A Crysis of Kombat

It's been some great gaming since my last update. Got to play through Crysis 2, sink my teeth into some Mortal Kombat, and spend a little time with Outland on the XBLA.

Let's cover some Crysis 2 first. I was really happy with Crysis 2. Being a majority console gamer, I never played the original Crysis so I can't compare the two. I've read complaints that Crysis 2 was less open then the original but I didn't notice it. It definitely was not a corridor shooter by any means. There were some cramped spaces but a lot of the game was spent in open combat. The options presented to you are excellent. You enter a lot of battles from a raised vantage point. From there you can whip out your tac visor and mark enemies and ammo ahead of time, making them easier to spot and kill when the action gets going. Or, you can do what I did, which is cloak yourself, kill a couple guys, hide to build up energy, cloak again, kill again, rinse, repeat. Hell, there were whole parts of the game you can cloak and hide your way through without killing anyone. I like those kind of options in my games. Games should allow you to play the way you want instead of trying to mold the player to the game and Crysis does that very well.

It's a very pretty game too. One of the things Crysis was known for was graphical prowess and Crysis 2 does not disappoint. Scenery is lush and bright, buildings are sharp and well lit, enemies are very repetitive though. I honestly only remember fighting maybe 10 different enemies the entire game. It had a lot of deja vu moments as I shot and killed the same enemies in similar venues over and over again. It's probably the biggest fault of the game. Definitely not a deal breaker though.

The online play was really fun. I didn't spend a lot of time with it, but it was a unique enough experience that I didn't get bored at all. There is a lot more strategy involved then with standard shooters. The ability to cloak adds a nice level of subterfuge to the game. I found my best strategy was cloak, uncloak, shotgun. I was running a 4:1 kill ratio which, for me, is phenomenal.

Now to move on to one of the more anticipated titles of the year, Mortal Kombat. This is, I believe, the ninth game in the MK series. In the past they've taken some interesting paths with the franchise, a lot of them negative, but the word on the street was this game was going to bring the franchise back to its roots. I was one of the skeptical ones going in. The last game with MK in the title, MK vs. DC, left a bad taste in my mouth. After reading reactions and reviews though, I found myself excited enough to buy it and it was not a mistake. Mortal Kombat is fantastic. It's high speed, visceral combat at its finest. The game seriously harkens back to it's roots with some absolutely disgusting fatalities. The shock factor is back for Mortal Kombat in a big way.

Shocking fatalities alone would not make this game great. They've really changed the gameplay the right way in every direction. This is a much faster MK game. The character variety is excellent and devoid of any complete stinkers. They've trimmed a lot of the unnecessary fat from the roster. X-Ray attacks are awesome and brutal. The challenge tower is a nice time consuming addition. Some of the challenges later in the tower are tough, and it will take time and skill to climb it. The best addition has to be story mode. Instead of just tourney style combat, the story mode thrusts you into the narrative of Mortal Kombat, fighting predetermined battles on your way to unraveling the mystery of the tournament and Shao Kahn. The writing is nothing to get too excited about, but the mode itself is a very welcome addition to a genre that is generally devoid of any story.

Haven't had a chance to play online yet but I will soon. I want to work on learning some of the fighters before I take it to the internet to get my ass handed to me. I'll report on it some more with my next update.

Last game I want to talk about here is Outland. Outland is the most beautiful game I've seen on the XBLA. It's a very old school feeling platformer with some combat mixed in, but it's the graphics that will draw you in. I know graphics don't make a game great, but they can take a good game and put it over the top and that is what is going on with Outland. The most interesting part of the gameplay is the Ikaruga-esque color changing to absorb and attack enemies. At a later point in the game you gain the ability to switch between red and blue at will. When you are red you absorb red and damage blue and when you are blue you absorb blue and damage red. Makes perfect sense, right? There are parts of the game that involve dodging and absorbing projectiles, which makes a nice break from slash, slash, slash sword combat. I don't say this much, but Outland is a game worth checking out just for the style and graphics alone. The gameplay is what makes it worth buying though.

