From time to time, I send my friends short-to-longish reviews of games I have recently finished while passing time in Iraq. What started as small blurbs have gestated into anything from concise praise to bizarre profanity-laced rants. Here are several samples. They seem to like them, I hope you do as well.

Winter 2009

(Today's ratings are in honor of Chris Rock's superb documentary Good Hair--worth watching if only to hear Al Sharpton's story about James Brown convincing him to relax his hair when they went to meet Ronald Regan while getting MLK's birthday granted a national holiday--and the "Hair Battles", dear lord.)

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time--Sublime. There really is no better word for a series that continues to do great things in new and inventive ways. Had I started my odyssey with the first R&C I'm sure I would be tired of the formula by now, but as this is only my second go round the new has yet to wear off. The story continues the cliffhanger from the last game, with Ratchet on his own and Clank kidnapped by Dr. Nefarious. It's serviceable enough, although not quite as funny as the previous installment. There are chuckles here and there, but less so from the writing and moreso from small touches elsewhere. (A good example: the 1812 overture starts playing if you fire the Ryno V for more than a few seconds)

All the solid platforming has returned, including standard story sequences and new Mario Galaxy-esque planetoid challenges. Clank has his own storyline for most of the game and it contains the best new addition to the franchise--puzzles where you have to make copies of yourself to complete them. I could have honestly played an entire game of these, but as this is Insomniac they know not to overstay their welcome. Most importantly, these challenges give the game a wonderful sense of pacing as the platform/shooter elements could have grated after a while had they not been broken up with the puzzle sequences. The graphics are phenomenal as always, but it was with great sadness that I learned Insomniac were giving up the ghost on 60 FPS after this game. I know it's a small matter, but I still believe a fast framerate means something. The smoothness of faster framerates gives everything a much more fluid appearance and lends itself to a more dynamic feel. I don't believe that Wipeout HD, Modern Warfare 2, or Forza 3 would have anywhere near the same effect visually if they had slower framerates, but alas it's something that seems to be falling out of vogue these days. All in all, a solid game of the year contender were it not sandwiched in with so many great games.

Rating: Shaft's Afro (Classic, yet still stunning)

 

Dragon Age: Origins--Oh Bioware, where to begin? Those crazy fellas have churned out yet another RPG. In the past the Bioware name has been a mark of almost indelible quality with titles like Mass Effect, KOTOR, and Baldur's Gate. Unfortunately, they have returned to the fantasy trough with Dragon Age.

I have quibbles with the game that I will address later, but first I have to ask: Why? You've already put out a few classic and semi-classic fantasy RPG's. Why go back all these years later when you've managed to get out of the elves and orcs ghetto? It's these tired tropes that are the failing of Dragon Age. The basic model is the same: get quests, go to dungeon, loot corpses. I am fine with this, but what I am not fine with are people heralding the "gripping story" or "incredible world". These are not incredible worlds people--you've seen them 8 or 9 million times before. I'm actually surprised Blizzard isn't suing their pants off as the dwarven city "Orzammar" is an almost pixel-perfect rip-off of Iron Forge from WOW. Oh, I forgot--they made elves second-class citizens. That's it, there's your "new" people. Truly gripping stuff.

There has also been much hullaballoo about how your decisions affect things that happen later in the game. During my playthrough exactly one thing was affected--a guy I saved early in the game stopped by to tell me he was writing a book about my exploits. Groundbreaking. The combat system is wonky, and has a steep learning curve. I've heard it is easier manage on PC, but I was able to get by just fine. My problem was with the difficulty. I am by no means a babe in the woods when it comes to these games, but I was saving every time I turned a corner since anything and everything can kill you almost immediately once you get past the first ten or so hours. After the seven or eight hundreth time I had been frozen by mages and hacked to pieces in a matter of seconds, I finally dropped the difficulty down to casual. It is my understanding that they have actually patched the game to adjust the difficulty now, but honestly--how did this make it out of play testing? It's fine and dandy if you want to play it on the hardest difficulty, but if someone who has been playing these games for 20 years finds it incredibly frustrating on "normal" it's probably a smidge too difficult. That said, even on casual I ended up having to drop back and play my healer when I fought large bosses as it was otherwise impossible. (Side note: there are extensive tactics routines that you can program your NPCs with to solve this dilemma if you feel like spending hours figuring out how to make it all work--god forbid they give you a tutorial) Let me tell you, nothing is more satisfying than watching health bars drop and casting healing spells from a hundred feet away while the computer fights a dragon.

I can appreciate that years of work and effort went into the multiple stories, mythologies, etc. It's this work that allows multiple playthroughs with tons left to see after you finish. There's only one problem: I don't want to play it again. I finished it and said: "meh". It wasn't horrible. I guess I enjoyed it for the most part, but I just couldn't be bothered to get excited about anything in it. There is nothing here you haven't seen or played in other, better Bioware games.

