Limbo

Date Acquired: July 17, 2011

Date Completed: September 4th, 2011

Thoughts: Limbo is a puzzle/platformer for Xbox Live Arcade that is best known for it's strikingly dynamic visual style. There is no combat of any kind in this game, it's all solving puzzles and trying to keep from dying as you journey through the game looking for your sister. The game effectively uses it's soundtrack and sudued visuals to create a mood of wonder and exploration as you make your way through these mysterious woods.

Pros: I've already mentioned the graphics and sound, but they are definately the highlight of the game. Some of the aha moments as you solved a puzzle. The game has a very forgiving checkpoint system, which is great because you'll die a lot. The only achievement I didn't get in the game asks you to play through the whole game in one sitting, and die less than 5 times. For a measly 10 achievement points. That's not even close to worth it.

Cons: The game doesn't do a great job of explaining what you are supposed to do. There's no tutorial. You are introduced to new things in the game and are just supposed to figure out why they are there. I know it's a puzzle game, but figuring out how to play the game shouldn't be part of the puzzle, IMO. Some of the puzzles are pretty out there.

Final Thoughts: Ultimately I was a little let down by this game. I feel like it was over-hyped, largely due to the visual style. It's a decent game, but not this must-play experience that I've heard it made out to be. I was never pulled into this game to keep going as I am with most great puzzlers. I basically had to go 'oh yeah, I want to finish that game' and made myself play a few levels.

Portal 2

Date Acquired: May 4, 2011

Date Completed: July 17, 2011

Thoughts: Like many people I was a giant fan of the original Portal, originally included by Valve in the Orange Box compilation, and had anxiously awaited the sequal ever since it's initial announcement. There was some trepedation. The original game came out of nowhere. I had never even heard of it until I read reviews for the Orange Box when it came out. The original game was extremely original, funny, and a short, succinct experience. Now Valve was proposing to expand it into a full-length game. Can the mechanics hold up that long?

The answer for me, is an unqualified yes. The game succeeds on every level, both in a sufficiently lengthy single player, and an even more fun co-op mode, both of which I was able to play to completion. One of the fun parts about this game, particularily in the co-op is getting the wrong answer, but still solving the puzzle. It's like math class all over again. My friend and I would spend a ton of time working out a solution that was incredibly complicated and precise, pull it off, then go look up the right answer online and kick ourselves for missing what in retrospect, was a very obvious solution.

Pros: Most of the game falls into the category. The humor again is the standout for me. The creativity and the characters are all plusses. The co-op mode and the free content being released are also great perks to the game.

Cons: The game probably could have been a little more difficult. Too many times you'd be trying to figure out a solution to a puzzle, only to find one random white spot far in the distance that you can portal to. It takes away from the difficulty because you immediately know that's what you have to put a portal on. The replayability also isn't high. I basically have to just wait until I've forgotten all the puzzles before I can play it again, but I probably will eventually. I did get the game on PS3 and PC, in addition to the 360, afterall. The final boss battle wasn't as satisfying as the original either. I loved the original boss battle. The diaglogue is so good in it, and I thought it was challenging. You really don't get much of that this time around, it's pretty straight forward. Finally the greatest dissapointment for me was the final song. I loved the end song in the original game so much! I've played it in Rockband a hundred times. This song.... eh. It wasn't nearly as good. I played it twice, and it got better the 2nd time, but it's no Still Alive....

Final Thoughts: The Cons section may make it sound like I didn't like the game. I loved the game. But in such a good game the flaws stand out to me more than they do in a mediocre game. It's definately on my short list for game of the year.

Mario vs Donkeykong: Miniland Mayhem

Day acquired: 5.20.2011

Day completed: 6.7.2011

Thoughts: This game marks the third entry in the series which began on the gameboy advance. I remember playing that first game and thought it was great, but never bought another game in the series until I found a good price on a used copy of Mini-Land Mayhem at Best Buy.

It's been so long since I played the original GBA title, I had to watch youtube videos to remember it. I thought that the minis had been in the series since the get-go, but that's innacurate. In a very un-Nintendo like way, the series has actually changed drastically in every iteration. In the original game, it was basically a direct sequal to Donkey Kong. You have complete control over Mario and are solving puzzles by dropping fruit on enemies, jumping to vines, etc. In the first game for the DS, the minis have center stage, and the game has taken more of a Lemmings turn. You have complete control over each mini, you can stop them and move them with the stylus. MLM embraces the lemmings formula even more, eschewing the control you had over the characters before. Now you can only start them moving with the stylus, for everything else you must manipulate the environment. Every level introduces a new puzzle element such as Warp pipes, gravity zones, springs and moving platforms. Unfortunately, while each world focuses on whatever new element it introduces, by the time you move onto the next world, the previous elements are forgotten and you use on the new element.

