Deadpool: Mouthing Off 2

Part 2 of 2

I've done my best to stay away from the review sites across the Internets, but I'm assuming this game is going to be well received by Deadpool fans and lumped into an average rating by most gamers. The Deadpool game fits the summer-popcorn-movie stereotype. It's good but not great; kind of short for the $49.99 release price. I'm also guessing that people who are unfamiliar with Deadpool will be put-off by his antics and confused by his humor. Or just irritated. Probably irritated

Now that I've finished the story campaign, I wish there was more to the story campaign. I feel like I got enough; I played the game for three hours a night, starting on the Tuesday night that it released. I finished the story campaign on Thursday night. Normally, I hop around from game to game while playing. Deadpool had me hooked and satisfied from the minute I started playing. That doesn't happen very often. Now that I know the story and how it ends, I just wish it could continue...or have a new arc start in the same universe.

To wrap this up, in the best way that I can, I have to label the Deadpool game as scatterbrained. If this were a normal game, that label wouldn't be compliment. I think the game would be accused doing or including too many things. For example: most of the Deadpool game is a hack n' slash, beat 'em up....but it's also a third-person shooter/platformer/adventure/stealth game. It contains a side-scrolling level (I would take more of this), a couple shooter-on-rails sections (think turrets), and a retro-style Atari level in the sewers (only for a couple minutes). The point being: it is all over the place.

And that's Deadpool. He's all over the place.

Speaking of all over the place, go to Part 1

Deadpool: Mouthing Off 1

Part 1 of 2

After sinking 3 to 4 hours in it, I think I'm qualified (by Internet standards) to talk about the new Deadpool game that dropped this Tuesday. I walked out of GameStop with a copy of the PS3 version, stopped at Chick-fil-A (sorry, no chimichangas), and plopped down on my couch to get reacquainted with the Merc with a Mouth.

The first little section of the game serves to do just that, teach the player about this masked madman by exploring his apartment. I was laughing the whole time, especially while Deadpool made fun of achievements by giving me the first and second ones for "free," I'm glad Deadpool shares my opinion on trophies and achievements.

Once out of the crazy-filthy apartment, it was sword-swinging, gun-toting, tutorial time. At first thought, I'd call Deadpool a hack n' slash game with a bit of platforming, but that's because I didn't want to use my guns, like ever. I guess I have more fun slicing and dicing enemies; even when the enemies were poised for a duck-and-cover shoot-out, I would run head-first into enemy fire (what's the point of a healing factor if you're not going to use it) and stab, stab, stab.

The non-shooting combat is easy to learn and the enemy AI is pretty dumb. And, oh I forgot about the teleport dodge: it makes the sword combat and countering very over-powered. I had honestly forgotten that Deadpool had that teleport technology. Where's Weasel when I want to thank him? Anyway, it was later into the game when I realized I was in trouble for not using/upgrading my gun arsenal.

The "heavy" baddies are much easier when Deadpool is dual-wielding shotguns. Maybe that's the case for all the baddies. Still, I get bored with third-person shooting faster than I do stringing together bloody-bladed melee combos. The melee gameplay is no Arkham Asylum, but I still enjoyed it. I like my Deadpool with his blades; I also like the sai, but I haven't used them much. The swords are fully upgraded, the sai are newly unlocked, and the hammers, well, I haven't purchased them yet.

Most of the glitches that I've seen have occurred during combat, but nothing has made me want to eat my controller. Occasionally an enemy will end up on top of Deadpool; sometimes my hits connect with the displaced enemy and sometimes they don't. Meh. Deadpool points (DP) don't always revert to the previous amount if you die and then continue from the nearest checkpoint. Last, but not least, enemies can deal lots of damage to each other; I've always thought friendly fire is a stupid concept, so when a "heavy" baddie clears all the normal enemies for me, I wonder if that was intentional.

Even though the game is linear, I'll praise the level design and variety. From Deadpool's apartment to the mucky sewers to the catacombs of Genosha, the scenery is a sight to behold. I'd also like to get my hands on some concept art, especially the final level in Genosha. Floating platforms as far as the eye can see. Again, thank you Weasel for the teleportation.

Speaking of teleportation, BAMF over to Part 2

What About The Rest Of The Year?

