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[itisnotlogical]

Simple enough, title says it all.

The Wind Waker took Zelda in a new direction. I was pretty optimistic, since I played through Spirit Tracks and loved every second of it. Unfortunately, WW was more... meh.

It's definitely not a bad game by any means. It looks nice, there's some intense action and cool puzzle solving, as well as tons of side quests. But unfortunately, all the good Zelda mechanics feel weighed down by the sailing.

I find sailing to be the most boring, clunky, unappealing feature I've seen in a Zelda game to date. While the boat is cool, after a while I found the long travel time grating on me. In the early stages, I could put the controller down for minutes at a time with no ill consequence. But the combat is even worse. To use your cannon, you must completely stop your ship, often from top speed. Then you must aim your cannon without the assistance of L-targeting, keeping in mind a single shot can knock you off your boat and back to square one.

This is fine for slow-moving foes like pirate ships, but often you have to fight incredibly fast enemies that stay out of your bow's range. You are essentially stun-locked trying to get back on your boat and aim the bloody cannon. And once the battle is over, it still takes unreasonably long times to get where you're going. The fast-travel song is easily the most useful in the game.

I would call this nitpicking, but sailing is essential through the entire game.

However, the rest of the game is typical Zelda quality. It's really a shame that the sailing drags the game down so much, because some of the dungeons are cool and the boss fights are incredibly tense.

Unfortunately, this game falls prey to all the stereotypes: there's the fire level, the forest level (two of them), the fortress level, the lava level, etc. Every item you collect is recycled from a previous Zelda game, except for the grappling hook and titular instrument. But even the grappling hook should have been combined with the hookshot.

But this is really nitpicking, especially for a Nintendo game and doubly so for a Zelda game. It's still fun, just not as fun as some others I can name. The pirate theme is kind of cool at times, and I love every music track from the game. It's just a shame that the sailing was so phoned in, because with more work that could have made an okay game truly shine.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, they kind of wait until the end to carry on the passage of time/moving on/looking to the future/etc. theme from OoT but at this point I'm really nitpicking. Check it out if you like pirates or Zelda or both.

[Flying Carcass]

LA Noire is a detective game set in late 1940s Los Angeles where the player plays the role of Detective Phelps, a decorated war hero and family man whose brilliant detective skills have him skyrocketing through the ranks of LA's finest. The setting is unique; Rockstar set out to make a faithful and open-world reproduction of post-war LA (which isn't exactly a common setting in video games) and really sells the setting with a city populated with cars, fashion, news, music, and buildings from that era. The cast of characters is memorable, thanks in part to the face-motion-capturing technology and actors Rockstar used to create a theatrical presentation. The overall story is excellent; the individual cases are interesting and keep the player engaged while an overarching storyline with some really neat plot twists makes this one of the best story-driven games I've had the joy of playing.

There are some action sequences where the player engages in fist fights, shoot outs, or high speed chases which are competently done, though the main part of the game is the investigations. In the course of an investigation, the player visits various locales, searches for evidence scattered around the crime scene (using audio cues (string tremolos) to let you know how close you are to evidence), and then questions witnesses and suspects. While questioning persons of interest, the player has to choose whether to believe the person's statement, doubt the person's statement, or outright accuse them of lying (though to successfully catch someone in a lie, an accusation requires collecting and presenting the correct evidence). It's a system that works for the most part, though sometimes Phelps asks the questions in a way you may not expect... for instance he has a tendency to go into a table-flipping psycho rage when doubting someone (okay, maybe no tables got flipped... at least not in my play through...).

LA Noire is a really worthwhile game if you want a well-told mature story, that said there are some flaws. For starters, sometimes the evidence is hard to spot, so you may spend a bit of time pacing back and forth until you find the last piece of evidence you were looking for. Secondly, the open world city is huge and there isn't much to do in it aside from the main story and side quests (one-off police dispatches that send you to the other side of the city to do 2 minutes worth of action scene). It's strange to say, but LA Noire really would've been a better game if it were linear.

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Final Fantasy 8 is a Playstation 1 RPG considered by many to be a classic. Its story is one of love, friendship, betrayal, and saving the world interwoven with a coming of age theme. The protagonist, Squall, and his friends are elite mercenaries who find themselves caught up in an epic struggle against an aggressive country led by a powerful sorceress. It has a solid cast of characters, a great soundtrack, and some really excellent and dramatic scenes and events.

It was certainly an enjoyable adventure, though one with some notable flaws. For one, the stat system is convoluted and explained all at once (considering the game takes around 40 hours to complete, good luck remembering the game's brief explanation if you're playing several months down the road), for another the combat and stat systems are heavily reliant on siphoning powers from enemies and either casting them at the enemy or storing them up for later use... it's essential that the party stores up powers because the quantity and types of powers they store up directly affect their stats; this means that the player will likely wind up spending some time just "drawing" and storing up powers from weak enemies. Also, the game is terrible at giving directions and many locations are hidden behind mountains and cliffs, so having a FAQ or guide is essential to figuring out how to go from point A to B.

