I recently completed by first game play of Heavy Rain, and if you are tired of the same cliche mainstream sequels that have flooded the market, it is a breath of fresh air.  Heavy Rain is played in the 3rd person where you hit buttons to correspond with real time events happening in the game.  You are faced with a multitude of options from how you treat someone, how hard you look for something, or a moral dilemma your character is facing.  The worst thing I could do is ruin the story, so I’m going to try to be as vague as possible as the story is the real experience that you should enjoy in this game.

Heavy Rain gives you control of four main characters who are indirectly and directly linked through the case of the Origami Killer.  You follow the investigation from the point of view of the FBI, a private investigator, a journalist and a father.   You play out short scenes with each character often rotating in between them after 15-30 minute scenes.   From a character development standpoint, Heavy Rain really lets you create your character’s personality which in theory makes you more attached to the character.

The quick time events throughout the game can be as simple as hitting triangle to pick up an object, rotating the right analog stick to dodge an attacker, or shaking the controller to kick down a door.  Between hitting, holding, tapping, rotating, shaking or holding multiple buttons, there is plenty of options to keep your fingers moving in high pace scenes. The game always prompts you when you can activate a quick time event, however, whether you perform the action or not is up to you.  All investigating, physical confrontations, or routine life choice such as taking a shower follow the same format. Missing a prompt can sometimes lead to having a chance to do the action over again, or if in a confrontation can lead to you being hurt. Your characters emotions will also affect the prompts you get on screen, if your character is rattled or scared the button will shake or appear harder to see.  The thoughts and options that surround you will become harder to read almost to make a strain upon the player.  All in all, this system worked fairly well and is creative.

Heavy Rain Trailer E3

Heavy Rain does indeed play like a movie, there are no chances to continue should you die (and yes, you can die) and the story will keep moving right along with or without characters.  What is intriguing about the story, is that is is not linear, it will change based on your decisions no matter how big or small.  Believe me when I say, not all of the options presented are very easy to choose, there are some situations that you are presented with where you really have to think if you want to “stoop to that level”.  Obviously, this leads to quit a few different scenarios playing out at the end of the game.  The story begins slowly as you get accustomed to the controls and the game sets the tone, but it quickly picks up to the pace of a suspense movie.  I had the pleasure of watching my wife play through the game after I had already beat it, and it was interesting how much her story differed from mine, especially the last few scenes and the ending.

Gameplay:  A.  Besides a few instances where the camera angles made it hard to read your options, or sometimes the symbol for holding down a button or tapping it appeared similar due to your character’s anxiety,  the gameplay was very satisfying.

Graphics: B.  Overall the facial expressions look great, however it is noticeable that the same amount of effort wasn’t put into the character’s attire and environments.

Sound: B.  The voice acting is a huge part of the game and is usually done pretty well.  However, it is pretty irritating that few of the cast members can pronounce “Origami” correctly.

Replayability: C.  The game is about 8 hours long and as I said there are a lot of different endings.  However, the game is slow at points and to replay the whole game to get a different ending doesn’t seem that enticing.  There is future DLC, so that is one reason to not trade this in.

Story:  B.  This would be an A as the story is great.  However, there are a few instances in the story that really prevent this grade from being an A.  I don’t want to spoil the experience, so I’ll leave it at that and we can talk after!

Overall Grade:  B+. Heavy Rain is a great experience that should be enjoyed by anyone looking for a break from the run of the mill platformers and FPS games dominating the market.  It is not without it’s faults, but you can easily overlook them to enjoy this game.

First off, I’m going to get this out of the way.  “Lost in Nightmares” and “Desperate Escape” very much do tie in to the vanilla RE5’s story.  That was your spoiler alert warning of the day, we now return you to your regularly scheduled review.  :-p

Do you remember the flashback in RE5 where Jill and Chris go into that secluded mansion to find Spencer?  “Lost in Nightmares” is the playable version of this.  After completing it… I was pretty disappointed by this particular pack, to say the least.  I was going through the first time with a friend (much better than ‘dealing’ with the game’s AI partner) and when we got into the place I was flooded with memories of previous RE games.  So at first, just like a rollercoaster; my excitement level was rising.  Then… as I found more and more areas in this mansion to be locked by gates my excitement started dropping quickly.  I tried to picture in my head just exactly how long this DLC was going to be at this point.  Through many a washing, rinsing, and repeating merry-go-round running finding items for puzzles (not to mention unlocking a few doors)-- finally we ended up in what appeared to be a dank subterranean section.  This was where we were to meet our first enemy… and defeating it was a pain in the ass, but that was fine b/c it showed me a faint glimmer of hope for the rest of the experience.  However, as I would come to learn later on- for a giant mansion to only have around 10 or so enemies total is a letdown.  Once you get to the boss “battle”, it’s not even really worth your time- the match is secretly timed anyway.  Flight or fight you will see the same outcome, and since I already saw the outcome in the vanilla Re5.… zzzzzzz.  I felt like I wanted my hour of my life back after finshing this; it just wasn’t that fun to me.


back to the mansion… hold your excitement; it’s not that awesome.

