If you’ve been waiting for a Mass Effect 3 review, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. It’s a long game and I’m doing what I can to get through it at my own pace. Without spoiling anything, I can say that it’s a quality product, though I’m still debating in my head exactly how good it is and where it stacks up on the pantheon of Mass Effect games.
Do you remember the Gears of War Mad World commercial? Up until that point, the game had been presented as a ‘dudebro’ shooter with all of the emphasis on its revolutionary cover mechanics and stop-and-pop shooting. Then the Mad World commercial hit television and it presented the game as something more emotionally charged. Unfortunately, it was all for the sake of advertising, as none of that Mad World feeling ended up making it into the game. Gears of War 2 sort of tried to capture that, but those few attempts came off as unintentionally funny.
While Marcus and company weave through bombastic firefights and kill all varieties of alien lifeforms in Gears of War 3, it actually manages to capture that Mad World feeling in a number of spots. In one particular case, it literally captures it, but that’s going way into spoiler-territory. Let’s back up and talk about this new, improved and somewhat more emotional Gears of War 3.
If you’ve been holding your a breath for my Gears of War 3 review, you can exhale. No, this isn’t it and no, I’m not close to having one ready. Though my progress through the game was stilted by my practice for T12: Toronto Fighting Game Championships, I’ve now got some time to make progress.
It’s time for Gears of War to finish the fight with the third installment of the series, which hits store shelves today. Will you be running out to stores this week to show those Locusts whose boss?
Vanquish has the dubious distinction of being Gamespot’s 2010 Best Game No One Played. Back when it was released, I paid no mind to it, as I had no interest in a Japanese interpretation of Gears of War and Halo. However, despite my initial disinterest in the game, the general buzz about the game was that it was pretty good. With that in mind, I kept it on my list of games to pick up on the cheap. I was able to do just that a few weeks ago during the big Blockbuster closeout event in my country. Do I recommend you follow suit?
For the first few sections of the game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves made me wonder what all the hype was about. The game starts out with a stealth sequence that I didn’t find very fun to play, followed by a pass through a jungle, which was 95% of the original game. I had high hopes for Uncharted 2 surpassing the good but flawed original, but things did not start off on the right foot for me.
But then you’re running through a city with an armored vehicle trailing close behind you. Then you’re running away from a helicopter. Then you have to escape a collapsing building. From that point on, Uncharted 2 was pretty awesome.
Uncharted 2 was the main reason I picked up a PlayStation 3. Based on everything I saw and heard about this game, this was one of those games that I could not miss. Before I got around to this though, I decided to play Uncharted 1, which was really good, but flawed on a number of levels. If Uncharted 2 were to really live up to the hype for me, it would have a lot of obstacles to overcome that soured me on the first game.
As I watched my girlfriend shoot up dozens of terrorists in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, I longed to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t feature local co-op, which is par for the course for this style of game. Instead, I picked up my own copy and we recently had the opportunity to play online co-op together. Without spoiling anything (as if anyone cares about the ‘amazing’ story contained in this game) we started playing at the point just before you fight a helicopter, and ended our session just after we shot down the third helicopter. Yes, that plays out as ridiculous as it sounds.
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During a time of economic instability, relatively high prices for new games and a number of high-quality games to choose from all major platforms, the market doesn’t really show much love to decent or middle of the road games. You can be an avid gamer on any system and own 30 games; all of which are AAA titles. If a game is not on the level of a Modern Warfare 2 or Halo, gamers nowadays with discriminating wallets can easily leave your game to rot in the bargain bin.
Stranglehold was one of Midway’s last attempts at creating a AAA title. It featured fast-paced third-person shooting, was inspired by John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” and even starred Jet Li as the protagonist. However, in a market crowded with great shooting games, not even John Woo and Jet Li could save Stranglehold from being a mediocre game at best and a sales flop.
In spite of its shortcomings, my experience so far with Stranglehold gives me the impression that this is a pretty decent video game equivalent to a B-movie. It has its flaws, but for the right person at the right price it could still be a good time.
When this game first came out in January, the Internet buzz surrounding Mass Effect 2 was insane. People were hailing this as the game of the year 2010, regardless of what else was to come out in the next 11 months. I got so caught up in the Mass Effect 2 that I went out and bought Mass Effect 1 and beat it just so that I could get the full Mass Effect 2 experience.
Mass Effect 1 rocked my socks pretty hard. If it weren’t for a few excessive RPG elements and technical issues, it could have been right near the top of my unofficial “best games I’ve ever played” list. With such lofty expectations built up for this game, did they live up to them?
Yes. Yes they did.
In Third Person 