Game Review: Heavy Rain

One of my favourite things about the winter break is the ability to catch up on some long awaiting books, movies, and games that I've been meaning to get around to for a long time.

Case in Point, Heavy Rain a thriller designed for the Playstation 3 and released in 2010, which follows multiple leads over the course of a week in the search for a missing boy and the serial killer who has captured him.

Throughout the game you play the boys father, a journalist, an FBI agent, and a Private Detective, all racing to solve the crime before the young boy dies.

What I loved about the game was the whole "choices have consequences" aspect, wherein main characters can die or make decisions that dramatically effect the later chapters of the game.

What I actively disliked about the game was the way that Madison Paige (the jounralist), the games only female protagonist, was largely involved to nurse the other characters or act simply as a sex object.  I'm all for sexuality in games and stories, but it would have been great if she had had anything more to do than the very basic traditional female roles given to her in the story.

Of course my favourite aspect of the game was the fact that the main character, Ethan Mars (the missing boy's father) spends much of the game solving horrible Saw-style puzzles to get clues as to where his son might be, and each successful trial gives him more letters in a hangman-style game which he has on his phone, spelling out the final address.  After one trial, I'm pretty sure he could have taking the partial clue to his local library and solved everything on day two (of seven).

Overall a fun game, but the follow up Beyond: Two Souls was much better, and I won't be keeping this one having finished it.

Game Review: Assassin's Creed II

This morning I got up early and figured I'd play a little bit more of my latest PS3 game, Assassin's Creed II.  The game has 14 chapters (called sequences) and as I had just finished Sequence 11 yesterday, I figured I would try sequence 12 today and finish the game up next week.

Interesting note about Assassin's Creed II, Sequences 12 and 13 are downloadable content, not part of the main game, so when you finish Sequence 11 you go straight to Sequence 14, the end of the game.

Luckily for me, I wasn't quite finished my latest book for review, so I can now do a game review.

Assassin's Creed II continues both right where Assassin's Creed left off and a few hundred years later.  You still play Desmond Miles, but instead of inhabiting an Assassin during the Crusades, you instead inhabit an Assassin during the Renaissance in Florence, Venice and ultimately the Vatican.

Like the previous game the set up is that you are a guy in the near-future who has been kidnapped and put in a machine (kind of like The Matrix in reverse) and are living the life of an Assassin in the past to discover stuff about the future.

The game is sandbox style, which means that while there is a main story line to follow, it has a large number of side quests and areas to explore.  It feels kind of like the Grand Theft Auto games in that way.

The visuals are great, the music is fun, and in one particularly interesting set of side quests you have to make your way through a number of ancient tombs to find secret seals (items not mammals) which feels an awful lot like Tomb Raider or Uncharted.


In the end the game was fun, worked for me for about a month and a half (remember, I only play on weekends) and definitely has me interested in continuing through the series if I can find the discs for a good price ($20 or less).

Game Review: Infamous

As I've been off on vacation for the last couple of weeks, I was able to finish my most recent game for the PS3, Infamous. The game is a sandbox-style game (wherein you can follow a main story, do side missions or simply explore the environment) and follows a bicycle messenger named Cole MacGrath who begins to develop super powers after being at the epicentre of a massive explosion.

The game itself was a lot of fun, as the explorations through the city showed me a lot of really neat environments and allowed me to interact with the cities population. Actually one of the best parts of the game, in my opinion, was the ability to be a jerk or a decent guy throughout and have your choice actually affect the gameplay. Playing as a good guy, I eventually had a lot of people helping out in my battles and being friendly to me overall. I'm looking forward to coming back to the game at a later date and trying it out as an evil guy, so the replay offered by the game is actually quite high.

The graphics were fun, the story was engaging, and although there were a few glitches (mostly falling through parts of the environment that should not have let me fall), overall this was a really fun play. I'm excited about checking out the sequel as well, but next up for me is the sequel to one of my favourite games for the PS3 so far, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This new title, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Things I've noticed: Maybe Bookmonkey isn't the most accurate name

Looking back through my older posts, I’ve noticed that I have a lot of work on film, television, and videogames. Unfortunately, I can’t create three additional parallel blogs called Wisdom of Filmmonkey, Televisionmonkey, and Videogamemonkey, so everything has come under my bookmonkey blog. (Actually I’m sure I could, but as I like seeing my friends and family, I’m just going to stick to this one.)

Considering how many articles I do have regarding books however, it is important that I send out a quick thanks to my lovely wife for regularly reminding me that a blog with the word “Book” in the title should have more than a small amount of book-related postings.

It’s kind of strange overall when I look back at my earlier posts, for a while I had a great numbering system and three specific types of posts (Things I’ve noticed being the only survivor of these categories), and with one embarrassing post aside (yes I’ve activated a link to it – I still think epic fantasy series are far too numerous for any well-rounded reader to follow, but perhaps I could have said it a little nicer), I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done.

Anyway, for those of you out there who agree with my wife and wonder how long it will be until I put some more focus on genre books in this blog, don’t worry, I try to rotate between all the stuff I’m interested in and books are a huge part of that.

Your Pal,

Bookmonkey