Blogging? Am I still doing that? By missing E3 this year, I shot my blogging-self in the foot. Last year and the year before, E3 was a prime time to chime in on the world of gaming. Starting right now, there are only 4 games that I'm really looking forward to for the remainder of 2013. They are, in order of suspected release:

6/25/2013 - Deadpool
9/3/2013 - Diablo III (Console)
9/17/2013 - Grand Theft Auto V
Q4 2013 - South Park: The Stick of Truth

I'll definitely be talking about the Deadpool game, because it looks awesome and hilarious.

The other two games, Diablo and GTA, look to be early fall releases but I'm not really sure about South Park. Who knows? Anybody. I can wait for that one, because I want the South Park game to be done right or not done at all.

Good news though, I'll have plenty of time to play Deadpool before I get bogged down with the other new games. Deadpool is my favorite Marvel Comics character and I've been anticipating this game since I first heard about it. And it's about damn time that it was released. I'll try and get a huge chunk of it played shortly after release so that I can post my thoughts on the game.

There were some tempting pre-order bonuses, but nothing too blingy. So I put my pre-order in at GameStop and got two more challenge maps, two extra costumes, and a wallpaper. Let me see if I can dig that sucker up.

October In Full Force

It's been four weeks since Resident Evil 6 dropped and I still don't think I've played enough of it to adequately "review" it. Then again, I haven't played it that much. I blame the game itself. But I can also blame another game: Dead Space. Yes, the original Dead Space. This red-cased, greatest hits game is scarier than most of Resident Evil 4, all of Resident Evil 5, and what I've played of Resident Evil 6 combined.

Sneaking through the Ishimura a couple weekends ago was satisfying and creepy; to add extra tension, I'm going for the plasma cutter challenge and only using that weapon. At first I thought it was hard to shoot for the limbs and appendages (I'm a seasoned zombie killer, aiming for skulls) but I slowly got the hang of it. I'm also a fan of the Kinesis module; sharp objects and explosive canisters are launched at anything that moves. The most fun I've had in-game has involved creative killing with gas tanks and shrapnel.

Unfortunately, the Kinesis module isn't that original. I've encountered the mechanic before in Half-Life 2 and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, but it's still fun to use. It's definitely a good thing that weapons like the gravity gun don't exist in real life, because I would cause all kinds of trouble armed with one.

Out in the real world, everything around the DoNothingMan is falling apart. I still can't get my twitter feed to display in the blog margins (this just suddenly started happening and I don't know to fix it) and last Thursday my van decided to stop running. Hopefully I can bring it back to life.

Resident Evil 6 Demo: The Rule of Thirds

After a boring, 8-hour work day, I came home yesterday knowing that the Resident Evil 6 demo was going live. I hopped onto the PlayStation and I found nothing. No Resident Evil 6 Demo to download. WTF, I thought to myself. Eh, it's probably just Sony being Sony and effing something up. I'll play Skyrim instead (yeah, I haven't killed a dragon in months).

So I killed a dragon outside of Riften. Then I looked at my to-do list of quests and thought they all seemed mundane. Pausing, I checked the Internet for any news about Sony not having the RE6 demo (couldn't find any) and I switched to a Skyrim wiki and landed on a page about the Ghostblade. That's what I need, the Ghostblade. So I played until I obtained the Ghostblade.

An hour or two later, with the Ghostblade in my hot little hands, I checked PSN again and the RE6 demo was there. Spooky. So I downloaded it and played it. Here are my thoughts:

Finally, I can set aside all my speculation and muckraking - I have played a demo for Resident Evil 6 and it wasn't that bad. I'll get into more detail below, but I generally enjoyed the appetizer experience contained within the demo. As a preview for all three main campaigns, the demo lets you play as Chris, Leon, and Jake (their partners we're also selectable, but I only played the main characters). Each campaign is different and each character plays differently (we already knew that) but there is wide gulf that separates them, wider then I suspected.

Twenty Minutes of Chris

Band of Bros

No, I'm not abbreviating "brothers" here or alluding to the epic series. This is the BRO GAMER campaign. "Is he always this awesome?" says the rookie BSA moron as Chris Redfield walks away. Yes rookie...Chris is so awesome that he's probably the only one who will survive this mission. This means you’re going to die a horrible death at the hands of zombie hulk.

The running and gunning in Chris's twenty minutes felt exactly like RE5, but slightly faster. Switching weapons has the same intuitive directional pad controls as RE5. Healing was less intuitive until I realized herbs were picked up and compressed into Tic-Tac form. You have to go into your inventory to combine herbs and load them into your Tic-Tac container. The pop-a-health-Tic-Tac button is R2 and you can pig out like fat kid with Pez dispenser (as long as your container is loaded).

