Geek vs Life

I’ll be honest, when writing a review for any Dynasty Warriors game, it would be simpler to cut a past a previous post and change a few details to make it fresh again. That’s basically what Koei does after all. The differences between the 5th and 6th incarnation of the Dynasty Warriors: Empires series is negligible at best. Does it mean that it’s a terrible game? Far from it. According to Raptr, I have been playing the game for about 20 hours… seems about right.

For those unfamiliar with the series, here’s a quick rundown: DW takes place in ancient China during the Three Kingdom period which extends from approximately 184 to 280 M.E. The three kingdoms in question are Wu, Shu and Wei. The regular game is pure hack and slash with a back drop of history added in between fights to make it seem to have an ultimate goal. Kill, run, kill, run, kill the enemy leader and move on to the next map. That’s it.

Empires on the other hand, gives you more control over the course of events. You start off as a vagrant, looking to either become an officer for a settled ruler, or overthrow him and claim his territory of your own. While you make your decision on which land you will conquer, the option to do mercenary missions are available to you. The ultimate goal is to conquer all neighboring territories, then the country itself. Empires gives you more freedom to a certain extent. The open ended storyline allows you to forge your own path, unless you are an officer, where you are at the whims of your ruler. That is until you choose to dethrone him or defect to another one.

This game is very much a love or hate type of game. You either love it to death and play for hours on end, or you don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole. Some people call the game too repetitive, and honestly that’s quite true. And we’re not only talking repetitive in one game, the franchise is repetitive as a whole. All that really changes are the level designs and graphics. Press X half a dozen times to attack, sprinkle in a few Y’s to charge attack and when in need press B to launch a musou attack (DW magic attack) that will knockdown most opponents. Repeat until victory is achieved. Does that make it a bad? No, not at all.

The game takes all it’s importance when you get your two player game on. I like to call this game the perfect “girlfriend game.” Where your girl can grab a controller, follow next to you and hack and slash her way to giddy. There’s no blood, so the gore factor is nil. Controls are relatively simple so there’s no need to be an veteran gamer to make your way through the game. Careful when she starts getting the hang of it, then you’ll be fighting over who gets to kill the final level boss.

Pros for the game are the addition of character creation, improved graphics and better looking maps. Another welcomed addition is the aforementioned mercenary missions which act as side quests, giving you sometimes attack bonuses or new characters which you can later “befriend.”

As my fiancee will attest to, the game lack in second player achievements on the Xbox 360. As she so rightfully claims, she killed her fair share of enemy troops, why can’t she reap the rewards as well? The game does get very repetitive after a few hours of continuous game play. DW5E had more options when it came to politics, allowing you to reward the people, tax them and form alliances with your neighbors. Something which is missing in here. I wished that the makers would have had an “import character information” feature, allowing me to transfer my saved files from DW6 into DW6E. That way, Icould play with my level 50 Zhou Yu while taking over China.

All in all, for me at least, the game is worth it. Not only is it the premier hack and slash game on the market, it’s a bonding tool for me and my fiancee. Despite the fact that she has now started to out hack and slash me. I need more musou.

For Transformers 2, director Michael Bay, the man behind such cinematic gems as Bad Boys and The Rock, seriously gets a bad rap. Yes, you know that shit will be blowing up for at least three quarters of his film. But is that REALLY a bad thing? You don’t go to his films and expect “Oscar for Best Film” cinema do you? For shame. Bay sets the story aside, and makes things go boom. The end. And you know what? I’m fine with that. Most of the time.

In this, the latest film to be attached to his resume, Bay returns to the robots in disguise with a renewed interest in pyrotechnics, which seemed to have been on sale at Costco. The story once again follows Sam (Shia Labeouf) who moves out of mom and dad’s house to go to college, leaving Mikaela (Megan Fox) at home with… a web cam? (More on real reasons to cast Fox later.) Robots multiply, Megatron comes back to life (rather easily I might add), and yes, things go kablooey.  Alot.

Apart from stuff blowing up, the films does get some stuff right. Some of the robot battle sequences are fantastic. The Transformers seemed more agile and less static than in the first incarnation of the franchise. They at times moved with the grace of a Jet Li or Michelle Yeoh. Not a small feat for 20 ton gigantatron robots. Another point of interest, KABOOM!

Now for the not so niceties. Megan Fox should be dragged behind a shed and shot… in the head. If only to preserve her ass and tits, which are really the only reason to cast her in anything. You might argue that she has pretty eyes, but when she is running in slow motion for 5 minutes, wearing a bra that lacks in any real firm support, her eyes are not what your eyes are drawn to. At all. Unless you more a Shia type of person. But even then, I heard he stuffs his jock. Just saying. Blaming the actors for a poor story is unfair. There were passable jokes (a robot scrotum… what?), and the plot had many gaping holes in it. Someone must have strapped dynamite to the script and well… you know the rest.

