Cam's Eye View: DLC Domination Part 7: Renegade Ops for the PS3 and 360 review

Welcome back to another DLC Domination. Who here has seen the awesome film The Expendables? You know, the 2010 film with all the big action stars of yesteryear and of modern day with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and cameos from Arnold and Bruce Willis? Well, if you haven’t, you need to buy it! It is this generation’s Commando, it’s this generation’s man sandwich of pure man energy! It’s an enjoyable film and I think you can find it cheap now so there is no excuse if you haven’t seen it. The whole film seems like it would set itself up well to be made into a video game since it can be over the top, a lot of goons to shoot down, and explosions everywhere! We kind of get that film-to-game adaptation with the game called Renegade Ops. While it might not be the hottest 360 or PSN downloadable game out there, it is just pure high-octane action. You get explosions, you get multiple vehicles to pilot and shoot stuff in, and you get an incredibly stupid and clichéd story line. It is more like an arcade game or an NES game like Jackal, so if you are into those kinds of games, then I say download it right now if you’ve got the points. Does this game have its faults? Well, you will have to read and find out.

            The story starts off with an evil villain named Inferno who contacts the United Nations and states that he has basically taken the whole world hostage. Inferno then demands that he rule the world or else it will all burn to the ground. While the United Nations tries to think of a more logical way on how to stop the villain, an army general goes commando and brings along 4 bland and personality-deprived teammates to take down Inferno and SAVE THE WORLD!!! Yeah, it’s total super popcorn flick stuff. No one has a solid personality, the characters you play as are bland, and some can even be useless in gameplay! I love this kind of terrible story telling, but at points it seems like they are trying too hard to make this story seem serious. It just isn’t possible, and you won’t give the slightest care for what happens in the story. Give them credit though, they did nail the stupid popcorn movie lines. Then again, the guys who created the awesome Just Cause 2 made this game.

            The gameplay, however, is much more interesting than the stupid, stupid cookie cutter story. You get to control 4 different vehicles that you can choose to play as in each level. However, the only two that are actually useful are the two vehicles that are on the cover art for this game. They really don’t play any differently from each other. The left analog stick can control them, and you can aim and shoot using the right analog stick. Each vehicle out of the 4 has its own special power, like a strong cannon, calling an air strike, pulse blasts, and a super strong armor. You can gain power-ups, health pick-ups, secondary weapons, and special items to unlock extras. During some areas of the game, you will be able to unlock the ability to ride combat helicopters to take down the tougher parts of the missions. You can also play with up to 4 people at the same time offline and online, and cause even more over-the-top action set pieces than seen in a Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis film. It’s over the top fun that reminds me of another downloadable game called Gatling Gears, but that’s for another time.

            The graphics are nice. They get the job done and are not the best nor are they the worst. Everything runs smoothly most of the time, and I rarely have dealt with slow-down with all the explosions and action on screen. The enemies are varied enough to make sure the game doesn’t feel incomplete. Controls feel good, and you pretty much have a good amount of control over your character’s vehicle. The music is fine, but it can sound a tiny bit generic and could have been used for any popcorn flick action film. It isn’t bad music, but it isn’t very memorable.

            There are some minor problems though that bring this game down. The first is its price tag, it’s 15 dollars on both PSN and Xboxlive. It’s a bit pricey for this kind of game when you could easily get Gatling Gears for 10 bucks on either platform, which in a way is a better game. The game can also get a bit boring due to a few minor things like repetitious boss fights, missions, and not enough variety besides the helicopter piloting. The story is also very boilerplate for an action game, which made me think back to Jackal on the NES. I enjoy it for its popcorn script, but overall it just feels like a waste of time. I also feel like two of the characters are completely pointless and/or useless. It’s the two drivers who have the pulse gun and the super armor, since their weapons are not the strongest, and along with the two other characters you can play as, are boring and unoriginal.