Pros: The game is suprisingly compelling. It's not the deepest experience, but Kept wanting to pick it up and play the next few stages. The Boss Battles are generally fun, and the final battle is difficult.

Cons: Unfortunately by simplifying the controls, the game becomes a little too simple. There's usually very little challenge to solve the puzzles, what challenge there is often comes from collecting all the items in the level, but even that I was able to do more times than not. I played through the whole game in a day (granted I was on a plane to Chicago for most of it, so I had a lot of time) The game tries to compensate for this by having you play through the game a second time in a 'remixed' fashion. The only change though, is that now when you guide your little minis to the door you're trying to unlock, it has to be in a specific order. In the first go around it didn't matter what order they went into the door as long as no more than 5 seconds pass between characters walking through the door. It adds some challenge, but not enough. I didn't consider the game completed until I finished the second gothrough, but that's mainly because I didn't feel like I earned that victory, it as too quick.

Final Thoughts: I wouldn't spend a lot of money on this. Pick it up cheap, it's fun enough for the couple days it takes you to beat it. What this game has really done is make me want to go back to the original Mario vs Donkeykong and finish that...

Prince of Persia: The forgotten Sands

Date Acquired: September 2010

Date Completed: May 17, 2011

Thoughts: Prince of Persia debuted on the Apple 2 computer in 1989, and on Windows a year later. When it made it's inevitable assault on home consoles in 1992, it was completely beneath my attention. I knew of it, never bothered to check it out. And while the original game was released for every system under the sun, the sequal only made an appearance on Apple's system, and the franchise went dormant, largely unheard of until it's rebirth as the Sands of Time in 2003. This time it had my attention. Sands of Time was a wonderful game, full of charm, great graphics, interesting puzzles, it was very compelling. It's two immediate sequals were received fairly well, but couldn't match Sands' appeal. When the current generation of consoles launched, Ubisoft Montreal tried something new, a very graphically stylish game that was simplistic. I enjoyed that game tremendously, but it didn't sell well, and that was the end of that experiment. The Forgotten Sands is the newest entry in the franchise; apparently being released to coincide with the movie that also was released in 2010. Fortunately only the timing was the same, and the games have no similarities with each other. This game is more of a 'throwback' Sands of time-era Prince of Persia.

The Prince of Persia franchise appears to be on the verge of going dormant again. I've long wondered how well this series could possibly be selling. It doesn't seem like it would be embraced by the core gaming market. It seems actually, that Prince of Persia has evolved into, and been replaced by the Assassin's Creed franchise. Both franchises are developed by Ubisoft Montreal. The Prince of Persia influence is clearly apparent in Assassin's Creed, but the core gameplay and concept seem to resonate more with the main core gaming market. I myself, admit with some shame that when I first tried Forgotten Sands, it was immediately after heavy sessions with Assassin Creed 2. As soon as I walked into a scenario where I was suposed to climb to the top of several giant machines and flip levers to rotate them, I groaned and exited my game, not touching it again for several months.

Eventually I returned to Forgotten Sands, this time it had been months since playing Assassin's Creed, and I was no longer unconsiously comparing the two games. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it right away. There weren't too many giant machines with levers to mainpulate, the game's core mechanic was platforming puzzles, made possible with new powers, most notably the ability to freeze water, which I had a blast with. The prince could find a stream of water trickling down and then freeze it, allowing him to climb it like a column. Or a wall of water could be frozen, allowing for wall jumps. Eventually the puzzles get more complicated, requiring you to jump through a wall of water, then freeze the water before you get to the column behind it. The game also adds elemental-based powers which to be honest, added very little to the experience. You acitvate them by using one of your energy slots, the same energy slots that allow you to freeze time. I found myself conserving these slots for when I needed to freeze time, rather than activating my ice blade to take out a random group of thugs.

Pros: Like all of the games in this series, it's a fun experience, not overly challenging, just a nice time-waster. The achievments in this game are a plus for me as well. They are easy to get (I wound up with 900), but still require you to try things that end up making you better. I spent most of the game trying to get the achievement that asks you to get 50 kills without taking any damage or using time powers. This is especially difficult because you rarely get 50 enemies at once, so you can kill 30 enemies without being touched, but now you have to go platform for 45 minutes and still take no damage or rewind time, which is difficult to do. There are other achievements for using different attacks a certain number of times. Many of these I wouldn't have even known about if it wasn't for the achievement, as there's no tutorial for the game, and honestly who reads the manual?

Cons: This was very much a 'more of the same' experience. Ubisoft didn't put a lot of effort into pushing new boundaries here. The better ideas likely being saved for the Assassin's Creed franchise. The game's not particularily challenging either. It's unlikely I'd have been satisfied if I'd spent the $60 it cost new at retail. Fortunately, Ubisoft games drop in price very quickly, and I got it for $10 4 months after it came out.

