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.

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Thirteen - Jericho

Sitting on my video game shelf for the last few year's has been Clive Barker's Jericho, a Playstation 3 title that was written and co-designed by Clive Barker.  It follows a team of military witches who are called upon by the military to stop supernatural threats.

Unfortunately for me, being a fan of the writer didn't help as the game mixes two of my least favourite types of video games; first-person shooters (I tend to get a little nauseous after playing for more than a few minutes), and progressive game style (wherein you follow a simple track and don't really have the chance to explore the world).

I did my best for the first half of the month to play about half an hour a day, and I did get through the first third of the game, but eventually the first-person play style just got me woozy (and not in a good way).

Oh well, not everything I checked out this month would end up as my cup of tea, and by finishing as much of the game as I could, I cleared the last little bit of the pile to reveal...

ASH VS EVIL DEAD (and yes,  I knew it was there all along, but I'm excited!)

Fables or Zombies? What's a Bookmonkey to do?

Sometimes a Christmas present can be a double-edged sword - not literally (well, yes, technically I suppose you could get a double-edged sword for Christmas, but that's not what I meant), but metaphorically, like the $20 Playstation Network gift card stocking stuffer I received.

The problem is, there are actually two games I'd like to get.  A few months ago I did a post on the Telltale game The Walking Dead which I really loved - a game focused less on the run and jump aspect of the majority of video games and instead on building trust and relationships was a really neat idea, and one of my favourite gaming experiences of 2013.

So then when I found out the same company was creating a new game based on the Vertigo series Fables (which is one of my favourite comic book series, period), I got pretty excited.  Early reviews were really positive and you get to play as Fabletown's sherrif, Bigby Wolf (who I've posted about here) and I've always been a sucker for the world created by Bill Willigham.

So things looked pretty simple, spend my $20, get a Fables game - awesome.  Only then I found out that Telltale games was releasing a second season of The Walking Dead and this time you get to play as Clemintine (the girl that the main character works to protect in the first game), so now I'm in a tricky place:

Do I pick the Fables, or the Zombies...

Things I've Noticed: My Wife is Pretty Amazing

Sorry I didn't get this post up earlier in the weekend; I came home on Friday expecting to have an evening's worth of stuff to do, and would hopefully get out a review of the book I was planning to finish (should come next week), when my wife told me she had a surprise for me - which turned out to be a copy of the new PS3 game The Last of Us from my local library.

So, as a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories, I've spent my weekend working my way through the game (also schoolwork, hanging with the family, visiting friends, etc.), and so far I've got to say it's pretty amazing.

The company who produced the game, Naughty Dog, are the same folks who created the Uncharted series, so I've found a lot of the controls are similar (which is nice), but what really amazes me about the game is just how amazing it looks - considering I'm playing a guy fighting zombie-like creatures, the sheer level beauty of game, showing a world where nature is slowly creeping back up on the remnants of our modern world.

I'm still probably in the first quarter of the game, but wow; it's a huge amount of fun.

Have I mentioned how amazing my wife is?

Game Reivew: Flower

Two weeks ago I picked up a new PS3 game for my wife; actually a three-in-one game, being Flow, Flower, and Journey.  All three were originally released as games on The Playstation Network which means they were downloadable content (games purchased online rather than as hardcopy discs).

Playing the three games in order of release, my wife quickly worked her way through Flow and moved onto Flower, which after watching the gameplay for a couple of days may be one of my new favourite games - right up there with Ico (although not quite at the level of Shadow of the Colossus).

Using no dialogue, the game takes place in the dreams of flowers, specifically a group of flowers on a small shelf in an urban apartment.  In the dreams, you control flower petals which travel across a landscape waking up other flowers and slowly, but surely bringing the landscape to life.  Like Katamari Forever,  the levels each start out easily and get tricky very quickly - also like Katamari, the game is quite addictive.

Things I've Noticed: Christmas 2012 is almost here!

And for me this means two key things:

1 - I get to change the banner on my Blog! (See Above)

 

And

2 - I get to take a few weeks off between my Fall 2012 classes and my Winter 2013 classes!

So what am I going to be filling up this month of non-school time with before I head back into the second half of my Masters of Library and Information Studies Degree?

