Not too long ago, I played through Lollipop Chainsaw. It was mediocre at best, but its humour and short length offset its failings just enough for me to play it through to completion. While Bayonetta in many respects is a better game, I don’t think I’ll ever get past its halfway point. What gives?
As a mostly independent games writer, I don’t play much in the way of bad games. I generally play what I want and leave it at that. Because of this, I usually do not award games with the title of worst game of the year.
With that said, I did play at least one terrible game. One that was critically panned. One that hurt my soul as I played through it to completion. I normally don’t do this, but this title is definitely deserving of In Third Person’s worst.
Will the real sequel to Assassin’s Creed II please stand up?
As much as I enjoyed Brotherhood (and despised Revelations), they are essentially Champion Edition and Turbo sequels. Their innovations were minimal and their overall impact to the bigger story was inconsequential. Case in point, the start of Assassin’s Creed III make virtually zero reference to Ezio’s later adventures.
Now that ACIII is here, is it the leap forward we’ve been hoping for all along?
Immediately continuing where God of War II left off, Kratos finds himself riding a titan as they venture together to the top of Mount Olympus to give Zeus a cold serving of revenge. I had some concerns going into God of War III, because the tried-and-true God of War formula got stale to me towards the end of God of War II. However, the start of God of War III turns the formula on its head with one of the best opening sequences I’ve ever played in a video game, as it has you fighting while on top of the titan as it’s trying to climb the mountain. It’s so wildly creative, violent and downright fun to play, that I would imagine this being better than most ending sequences in video games. As I was playing through this, I kept asking myself, “How does the game keep this momentum up from here?”
Asura’s Wrath suffers from a problem that exists outside of the game itself. It’s a problem that has divided the critics. A problem that factored into the game’s poor sales. A problem that Capcom probably could have addressed with better marketing. Granted, this was never expected to sell like Call of Duty, but I feel like Capcom did this game a disservice by not emphasizing the game’s biggest strength…which is also its biggest weakness.
Save for the most recent installment, the modern-day Ninja Gaiden series has been held in high regard among critics and the gaming populous. Despite the positive word-of-mouth, I hadn’t played a Ninja Gaiden game since the Ninja Gaiden II on the NES. I’ll never forget how brutally hard the NES games were, and I heard the new games were equally challenging. As someone who isn’t much of a masochist when it comes to video games, this just didn’t sound like something up my alley.
However, when I came across Ninja Gaiden II for dirt cheap at a Blockbuster closing down sale, I decided to outside of my comfort zone to give this one a shot.
Watching franchise fatigue set into a franchise you love can be heartbreaking. Sometimes, this process can happen in a very short amount of time; should a publisher try and cash-in on a franchise as fast as they can while it’s still hot without keeping the formula fresh. The most obvious examples of franchise fatigue from this generation are Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.
If my early impressions of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (the third main-line Assassin’s Creed game in three years) are to be used as a gauge, then franchise fatigue is clearly starting to seep in.
Back in 2009, Uncharted 2 was a groundbreaking game. When I think about that game in retrospect, I think fondly about the great characters, the great story and those incredible setpieces. I still get the chills thinking about playing through that moment in the collapsing building and the train sequence. It wasn’t a perfect game, but it was definitely ahead of it’s time. Even in 2011, there isn’t really another game out there like it.
Well, there wasn’t anything like it until the release of Uncharted 3 a few weeks ago. For better or worse, Uncharted 3 is essentially more Uncharted 2 and not much beyond that. That can’t be a bad thing, can it?
Yesterday, I picked up my copy of Uncharted 3, the biggest PlayStation 3 exclusive title this year. I have not had a chance to play it yet, but for sure I will be zoning out and playing a bunch of it today. As a huge fan of Uncharted 2, I can’t wait to jump back into the shoes of Nathan Drake and take on whatever may come my way.
Of course, a review will be on the way once I’ve played enough of it. For the time being, feel free to check out all of the other great content on In Third Person, or leave me a comment about Uncharted 3 or whatever you may feel like talking about.
With high expectations behind it, it wouldn’t be difficult for the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum to fall short. If anything, it would be easier for Rocksteady to fall short with the sequel than it would be to equal or surpass the original. Arkham Asylum was a fantastic (and arguably revolutionary) game for its time. To this day, I’ll still gush over how amazing that game was (and still is).
Now that the groundwork is set, let’s talk about what people really want to know. Riddle me this, riddle me that, is Batman: Arkham City really all that?
In Third Person 