Cam's Eye View: Binary Domain for the PS3 and 360 review

There is always that one game that you think would be one thing, but then is surprisingly different and is better than what you expected. Today’s game is a good example of that situation. It looks generic on the outside, but is actually more unique on the inside. This game is made by the team behind the Yakuza games, and yeah, on the outside it might look generic. You got the buff white guy, the big black guy with the big gun, the snobbish British guy, the uptight Asian girl, robots, themes of Blade Runner, Terminator, and other themes that we might have seen once before. However, Yakuza producer, Toshihiro Nagoshi puts his own spin on it and is much more investment-worthy than other shooters like Slant Six’s Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City or EA’s Syndicate. I am just going to get on with it and announce today’s review, Binary Domain. Again, you might think you have seen this before, but you really shouldn’t pass this up. Of course, the American gamer can be stupid and go with something more generic and unneeded like the two shooters I listed above or go with the overrated and slowly dying in popularity, Call of Duty series. Let’s begin, shall we?

The story of Binary Domain takes place in the future of 2080 where years earlier, the earth was flooded and humans were required to make robots who could help put human society back together. Now robotic technology has gone to incredible lengths. One day however, a human shows up to attack the founder of an American robotics company, but then turns out to be a robot with human skin called a Hollow Child. America catches wind of this and sends out a squad known as Rust Crew who is specialized in handling these situations. You play as an American Rust Crew member named Dan Marshall, voiced by Travis Willingham. You accompany another American Rust Crew member named Roy Boateng, voiced by Alem Brhan Sapp, two British Rust Crew members named Charles Gregory and Rachael Townsend, voiced by Troy Baker and Nayo Wallace, a Chinese female member named Faye voiced by Laura Bailey, and a French robot named Cain, voiced by John Devito. Of course, things go to hell and unexpected things happen. On the outside, it sounds very generic and predictable. However, it is actually much more interesting than you would think. Due to the Consequence mechanic shown throughout the game, everyone can either live or die depending on how much they trust you, meaning multiple endings. This story alone is one of the biggest surprises of 2012, but there are those little clichés in the character stereotypes.

The gameplay is a squad-based shooter and is rather unique, something that Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City can never hope to achieve. The uniqueness comes from, again, the Consequence mechanic. Throughout the game, what you say or do will change your teammate’s opinion about you. Stay in a room too long to shoot an endless horde of robots? They will look down on you. Say something they like? They will trust you and become closer to you. They will both obey your commands, like fire, retreat, regroup, or charge, or just ignore your commands and do whatever. This is vital that you gain their trust since the robot enemies sent after you are very aggressive and are tougher to take down than you would think. Instead of being just a stale shooter where you just shoot and get done with it, the shooting mechanics take more elements from games like Dead Space. You can shoot off the appendages of robots to gain better points or even use it as a tactical advantage. For example, you are in a room filled with robots and you are only with two other allies and you’re taking heavy fire, shoot off a robot’s head and it won’t be able to tell you from its allies and will start shooting at them. Want to wipe out a horde of enemies to just get some breathing room? Shoot off their legs and force them to crawl at you. Points that you gain from shooting down the robots can be spent on weapons, upgrades to you, your allies, and said weapons. There is a good length to this shooter, running about 10 hours or so. That’s amazing since most shooters can be beaten in 4 hours, which is pitiful and shameful that developers think they can do that. There are the typical multiplayer modes like team Deathmatch, capture the flag, survivor, and a horde mode, but it’s unique if a bit unbalanced. Though as I typed this review, I couldn’t find a whole lot of multiplayer rounds to play, due to Mass Effect 3’s fun multiplayer or some other multiplayer-centric games taking up the spotlight when they didn’t deserve it. Overall, Binary Domain is a solid package in the single and multiplayer experience, but it could use some polish and uniqueness in the multiplayer section if they decide to make a sequel.

The graphics are slick, clean, and amazing. I think it’s running off on the same engine the Yakuza PS3 games run off on, and the slickness of the robots and characters look great. There is a lot of variety, so unlike Operation Raccoon City or Syndicate, you will not be bored with the same place for long. The voice acting is rather enjoyable if a bit goofy at times. Then again, you have to have a little fun when you have a robot with a French accent fighting by your side. The music is very well done and is memorable. While it might not be God of War 3 or Castlevania Lords of Shadow amazing, the presentation is wonderful and looks better than the two obvious shooters I keep mentioning above.

