I have picked a few games I have been playing recently, and am going to share with you, my loyal audience, what I thought of them. These are going to be quick and dirty reviews, for no other purpose than that I want to refrain myself from becoming too long winded in expressing my opinion.Marianne would probably say that I should try that not only in this article, but also in regular conversations. Alas, I have yet to unlock that achievement.
By the way, you'll note from the platforms I played these games on, that I am firmly rooted in Microsoft's core audience: the thirty-something hard core gamer.
A fact I'd probably should not repeat outside of these pages.
Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)
Good: The AC engine is beautiful to look at and controls wonderfully.
Bad: They try to obscure a lack of content by adding a plethora of repetetive side-missions.
Ugly: 1) "Interactive" cutscenes with way too much plot exposition 2) The plot
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Good: The ME engine is beautiful to look at.
Bad: Turn on auto-leveling and the game becomes Gears of War with a better story and a sub-par shoot / cover system.
Ugly: Inventory system makes baby jesus cry.
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Nintendo Wii)
Good: Coop mode!
Bad: Everything that sucked storywise over the course of the entire franchise is now yours to own in one game.
Ugly: Shake-your-Wiimote-to-dodge-the-next-killing-blow is b-r-o-k-e-n
Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
Good: More master Chief! More incredibly well-designed shooting action! Four player coop! Forge!
Bad: It's not the end of the series (DUH!)
Ugly: They should have retained the simple elegance of the story present in Halo 1: as it is, I don't understand jack about what's going on anymore. The excellent books written by Eric Nylund shame Halo 3's storyline.
Bioshock (Xbox 360)
Good: Steampunk meets Stanley Kubrick's The Shining? Weeeeeeeeeeee!
Bad: Carefully crafted and scripted events are absent from the latter part of the game, replaced by an uninspired endboss battle.
Ugly: The much heralded and advertised freedom to do anything, behave any way you want boils down to Light Side / Dark Side choices and 2 corresponding endings. So last gen!
Stranglehold (Xbox 360)
Good: It's Max Payne starring Chow Yun Fat.
Bad: The destroy-the-environment-to-take-out-enemies mechanic largely disappears after the first level of the game. That's right, the demo level that was on XBLA...Hmmmmm...
Ugly: It's Max Payne starring Chow Yun Fat.
3 comments:
Hey Jesse, I agree on your comments on those games. You'd think things like that would be properly done. But as big as the gaming industry got over the past eight years, there's still some folk not entirely up to speed on proper gameplay.
Nice to have found your blog, by the way. We used to work in the same building back in 2003. I was that student that got hired to do network/system administration for Lanestate, back then.
I think you were working on Alpha Black Zero at the time.
I worked on Alpha Black Zero, and EuroCops and The Chronicles of Spellborn afterwards.
Sold my part of Khaeon more than a year ago and now I am producer on some cool console titles :)
Cool to hear from you again :)
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