I used Chris's pistol more than his automatic weapon; the machine gun hopped around as you fired (I guess that's realism for you). Anyway, I was able to pick off a rocket launcher goon all the way across the map with the pistol as I was killing time while the BSA rookie was planting charges or something. Timed survival seemed to be a common theme. Twenty minutes of Chris's foray into the world of Call of Duty wasn't bad. But I don't know if I can survive the brotastic bullshit for an entire campaign; I played Chris's first because I knew it would be the hardest for me to stomach. And I was right.

Twenty Minutes of Jake

Zombie Tyranitars

Of the three characters, I am the most curious about Jake Muller, the supposed son of Albert Wesker. The demo didn't give away much of Jake's story; he is paired with Sherry Birkin and that can't be for no reason at all.

Jake's gameplay featured the most variety and the most surprising enemies. He comes fully loaded with a pistol, hand-cannon (think elephant gun, stranger), machine gun, sniper rifle, and hand-to-hand. Yes, you have to equip hand-to-hand. Jake's twenty minutes trained me in the ways of melee and close combat of RE6 and that's only because it was the best way to deal with the zombie lizards.

More like zombie tyranitars. Almost every infected enemy crusted over after you defeated them. Some of the crusties then broke apart revealing this new enemy. Sure, I could've wasted all my ammo on the zombie tyranitars, but it was most effective to engage the beasts in hand-to-hand and beat the brains out of them. More satisfying too.

Jake's run felt more familiar then Chris's; it actually felt the most like RE4 when you get onto the island. And I'm okay with that. I can only hope that Jake's story is well hashed out in the full game. After all, he has his father's shoes to fill.

Twenty Minutes of Leon

My Knife and the Ghostblade

I almost played as Leon S. Kennedy first, but I'm glad I didn't; I saved the best for last. Leon's twenty minutes felt like classic Resident Evil crossed with RE4.

I remember when books were used to hide things like keys, emblems, and clues.

The opening cut-scene drew from the first zombie encounter in the mansion back in 1997. Only I didn't actually get to shoot the zombie...cut-scene Leon shot the zombie and he looked cool doing it too. You then assume control of Leon on a college campus with a new flesh-bag partner (who isn't completely worthless) and joining the team again, codec-style is Hunnigan. Yesh!

Leon comes equipped with a pistol and his combat knife. I switched to the combat knife right away because the pistol only had forty bullets. Better conserve ammo, I thought. It was a good feeling, one I've not felt since Code Veronica. The zombies are zombies, occasionally they'll be carrying something that you can snatch away and use against them only once. I used the knife and the melee attacks for Leon's entire twenty minutes. Awesome. But I did notice the new stamina bar, which I drained quickly going all up-close-and-personal with the undead. My partner did help me get out of some tight spots and I had to use grapple quick-time events to get the touchy-feely zombies off me.

Resident Evil 6 now includes decorative urinal cakes.

The demo ended with an awkward quick-time event in a police car looking for the keys as zombies attacked and climbed all over the cruiser. Annoying, but it was tense. Leon's run was definitely my favorite; I might even play it again. I might even use his partner...I forget her name already and I don't feel like googling it.

Two Thirds Satisfied

One Third Worried

That seems to be a good summary of my experiences with the Resident Evil 6 demo. Overall, I was happy with it. Chris's campaign bothers me and it will probably still bother me when I play it in full. However, if I hadn't already pre-ordered Resident Evil 6, this demo would've sealed the deal. I am looking forward to playing the full game on October 2.

A Summer Sans PS3

August always signals the end of summer for me. Yeah, schools don't start for a couple more days, but by the middle of August, summer is basically gone.

After flipping through a couple older posts and looking over my gaming notes (yes, I have gaming notes), I arrived at a shocking revelation. I have not played my PlayStation 3 at all this summer. My gaming time consisted of the following:

Diablo 3 (PC)
Tribes: Ascend (PC)
League of Legends (PC)
Saint's Row 3 (Xbox 360)
Just Cause 2 (Xbox 360)
Pokémon Emerald (GBA/DS Lite)

Yep, that looks about right. I'm almost finished with Emerald and I'm a complete noob on League of Legends, but Diablo 3 and the sandbox games have kept me pretty occupied. Receiving the most ink, though, are Diablo 3 and Pokémon because I just enjoy writing about demons and pocket monsters.

