05 November 2010

A Few Reviews....

Hey everyone,

I was just surfing the net today, bored, and figured it would be a good a time as any to post a couple of mini reviews of games I've been playing of late.

Fallout: New Vegas -- I rented the XBOX 360 version of the game and was honestly shocked by how buggy it was. Fallout 3 had its problems but it very rarely crashed or stuttered in its framerate for me. Still, the story showed promise so I continued on until I reached a point where I guess I did something the game didn't expect and it flatly refused to let me finish a mission and froze.

I took the game back to Rogers for a store credit and was convinced by one of the guys there to try another copy of the game with the 7 day rental limit renewed and if the game still crashed for me, I could still get a store credit when I returned it. So I gave the game another try, it still crashed in that spot and so I decided to restore an earlier save and try a different path. To my surprise, when I actually reached New Vegas, the game actually starting being fun for me (occasional game freeze and frame rate stutter forcing a reset aside...)

The main story was a definite improvement over Fallout 3, you don't need to fight your way through bleak endless subway tunnels over and over this time just to get to your next destination, and thankfully the epilogues that were inexcusably missing from Fallout 3 are back, so you can once again see the consequences of your actions with the various factions and locations you encounter in the game.

The music, at least the default music that came with the game, was pretty lousy and I was pretty much keeping the radio off after the third rendition of 'Johnny Guitar' and 'Texas Red' or whatever the fuck that song was called. (I never thought I'd be pining for 'Butcher Pete'...) I understand getting Elvis songs would've been too expensive but I'd rather have had more 1940s/1950s era pop songs and such.

Anyway, the XBOX 360 version of the game was still a bug riddled mess and I can't recommend it in good conscience. I know they'll come out with patches eventually but I don't use internet on my 360 and even if I did, it still doesn't make me want to buy the game anytime soon. Most likely, now that I (hopefully) have a computer powerful enough to run the game, I'll wait for the PC version to drop in price, all the patches to be released, along with a bunch of cool mods, and buy it later. I'd recommend to anyone interested in this game to do the same.

Star Wars: The Forced Unleashed II -- Ugh. The first game had an interesting story with frustrating controls and a retarded camera. This sequel has a story that was rushed, dumbed down and thoroughly mediocre compared to the first with somewhat better controls and camera but far less epic in scope. I breezed through this game in about six hours or so, and had no interest in replaying on a harder setting or as Guybrush Threepwood, though I can imagine how that final battle would go:

Guybrush: You fight like a dairy farm... URK!!

Darth Vader: How appropriate. You choke like a cow.

Guybrush: *thump*

Darth Vader: All too easy.

Seriously though, this game reminded me a lot of God of War III and that's NOT a compliment. The graphics look pretty, yes, but unlike the first game which had all sorts of interesting enemies and characters, this one pretty much has you fighting the same five or six enemies throughout the entire game. Force powers are fun to use but it gets old after a while and targeting was still annoying at times.

As for the story, without spoiling anything, it seemed to have a point in the beginning but little to nothing was done with it till the very end and that only served to set up another sequel. The few characters that were brought in from the previous game were one-dimensional shells of their former selves. Rahm Kota was just another commander yelling orders in your ear, Vader was a generic video game villain and Juno had about maybe one or two lines tops and about forty seconds of screen time despite being the central motivation for the main character who clutches his head now and then every time he experiences a flashback to the previous game.

So yeah, I'll still enjoy the cutscenes of the first game from time to time but otherwise, I'm done with this series. I'll see if the upcoming 'Old Republic' is a worthy successor to KOTOR *1* or just another overstuffed MMO.

That's it for now, I have to go out shopping and do errands.

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