|
Compound
|
 |
« Reply #56 on: June 17, 2009, 10:30:26 PM » |
|
Just finished up a trio of games recently, all in the same genre:
Spiderman Web of Shadows
Spiderman's alien costume returns, and so does his foe Venom. And Venom's return brings with it an invasion of New York City as the residents slowly become infected by the aliens as well.
Not a bad semi-open world little game. You control good old Spidey, initially fighting crime in New York. But as the game progresses, New York becomes more and more infected and by the end of the game, it's a fairly creepy place, with streets full of alien zombies, pulsating egg sacs and the occassional uninfected person screaming in terror.
The fighting is okay. It's not as polished as inFamous, the old Spiderman 2 game or the like, but the controls are serviceable and certainly give a Spidey-ish feel to it. It also includes a "choose your morality" option, ala inFamous, allow Spidey to be a good guy or walk down the dark path to Dark Jedi-hood. Er, supervilliany. A number of other Marvel characters make cameos as well, including an X-Man. No Squirrel Girl though. Pity. The dialog is fairly Marvel-ish in feel. The save points are fairly generous, so that if you mess up in a mission, you're not forced all the way back to the beginning.
Overall, I liked it. It wasn't spectacular, but it was good enough and it was certainly worth the $10 that the local Best Buy was clearing them out at.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged
After his loved one dies, a mutant goes on a revenge spree against his brother and the shadowy organization that betrayed him.
I liked this one a lot. It’s surprisingly good, especially for a movie adaptation. The fighting is actually a lot of fun (which is good since there’s a lot of it.) Aside from the basic fighting, there’s also a surprising amount of environmental interaction, allowing you to slam foes into tree branches, forklift tines, windows and other stuff. The film’s actors also reprise their roles. I think. The game says that it’s them, but Jackman’s accent occasionally slips from Canadian to, I don’t know, something that sounds like Texan.
Plot-wise, it follows the basic plot of the movie. Wolvie heads to Africa (and throughout the game, we keep getting flashbacks to Africa), then up to the research bases where he gets metal stuck in him, then to the supermarket in Dead Rising, then to a place building big old robots that show up in every X-Men game, but not in any of the films, then to New Orleans, then to The Island, where Wolvie fights a clone escaping to America. Or not. In most of these scenes, they expand on the movie’s scenes, and mostly for the better. For example, in the movie, the fight with Gambit is a two minute long affair set in an alley. In the game, it’s a sprawling fight through a casino, up through another partially built casino and culminating in a fight on the giant electric letters of a casino sign. Which is a much more gratifying battle. The Sentinel base is new, and the Sentinels look fairly good. Good enough to be in a movie. Hint, hint. The only set piece which wasn’t really improved was the final fight in the game, which is a bit bland. Blander than the movie’s version even.
On the downside, there’s a number of places where there really needed to be more checkpoints. You’d run for a few minutes to get to a point, and then die. Then back to the beginning of that area. D’oh. Plus there’s a number of jumping puzzles. In a frigging Wolverine game. Grrr. And I’ve mentioned Hugh’s accent. Plus unlocking Wolverine’s other costumes is a royal pain. You have to fight another Wolverine, which is neat in execution, but it’s not fun in execution since the other Wolverine doesn’t have to play by the same rules as you do.
I’ll also note that the movie is much closer to the comic’s spirit than the movie. Meaning that it’s rather bloody. Extremely so. It’s rated M for a reason. And since the movie was only PG-13, you may want to be wary letting the kiddies play it.
Still, it’s a fun game. I wouldn’t spend $60 for it, but when it hits the $30 or so mark, I’d recommend snapping it up.
Prototype
Alex Mercer awakens in a morgue only to discover that the military is chasing him, New York is under siege from a mysterious infection and he has strange new powers.
Another next-gen superhero game and another game where a major city falls into chaos. (Web of Shadows also infects Manhattan, and infamous decimates a fictional great city.) The game play is slightly clunkier than inFamous’. In the latter game, the controls were fairly well mapped out, with button taps to change powers. Prototype has many, many more powers, but a lot of them are situational (to do an elbow drop, jump then hit Y in the air) or combos. (Target with LT, hit X+Y while standing near the target.) But while inFamous has you fighting targets with electric grenades and shock blasts, Prototype has you swinging up to an attack helicopter, highjacking it, abandoning it, elbow dropping down to the street, picking up a tank, and then throwing it before plowing through a horde of infected New Yorkers. It definitely feels more epic in scope.
Unfortunately, there are problems too. It needed more checkpoints for one. The power controls can feel a bit clunky. (And I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally shape changed into a wrong form during a fight.) Plus, the combat animations. At numerous points in the game, you can, for example, highjack a nearby vehicle. You hop aboard, scoot over to the hatch, open it, stand above it for a sec and then drop in. Fairly standard pre-rendered stuff. Except in Prototype, while you do this, the other forces are still shooting at you and can knock you off of the vehicle. And you can’t do a thing to stop it. It’s rather maddening.
Other issues: In other recent heroic games, you get the choice to be good or bad. In inFamous, for example, you can heal bystanders or blow them apart. But it’s certainly possible to go through a game without ever harming a bystander. In Prototype? Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of innocents dead. I mean theoretically you could do it. But in practice? Well, let me put it this way: there’s an early missions where you borrow an APC to drive it across town to rescue someone. Well, this is New York. The streets are packed with cars and pedestrians. And when you get in a vehicle, they all go insane. Pedestrians will run into the side of your vehicle, killing them. The cars ahead of you will not move out of your way, even when you’re in a tank. As a result, by the time I got to my destination, I had killed almost 1000 civilians. Ow. This may bother some people. Plus, it’s also fairly bloody as well.
One other problem. You’ve got a gazillion powers, but in many of the final missions, I ended up grabbing a gun or tank and shooting the bad guy with it. Not terribly super heroic there. And unfortunately, prior to that there are a number of missions where you either have your powers taken away from you or you simply can’t use them. If I think it’s easier to use a gun to finish a mission, that’s my business. If the game forces me to do that, that’s another thing, and that’s not a fun thing.
Plot wise? It’s fairly bare bones, but I enjoyed it. The writers of the game are also responsible for the Delta Green game and it’s got a strong dose of horror in it as well. Plus, the game has you consuming other people to regain health and gain information. That may squick some people, as it is slightly graphic. But the collapse of New York City is pretty darn unsettling, especially with the throngs of fleeing citizens running in panic. (And there are often dozens and dozens of people running down the street. It’s New York.)
Overall, it was good. I don’t know if I’d prefer it or inFamous, but they’re both fairly comparable. But I’d hold off on buying it until it’s cheaper.
By the way: Pop quiz. Which of these three games has the lowest death count? Answer: the Wolverine game. Wolverine had you stabbing maybe 1000 people throughout the game. Prototype? Well, it has a trophy/achievement that has you killing 53,000 people. (And it’s a tribute to Dead Rising.) And the Teen rated Spidey? Well, when a person gets infected they switch over to a symbiote form. And when you punch those symbiotes, they generally just collapse into a puddle. But sometimes, a person pops out of them. Given that, I suspect that a lot of the symbiotes that Spidey fights have people inside them who won’t be leaving. Ever. And Spidey takes out a few thousand symbiotes during the game.
|
