One of the games I snagged for cheap recently was Transformers: Dark of the Moon Decepticon version. I've recently finished it and felt inclined to make a quick review for the game. So, let's review and roll out!
The graphics look exactly like the first Transformers movie game for DS to me. That is to say, there are textures pasted on blocky 3D models. I still think the DS is capable or more, but that isn't what's here. The graphics get the job done, but they are not very good. Backgrounds are sparse outside of the playable area, and buildings noticeably pop in and out of view while moving.
The few lines of dialog/story in this game are voice, which is a plus. The music is just kind of there, it's not grating but not memorable at all, either.
Controlling the Transformer is a little wonky at first. Since there is no second stick to aim, you make do with moving and using the L and R Buttons to strafe. It took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it, the controls worked fine. One thing that always bugs me, you have to use the touch screen to do all of the menu options. It's fine if that's in the game, but I always want the D-pad and buttons to work on them, too. One sad note: changing into your alt form (vehicle) is useless in this game. You don't ever need to do it and there is no good reason to. When in vehicle form, you have to press a button to engage "stealth" mode where your guns come out and it would be impossible to blend in anywhere. This is the only way to fire guns in the alt mode. Sadly, even Megatron, who turns into his Revenge of the Fallen tank form, has to engage "stealth" mode to fire the cannon.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon Decepticon version has only 12 missions. They do get longer as you go farther in the game, but the longest is still less than 30 mins. You don't really get much game for your buck. It's also pretty easy, so you aren't going to die and have to restart much (if at all). Each level has a few collectibles, but they aren't too hard to find once you know what to look for. No characters are unlockable, either, but you can use any of the four playable ones on any mission once you beat the game. Yay? A person could beat the game and get all the upgrades/collectibles in a day without much effort. There is multiplayer, but it is local only, so I wasn't able to try it out.
I paid $5 for the "special edition" that comes with the toy car. Honestly, that was the best part of the purchase. I don't regret buying the game, but I can't recommend anyone get it either. It was more fun than the Xbox 360 version of the Dark of the Moon game I rented months ago, though. If you really want a Transformers game on the DS, stick with the game of the first movie. There was much more content and fun in that game. Transformers: Dark of the Moon Decepticon version could be much better if there were more playable characters and levels. Even adding a "challenge" mode or something (even though I'm not too fond of those) would have been better. I'd recommend skipping this game, even if you are a die-hard Transformers fan like myself. The toy car does look pretty cool, though. Glad I bought the Decepticon version, since I'd be more unhappy having a Bumblebee toy.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Weekends of Ups and Downs
This weekend, as the title describes, had it moments, but also sucked really bad. On Friday night, I finally beat the final urgent mission in Monster Hunter Tri (spoilers for those who check out my Youtube channel). It wasn't by myself, of course. I was playing with a fan of said videos and some of his buddies, and the four of us emerged victorious. I didn't make a fool of myself, which was pretty good. They were obviously much better at the fight than I was, but that will come with more experience with the monster. Now only one monster left until I feel ready for MH3U!
The sad part of the weekend? It was the close of City of Heroes later that night. Despite having work early the next morning, I had to stay up and say goodbye to such a great game. Figuring out which character to see the end with and where to do it was a hard decision. Do I say goodbye with my first lv 50 hero? My first lv 50 villain? What about the first character I created? What about the one I had the most fun with? The one that didn't get his chance to shine? In the end, I sadly passed up my scrapper, peacebringer, warshade and brute to go with my main villain, Gear Master J.
He was one of my first concepts, but probably my third created character. I started with villains and on launch day made my first three characters instantly, mostly to get the names for the first two. Well, actually my first character was created to get the global name I wanted, but I don't really count him. Anyway, Gear Master was my first and only lv 50 villain, based a bit off of me, and was tons of fun. So where should he see the end? Most people gathered in Atlas Park, so I wouldn't want to go there. Plus, I'm a villain, so I can't. How about the villain starting or ending zone? They aren't as memorable to me as some of the other zones. Eventually, I decided upon Ouroboros. The place deals with time travel, which is a subject I like, so why not? Also most of the plot there revolves around "the coming storm", so it seemed very appropriate. I used "/demorecord" to try and capture the final minutes, I'm just not sure how to view it yet. I also took lots of pictures.
As midnight rolled around, many said there goodbyes and lamented the game getting killed. It seems as though the servers were turned off one by one, since it took a few minutes for Guardian to go down for good. For yucks I logged in real quick again, and was greeted with this sad sight.