Well why don’t I tell you? (Obviously I’m not going to mention my real first priority, spending time with my wife and kids, watching my favourite Christmas movies and hopefully getting some holiday baking in – I’m just going to focus on the “me” stuff)

First of all – I’ll still be heading down to the University campus every weekend to start reading books that may relate to my courses next month – I know this doesn’t actually sound very glamorous, but a couple hours a week now means that when term paper season hits, I’ve already got a handful of quotes and citations to get me started.

Second – I’m going to try and finish the third season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. which I’ve currently got on loan from my wonderfully patient friend Ron, so I can start getting my collection of borrowed DVDs/Books/Comics back to the friends that loaned them to me in the first place

Third – I’m going to try and finish the PS3 Game L.A. NOIRE which I’m currently sitting at 1/3 of the way through as I’m hoping to get another game for Christmas and would like to be finished this one by then so I can start playing any new games I get as soon as possible.

Fourth – I’m going to try and catch up with my reading – for the last few years I’ve set a goal for myself of seven books a month and I started December with 11 (four left over from November) – you know, Full-Time work, Grad School and a rich family life actually do start cutting into your reading time after a while!

And Five – I’m going to try catching up with my Magazine and Comic-Book reading as I’m starting to fall dangerously behind and January is bound to get busy again.

So how about you, my ever-faithful blog readers?  What are you going to be up to this holiday season?

Three Posts to go until a month of Saw

From the Desk of Bookmonkey,

As I'm now three days away from spending a month on a look at the Saw franchise, I thought I would clear a few things up.

1) I'm not going to get into graphic descriptions of on screen deaths or the like, although I'm a big fan of the horror genre, I'm not particularly into gore.

2) I am going to focus on a lot of the ways in which the franchise grew, looking at the original short film, the series, the spin-off comic book and at least the first game for the PS3 (I'm still searching for the second)

3) I've done a bit of a double duty with my Saw-themed month, I'm also going to be using it for a course I'm currently working on, so there may be some references to other academic works over the next month, and the occasional work cited (bear with me).

Anyway, that's about all - I just wanted you to know that my goal is to still have this blog be a place my kids and my mom could read over the next month, and due to the subject matter, I thought some of you might be cautious about what I'd be writing about.

Your pal,
Bookmonkey

Genre Character of the Week: Toby (Kung Fu Rider)

Having just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PS3, I’ve now moved on to a new game called Kung Fu Rider for the Playstation Move.  In it you take the role of either our genre character of the week - a private investigator named Toby, or his assistant Karin, who are attempting to escape from the mob (or to be more technically correct, the triad) through the street of Hong Kong while riding office chairs.

You know what?  That’s actually pretty much it – take a look at the attached photo and read the above paragraph and you know everything about Toby I do – the only time he even speaks in the game (past saying “I hope Karin’s all right” at the beginning of each level) is in the opening menu where he asks his assistant exactly why the mob is after them.

Reviews of the game are either pretty bad (game control seems to be a big issue) or good but with the caveat that the game is quite short. My only complaint is that I feel a little uncomfortable playing the female character as she seems pretty overtly sexual for a family game (living in a house of women I tend to notice these things).

For my money (which I didn’t actually spend – I got the game as a trade during my last used-book store run) the game is a lot of fun and the short levels mean it would do well as a game to share with company as well. 

Game Review: Batman Arkham Asylum

Since Father's Day my weekend PS3 game of choice has been Batman: Arkham Asylum and I've got to say it's been a lot of fun.  Unlike previous playstation games I've played, this time my 15-year-old daughter was playing the game as well, and she finished the game one day after I did, which was nice because some times I was a little ahead of her and could help her out and sometimes she was a little ahead of me.

The game follows (pretty closely actually) the Grant Morrison graphic Novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth which has the honour of being the first Graphic novel I ever purchased and for introducing me to Morrison and artist Dave McKean.

The game works in a sandbox style (meaning you can either follow the main story or any number of side stories) and focuses on the inmates of the asylum taking over and Batman having to put things back in order.

Honestly this game was tonnes of fun - for the voices they used a number of the same actors from the '90s animated series and the whole look of the game was pretty amazing.

I know I'm pretty far behind the curve with this one (Batman: Arkham City is the current game of the day), but if you haven't tried this one yet it's a lot of fun.

Genre Character of the Week: Desmond Miles

Having finished Shadow of the Colossus over the Easter long weekend, I moved on to my next PS3 game, Assassin’s Creed II. Like the Uncharted series, I am way behind on the current games, but at the same time I’ve never paid more than $20 for a game so there you go.

