Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft

You have played this game before. Maybe you don’t know it, but if you have ever played the campaign of any Rainbow Six game before you have surely played this one. Hit the break for the full QP Review.

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Developer: Hothead Games
Publisher: Penny Arcade

Let’s get it out of the way right up front — Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness costs too much money. Unlike so many of our colleagues, our complaint has little if anything to do with it’s length or it’s complexity (four to six hours is more than enough time for me.) As someone who’s read Penny Arcade for three or so years now, I felt fairly justified in spending $20 on something I ostensibly haven’t paid a dime for (their comic strip); not just that, but I was getting a pretty sizable package in return. And then I started thinking…episodic, huh? If one episode costs me $20 and there’s four episodes…well, that’s a lot of goddamn money! (6400 spacebucks if you want to get down to brass tax.) Now, I truly enjoyed the humor in this game, the combat, the adventure elements — but $80 for an (admittedly very good) XBLA game? That’s starting to sound pretty crazy. Hit up the break for the rest of our review.

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Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games — Take Two Interactive

Where to start?

Let’s all be glad Burnout Paradise got to “Welcome To The Jungle” before Rockstar.

This installment of the GTA series places you in the boots of Niko Bellic, an incorrigible immigrant from the Eastern Bloc who committed unspeakable atrocities in his mysterious past and has now been lured to the United States by his cousin with promises of money and women. Yeah, that sounds like a good place to start. Developer Rockstar Games put a tremendous amount of effort into this title and it really shows with jaw dropping incidents, stunning graphics, and a compelling storyline.

First thing’s first, this issue of GTA has a strong emphasis on story. The characters are still blown out caricatures, but honestly would the game be as fun (or as funny) if Brucie wasn’t always screaming about being genetically superior or commanding you to ’stay alpha’? I don’t think so. In the story line, Rockstar wasn’t looking for reality. They’ve set up, I believe, an intriguing though at some points intentionally campy story that really keeps you guessing. However one of the problems the game faces is that there are so many stories and characters that it’s easy to forget what’s happening. Especially if you’re like me, going back and forth between main character missions.

Side missions abound, one example being you’re tasked with making friends and keeping them your friends. This sucks. By the halfway point your phone is filled with contacts all wanting to get drunk or throw darts (or both.) Sometimes I just wanted to search the alleys or complete side missions but Little Jacob wanted me to drive him to Cluckin’ Bell (Cluckin Bell! Awright rasta) and after I was done with that Dwayne wanted to bring me down with all his ex-con bullshit. You’re given an incentive to hang out with these people though — if you get them to like you enough they provide services for you, such as helicopter rides, discount weapons, backup etc. Careful though: if you’re not friendly enough they won’t pick up your phone calls. I wouldn’t have minded hanging out with them until you unlock the perk, and then always having the perk from that point on, but it gets incredibly tedious hanging out with people, even if they do have something different to say each time they get in the car.

Aside from the veteran side missions of car theft, vigilante justice, and street racing, the main missions feel like there’s a reason to be doing them. It’s not so much go find this guy and shoot his car until it explodes anymore. Many times a car chase will deliberately be difficult because Rockstar is leading you to a spot where the guys you’re chasing bail out and take up defensive positions in a house or park (for instance.) They’ve also designed a ton of buildings to specifically be a space you fight in, which adds an ‘indoors’ dimension lacking in previous GTA’s.

The story asks you to make decisions affecting future business opportunities (and business partners for that matter.) The result changes the storyline and (depending on your perspective) the entire outcome of the game, which adds yet another layer of replayability, as if we needed anymore.

Rockstar made a good decision this time around by focusing their efforts into making a few gameplay elements really fun and compelling, instead of spreading them out over a ton of semi-fun activities (i.e. jetpacks, planes, sky diving, property ownership.) They implemented the same idea with gamespace as well. One of the things that’s been floating around our conversations here at QP is how space in GTA IV is much more useful. Sure, San Andreas was probably the largest GTA in terms of space, but most of that was open fields and dense forests that saw at most three or four missions. Here, every inch of Liberty City is worth scouring, and you’ll find yourself at almost every out of the way warehouse or crumbled building complex by the end of the story.