Freedom, was apparently, the last to go. As I've said time and time again, this was a sad time. The game was really fun and there isn't anything that can fill the void it leaves. The other two superhero MMOs just don't compare to the sheer amount of fun, creativity and content of City of Heroes. I backed up all my characters with the Sentinel program, just in case there is a way to bring them back to life. It's the comic way! Still, I wish there was some way to get a single player/ LAN capable version of the game, as that would be perfect. I'd easily buy one (two) if I could. City of Heroes and Paragon studios, thank you again for the great game. I hope to make a video about CoH in the near future.
Lastly, on Sunday I scored a spectacular deal on a handful of games. Lack of money or not, I couldn't pass up the deal I got. Thankfully, I'm getting some money for Christmas, so that pretty much went to this. Basically, I scored a lot of games for about $5 each. I guess we'll have a good Christmas after all!
The sad part of the weekend? It was the close of City of Heroes later that night. Despite having work early the next morning, I had to stay up and say goodbye to such a great game. Figuring out which character to see the end with and where to do it was a hard decision. Do I say goodbye with my first lv 50 hero? My first lv 50 villain? What about the first character I created? What about the one I had the most fun with? The one that didn't get his chance to shine? In the end, I sadly passed up my scrapper, peacebringer, warshade and brute to go with my main villain, Gear Master J.
He was one of my first concepts, but probably my third created character. I started with villains and on launch day made my first three characters instantly, mostly to get the names for the first two. Well, actually my first character was created to get the global name I wanted, but I don't really count him. Anyway, Gear Master was my first and only lv 50 villain, based a bit off of me, and was tons of fun. So where should he see the end? Most people gathered in Atlas Park, so I wouldn't want to go there. Plus, I'm a villain, so I can't. How about the villain starting or ending zone? They aren't as memorable to me as some of the other zones. Eventually, I decided upon Ouroboros. The place deals with time travel, which is a subject I like, so why not? Also most of the plot there revolves around "the coming storm", so it seemed very appropriate. I used "/demorecord" to try and capture the final minutes, I'm just not sure how to view it yet. I also took lots of pictures.
As midnight rolled around, many said there goodbyes and lamented the game getting killed. It seems as though the servers were turned off one by one, since it took a few minutes for Guardian to go down for good. For yucks I logged in real quick again, and was greeted with this sad sight.
Freedom, was apparently, the last to go. As I've said time and time again, this was a sad time. The game was really fun and there isn't anything that can fill the void it leaves. The other two superhero MMOs just don't compare to the sheer amount of fun, creativity and content of City of Heroes. I backed up all my characters with the Sentinel program, just in case there is a way to bring them back to life. It's the comic way! Still, I wish there was some way to get a single player/ LAN capable version of the game, as that would be perfect. I'd easily buy one (two) if I could. City of Heroes and Paragon studios, thank you again for the great game. I hope to make a video about CoH in the near future.
Lastly, on Sunday I scored a spectacular deal on a handful of games. Lack of money or not, I couldn't pass up the deal I got. Thankfully, I'm getting some money for Christmas, so that pretty much went to this. Basically, I scored a lot of games for about $5 each. I guess we'll have a good Christmas after all!
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Rental Review: WWE 13 (Xbox 360)
Again, thanks to Redbox, I had just over a day to review WWE 13 for Xbox 360. Originally, I took part in a group review podcast of it, but it can't be edited. According to @ChrizAkaTheMole, whenever he loads it into Movie Maker, he gets the "Blue Screen of Death". So....I'll just write up my impressions instead.
The graphics still look pretty good, detailed and faithful to their real-life counterparts, but the models look very plastic-y to me when they get sweaty. The crowd, however, looks better than ever. The don't look like flat sprites or low polygon people. Sure, they aren't near as detailed as the wrestlers, but they move at different rates and don't look like copies of each other as much as they used to.
The sound...well, honestly some of the commentary sounds like it was recorded in a tin can in the "Attitude Era" mode. My fellow Xpounders feel that is intentional to get a "retro" feel, but it never sounded like that to me. It just sounds horrible and sticks out like a sore thumb. However, the lines for the in-match commentary feel less canned than previous years.
I'll admit that I kept getting confused with the controls. They switch them slightly each year, and some things that switched the previous year didn't stick with me. Probably because I only played WWE 12 for a day, same as this one. Since it was a rental, there was no instruction book and I had to look up the controls in-game. Even so, I fell into habits from games past and hit the wrong button occasionally.