Assassin’s Creed II is actually kind of clever in that it both picks up immediately where the first one left off and also takes place 260 years later. The reason for this is the protagonist, and this week’s genre character: Desmond Miles.

Desmond is basically used as part of the framing story for both games (there are three more games in the series that I haven’t played – not including games for the PSP and Nintendo DS), but from the little I’ve seen of him in the games, he comes across as a pretty decent guy.

Working as a bartender at the beginning of the first game (which could be modern day or near-future, there really isn’t enough info to tell), Desmond is captured by people working for a company called Abstegro. Here he is locked in a laboratory/dorm room and forced to help two doctors by entering a machine called the ANIMUS, which allows him to re-live the life of one of his ancestors, Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad, an assassin who lived in the middle east during the 1190s A.D. Desmond spends the first game entering and exiting the ANIMUS and trying to find a way to escape from his capture. In the end (mild spoiler) he gains an ability from his time as Altaïr, and with it he discovers writing all over the walls of his prison in strange and cryptic writings.

In the second game (which, again I have only played for a few days), one of the doctors helps (again, mild spoiler) Desmond escape and together they join some sort of small group who are willing to help Desmond train to be an assassin in his own right, by entering the ANIMUS 2.0 and following the training of another ancestor who lived in Florence during the Italian Renaissance, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Desmond begins to learn the skills of the Assassin himself.

What I like about Desmond is that he acts like a normal guy in an extraordinary situation, trying his best to learn all he can about his captors and then working to better himself in an effort to fight back. I’ll fully admit I’m a sucker for characters who are willing to do hard work and try to better themselves in any way, so Desmond was pretty much a shoe-in for me right from the start.

If you haven’t tried any of the games before, I recommend starting with the first one – the narrative does flow from one to the other and abilities gain in the first one follow through into the second. So far, I’m having a lot of fun with this series.

Genre Character of the Week: Ico

So as I’ve been working my way through the PS3 catalogue of games I came across one called ICO/Shadow of the Colossus at in a bin at a grocery store for $20. I figured that although the games listed were PS2 games upgrade to work on the PS3, they came out to $10 each and hopefully someone thought they were good enough to be put on the newer system. (NOTE: After writing the review, it became apparent to me that both games actually rank highly on many gamers best games ever lists – but I was unaware of this until after writing the post)

Anyway, I haven’t touched Shadow of the Colossus yet, but I did just finish the other one and can now introduce you to this week’s genre character: ICO.

The game is incredibly minimal in back story, so here is just about everything you know about the character: he’s about ten-years-old, he comes from a village in some sort of fantasy world, he has horns (see picture), and because he has horns, his village has sacrificed him to die of starvation in some creepy sort of statue in a giant spooky castle.

Due to a mild earthquake the statue breaks, freeing Ico, who then proceeds to try and escape from the castle. Along the way he finds a strange girl named Yorda who he spends the majority of the game trying to help escape (she can be both intriguing and incredibly frustrating throughout), and the majority of the game is sort of like Myst but with fighting involved. Basically you solve puzzles and move Ico and the girl through the castle looking for a way to escape.

Although you (the player) use the character of Ico to solve the various puzzles to escape from the castle, as a character this little kid is really smart and very dedicated to rescuing his friend (even though they don’t speak the same language).

In the end the game took me two weekends to finish (so it was pretty short), but at the same time it was visually stunning and well worth the purchase, and for me a big part of that was due to the title character.

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.

Genre Character of the week: Isaac Clarke

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing the 2008 PS3 game Dead Space. My wife got it for me as an Anniversary gift (our 14th! which means if our marriage was a kid it could apply for a Learner’s permit!) and I’ve been playing it on the weekends ever since.

The game in three simple words?

Zombies. In. Space.

Seriously, it’s like back in 2007 someone at Electronic Arts went “Hey I think we should make a videogame for that Bookmonkey guy, and I’ve got just the right idea, Zombies in Space! Who is this Bookmonkey? Well let me tell you, next year this upstart Canadian Dad is going to jump onto the blogging bandwagon and a few months after that over a dozen people will be publicly following him on blogger – seriously! Now, it’s important to remember that he won’t be getting a PS3 until late 2010, and won’t even be touching this game until after Halloween in 2011, but we might get lucky and strike a chord with some other players between now and then, who knows, maybe more than one guy likes the idea of fighting space zombies!”