So, this seems like the ultimate cyberpunk shooter, what could be wrong with it? Well, there are a few gripes that I have to mention that bring this game down. The first thing is the ally AI, this could be because of the Consequence system, but sometimes the ally AI can and will act dumb even if your trust level is high with them. Only a few rare times have they run out in front of me. I heard there were voice commands that you can say yourself if you play the  Xbox 360 version with the Kinect, but I wasn’t able to take advantage of that (I played the PS3 version), but I hear it isn’t that good. The boss fights are frustrating as heck. They take up a lot of damage, and due to very aggressive enemy AI, you will be there for quite awhile trying to take quick strong shots at the giant robots. It’s a shame since this game is pretty balanced, but these boss fights can be a chore! Especially the final boss and the gorilla robot boss are great examples of bosses that are not fully polished, and take way too much damage. I also wish the multiplayer could have been more unique since the entire single player revolves around teamwork and the multiplayer feels unique in only a few areas. I just think there could have been more potentially creative multiplayer modes. When I say potentially unique modes, I mean like something along the lines of what Two Worlds 2 did. Yeah, Two Worlds 2 might not be the best example, but Binary Domain could have had team demanding missions in multiplayer. Have a separate storyline for multiplayer to cover incidences like Faye’s other two teammates or what the heck the other Rust Crew members were doing when they got separated. Don’t give us typical multiplayer modes that are there simply because they are popular due to games like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

Overall, this is a very unique game and is sadly the hidden gem of 2012. Why? Because terrible shooters like Syndicate, Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City, and other big releases buried this game’s release when it deserves more respect than a lot of games this year. If you are interested in this game, go rent it from Gamefly or Redbox it. When the price lowers, I would recommend picking it up, simply for the enjoyable single player mode. I would really like to see a sequel to this game and I hope Sega can give the Yakuza team the funding for it. We need another trip through this cybernetic world of Binary Domain.

This game gets a solid 7 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine for the PS3 and 360 review

Welcome to the main event of the Warhammer Special. The first part, if you are just tuning in, was the downloadable twin stick shooter, Warhammer 40K: Kill Team. It’s not a bad game, but due to the short length and harsh difficulty if you’re playing alone, it’s hard to fully recommend unless you got the 10 dollars to spare and you like Warhammer and twin stick style shooting games. I however, would recommend a different Warhammer game, and no, it isn’t the FPS PS2 game released awhile back. This is the recently released Warhammer game from Relic Entertainment called Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. This is really one of the better games I played in 2011, and is one of my more favorite shooter games. It’s extremely loyal to the franchise, and it’s a very solid game with a few minor hiccups down the line that does prevent me from fully recommending it over games like Uncharted 3, but I could easily recommend it over Rage and Dead Island. Let’s get into our Space Marine armor and charge our way through the hordes and review Warhammer 40K: Space Marine.

Heads up, there are spoilers in this review! The story puts us in the shoes of the Ultramarine’s captain, Titus, voiced by Mark Strong. You and a group of Space Marines are sent down to the forge world of Graia to stop an Ork invasion led by a giant Ork named Grimskull and prevent them from finding a Titan, a huge robot with giant guns. Later on there are some major troubles when an Inquisitor named Drogan opens up a wormhole that makes all forms of the Chaos Space Marine race appear and become the major threat. It is up to Titus, along with the two Space Marines, Sidonus voiced by Mark Richard Hawley, and Leandros to stop the Ork threats and later on the Chaos Space Marines. The story is actually entertaining and will keep you going through the end. The three main Space Marines might look alike since they are huge steroid-reddened humans that are actually over 100 years old (they look good for their age), but they are different enough that you know who is who. You will also get to meet Imperial Guardsmen like the female lieutenant Mira that will be there to progress the story. Like I said, it is entertaining enough to keep you going.

The gameplay takes the form of a third person shooter, mixed in with an action game. It reminds me more of Darksiders control style since you can play it like an action game that has a pretty decent combat system, but it mostly plays like a third person shooter. The biggest pointless complaint I have heard from people about this game is that you can’t cover fire, but it makes sense that you can’t. If you don’t know, Space Marines are like giant gorilla men in huge thick suits of armor, so there is really no point in taking cover from fire, like in Gears of War, since you are so heavily protected from harm. And unlike Transformers: War for Cybertron, the melee combat feels more like a hack-and-slash kind of game. You can pull off some decent combos, and to regain health, you pull a special move by causing the enemy to get dizzy and then either stomp their skull into the ground or hack them up with your chainsaw sword. Of course, the staple in every action game appears where if you fill up a bar enough, you go through this berserk mode and are invincible for a short amount of time. The shooter aspects are pretty normal. You have your different kinds of guns, and you shoot down the Orks and the demons of Chaos as you go through a huge world. Sometimes, there will be some unique levels like getting the ability to use jet packs and the most recent trend with third person shooters, the train fight scene. Unlike Dark Void and Splatterhouse that have you kill the main villain through the final cutscene, you actually get to kill the final villain yourself, which is pretty nice. There is a co-op mode where you get to play with someone else through split-screen. The multiplayer is very bare bones, which I will explain my hate for in a minute. You basically get Deathmatch and “capture the flag”. You can customize your character in multiplayer and make him look pretty much how your little model space marines looked in the real-life tactics game.

