Bulletstorm

From the coverage, Bulletstorm intrigued me, there haven’t been many new run and gun shooters in a while and I was really looking forward to a fast paced shooter that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Keep reading to see if Bulletstorm successfully scratches the itch.

The story isn’t bad, you’ve heard the revenge story before, the main character, “Gray” and his squad will go to any length seek revenge against a Gunnery Sergeant Hartman looking and sounding guy who had been manipulating them. They eventually find out and go rogue, which leads them to be stranded on some planet with a few factions of various level of crazy. The dialog is a mixed bag, I found some of the conversations to be just the right mix of some vulgarity and plot or background but more often it is just sophomoric, vulgar, and frankly stupid. There is a distinct difference in my eyes between cursing when a building you’re in is collapsing, and someone telling you they are going to “kill your dick” in passing. Yes, they are clearly aware of how absurd it is, and the characters react in such a way in some cases that let you know. Just because you’re aware of your stupidity, doesn’t make it ok… I really do wish it was better because I really was looking for something light hearted. The length and pacing of the campaign was really good, didn’t feel like it was dragging on at any point, and I think it ended when it needed to.

When it comes to gameplay, I pretty much love this game, the skill shots are fun and the reward of more points for being creative with your weapons really works. The environments actually help to drive you try other weapons from time to time, for example, in small corridors it makes more sense to use the screamer (sort of like a flare gun), than the flailgun (couple grenades attached by a chain), which has a wider shot and is less effective in tight places. In that sense the gameplay is varied, though when not presented with theses unique areas I always found myself reverting back to the same load out. There are a few annoying choke points where enemies spawn in waves in a very small space it can be hard to deal with, and not in a “this is challenging” way, in a “this is poor level design” sort of way. Between the spots where lots of bad guys come, there are some basic traversal stuff where some story, or not so witty dialog is delivered. It provides a break in the action, and it looks really good, but you are asked to climb over, or crawl/slide under things but it feels a little clumsy,  like you have to be in just the right spot for it to work. It’s not terrible but by the end of the game I found it quite annoying.

There is a nice selection of weapons, each with an alternative shot that does more damage, or is used for its own skillshot. This was one of the few games that I had to spend in game credits to buy ammo, I never felt like I was starved though and it did seem like I always had enough to buy what I needed even though I wasn’t all that varied in my skillshots. The weapon “upgrades” are pretty lame since all they do is increase your ammo capacity. it would have been nice to see maybe some extra properties added to them like, the weapon now ignites the target or near by baddies or something like that. More ammo is nice and all, but it doesn’t change the game.

In addition to the story mode there are “echo”s which are essentially one player time trials with leaderboards from what I’ve seen most of them are taken directly from segments in the campaign, and they do provide some replay value. There is also a coop multiplayer horde mode that I didn’t get into, but it’s there if you’re into that sort of thing.

It seems like I came down on Bulletstorm here, but I really did have a good time with the combat for the most part, it was a fun idea and if you can come into knowing they are going to say some stupid shit that makes you sort of angry (or maybe you’re into that sort of humor), I think you can have a lot of fun with this game. If you have some friends playing it I can see the echo leaderboards being a good distraction. I can definitely see me putting this back in down the road and giving it another romp. Nice job People Can Fly, really.

DJ Hero 2

I liked the original DJ Hero, it was a serviceable first effort for an innovative step for the genre, but thought there wasn’t enough there to really motivate me to play much of it after writing my review. This will be a fairly short review since not a whole lot has changed so I do suggest giving that a once over if you know nothing about the DJ Hero franchise, otherwise read on to see if I thought the changes were significant enough to make this a worth while title.

The follow up to last year’s DJ Hero really seems to be the game that the developer freestyle games had in mind for DJ Hero when they finally settled on their peripheral. My biggest complaint with the original DJ Hero is that I was having trouble relating my actions to the music resultant, the gameplay changes I feel has resolved this and as a result the fun factor of this game increases ten fold if not more. Whether it is partially the fault of an excellent (no seriously, top notch) collection of mixes, or an improvement to the track mapping, or the handful of additions and improvements to the freestyle sections.