Conclusion: This game probably wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for the movie, but it is LEAGUES better than 95% of movie game tie-ins. It's not a particularily memorable game, and not a must-play, but it's a fun time-waster and easy source of achievement points.

Bulletstorm

Date Acquired: 2.21.2011

Date Completed: 5.12.2011

Thoughts: I've been asked if I stopped this list after the year ended. A reasonable question since it's May and I haven't had a single post. Well, the reason I haven't posted since then is that I haven't finished any games until now. That's kind of funny to think about when you consider that I had finished 9 games by this time last year. A few things happened to make that happen. The first was just good old fashioned burnout. Anything you make yourself do becomes tiring after a while, and I was pretty 'video-gamed out' by the end of it. I was also dating a lot in that stretch, and studying. But I always knew I'd get back to games and blog about them when I did.

Bulletstorm is kind of like 2011's version of Crackdown. Both games were heavily hyped but ultimately overshadowed by very prominent beta demos that came with them: Halo 3 for Crackdown and now Gears of War 3 for Bulletstorm. Like Crackdown, Bulletstorm was well received for the game that it was, despite not getting much attention. I will admit that the Gears 3 demo played heavily into my decision to buy the game. In fact I didn't even really get around to spending time with Bulletstorm until the Gears 3 beta released. Once I got all the unlockables done with in the beta, I decided to try out the game I kept putting into my consoles to play it.

After the Gears 3 beta, the thing Bulletstorm is next most famous for is the fraternity-boy level of humor and sophistication. The game is famous for taking stupid words and having the characters say them together, like 'dicktits', or when a female character promises 'I'm going to kill your dicks'. Nothing about that appeals to me, but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt when I see things like that. One possibility is to take the game at face value and assume it's been made for the 14-18 year old male demographic. I looked at it as more of a spoof, a tongue-in-cheek presentation where the developers are quietly laughing at the expense of the people who actually think the dialogue is awesome.

Once you finish the beta, and get past the shallowness of the presentation, there's a fun game underneath. It's set up as a third person shooter, you play Grayson Hunt, a mercenary who's hunting down his nemesis and winds up crashing them both down on a foreign planet that he has to fight through to get his revenge. You get several different weapons along the way, each with a powerup attack that you can purchase via skill points that you accumulate. You have a leash, a whip-like device that is used to grab enemies and objects and pull them towards you. The inventive part of the game is how you get skill points. If you just shoot the enemies with your guns, you can beat the game, but you won't get many skill points and you won't have a lot of fun. You are awarded skill points for different ways you think of to kill an enemy. Many of these are as immature as the dialogue, such as guiding the sniper rifle shot into an enemies groin or ass (each gives you different skill points). Fortunately the game lets you get far more creative than that and there are a lot of different combinations to find. The game even gives you a list you can access at any time, showing you the skillshots you've already unlocked, and giving you hints as how to unlock the remaining items.

The bad: Probably the most puzzling decision in a third person shooter, where the entire game is spent with at least one other character playing with your character, is the decision to forgo a co-op mode. Possibly it was decided that adding the mode to the game would delay it, and they obviously couldn't delay it since they were hitching the beta to it. It's an unfortunate decision, but one that will hopefully be remedied in the inevitable sequal.

The good: Probably the best thing about the game to me is the creativeness and the potential it has. I already mentioned the skillshot, but there were plenty of other areas where the creativity shown, such as early in the game you gain control of a robotic dinosaur that you can use to decimate your enemies for most of that chapter. It's the only time in the game you get to do it, and the dialogue about it is fun and clever. The powerups on each weapon was a nice touch, the sniper rifle took some getting used to, instead of a bam-bam trigger-t0-impact moment like we're used to, each time you pull the trigger you are treated to a minigame 0f sorts where you guide the bullet towards the target, the target will try to get out of the way and you curve the bullet towards him to get the kill. It was annoying and difficult at first, but fun and natural by the end of the game. The end of the game leaves little doubt that a sequal is in the works, and I hope they take a lot of the ideas they had in this game and expand on them: co-op in the campaign mode, more playing with the leash, there were a lot of cool moments where you leashed an object down so you could walk over something, I think the next game should have multiple paths through each level, the standard path, but if you're paying attention you can use the leash to move stuff down and make bridges or clear paths, and find different ways through the level. Implimenting some kind of swinging mechanic with the leash, or a hookshot-type mechanic where you can pull yourself towards the enemy would open up new skillshot possibilities as well.

Conclusion: Bulletstorm is a fun ride. You absolutely can't take it seriously, ignore the stuff that makes you groan, but it's an enjoyable game, and really better than it probably deserves to be. I will have to check out Echoes mode with friends later, after I beat the game those procrastinators were still trying to unlock the Gears 3 beta stuff and didn't want to play anything else, so I played around with it on my own. I look forward to making new skillshot combinations with a friend.