Most of the time when I start playing a game, if it fails to really sink its teeth into me or doesn’t seem that fun in the beginning, it ends up another discarded case on my pile of shame. With my limited free time and the never-ending stream of games to try, I don’t have the patience or hourly resources to force myself to play something just because reviewers say it’s “good“.

When I heard that Fallout 3 received multiple game of the year awards and was generally praised in the gaming circles, I wanted to give it a try. After I started looking into the artwork, gameplay and features — an action RPG with exploration and moral choices — I bought it outright, something I rarely do in this economy.

The problem was that I was so behind on the games that I had, I put off playing Fallout 3 until this past summer. When I finally got the chance to sit down with it and started my vault dweller, I hated it.

In the beginning I was having fun and I thought it would evolve into a game I could play for a while, but once I had been playing for around 5 hours, I started to become frustrated and wanted to stop. The game just hadn’t been what I had expected.

I told myself I would give it until I reached Level 10 to turn up the fun dial (another 5 hours or so). All I can say is that I’m glad I did. What started out as ten hours of mediocrity ended 100 hours later as one of my favorite games ever.

What It’s About

200 years after a nuclear war with China devastated most of the United States, you emerge from the protective world of Vault 101 in Washington D.C. to chase after your father, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Armed with only a pistol, the clothes on your back, and your wits, you leave to track him down.

What begins as a simple search mission evolves into an epic adventure that will take your vault dweller to the brink of humanity and back. Your decisions not only affect the lives of the people you meet, but the world around you as well, and how it all ends will be up to you.

What’s Awesome

Exploration Nation: The name of the game in Fallout 3 is exploring. The main storyline will only lead you through and around the smallest part of the world. Without exploration, not only will you miss sidequests and potential companions but you’ll miss a lot of what makes this world so impressive.

Shades of Gray: Many games have tried giving the player the option to be good or evil, but very few allow you to choose to live in the middle of the two. This game gives you the chance to play however you want. For instance, my character was mostly a “good” person, but would occasionally steal or play two sides against each other if it meant a better reward.

Have It Your Way: Would you prefer to have a gun-toting showboat, or a sneaky drifter? Do you want to wield firepower greater than anything you’ve ever imagined, or do you want to cut down people with a samurai sword? Do you want to be nice to peoples’ faces but rob them blind when their back is turned, or do you prefer to just kill them in their sleep? Any of these and more are possible. Fallout 3 gives you the chance to build the character you want to play: from weapons and armor to personality and behavior.

Side of Quests: The main storyline is fun and exciting, but it’s the dozens of side events and locations that really complete what it feels like to spend time in the Wasteland. And since the variety is good — some involve hunting and killing, others are collections or puzzles — they never get boring.

Art Deco-rated: The art style and graphics of Fallout 3 are awesome. Not only does the game look incredible, but since it exists in a reality that evolved radically different than our history, the style of the world is stuck in the 1950s. This means there are archaic-looking electronics that do extraordinary things, doo-wop music, and out-of-date fashions. Art Deco permeates the world around you: from posters and art, to architecture and vehicles.

What’s Annoying

Slow Start: As I mentioned before, I almost missed out on this game because it failed to grab me from the start. The game begins with a lot of clumsiness and really takes a while to get moving. It’s hard to explore at the lower levels and you find yourself outmatched in most of the fights. I don’t really know what they could have done to make a more appealing beginning, but I’m sure more than a few were scared off because of dreadful start.

Conclusion

For a game that received such high reviews, Fallout 3 really is very niche. It seems like it would be hard to find a lot of players interested in a Dystopian, Sci-Fi FPS/RPG hybrid that is slower-paced, challenging and long. You can’t just play shooter-style because it’s tougher that way, but you can’t just sit back and play the turned-based game either. A mix of both skills is needed to succeed. Overcoming the slow start is worth the effort because for your time and money, this game is a great mix of story, production, gameplay and graphics, and definitely worth a try for anyone who is a fan of video games.

Justin says: So good, it’s one of my top five favorite games ever.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.

Even though I never had an original PlayStation, I knew people that did, and these people seemed to always have Resident Evil games. As I mentioned in my Dead Space review, I’m quite fond of the survival horror genre, and Resident Evil is no exception. I was particularly happy when Nintendo decided to re-release the original on GameCube so that I finally had the chance to own one of the games.