[Darkmere]

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is a first-person shooter with some inventory management and survival elements. The plot follows the amnesiac Marked One as he travels through the Zone of Exclusion surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Several years after the original disaster, a second catastrophe happened at Chernobyl that filled the surrounding area with bizarre spatial anomalies and began wildly mutating animals (and people!). Follow the Marked One as he delves into the mysteries of the Zone.

The good: This game won several awards for atmosphere, and it deserved them. The Zone isn't a lifeless husk, but it is very obvious that the whole area was completely abandoned and people have recently moved back in. Pripyat in particular was memorable, and the Chernobyl NPP is very impressive. The artifact system was fun, and an interesting alternative to RPG-style character development. Decent weapon variety kept things fresh through the game. The plot moved along well enough, and the missions were memorable. Some of the areas you visit really give off an oppressive loneliness and perilous vibe, which I enjoyed. The missions also flowed fairly well, keeping the pace up, right up until

The bad: the very last segment of the game. Without spoiling anything, there are multiple endings available, with additional "good-ness" coming the farther you delve into the game's big mystery. Until the very last segment, which is a series of pseudo-platformer ambush setups. Walk into ambush, reload, do it properly. The worst one was at the top of a tall ladder, where 3 enemies had weapons trained where my head popped up. Instant, helpless death. There are a few places near the end where it's quite obvious that the only areas of high radiation happen to be human-sized pockets near all the good cover. Also, much of the NPC dialog was not translated, so if you don't speak Russian, you're out of luck. I also managed to bug out Barkeep a few times, where he would stand out of talking distance and refuse to move up to the bar. Since he's the most central trader, this was annoying. Not being able to repair your gear was also bad, but the STALKER Complete mod fixes that, and is a must-have.

The Verdict: STALKER is a very memorable shooter where Rambo isn't always (or almost ever) the best option. If you're a fan of thoughtful FPS-style games, post-apocalyptic settings, vodka, atmospheric survival, or crazy space-time anomalies, this game is worth checking out. The bad section is only longer than the good because I avoided all plot spoilers, so don't let that be a deterrent.

[Seriyu]

Zeno Clash is a first person brawler taking place in an alien landscape, following a fella named Ghat as he tries to find a better place to live after killing his tribe's "father-mother".

Let's get the good stuff outta the way first, the brawling in this game is amazing, the punches really have some kick to them, and you never really feel like you're messin up unless you happen to start taking hits which is very nice. The combat isn't terribly complex, mostly normal melee combos and some context sensitive stuff. (Holding back while hitting heavy punch will make a "super heavy" punch that is difficult to land but sends people flying on top of doing tons of damage, for instance) Not a bad thing necessarily, but at times you can't help but feel there's lost potential.

The scenery is very nice, you've mostly got bizarre looking plants, the guns, being made out of bone and wood (it seems like), are fantastic looking, and are very well animated. While everything looks quite different from earth (obviously), the fact that you regularly encounter humans (and bizarre pig/bird men) as enemies it kind've takes things out of the alien atmosphere. At the end of the day, I'm okay with this as really, what else are you going to have a fist fight with?

Bad... almost everything else. Which isn't to say it's a bad game, and in fact most of the "bad" isn't really so much "bad" as "why did they do this". The game has a pretty wide theme of trying to be more then one thing, and it can get a little extreme. For instance, the game has FPS style guns too. They fit in theme with the game, that's fine, they're perfectly effective (and honestly balanced really well, you rarely feel like a gun is just killin the hell out of everything, or at least not as good as your fists), but at the same time, there are two seperate boss fights where you are forced into using guns for an extended period of time, and one full stage of drifting down a river while a plot dump happens and you shoot one shot kill enemies from your boat. I feel like that could've been a cutscene.

The gun boss fights are their own issue. They aren't terrible but they're... jarring. The gunplay is fine, it's easy to hit stuff, in fact I've had an easier time aiming at things on the move in this game then any other, but it mostly boils down to doing the same thing over and over again. Which works for the melee, enemies are constantly on the move, you've gotta dodge and block and such, it mixes it up, but for the gun fights it amounts to running around like a madman and taking a pot shot when you get a minute (while you're busy kicking squirrel bombs that are scurrying around your feet, and staying away from them). To make things more frustrating the boss has absolutely no issue with one shotting you if you get enough of the little jerks around you at one time, which leads to doing it all over again. The second version of this guy adds spitting crabs into the mix which to me seems to completely ignore all the issues with the first boss and just make it harder to get the squirrel bombs out of your face. This, combined with the fact that it is focusing on, easily, the worst part of the game makes the bosses KIND'VE miserable.