That's pretty much it for this update. Next time I look forward to discussing Mortal Kombat's online play, and more on Outland as I work my way through it. Look for another top 10 list between updates this time. Not sure of the subject yet but I'll come up with something.

If You Say Portal Too Much It Starts to Sound Weird

There were two big releases this week, Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat. I went to the video store with the intention of renting one of them. I studied the cases and decided to rent Mortal Kombat. I started walking to the counter still pondering my decision. I got to the counter with MK still in hand before I had a sudden change of heart and decided to go with Portal 2 at the last possible second. I'm not going to say I made the correct or incorrect decision, but it was a decision and it means I'm talking about my experience with Portal 2 here instead of Mortal Kombat.

I'm guessing I'm about halfway through the game with about 5 hours under my belt. Not too shabby. It's amazing how Portal 2 manages to maintain the fun of the original without it getting boring over the extra length of time. Now, Portal is not a game I've ever been able to play for endless hours non-stop. I'm good for about an hour or two then I have to give it a break. There isn't a ton of variety in Portal and after playing for awhile it does start to bore me a bit. However, after a break I'm back in and raring to go. The mind-bending puzzles are fantastic, and the dialogue in the game is perhaps the best I've ever heard. It's genuinely hilarious and I only wish there was more of it. I could go for some berating as I'm failing my way around a room trying to figure out how to aim a laser or where to place the latest light bridge.

I'm not going to talk at all about the story here. Hell, I'm not finished with it myself, but I don't want to take a chance on spoiling anything for a reader who hasn't played. It's good...and that's all I got to say about that.

I did finally finish Call of Duty: Fight Club the other day and if you've finished it then you would understand why I've given it that title. The end was a twist of sorts, but it wasn't terribly well done or interesting. Overall I would give Black Ops a solid ok for the single player experience. The best part about finishing it though was I finally gave some of the other modes a shot. Dead Ops: Arcade might be the best thing on the disc. It plays a hell of a lot like Smash TV and it's awesome. If you've never played Smash TV in any of its incarnations it is basically a top down shooter. Not unlike something along the lines of Geometry wars. One stick controls movement and the other controls the direction you are shooting. It's fast paced and fun. Best part of the game.

I've not done any coop Zombies mode so I don't want to knock it too much. As a single player experience I was left a little underwhelmed. Zombies break through walls and doors, you shoot them for points that you use to buy new weapons and open up new areas, then between rounds you have a limited time to repair the places they broke through. By yourself it just isn't that much fun, but I can see the potential in a multiplayer experience. Therefore, I won't say anything particularly bad about it. I will just grade it as an incomplete for now and bring it back up in a later post.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about my most anticipated game of the next coming months, L.A. Noire. If you aren't hyped about this game they you haven't read enough about it or just hate things that are awesome. Here is a few links to help remedy this.

http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/agegate/ref/?redirect=

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/l-a-noire/3244

Read about it, watch some trailers then tell me it doesn't look amazing. I will then tell you that you are a liar. The technology used for facial capturing is amazing and being able to "read" faces to be able to tell if people are lying sounds awesome in theory. I hope it works as well as they say it will. Focusing on detective work instead of action is going to be what can put this game over the top. Action games are a dime a dozen, well written thought provoking adventure games are rare and this looks to be more in that vain. If everything comes out the way Rockstar says it will I can't imagine that L.A. Noire isn't going to be a game of the year contender. Rockstar is no Peter Molyneux...they don't have a habit of over hyping their games then removing or nerfing half of the features when the game is released.

Color me excited.

Top Ten Hardest Xbox 360 Achievements

This top ten list I've decided to highlight the hardest Xbox 360 achievements around. Some of these are borderline impossible while others take so much time you might die of old age while still working on them. The designers who sneaked in these achievements obviously hate people.

*Disclaimer* I do not have any of these achievements though I've attempted most of them. By the beard of Odin, I'm only a man.

