It’s really hard for me to write a fair review about this game, given my slightly biased feelings towards the Portal series. I will try to point out a few differences between Portal 1 and Portal 2 instead of rabidly raving about how much I loved this game. By the way, this post is more of a discussion about mechanics than anything else. I will try not to discuss the plot or include any spoilers, but I do slip on occasion. So, you have been warned.

Portal 2 is the first full-fledged, full-length single player campaign that we have received Valve since Half-Life 2 if you exclude episodic content (and the first Portal, since it wasn’t technically full-length). It is roughly twice as long as the first game, at about 8 or 9 hours for the single player campaign and about 5 hours for the co-op campaign. It is just long enough to deliver a complete story and a fantastic ending without getting too old or repetitive. Portal 2 is still at heart a puzzle game, but has much more of a narrative experience this time around. Each character is masterfully characterized and played out by a very talented cast of actors, from GLaDOS’ palpable passive aggressive annoyance to Wheatley’s humorous quips. I would be hard pressed to find a game with funnier or better dialogue. Being a direct sequel, the game loses a little bit of it’s charm, to some extent at least. It does not have as much of a wow factor because it’s not a new face; Players are familiar with the Portal mechanic and the overall feel of the series. Though fantastically paced as it may be, Portal 2 also settles into a rhythm: Enter a chamber, listen to a sarcastic AI quip, solve  the puzzle, exit the chamber, listen to another quip. I think that it is a game designed to be savored: Don’t just rush through it in one sitting.

The Source engine isn’t going to win any beauty contests nowadays, but it has held up remarkably well over the years, and is a fitting match to the Portal universe’s austere test chambers and degenerating building infrastructures. The texturing and shadowing are both well done and amazingly detailed. Also as always, Portal 2’s art direction and level design are top notch.

Portal 2’s difficulty doesn’t escalate as much. There were less twitch-based puzzle solutions this time around (mid-air rapid portal placement, and stuff like that). It feels more like a collection of different types of puzzles. I like the new mechanics and feel that just the right balance of newness was added, to keep the game fresh without creating giant clusterfuck puzzle rooms. The speed gel/bouncy gel courses were particularly fun. Also, this item was mentioned on a couple of other blogs but: There aren’t as many white panels in Portal 2, making proper placement fairly obvious in many cases. The first thing that I would do in a new room was to search for white panels. It seems to be very much a game of observation, both plot and puzzle wise. So the big question: Do any of the changes really detract from the game as a whole? No, they do not. It’s a bit different than what we are used to, but necessarily in a negative way. Portal 2 is easily the best game that I have played in quite a while.

PS: Co-op is amazing.

At first, I didn’t have that much interest invested into Crysis 2. But, it seemed somehow wrong to purchase a shiny new video card and not buy the premier game for shiny new graphics. This entry was originally just going to be a short afterthought on the game, but I found myself enjoying it much more than I had expected; So there you go. Now, keep in mind that I have not played the first Crysis game beyond what was included in the demo. Even so, all I really did was run around punching chickens. Crysis 2: Y U NO AUTOSAVE?? Seriously.

Crysis 2 is a good shooter. If you like first person shooters and don’t mind spending a bit of cash, you may as well buy it. The multi-player component is a blast and it has a solid campaign of a reasonable length (in other words, it’s not pulling a 4 hour CoD special). If you don’t enjoy FPSs well, this game probably won’t change your mind. The overarching story is decent, but it’s not a literary masterpiece and the voice acting/dialogue was tolerable at best. I wouldn’t say that any of the characters or story elements were particularly engaging or memorable. It’s not a bad story per se, it’s just that the pacing and execution feel fragmented: There were many chapters that didn’t stitch together well or were segued with a cheap loading cut-scene. There were also way too many, “suit is failing, Alcatraz is half dead, load new area, wake up and start shooting” sequences. I swear that happened at the end of every major plot element.

Crysis 2’s gameplay is very flexible; I wasn’t expecting that to be the case and was pleasantly surprised. If you want to pick people off with a sniper rifle while safely tucked away, you can. if you want to stealth around and stabify enemies in the neck, you can. If you want to go balls out shoot-em-up style, you sure can. And, if you want to just throw shit at people with super strength, you can do that as well. There are a lot of options. My personal preference tends to lean on the sneak and snipe side of life; so I always appreciate first person shooters that offer a comprehensive stealth experience, since they seem to be few and far between.

