X-Men Origins : Wolverine

Tom Clancy`s H.A.W.X.

A few weeks ago, a friend from work asked me if I played H.A.W.X. yet and if I like flight simulators. My answer was simple : NO and FUCK YOU. I barely forgot all the hours of stress while trying to figure out how to get off the ground in one of the F-xx series.
Though i didn`t want to stay completely in the dark, I decided to at least google the damn game. Google`s results were, as always, many and barely decisive, until i saw the magic words : TOM CLANCY`s. I didn`t hear about H.A.W.X before, but when i saw Tom`s name there, i knew that it deserved at least one try. So far, all of Tom Clancy`s games were great for me, so almost instinctively i knew this one would be great.
A few moments of download, another few moments to install the game and voila, i was ready to kick ass.
I have to admit that while the game was installing i kept having some flashbacks about my plane simply sitting in the airfield doing nothing as i had no fucking idea about how to take off, but there it was, i started the game campaign and, to my greatest surprise, my plane was already in the air.
"AI KARAMBA!!" shouted Bart`s voice in my head, now i am going to kick ass for real. In just a few seconds i adapted to the game, and already blowing some emo ass sky high. H.A.W.X. has an almost unique gameplay that relies on two very important things : SIMPLE and FUN. In my opinion other flight simulators are hardly SIMPLE and NO FUN at all, while H.A.W.X. is purely brilliant. The air-to-air fights are pretty much awesome and the air-to-ground fights are like a small challenge which consist of "how many tanks can you blow up before you hit the ground/have to turn your noze up and dive into them again". All of the missions include blow this up and protect/escort that, but even the protect/escort part consists on blowing enemies fast and effective. Though so far i`ve only played the campaign and it took me about 4-5 hours to finish i have to admit that the only bad thing i can say about this game is that the "realism" part si pretty damn questionable. At one mission i was supposed to take back L.A. and after a quick sweep of the city, another wave of enemies had appeared, i pretty damn expected to see more tanks and planes on the battlefield but i really couldn`t understand where did the fucking Anti-Air turrets had appeared from again ( considering that the city had been swept of all enemy forces ) ?!?!?!?!
Besides the great gameplay H.A.W.X. has great graphics to offer, even if most of the time i had to stare at the plane`s ass i can say that this game was a real treat for my candy hungry eyes ( especially now with my new PC ). All of the mission locations look as realistic as authentic ass possible.
Next to the cool graphics and great gameplay this particular game also has some of the best sound tracks so far. Put them all together and voila : i was fucking absorbed by game.

Just like all the games out there, H.A.W.X. isnt flawless, the most important thing for me simply had to disappoint me : the difficulty system. At the normal level i had many missiles and i took very low damage, at the expert difficulty i had slightly fewer missiles and i took a little more damage, but the enemies rarely managed to land a hit on me and they blow up really fast at either difficulty leveles ( 1-2 missiles ), and even for the dumbest of players there is an E.R.S.(Enhanced Reality System) to help them evade/intercept/fly.

Here`s a pic of me trying to play the game at the super mega awesome difficulty setting : my cat biting/playing with my hand while i was playing.

Things i learned from MMOs

- Whatever your goal in life may be, you must always be an adventurer.
- The outskirts of your training grounds have many small animals who will happily act as your punching bag.
- Spells make you thirsty.
- Eating normal food will heal even the worst-looking wound.
- Some people have the job of standing around waiting for someone to bring them things.
- No matter how many people tell him where they are, the farmer will never find his lost children.
- People will award you with large amounts of gold for delivering a letter to their uncle which lives 10 minutes away.
- Anything you kill will disappear soon, only to reappear a few minutes later, alive and having forgotten everything.
- Animals will puke gold when you kill them. Incidentally, that is also how gold is made as there never seems to be any coin-making factory anywhere.
- Your character can survive indefinitely without food, water, sleep or personal hygiene.
- Platemail covers 90% of the male body, but only 20% of the female body. However, in both cases it weighs exactly the same and offers the same protection.
- Chainmail bikinis are among the most powerful and protective pieces of armor.
- If you are a very powerful and ancient creature about to be attacked by a band of adventurers, the most logical course of action is to try and kill the one who pisses you off the most while randomly throwing fire on the others. Incidentally, the one who pisses you off the most is the heavily armored guy wearing a shield.
- Shields and armored warriors piss off powerful creatures more than spells of mass destruction aimed at their faces.
- No matter how wounded you are, you will never feel any pain or experience weakness. Sometimes, you will even experience strength.
- No one ever uses a staff as a walking aid or to hit something with. Instead, staves are used to increase the power of your spells.
- No matter how big you are, you will NEVER try to squish an adventurer who wants to kill you. Instead, you will try to hit him with whatever weapons you have at your disposal.
- Powerful creatures always carry powerful items they do not have any use for.
- Creatures will get tired of chasing you given enough time and will just forget about you, and are incapable of hearing/seeing things that are happening further than 20 yards away.
- A big enough sword can sometimes do more damage than an exploding ball of fire.
- Every general goods vendor in the world sells the exact same things in infinite quantities.
- No matter how shitty and useless something you pick up from the ground is, someone will surely buy it.
- Once you have killed enough monsters or done enough deliveries, you will be surrounded by shiny lights and will grow in power.
- No matter how many times you die, it will never be permanent.
- No matter how many times a creature kills you, you can always come back to try again.
- All dwarves are scottish, like to drink and live in snowy or underground areas.
- There is no such thing as fat people.
- Although all races procrate, there are very few or no half-breeds, unless they are powerful, significant and awesome. Half-dwarves are a concept which does not exist.
- Trolls are jamaican unless they are evil and/or dumb.
- If you are an evil creature, do NOT kill a good, innocent creature unless you want its spirit to come back and offer rewards to adventurers who kill you.
- Powerful adventurers who kill dragons for a living will sometimes collect cute fluffy things.
- The chinese are an evil nation composed entirely of farmers.