Graphically, this is a very good-looking game. It isn’t Uncharted 3, but it’s a very good-looking game that brings the world of Warhammer 40K to video games. The detail on the armor and on the characters is amazingly well done. The voice acting is also well executed and I already listed some of the voice work like Mark Strong voicing the main character who I liked the best out of the voice actors. The music at times has some epic cues and can really make battles intense, like on the train fight when an Ork ship is trying to slaughter you and your two allies. The AI is also surprisingly aggressive, and don’t just stand and shoot like idiots. At points, when I was trying to snipe Orks from a distance, they would actually move out of the way, which surprised me. Finally a game where the AI will actually either swarm you and try to rip you to shreds or move out of the way of gunfire.

However, there are some complaints that I have with this game. While I enjoyed the look of the game, it has the same issues like War for Cybertron where everything looks the same. After awhile, the scenery gets boring and you want to see something new, which is an issue since you are in a world covered in scrap metal. I also wish there was a little more variety in the multiplayer, like a survival mode where you go against a horde of Tyranids or something. Instead, we get the bare basics of multiplayer. There also needed to be some more variety in the single player mode instead of just shooting up a storm and a few turret and jetpack sections. Of course, recently released DLC may have added some variety with the mech suits that the Space Marines use, but it just gets a little repetitive along with the repetitive environments.

For all that it’s worth, this game is fun and is great. I would highly recommend this game over some of the mediocre shooters that were released back in 2011, like Brink and Bodycount. It should be cheap now, and if you can find it for a good price, I would pick it up since it now has a co-op mode. There is a sad note to this game since the lead designer of the game died back in 2010 in a car accident to protect his wife. Relic Entertainment has my condolences for that, but I congratulate them in making a very solid and very entertaining game. Show this developer support and buy this game.

This game gets a solid 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Split-Second for the PS3 and 360 review

Recently, I have been playing a lot of slow-paced RPG’s or action adventure games like Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story and Okamiden. While I love me some RPG’s like you all know, I was getting kind of tired of the slow-paced nature of some of these games. Sure, they may offer something to make turn-based battles more fast paced, but it still had a slow nature and I was just a little overdone by these slow-paced games. I love them with all my heart, but I needed something fast, like a shooter, action, or a racing game. I put up a lot of shooters for the future to review and I put up a couple of racing games that people have recommended to me. After a week or so of waiting for Gamefly to get my game and to get a new one out for me, I was looking to see what games were fast-paced in my list of games to rent, and a week later got a racing game from 2010 that was liked by a lot of people from a company called Black Rock Studios. This studio is famous for a few games like the MotoGP series, the PS2 and Gamecube version of the Italian Job, and Hot Wheels World Race. The game I rented from that company was Split/Second. The name might mean some fast paced action, but I know a lot of racing games have been out like the fun Mario Kart series, ModNation Racers, and Blur, so I decided to get this one due to it reminding me of those Stunmen games or the Burnout series. Let’s get started.

The setting of the game is a racing game show called Split/Second where you take control of different kinds of cars from 3 different classes and participate in multiple events to win more cars and become number 1. Think Deathrace combined with a group of drunk workers who toss stuff like airplane engines, iron beams, and bombs everywhere. This would be a huge hit if this was a real show, but there are some moral issues that would keep this show from being made. I mean, you could actually die, and screw your car up in this kind of game show! Where is the possible danger in that? Oh, wait, moving on, there really isn’t much story, which is nice.