All of your abilities draw from the same power source: Your suit. You may swap between different gameplay “modes” as they are all tied into nanosuit abilities. You have enough energy to do quite a bit, but it’s still very finite. If you move around too much while stealth, your energy will deplete fairly rapidly. The same is true if you get shot up too much while in armor mode and so forth. It forces you to analyze the situation and think about your next course of action. There’ seven a tactical view display that will display various options that are available to you.

The graphics on the PC version, obviously, look pretty kick ass. If you like this genre, have a PC that can run high end games and have even an inkling of an interest, just buy this game now and play it before the graphics go out of style in a couple of months. It looks great and it’s fun. I will admit that a not-insignificant portion of my enjoyment came from gawking at how good it looks. It’s not even the graphics too: The environments are amazingly vibrant and detailed. Crysis 2 is a linear game but, there’s enough of an exploration element where I didn’t feel trapped on a rail.

The downside is that, there  are a tragically limited number of things that you can configure from the options menu. What the fuck. All graphics options are limited to one slider. If I am playing on my computer, I want the ability to fine tune the game’s graphical settings from within the game client itself. I shouldn’t have to resort to editing config files just to enable/disable shading and fov options. Not cool. Also, the DX11 carrot keeps being dangled every other day. I know that a patch is being promised, but I haven’t seen it yet. So, I guess I will have to wait.

I like Dragon Age’s flavor: It’s high fantasy, but it has a small twist. Dwarves aren’t your run of the mill tolkienesque dwarves (I mean, some of them lack beards!) and the elves as a whole aren’t your standard tall graceful mystically superior race. It has a slightly unique feel not usually found in fantasy genres and I like that. But that said, most people have been fairly divisive regarding Dragon Age II to say the least. Honestly, I don’t think that it is as good as it’s predecessor, Dragon Age: Origins, but it’s still a good game. So if you are passing it up because of the negative reception, you are missing out on a good RPG.

BioWare’s saving grace has always been the quality of their writing and acting; Dragon Age II is no exceptions. They once again present to us, a fascinating tale of political intrigue. It is different though and feels less epic than its predecessor Dragon Age: Origins. DA II is a character based story. The plot isn’t about saving the world, it’s about one man (or woman), his life, the lives he touches and the impact that he has on a touchy sociopolitical situation. I really like character pieces so I appreciate Dragon Age II for what it is. But that said, for the a character based game, there are grossly fewer character interaction opportunities in comparison to Origins and character development suffers because of this. My favorite quests were the character stories, I would have loved more of those.

Overall pacing feels off as well. The first act is too drawn out, it takes way too drawn out; It takes too long to get into the meat of the story. Until you acquire enough capital to move to the next part of Act I, it’s just random quest after random quest. the acts also do not seem to piece together all that well. Much of the story feels disjointed, especially the Qunari storyline, which was neat but I’m not 100% certain how it meshes in with the overall plot. Is there an overall plot besides the life and times of Hawke?

The entire game for better of for worse occurs within one, albeit large city, so the number of locations that you are able to visit are pretty limited. Kirkwall is an interesting location and an appropriate one given the context of the story but if you are expecting a tale spanning continents, you will probably be disappointed. Also,the city of Kirkwall doesn’t really change all that much between the three acts. It’s somewhat awkward watching Hawke seemingly change, but the background remaining exactly the same. I could have really done without the cut-and-paste scenery though. Really BioWare? Literally every single cave and every single building interior looks exactly the same, down to the layout and everything.

Yes, the combat pacing has been sped up. I’m not sure what so many people have been criticizing it so much, it feels fine to me. My only real gripe is that the camera is very restrictive this time around. You can’t place it into a full birds-eye view, which makes dragging and repositioning party members around or just getting a general tactical view of unit positioning a pain in the ass. I am also not a huge fan of the random waves of random enemies popping in at semi-predictable locations (big empty area with crates = random battle time). Can we do away with this sort of thing BioWare? It’s been in everyone on of your games…

For all of its faults, and there were quite a few this time around, Dragon Age II is a compelling story and a blast to play. It’s worth buying, or at least waiting until it’s on sale on Steam.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is to Assassin’s Creed II as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is to Grand Theft Auto: III. That is, better and more polished in almost every way, but not a true successor to the series and not different enough to be considered one in any sense. It lays somewhere between an expansion pack and a sequel; Suffering from the middle child syndrome to some extent. Assassin’s Creed II was a huge leap in improvement over Assassin’s Creed I. Brotherhood doesn’t provide nearly that degree of improvement, but it layers additional polish to an already polished series, adding a new single player story as well as multiplayer action.

