"...the world you see is yours, because it is different for everyone else."

About Evon

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I am a photographer, a sometimes writer, a gamer, a driver and more. I graduated from Central Michigan University with a double major in Journalism(Photo) and English(Creative Writing). Any Photos are copyright Ryan Evon, The Facts or the Morning Sun 2010/2011/2012. All words by, representing and claimed by Ryan Evon & only him, unless in quotation marks & specified otherwise.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

GAMES: Assassins and Spies: Double B, Double Review! AC:Brotherhood and 007 Bloodstone

Not going to apply numbers to this anymore. It just isn't working for me, sorry numbers. It's not you, it's me.

Just for time and because I've been trying to make these things shorter, for your sake, I'm going to combine these two games.

I think, in fact, if I could combine these two games it might be the greatest game of the sneaky/assassin/kill-tons-of-people game ever.

Assassins Creed: Brotherhood is great. I like the series, the first two were awesome. A bit frustrating with the free running every so often, especially in the rooftop foot chases of thieves or messengers.

The bitch of it is, I don't have to chase them. It's completely extra. But I WANT to chase them. 1. Because it is often quick fun and 2. (more importantly) it is VERY gratifying, after losing a couple chases because of a stupid mis-step that sent you flying off a roof into the river, to barrel down on that bastard and tackle him to the ground. I feel like a lion chasing some stupid zebra that tried to steal my wallet. "Yeah, that was a mistake and now you are MINE!" If he happens to get thrown off the roof...well, accidents happen.

AC: B isn't a sequel, it's basically a continuation of AC:2, picking up exactly where 2 left off. It grows the story line and grows the core of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if it started out as DLC, but they just kept adding stuff until they realized it would take forever to download.

The big things it adds, mechanically and story-wise, is the title referenced Brotherhood. Instead of Ezio being the lone wolf BA killer McGee, he is now in charge of a growing band of hooded, wrist-blade wielding acrobats. You have to liberate Rome from control of the Borgia by killing the bosses of several towers and then burning the tower to the ground. Getting the bosses is fun and can be very challenging/impossible if you want to do a clean one body assassination. Burning the towers is just like climbing for the lookout points, but with a fiery explosion!

You are able to use the brotherhood at anytime, after a short "recharge" from previous use. It's a simple target and single button death signal. It can make the game too easy, if you let it. Because, strangely, your brothers can swoop in (actually accompanied by an eagle screech) and eliminate guards in your path and then vanish without a trace most times. It's nice they draw no attention to you, and can actually act as a diversion allowing you to sneak somewhere you might have had to work hard to get too otherwise.

It's a neat mechanic. You also send them on separate missions around the world to get them to level up. But if you send them all and get in a pinch you are on your own. You can whistle all you want, Rocco probably won't be able to make it back from Moscow in time to help you with those guards.

I really, really want to try the multiplayer...but don't have the internet at my house yet. So I only had the story and the many side quests to entertain me, darn. That's just a drag. :D

As usual, tons of exploration goodies to find.

A little tip for you, if you are a treasure hunter like I am. DON'T SELL the stupid stuff you find. Keep all the ivory and shrunken heads or whatever else. Because later you get shop quests for fancy items and that is the crap you need to find. I sold a bunch of crap then got the quests and it took forever to find it because I'd already found so many of the treasures.

Good fun though.

One thing I think Assassins Creed needs to embrace is the use of cover systems. I know it's the popular thing to do, but for a profession that dwells in the shadows it is a must. So many times tailing a subject or sneaking into a place and I walked up to a corner to observe, only to be beyond the corner and they spotted me. Super annoying.


007 Bloodstone, sadly, didn't get the same amount of time in my console tray. But I feel confident I experienced what the game had to offer. I just have a threshold that sometimes sees games come to an early end.

I liked it though, for what is and tries to be. It is a sort of fun game, it tries to be another piece of the James Bond pie of entertainment fiction. The last movie was kind of..."meh" in comparison to Casino Royale and the game story is kind of "meh" in comparison to a lot.

It is a completely original story, voiced by Daniel Craig and Judy Dench (whose character model looks AWFUL in the cut scenes, she looks like Leatherface), but only Dench's work sounds like the movies. Craig's work seems like he phone it in, maybe it was the script but I swear there was a "scene" where someone was talking to him for awhile and he said "yes" or some other one word response...and that was it. Come on, give me something.

The Game here is very movie like, there are lots of cool spots where you see really awesome stuff, explosions and all that. There are several parts where Bond is trying to escape or catch up from/to something/someone and the use of music and effects makes the urgency seem quite real.

One such chase/escape (you are chasing someone on a train and escaping a helicopter at the same time) has Bond in the beautiful Astin Martin driving on a mostly frozen river. It is quite fun, but by the sixth time I was a little annoyed. This may be my crappy Low Definition TV but I don't think so. The ice and open water parts of the river are very similar colors, so it makes high speed navigation more likely to end with wet socks.

On the flip side one of the times you swing the ass end of the car out and it starts to go into the water but you continue the slide and escape will make you feel like a bad ass.

There were several WOW moments in the game, most, if not all, were in said chase/escape moments. But they were fun and the basic mechanics of the game are entertaining for awhile, but repeat themselves quickly.

The movement is...less than fluid. 007 runs like he has to pee, but you get used to it.

The cover and fight systems both work well. I would have liked to see a little more involvement in the hand to hand combat. Since it is listed as "BRUTAL" on the back of the box. It's a single button and you watch the awesome thing. I want to be part of the awesomeness.

Even a three button mash timer, because Bond doesn't dominate all his fights. That's what I loved about Casino Royale, he got all messed up.



Now, if I were a magician or game Czar of the world, I would take the cover system from Bloodstone and put it in Brotherhood. It would be awesome to have your back to a wall on a corner waiting for a target to come by and you just pounce. Kind of like when hidden in a haystack or on a bench, but much more realistic. Plus it would make tailing people a lot easier. As long as they don't make a common mistake, like in Gears of War, where the cover button is a shared button. Don't do that.

I really think Bloodstone could use some more of AC's free running; there is a little, but nothing of your own choosing, Bond is basically Super Mario. You walk to a ledge and are actually prompted to jump. Free running was also featured nicely in Casino Royale, but not over done, which was good.

AC could definitely use 007's "restart from checkpoint" menu option. Especially since AC added qualifying actions to missions to reach full synchronization. Stuff like don't get noticed or only kill your target. Those are fun things to try but if you mess up once, even if you die (which takes a lot sometimes), it remembers that you made a mistake. Which really sucks if you were two feet past a checkpoint.


AC: Brotherhood is worth a lot of time, likely purchase if you liked either of the others. I've heard nothing but good stuff about the multiplayer, and its something I said the first one should have had. Co-op would probably make my head explode.

It's doubly good if you like the storyline. Because this one continues it and has a hell of an ending.

007 Bloodstone is probably worth a rent, especially if you have a game pass (yeah!) because you can take it back as soon as you get tired of the grind.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

GAMES: A kind, noble ruler...who married a whore. FABLE 3 : Xbox 360

As I previously mentioned in my Fallout : New Vegas post, I try to be an upstanding person in the realm of pixels and polygons. More often than not, it is because I feel I should but also because it is my belief that the good half of the game got more attention than the bad half. So it is in my best interest as a player to go after the best piece of game.

In Fable 3 I once again marched down the path of nobility with my prince's chiseled chin held high.

The game picks up where 2 left off, just one generation later. You are your son. From 2, that guy, you're his son. Your son. Whatever.

The Molyneux promise I heard early on for 3 was that your actions would have direct effect on the look of your kingdom. That I didn't really see. When you finally ascend to the throne (I'm trying not to give anything away, but you should have figured that out) you are asked whether you want your castle decorated in good or evil. While I'm curious what evil would have looked like, I went with good and saw no change.

I was kind, I was immensely giving, I slaved over a firey hand and steel blade for hours to give these people freedom and what thanks did I get?

Near the end everyone hated me anyway, even though I was virtuous and kind. But, just because I bought every store and most houses in the kingdom, people hated me.

I had a few loves out there, ya know a Prince has got certain needs. My first marriage ended in shambles, childless with a drunken wife.

So the second time around I married Stacey the Whore. Partially, okay, MOSTLY because I thought it was funny as hell. Every time I come home I am greeted by "Stacey the Whore."

But, in addition to my laughter I got 3 STDs and a black daughter. So perhaps the laughing wasn't worth it.



Fable 3 has some graphic issues, but more and more I'm curious whether the graphic popping that I'm continually seeing are poorly made games or my suffering 360, which I'm betting will die in the very near future.

Regardless, the graphic pops didn't matter to me, I had fun.

Combat was fun, frustrating to come up against a pack of balvarines without any health potion, but still fun.

New weapons all have different modifications you earn by performing certain tasks, that give certain perks. Like kill 200 hallow men and earn +30 to damage against hallow men.

The addition of the Sanctuary made weapon/spell/clothing switches a breeze. Start magically pulls you into this lobby where your butler stands ready and multiple rooms lead you to whatever you want to change. Clothing is purely aesthetic but, like I said, different weapons can have different perks, so changing them up can help in battle.

You can also combine spells, like fire and ice, to make icy fire balls. Or something.


Now, there is an inventory, but I never knew how to get to it. That is stupid. Nothing ever told me how to get it, potions and food will pop up when you are injured, but other than that you have to do some LT + RT magic and dance around in a circle or something.

How about this Pete? Back button. It didn't really do anything anyway.

Also a map button would have been nice, not that the maps (available through the Sanctuary) were overly helpful anyway. It barely matched the actual world.

The quest list is accessed in a similar fashion, which was also annoying.


The BIGGEST issue is the complete lack of control for interactions. What a mess!

Interactions with people is a huge part of Fable. You have to gain followers, friends, enemies or all. You do this almost entirely through interactions like Hug, Scare, Hero Pose, etc.

But you get three buttons when the interaction menu comes up. A, Y and X

A is good, Y is middle, and X is bad. But the action that comes up is, well, I was going to say random, but its not. It's chosen by the game.

So Dance came up on A almost all the time for me. I know it's a game and I'm not stressing about this, but I'm not big on me (or my videogame equivalent) dancing with dudes.

Because it's not like a little kicks, let's joke around dance. It's a fricking slow dance, with a kiss on the hand at the end. Come on!



The halves of the game, well it's more like the first 3/4 and the last 1/4 are different, you battle for the first part and the last bit you are the king and have to make kingly decisions.

That was a cool thing. Because you can promise all you want throughout the election, but once you get to the throne you have the grim realities of running the country. So you as the bastion of Hope may wear away quite quickly.

Because as a ruler it is the end game you have to keep in mind. So hearing the proposals for using a small swamp town as a place to dump all your kingdom's waste might sound cruel, but the economic gain is tempting.


FABLE 3

4 of 5 as a game
3.5 of 5 as a sequel

Beat it in one rental, considered going back through on evil, but figured the main quests wouldn't change and they wouldn't be as fun a second time.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

GAMES: Gamble on Gunfire! Fallout: New Vegas for XBOX 360

I'm a little slow on this one. I moved across the country and don't have the internet either. Jeez. But Texas is warm, so I'm dealing with it. :D

The big plus, videogame-wise, is I'm in a town where I don't know anyone, so I work and go home and play video games. It's sad, I know.

Anyway. Fallout New Vegas.

I've loved Fallout since the very first one. I'd kind of like to see the world where everyone is forced to abandon their technological dependencies and return to a simpler way of life. The strong few trying to salvage a living off the decaying husk of the world that once sheltered the masses of the weak.

Maybe not if that world is full of giant mutants that try to crush my head with a chunk of cement at the end of rods of rebar...but who knows.


If you played Fallout 3 then New Vegas isn't going to surprise you a lot, from what I've seen so far.

The biggest change is there are more possibilities for crafting in this one. Which fits well in a post-apocalyptic scavenger paradise.

You would be constantly trying to keep what you had working and making new things to survive the harsh brutality of the world around you.

The Reload Bench has been added, usually near the Work Bench (which has also received some changes).

The Reload Bench allows you to create or breakdown ammo. So those that have a favorite weapon that has rare ammo, can now breakdown all the worthless 9mm bullets and get the powder and lead to make .357 rounds. Provided you have all the other pieces to make that ammo.

For the Work Bench there are many, many more recipes in New Vegas. Pieces of plants can be picked to be combined to make healing balms, snacks and a foliage ferris wheel. Not really on the ferris wheel.

And now your wanderer can also utilize Campfires as tools to create food and items for your continued survival.

You can kill a dog and eat the meat raw, sure...any savage bastard can do that. It's the sophisticated bastard that waits and cooks the meat before jamming it down his gullet.

These changes now give you a TON more stuff to carry.

In standard play, ammo doesn't have any weight but in the new HARDCORE mode it does. HARDCORE must be capitalized, cause that's how HARDCORE it is.

If you want to know how you would behave after a global pandemic or nuclear war situation, play on HARDCORE.

Instead of just monitoring your health and equipment condition you also have to deal with your character's water and food intake, as well as the amount of sleep you get.

It's not for the faint of heart.

I try to be a morally upstanding character in the vast confusion and chaos presented in the Fallout scenario.

Yes, I will help the old couple with their livestock being killed every night.

But you better be damn sure I'm going to rob their house of anything I need at the very first moment they turn their backs on me. I'm playing to LIVE, dammit!



Basically, the game is similar to F:3, with some good tweaks.

Which is in no way a bad thing. It's more awesome story, but set in an entirely new location. So you get to play the good story AND explore the new land.




Fallout: New Vegas


Rented once, likely will buy as soon as I get money.

5 out of 5 as a sequel. Improves on the original, but leaves the good stuff alone.
5 out of 5 as a game. Just plain awesome.