On the other side of the coin, we have “Desperate Escape”.  This takes place in the timeline after Chris and Sheva’s encounter with (hey, no peeking!).  Josh shows up afterward, and the object of this DLC is revealed: Josh and (not spoiling it!) have to get to an escape chopper a great distance away.  I thought the first time I played this scenario “Lost in Nightmares wasn’t sh-t.  So this should be easy.”  Nope!  Compared to the lacking action of “Lost in Nightmares”, this DLC in particular is chock-loaded with Majini attempts to polish you off.  I attempted to beat this with that same friend of mine.  We failed at that, but at least played for the first 40 minutes w/o a retry.  The list of all-stars you face is impressive.  There’s “Camping With A Rifle Roasting Marshmallows” Majini, “World Class Track Meet” Majini, “Mounted Gatling Guns Are Fun” Majini,  “Africa Chainsaw Massacre” Majini (but this time in SUPER tight spaces), and many many more!  Seriously, a mechanic to run and shoot at the same time would have been PERFECT here.  Still though, “Desperate Escape” is easily my favorite of the two DLC’s, based upon how chaotic the feel to it was; no contest.  Some of you may have been considering getting the RE5 Gold version that just recently was released (comes with both), but for those of you who have the vanilla/ or are getting a used copy on the cheap.,, my advice if you’re curious is to just download this scenario and the update on the Mercenaries game.  Don’t waste points on “Lost in Nightmares”, I will slap your hands if you do (lol j/k)


This is going to be the start of a REALLY bad conga line!

Let’s lower the disco ball and break it down shall we?

Pretty Colors!                                 A- (both DLC packs)

“Lost in Nightmares” and “Desperate Escape” still use the RE5 graphics, and they were good to begin with.  Nothing to see here, move along

Bells and Whistles!                            B+ (both DLC packs)

The sounds for both DLC also are recycled from vanilla RE5, they get ’er done.

Satisfied Wallet?                            C- (Lost in Nightmares) A  (Desperate Escape)

While Lost in Nightmares wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t good by any means either.  You already know how it ends, the mansion didn’t have enough enemies, and for Jill to be the “Master of Unlocking” I sure couldn’t open an ass ton of doors in that residence.  This particular DLC should have been free.

Desperate Escape on the other hand I loved.  Lots of action, the difficulty was harder than most spots I went through in the main game, and you don’t wonder if you’re going to fall asleep while playing it.  This DLC scenario was worth the points I‘d say.

Storytime!                                D+ (Lost in Nightmares) C (Desperate Escape)

The thing that hurt “Lost in Nightmares” severely in my opinion in this department was that as I said- you’ve seen how this begins AND ends through flashbacks provided in the main story.  Why eat the ham sandwich if the bread is stale?

Desperate Escape was pretty straightforward itself (In Ahnold voice: “get to the chopper!”).  Its basic approach almost landed it in the same failboat as the first DLC… but there was a very noticeable difference: the character interaction!  I snickered quite a few times between getting my butt whipped in D.E. because of some things I was hearing.

Ow!  That Hurts!                            C  (Lost in Nightmares) A (Desperate Escape)

Oh, Lost in Nightmares, how you wound me!  With very few enemies, only the first batch of 3-4 made me play ‘keep away”. The rest of the “Capcom’s Witnesses” I rolled my eyes at.  Lastly, the boss “fight” was very lacking due to the fact that (as I’ve drilled into your heads) it’s not a “fight”.  I previously mentioned you could just run down the game’s hidden clock.  In fact, some of the QTE prompts involved in it can be avoided by running out of the way, wtf!

Desperate Escape on the other hand, it’s almost everything but the Kitchen Sink Majini.  I was cursing and carrying on through a bit of tight spots admittedly (damn snipers).  Didn’t get to beat this one yet, but hope to soon.  If there is a final encounter to this one, I’m hoping it will be a REAL boss fight.

Grades are in!