As an avid PlayStation fan, I feel I must explain my summer of transgression. Excuse number one is that I moved and it's taken time to get things set back up. Lame reason. Excuse number two is that my PS3 currently has no sound. During the move, I decided to commit my surround sound speakers to my gaming PC for demon slaughtering eargasms. This left the PS3 with no audio device and me with an excuse to explore the world of surround sound headsets. And I haven't found a pair that I like.

I've never been an audiophiliac, but recently, I've had an unusual appetite for video game audio and becoming totally present in a gaming reality. That means tuning out the real world and tuning into the game world; the complete immersion of self. And listening to a game through sound cancelling headphones seemed like the best way to accomplish such immersion.

The plan was to pick up a pair of headphones for my PS3. The problem is that one does not simply "pick up" a pair of gaming headphones. Maybe I just don't know enough about quality audio, but between Turtle Beach nonsense and Logitech fluff, I'm not really sure what I'm doing.

The minute I decided on a pair, the Tritton Ax Pro, I read about a new pair coming out this fall; an updated or upgraded version of the Tritton Ax Pro. I really wish the name was Tritton Axe Pro, which sounds like a wicked combination of two-handed melee weapons.

The Nostalgia Sell: Resident Evil 6

It's time for more of this Resident Evil crapfest. Is crapfest a word? It should be, because it paints a perfect picture of how Capcom has transformed Resident Evil. Quite a feat, if you ask me; if Capcom set out to maim the Resident Evil franchise, then they deserve to celebrate, because they have ruined a magnificent series of games.

The truly sad part of all this: I still like Resident Evil games. I can't say love. I used to love Resident Evil back in the PlayStation days. So when I saw this on Amazon, I was excited. Harkening back to my craving for sweet pre-order bonuses, when I saw the Resident Evil Anthology pack, I thought: that's a super-awesome deal. Forget Leon's jacket, an Africa necklace, or a mini Chris Redfield (and think other shiny pre-order goodies), let's give out the other RE games.

The Resident Evil Anthology: at first glance, this looked like an amazing deal. Then my common sense started tingling.

Wait a minute...
This contains six Resident Evil games. Three of my favorite games (the first three) and three that I'm not all that crazy about.

Wait a minute...
I already own all of these games (in disk form) except the 6th one.

Wait a minute...
Resident Evil 6 costs $59.99 alone, which means they're charging thirty bucks for the five other games.

Wait a minute...
That means Resident Evil 6 is insanely over-priced.

Nostalgia clouded my judgment, nearly causing me to make a bad decision. Touché, Capcom. You almost had me there. Marketing strategy suggests that when we look at this bundle, we think we're getting all this awesome stuff with the new game. The reversal (and maybe closer to the truth, I fear) is that Capcom is re-selling what made Resident Evil so great and tacking on RE5 and RE6 like the backwards little runts that they are.

Kind of like the Indiana Jones 4 Pack. Nobody's going to buy Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by itself. So they have to bundle it with the other three good movies.

I'm being pretty harsh here. I haven't played Resident Evil 6 nor have I played its demo. I've seen some cool gameplay footage over at Kotaku and that's about it. The bottom line is that I'm not fond of the Resident Evil action game. And I hope Capcom doesn't turn Resident Evil 6 into a knock off of Call of Duty Zombies.

That's What I Need: More Doom

Some pretty crazy news has surfaced about a Doom 3 re-release. Openly, I'll admit to being a rabid Disgaea, Fallout, and Resident Evil fan; I'll even quietly admit to playing the Pokémon games and older Final Fantasy games. But the fandom started with a little 3.5 in floppy disk containing the shareware version of Doom.

If I still had that floppy, I would snap a picture for this post, but I don't. I did what we all did back in 3rd grade with that disk. Someone gave it to me. I took it home and installed it. I brought the disk back to school and passed it on to the next kid. That was how sharing software worked back then. To this day, Doom is still one of my favorite games. It still ends up on all of my windows machines. When most people get bored at their computer, they open up solitaire or click through minesweeper. Not me. I open up Doom.

This is not what Doom looks like, but this is my screen capture output. I thought it looked cool anyway; fits the blog color scheme and I'm too lazy to try and fix it.