            Overall, this game reminds me a lot of Deathsmiles and Vanquish, where I enjoy the over-the-top gameplay, but it also doesn’t have a lot of substance. Granted, it’s easier than Gatling Gears, but I feel like Gatling Gears is a better game since I had more fun with that game than this game. It is better if you have more than one person playing with you, but don’t expect it to be a game you will play over and over and over again. I would say, wait for the game to drop down in price (if it ever does) to download it. Until then, get games like Gatling Gears or Hamilton’s Great Adventure.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the PS3 and 360

I don’t play a lot of shooters these days. It isn’t that they are bad or boring games. Some of the better games I have played are shooters, like Timesplitter 2, Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted 2, Vanquish, Mass Effect 2, and Medal of Honor: The Rising Sun. Though it seems like every single year we get a Battlefield, a Call of Duty, and then a bunch of other shooters that try to kick the kings of the shooter genre off their high chairs with mixed to mostly negative results. There are some interesting ones like Homeland and Brink, but they don’t feel as finely polished or as entertaining as games I mentioned above. I guess I just want more variety than what I have seen with most shooters these days. This is where today’s game comes in, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third game in the Deus Ex Franchise. So far, the critics and other reviewers have praised it highly as one of the best games of 2011, but how good is it, really? Not to say other Internet reviewers are wrong since we all have our own opinions, but I had a bit of a mixed reaction when I played through this game. I guess I could say it’s a good game, but with some faults. Let’s dive into the mechanical cyborg world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the PS3 and 360.

The story puts us in the futuristic and drab world of Detroit in 2027 where humans are now capable of having cybernetic upgrades or augmentations to their body. Of course, this doesn’t sound as glamorous since it also comes with riots about how terrible this kind of human evolution is and of course some other shady underworld dealings. You play as Adam Jensen a security guard, voiced by Elias Toufexis who you might have seen if you watched Smallville or Supernatural. During a surprise attack from a group of augmented beings that attack the company you are a security guard for, Adam basically gets pushed to near death while his exgirlfriend is killed. Six months after the event, Adam is brought back to life with a new augmented body and a pair of cool-looking shades. It is up to him to find out who was behind the whole attack, the murder of his exgirlfriend, and who were those augmented beings and wonder how the whole, pardon the pun, “Human Revolution” will happen. To be personally honest, I didn’t care much for the story. It kept me interested for a good while, but in the end, was a bit confusing and had some bland characters. Those are just my thoughts, since some people liked the complex, but still pretty confusing story.

The gameplay is an interesting mix of stealth, first and third person shooting, and conversation branch stuff. This is basically what Alpha Protocol should have been. You go around doing missions, which you can take on by either going in guns blazing or sneaking around and stealthfully killing enemies only when needed. You also, from time to time, take down bosses, hack computers to do all sorts of mischief, to take on optional side quests, and level up your character and upgrade new kinds of augmentations. These augmentations are a major mechanic since sometimes you need to unlock certain upgrades to progress through parts of the story, like having certain level hacking, stronger armor, not dying after jumping from a 7 foot tall ledge, invisibility cloaking, and make yourself a super robot action hero that Blade Runner would be proud of. You will usually be going around to different parts of the world to get questions answered, but those answers bring more questions to the table. The game also has a bit of strategy to it, due to the fact that even though it says you can tackle this game any way you want to, it really pushes you to go on stealth, which I will talk about later. You can knock out enemies or you can straight up kill them, but killing them causes them to make a sound, which is weird after you stabbed them or cracked their neck in half, the sound is what causes more troops in that area to swoop in, and hopefully, you are either hiding or you hid the body so they can’t find it and set off the alarm system. The main varieties of enemies you will be facing are usually soldiers and giant robots, with the occasional boss fight. There is also a conversation branch-style mechanic that you see in games like Mass Effect and the Witcher 2, where you could change the results of the conversation with whatever you choose to say. There is a huge amount of content for your dollar, which results in the game being about 20 or 30 hours or so of gameplay if you choose to tackle everything. It’s even more replay value due to multiple endings that you can go through, depending on what you do throughout the game and what decisions you make.

The graphics are high-end and look amazing. There is just a lot of flash and style to this futuristic Minority Report mixed with Blade Runner look. The music is also high quality and it matches the mood of whatever the situation is. The composer for this game is named Michael McCann. He is mostly famous for stuff like Splintercell: Double Agent, Tom Clancy’s EndWar, and shows like The Foundation. The voice acting is also good with some quality voice actors. The controls work perfectly and give off a great shooter and stealth vibe and movement. It isn’t buggy or glitchy in the least. To be honest, when I went into this, I knew it was more stealth than shooting, and I thought it was going to be like Mass Effect, but with stealth, and I’m glad it isn’t that.