Split/Second’s gameplay is course, a racing game, but with a few twists. It isn’t all about getting into first place. I mean, yeah, most of the situations in this game require you to get in front of everyone else, but due to this being a crazy over-the-top racing game show, expect some “what the heck?!” moments while driving at fast paced speeds. You participate in a number of “episodes” that have about 5-6 challenges that you must pass to get more points to unlock cars and qualify for the next episode. The challenges are just OMG -worthy.  I will name a few of the challenges just in case some of you haven’t touched this game yet. One challenge has the normal racing where you try to get in first by causing massive chaos, like huge explosions or buildings toppling down on top of the racer to delay them and get them further back in the ranks. Another one has you deal with a helicopter that is shooting missiles at you and you need to dodge them. Other challenges include staying up front and not being the last one or else in a number of seconds, you will be destroyed, dodging trucks that drop barrels that could make you crash, and just racing against time to be in first place or else the longer you take to finish the level, the lower in ranks you will be in if you don’t cross the finish line. The main gimmicks in a lot of the challenges are the “Power Plays”. Since this game uses drifting as another mechanic, the more you drift or do something fun, you fill up a bar that acts like your “weapon” to cause the racers in front of you to crash or get wrecked. If you fill the bar up enough, you will get to cause a level 2 Power Play and can make stuff really hit the fan. There are a decent amount of levels, but a lot of the times, sections of the tracks will change and give the game a decent amount of variety due to there only being 11 tracks in all. There is split screen offline and online multiplayer where the Power Plays can cause some really chaotic and fun game nights if you play with other people. It is an overall high intensity racing game that always had me gripping my controller tightly

While it isn’t the “most graphically impressive game of all time” like Gran Turismo 5 or again, Uncharted 3, the graphics look wonderful, with a great amount of detail put into the tracks themselves, and you kind of wish you could slow down to see all the little details and all of the power plays that happen frame per frame. The music is also nice, but nothing memorable. It just gives you something to feel intense and extreme about as you barrel past racers that got wrecked by a wrecking ball flying across the road or trapping them within a gas station and making it explode. Once again, this show could never happen in real life.

This game, as fun as it is, has some glaring issues. Let’s start with the glaring issue of the glare of the sunlight! I can’t count how many times I crashed because some glare from the light got in my way and I ended up ramming my fast car into a dang wall!  That is another issue, the game seems to be set to evening time ALL THE TIME! I mean, this is like Blur that is stuck in nighttime all the time. This leads to all the levels looking the same. I mean, there are differences, but due to the constant evening time that the Split/Second universe seems to be cursed under, everything looks the same. Since there are only three kinds of cars, you think they would all be useful, but the trucks or the bigger cars are pointless and useless unless you yourself are asking to be set up in a Power Play if you drive one of them. Since most of the challenges require you to get first place to win, there is no way to counterattack against Power Plays that the AI or other players activate. This means there is no Power Play to unleash a bunch of barrels to screw with the racers behind you or anything to protect yourself. I also don’t like how the brake and drift button are the same button. For the first few hours of playing this game, I had an issue of braking by accident when I need to drift and the racers drove past me. This leads to my final complaint, drivers getting in front of you are asking to be killed. This isn’t something like the rubber banding in Mario Kart. If they get in front of you, they are asking to be killed by a Power Play you unlock. It’s like in a shooter when an enemy running out in the open is just begging to be shot in the head by a sniper rifle. This makes the AI racers either good, since they can actually get in,front of you, or they are incredibly stupid when they get set up for a Power Play.

Overall, Split/Second is a very over-the-top and fun racing game that I could recommend for a party night, but can’t fully recommend investing into a full price purchase. It just has a few flaws that weren’t fully thought out that I could see being fixed in a sequel, if Disney Interactive Studios allows this developer to make a sequel because it’s over-the-top, fun, and a blast to race with friends. Hopefully, I can find some more racing games that can be like this one in the future.

This game gets a 6 out of 10

Gaming with killatia House of The Dead 4

Catch my Alan Wake American Nightmare review up now on gotgame.com

Cam's Eye View: Uncharted 3 for the PS3 review

I love the video game character Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series. I know a lot of critics like to bash him for being “bland”, but like Kratos from God of War, I don’t really see what the heck they are criticizing. I find Nathan Drake to be an extremely likeable and memorable character. He is smart, but cocky. I find his reaction to certain events real. For example, early in Uncharted 2, Drake gets chased down an alleyway by a truck and he has to keep shooting it until it explodes. After that little chase, he is happy he got out of there alive, but he is still a little rattled and out of breath since he almost died, and that thought just caught up with him. He is a guy you would like to have a beer with. Sure, he might look and act like the everyday guy, but he is more than that. That is what makes this third person shooter franchise so fun. I mean, other third person shooter series like Gears of War are good, but in that series, they just make the scale of the game epic. The characters however, are not that interesting, nor memorable. They are just muscle-bound men with steroid rage. I am getting a bit off-track, so how about we take a look at Uncharted 3 for the PS3? This has to be yet again one of my favorite games of all time. I mean, besides a couple of little flaws that add up, I might love this game more than Uncharted 2 and that game was amazing. Just put in your Indiana Jones theme music and let’s get started.