The gameplay in this installment shows great leaps and bounds (within the GTA universe) in some areas, and falls flat in others. Probably the newest and best aspect is the completely revamped aiming system. Pull the left trigger to auto aim, then use the right thumbstick pick your shot: head, hand, foot, etc. You can also go the much harder and arguably more manlier route by free aiming. Free aiming requires you to hold the left trigger half way, and allows you to have complete control over what you’re shooting at — very useful for shooting exploding barrels or car tires, not practical at all for taking down baddies.

Rockstar also added a cover system that serves its purpose fairly well. The cover system is pretty sticky, which is good for missions that are designed for you to use the cover system. However, if you get caught up in a gunfight on a street crowded with cars or stuck in a tight space, it’s nearly impossible to predict where Niko will take cover. You can also jump from cover-to-cover a la Gears of War – and from my experiences it works much better than Gears.

Your environment in GTA IV is much more conducive to losing police in alleys and backyards. They’ve given Niko a quick hop over smaller objects, and the ability to hang on to and shimmy to and fro on a ledge. Ladders provide easy vertical access providing rooftop shootouts and building-to-building firefights. In general, getting around on foot is easier and way more fun than previous installments.

Unfortunately, GTA IV still suffers from a case of what I like to call ‘The Walkies.’ The walkies have been in every GTA since they’ve gone 3-D and it refers to the phenomenon of not being able to stop your character on a precise spot. Walking near a ledge is a death wish because when you let go of the thumbstick Niko inexplicably takes one or two more steps. Forget turning around quickly because Mr. Bellic needs more room than most cruise ships to complete his semi-circular procedure before finally facing the other direction (he must have hurt his knee or hip in the war or something.) Whatever you do, DO NOT combine any of the aforementioned moves with the sprint button as you’ll inevitably end up looking down the barrel of a cop’s shotgun.

Driving is very fun and controllable, though it takes a while to get used to; once you’re set though, it’s easy like Sunday morning. GTA IV also desperately needs an easier way to switch guns — how about the ‘B’ button guys? Come on! It’s arguable that current-gen consoles shouldn’t even use d-pads anymore, let alone poorly implemented ones (yes, I’m looking at you, Xbox 360), but I shouldn’t have to stop moving if I want to switch my weapon.

For my money, GTA IV is the best looking game around, especially when you consider everything the engine is doing. The graphics sport a hint of Crackdown in a very subtle, comic book, black outline kind of way (stylized anyone?) Every block is extremely detailed and completely unique which really helps with navigating the four islands. A wide selection of cars to choose from, all sporting variations on sun roofs, convertibles, and gold trim, among other things, help to keep things fresh. There’s also a wide selection of people to run down…or interact with — whatever.

The only problem I saw with the graphics is that sometimes the details on the road surface will disappear for a second, or objects will pop in(to) view at the last second. This isn’t a huge problem though and rarely does it affect the gameplay. The huge variation of cars, people and city blocks, combined with GTA IV’s impressive draw distance really bring together the environment like none of it’s predecessors. Take a helicopter ride night… tet-tet, shh… just do it.

Multiplayer is intensely addicting. It’s bad enough that I still want to play the single player game after putting in seven hours in one day but on top of that they have to give us totally awesome multiplayer? Play anything. It’s all fun, we promise. Just be sure you get a host who knows what they’re doing. This is important as there’s a myriad of game variables just waiting to be tweaked: weather, spawn distance, re-spawn time, amount of traffic…it seriously goes on like this for quite some time — and they all can seriously affect how fun and fair the game is. However one element that must be changed is re-spawn distance. If it’s set to ‘near’ you’re just going to be spawned right next to the person who killed you. You’re going to want some time and space to get stocked again after you’re hit in any game mode.

Speaking of modes, GTA IV multiplayer sports cops and robbers (just like it sounds), street racing, deathmatch, co-op missions, and perhaps the most addicting: free mode (among others.) In free mode you simply wreak havoc on friends and the dear citizens of Liberty City for as long as you like. No rules.