Prince of Persia aka "It's the shit"

If you read some of my other articles in this blog you'll find one dedicated to the Prince of Persia series, in which i'm praising it as one of the new millenium's more worthy game franchises. Well, as it stands, it looks like UbiSoft has joined the LucasArts bandwagon in what i can call either "milking the dead cow strategy" or "the Final Fantasy syndrome". Which basically implies that after a succesful game or series of games, you make another game with the same name, similar setting and mechanics, but completely different storyline and characters. So far, it works: the game takes some of its fame from the previous series, which almost assures great expectations (and big sales at the start), while keeping many of its previous fanbois. Because NOTHING that has "final fantasy" written on it can EVER be bad, amirite boys?
Well, i just finished it (and by "it" i meant the PC version) a few hours ago, and i'm impressed. I'm impressed at what lengths UbiSoft will go to when making a complete shiny failure is involved.
Let's be frank, however: it's not the game that is a complete failure, it's the execution. The game has incredible potential and a very artistic style (that vague reminds me of Suicide Girls), but its casual-friendliness and cracks in immersion ruin it thoroughly.
Let's start at the beginning, though: the story. This game's story is about some guy (who would be twice more mysterious and interesting if the game wouldn't tell us who he is from the bloody title) walking around through the desert storm looking for his donkey, named... Farah. That's a negative point from the start for taking the name of one of the most important and deep characters of the series and giving it to a fuckin' donkey that we never even get to see anyway. Suddenly he falls down a pit, gets hit on the head by a falling rock and accidentally finds an old, deserted kingdom which is on the verge of collapsing to a god of darkness. Well, no. What he finds is a girl who's getting chased by some very cowardly soldiers. So the prince chases the girl to this temple thing where her father slices a tree in half and starts the end of the world, spreading the land with a thing called "corruption" (which i will, from now on, call "shit"). Apparently the tree was a prison for the Dark Lord of the Shit, and now that dark lord is spreading his shit across the land in an attempt to destroy some ancient... things (called Fertile grounds - incidentally, they say the word Fertile about 100 billion times over the course of the game) that once destroyed will allow him to spread shit across the world as well. Utterly coincidental, the girl discovers that she has magic powers of light that allow her to clean up the shit. Well, whaddya know.
So the prince and the girl must now thread through the shit-infested lands, reach the ancient things and clean the shit up. Once they clear an area, strange floating orbs of light called "light seeds" (which i will subsequently call "points") appear and make the girl (which i will subsequently call Elika, because that's her name) feel better. Even more, if you collect (or, more precisely, bump into) lots of points, you can buy yourself a special power with them. And you get to choose this special power out of 4 total. The powers are there only to help you reach areas and you can only use them in special locations marked by different colored plates on walls, and are, in order: jump, jump, fly and run on walls. So your goal will be to run around cleaning up shit, then collect points which will allow you to buy powers to reach more areas where you run around and clean up more shit, and consequently get more points. Once you clean up all the areas in a specific quarter, you get to kill a boss and once you've killed all 4 bosses you get to kill the last boss which will finish the game. Easy.
Now that i'm through with the presentation, let's talk mechanics. The game is similar to the other games, but different. First off, there is no time power. You will never be able to rewind, stop or slow down time in this game (unless the game does it for you for increased dramatic effect). The prince gains some new abilities such as crawling on ceilings (Spider-prince, spider-prince, does whatever a spider-prince does. Can he shoot - from a web? No he can't - he's a prince), climbing on cracks in a wall and sliding down walls with his metal gauntlet that he just happens to have (and you're not supposed to ask why, because the game doesn't talk about that sort of thing).
Add to this the power of having Elika at his disposal at all times, which about doubles his overall effectiveness. First off, he can't die. Whenever he's about to fall into a pit of shit or an abyss, Elika teleports him safely away to the last place where his feet were on solid ground. This instantly replaces the rewind time feature, and makes the game freakishly casual to boot. No longer will we get the satisfaction of seeing the prince being sliced to pieces, bludgeoned to death or going SPLAT against the bottom of the pit. For one, the game doesn't have any sharp obstacles (unless you're one of those people who thinks that shit is sharp), for two, Elika saves you every damn time - even when she's supposedly incapacitated. You even use this "power" to solve a puzzle, for crying out loud.