Assassin’s Creed II was an epic story spanning several decades. Brotherhood, being more condensed, does not have that degree of narrative impact but is still a good story (even though some of the plot missions feel a bit scatterbrained). I am also finding that I enjoy the side missions quite a bit. They are plentiful without feeling spread too thin, disjointed, or distracting from the main story (like GTA, I’ve only managed to finish one of those games, got bored with the rest). Rebuild your assassin empire one citizen at a time and kick back as a team of hand trained minions duke it out with a hoard of guards at your pleasure; It is a surprisingly satisfying experience. On the other hand, it feels a bit inconsequential. Level up the assassins and use them, or don’t. I don’t think it matters plot wise.

Combat is still way too counter heavy, but an execution streak system has been added: While executing your current target, you can continue a one hit kill streak by quickly selecting a close enemy with the left analog stick and hitting the square button. Though it’s more fluid, much of the combat still consists of mashing the X button while waiting for opportunities to counter attack. Even so, attacks a bit more diverse and there are a wider variety of weapons: From poisoned darts, to large two-handers to crossbow. Each weapon has it’s own flair. It’s not a huge combat improvement, but still an improvement nonetheless and most importantly, still very fun.

But you know what? I really like the Assassin’s Creed series, a lot. The overarching plot is a bit ludicrous, but I love the gameplay and there has been a notable and steady improvement with every title. I love the blend of fictionalized history with a science fiction edge. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood picks up literally right where Assassin’s Creed II left off (and in those few moments between games Ezio has managed to grow a beard?). If you haven’t played the second game, Brotherhood will make little to non sense. Similarly, if for whatever Godforsaken reason you did not enjoy the second game, Brotherhood won’t change your mind because it’s very similar. Highly recommended. Go stabify people.

…I am still convinced that Leonardo is mad at me. I can see the disappointment in his eyes, even after all these years (or months?). I would have bro hugged you if I had known 🙁

I better post this before I disappear into the world of Minecraft again. Sorry, did a pretty shoddy proofing reading and editing job, even for me. I was looking for a new console game to fix on a few weeks back and ended up purchasing Uncharted 2. TL;DR, it’s really fun, go buy/rent it. I really didn’t know what to expect from this game, it was a title that I have heard of multiple times, heard that it was fantastic, but just blew off because of a time constraint or general lack of interest. More specifically, at the time it seemed like a generic action game, in that it didn’t fill one of my fantasy/sci-fi weakness niches so I passed on it.

In some sense, it is a generic action game: Nathan Drake, from a design standpoint is such a normal character. He’s un-noteworthy to a point: He doesn’t have an eye-patch, a mechanical arm or super powers. There’s not a whole lot that stands out about him on a surface perspective, which is what I think makes him a great character. There’s no gimmick or “miracle.”  Nathan Drake and the cast of Uncharted 2 are believable characters to the extent that I think players get the feeling that if they were a little more athletic and well studied, they too could climb walls and partake in wonderful adventures. It creates a connection rarely seen in a game nowadays.

Uncharted 2 is cinematic. It plays out like an interactive movie, which in game speak translates to a well paced plot-based linear title. The action scenes are artfully scripted, the dialogue is well placed and well written, and the cutscenes are plentiful, but well done and don’t overstay their welcome. In fact, many could have been cutscenes were replaced by (for lack of a better term) playable scenes.

Uncharted 2’s gameplay is pretty standard fair in terms of action games. Much of the gameplay reminds me of Assassin’s Creed in the, climbing around and jumping on things sense (but without the sandbox element). The free running and climbing is very fluid if not a bit obvious, since much of it consists of searching for conspicuous bricks and ledges sticking out from walls, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it feels very very similar control wise, so having played Assassin’s Creed not so long ago, there wasn’t really a learning curve which is nice (because apparently, my game attention span has shrunk).

The camera angles are very deliberate; it’s like a movie and its director: We are supposed to experience certain scenes from a certain angle. It works well for the story and the game’s atmosphere at a small sacrifice to gameplay (in my opinion at least). Any time a game takes control of the camera, console games especially, awkward control situations are created. For example: At one point a truck is chasing you. the camera pans around to a full frontal shot so that Drake is running towards you with the truck speeding after him in the background. You are supposed to run and gun, but which way do you  hold the stick? Are the controls reversed because the camera is reversed? The point of reference tends to change with some frequency and that just feels really really odd to me as a primary PC gamer. It’s not that big of a deal, but camera antics are a personal pet peeve.

The combat felt a little weak for an action title. Aiming and targetting is a little cludgy and the cover system doesn’t feel as natural as it should. Much of the ranged combat also felt somewhat off. I mean, in what magical land, real life, gaming or otherwise are headshots not insta-kills? Did they just not register or do they really take two or three headshots to go down. Awkward. Uncharted 2 also suffers from Obvious Level Design Syndrome, though to a pretty minor extent: You walk into a large round room with boxes and other low cover walls strewn about. There are two doors off on the opposite side. What are the odds that a swarm of enemies are about to rush?