HERE WE GO!

10. Dead Rising - 7 Day Survivor

7 days...just one week. You only need to survive for one week in a zombie and psycho infested mall. Also, your health is continually depleting...oh, and you can't save your game. It's a one shot deal. You die, power goes out, Xbox locks up, kangaroo kicks the power cord out of the wall, Mom bursts in your room and shuts off the box because you didn't finish your homework and you're always playing those damn games...anything that causes the game to go off and you have to start over. It's 2 hours per day so e , are talking about 14 hours straight. You can pause the game to take a break, but then you run the risk of something horrible happening.

The actual surviving might not be too hard...except there is a limited amount of precious health bar filling food in the mall. So not only so you need to contend with everything else, take too much damage while trying to survive and you can easily run out of time.

I made a few runs at this back when Dead Rising had first come out. I never made it past day 4.

9. Call of Duty 4 - Mile High Club

Despite being named after the mythical club of folks who have allegedly boned on an airplane, the Mile High Club achievement in Call of Duty 4 is an exercise in frustration and rage.

Mile High Club is a bonus mission on Call of Duty 4 that is unrelated to the rest of the game. You have to beat it on "veteran" difficulty, which is the hardest in the game, and you have one minute...that's right, one minute to accomplish this feat. Within this minute, you have to fight through about 30 guards on a commercial airliner to secure a hostage. You will die...lots. over and over again you will die. Then, when you slow it down a bit to survive, you will run out of time. Over and over again you will run out of time. Finding the balance between time and survival is key and it is damn hard to do. I worked on this achievement for about 3 hours before abandoning it forever. It's just one minute long so it isn't higher on the list. More skilled players might say this isn't that hard...they are liars.

8. Ninja Gaiden 2 - Way of the Master Ninja

Ninja Gaiden 2 is a jerk. There is no other way to describe it. The people who made are obviously misanthropes and wanted to figure out how they could best stick it to humanity. "Let's make a gorgeous game that is tons of fun...but let's make it as hard as possible." Bunch of jerks. Anyway, this achievement is for the simple task of beating the game on its hardest difficulty setting. That's all, just cut and ninja flip your way through throngs of multi-colored ninjas and werewolves and demons. Wade through rivers of blood as you hack through endless enemies all hell-bent on your demise. It's a really hard game on the easiest difficulty...when you turn up challenge the game becomes damn near impossible.

7. Rock Band 2 - Bladder of Steel

I'm pretty awesome on guitar. I can beat any song on expert and five star most. Learning to play an instrument on Rock Band isn't necessarily difficult on its own. There are the rhythmically challenged who will never be any good, but most people with a lot of practice can learn to beat the game on expert. This achievement is specifically about the time it takes. In order to get the Bladder of Steel achievement you have to not only beat the endless setlist, which is every on disc song in the game, but you can't fail a song, and...you can't pause the game. No pauses at all...using a wireless controller and the battery runs out...TOO BAD! 84 songs, 6 and a half hours, and no breaks. Plus, you have to have the skill to not fail. As good as I am on guitar, I still fail some of the really tough songs sometimes. I couldn't imagine being 6 hours in and failing on Painkiller. I'm pretty sure I would throw the guitar through the TV.

I've never had the opportunity to even try for this achievement. I have kids and a lack of Rock Band playing friends around to help. No way I would try solo. I want someone to be there to bail me out in case I screw up.

6. G.R.A.W. - World Champion

Ahhh....Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. What a great title. First of all, you aren't just a fighter, you are a WARfighter. Plus, you're an advanced warfighter, not one of those basic warfighters. When this game first came out it was all of the rage. Primarily because it was one of the first really great online titles early in the 360's library of games. I can remember getting great groups of people together to shoot each other over the fat pipes of the internet. Anyway, I've not said much about the achievement yet because there isn't a whole lot to cover here. It's quite simple. In order to get this achievement, you just have to be the #1 ranked player on Xbox live. The #1 ranked player in the world. That's it. If you have any experience with games (and if you are reading my blog, I imagine you do) then you understand just how impossible this achievement is. I will never even come close to this nor will I ever know anyone who will come close to this. It's a ridiculous achievement.