Over the years I’ve spent a good amount of time familiarizing myself with the games, the back-stories, the characters and (shudder) the movies. When Resident Evil 4 was released, I purchased it day one. I thought the reboot of the series and control style were very ingenious, but sadly, I never did finish that game, and it remains one of the great games on the top of my pile of shame.

After that, Resident Evil fell off the map for me and I continued my gaming life without it. When Resident Evil 5 was announced, I got excited but I also worried that it would suffer the same fate as the fourth game and become another forgotten gem. After being turned off by the demo, I finally decided to give it a shot a couple of months ago. And it is awesome.

What It’s About

After the events of Resident Evil 4, the B.S.A.A. (Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance) was created to prevent the spread of the Las Plagas virus throughout the world. Chris Redfield has been sent to Africa and teamed with Sheva Alomar of the African division of the B.S.A.A. to hunt Ricardo Irving, who is attempting to sell a bio-organic weapon on the black market.

While attempting to apprehend the dealer, they are ambushed by Majini, who exhibit Las Plagas symptoms. Throughout their quest for survival the two uncover an intricate plot to reform the world, and meet a coupe of familiar faces along the way.

What’s Awesome

Co-op Fun: RE5 is meant to be played with another person. Another human person. This game is a flat-out blast to play online or split-screen with a friend, and the fact that money and progress is divided automatically, means there’s no fighting over treasure.

Seek and Destroy: Every level has multiple treasures to collect, ammo stashes to harvest, weapons attache cases to open and enemies to behead. The rare treasures are fun to discover and the different enemy types create moments of tense action.

Upgrades Galore: There dozens of different weapons to find and buy, and all of them can be upgraded by purchasing more firepower, capacity and reload speeds. After completing the game, you can even use points obtained from completing levels to purchase unlimited ammo for nearly every weapon in the game.

Infinite Re-Playability: The infinite ammo option is a great reason to replay levels. There are also emblems to discover that, along with the points from the levels, allow you to purchase figurines, video filters and costumes for the characters. Unlockable difficulty modes, a mercenaries option and the achievements on the Xbox 360 version are also enjoyable reasons for multiple replays.

What’s Annoying

Press X to Not Die: Quick-Time-Events (QTEs) are quite an annoyance in modern gaming. What’s more annoying is that in RE5, the less you die, the better your score at the end of the level. It can be frustrating to have an S ranking nullified because instead of just running away from something, you have to press the right sequence of buttons in time.

Weak Sauce Bosses: The bosses are not only unimaginative, but incredibly easy with enough firepower. Even the hardest boss dies with a couple rockets on the hardest difficulty. Add that to the fact that you battle one of the potentially cooler bosses from the back of a jeep with mounted machine guns and you’ll be missing the fun of the El Gigante battles from the last game.

Not a Scare to Spare: RE5 is definitely tense, but it’s not scary. I’m not sure if it’s because you have a partner with you, or if it just lost some of its creepiness because it’s more run-and-gun than the previous games.

Conclusion

Resident Evil 5 is definitely a good game, and if you have someone to enjoy playing it with, it can be a great game. The downfall of the experience is that it loses it’s grip as a survival horror and turns into a collection/speed-run game. While this definitely makes replaying it enjoyable, it does show that the game is lacking the character and story department, as these elements wash over you without anything sticking. I had trouble even remembering what the game was about when writing the earlier paragraph.

Justin says: Have a partner? Buy it. All by your lonesome? Try it first.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.

Some of my favorite types of games to play at the arcade (as in the actual building kind) are light-gun shooters. There’s something about those games that calls to me when I enter these places that makes me happily jump into the role of cop, soldier, mercenary and even John McClane. That something could be that these games are generally a good time, or it could be that every other game in today’s arcades is crap in a cabinet.

House of the Dead: Overkill brings the light-gun experience to your living room on the Wii. I had already played through some of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and even though I’m a huge Resident Evil fan, the game just didn’t click with me. I think RE:UC’s biggest problem was that it was trying to be a good game, and this philosophy goes directly against what light-gun games are about. The reason I enjoyed Overkill so much, and I did, was because it knew it was a bad game and had a lot of fun with being bad.