DJ Hero 2 introduces an “Empire Mode”, which plays out not unlike other campaigns in the Hero franchise, you play through each of the songs collecting stars, unlocking characters and accessories, to pimp your dude with things you never get to see anyway. Regrettably they dug a little too deep into the Hero’s playbook, or garbage bin however you look at it, they’ve scattered “DJ Battles” that play out like the guitar battles that was in some of the older Guitar Hero games, more or less a vs mode against the AI. Like in the GH games I didn’t find it all that fun because the music felt like it they sacrificed good music to making something difficult, and although going back and forth, makes more sense in the DJ context it’s still feels like the computer is cheating some times. As you progress, you unlock new venues, and most (if not all) open up with a megamix figuring one of the guest DJs. The mega mixes are 3-5 song non-stop setlist that are pretty great and are a pretty good way to pass the time. Now if they figured out how to do this with custom playlists they’d seriously be onto something.

So while I think the “DJ Battles” in “Empire Mode” are a bit of a failing playing these competitive modes with a friend is actually pretty fun. It just feels a little less cheaty that way. It only took a few seconds for the match maker to do it’s work, and it had most of the options you’d want, set the length of the setlist, your opponents level (which is based off an experience point type system djp associated with your profile). The one setting missing that disappointed me, was the difficulty setting, I was playing on Hard, and kept getting put up against opponents on Medium and in some of the modes there are some competitive imbalances that you’d hope to be playing someone on the same difficulty or at least have an option for it.

Really the key improvements here are in the freestyle gameplay elements. First, they updated the freestyle samples to use appropriate samples at various points of the song, this is so much better than last years which you basically picked a sample set and used it for all songs, most of the time it sounded terrible. Second, free style scratches, these are awesome, it’s basically a short loop they let you play with, you can start and stop your scratch and get a little sample in there and pick your scratch up again. Finally, freestyle cross fades where you can switch between tracks on your own,  though they do leave some markers on the highway that gives you some clues where key parts of the tracks are to make it a little more intuitive. The trick here is that a lot of the time, with very little effort, these freestyle sections sound good! and because they sound good they make you feel good! And, coincidentally feeling good makes games more fun!

Needless to say, I still doubt that this game is for everyone, but I can say, if you feel a little curious about it, and/or it seems a little interesting to you I can whole heartedly suggest picking it up, there is a lot of fun gameplay in here both on and offline, and a really good, really well rounded soundtrack to play with. If they continue to support DJ Hero 2 with DLC in a way that is superior to how Guitar Hero has done it, I’ll be a pretty happy guy.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

In anticipation of the release of this game, I recently went back to finish 2008′s Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, which was an incredibly flawed to the point of tedium, primarily a fighting game, mashed with a sandbox type hub world, with far too many collectiables, and unlockables. The fighting was fun but beyond that, the non-fighting quests activities were terrible. Assuming that the team would keep an eye on the feedback, and from all of the epic battles that occurred in the Shippuden series, UNS2 had all kinds of potential to be an excellent game, and not just for fans of the franchise.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 picks up roughly 3 years after the events of the first in the series (this is inline with the break in episodes in the anime as well). Starting with reformed Team 7′s search for former comrade Sasuke, who abandoned the village at the end of the first on a mission of vengeance. Sadly, I don’t think this was really communicated well to people who didn’t play the original. That is pretty much the case throughout the game in that it really isn’t fleshed out like it is in the anime and manga, which as a fan is ok because knowing that story it’s easy to piece it together because they do follow the story closely with the exception of some minor details that I’m sure were changed for game purposes. One problem though with the story telling in the game is that the objective of your mission is primarily going to be ‘win a match’, which on it’s own isn’t a problem  but sometimes you are controlling the losing side of the battle, and your objective is to win. When you win under these circumstances it isn’t explained. Again, if you’re familiar with the series this isn’t a big deal but in my opinion it makes it hard for me to recommend this game to non-fans. Therefore, if you are interested in this story at all, I’d say go ahead and watch the anime or read the manga instead.

The core of this game is the fighting, which makes up the “Free play”, “online battle”, and most of the story mode. On the surface it sounds rudimentary, you have 1 melee attack that you can spam for combos, insert some thumb stick directions to vary the attacks, and more importantly the timing of said attacks (more on that in a minute)  and a ranged attack, and a jutsu button.