5. Hexic - Grand Pearl Poo-Bah

Hexic is a really fun little game. It comes with every Xbox packed with a hard drive so pretty much everyone has played it. I've been playing it since I bought my Xbox in 2005. That's nearly 6 years of on and off Hexic. It's the perfect title for killing some time and relaxing. The idea is you rotate colored gems to make groups of three. If you can circle a single piece with all of one color, you make a silver star piece. Not that hard. You can easily make a bunch of them every game if you are careful. Now...if you can surround a single piece with silver stars...that's 6 silver stars arranged in a circle, you make a black pearl. I've managed to do this exactly 7 times. Over the course of 6 years I've made 7 black pearls. To get the Grand Pearl Poo-Bah achievement, you need to surround a single piece with 6 black pearls. 6 BLACK PEARLS!! I've only made 7 of them in 6 years and they expect you to make 6 in one game and move them into a circle pattern. Now, maybe I suck at Hexic and other people will tell you how they can do this in their sleep, but I've never met one. The great thing about Hexic though is it is a very fun game to play, so I'll keep trying. Maybe someday I'll make 2 black pearls in one game...I doubt it though.

4. Super Meat Boy - I'm a Golden God

Super Meat Boy is a game designed to be as hard as possible. However, because of how fast the game loads, it doesn't get boring or frustrating. You will die...a lot. I'm talking thousands and thousands of times. Most people will never finish it. They will either give up, or their hands will become so crippled they can't continue. To get the I'm a Golden God achievement, you need to 100% complete the game. That's find every bandage, beat every level, beat every bonus level, beat every hidden level, find everything in the game, and do it all with A+ scores. I can't express the difficulty of this game in words. You have to play it to understand. So, go play, then cry for awhile as you think about what this achievement entails. Then decide it is probably not worth the effort and move on to something else. Just don't bother with the next few achievements on this list either.

3. Star Ocean: The Last Hope - 100% Battle Trophies

Battle trophies are what they sound like. An award given for various combat events. Fight so many enemies, do so much damage, etc...There are exactly 900 to obtain. 100 for each of the 9 characters. None of them are particularly difficult to get on their own, but the sheer volume of them means the time required is absolutely ridiculous. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of hours playing this relatively mediocre game just to obtain arbitrary awards for every character. It's a boring achievement and I'm forced to question the sanity of anyone who bothered getting it. I have zero intention of ever trying.

2. Final Fantasy XI - Reach lvl. 75 with any class

Ahhh...Final Fantasy XI. I've personally never played it on the Xbox, but I spent a fair amount of time playing it on PC back when it first came out. This is another one of those absolutely time consuming achievements. FFXI is designed to take forever to accomplish ANYTHING. Square wanted to make sure people kept paying to play because they went out and insured that anything you want to do in the game would be slow as hell. If I ever do an article on the 10 hardest games to get all the achievements in, this will be #1. Not only so you need to level one class to 75...you need to level all of them. This would literally take years. It's cumbersome and tiring and I just don't even want to think about it anymore. To anyone that manages to level one class to 75...kudos, I guess.

1. Mega Man 10 - Mr. Perfect

Oh, Capcom. Why do you hate us? Mega Man 10 is a piece of retro pie that is delicious to eat. Those of us who grew up playing the old Mega Man games immediately recognize 10 as a perfect retro title. Exactly as good as the old Mega Man games were. Mega Man games have always had their difficulties, and the new ones are no different. You need to try to figure out which boss weapons work on which bosses, kill all 8 bosses, then fight your way through Dr. Wily's lair, usually battle all the bosses again, then kill Wily. All this achievement wants you to do is beat the entire game...without getting hit. That's right, zero damage. Stray bullet hit you near the end of the game...START OVER. Mistime a jump and fall? START OVER. No damage, no hits, no mistakes from the beginning of the game to the end. It would be one thing if this was an easy game but it's Mega Man. It's quite difficult at times. Sadly, this is another achievement that I know my old, withered fingers will never get. As a matter of fact, check your friends list right now. Anyone that has this achievement is clearly a Cylon because no human can do it. TURN THEM IN TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES!