However, I do have a few grips that kind of turn me off about the game. Even though you can choose how you go into the missions, like either go in filling everyone with lead or just find a stealthy alternate route, it leans more on stealth and really pushes you to go Metal Gear Solid on the missions. That is fine since this game can be difficult if you go in rushing through the levels, but I feel like my actions are more limited than they should be. This game is about choices, which I understand and fully respect, but I’d actually like to have the option to go in with a more offensive choice, due to very limited ammo pick-ups. I’m not really good at conserving my ammo, and that’s a fault on my side of this game. I guess what I’m saying is that I want a combat and stealth element, like in the Assassin’s Creed and the Rocksteady Batman games. Even though the graphics look beautiful and amazing, all the areas you visit seem to be the same drab color choice. The detail is great, but it all looks the same the more you go into the game. I also found side missions to be extremely tedious due to a huge amount of backtracking, which is, in of itself, a tedious way to make filler for a game. It doesn’t help that the map isn’t the best and the towns can get a bit confusing layout wise, that in returns make backtracking frustrating. The loading times are also annoying since they take a good 15 seconds or so, but I heard at launch they were much worse. I also felt like the boss fights were extremely disappointing. The whole game is saying, “ take the stealthier route for bigger rewards”, but the boss fights are mostly “ shoot them until they stop moving their leg”. It kind of breaks the pace a little and is more annoying than interesting, since I hear that in the past Deus Ex games, you could run away and avoid the boss fights entirely. I was expecting something more like the Batman Arkham games or the Assassin’s Creed style bosses. At least the company admitted they screwed up with the boss fights. I also found some characters to be a little bit interesting, but still on the bland side, and really not that memorable. Not that the whole cast is like that, NO SIR! It’s just a few and it somewhat pulled me out of the story.

At first, my final thoughts about Human Revolution were at an honest 7 out of 10. This was before I then kept playing and got through it enough to have some of my complaints taken down and realized that it is a really good game. It is one of the best I played in 2011, but I would put it in the number 10 spot since I didn’t enjoy it as much as other people did, which is reasonable in my opinion. I definitely enjoy the setting, story even if it is a bit confusing at times, the stealth elements, music, and voice work. However, I didn’t like the throwaway action elements, boss fights, repetitive-looking levels, confusing level layout from time to time, and not being as fully immersive as other free-roaming games like Red Dead Redemption. I would highly recommend at least checking this game out, but keep in mind it’s more along the line of stealth and not a super action film with cyborgs. It has probably dropped in price by now, so I could recommend it and the overpriced, but actually having a great Deus Ex style boss fight DLC, The Missing Link. Maybe I prefer more action over stealth or maybe I prefer action and stealth mixed together like in Assassin’s Creed or Batman Arkham City, which are the best in that category in my opinion. Its one of the best you could play from 2011, but as of now, I’m ready to play some more Mass Effect 2 so I will see you all later.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: WWE All Stars for the PS3 and 360

Hey, everyone, welcome to the New Year! WOOOOOO! It is 2012 and time for more new games and time for me to make them into game reviews. I decided to spook you all a little and do something different with this year’s first review. I decided to review a sports game! I know, I can hear you all gasping, since out of over 200 reviews, I haven’t really reviewed any sport games. This is mostly my fault for being biased towards these games. The other fault though is that sports games come out year after year after year. They don’t take their time and make something special, they usually do it to make money for the consumers who do enjoy and play sports games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the thrill when you play a football game and you are running down the field and no one is tackling you. I understand why these are popular to some extent, but they don’t really make me want to review them or put the money down for these games. I just want to play a sports game that is over the top and arcade-like, and doesn’t result in a realistic simulation of that specific sport. This is where this first review comes from, WWE: All Stars. Admittedly, the sports games are turning into the Guitar Hero and other music-based franchises, where we are getting kind of tired of seeing them, but WWE: All Stars decided to take a more fun approach, with an odd, but cartoony art style, more arcade style gameplay, and not too simulated like every other sports game out there. Let us see if this game succeeds! This is WWE: All Stars for the PS3 and 360. There really isn’t any story here, and all I could say is that all of the famous wrestlers old and new are in this game, and it’s a fan-serviced game where you can fight Andre the Giant with Rey Mysterio and take him down with your finishing move. Let’s move onto the gameplay then, shall we?