Make no mistake about it, it’s very easy to get caught up in all the hype surrounding this game. Mostly, said hype is justified. There will be moments when you curse the game for it’s somewhat clumsy controls or lack of checkpoint system (I have to drive this dump truck to Broker, again?), but for every moment that plays smoothly, GTA IV shines brilliantly and constantly demonstrates why it indeed deserves the title of most hyped game of 2008.

Developer: Retro Studios
Publisher: Nintendo

Now my justification for the title of this review. Enemies are frustratingly resilient in this game. Much like Samus herself they can enter ‘hyper mode’ and unleash some powerful attacks. The big problem is that there are no middle weight enemies. You either take them out with one or two shots, or fight them for a good minute.

Don’t even get me started on bosses. Each boss fight, honestly, seriously, no joke, will take at least 15 minutes. From the very first boss up until Dark Samus. After fighting one of the bosses for a solid 10 minutes I got his health down to just a nugget of power, just one hit, and he entered a phase where I couldn’t attack him. I screamed in rage, “For Fucks Sake!” because I had to fight him for another five minutes before he became vulnerable again. That was somewhere near the halfway point, and yes they do get successively harder. Let’s face it, the Wiimote is not the most comfortable controller to use, and after about 10 minutes of intense fighting you start to feel some pain in that space between your thumb and pointer finger. Yeah — you know what I’m talking about.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is one of the most beautiful and detailed games I’ve seen on the Wii. While it loses some of it’s original novelty in that you’re not isolated on a planet left to on the figure out an eerie mystery, and you have to deal with other people, it still holds up to Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. (Why didn’t I include Echoes in that previous statement? Because Echoes was a linear, restrictive piece of [End])

Prepare your hands now, cause they’re gonna get fucked.

Travis Touchdown is a stone-cold murderer — the geekiest one that you could possibly imagine. Johnny Bravo meets Han Solo meets Jeffrey Dahmer: they all get drunk and spawn an abomination. He loves lucha libre, gratuitous swearing, cutting people straight in half and trying to nail his blond haired assassination-lifestyle facilitator. Right off the bat, you’re thrown into his persona full-force and to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t feel so bad.

Let’s be up front about this — No More Heroes is charming. It’s perfect for the gamer crowd, at once appealing to a variety of different subcultures: wrestling, anime and kung-fu, among others. Those exact gamers will quickly realize (unless they’re card carrying lucha libre mass murderers themselves) there’s not much more to this game than it’s initial novelty (not to be confused with actual character.) Suda 51, Grasshopper Manufacture CEO and the man responsible for NMH (as well as Killer 7) set out to make a statement and in some respects, delivers on that promise. He clearly states his desire to create fringe/strange games with repetitive gameplay yet (at least initially) hilarious cutscenes.

This game is through and through a hack’n’slash, allowing nearly-falling-off-the-hinges loose controls as to lower the barrier of entry for Wii gamers — and thusly gimping the game’s controls for anyone able to grasp the mash-mash-slash combat system.

The main story is the big standout in the game and we’d feel a hell of a lot better about NMH if it would have allowed us direct access to that. The mindless minigames and brutally incomplete open-world you’re challenged with navigating feel woefully cobbled together and exacerbating the situation, the one vehicle you own handles worse than it looks.

(This is how shitty it looks)

And it handles worse than that. We here at QP want you to think about that. Anyways…

Surprising as it may be, the biggest problem with NMH is that it’s all ‘vision’ (our favorite buzzword, what’s yours?) Mr. 51 has some great gameplay ideas, his problem is that he’s poor at implementing those ideas without hurting other pieces of the pie, so to speak. For every Cowboy Bebop-esqe showdown with a boss where our man Travis Touchdown talks smack throughout the whole fight, there’s an infantile coconut collecting minigame (and you can interchange ‘coconut collecting’ with a small variety of other silly titles if you’re so inclined through actual gameplay.)