There's another weapon, a staff that shoots fire that is similar, and it's a surprisingly neat weapon. The fireballs arc a bit so you have to aim, they one shot things that are otherwise mostly immortal, and you have to "catch" fireballs enemies throw at you to recharge your ammo, which is rather hard. I feel like if they just tweaked the guns a bit it might've worked better. On to one more combat related gripe...

Melee weapons. Melee weapons are basically used to kill "big" enemies, like elephant people or boar people, and again, it falls into the same traps guns do. You do the same thing over and over, maybe while dodging small enemies (although the weapon will take care of them too). You hit them once while charging, they fall back, charge again, you hit them again. There's never much of any reason to move around during these exchanges, they're easily timed, and it overall adds very little to the game.

The plot is.... sparse. It's basically Ghat and his ladyfriend wandering through the world and seeing the sights, along with periodic flashbacks that reveal the things ghat did before he killed before he killed father mother, and ultimately, the reason, and fight itself. (which is very well done and involves guns, as a side note.)This isn't bad, it's.... it's a plot basically. He goes to father mother after beating up some thugs, asks her some questions and she freaks out about it and sics guards on him, which pisses him off and leads to him killing her. Unreasonable reactions on both ends. (which is acknowledged by the game)

After that they find a fellow named Golem, a person placed by a mysterious race at what would appear to be the edge of the world, to sit and wait until he is needed. They wake him up, and he takes them back to the  home village, after revealing he inexplicably has a full knowledge of ghat and father mother's conflict. As they travel along the coast they find a woman who's child has inexplicably turned into a pig overnight. Curious.

When they get back to the primary town, Father mother reveals (a term used in game) that it was alive the entire time, albeit wounded quite badly. THis leads to the final fight of the game, ghat and father mother duke it out one more time, almost leading to ghat's death, until golem saves the day by.... breaking his fingers, which breaks ghat and father mother's fingers as well. This happens earlier in the game at a much less important part of the story, so it doesn't just come out of nowhere, by the way. Then the game ends after Golem reveals father mother's secret, that she isn't a father mother, she kidnaps Children and replaces them with animals and takes them back to the village where she raises them (remember the pig?), revealing the reason she chased Ghat out of the town, as she thought he had figured out her secret. Golem then ends with the revelation that the shattered family is going to have to rebuild if things are to continue as they are.

And that's the end. It answers one question, and is otherwise mostly set dressing. Not.... bad? But it's not winning any prizes either.

However, despite all this, they do a very good job of downplaying the bad parts (guns and melee weapons), and the plot isn't so bad you'll dislike it, it just ends a little early.

So, after all is said and done, Zeno clash is hardly a bad game. Would I buy it for 30 bucks? I dunno about that. Ten/Fifteen? Maybe. I'm kinda stingy. Has it earned its' independent game of 2009 reward from PC gamer? Definitely. The 3D environments are beautiful and run very well even on my laptop, the combat is fantastic, and the game knows when to let itself out. It's not a game that can keep your attention for years, or even weeks, but for the time it spends, it's most definitely a wonderful game, even if the plot needed a little bit more time to develop then the game had.

[Logical2u]

We should totally form a stand up duo.

ANYWAYS ONTO A REVIEW because I actually really like talking about games?

BORDERLANDS (for PC) (I only bought it this year yes I know the sequel is out.)

Spoiler: This contains no spoilers but mostly I wanted to hide my wall of text so it was easier to traverse the thread. (click to show/hide)

Borderlands is a game primarily about shooting things. Secondarily, it is a game about picking things up. It oftentimes also involves selling those things.

What I'm saying is that Borderlands is, on paper, basically Diablo, except with guns.

That's not necessarily a bad thing - Diablo was, by all accounts, a good game (I've only played the demo of Diablo 2, as well as the Torchlight series), so it makes sense to 'copy from the best' - good artists imitate, great artists steal. Thus, the issues with Borderlands aren't with the core gameplay itself - if you like Diablo-likes, you'll probably like Borderlands, assuming you also can stomach first-person shooters. If you don't like Diablo-likes, you'll find Borderlands hollow and unfulfilling, and if you can't stomach first-person shooters, you'll Borderlands crass and meaningless.

Of course, even if you like Diablo-likes, you might find those same issues with Borderlands.

Let's talk about the 'secondary' gameplay - things like quests, combat itself, interacting with others, scenery, plot, and something else that I'll call "the sense of progression". I'll do these roughly in order.

