Looks like a busy week this time, with a few more reviews than I'd been doing, dealing with games I've heard of, games I haven't heard of and games I probably currently wish I'd never heard of. And that doesn't even count my Minelvaton Saga review (originally in category #2 and now, very definitely in #3), which gets shunted off to EmP because site rules say I can't simply give myself first place this week and ignore the other two places, leaving me with a lot more free time!
THIRD PLACE
Joe's Anima: Ark of Sinners (Wii)
First off, this was a tough competition again. It's always a good problem to realize that most of the submitted reviews could easily be judged a top-three effort for the week and then have to really delve into them to find something or other that puts one review above a couple others. For you, that moment came pretty early, as you quickly give a great comparison point, mentioning Symphony of the Night and Devil May Cry…and then immediately take it away by noting this game is like those if a great deal of what made them so good had been stripped away. From there, you talk about how short the game is, how it's not overly challenging, how the dialogue is easy to miss and how said dialogue is crucial to knowing what you need to do. If I decide to buy another game for THE WII I RARELY CAN BE BOTHERED TO PLAY BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, THE CONTROLS, it won't be this one!
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SECOND PLACE
Nightfire's Duke Nukem Forever (PC)
As a guy who had a good bit of fun with Duke Nukem 3D, I dug this review a lot, as it really gets to the heart of why this game would be horribly disappointing to fans of 3D. There was some good stuff about how the long developmental hell period had a negative effect, with various elements and jokes that would have been good, if not for how some other game had done that or made that reference a few years previously. The talk about the inconsistent tone also made a lot of sense, as it seems this game is all over the place, from self-parody to being completely serious OR making bizarre attempts at humor at times where doing so is rather nonsensical. Comparing the alien-goo girls from 3D to the more realized models in Forever was a nice tough to show how one treated them as scenery that can be destroyed (I believe that can help getting 100% kills in a level, as destroying a lot of them causes an alien or two to spawn near you, if I remember quickly), while the other uses them to create a seemingly horrific stage verging on horror…and then ruins the atmosphere with Duke's ability to make bad jokes about things. I really liked the ending too, where you basically were like, "After that, I decided to screw with multiplayer, but since no one else plays this crap, that didn't last long." Good way to end this review, I think!
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REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)
EmP's Don't Chat With Strangers (PC)
You know, it's rare that I get interested in actually playing a lot of these cheap PC games that you and a few others review a lot, but it's common that I get interested in finding out more by getting online and either watching a video or reading a guide or whatever. And so I watched a couple 15-20 minute videos of people playing this game. Or I least I watched parts of a couple videos. The cool thing was that I felt I was essentially watching your review in video form. Not because of commentary by the dude doing the video, but because I saw virtually everything you were talking about and I could easily see just what was so frustrating about things. Like you said, some of the stuff is cool and reasonably straight-forward, such as you having to be chill with the girl while online with her unless you want the lights to go out and then return with you hanging from the season and "DON'T LEAVE ME" or whatever scrawled on the wall. I also watched the guy use the phone and get electrocuted, I watched him turn the radio on before the game cues you to do so and it blew up, I watched him go outside and get run over by his car. The kind of stuff that makes it feel less like a game and more like an interactive trial-and-error experience where you have to figure out just when to click on stuff or die horribly for not clicking on it or clicking at the wrong time or whatever. I also have to say that from watching the video, if someone asked me to play against them in that "buttons" game, I'd pick the horrible death.
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That's it for another week, so now it's time to get back to Super Meat Boy until my thumb starts to bleed! Or read more about this bizarre world-spanning, geo-caching easter egg located in Trials Evolution that I knew nothing about despite playing that game for dozens of hours.
THIRD PLACE
Joe's Anima: Ark of Sinners (Wii)
First off, this was a tough competition again. It's always a good problem to realize that most of the submitted reviews could easily be judged a top-three effort for the week and then have to really delve into them to find something or other that puts one review above a couple others. For you, that moment came pretty early, as you quickly give a great comparison point, mentioning Symphony of the Night and Devil May Cry…and then immediately take it away by noting this game is like those if a great deal of what made them so good had been stripped away. From there, you talk about how short the game is, how it's not overly challenging, how the dialogue is easy to miss and how said dialogue is crucial to knowing what you need to do. If I decide to buy another game for THE WII I RARELY CAN BE BOTHERED TO PLAY BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, THE CONTROLS, it won't be this one!
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SECOND PLACE
Nightfire's Duke Nukem Forever (PC)
As a guy who had a good bit of fun with Duke Nukem 3D, I dug this review a lot, as it really gets to the heart of why this game would be horribly disappointing to fans of 3D. There was some good stuff about how the long developmental hell period had a negative effect, with various elements and jokes that would have been good, if not for how some other game had done that or made that reference a few years previously. The talk about the inconsistent tone also made a lot of sense, as it seems this game is all over the place, from self-parody to being completely serious OR making bizarre attempts at humor at times where doing so is rather nonsensical. Comparing the alien-goo girls from 3D to the more realized models in Forever was a nice tough to show how one treated them as scenery that can be destroyed (I believe that can help getting 100% kills in a level, as destroying a lot of them causes an alien or two to spawn near you, if I remember quickly), while the other uses them to create a seemingly horrific stage verging on horror…and then ruins the atmosphere with Duke's ability to make bad jokes about things. I really liked the ending too, where you basically were like, "After that, I decided to screw with multiplayer, but since no one else plays this crap, that didn't last long." Good way to end this review, I think!
---
REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)
EmP's Don't Chat With Strangers (PC)
You know, it's rare that I get interested in actually playing a lot of these cheap PC games that you and a few others review a lot, but it's common that I get interested in finding out more by getting online and either watching a video or reading a guide or whatever. And so I watched a couple 15-20 minute videos of people playing this game. Or I least I watched parts of a couple videos. The cool thing was that I felt I was essentially watching your review in video form. Not because of commentary by the dude doing the video, but because I saw virtually everything you were talking about and I could easily see just what was so frustrating about things. Like you said, some of the stuff is cool and reasonably straight-forward, such as you having to be chill with the girl while online with her unless you want the lights to go out and then return with you hanging from the season and "DON'T LEAVE ME" or whatever scrawled on the wall. I also watched the guy use the phone and get electrocuted, I watched him turn the radio on before the game cues you to do so and it blew up, I watched him go outside and get run over by his car. The kind of stuff that makes it feel less like a game and more like an interactive trial-and-error experience where you have to figure out just when to click on stuff or die horribly for not clicking on it or clicking at the wrong time or whatever. I also have to say that from watching the video, if someone asked me to play against them in that "buttons" game, I'd pick the horrible death.
---
That's it for another week, so now it's time to get back to Super Meat Boy until my thumb starts to bleed! Or read more about this bizarre world-spanning, geo-caching easter egg located in Trials Evolution that I knew nothing about despite playing that game for dozens of hours.
I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle
