GameTruth

Released yesterday on XBOXLive, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai has created a bit of a stir amongst the indie gaming community.  I decided to download the demo and try it out.  You can get plenty of great insight from the various gaming websites that have already posted reviews, so I will try to distill mine down into a deliciously intoxicating thimble of gaming criticism.  This game is a side scrolling beat-em-up button masher that looks pretty stellar.  The release of XNA has made shaders and graphical craziness easily accessible, so it is quite overused in The Dishwasher.  I think the look and feel of the game are pretty exceptional, but the visual simulation overload gag is a bit played out at this point. Now time for the boiled down review I promised.

So lets talk about some good characteristics:  The combo mechanic is pretty cool, and I can see the potential to get away from button mashing eventually.  The graphics and sound are solid and the story seems to have potential.  The controls are pretty intuitive and it is fun to play in small doses.  The feedback and reward for executing the right move at the right time is exceptional and very well done.

Now time for the bad stuff: The fact that I need to pause the game and go into my inventory to use a health powerup is lame.  The boss battle at the end of the demo was a bit too easy (just press Y a lot for a dominant strategy) and the unsolicited quicktime rapid fire button stomping did not impress me.

Overall the game looks fun, but I probably won’t buy it.  I am a bit sick of 2D side scrollers, and if I needed a 2D side scrolling button mashing fix I would just get some friends and play Castle Crashers.

A few weeks ago I got a chance to try a demo of Dark Athena at the NYCC.  I must admit that I was pleasantly impressed with the game, and since I loved the original I was probably being way too nice.  My good cheer came to an end today when I got a chance to download and suffer through the demo on XBOXLive.  It is totally unacceptable to release a demo to the public that is this frustrating.  The original Bioshock demo was what sold that game, it set records.  The most insufferable player in this forsaken shindig is that the demo I played at the NYCC was awesome.  Why the hell would they release a weak, difficult to understand, demo that had no foreshadowing of the story or what is to come in the full game?

Overall the gameplay does look solid, the same great melee, platforming and stealth components will all be included.  The surprised at the end of the demo is a video showing some multiplayer, and looking online it is obvious that there will be some interesting new modes to try out.  However, I still can’t shake the shotty showing by the demo, I hope that players do not shy away from the game based on this.

I am just mad because I know I will probably still cough up the dough to dice people with ulaks.

It is no secret that I loved the original Gears of War (GoW).  I think it totally changed the shooter genre forever, but also had many small details that made it an excellent game (active reload).  Ever since the first game I have been anxiously waiting for the sequel.  Since the release of the game about a month ago I have had the chance to beat it twice, and I must admit I really do like it better than the original.

SPOILER WARNING: I am going to talk about the game below, if you haven’t played it I might ruin it for you.

The biggest draw of the Gears of War games is the ability to play cooperatively with another person.  I would be lying if I did not admit that this is likely the biggest selling point of the entire game for me.  GoW2 does an excellent job with the cooperative experience, much like the original. Players must work together to get through the game, and several times during the experience more teamwork than usual is required.

Some examples that come to mind include when the two players must split up to pass through an area with numerous security gun drones.  One player must walk through the hallway that is protected by the guns, while the other must disarm them at the right time to allow passage.  The other specific time is moving a large bomb into position to open a door.  This particular mechanic has the players essentially linked together carrying a huge crate, and of course oncoming enemies make this more difficult.  This was probably the coolest multiplayer sequence in the game.

Other than the obvious multiplayer appeal GoW2 delivers a dark and quite depressing story.  One particular sequence is stuck in my mind, and it certainly effected me emotionally more than I thought it would.  After finding out that the Locusts are torturing people you come across Tai on one of the torture ships.  Throughout the story leading up to this point Tai has been said to be unkillable and I felt he was one of the most badass cogs in the game.  During this cut scene Tai kills himself, and the reaction from Marcus is really compelling.  This is just one example of the story elements included in GoW2.

From the first game we knew that Dom was in search of his wife, Maria.  That is one of the main plots in the game, and towards the end of the game he finds her.  She has been tortured to the point of not even remembering who Dom is, and is so obviously destroyed physically and mentally that she could never recover.  Dom chooses to end her suffering by killing her himself.  Again, this was another moment in the story that felt very dark and serious.  There was no point in the first game where I felt this way.

A final credit to the game is the variety of new mechanics that are included.  The game is not a standard 3rd person shooter.  There is a plethora of other challenges for the player including some light puzzles solving, platforming, vehicle combat and even some cool rail shooting.  This all adds to the depth of the game, making it a real roller coaster ride to play.  In an upcoming article Mark and I have been working on we breakdown the anatomy of a game mechanic and we will be using one of the mechanics in GoW2 to help illustrate our point.

Now, GoW2 is not without problems.  While I enjoyed the game overall and felt it was better than the original it still lacked a solid ending.  Another problem I have had with both GoW games is the lack of a decent boss fight.  There are several of these boss fights found in both games, and they always feel weak and not very interesting.  I refuse to rate games on any sort of number scale, but I would say that GoW2 is probably one of the better games I have played this year.

It is pretty obvious I am leaving out a huge part of the game from this brief review.  I do not talk about the online multiplayer at all.  To be honest it is totally awesome.  The Horde gameplay is like tower defense meets shooter.  It would take another complete review to discuss the online component and I just might do that.

-Seth