Rating: Ice Cube's Jheri Curl (cool at the time, but kind of silly now that time has passed)

Spring/Summer 2009

**Infamous**

So, Infamous. What to say? This review is going to be hard since there was a pretty good reason everyone compared Prototype and Infamous. They are incredibly similar in storytelling, setting, pacing, gameplay, etc. But we'll get to comparisons later.

All in all, an incredibly well done game. The story is (mostly) excellent, if not a little predictable at times. The controls are tight and responsive, not unlike Ratchet and Clank in many ways. Infamous is more of a platforming/shooter set in a sandbox environment. The powers are fun and interesting, but end up being somewhat similar to each other due to the fact that they are all electricity based. The targeting can get overwhelming at times since there is no lock on mechanism, especially towards the end of the game when the machine likes to throw 10-20 sharpshooters in a 360 degree arc around you. (Did I mention they shoot very well?) Which brings us to the fanny-tastic autosave system. I have never played an autosave based game that worked as well as this. At no point did I have to complete a three or four minute sequence just to return to the part of the mission where I died. I don't know if I was lucky or it was just saving constantly but usually I started again no less than a minute or less prior to dying, most times I started almost exactly the moment prior. Whatever the reason, others need to take note--this is how it's done. The graphics are mostly excellent. There are quite a few issues with passing through scenery, but the art design is great and overall everything works very well. The side missions are almost all excellent, with enough variety to keep it fresh throughout. There are a few that tend to repeat more than others, but it's rare to get one type so often that you get sick of it. I've got almost nothing bad to say about this game. It's just solid on every conceivable level.

So why aren't I hurling hyperbole right now? Well, it's Prototype honestly. Infamous gets every single thing right that Prototype got wrong--more coherent story, better targeting, better mission variety, and better autosave. But the reason I'm not singing praises is because this game just feels...safe. I hate to say that since it's imaginative and extremely original in many ways. It's completely enjoyable, and I'm happy that I purchased it, but it feels like a base scoring double rather than a home run. Prototype was flawed in many ways, but it was *fucking insane*. The developers came up short, but they were shooting for Alpha Centauri rather than the moon. Infamous is a solid moonshot. The city, enemies, and people are far more detailed, but there are never more than 20-30 of them on the screen at any given time. Compare that to Prototype where hundreds fled or fought at any given time as the city destroyed itself. The powers are cool, with lighting grenades, rockets, storms, etc. Again, compare to the preposterous number and variety of upgrades in Prototype--there were more upgrades for one *type* of weapon in Prototype than there are total in Infamous. Getting around the city is somewhat fun, but you'll get extremely tired of hopping from one ledge to the next to climb (he climbs like a less graceful Altair), and the coolest thing you get to do movement-wise is ride power lines and subway tracks. Again, compare that to running full speed up a 70 story building then vaulting 50 feet in the air and gliding for a quarter of a mile. So the question is, is it better to do a good thing well? Or is it better to do a truly great thing worse? I can't think of more than three things to say negatively about this game. I can think of far more than three negative things to say about Prototype--and yet I just didn't enjoy this as much. Confused? God knows I am. Final verdict--a solid 4.5 / 5

**BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger**

Elements:

1. White haired androgynous male - check
2. Scantily clad brunette with giant hooters and some sort of cute bear on her person - check
3. Waifish girl with high pitched voice and unrequited crush on secondary character - check
4. Completely inscrutable story involving family, betrayal, food, a group of six legendary heroes, and the apocalypse - check
5. A combo system so ridiculous only nerdy 13-37 year olds with no life have any chance of understanding, much less mastering it - check

Answer: A hardcore japanese fighting game!

In this case, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. After putting in an evening's worth of play I figured I would drop some impressions on you fellas as I have nothing much else planned for this evening short of finishing the second season of Prison Break (yes, I have *that* little to do). Just to get it out of the way: I like it. Hell, I like it a lot. It's the kind of thing that used to get released like samples of Tide in your mailbox, but with the advent of 3D fighters has fallen on hard times in the past years. It's very obvious that these guys love the genre, and are desperately trying to keep it alive with something new. I will present a disclaimer though--if you are not a Marvel vs. Capcom (specifically MvC 2) fan you should probably just discount everything I'm about to say. This is not a knuckles brawler, this is a special move brawler, to the degree that it is what differentiates the characters.

You have your standard three attacks (light, medium, and hard), which work to varying degrees, but are mostly there to be used in sequences of combos. What makes BlazBlue so different is that each character has a "drive". The drive is mapped to the A button, and for each character it activates what makes that character different. For instance, the character Ragna steals life with successful attacks, another freezes, one triggers a combo mode. So far, standard stuff right? Okay, would you believe one controls a robot? How about a fighting stick? How about *the wind*? Yes, it's that original. You have your standard special moves with a few characters, but with others shit gets all crazy. I'm talking electric frogs, a move that sends out killer insects every time the other person presses an attack button, a goddamned rip in space time that holds you in place. Strangely enough, it never really feels unbalanced (except for the last boss on HELL difficulty--she makes Seth from SF4 look like Glass Joe) once you get used to it. That very well may be what sinks the game for most people. If you don't spend a good couple of hours playing it, you will be pretty much confused, but somewhere around hour two or three everything starts to make sense, and moreso than making sense, it becomes incredibly fun. Props to the developers for mapping two specials and one super move to the right analog stick on the controller. You can trigger the moves by flicking the stick North, East, or West. You don't have to play with it on, but in the early going it can keep you from just tossing the controller out the window out of frustration.