All in all, while NMH and Mr. 51 have proven that weird, (sort of) indie games can be great at times, big undertakings like this may profit from either better editing or larger development teams/more experienced developers. We are still looking forward to your masterpiece, sir. Don’t let us down.

The new Call Of Duty 4 maps were released this weekend to much fanfare and many complaints. I wasn’t even able to download the maps until last night because of several different error codes. Several threads found on the XBL forum mirrored my own problems, including such gems as: Why can’t I buy microsoft points?, Microsoft points not downloading, and best of all Xbox live doesn’t allow me to update my Call of Duty 4. Apparently some of these kids tried for two straight hours to download this stuff, and after finally getting my hands on ‘em, it’s hard to blame them.

Of the four maps released (Chinatown, Creek, Broadcast, and Killhouse), I’ve so far played the former three. (Killhouse is a one-on-one map available via the ‘Cage Match’ matchmaking option.)

Chinatown is a close quarters, urban shoot-out. Check those windows because almost all buildings are two stories and many firefights are window to window. Picture District, only now with the ability to enter all buildings.

Broadcast draws off it’s older compatriot’s maps by getting sliced out of the single player mode and dropped onto our gaming plates. This large map features an extensive indoor battle ground filled with twisting hallways, and a substantial outdoor section including the rooftop of the main building, and a bombed out building on the opposite side of the map.

Creek is a massive walk in the park. Two towns separated by a huge ravine and connected by a cave set the stage for this surprisingly balanced snipe fest. Although I did experience one, several respawn streak of getting my face sniped off, all other experiences on this map have been heartily satisfying.

Finally, Killhouse. This map is, well…an enigma. I haven’t been tossed into it yet, though I played cage match and the variety map pack match-a-making for an hour today. I can’t help you here just yet.

The new maps are thought out very well — more so than the originals — and refresh the excitement I first felt when playing COD4. You’ll find some interesting angles (A broken plank in an outhouse anyone?) more intense fire fights, and clearly thought out, well balanced level design. Oh yeah, and it’ll set you back $12.50 (ouch), but any battle hardened COD4 vet should know it’s money well spent for more great content from Infinity Ward. (Even though, seriously, it should be free. But that’s for another piece entirely.)

(Pictures via GameSpot)

Nintendo’s latest installment of the Legend of Zelda series makes its debut on the DS in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The fourteenth installment sees our hero on a quest to restore dominion of the high seas to its rightful ruler The Ocean King. Truth be told, this is the sequel to one of the few Zelda games I have not played (Wind Waker) and thus if I’m praising elements of Hourglass that were in Wind Waker…don’t think poorly of me, I’m ignorant.

That aside, Hourglass is a visually appealing game that draws from the cell shaded art direction of Wind Waker but also takes from 2-D concepts found in black sheep LoZ: Four Swords. Luckily for us it does a great job of not taking itself too seriously (a la Ocarina and Link to the Past before it). Dialog and certain side tasks, aided by comical animations, are well thought out and often, laugh out loud funny. The characters are interesting and no one seems out of place or unnecessary.

Much like in Wind Waker, the world map is the high seas. You can hunt for sunken treasure, fish, fend off pirate attacks and slay water monsters that lurk in the murky depths. There’s an abundance of side quests to complete out on the ocean so being on the high seas doesn’t feel like a waste of time. You can also customize your own skiff (see Gob Bluth: “… but Skiff is appropriate right?”) ranging from demon decor to tropical trappings.

Final Fantasy VII has remained one of my absolute favorite games for many many years, though until now I’ve avoided the whole “compilation of Final Fantasy VII” crap except Advent Children (which was really just an excuse to see all the people and places in pretty graphics). But, after hearing all the chit chat about how Crisis Core actually didn’t suck, I bought into it and, having just finished it, I must say that not only did it not suck, it was actually really pretty damn good.

Being the FFVII fangirl that I am, I was positively gleeful to be able to visit areas and meet people from Final Fantasy VII. Most of the areas were pretty faithful to the original game, which made for some nice nostalgic exploration.