Lost in Nightmares:    C-
Desperate Escape:     B+

Resident Evil5 Gold trailer (covers both dlc)

Praise be we have a use for the Wii! I’m sure if you own a Wii ,I know most of Upstate doesn’t, it has been sitting around not doing much. New Super Mario Bros. can only keep ones interest for so long. Now finally a good fighting game (Sorry Smash fans, Brawl is ass) has hit the Wii. So dig around for your old Gamecube Soul Calibur sticks and prepare to not know which way to block, it’s Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars!

First off, what is Tatsunoko vs. Capcom? Well it’s the continuation of the Vs. series which consists of the Marvel vs. Capcom games and the Street Fighter vs. X-men games. However, this does not include the Capcom vs. SNK games, why? I don’t know. It’s a game that features Capcom characters from fighting-games and various franchises and anime characters from Tatsunoko. WTF is Tatsunoko? Remember Samurai Pizza Cats? No? How about Neo Genisis Evangalion? No? Well they are the people that made Speed Racer and all of those animes, and a bunch of one’s you’ve never heard of. Ironically none of those series are represented in the game. So chances are no one from the Tatsunoko side will look familiar but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to play as.

Second lets clear up the difference between Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars(TVC:UAS aka TVC 1.5) and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes. (TVC:CGoH aka TVC 1). The original TVC was released early last year on console and in Japanese arcades.

So this is usually the part where I have to type out this big long paragraph about how the game works and the game mechanics. But lucky me people already made video tutorials doing that for me. So take a couple of minutes to learn about TVC:UAS mechanics.

Have you ever woke up from a kickass party one night to find nobody’s in the house? That’s pretty much what’s going on in Mass Effect 2- but on a larger scale. Two years after you took it to the Rogue Spectre Saren, an alien race known as the Collectors are making entire human colonies vanish. Naturally it’s up to you as Shepard to investigate-- and to stop any further occurrences from happening.

When you start the game for the first time, you’re given options: You can start this sequel from scratch, or you can import your Game Clear data from the 1st Mass Effect so you can continue with the Shepard you created long ago. I preferred to start the game in that way, as it truly makes the experience a little more personal. Mark my words, you will enjoy the overall story much more if you carry over a character. If you choose to import, decisions you made in the first game will also affect certain areas of the story. For example, if you wiped the Rachni species from existence in the first Mass Effect, they will obviously be long gone in part 2. A final incentive to importing your Shepard from the first game is what I call a ‘loyalty’ bonus; as in because you were good enough to take the time to beat our game, and decided to give our continuation a shot… we’re going to take care of you quite well. This bonus can include anything from starting with an insane amount of money (if you ended the 1st game with a lot of coin), to a nice head start in either your Paragon (goody two shoes) or Renegade (bad puppy!) rating.

Once the opening hits your T.V., without giving too much away; what starts as a calm day on the ship for you and the crew of the Normandy (your ship) becomes a whirlwind of holy shit. It doesn’t let up right away either, as the first thing after the opening is escaping from a facility that got overrun by hacked robots. It’s safe to say someone is definitely after you.

If you’ve played the first Mass Effect, there are some things you’ll realize no longer exist. There’s no blind fire from cover this time around, which in my opinion is unfortunate. As well, no more crouching… which as a former veteran of sniper rifle abuse, also made me sad. Crouching makes me a smaller target and increases my accuracy, after all. Third of note-- there’s no fiddling through your squad’s armor and accessories from the pause menu this year… which may be due to the Armor Glitch back in Mass Effect 1 (look it up).

There are also things about battle you will find out the hard way… and this regards the A.I. (your squad and of the enemy) in general. Somehow, enemies know when you cloak even when they’re not on screen yet. I remember once leaning against a wall and activating my cloak before peeking around the corner (keep in mind no enemy saw me yet), and all of a sudden I hear, “He’s cloaked!”
Secondly, your squad’s A.I. will occasionally move in front of your shot, run clear into rockets on their way to cover (Archangel, I’m looking at you), or get stuck in the wall (Hi, Miranda). Another new addition is weapons now have an actual ammo count now- yes, you can run out of bullets, but like you‘d expect- some enemies drop clips when they die. Using powers is also different now. When you use one, you can’t simply go to another your character’s trained in and use it while the other recharges; it’s down to one at a time. It feels a little more realistic in that respect; guns do not have unlimited ammo and you are not a superhero.

Planet hopping is thankfully changed. When you select a planet, scanning its surface now involves little probes, and their limited supply can be restocked at a fuel station. Planets are now ranked in how much mineral count there is from ‘poor’ to ‘rich‘. I personally advise just scanning the ‘rich’ planets, since. there‘s no achievement for finding every planet. Also new to this game with regards to planetary travel is (read my lips) “No More Revisiting the Same Recycled Gang Hideout“! When you land on a planet, you’re at the mission’s doorstep- and they all have a different look to them. That being said, there’s no more Mako driving either-- thank the gaming gods! Furthermore, the last bit to note when flying the Normandy around is that it takes fuel to move from system to system. Worry not, more fuel can be bought at the fueling stations, and if you run out of gas-- you’re transported automatically to the nearest one.