The game comes with several modes, but the arcade and score attack ones are the only ones that are really necessary. Story mode should be studiously ignored, as it contains exposition that could very well cause you to keel over from either boredom or confusion--whichever sets in first. Which brings us to my recommendation--I honestly don't know. I know I'm glad that *I* bought it, but I couldn't really say for anyone else. We are not really fighting junkies like we used to be, so it's not a must-buy. But it is a top notch 2D fighter, and considering the market could well be the very last *original* one. (I love Street Fighter 4 just like everyone else, but let's not bullshit ourselves--5 new characters and 3D graphics do not a new game make. Sadly Capcom gave that up when they released Street Fighter 3--not Alpha, but 3--to collective crickets) If you're feeling the urge, rent it and see what you think. Otherwise go about your business and hope nothing else gets pushed back to 2010. My rating -- 4 out of 5

**Resident Evil 5 Demo**

So, after hearing the game critics bleat ad nauseam for the past six months about how RE: 5 was the second coming of Jesus, Allah, and Elvis all rolled into one I was excited today as I scanned Kotaku and noticed the demo had come out today. A little history: I enjoyed the first Resident Evil (and RE: 2). It was a different time then, I could accept the wacky puzzles, the counterintuitive controls (shooters by and large didn't exist on PSone), and the weird movement scheme because it did something that no game had done before it: scare me. I got Code Veronica for my Dreamcast but found that as pretty as the game was it just seemed that the gameplay was stuck in 1996. After that I lost interest. Then a few years back a good friend of mine (and a Czech bastard) proceeded to proclaim that Resident Evil 4 was the equivalent of coitus with Angelina Jolie whilst drinking my favorite beverage on a big pile of more Angelina Jolies. I bought it, I tried it, and my only reaction was "huh"? True enough it was very pretty, and they had loosened up their miserly ammo policies, but by and large it was exactly the same game I had played so many moons ago. (Oh, except for Quick time button mashing events--which while we are on the subject should never ever ever ever ever be a feature in any game until a horse on a pale rider saunters past my window)

So, today I excitedly watched the progress bar grow with just a twinge of trepidation as I have been burned before by this series. But then I realized I was in the clear as there is not one person on *the internet* that has spoken an ill word about this game. There are people on the internet who hate fluffy puppies.

"My fears are unfounded!" I cried. So the progress bar completed and I dived in without a second to spare. Neat virusy intro straight into the "RESIDENT EEEHVIL!" voiceover as the menu came up. I hit start and took off.

Instead of printing the twenty or so minutes of profanity that followed I will just say this: "Huh?"

Almost 15 years later, I am still planted on the ground like a mounted artillery piece the second I pull my weapon. What is this, the Maginot Line? Strafing while shooting? That's crazy talk! Although I am apparently the most qualified black ops guy on the planet I am incapable of moving backwards while facing forward at any more than a walk. Also (and I discovered this to my extreme delight as an eight foot tall mutated Executioner was swinging what looked like the hood of a Buick on a stick at me) there's no way to dive out of the way. You can run, sure! But guess what? You have to turn your ass around to run away! Then once you have cleared the range of said Buick-hood-swinging mutant, you must stop, turn completely around, and plant your ass again to attempt to score a hit. Did I mention that there are roughly forty other zombies that are surrounding you at the same time? Fun!

You want to give your partner ammo? Well you better hope no one is around buddy, because the only way to accomplish this is to pull up a menu that obscures everything that is going on, push two or three buttons and confirm. Which wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that she runs out of ammo in roughly three seconds, and when she dies: game over motherfucker.

Anyway, I finally figured out what I needed to do to survive, although it was beyond frustrating trying to accomplish it since the game doesn't feature a "shove" command to get the zombies out of your way so you can get to higher ground to finish them off. You can either kill them by shooting them (good luck on the ammo!) or you can knife them, which of course is accomplished by standing in one spot and hoping you have the reach to hit them. The really special part is when you try to close the distance if you are short. They grab you, and you get to waggle the stick in a Quick Time event! "Clop, clop, clop" says the pale rider.

On the plus side, it is an absolutely beautiful game. The washed out pallette is somewhat tired, but you forgive it when you witness the phenomenal textures and models. I will admit it started to have a certain charm once I figured out how to evade the zombies enough to get breathing room to fire, but I just can't abide a game that keeps that awful, counterintuitive control scheme in this day and age. The tension was fun, but it was outshined by my frustration at not being able to accomplish anything movement-wise that any other action game made in the last 10 years allows. Purists be damned, if you want to impress me figure out a way to keep the tension going with some kind of change to the setup. (Bioshock or Left 4 Dead anyone?)

I know it's a demo, but fuck it. Rating: the finger