So Pringles.

Howdy y’all. Help support the your local fighting game community. Here at upstatefighting, we bring you inside coverage of national tournaments, game reviews, group photos, and more. And in the near future, we hope to bring you even more: player interviews, match videos, and *get hype* a tournament series across upstate New York featuring some of the gaming world’s finest! Happening in a location near you!

In order to get these events off the ground we are asking for community support and participation. Donations are welcome, no amount too meager (… I may eat those words). Funds will help with tournament material (ie. projectors, stations, food). In addition we ask for your participation in building the smaller upstate communities (Rochester, Albany, the cavalry is comin’). If you can play a mean game of Street Fighter and want to beef up the scene, make an appearance! Show the guys what’s up!

Our goal is simple: build the community and have a good time doing it. Thank you.

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)