bought it and will continue to enjoy it down the road.

Most of the time, FPS games all feel the same.  For some reason though, Killzone 2 just feels terrible when you're playing it, at least when compared to MW2.  Everything feels sluggish when compared to how quickly you can aim and shoot in MW2.  MW2 does provide a little bit of assistance with aiming (it snaps the crosshairs to the target if you're aiming close enough).  Killzone does not have this, but I'm pretty sure the addition of this wouldn't change the overall feeling.

I guess that in the end, maybe MW2 is just a much more finely tuned game than Killzone 2 where every aspect has been obsessed over to allow for the best playing experience.

I think at this point in time, single player campaigns are being increasingly less important as the multiplayer experience keeps improving with FPS games.  I mean, who really bought MW2 for the single player?  Regardless, I still love myself a good solo campaign where I just run around and shoot crap and maybe be part of a cool story.

MW2 has a pretty short multiplayer campaign, even for a FPS.  However, there are some really cool action sequences and a lot of action in general that makes it interesting through the whole, albeit short, single player campaign.  The story jumps around between a couple characters, but this helps keep it interesting.

As for Killzone 2, even though I haven't finished the game yet, I can feel that I'm going to be pretty unimpressed.  There is just something that's too point A point B about this game.  Run somewhere and shoot some people.  Run somewhere else and shoot some more people.  Sometimes, shoot 'em a bunch of times because they just don't know how to die.  I really don't have a good feeling that this is all gonna wrap up in a fantastic way.

I think this is the best way to put it.  I beat MW2 over 3 sessions of at least 2 hours a piece.  For Killzone 2, I have trouble playing the game for longer than about 40 minutes in a sitting. 

Simply put, DJ Hero makes you feel like a DJ.  Beatmania makes you feel like a loser with it's obnoxious difficulty.
I love rhythm games and I love the challenge of something new.  But Beatmania is absolutely relentless with it's difficulty.  You miss 3 or 4 notes in a row and you shoot straight to the red.  In DJ Hero, you don't even fail songs.  You can SUCK, sure, but you don't fail.

Anyway, the gameplay itself from these games are entirely different.  Beatmania's controller is basically a 7-key piano with a turntable.  Obviously, the turntable itself is the most appealing factor, but Beatmania just treats it like a button, which is a real turn off.
This is where DJ Hero shines.  You have three buttons, an effects dial, a cross fader, and a turn-table.  When you scratch on the turntable, you have to do it in rhythm, and on harder difficulties you even have to scratch in the right direction.  It syncs up with the music so well that you really start to feel like you're spinning the music.

Also, the soundtracks for these two appeal to entirely different audiences.  The songs in Beatmania are pretty much copy/pasted from DDR and whatever other Bemani titles.  Lots of techno/orchestra, a bit of rave here and there, but mostly obscure stuff.
DJ Hero sounds like songs you'd actually here in a club.  All songs are mash-ups, meaning it's at least two songs mixed side by side.  Most generally this is a hip-hop or rap song combined with anything else, whether it's an 80's pop song or some rock n' roll tune. 

Anywho, play Beatmania in front of people, you'll feel stressed and feel like a fool.  Play DJ Hero with some people (and get good at it like me :D ) and you'll feel pretty awesome, plus you'll gain respect for DJ's in the clubs.

This is purely based on controllers.

The guitar controller on Rock Band is MUCH more comfortable and practical than the GH:WT or GH5 controller.  The fret buttons take up the FULL FRET, as opposed to the childish smaller buttons on the GH controller.
The strum bar is a matter of preference.  RB's is completely silent, but it's also a little tougher to be precise on fast patterns.  GH's is still clicky, but it's fairly quiet and you barely hear it if you crank your sound up as much as I do, and it's perfect for fast patterns.

I much much MUCH prefer the solo buttons over GH's slider.  The slider just isn't implemented well.  Transitioning from the normal buttons to the slider is just terrible and pointless.  You might as well just stay on the buttons the entire time.  However, with RB's solo buttons, I can transfer there and back with ease.  They're smaller, so there's less finger movement, and I can feel where the buttons are when I play.

As for the drums, again, it's a matter of preference.  The kick pedal is far superior in RB, IMO.  I'll give GH credit for having cymbals a part of the base installation, and the pads are quieter, but otherwise I once again prefer the RB drums.
I have the three cymbal expansion for RB, and I love 'em.  It makes it really satisfying to roll the snare, toms, and then finish with a cymbal crash.  Plus in free play, you pretty much have an entire drum kit, so you should be able to play any song you want :)

Vocals... eh whats there to say.  Who plays vocals?

Two strategy games that really hooked me.  One fairly serious, one...not so much.  Final Fantasy Tactics was a game that gradually sucked me in over the hours that I put into it; the story just got more and more complicated up to the epic climax at the end.  Disgaea was a game that I didn't see coming at all.  The wicked sense of humor that I found in the dialogue and story kept me entertained throughout the game to its completion. 