Instead of "Road to Wrestlemania", the story mode this year is "Attitude Era". I love what they tried to do here, having the player relive significant moments from the best era of professional wrestling. It's also a bonus that they have actual audio and video from the time in the game (with the appropriate censoring of the F in WWF). However, you must do every match in order. They have them divided up into sections, but cannot jump to different sections, which I would have liked. They also seemed to get difficult pretty fast, and made even harder that there is a laundry list of things to do in each match to unlock an extra (that may or may not be worth it). It wasn't as bad as WWE 12's story mode, but it wasn't very fun for me. I'll just stick to Exhibition. Universe mode is back and I didn't really notice many upgrades. There did seem to be a lack of automatic story lines, which I've heard they will address in a future patch.
Matches were still fun when playing as the characters I create. I didn't have much time for story creator, and it wasn't like I could upload or download anything anyway. Create a finisher is still solid. There a lot of moves to set this year, and I almost felt like there were too many, since it took so long to set them all. The entrance creator is still the same, and unfortunately still won't loop the music to fit the entrance if you pick longer animations.
All in all, there is a good amount of replay in just the story mode, boring as it is. I had the most fun in exhibition matches, but probably not $60 fun. I'm going to wait for a price drop like the last few years. The game doesn't seem quite as buggy as last year, at least on the 360. I have no interest in playing online, so there isn't much to comment on other that doing the 1 match for the achievement had some lag. So, the servers are still pretty bad.
The graphics still look pretty good, detailed and faithful to their real-life counterparts, but the models look very plastic-y to me when they get sweaty. The crowd, however, looks better than ever. The don't look like flat sprites or low polygon people. Sure, they aren't near as detailed as the wrestlers, but they move at different rates and don't look like copies of each other as much as they used to.
The sound...well, honestly some of the commentary sounds like it was recorded in a tin can in the "Attitude Era" mode. My fellow Xpounders feel that is intentional to get a "retro" feel, but it never sounded like that to me. It just sounds horrible and sticks out like a sore thumb. However, the lines for the in-match commentary feel less canned than previous years.
I'll admit that I kept getting confused with the controls. They switch them slightly each year, and some things that switched the previous year didn't stick with me. Probably because I only played WWE 12 for a day, same as this one. Since it was a rental, there was no instruction book and I had to look up the controls in-game. Even so, I fell into habits from games past and hit the wrong button occasionally.
Instead of "Road to Wrestlemania", the story mode this year is "Attitude Era". I love what they tried to do here, having the player relive significant moments from the best era of professional wrestling. It's also a bonus that they have actual audio and video from the time in the game (with the appropriate censoring of the F in WWF). However, you must do every match in order. They have them divided up into sections, but cannot jump to different sections, which I would have liked. They also seemed to get difficult pretty fast, and made even harder that there is a laundry list of things to do in each match to unlock an extra (that may or may not be worth it). It wasn't as bad as WWE 12's story mode, but it wasn't very fun for me. I'll just stick to Exhibition. Universe mode is back and I didn't really notice many upgrades. There did seem to be a lack of automatic story lines, which I've heard they will address in a future patch.
Matches were still fun when playing as the characters I create. I didn't have much time for story creator, and it wasn't like I could upload or download anything anyway. Create a finisher is still solid. There a lot of moves to set this year, and I almost felt like there were too many, since it took so long to set them all. The entrance creator is still the same, and unfortunately still won't loop the music to fit the entrance if you pick longer animations.
All in all, there is a good amount of replay in just the story mode, boring as it is. I had the most fun in exhibition matches, but probably not $60 fun. I'm going to wait for a price drop like the last few years. The game doesn't seem quite as buggy as last year, at least on the 360. I have no interest in playing online, so there isn't much to comment on other that doing the 1 match for the achievement had some lag. So, the servers are still pretty bad.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Sine Mora (PSN) Review
Thanks to Grasshopper and Digital Reality, I can bring you another review! This is Sine Mora, a time-bending bullet hell game that previously came out on the Xbox 360, now available on PSN for PS3 and Vita.
