Reviews upcoming

I figured it’d be easier for me to manage some reviews if I made a list, so here it is.

Upcoming reviews:

Rock Band
Assassin’s Creed
NHL 2k8
Resistence: Fall of Man

And a few more I can’t recall. Keep checking back!

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune review

I won’t lie; I haven’t played an action-adventure-platform game in quite some time, much less a decent one. In fact, I think the most enjoyable one I’ve played last was either the lastest Tomb Raider, or, more surely, Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, mind you.

Yes, it’s been a while.

Which, I suppose, is the sole reason I’m always apprehensive about picking up a game from this genre: there’s just so much out there that sucks that it’s disheartening to plod through another boring, disappointing game whose progression relies solely on shoot-shoot-shoot-dodge-jump, rewarding you with the next scene of some ancient Indian treasure. Woopty smack.

The refreshing thing about Uncharted, however, is that it does follow the traditional platformer-formula, and it follows it well. It also, believe it or not, posesses a story, something that usually helps people enjoy your game. As seemingly simple as the story sounds (The protagonist is allegedly a direct-descendent of Sir Francis Drake, following clue-after-clue in a wild goose chase for the fabled El Dorado), the pacing of the game — short, almost choppy, missions that work exceedingly well in conjunction with the action-adventure aspect of the game. There are very few times where you sit around, aimlessly wandering or jumping platforms and shimmying over ledges to get past obstacles to be greeted by a lengthier jump-and-shimmy combo. Most platforming is short and sweet, getting you quickly from point A to B, to battle more enemies, then lets you move from B to C. Here, you’ll either get a story scene or end of chapter.

It’s broken up in such a way that made reading The DaVinci Code enjoyable; everything was broken up into such small, nice pieces that you can digest as you choose and at your own pace.

While a majority of the game is great, there are a few snags that pull at me — there is an amazing lack of weapon variety in the game, especially when it comes to weapon effectiveness in certain situations; for most, using the simple handgun proves to be the greatest ally as it is very accurate and go dispose of an enemy, regardless of distance, in one headshot.

There’s also a twist towards the end of the game that, while it makes complete sense with the story of the game, just feels strangely out of place, almost to the point of ruining the game had the twist not been near the end of the game.

Bottom Line: Uncharted is the best exclusive game currently on the PlayStation 3. A great story with great pacing and solid platforming provide no reason not even to give this game a rental at the absolute least. The only downsides are the plot twist, lack of weaponry and length. As soon as the game starts getting in its groove — things start to end, which is a shame.

I can’t wait for the sequel.

Rating: 85%

Promises!

So, seriously. I promise — reviews, updates and such coming soon.

I am, however, currently entrenched in my guiltiest pleasure — Gilmore Girls.

Yes, the wife’s copies of the first three seasons sit somewhere near my copies of movies like The Wedding Singer, Final Fantasy: Advent Children, A Scanner Darkly and Orgazmo.

I picked up NHL 2k8 and Resistence: Fall of Man the other day at BlockBuster, expect something on them sometime short.  

Coming soon!

Throw in marriage, moving and family holidays and you’ll find that all of your free time simply vanishes.

But, in lieu of my great unemployment, I’ve been playing a lot of games, especially for my our new PlayStation 3.

So far under my belt, I’ve beaten Uncharted and Stuntman: Ignition, given up on Heavenly Sword, own both Rock Band and Assassin’s Creed and I’m currently stumbling around on-line getting killed a lot in Warhawk. And with a weekend ahead of me, I’m looking to review all but Warhawk, and maybe even do an extensive write-up on Tabula Rasa, since everyone else is doing it.

Kane & Lynch review

Good: Fairly fast pacing through most of the levels; each level different enough from the others to keep the game interesting; shooting is not perfectly accurate (as it should not be); no disney-esque ending

Bad: Interesting concept (duality between Kane and Lynch) never really fully fleshed out; gameplay does get redudant after a while; fairly short

The long: While Kane & Lynch delivers a startling fresh idea (allowing the gamer to ‘nearly’ play two characters at once and develop simultaneously, the game never really fleshes out the concept. The game could’ve been a charm had it, at some point, branched out between the paths of being Kane or Lynch, giving you the choice of seeing one backstory versus another.

The game itself is a fairly fun, no-holds barred, typical gunfest, where you are driven, as Kane, to save your daughter and wife. The concept is rather vanilla, but the game does hold its merit in the way you go about trying to save them, hitting up people from the past and looking for clues–one level has you goign through a busy nightclub to get to the owner, another has you repelling down the front of a skyscraper, bombing out a window and raiding the building.

And short: Kane & Lynch delivers some interesting concepts that deliver a little more than half-heartedly. It’s an above-average game that you won’t feel bad about tearing through in a day or two.

Score: 70%

Wonder if they got fired…

The image above is a screenshot that I took when I noticed something interesting–if you click on the image, it’ll take you to a bigger picture. If you look closely, on the right pane of the ‘Games’ folder in Windows Vista, many games (as long as the installation package installed the game and corresponding shortcut) will show the game’s required/recommended game rating in comparison to your system’s rating, in addition to the actual ESRB rating.

For those playing at home, you’ll see that Unreal Tournament 3 has earned an ESRB rating of E, meaing the game possesses “content that may be suitable for ages 3 and older. Contains no material that parents would find inappropriate.”

Looks like my copy of UT3 has me shooting rainbows and unicorn giggles isntead of rockets and flak shells.