A Storm of Bullets. Also, Boxing Day in The Game Beard Household

I have a son named Grayson. I sincerely hope he does not grow up to be anything like Grayson Hunt, the main protagonist of Bulletstorm. He is foul mouthed, violent, and an drunken idiot, Grayson Hunt is even worse. His inebriated thirst for revenge dooms his entire space pirate crew. When the game first started, I hated him. He seemed like a worthless idiot with no regard for anything but himself. Without divulging too many spoilers, by the end of the game, I had earned a lot of respect for him, and understood his character a lot better. I was genuinely surprised how well Bulletstorm pulled off character development. I thought the game was going to be mindless shooting and lassoing of enemies but it really ended up being a heck of a lot more. The game actually possessed a pretty damn good story. It's not winning any awards, and the language goes a little overboard sometimes, but the development of Grayson Hunt and the underlying story of his revenge is icing on the delicious cake that is Bulletstorm.

I talked about the gameplay in my previous post so there isn't much to cover. I was correct though that it did start to feel a little old by the time I was done. The last few levels lacked the variety found in the early parts of the game. There was no giant, final boss fight or anything like it. Just masses of enemies, and an explosion countdown. Fortunately, just as it started to get a little stale, it was over. Just about the perfect length. I think I spent about 6 hours on the story. I spent a short amount of time with the other offline mode and left feeling a tad underwhelmed. Echoes is a perfect name for it. The mode thrusts you into previously played parts of the game and asks you to fight through it to an arbitrary end point. The idea is to use your creativity to rack up points killing baddies while moving as quickly as you can to the end point. You are awarded up to 3 stars for your performance. It's fun, but after playing the game it feels like a little bit of been there, done that because it is. It's the same levels you've already played through. Trying for a new high score can be addictive in games, but Echoes didn't quite grasp me.

Now on to other news. Fight Night Champion is pretty excellent...I think. I played it quite a bit this week and am really having a hard time deciding how much I like it. It's definitely not bad, and I'm pretty sure it isn't excellent, so it might just be decent. The actual boxing doesn't feel much different from previous iterations of the game. You still use the sticks to move and throw punches while blocking and dodging with the triggers. It's a great system so they don't need to worry about fixing it. The new addition, Championship Mode, is pretty fun but extremely short. You can box your way through it in a short afternoon. Most of it is standard fighting, however, they occasionally mix in special requirements. For example, in one fight, you break your hand in the first round and have to fight the rest of the fight lefty. They mix things up a bit, but oftentimes, they tend to be annoying. I don't want to fight an entire fight one handed. Also, if there is a scripted scene late in a fight, you are essentially fighting an invincible opponent until then. Also, the last fight is a gigantic pain in the ass. The story is actually really, really good though if not pretty predictable. It's a step in a very interesting direction and I sincerely hope they expand it in the next game.

The biggest issue I have with Fight Night: Champion is they didn't wait long enough to release it. We were forced to wait years between Round 3 and Round 4. Now they put out Champion pretty soon after 4 is released. Other then the Champion mode itself, the game doesn't offer anything new that would make me feel compelled to go out and spend $60 on another boxing game. The roster is mostly unchanged, the graphics are very similar, if not the same, and the boxing itself is mostly the same. It's the best in the series, but you should definitely think before you buy if you already own Round 4. As awesome as the Champion mode is it takes a couple hours tops and doesn't give you any reason to play it more than once.

So, this week, I'm going to finish Black Ops, play some more Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and maybe start Resonance of Fate. My next post will be either another classic review or top ten list. Look for both coming before the weekend.