Sadly the PS4 and the new Xbox are not with us quite yet, so I've had to spend my time playing games on the 3DS and the now seemingly super old PS3. On the 3DS front I played through the entirety of Fire Emblem: Awakening and am still continuing to play it. I'll post my thoughts on that when I'm finished with it.
On The PS3 front I played Sly 4: Thieves in Time. It's possible that I was one of very few people who knew about the game's release, because Sony did a terrible job marketing the game. It's almost as if they wanted the release to be a surprise. Sony seems to be doing this with most of their first party titles lately, which is a bit unsettling. Hopefully they're just focusing on PS4 development, because at this point they're almost sending games out to die at retail.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence had a fair bit of marketing behind it though. Every trailer was filled with maximum insanity and the game itself is not any different. There's a fair bit to talk about, so let's get right into it. It's game time!
Sly 4
I must admit I never played through any of the Sly Cooper games when they were originally released. I remember my brother playing through most of the second game when he rented it, but I didn't end up playing it myself. So when the Sly Cooper HD collection I decided it was time to play through them all. To my surprise I actually ended up liking the first two quite a bit, while I actively hated the third for adding terribly controlled mini games at every turn. Suckerpunch managed to create a likable band of thieves in Sly, Murray, and Bentley that I became quite attached to.
The problem with the Sly Cooper franchise is that it's very much a product of it's time. They were PS2 action/adventure games made in the early to mid 2,000's. Games of the original Sly Trilogy's ilk have fallen out of style on modern consoles, so I didn't really know what to expect from Sly 4. All I knew was that I wanted some more Sly Cooper. That's what I ended up getting, but Sly 4 is a bit too similar to it's predecessors.
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| Sly and the gang are back again, but this time it's full blown HD! |
Once again you'll play as the crafty Raccoon thief Sly Cooper, the brainy turtle Bentley, and the brawny hippo Murray. Pages from Sly's ancestral tome the Thievius Racoonus are disappearing, so the gang has to go back in time to figure out what's happening to Sly's ancestors. You'll travel to various iconic eras such as feudal Japan and the wild west where you'll actually meet up with Sly's ancestors.
While Sly 4 throws some new elements into the old Cooper brew it's still very much like a PS2 game. Like the previous two games in the series each "episode" is like a relatively large plot of land that you can freely explore. I'm going to refer to it as open world exploration, but it's not necessarily on the scale of an open world game. Each time period also has a base of operations. From your base you can select missions, buy upgrades, and change the time period if you need to. You'll need to traverse the open world in each time period in order to get to your missions. Although if you want you can mess around finding hidden treasure and pick-pocketing guards in order to buy upgrades.
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| Sly's ancestor's are fun to play as for the most part. |
As for the new elements there aren't very many. It's got decent looking HD graphics, but the major hook of the game is that you can play as Sly's ancestors. They control relatively similar to sly, but each will have a special ability that allows them to access special areas and cater to certain mission objectives. The way they change up Sly himself is by giving him costumes. In each era Sly will gain a new costume that gives him special abilities. In the end it still controls exactly like the previous games in the series, or to be more precise a PS2 game. The overall controls are still very stiff and can be quite frustrating at times.
In the end it's just a 3D adventure with anthropomorphic characters. These types of games are few and far between now and that may be for good reason. It feels like a holdover from a bygone era, but that's okay with me. I had a fun time playing it. That may have been because I have a connection with the series though. The continued plot definitely helped me through it, because it lost a bit of it's luster partway through. It's just not different enough to be a hit, but it's still fun to play. The game ended with a cliffhanger that made me simultaneous pumped and anxious. I really hope that Sanzaru gets another stab at the series, because it could turn into something much more. Next time they might be able to diverge from the established formula.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence
You may have heard that Revengence is only four hours long. Well, the rumors were true. The story mode clocks in at around four, which doesn't count the cut scenes. Normally that kind of thing would be a deal breaker for me since it's a full priced retail release, but in this case I'm totally all right with it.