The gameplay, instead of being a tedious wrestling simulator, is more like an arcade wrestling and fighting game. You have your usual wrestling mechanics like pin downs and ringside take downs, but there are some light and heavy fighting moves like punches, kicks, throws, and even special moves that are easy to pull off. In the normal case of each match, you will either need to knock out your opponent or pin him down for 3 seconds. There are special cases, like in the cage match, where you need to knock out your opponent and get out of the cage as fast as you can. In extreme rules, you fight in a normal match, but can use weapons like 2x4’s to add some extra damage. Sometimes, you will be fighting only one opponent, or in make a million viewer episode, forced to fight multiple wrestlers at once. There are other modes, like tag team, where you team up to take down another team of wrestlers. The 3 main campaigns will have you fight the Undertaker, another will have you fight Randy Orton, and the other one has you fight against D-Generation X as the final opponent. A fun feature is the dream match-up fights where you can choose from either one or another wrestler that was paired up for a “dream match” like the Ultimate Warrior vs. Sheamus and they show live footage of both wrestlers, which is pretty cool. There is also online multiplayer with the usual suspects that you can play with offline, like cage match, and or just brawl each other to the ground. There is also a character creator, but due to the kind of silly art style, you won’t be able to truly make a dream wrestler. Either way, there is a lot to do with this wrestling game to keep you going with simple and easy to-get-used-to controls, a good deep combat system, multiple wrestlers old and new, and other things that make this game worth a purchase around the 40 dollar range, or simply for hardcore wrestling fanatics.

The graphics and art style are pretty silly-looking. The art style makes all of the wrestlers sometimes look the same body-wise with their over exaggerated muscle bound bodies. The graphics just get the work done. Don’t expect them to be Castlevania Lords of Shadow or Uncharted 3 good. The licensed music, like in Splatterhouse, really works here as you do get pumped a little when you see yourself go down to the ring and see the other wrestlers you will be going against. It is definitely how wrestling is in real life, over the top and flash-over-substance mixed with fake wrestling. Oh, and I don’t care if I offended you by saying wrestling is fake since it’s somewhat true. There are also some small bits of humor put in, like when in one cut scene, one of the wrestlers advertises his own game to the masses and the other looks at him like an idiot. Either way, they did as good of a job as they could do using the Unreal 3 engine.

However, there are some major faults in this reboot and makeover of the wrestling game genre. There is no god dang training or tutorial mode. This made getting used to the controls and knowing what you can do with the controls really awkward and clunky, making for some unfair and terrible first fights. I mean, I am not saying that I need my hand held, but a proper training or tutorial stage would have worked so much better with this game where you can learn about the controls and techniques you can pull off. I took off a whole point from the score because of this one screw-up. Another major complaint I have is that the AI can be a mixed bag. One fight you are breezing through this fight with no trouble at all and the next fight, you are struggling to get out of harm’s way since you can’t block well or dodge attacks easily. Difficulty should be given to us slowly as we play through the game more and more as we get to the end and not just random spikes in difficulty. It is the same problem with games like Virtual On Marz where in one fight, I am having a huge issue with taking down two opponents, and then after a couple of times fighting the same fight over and over, the AI just got dumb and I got lucky. The next few complaints are just minor, but do add up. The cage match is tedious since it isn’t just taking down your opponent, but you also need to get out of the cage and do a timed button press to get out successfully. That is tedious and not needed. The other is that the Unreal 3 engine is showing its age and in the character creator, everything looks blocky, but that could easily be the art style that makes everything blocky.

Overall, for the first major sports game to be on my list of reviews, this one is pretty good. Maybe the future of wrestling games and or sports games can learn from this little experiment. I have wished for years that sports games be more than just simulation games of that specific sport. While this game does have some minor flaws that keep it from being perfect, I could still recommend this to anyone who is looking to get into wrestling or sport games. Hope you all are having a great beginning of the year and hope you all come back for more.

This game gets a 7 out of 10

Gaming with killatia Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion Xl

Catch my Otomedius Excellent review on gotgame.com right now!

These days many gamers are getting excited for big games Like Cod: MW3, Battlefield 3, Zelda, and so much more. But what about the lesser know games that no one will take notice? Killatia takes a look at such a game with Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL. Is it a hit for the home consoles or just as crappy as the original 3ds version? Watch to find out.

Lets Unbox The Elder Scroll 5 Skyrim Collectors Edition

Just an unboxing video of the collectors edition of Skyrim