Man, this game was looking to be pretty good, but it really hits Boarderlands 2-syndrome in the end of the 4th into the entire last chapter. There are certain segments that are clearly designed to be played optimally in a co-op setting. Without a human partner, they require either absurd luck with either your partner AI or enemy AI. Specifically grevious is the turret section on the train and the final boss. I imagine the final boss is a very fun challenge with two people, with one to lure him and one to operate the turret at the back, but holy shit, he is damn near impossible to beat by yourself.
On a story note, the universe seems kinda neat, so I wish the game took its narrative more seriously. I mean, it'd be one thing if you were just thrown in and had to figure things out just listening in on Marcus' point of view, but they don't even give you that. Very often you're kept out of the mission briefing and thrown right into the action with little to no explanation of why you're there or what you're even doing. If it weren't for the general linearity of the levels, it'd be really easy to just lose track of what you're doing with how vague your step-by-step objectives are. Verdict: Hasn't aged well. Too many other great 3rd person shooters you could be playing from that generation, let alone that console, to warrant spending time with *cough* Vanquish *cough*. Don't waste your time with it unless you really want to experience all 3 original games in order.
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Dang, we had a lot of fun with this. I've never beaten Halo 1, and it's been like, four years at least since I played through Halo 2 with a friend in one sitting (similarly to how we did this today), so I couldn't really follow the plot too well. But it's Halo though, and being part of the original trilogy, I don't really need to comment too much because you know it's a great game. Guns are great and sound cool. A good amount of weapons, characters are even fairly neat, (even if it's mostly just neat to look at). No final boss really, but that ending escape sequence was really something else.
Verdict: A great 5-ish hour romp with a friend if you want to play a good couch-co-op FPS on your 360. Has aged well, and is just as iconic and fun as it always was. My expectation going in was something L.A. Noire-ish, and that was more or less what I got. Given that LA Noire is a very similarly themed game in the not so populated genre of Americana-sandbox (specifically in the 50's in this case), and both games came out around the same time (9 or so months apart), this "review" will contain a lot of comparisons to it. I really like period games though, and this was a great one, so I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Gameplay-wise, where LA Noire is Phoenix Wright meets GTA/sandbox, Mafia II is cover-shooter meets GTA/sandbox. Personally, I prefer the Ace Attorney style of LA Noire, Mafia II takes itself as much more of an action game, and does it fairly well. There's a wide variety of guns which sound very good. Enemies aren't terribly smart by themselves, but where they spawn usually incorporates the level design in some way to make the best of their limited intelligence. You have a health bar that regens, but it regens kinda like in Wolfenstein: The New Order where the more you get hurt at one time, the less max health you'll be able to regen before healing again. On the topic of health regen speed, it differs a fair bit between difficulties. I played through the story through on hard, then mucked around a ton on normal and easy to mop up collectibles and achievements, and the difference between difficulties is noticeable. Your health appears to regen much faster on lower difficulties, but I'm not 100% certain (sometimes it was very fast, other times fairly slow), but the biggest difference is how hard enemies hit. Enemies have exactly the same amount of health on every difficulty, but you just take WAY more damage on higher difficulties. You aren't invincible on easy mode, but after playing through the game on hard, I certainly felt like it. You can get wiped away REALLY quick by an unfortunate Tommy gun blast on hard mode, and the checkpoints are fairly unforgiving in the later chapters (especially the last one). Hard tends to be a fair challenge, even for someone who sucks at twin-stick shooting like me. Occasionally it runs into problems with the game design though. There are certain sections where you're being fired upon by another vehicle's occupants. You're ALWAYS driving more or less, and this ain't Saints Row: You can't fire a gun while you drive a car, not even a pistol. Sometimes you're forced to drive on narrow stretches for a few seconds after the respawn point, and on hard mode it's just a gamble on whether you'll make it to the street alive. It's a total roll of the dice on whether the AI will get lucky and completely wreck your