The lights are on
Assassin's Creed grips you from the moment you begin. What the heck is this? You look back at the cover of the box and look back at the screen. It looks the same but...I'm not in the Crusades. This is one of the classic twists in this console generation and props go to Ubisoft for keeping their staff tight-lipped on this subject to give a pleasant surprise. I've never been surprised by the beginning of a game before. But, that is just the brilliant beginning of a brilliant game. In Altair, we see a new character. Shrouded in a white hood and a secret blade under his wrist, he strikes at his targets from the shadows but he does so not out of a lust for anger or vengeance but to serve higher purposes of his Assassin's guild. He shares small moments with all his victims after he ends their lives. Many see these moments as unrealistic because dying people can't have conversations. I'm not making an argument for the logic of it but for the reasoning behind these conversations. Altair always offers his target peace, and wishes them no ill will in the afterlife. It is in these moments that Altair becomes more than just a cardboard character. He has emotion and depth and he understands how serious his killings are. It makes not only the character fascinating but gives the game so much more depth than it would have had if this had been removed. There are plenty of awesome and fun things to do in this game but none struck me more than these few tidbits. Do yourself a favor and play this game and become enraptured in one of the great adventures of this console generation.
After hundreds of villains that lust for death and destruction of everything they see, it's refreshing to be given an anti-hero who's largest misdeeds include stealing pies and accidentally breaking time. This game is a brilliant puzzle game from 2K Play and a bunch of students who started a school project with this as the result. Though only students, they are still able to construct some extremely clever puzzles. Winterbottom, through some of his mischievous hijinks, stumbles across an ability to clone himself for a limited period of time. A simple concept at first, it gets incredibly complicated as you progress through the game. Not since Braid have I stared at a puzzle so long just trying to figure out the answer. It's a testament to the brilliance of the design that the answer is always staring you in the face if you just stop and think about it. The game has often been compared to Braid which is a fair comparison as the puzzles and the time twisting element are similar but where Braid's story was a ponderance on regret, loss and perception, Winterbottom's story focuses on the horrors of what happens to a town when a villain constantly steals their pies. What can really happen without pie? Well, quite a lot actually. While I appreciated that the team tried to uses rhymes to tell the story, I felt that in their effort to rhyme, it damaged their ability to tell their story as it was sometimes hard to understand what was going on. The other problem with this game is that it is extremely short, offering maybe only 4 hours of gameplay. While the challenges and bonus shorts are a nice addition to the replay value, it's just not enough to keep me coming back. However, this should, in no way, keep you from playing yet another brilliant title to come from Xbox Live Arcade and Winterbottom should be remembered with the best of them to come out of this format.
I really wanted to like this game. Having been a fan of the previous Prince of Persia trilogy, I expected big things from this entry. The art style is gorgeous to behold and you can almost see the care that the artists put into the game peeping out from every edge of the screen. Doing this art style on such a serious and popular franchise was undoubtedly a risk and you must give credit to the team at Ubisoft for taking it. It paid off. The character of the Prince is much more engaging this time as you get to hear him speak in candid conversations with his partner, Elika. At first, I found myself annoyed by the macho banter but the Prince becomes funnier and more endearing the more you allow him to speak. The platforming elements are as fun as always but I felt like they were holding my hand this time around, where they were pointing out to me exactly where to go and what to do. This is disappointing because it takes away the puzzle element of platforming from other Prince of Persia games. The other disappointing element is the swordplay. I was initially intrigued by the idea of having one-on-one battles, something that went against past iterations of multiple enemies at once, but there is not a lot of room for creation here. The sword battles are done in a way where you must fight characters in a specific way instead of allowing the player some freedom to decide how they want to fight or to develop an appreciation for certain combos. Despite all of these things, the game is still worthwhile and is different from most other games you will see on this console. That alone, might be worth the price of admission.
Everyone knows that this series is due for another re-boot. It's not that the games are bad but that they've just neglected to reinvent and add new dynamics to it's gameplay. However, Underworld is a solid game with beautiful vistas for the beautiful Ms. Croft to explore. The platforming is as challenging and clever as always, requiring both puzzle-solving and incredible timing to traverse some of the many dangerous locations. Where this game lacks is where the series has always lacked: the gunplay. While doing back flips while firing an assaut rifle at a bunch of bengal tigers sounds cool, it's actually looks incredibly sloppy and though the tigers lay dead after doing this ridiculous stunt, I'm still not sure how I killed them nor at any time was I having genuine fun while doing it (the fun I did have was from laughing at how ridiculous it was). Gunplay is fairly limited in this one, using it in just a few levels which makes one wonder why they thought it important to include at all. Underworld is a solid game and a tribute to where Lara has been but not to where she is going.
Everyone knows that the greatest thing about the Batman universe is the villains and this game has villians in spades. In fact, there are probably only a handful of villains that this game excludes from it's long list of playable characters. However, after three Star Wars games and two Indiana Jones games and now this iteration, the style of these games is showing some rust. The puzzles are clever and it's fun to hear Joker's maniacal laughter at will but I didn't have as much fun with this one as I did with the Indiana Jones game. It has nothing to do with me liking one over the other and everything to do with which one I played before the other. There's some fun to be had with this title but it dissipates after a few hours.
So, your story is absolutely ridiculous? Big deal. You can't move while you shoot? So, what? Resident Evil 5 is a blast to play. Made by Capcom who helped establish how video games can be exciting, this game is a lot of fun. It gets even better when playing with a friend. All those little details about the story being absurd and Capcom sticking to their belief that no one can move while they fire a weapon, don't really matter once you are playing the game and narrowly escaping death time after time from dozens of different and disturbing looking creatures.
GAAAARRRRYYY! Seriously, if you understand this reference, you will understand the genius of this game. A perfect blend between the depressing and darkly humorous, this game addresses every single problem with blowing ourselves up. And yeah, the explosion is only the beginning. Just a genius masterwork from beginning to end and then some.
Bioshock 2 achieves what other games often fail to do. It completely broke through my preconceptions as I played it. With the absence of Ken Levine, who was the guiding presence on the first game (which I consider the best game of this console generation), and with loads of bad rumors surrounding it (multiple developing companines involved, multiple changes to the storyline, 2K Marin's creative lead saying that Jack, the protagonist from the first game, wouldn't survive in his Rapture), Bioshock 2 is a solid game that every Bioshock fan should play.