Aw man, I went and did it again didn't I? Forgetting to post and shit*. It was only like three months this time though, cut me some slack. I'm just going to summarize what I've been playing since we last met.
I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.
I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.
LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.
The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.
Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.
It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.
Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.
Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.
*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.
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