Even so, the combat system is fun and doesn’t feel like a chore. You have the option of sneaking up and stealth killing an enemy, going balls out and rushing, taking a cautious ranged approach or any number of strategies. There are a surprising number of combat options depending on both level and weapons available. One method might work well for one particular scene whereas poorly in another.

I, being a primary PC gamer am usually poo-poo about console graphics, but I was legitimately impressed with Uncharted 2, specifically its color palette. This game is notably color. As in, a game that actually achieves a realistic graphical design (as opposed to cartoony or abstract) while using colors extended beyond shades of brown and browner. Amidst, drably designed “modern” games, Uncharted 2 is a shining jewel. Seriously, it’s vibrant.

Uncharted is a visual treat. The environment is lush, detailed and quite varied; Ranging from jungles, to temples, to snowy mountains. The shadowing is gorgeous and the visual design is pleasing. There were a couple occasions in which I hit an invisible wall, but not many. The game boundaries and level flow are presented naturally enough not to notice. Nothing breaks immersion more than a game element sticking out like a sore thumb. Speaking of which, instead of having a giant bar across the screen, color is also used to indicate Drake’s health level. As he takes dangerous amounts of damage, the game’s color saturation will fade, when you are about to die it’s black and white.

Uncharted 2 isn’t the most original game. It’s one part Indiana Jones and one part Tomb Raider, mashed together in cinematic video game form. It also doesn’t excel in any particular area (though as mentioned before, the graphics are very impressive). What it does provide though, are a variety of experiences neatly tied together in a package that has been polished to a mirror shine. It’s the kind of game that will make you wonder why other similar games aren’t as fun and polished. Well worth buying.

I lament, often on an almost daily basis about the lack of co-op support in our modern gaming society. So lo and behold what do the Valve Gods gift us with? An up to 4-player co-op game for free! Alien Swarm was originally an Unreal Tournament mod released in 2004. This release was actually developed by the original team after they had been scooped up by Valve (according to Wikipedia). It’s a top down 3rd person shooter with a sci-fi flavor. There’s not a whole lot in terms of plot, but that is not important. The only facts that need be known are that there are waves of aliens to kill on a space ship with your real life buddies.

You have a choice between four different classes and eight unique characters. Each player gets to choose a main and secondary item. You have 40 to choose from, they range from rifles, shotguns, sentry guns, to health and ammo packs. Most of the items are unlocked via a horizontal leveling system as in, you get more items at each level not better. Each class also has a unique class item. With two people playing co-op it took a bit of strategy in terms of what to pick. We had two people total playing last night and it took a bit of trial and error to figure out what worked for us.

Alien Swarm is a very nice looking game. The texturing is very nice, shadowing is very nice, the lighting is very nice. If there’s one thing that the Steam engine has always been good at it’s scalable graphical output per performance. Even with the graphics turned up to high and with the nice particle effects, I didn’t notice any slowdown or frame drop at all, no many how many mobs were on the screen. I will include a couple of screenshots at the bottom of this post so that you all can judge yourselves. If anyone wants video, I am sure that by now hundreds have been posted on YouTube.

The interface is for the most part very nice with a plethora of nice Steam touches: Steam stats, achievements, integrated voice chat, the ability to doodle on the map, etc. A few of the interface elements are confusing though. I feel as if there is probably a better way to handle the ammo and health notifications. Reloading confused me for a bit since you have to continuously glance down at the corner of the screen. There’s also little notification as to when you are reloading save for a small animation. I suppose I should know better. I mean, the party bars at the bottom are laid out in a WoW like fashion.

The controls are fairly straightforward: It’s a dual stick shooter. WASD for movement and mouse for aiming and shooting. Most of the weapon options are introduced as you play the game, though you may want to glance at them for reference. The keybindings are by default setup oddly. A few of them weren’t intuitive to how I usually bind things. It’s not that big of a deal, you just may want to check on all of the keybinding settings before jumping online to play.

Alien Swarm is short: It is one campaign with six levels. But fear not. Conveniently enough, the SDK was also released with the game so hopefully it won’t take people too long to jump on the player generated content bandwagon. Valve provided a sturdy foundation from which to build from; The rest is now up to us. Either way it’s not like one could complain too much, being completely free and all. Pick Alien Swarm up, grab a friend or three and play it. It’s fun and you have absolutely nothing to lose.