Anyway, my theories of game design (delusional as they may be) aside, the game follows an engineer named Isaac Clarke, named after Science Fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke (neither of which wrote about space zombies) who spends the entire game fixing a massive mining ship in deep space while fighting off zombies and also happens to be our genre character of the week.

Isaac doesn’t actually speak, but he is resourceful, brave and willing to fight his way through some of the nastiest zombies I’ve ever come across – seriously the game has some pretty nasty visuals, so make sure your kids are in bed before you start playing.

I guess what I like best about Isaac is the fact that he’s not a soldier, but instead a guy who goes around fixing things and making his world a better, zombie-less place.

Genre Characters of the Week: Ratchet and Clank

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my local library? As I'm working my way through classic PS3 games, usually through purchases at EB Games, there are a number of titles that are still currently too far above my price point to purchase - Red Dead Redemption, L.A.. Noire, etc.) so once I found out that my local library has video games, some of those pricier titles are now available to me. Case in point, the first title featuring this weeks genre characters: Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction.

Ratchet (pictured left) is an alien creature known as a lombax who, along with his servant/backpack/friend/robot Clank save the universe on a pretty regular basis. What I really enjoy about both characters is that they are pretty genuinely funny (humour and SF are always good friends of mine), and that by playing the game I'm seeing lots of neat settings, amazing and varied weapons and I can also play the game whether my kids are watching or not (there are a lot of horror-themed games where I have to play the game early in the morning with the sound off, and hiding under a blanket).

In the end, these guys are funny, effective and have a lot of heart. A solid game.

Things I've Noticed: Sometimes I speak too soon

Happy Canada Day everyone! (for those of you South of the boarder, that means we get Friday rather than Monday off this weekend).

A couple weeks ago I gave my first impressions of the PS3 Game Assasins Crreed. I used phrases like "cut-scenes that go on forever," a "Bizarre game-within-a-game set-up," and finally an open-ended style that was "so vague" it came off as unhelpful.

Now, a couple weeks later and just about halfway through the game I'd like to re-address these issues.

First: Sorry - I spoke too soon and as my playing style (a couple hours each Saturday and Sunday) limits the amount of time I'm playing any game, I found it hard to get involved with the story. Four weeks into the game and I'm actually having a lot of fun.

Second: The open ended nature of the game, although difficult to figure out at first, gets to be a lot more fun as I start exploring the cities throughout the game. Basically you begin by climbing to the high spots throughout the city, then look around and get a bunch of mini-missions to do - the more mini-missions completed the better a chance you have at assassinating the bad guy in each level. Once the game got rolling I found this to be a lot of fun.

Finally: I'm still not a big fan of the game-within-a-game structure, every once in a while the character wakes up, is able to view two scientists argue and then goes to bed. Seriously, although you can wander around the lab, and occasionally read some emails or find a secret code, there isn't really a lot to this aspect of the game (so far - see I can learn!)

Anyway, almost immediately after my first review the game started to be a lot of fun, and in the spirit of all Canadians everywhere, I'd just like to say - sorry.

Happy Canada Day Everyone!!!

Game Review - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Today I thought I would take a quick look at my latest game for the PS3, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I know that this game is almost five years old now, but as I've only had my console for about a year, I'm just getting around to these classics.

A quick note - the game has twenty-three chapters and I'm only on Chapter twenty, so although I've played the majority of the game, I haven't finished it yet.

The three points I want to make about the game are as follows:

1) The game is pretty similar to the Tomb Raider series, basically you enter an environment, kill whatever is running around there and then move things about to find the exit.

2) That said, the graphics are pretty darn amazing and the fight scenes demand any number of creative solutions - going in and shooting Rambo-style will work for a few of these fights but most of them require some sort of strategy.

3) This game (and I say this as a hard-core Zombie fan), really doesn't need the (mild spoiler) Zombies in the final act. Seriously, the entire game up to the last few chapters has done a pretty good job of being an Indiana Jones-style game wherein a treasure hunter is fighting off other treasure hunters - why exactly does the game need to go all Resident Evil in the end? Also, for a game with such incredible graphics it is a little annoying to spend the last few chapters chasing (and running from) zombies in dark cement hallways.

In the end I'm enjoying the game, but I'll probably trade it away after I've beaten it - a fun play, but the sudden switch of genres at the end seems kind of forced and ends up taking the game out of my library of games.