As we usually do, let us start with the graphics for Sine Mora. The game looks great. The settings are fantastical and detailed. There's almost too much detail which makes me want to look at all the pretty stages. I can't, since that gets you killed very quickly. Enemy design is also top-notch, with lots of variety. There's barely any pallet swaps, either. Bosses are all huge, imposing and unique. As an added plus, the artwork for the characters looks really cool, too. Enemy bullets are many different colors, but this is a mixed blessing. It can make it easier to see different shots, but sometimes they blend into the background. That's really my only gripe with the visuals, all the rest is superb.
All the in-game lines and loading screen story bits are voiced. I had to look around to see what language it was, since I had no idea (Hungarian, apparently). So if you have little ones, the "strong language" and "sexual themes" would only be an issue if they can read (or speak Hungarian). The music is also pretty nice. It's not too memorable, but it is fitting.
So how does the game play? You can shoot (of course), fire a sub-weapon and use a "capsule" ability. In the main story, the capsule ability allows you to slow down time, making it easier to dodge bullets. The concept of bending and travelling through time is also present in the story, so this isn't a tacked-on ability, it makes sense in context. When playing the non-story modes, you can pick a ship (affects the shot pattern), then a pilot (affects the sub-weapon), and finally the capsule ability (slow time, reflect bullets or rewind time). It's really nice that there's lots of builds available, which means everyone can find a build that works best for them. The ship moves pretty fast, but sometimes too fast for me. The only way to travel slower is to slightly tilt the analog stick. This works well, but is very hard to remember to do in the heat of battle (read: while dodging a massive amount of bullets).
I'll say that the difficulty of the game is really where I have my gripe. I like that whenever you are hit, you just lose time instead of health, which I think gives more leeway most times. However, there are several parts when hitting something immediately results in death. To me, they were unexpected and I was usually confused as to why I just died. To illustrate, there was a part where I had to sneak through some pipes by hiding in trash. I didn't realize that I had to literally be in the middle of the trash. I didn't want to ram into it, since these games (and also this one) condition you not to touch things that aren't powerups. So after a couple of continues down the drain, I just ran into the trash and was unharmed. I was a bit grumpy to say the least.
Bullet spreads and effects can also be downright mean. There are bullets that move at varying speeds, change direction, home in on your plane and even disappear. The final parts of the game felt more like they were just trying to be jerks than making it harder. The arcade and score attack modes don't even have a "normal" difficulty option, just "hard" and "insane". Even the hard difficulty is ridiculous to me. While I'm never the 1CC guy in these games, I'm usually the 2CC guy, if you want a point of reference. I'm also hopelessly bad at the one challenge I have unlocked in Challenge mode. As far as I've learned, you have to beat one to unlock the next, which I can't say I'm a fan of. It would be nice to have multiple open so players aren't just stuck and can at least attempt others. One last gripe: I don't think there's any invincibility time after getting hit. This is especially bad when trying to get your shot powerups back after getting hit.
Sine Mora's story mode can be beaten in a day, but it's lengthy for a bullet hell game. The best part of the story is how detailed it is. The whole world and civilizations have backstories to flesh the whole game out. The game spins an interesting tale of revolution and revenge, but it can be really hard to follow. As far as I can tell, there are two separate plots that the game jumps between as you progress through story mode. It can be hard to keep everything straight with all the jumping around. I'm sure I have a decent grasp of the plot, and I especially like the outcome of Koss' quest for revenge.
If you look at the trophy list, you don't get an indication of how much work you have to put into the game to get them. In-game there is a list of requirements for each one, and there is lots of stuff required to get them all. Several of the requirements are going to stop all but the very best players. As good as I am at bullet hell/ space shooters/ shoot em ups, I doubt I'll be getting many trophies for Sine Mora. Definitely a lot of playtime for your money if you go for trophies or the insane Challenge mode.
There is also a Vita version, but unfortunately there is no cross-buy. It would have been cool to have cross-buy for an extra $5 or so. I have no idea if it's possible, but this would be nice to play the game a bit when on the go to work on the trophies or challenges.
As mentioned before, the game can get really hard. However, if you are a fan of bullet hell/ "shmup" games (I really don't like that term), you should pick it up. The game can get frustrating, but it is fun. Mean, but fun. The story is confusing, but it's probably not why you would play Sine Mora. If you aren't a fan of bullet hell games, this one isn't likely to change your mind, but as said before, fans of the genre should give the demo a whirl.