The original Xbox was a dorm room stable during my college years; we all played Halo and Halo 2, of course. But when Doom 3 made its Xbox debut, I went out and bought my own Xbox console. So I could play Doom 3 and not have to share with all the crazy Halo nuts. The Doom 3 experience was solely single-player for me; I blasted my way through the Mars UAC research facility, going late into cool spring nights with my own Xbox and 19 inch television stashed in my dark bedroom. While playing the game, I wanted to be scared. And, for the most part, I was.

Doom 3 was an excellent experience, but when I want to play Doom, I still turn to the Doom installed on my little netbook. If I'm sitting at my Xbox 360 and I get the Doom itch, I can play the XBLA version of Doom, which I downloaded on a whim when first appeared. I didn't even know it was taken down and put back up until recently. I do prefer the keyboard instead of a game controller when it comes to the original Doom games though.

Like I need excuses to play more Doom, but a graphically enhanced PS3 version with the Resurrection of Evil expansion and new levels. That's more than a good excuse to play more Doom; that's a damn good reason to play more Doom.

Destroy the Secret Raccoon Civilization! Oh wait..

On Tuesday, during my lunch break I jetted over to Best Buy to pick up my reserved copy of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (the special edition) which I will, from here on, refer to as RE:ORC because its short and orcs are awesome. Anyway, I did my best not to check out any reviews of the game, but I did inadvertently skim the beginning of the joystiq review while scrolling down their post line up. Sorry. That was my bad. I've quarantined myself from the Internet so I can play the game and give my unadulterated opinion on the long-awaited return to Raccoon City.

Clearly, every Resident Evil game should include hidden taxidermied raccoons from here on out.

After three days of killing and being killed in RE:ORC, I can say that I'm enjoying the game. This game won't pull the foul-mouthed children from their Halos or CoDs (which is a good thing in my opinion) and therefore RE:ORC won't explode in the world of online multiplayer. The problem though, is that there's not enough campaign meat to justify the weak multiplayer effort.

The campaign is lackluster fan service to say the least. I've only played up until the beginning of the 5th mission, which is where you watch Leon and Claire crash their police car into a wall. Then you watch the trucker zombie run over their crash with his semi. "Command" immediately says to kill that cop. And now I'm chasing Leon through a series of parking garages. But the journey to this point was good; it wasn't bad. As far as shooters go, the missions are straight forward with plenty of flesh bags (infected and regular) to kill. The humans that get in U.S.S.'s way won't be getting awards for their smarts, but they make up for this lack of intelligence with hit points. They are stupidly hard, like three-shotgun-blasts-to-the-face-and-still-kicking hard. The zombies and monsters, on the other hand, scale in difficulty: zombies are the easiest and hunters are the hardest, which holds true to the classic Resident Evil style. Plus, it feels good shotgun zombies, lickers, and hunters all in one game. RE:ORC feels like a Resident Evil game, in that respect.

Who leaves incendiary grenades on a fire truck? That's just wrong.

Unfortunately though, most of the game doesn't feel like a Resident Evil game. There's ammo and health sprays everywhere. It's like the currency of Raccoon City was ammunition and you get to take every zombie's wallet after you kill it. Random attache cases and ammo boxes also pop up, so every U.S.S. team member has infinite ammo. The amount of health, sprays and herbs, is significantly less than the amount ammo, but to a Resident Evil veteran, RE:ORC has a veritable forest of green herbs. The game never frightens, let alone horrifies, (although there are parasites that look speciously like face-huggers and face-huggers are effing terrifying) and survival doesn't seem difficult. So, I can't in good judgement, call this game a survival-horror game.

I also have some reservations calling this game a squad-based shooter. Yes, there are three computer-controlled teammates, but there is very little squad control. If you've unlocked all the different abilities and weapons, you can equip your squad with goodies, but that's it. The good news is that your three squad mates are significantly less stupid than the gun-toting humans who get in your way. Imagine a competent Sheva divided equally into three people, well that's your squad. They're dumb, but not completely useless. You can sit back and let your squad do everything, but it's more fun to kill stuff yourself and it's much faster (besides you get more xp, yay). The U.S.S. squad will deal damage, but they can't clear an entire room. And they die, either by a tyrant playing patty-cake their skulls or by turning into a zombie themselves (then you get to kill them). As soon as they're dead, you can run up, hold a button, and BAMF! They're back.

So, infinite ammo, near infinite health, and infinite lives for your party. This doesn't sound like Resident Evil at all. And it's not. But for that brief moment, when I'm unloading shotgun rounds into an un-phased tyrant while he lifts his fists to smash me into the floor, I hold the controller just a little tighter, and remember the good times.