The character interaction is still with the same “choice wheel” from the first, with a new addition. There are times where you can interrupt someone you’re talking with mid-action/speech, and perform a Paragon/ Renegade action for bonus points towards either. Secondly, if you did import a character from 1, expect to see a LOT of familiar faces. Some will hail you, and some will really hate you for what you’ve done in the past game. Returning is also the romance subplots you can have with other characters, but the scene was significantly toned town from the first game- making it look more like something on Teen WB instead of something shown in ABC or CBS in their 10PM time slots. Unlike how it used to be, “Do I really have to be stuck with so-and-so?” No. After it’s official you’re “together”, you can break up with the character accordingly… and chat up another one! Oh you dog you! In fact, when you beat the game- they give you an option to stay on the ship to wrap up any unfinished business if you like… which for some includes expanding on their relationship with whichever character. I will let you know as a warning: if you’re using a previous Shepard, and you cheat on your love interest from the past-- their picture that stands proud on your desk will fall face down… it’s almost as if they’re hinting even this will matter in the inevitable 3rd (they originally wanted a trilogy). I see a planetary ‘Maury’ moment happening in 3 because of my cheating ways (life lesson: never cheat on your girl if her business is acquiring information).

Overall, I really enjoyed my 40+ hours with this game. It was definitely worth my 60 bucks, and I still play it now after I beat it (with a 2nd imported character from 1), as there‘s always room to do things a little differently. I stress a final time-- beat the first game before you touch this one. It’s already a fine piece of work without, but 1000x more so if you brush the dust off your old Shepard- and this shows in the interactions throughout the game. With all these good games that have been releasing early this year, what’s going to be left by Christmas time…?

The Mass Effect 2 Report Card!

Pretty Colors! A

Put the first and second game side by side… and note the MASSIVE improvement.

Bells and Whistles! B

Pretty standard sci-fi theme, nothing too orchestrated amazing.

Satisfied Wallet? A

Fact: I found it so good I would’ve paid 70 for what it came with (free download content!).

Storytime! A

I was always anxious to see what was going to happen next, and by the end I was thinking “Oh crap!”

Ow, that hurts! C

Not too difficult on default difficulty; then again headshots are higher damage…

Passes the exam with an A for Awesome

mass effect2 trailer

For the longest time when it came to action games, Ninja Gaiden on Xbox had my soul. Not only was it pretty, but it had this “kick your puppy into moving traffic” difficulty to it… which I strangely appreciated. Time passed, and it took Devil May Cry 4 to get me back into loving other action games; that was hard for me in the beginning and got ridiculously easy towards the end. Nevertheless, it was still fun to play. Moving to the present, Bayonetta slides in and honestly? I believe it’s the best action game I’ll play all year.

Visually- it does not seem like it breaks the 360’s graphical limit, but they definitely don’t slouch on it either. All characters and enemies are animated very well, and the landscapes look amazing.

There is a quirky little thing worth mentioning; just like Ninja Gaiden2 on 360 it will occasionally have a second or two of slowdown, but that was only 3 times I counted overall. Lastly, be prepared for quite an amount of fan service. You have a range that encompasses anything from the camera’s over focusing on her butt, to doing stripper acrobatics on spears.

When it comes to the music, you have to keep in mind this is a Sega game, so something will get stuck in your head. To give you an idea, back when I had just tried the demo version, the standard battle music I found humming for days on end. There are also a few remixes of songs from old Sega titles to look forward to once you get farther along. The voice acting is tolerable, with the exception being that the character Enzo will get on your nerves really quick. There’s a few curses thrown in as well, and I’m fine with that- she didn’t seem like the most innocent character anyway on first glance.

The story to Bayonetta may look pretty familiar as the game progresses. Think some elements of Devil May Cry 4, with the standard ‘hero with a lost memory’, then shaken around with a bit of last minute twisting like Final Fantasy 8. However, there is a high replay value to the game overall outside of that. You won’t get everything the first time, so don’t forget that final save for new game, something new is unlocked every time you beat it (from normal onward), and if you’re competitive, the leader boards will make you want to improve your score in each stage to beat the people on your friend lists.

Overall, I give the game 9 out of 10. It has enough humor to keep me snickering, enough of a challenge to keep me playing, and enough classic references in there to make me happy that I’ve been a Sega fan for so many years.

Bayonetta Trailer