Quests - varying between frustrating and acceptable in most parts. Frustrating is when you're tasked with running from point to point pressing buttons, fighting off enemies that then spawn as soon as you press the button. Acceptable is when you're tasked with doing different things in the gameplay - platforming is often the name of the game here, but sometimes it's boss fights. Yes, I understand why the enemies only spawn when I press the button, but if your entire mission is "Go to A, press button, go to B, press button, repeat." then it kind of turns into an annoying slog, especially if an arbitrary group of enemies spawn each time I press the button. At least when I'm platforming, I'm doing something different.

Secondly, quests simply don't seem to be configured for the PC at all - you have to use the page up and page down buttons to navigate quest information in your logbook, which, for me, are quite a ways away from what I'd normally be using - WASD and the mouse. There's also no in game minimap (that I was aware of, although there is a vague compass system), so to view your map you have to hit tab and select the map (more convenient) or hit m to open the map (faster but less convenient). This is often necessary when the area you are in is of multiple levels and there are impassable walls between those levels in most places - or sometimes just between two things on the same level - which you can't see unless you open the map.

Combat - interesting at first - you have to learn the enemy's weakpoints, how to fight them, what they'll do - and then it becomes a sort of puzzle game, where you have a group of enemies and have to think about how to take them out. The issue is that the game, to keep combat interesting, instead throws a bunch of enemies at you at once most of the time - sometimes in a mix, sometimes not (In the late game, mostly not). When they're in a mix, fine, that's still interesting. When they're not in a mix... great. Shoot enemy A in bodypart B, repeat. In the late game you primarily start to fight a bunch of repressive military types, and they're mostly boring, except the game tries to make up for this by sending literal waves of them at you. Great. Now I just have to fight a whole bunch of boring enemies!

Of course extremely late in the game it feels like literally every enemy is immune to your attacks, but I realize now that this is because I was using a loadout that was extremely effective versus, quite literally, everything else in the game - except for this one enemy type that they dump on you right at the end (with one exception). It didn't help that the enemy's weak point felt arbitrarily hard to hit, although when I did roll a natural 20 somehow the weak point was at least somewhat satisfying (even though it often didn't kill them, which I thought was the point?) Making an enemy tougher isn't necessarily a good way to make an enemy interesting - and almost every enemy type has a "beefier, harder to kill" cousin, which apparently appear semi-randomly. (read, almost all the time at the end of the game)

Interacting with others - there is no interaction with anyone else in a meaningful way. Every character is a static quest giver, and only communicate meaningful things through dialogue when accepting or in the middle of quests (which is rare), or in the quest text (common but often difficult to read on PC as mentioned earlier). The characters who do talk are often characterized as ~wacky~ or ~crazy~ which isn't endearing most of time.

Scenery - it's mostly boring, dull, brown, repetitive models. When things aren't repetitive models, you know you're in for something different at least. The mostly brown part is at least explained by the fact the planet is mostly desert, but then at the end of the game you suddenly wander through jungle and snow and it's 1. jarring and 2. makes me wonder why the rest of the game didn't have that type of variety. Occasionally it's dark, which is great - now I can't even see your dull brown models, now I can see dull black models. It's really unfortunate because they were playing with an alien world, and most of the time they don't seem to make good use of it. There are 'setpieces' for combat but they re-use models and are set against backdrops of brown, mostly.

Plot - there's a plot except it seems to disappear for a very long time in the middle of the game, which is exactly where the player's interest starts to wane as well. In the beginning you help out a town and get a thingy. Cool. Then you go on, get another thingy. Cool. Now you end up at a big town. Ok. No one talks to you and most of the stuff of interest is suddenly very spread out, slow going, and for the most part most of it isn't at all about your thingies. Maybe my problem is that I played most of the sidequests. That could be part of it. Then suddenly you're after another thingy for... some reason. And then OH MAN EVERYTHING BAD HAPPENS GO FAST. ... ok? Sure instill a sense of urgency in me... but I wish you had done that, you know, back when I looking for purpose about five hours ago? Instead of right at the very end which can be over in maybe 2 hours if you don't fool around?

Sense of progression - you start off feeling like a loser, and most people treat you like one. Then you get a few good weapons, and you're an incredibly badass. Except everyone still treats you like a loser. It really doesn't feel like your character has progressed at all in the course of the game, except becoming more a badass, which no one else recognizes or cares about. You even get treated like a loser at the beginning of the final boss.

Overall - Borderlands is certainly a game, but I'm not sure, with all these complaints, I can call it a great one. It's decent, and that's about it - Diablo-like gameplay is compelling, I kind of like first person shooters, and when combat was interesting it was good. But looking back on it, a lot of things really detract from the overall experience. With improved combat - at the very least less stupid enemy design decisions - and some nicer setpieces or more unique scenery, it would be a major improvement. Adding characterization and an improved plot would be a nice addition, but not necessary.