I’d have to say that now, Zack is my favorite lead character from any FF I’ve played. Cloud was an asshole, Squall was an emo asshole, Zidane was fucking annoying, Tidus looked like Meg Ryan and Vaan needed to take his Ritalin. But Zack, Zack’s a cool guy, which makes his tragic end all the more depressing.

The end…ah, the end. Players of FFVII already know how Crisis Core will end, but the way it ends was rather satisfying and pretty intense. It also brought a tear to my eye! A game hasn’t made me cry in a while, so hats off to Squeenix for jerking my tears.

One beef that I have with all this compilation of FFVII stuff: Her name is Aeris. Remember that game, Final Fantasy VII? The game all these other games and movies and OVAs are based off of? Yeah. In that, it’s Aeris. I don’t give a shit what it is in the Japanese version. In the English version, it’s Aeris, so keep it that way, don’t change it to Aerith in everything else. It was bearable in Kingdom Hearts, because she wasn’t a major character, and it was an alternate universe anyway. But this is the goddamn prequel to FFVII, she should have the same name. Aeris is prettier than Aerith, anyway.

This evening, I finally got the chance to sink my teeth into the first content pack for Mass Effect, “Bring Down the Sky,” which was released on Monday, much to the glee of sci-fi nerds everywhere. After downloading it, I started up a new game with an existing character profile, and made quick work of the beginning parts on Eden Prime and in the Citadel. Once I got control of the Normandy, I jetted off to the Asgard system to kick some Batarian ass.

Basically, there’s an asteroid orbiting the planet of Terra Nova, which is the home to some 4 million people. A group of Batarians (those nasty slavers we’ve heard whispers of in the game, but haven’t actually seen until now) has hijacked the facilities on the asteroid and are using three fusion torches to blast the asteroid on a collision course with Terra Nova. Of course, our delightful Commander Shepard is the only one ballsy enough to go in and save the day.

It was a pretty standard mission, mainly just “go disable these things, then go there and do that” sort of thing. But it introduced some interesting characters and had some good action, and the scenery was pretty. Overall, it was a nice little 90 minutes of alien fun. I wish that all, or at least some, of the side missions in the core game were as solid as this, rather than the same ol’ probes on the same ol’ maps with the same ol’ dead Salarians.

Now I’m going to try and get the rest of the achievements for the game, then sit tight for Mass Effect 2, which is totally going to blow my panties off.

Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: EA

The latest incarnation of the Burnout series arrived at my doorstep the other day via GameFly — Burnout Paradise. It’s a fun, arcade-style racer that focuses less on the technical side of driving (i.e. Gran Turismo) and more on the pedal to the floor, high speed, high risk aspect (i.e. Flatout.) The game takes place in the fictional Paradise City, where the grass is green, etc… You’re given an enormous city to explore and tasked with successfully completing literally hundreds of shortcuts, super jumps, billboards, and races.

Races vary from straight up street racing to ‘Marked Man’, where you have to make it to a destination before mafioso style “not-Cadillacs” total your racer. There’s also ‘Road Rage’ races where you ‘Take Down’ as many competitors as possible. You can fix your car at an auto shop or choose from about 150 different new ones at the junk yard. You can also refill your boost by driving through a gas station (For 3.23 a gallon).

Burnout is a very easy game to play, which is good because that makes it accessible. I certainly enjoyed it for a few hours, but the game doesn’t offer much else. Most of the races (whether marked man or road rage) all seem to blend together after a few hours of playing — also, the music is absolute horse shit. You’ll want to turn down the volume promptly unless you enjoy Axl Rose skull-fucking you through a bandana.

Burnout’s most redeeming quality is the online play. You simply press a button and you’re automatically placed exactly where you were in offline play. Online you can race other players, complete challenges, and of course wreck other people’s shit. If you complete a task in online play, like finding a Super Jump, it also registers that you completed that in your offline game.

All in all, Burnout Paradise is a fun game to pick up for a few hours, but doesn’t have much replay value. Unless you’re a hardcore fan of racers that are more arcade oriented than simulation oriented, rent this game — otherwise it’s basically just a racing version of a scavenger hunt.

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