health bar before you can even try to take evasive action, and these cars are from the 50's, so they usually aren't terribly agile to begin with. Driving sections like this just clearly don't feel balanced for hard mode (ones I'm thinking of are in chapters 13 and 14, if I remember correctly). There's also one specific driving challenge that cuts the time REALLY close on hard mode. Considering that challenge requires on walking out of your building and getting a car that spawns, if you don't have the luck to have sports car in front of the bar that respawn, you're fucked (that's chapter 11). This leads to my issues with general game design. For a cover shooter, this game REALLY needs a blind-fire mechanic. To fire at all from cover, you need to stick near your whole damn body out to then take aim and fire. Mostly in the last few chapters, the need for a safer way to fire at things becomes very clear as you have to take on groups of 5+ guys by yourself. The enemies even have an animation which is more or less blind firing, so I don't really see why the player character can't have some variation of that :/. Also, the aforementioned driving is a HUGE part of the game. Broken down, this game is story bits, driving, and action scenes interspersed. There's no LA Noire-style "make your partner drive" feature in this though, you gotta drive EVERYWHERE yourself, and damn do you gotta do it often. There's one chapter that's literally just driving and story stuff, not combat at all. The game really never makes much of an effort to make your destinations close together, relying on the narrative to dictate where the player needs to go. As such, if you have very little patience for driving in games, even with player conversations during, that's a big sticking point I can't ignore. I didn't find the driving so bad actually, though. Compared to LA Noire, this game has a TON of period music on its radio stations. I really like the early rock, rhythm, and blues tracks of the 40's and 50's, so I always got some enjoyment of being in a car. If the music ain't your thing, it'll be a lot less bearable though. I really enjoyed the story, personally. Where LA Noire was a fairly sanitized version of the 50's in terms of race relations, misogyny, derogatory language, this game doesn't shy away AT ALL. They never throw down an N-bomb, they throw around just about everything else. The main characters are self-centered, racist pigs, and their language gets that across very well. The main cast of Italian mobsters are voice acted very well, and really bring you into the atmosphere. The narrative, while it doesn't focus terribly well in every area that I'd want it to, is well written and engaging. I won't comment on my deeper complaints with the narrative choices (because that's both beyond the scope of this review, and very spoilery), but the mobster bits are of course the best part. One final comment is that I didn't quite care for the collectibles in the game. Not the style of their hidden-ness, but of what they actually were. Spread all around the city are wanted posters of mobsters that you can collect, which are themselves fairly harmless. But spread throughout each mission are Playboy (actually branded) magazines to collect. When you get one, you get the "Playmate" poster of that issue. I'm not sure if it's the actual fold-out from that numbered issue, but the're real photos of real women, so it's a constant hunt for tits, more or less. While I'll admit they're attractive, I don't really feel it added anything to the experience other than just pandering to a male demographic. I also don't believe it harmed the game in any real way, but it's just something I wasn't entirely comfortable with in a game that, while it does have sexual themes, otherwise has no nudity and fairly tame gore. (For the record, I had a similar issue to how Splatterhouse essentially did this exact same thing with its collectibles). Verdict: While the sloppy gameplay mistakes keep me from recommending it to everyone, any fan of history, Americana, or organized crime films will likely adore the story. I'd also recommend it to anyone who loved LA Noire's setting and wants more of that somewhat campy 50's atmosphere and storytelling. I know I've been sayin' this a lot lately with games I finish, but holy shit did this game blow my expectations out of the water. I really didn't know what to expect going in, Papa & Yo meets Legend of Zelda I guess, but I certainly didn't expect a game so compelling and so fun! Even though most of the game centers around the two main characters, they really are made out very well in the few cutscenes the game does have. The exposition before and after boss fights, as well as the almost Thief Gold-esque 2D story bits you get occasionally really put together a nice picture of the world you're in. The graphics are also bright, colorful, and look great, with only very occasionally FPS hiccups.