As we usually do, let us start with the graphics for Sine Mora. The game looks great. The settings are fantastical and detailed. There's almost too much detail which makes me want to look at all the pretty stages. I can't, since that gets you killed very quickly. Enemy design is also top-notch, with lots of variety. There's barely any pallet swaps, either. Bosses are all huge, imposing and unique. As an added plus, the artwork for the characters looks really cool, too. Enemy bullets are many different colors, but this is a mixed blessing. It can make it easier to see different shots, but sometimes they blend into the background. That's really my only gripe with the visuals, all the rest is superb.
All the in-game lines and loading screen story bits are voiced. I had to look around to see what language it was, since I had no idea (Hungarian, apparently). So if you have little ones, the "strong language" and "sexual themes" would only be an issue if they can read (or speak Hungarian). The music is also pretty nice. It's not too memorable, but it is fitting.
So how does the game play? You can shoot (of course), fire a sub-weapon and use a "capsule" ability. In the main story, the capsule ability allows you to slow down time, making it easier to dodge bullets. The concept of bending and travelling through time is also present in the story, so this isn't a tacked-on ability, it makes sense in context. When playing the non-story modes, you can pick a ship (affects the shot pattern), then a pilot (affects the sub-weapon), and finally the capsule ability (slow time, reflect bullets or rewind time). It's really nice that there's lots of builds available, which means everyone can find a build that works best for them. The ship moves pretty fast, but sometimes too fast for me. The only way to travel slower is to slightly tilt the analog stick. This works well, but is very hard to remember to do in the heat of battle (read: while dodging a massive amount of bullets).
 |
| There are "prettier" pictures, but I really like this one. |
I'll say that the difficulty of the game is really where I have my gripe. I like that whenever you are hit, you just lose time instead of health, which I think gives more leeway most times. However, there are several parts when hitting something immediately results in death. To me, they were unexpected and I was usually confused as to why I just died. To illustrate, there was a part where I had to sneak through some pipes by hiding in trash. I didn't realize that I had to literally be in the middle of the trash. I didn't want to ram into it, since these games (and also this one) condition you not to touch things that aren't powerups. So after a couple of continues down the drain, I just ran into the trash and was unharmed. I was a bit grumpy to say the least.
Bullet spreads and effects can also be downright mean. There are bullets that move at varying speeds, change direction, home in on your plane and even disappear. The final parts of the game felt more like they were just trying to be jerks than making it harder. The arcade and score attack modes don't even have a "normal" difficulty option, just "hard" and "insane". Even the hard difficulty is ridiculous to me. While I'm never the 1CC guy in these games, I'm usually the 2CC guy, if you want a point of reference. I'm also hopelessly bad at the one challenge I have unlocked in Challenge mode. As far as I've learned, you have to beat one to unlock the next, which I can't say I'm a fan of. It would be nice to have multiple open so players aren't just stuck and can at least attempt others. One last gripe: I don't think there's any invincibility time after getting hit. This is especially bad when trying to get your shot powerups back after getting hit.
Sine Mora's story mode can be beaten in a day, but it's lengthy for a bullet hell game. The best part of the story is how detailed it is. The whole world and civilizations have backstories to flesh the whole game out. The game spins an interesting tale of revolution and revenge, but it can be really hard to follow. As far as I can tell, there are two separate plots that the game jumps between as you progress through story mode. It can be hard to keep everything straight with all the jumping around. I'm sure I have a decent grasp of the plot, and I especially like the outcome of Koss' quest for revenge.
 |
| Someone actually claimed this wasn't a bullet hell game. Sure, buddy. |
If you look at the trophy list, you don't get an indication of how much work you have to put into the game to get them. In-game there is a list of requirements for each one, and there is lots of stuff required to get them all. Several of the requirements are going to stop all but the very best players. As good as I am at bullet hell/ space shooters/ shoot em ups, I doubt I'll be getting many trophies for Sine Mora. Definitely a lot of playtime for your money if you go for trophies or the insane Challenge mode.
There is also a Vita version, but unfortunately there is no cross-buy. It would have been cool to have cross-buy for an extra $5 or so. I have no idea if it's possible, but this would be nice to play the game a bit when on the go to work on the trophies or challenges.
As mentioned before, the game can get really hard. However, if you are a fan of bullet hell/ "shmup" games (I really don't like that term), you should pick it up. The game can get frustrating, but it is fun. Mean, but fun. The story is confusing, but it's probably not why you would play Sine Mora. If you aren't a fan of bullet hell games, this one isn't likely to change your mind, but as said before, fans of the genre should give the demo a whirl.
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