Second, Elika can throw him around (i.e. a double jump) and the game is designed to make it seem like they're working together. You can even use her as a weapon in combat (suddenly, the awesome thought of bashing an enemy with her comes to mind), but we'll get into that later.
The graphics are grade A, and if it's not a masterpiece anywhere else, then the game truly is a graphical one. The levels are littered with sublime views that will leave your eyes wide open and gently massage your soul. Or something. However, the level design breaks the immersion somewhat. The actual amount of running you do in this game is about 5% of the ground you cover, and the levels are designed to have a way to leave them, and a way to come back. This is where the immersion starts to fail as i seriously doubt that any big old kingdom would have conveniently placed bronze rings that you can get a hold of right after doing a wall run, among other things. The zones are big and outdoor-ish, which is better than what the other PoPs offered us but i can only raise an eyebrow when i see this. I won't comment on the cell-shaded graphics because they never bothered me.
As with any PoP game, there must be combat. This game has combat. Problems are, it's not nearly enough combat, it's impossible to die in combat, it's so easy that you might as well let a monkey play it and most of the times it's over in about 5 seconds. You fight 1, max 2 enemies per level, and sometimes that includes the boss aswell. Let me explain: the combat style and mechanics are solid, and very VERY flashy, with combos out the ass. But when it comes to execution, normal enemies are insta-killed AS SOON AS THEY REACH AN EDGE OR A WALL. Ironically, all your attacks will push the enemy back somewhat, and as soon as they're near a wall/edge the prince instantly plunges his sword in their chests and kills them like the big hero he is. If the prince reaches the edge, the enemies will simply throw him to the other side. If it so happens that the prince takes too much damage, Elika will jump in and "save" him (an act which also restores some of the enemy's health). There's a certain strategy required for some bosses but in all cases it's so easy that you start to wonder what the producers were bloody thinkin'.
Also, there are quick time events. Like any self-respecting next-gen franchise, PoP HAD to copy quick-time events from god of war or whatever. I thanked god that the pseudo-quicktime events from Two Thrones were just that, pseudo, but it looks like Ubi took it to the next... level. Yes, it is very interesting to watch flashy animations on my screen while looking for a button that's supposed to appear and hurrying to press it before it disappears. Not.
As for the characters, the prince is a cross between an angsty teenager and Indiana Jones, and Elika is... well, a cross between bitch, drama queen and sensitive flower. The game tries to make you like her, oh, how it tries. But as much as it tries, it fails horrendously (AVAST YE, MATEYS! SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READIN' IF YER LANDLUBBER ARSE DON'T WANNA BE SPOILT). I checked even the official forums and it confirmed my suspicions. You see, the game ends with Elika dying. And if you wait it out on the end credits, there's a final sequence in which the prince, defying all logic and morality, revives her but destroys all they had worked for so far, releasing His Shittiness upon the world... again. You see, you're supposed to develop such great affection towards her that in the end, you'd even forsake the world to get her back. Here's where the idea fails, because the prince does, BUT YOU DON'T. I did the last sequence reluctantly, while half-searching for a way i could get out of that place and into the desert. I didn't find it, but man did it feel wrong to negate her sacrifice just because i'm some sort of spoiled brat who dun care bout the world -or her duties and what she wanted to do- and simply fucks it all and gets her back. I said i checked the forums: there were fanboi topics saying that the ending affected them deeply, commenting on Elika's humanity and trying to find a reason for the revival, but not one of them said "yeah i liked elika so much that i would have done the same if i was the prince". Because the prince and Elika never share a serious moment of chemistry, because whenever Elika raises a hand, the prince is always lookin' away, because whenever the prince gets sentimental, Elika turns around and acts like a cold-hearted bitch. Everything they do share is smart-ass one-liners, ilke him saying "stop staring at my ass" and her saying "i thought you said it was a donkey". In conclusion, Elika will never reach the standards imposed by characters like Alyx Vance or even the old Farah.
A potentially great game, but one where (in my friend's words) the original developers seemed to be sleeping and the rest of the team quickly hurried to make the game in their absence, and finished it so as to give them a chance to show them how it's done. It's far from a bad game, but not too close to a good one either. If you're an adventure game fan, there's no big reason not to play and finish it other than the annoying hunt for points. Let's hope they wake up next time and design a game that doesn't make you collect stuff just to get it over with.