Support Attack

The key to the battle is managing your chakra, for those not familiar with the term this basically amounts to energy used to perform special moves, things like jutsu (read special moves), special ranged attacks, and chakra dashes (an easy way to close the gap or create some distance from your opponent) all take various amounts of chakra. You also have the ability to spend some chakra on a ‘substitution’ with a well timed block, meaning hitting block exactly when your opponent makes contact. This is where the strategy of the varied combos come in to play; in a lot of cases your ability to pull off these substitutions determines the outcome of the battle. Chakra can be regenerated but you can not block or move while doing so leaving you very vulnerable. To compensate for that, you often (depending on where you are in the story) have support characters you can call in that may help buy you some time. You also have items bound to the d-pad that will do things like clutter the environment with explosives that can buy you some time as well, but you can do things like increase your speed or attack power, or restore some chakra. Going further, if you use your support characters enough during the course of the battle you will enable “support drive” with means for a limited time your team members can jump in and out automatically, also, sometimes you can power up your chakra beyond the end of the meter to enable “awakening” which effectively changes everything about your character, they’ve got different jutsu’s they’re faster and stronger. The penalty to this is that when it expires, you become weakened and take more damage. Now all that said, it’s not impossible to get through the story mode without using a lot of that stuff, but as I’ll get into in a few, you are doing yourself a disservice if you do because it is honestly a treat to watch, the animation and camera work really create some cinematic experiences.

On top of all that subtlety, there is a very nice collection of characters to use, 42 of them actually once you’ve actually unlocked them all, which after my 30hrs in the game to this point I’ve yet to do entirely (3 left, Minato, Killer Bee and Lars from Tekken). That aside, these characters fall into different categories, there are those who like to get in close and punch it out, while other like to stay at range, and even odder, those who use puppets, yes puppets… these characters are particularly strange to use since you can move the puppets indepentantly of the character itself, which has proven to be pretty challenging for me to get a hang of. The difference is very obvious when you’re playing

Now I’m not trying to say that this is a fighting game that can share a stage with Street Fighter or any other fighter with a strong competitive following, it obviously doesn’t have that same sense of mastery and balance, but what this is, is a very fun, very accessible fighting game, that looks like it was ripped straight from the anime. Each match plays out with animation and style that I could not describe as anything less than complete fidelity. Fans will recognize the combos and jutsus and with all the little things like churning chakra and exploding tags and kunai scattered across the battle field. Unfortunately the battle field is always a very empty area, it would have been neat had they included things in the environment that could be used to hide behind or as protection, it really could have added some neat mechanics like using Neji or Hinata’s bakugan (special eyes that can find chakra) to hunt down the opponent in these scenarios, but I digress.

As great as I think the fighting in this game is, it is the story mode itself that falls completely flat on it’s face. Without going to much into the old game, they removed everything I thought was neat about the hub world from UNS (namingly direct action to the missions from the menu, and the ability to explore konaha as a sandbox). Replacing those features with, very linear classic JRPG-esque rooms with quest giving NPCs. Once you get a quest you generally have to go on some very long walk through areas you’ve already been for the most part, initiate a battle, win, then walk all the way back. If that weren’t tedious enough, along the way there are countless of respawning loot items that you need to stop and collect which are used to fulfill “order deliveries” at the Konaha shops which will unlock items that you can then purchase and use in battle. There are also collection quests and some hide and seek quests, but not nearly as bad as some of the variety quests from the original. There is however a payoff for sticking with it at the end of each chapter you encounter an epic multi-phased boss fight that is taken straight from the series. Sometimes they introduce some new mechanic that is only used for that section of the encounter, or some series of quick time events that results in some really fun to watch animations.  These fights are easily the highlight of the game, and it is a shame that it is surrounded by so many poor design decisions. On the plus side, you do get to play through the story as a variety of characters which really does help mix it up. There are also points where you can select who fights based on who is currently in your team, which can also be selected (this is how you play through the end game after the final confrontation).

Sasori Boss Fight: oh yes, you're in control here

Ultimately I’d have a hard time recommending this to anyone short of the hardest of fans. Those who have the ‘stick-to-it-ness’ to play through the story will rewarded with a handful of epic boss battles, and a nice full roster (I wasn’t even able to find a cheat code, not that I condone that sort of behavior) to play a very pretty, fast paced, fun, and accessible fighter. As a fan, I had a fair amount of fun with this, though I’m not convinced the reward is worth the effort.