I hated almost everything about the story. It takes place after Metal Gear Solid 4, so the patriots have fallen. At first it's kind of interesting to see how the world turns out, but for me at least I stopped caring almost immediately. Raiden works for a PMC and gets sucked into a conflict with another group called Desperado. They're making children into cyborgs and Raiden isn't pleased about that. So obviously he has to kill them. I wasn't expecting a lot from the story of this game, but what I got was even worse than I thought. Naturally a whole lot of it is completely nonsensical, but near the end it gets preachy in a way that pissed me off. I've seen a lot of people saying that they thought the final boss was amazing, while that was the point where I couldn't stand what was happening anymore and wanted the game to be over. Overall it's just dumb. It's a dumb plot. So don't expect a whole lot from that aspect of the game.
As you may know I'm all about plot, so why do I like this game? In this case it's entirely about the gameplay. The last Platinum game I played was Anarchy Reigns, which I wasn't so hot on. As a developer Platinum is known for their stylish action and this game does that a whole lot better than Anarchy Reigns in that regard. In fact I'd be willing to say that Revengence is made up completely of stylish action. You play as Raiden, and at this point in the Metal Gear Solid universe he's an unstoppable badass cyborg. It's cool, because he actually feels unstoppable. The combat isn't necessarily as deep and combo heavy as other platinum games, but it doesn't have to be.
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| Who wants to accurately cut up some watermelons? |
This game is all about viciously attacking other cyborgs with your sweet ninja blade. When you come to an enemy you can mash the attack button to put the hurt on them. If you take pauses and hold directions Raiden will do all kinds of craziness. If you want you can keep doing that until your enemy violently explodes, or you can check out what the game is all about. After a certain amount of ass beating the enemies will turn green if you're using the special optics Raiden has available to him. At that point you can activate blade mode. Time slows down and you can accurately cut the enemy before you into hundreds of pieces. Using the right stick you can choose the exact points where Raiden cuts. There's a bar that dictates how much you can use blade mode, but it's super easy to refill, which is where Zandatsu comes in.
At a certain point in the story Raiden gets an upgrade that allows him to perform what the game calls Zandatsu. When you go into blade mode there will almost always be a square that indicates a vital point on the enemy. Any point after cutting through the square Raiden can then rip out the enemies spine and CRUSH IT IN HIS HANDS to absorb their electrolytes. Each time Zandatsu is performed Raiden regains all of his health and his blade mode meter completely refills (Man, I really like saying Zandatsu). It makes the game kind of easy, but it's super cool to see.
Revengence is all about being a cool cyborg ninja. It plays well and makes you feel cool, which is what video games should do all the time. It's fun enough that I can get past the stupid story. I'm even kind of glad that the game is only around four hours long. Since the combat isn't very deep, blade mode and zandatsu can only be fun for so long. Eventually it'll get boring, but after finishing the game I still feel like I might want to play it some more. It's always good to leave the player wanting more instead of making them never want to play the game again by bashing them over the head with the same combat situations over and over again. To make it even better the game has a fair amount of replay value. There are hidden things to find and tons of upgrades to purchase. I'm not someone who normally does that kind of thing, but since the game isn't super long it's not entirely out of the question that I'd do it again.
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| Cutting up enemies and crushing their spine is commonplace in Revengence. |
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence is a surprisingly good game. I honestly expected it to be terrible, but instead I had a lot of fun with it. As an action game it's great, but as a Metal Gear side story it's not exactly the best. Sure you can see some more of the universe, but it's not very meaningful. If you're looking for story perhaps you'd be better off waiting for Ground Zeroes. However, if you're looking to cut stuff up into hundreds of tiny pieces as you ninja run up walls then you should totally check out what Revengence has to offer.
March is coming...
I've really been struggling to push one of these out every month. That tends to stem from the fact that I wait until the very end of the month to start writing. It sucks, because I've noticed that my writing has started to suffer because of it. Sometimes I'm writing about things that I haven't played for weeks and that can be a bit frustrating when trying to recall my feelings or specific descriptions. That's why I've decided to start writing them ahead of time. As soon as I finish a game, or whenever I have important thoughts I'm going to pop them in a draft for the next months Game Time. Hopefully my writing and overall quality of the post each month will increase.
With that said March is going to be a big month in terms of game playing for me. Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is hitting at the start of the month. It will be followed by a couple week lull until Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Luigi's Mansion, and Bioshock Infinite will all be released within a 4 day period at the end of the month. I don't know if I want to try and juggle all three of them at once, or stick with one at a time. We'll find out on the next exciting installment of Game Time!
-Manny