I said it for the first one, and I’ll say it again: the movie feels like a car commercial for General Motors. I think that the irony that the film is released just weeks after GM declares bankruptcy is HILARIOUS. But since when did GM make motorcycles… or was that a new sponsor?

See it for the action, check your phone for messages when people start talking to each other, your better off that way.

I have to admit that the only reason why I picked up this book is because I have a thing for Guillermo del Toro. From Cronos to Pan’s Labyrinth and including both Hell Boy films. He has a visual style that is excessively appealing to me. (News flash Gaiman fans, he is rumored to be attached to a “Death: The High Cost of Living” film. You may now stop drooling.)

Del Toro is not the sole name to grace the cover of The Strain, Chuck Hogan, author of “The Killing Moon” and soon to be a motion picture, “Prince of Thieves” also penned the book.

I have another confession, I didn’t expect much. Which is always fantastic as you get a small reward for making it from page one to 400. Vampires have been done and redone so many times, that you don’t know what supposed to kill them anymore. Is it power tools or silver bullets? Can we still use wooden stakes like Buffy did? No matter, these baddies are less Dracula and more blood sucking zombies.

The story starts off in post 9/11, modern New York (you’ll be reminded of that about every 25 pages), as a passenger jet incoming from Germany lands on the JFK tarmac with everyone on the flight dead. A call goes out to the CDC and Dr. Eph Goodweather and his Canary team are sent into the fray to investigate. After an solar eclipse that seemed to have lasted longer than it did, they soon discovers that someone should have just set the plane on fire and be done with it.

What works for me within the story is the highly visual aspect of the story telling. The authors create tension and let it go at the right moments dragging the reader along for a great ride. The mix of science versus folklore which have been trademarked in Del Toro’s films are well represented here. They take old world fables and explain it scientifically, rather than just let things be because that’s the way they are. On the other hand, some parts feel almost as they were cut and pasted out of college text books. If we really needed more info about about solar eclipses, we could have wiki’d it, thanks. Also I now know more about rats than I ever intended too.

The book is good mind you. I liked the zombies/vampire amalgamation they used (Zompires? Vambies?) In a literary vampire world where glowing vampires are kings, and goth kids still worship at the throne of Rice and her sexually ambivalent children of the night, I like the fact that the blood suckers take the back seat to the vamp hunters, much like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The movie anyway. I prefered my Scooby gang, without fangs thankyouverymuch.

When I sat down to play Red Faction: Guerrilla, I made myself a promise. No matter how badthey were, the graphics would not be an issue in the review. Trade-offs show up in every game on the market and with highly destructible environments, graphics will always suffer.

Disclaimers aside, Red Faction has reared its head with its newest title. In a series of surprises, you’re thrown back onto Mars as a demolitions expert (surprise!) named Alec Mason who, after an unfortunate event, takes up his obligatory hammer and joins the Red Faction (surprise!).  Mayhem ensues as you fulfill the dictum of your new rebel buddies: absolute destruction of personal property that isn’t yours.

In the initial few missions, the physics engine revved into high gear and stayed there as debris flew across the screen in a mad show of force. The threadbare plot kept me convinced that sheer pandemonium was a great way to start an uprising and didn’t really get in the way during the play-through. With decent controls, expect for the wonky weapons switchover system, navigating around the sandbox world and firing at baddies works out pretty well. It’s easy to get lost in the weapons fire and explosions however, which makes it hard to tell friend from foe in the midst of trouble.

Side missions in this game serve as enjoyment and ways to unlock more weaponry, but most of what they do is try and taunt you. Taunt you relentlessly as you draw fastidious diagrams of building structures cursing yourself for not being an engineering student at MIT. Sometimes it’s a roll of the dice to get an acceptable result. After four failed attempts at one particularly rough destructive mission, I had a sudden flashback of Crackdown. The same over the shoulder camera, ninja-spawning enemies, and even the same quest narrator (no really, it is) have been polished off and ported to the PS3.

The online multiplayer aspect hasn’t quite taken off the ground yet, but it looks promising once some more DLC is released in the future. For example, the wrecking crew option, where you compete against friends to take down buildings faster and better, has a certain awesome quality to it except that like the main game, the physics engine picks and chooses what buildings fall.

I think this game can best be described as a giant stress release ball. Like after a long day of dealing with angry customers or being in a poor work environment where acting out is frowned upon. This game  is a great way to blow off some steam using explosives. Unless you are on the verge of actually napalming your place of business, this should stay a rental game.