However, One thing that bothered me was whenever you came up against a level that was just too tough, your only alternative was to grind until your characters were tough enough.  This was also true with FFT, but the possibilities that the job classes held was an effective counter to keep me motivatied to grin and bear it.  I wanted to have two ninjas on my team, and I had to work to earn them.  As opposed to Disgaea, where I could have as many fighters as I wanted after I earned them; I just had to work for the mana if I didn't want them all to completely suck.  Sure, there were a few awkward sentences in Tactics, especially when it came to spellcasting, but I always found those to be like unintentional humor.  In the face of all the politcal scheming in the storyline, to see a badly translated sentence was like a reminder that it was still just a game, and not to take it so seriously.  Disgaea started out light-heartedly enough, with quite a few ridiculous episodes that got me to like the characters, but things took a turn for the serious closer and closer to the end, as I suppose that all anime-inspired games tend to do.  It was a little bit of a downer afer all the good laughs that I had beforehand. 

So, while I firmly believe that these are both excellent games, I have to give the win the old-timer, Final Fantasy Tactics.

It's nice to see Harmonix dip back in it's roots a bit :)

Rock Band Unplugged basically borrows the entire gameplay from Amplitude and adds a layer of Rock Band paint.  You control every instrument and jump from track to track.  When you play a couple bars of the instrument flawlessly, it "unlocks" for a few phrases while you immediately jump to the next instrument.  However, key differences leave Amplitude a step above RBU.

The difficulty in Amplitude is far better than RBU.  Both games offer easier levels, but even in Expert mode, RBU still feels pretty easily, espeically to vets of rhythm games.

The soundtrack probably goes to RBU in this comparison, for one simple reason; expandability.  RBU, like it's bigger console brothers, allows you to purchase songs for download onto your memory stick, allowing you to continuously purchase and play music as time moves on.  Amplitude existed in a time when no such feature existed.  Also, RBU features more songs on disc than Amplitude does, though Amplitude features some trance/dance/techno songs that appeal to me, so I still prefer Amplitude's soundtrack.

The gameplay is mostly the same.  However, RBU does a smart choice by forcing you to play an entire solo (for whichever instrument) instead of just playing a couple bars as normal.  Also, you can choose to play just one track the entire song if you so choose.
However, Amplitude allows you to freestyle when you collect a certain power-up.  The freestyler will either let you control a synthesizer or a scratch table for a certain length of time, which allows you to add your own little flavor on a song.

However, Amplitude completely excels in two areas.
Multiplayer doesn't exist in RBU.  There's not much more to say than that, other than it's weird that a game as focused on multiplayer as Rock Band doesn't feature a multiplayer option in it's portable iteration. 
Amplitude, however, features a plethora of multiplayer options, though all are competetive, save for the Remix function.

Oh yeah, and last thing.  Amplitude lets you remix songs in the game!  You can take any song that you've unlocked, and go into a remix mode that allows you to put down your own drum beats, guitar rhythms, synth noises, etc etc.  Back when Amplitude was new and had a crowd, going online and downloading remixes was possibly the best part of the game.  To this day you can still youtube remix videos from this game (and Frequency alike).

RBU is a good distraction for a music lover on the go, but Amplitude just offered so much.

Now that I've finished The Twin Snakes, here's an overall comparison.

The plot, characters, and level design are all almost identical, save for a few inconsequential points. The graphics are definitely prettier in TTS, though they're still not quite up to par with MGS2 or 3. In general, 3D graphics do not age well at all (while I believe that 2D sprites are eternal and can still look nice).

The last MGS game I played before this was MGS3 (haven't played 4 yet), so while the mechanics are still a step behind, it's not as bad as trying to play on the PS1. There are just some things you could do in MGS2 that become natural responses, like diving and shooting in first person and holding up guards. If you try those on the PS1, you're just going to get shot. These mechanical differences may make the game "easier," but I'd rather have smooth and easy over hard and frustrating.

It took me some time to get used to the Gamecube controller; the terrible shoulder and z buttons and the lack of analog buttons made the transition bumpy. I also never had an issue with the trademark MGS overhead camera until now, partially because I got used to being able to move it in MGS3. (And I miss actually being able to hide from guards with things like camouflage... the box never worked in TTS [on Hard].)

The areas are still very much the same, just with a few more details, some cosmetic, others to take advantage of your climbing and hanging abilities. None of it is necessary, but it makes life easier occasionally (there's a way to freeze and heat the key without having to backtrack).

The cinematics have a very actiony, Matrix-y style, which look cool, but many of them are just cheesy and ridiculous. Also, maybe I've been spoiled by more recent games, but I'd rather be in control and have the ability to do crazy things myself. Cutscenes just seem so very 1990's. The portions that really need spicing up don't get it, though; sitting on top of Metal Gear listening to Liquid pontificate still bored me.

TTS does a lot of things right, and in general just makes an awesome game even better. The original is starting to show its age, so if you haven't played MGS, look into The Twin Snakes. It would have been nice to have even more like new weapons (besides the M9 and PSG-1 T), items, and bonuses for collecting dog tags, but in a vacuum, TTS is an excellent version of the game. For those who have played the original, TTS keeps most of the charm, and the improvements to the gameplay make up for what's lost.

Huge win for Scribblenauts for replayability.  Because there are so many items that you can spawn in the game, there are a near infinite number of ways to use them together to solve puzzles or to just goof around with.  Curious Village clearly loses this one because the puzzles in that game have only one solution, so replaying any puzzle just means doing the same exact thing you did before.