Most of the game is combat against the forces of darkness with the Majin. He's your constant companion and battle partner throughout the game. You can direct him with simple commands (wait, follow, attack X-enemy) to both fight and solve puzzles. The terrain occasionally makes it a bit slower for him to get around, but he does a good job keeping up with you, so it doesn't feel like you're constantly babysitting him. He does have a health bar, but it's very big. He can heal you when you're hurt, and he's healed by killing enemies. This combined with how manual Majin-healing items are common, it was enough that I never had problems with him dying. He can even revive you if you're near him when you die, although I never personally had it happen. You slowly unlock powers he can use for both puzzles and combat, and they really feel good to throw around in combat. The feedback given when you pull off special moves, and when you execute finishers in a sort of Splatterhouse-style fashion, is great. When an enemy has been sufficiently damaged by Majin, it'll go into a stunned mode. Whack it a couple times, and you'll be able to do a special combination move depending on your positioning in relation to Majin. Killing enemies in this fashion gets you friendship-XP. This is different than the XP your hero normally gets, as while the hero's level-ups just increase his attack and health, friendship levels affect things like the speed of Majin's heals, different kinds of combo moves you can do, and how fast you build up finishers. The puzzles are also very fun, and I'd say at least as good as your average 3D Zelda. There was more than one where I had to really think about how I was supposed to go forward, because it's fairly hard to cheat the system and just go around a puzzle. They were never horribly stumping though, and always felt fair. The puzzles were made even more fun by all of the hidden chests and power-ups throughout the world. The Majin is such a fun character, it was always exciting finding a new health or strength power-up to feed him. There are also costumes you can find, which in addition to looking cool, give passive bonuses (usually defense against a specific enemy group). I found all the collectables in the game, but I never had to use a guide to find any. Some are rather cleverly hidden, but they're always sitting in a place you could see them if you just stood in the right place. Verdict: I know Sarge has already sung this game's praises a while back, but damn, I have to do it to. I'd say it's certainly one of the best 3D-Zelda-style games not on a Nintendo Console. Adamantly recommended to any Zelda fan looking for something a little different. I saw the love this game was gettin' the other day, and because it's on sale for 2.50 atm, (and I decided on $40 Nintendo cash instead of Overwatch), I thought I'd pick it up. It's not the most compelling or best action-puzzle game ever, but it's a fun way to spend an afternoon. It took me like 3-ish hours to get through it and get everything in the first 17 worlds, and now I'm working in the 5 you unlock in the post-game.
My only real complaint is how the last few costumes you unlock are the coolest, but they also give you bonus abilities (faster speed, higher jump, more blocks). Thus you have to choose between lookin' fly, and playing the game like it was designed :/ Verdict: It's a really well designed little action-puzzle game that I'd recommend to anyone looking to have a down-time game on their 3DS Hot damn, what a game. I went in expecting to like this game, but I had no idea HOW much I'd just freaking love it. The music, level design, the graphics, they're all absolutely fantastic. Every level feels like a totally different experience and never like they're just recycling the same ideas. Even levels in the same world follow a similar theme, but a lot of them have gimmicks all their own that are used to their fullest just in that level. Yoshi moves exactly how you want him to, and given that you can basically flutter jump infinitely if you practice your timings, there can be a lot of finesse in how you do the more difficult platforming.
This game also isn't afraid to get hard. The collectibles start getting hard to find just in world 2, and once you hit worlds 5 and 6, the normal levels start getting pretty challenging. Additionally, the extra 9th level unlocked in each world by collecting all of the flower in that world are always very challenging and very fun. The difficulty curve might not be the most forgiving thing for new players, but as a very experienced gamer, I really enjoyed it. There are also badges you can activate before the start of a level. The powers they give range from eggs always being big, to immunity to lava, to moving faster. I only ever used the one that reveals hidden objects and the one that magnetizes items to you (to make some of the more difficult flower and yarn collection more bearable), but it's just so great that these let you make the game as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. I definitely wouldn't have enjoyed the game as much without them. The Co-op feature also makes this game SO fun. I played through the first world with a friend who isn't a gamer at all, and she loved it! The woolly aesthetic just makes everything look so appealing. Even though she wasn't playing the best, she still just loved the woolly look and the yoshis and the great music. The mellow mode, where you can literally flutter jump infinitely, that you can turn on at ANY time is also another feature that was really kind to newer players and really enhanced our fun Verdict: This is now my favorite Nintendo platformer ever. Better than Super Mario World, better than Super Mario 3. Now, it might not impress you quite that much, but if you like platformers at all, I cannot recommend this game enough. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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