Before I get even more biased and over my head, let’s get into the story. Nolan North reprises his role as Nathan Drake. He and his friend Victor Sullivan, once again voiced by Richard McGonagle, search for some more clues and treasures that were left behind by Drake’s famous ancestor. They of course, run into trouble from an old female acquaintance by the name of Katherine Marlowe, voiced by Rosalind Ayres, who wants the ring that Nathan Drake wears around his neck, because it is a key to find what Drake’s ancestor left behind. What happens is mostly what you expect. You get Indiana Jones-style action scenes, a mystical culture, a mystical artifact, gunfights, some kind of demonic being, and many summer blockbuster movie-style scenes that are all combined to make a really amazing story. I think what makes the story so good is how it dives into Nathan Drake’s past, how he met Victor Sullivan, why Nathan Drake wants to find what his ancestor left behind all those centuries ago. I felt more involved in this story since, on top of the great characters, you got a more in-depth story about the characters and their relations. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stories of the last two games, but they always felt like popcorn summer blockbusters with over-the-top and 2-dimensional villains, while this film has a more 3-dimensional cast of characters, both good and bad. It is definitely the best story in any third-person-shooter besides Mass Effect.

The gameplay is still the stuff you love. You have third-person-shooting, platforming, climbing everywhere like Spiderman, hand-to-hand combat, some minor stealth mechanics, treasures hidden around the game, over-the-top cinematic-like sections that would be perfect in a summer blockbuster, and some huge puzzles to solve. The third-person mechanics work like you would expect. You can take cover and hold up to two guns and about 4 grenades. You can take aim, and fire upon the enemies. New to the formula is the more streamlined hand-to-hand combat to where you can actually get close to the enemy and serve him a couple of knuckle sandwiches. The previous games had combat, but the first game’s combat was not very polished, and while the second game’s melee combat was improved, it is perfected here. You can punch and beat the tar out of your opponent, counterattack, grab, and sometimes grab something like a fish and slap them with it. The platforming is just like the last game. You will be climbing and jumping your way through areas, like a couple of desert towns, underground taverns, a cargo plane, a hidden city in the sand, a castle, and a few other areas. The puzzles are complex and can make you scratch your head, but are not too hard to where it becomes tedious, since if you wait awhile you will get the answer to solve the puzzle. Multiplayer has been enhanced with the return of co-op missions for offline and online play, a character creation for online multiplayer, new perks, an equalizer to losing teams, and multiple maps to play on and other things carried over from Uncharted 2. I know I just skimmed through this part, but for me anyway, I play Uncharted for the story and not the multiplayer, unlike most shooters that have issues with having an endearing single player. Overall, besides Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 3 is a third-person-shooter that I can recommend that has a huge amount of content that will keep you busy for quite some time.

The Uncharted series has always had amazing graphics and this game is really no different. The detail on everything is amazing. Sure, it might not be as amazing as L.A. Noir’s facial animation capturing, but Uncharted 3 has amazing detail to everything from the wind hitting the sand to the boats floating in the ocean. The music, once again provided by Greg Edmonson has the same incredible music that you can expect with help from Clint Bajakian and a female Iranian American musician named Azam Ali. Overall, you can expect another great package music-wise from Uncharted 3. The voice acting is also top-notch, which again is an issue with a lot of shooters. You really believe that the characters are real and not hearing a voice actor or celebrity just doing the voice.

However, I do have some gripes, but not many. The AI is still terrible. A sign of this is when you see an enemy toss a grenade at a wall in front of him and it bounces off the wall and lands right next to him and someone else. It was hilarious to see, but sometimes it made me nod my head that everything else is so polished until you see the enemy AI. It is definitely better than the last game’s AI, but I still saw some areas where the enemies did some incredibly stupid things. The controls also still felt stiff, and it is one of those games that forces you to do what it wants and you can’t really do much about it. I mean, it plays more like a movie so you can’t just do whatever you want without some consequence.

The third game in the series in my opinion, has the biggest hurdle to go over. Usually the third game is the best, but someone ALWAYS complains that it doesn’t have the wow factor the second game had and it is played on the safe side. Well, I think this game is the best out of the three and has some of the best moments in any third-person-shooter. While I enjoy shooters like Vanquish, I can easily and fully recommend Uncharted 3 to anyone who is looking for an incredible PS3 third-person-shooter experience. The game is still relatively new so you might want to wait a bit for it to get cheaper. The collector’s edition while not worth it in my eyes is just 100 dollars, and it might go down in price in the future. This is one of the best experiences I have ever had with a video game and you all should play it or at least watch a walkthrough of how amazing this game can be. Just check it out. SERIOUSLY! Stop reading this and go!

This game gets a solid 9 out of 10