What It’s About

House of the Dead: Overkill is essentially a prequel to the entire House of the Dead series. However, I’m not a HotD lore nerd, so I’m not sure what kind of a job it does with the source material. By taking control of either the strong, silent Agent G, or the over-the-top, out-spoken Detective Washington, you are tasked with investigating some local disappearances and hunting down the crime lord Papa Caesar.  Along the way you will uncover the twisted fate of two families and learn a little something about what it means to be a good son. And you’ll kill zombies. Lots of zombies.

What’s Awesome

Fast and Furious: The action in Overkill is fast-paced. Even though the game is on rails, the fast transitions and constant barrage of enemies keep you engaged and entertained.

Simple Is Better: Using the Wii controls, most of the game involves pointing and shooting. A shake of the Wii-mote reloads, one button changes to your secondary weapon and the Nunchuk throws grenades. When things move fast, the last thing you want is a lot of buttons to remember.

That’s What She Said: Although I’d like to think I’m out of my crude-humor-is-hilarious phase, I’m not. The stupid puns, gratuitous swearing and ridiculous dialog add so much to this game.

Styled To Go: The game comes across as a Grind House type of experience. There is an abundance of grainy texture, campy music and abundant B-Movie references. The style is so well-executed that you don’t really notice that it’s Wii graphics.

Unlock and Load: There are quite a bit of unlockables and the upgradeable weapons add a lot to the replay-ability.

What’s Annoying

Short and Sweet: Overkill is short. Wicked short. Mark and I finished the game in under three hours. Even though it’s not a totally awful thing for a game like this, it does make it hard to recommend buying it.

Easy Does It: The game is also very easy. Even on Normal Difficulty, we completed the game without dying once, and not until halfway through the supposedly more difficult Director’s Cut did one of us have to continue.

To The Point: Light-gun games are a very specific genre that can be hit or miss. Most of these games come across as cheap, and even though Overkill has better than normal production values and style, it’s hard to get past the gimmicks of the game.

Conclusion

While there are some things that make House of the Dead: Overkill less than a stellar game, it’s hard not to recommend playing it. Because the game is so short and fun to play through with a friend, head down to your local rental shop and pick out a copy for an afternoon of zombie killing.

Justin says: Rent it.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.

Survival horror games are right in my wheelhouse. Whether that involves fending off zombies in an abandoned house, crawling your way through a diseased town, or fighting off the disgusting manifestations of the characters own mind, I’m in. I love being frightened while playing games.

Dead Space is a great newcomer to the genre, and with it being a Sci-Fi setting, it’s hard for me not to love it immediately. Well, almost. The demo that’s available on Xbox Live left me confused as to how a game that is essentially a third-person, survival horror space story left me underwhelmed. It’s just not good. Once you play the first chapter however, it becomes clear what is great about this game.

Everything.

What It’s About

You control Isaac Clarke, an engineer, as he and his crew travel to a non-responsive deep space mining ship called the USG Ishimura. What starts out as a simple reconnaissance mission turns into a violent fight for survival against an alien infestation of “Necromorphs” and all Isaac has to defend himself are his assorted mining tools and an air-tight work suit.

What’s Awesome

Welcome To Hell: Isaac travels everywhere on the Ishimura (the engine room, flight deck, sleeping quarters, etc), and even makes his way onto a second ship and the surface of a planet during the course of the game. Each area has its own feel and quirks, making every time you step off the tram that connects the sections a surprise.

Did You Hear That?: It’s one thing when you an enemy startles you, screams, and attacks. It’s a whole different story when you can hear the thing clanking around in the ducts and vents only to have them never appear, or show up later on. Add that to the silence of the vacuum of space and humming engines and this game sounds amazing.

Original But Familiar: It’s hard to be truly original with Science Fiction. A lot of the basic stories have been told and re-told. Most of them involve spaceships, religion, wars, lasers and aliens. The one thing Dead Space does is make the characters surprise you. I never guessed the twist at the end and I was constantly guessing who was on my side and who was against me. It was a little hard relating to the Gordon Freeman-like Isaac, but it was better if you thought of him as a version of yourself. I plan on watching the prequel animated movie and reading the online comics, and I’m excited to see where they take the franchise in the future.

Showing Only What You Need: I usually don’t like “real-time” inventory, and missing HUDs in video games, but Dead Space does it really well. All of your HUD elements (health, ammo, various gauges, etc.) are shown using glowing meters on the back of his suit or using LEDs on the weapons themselves. Health packs are mapped to a button for easy healing and there are plenty of breaks to catch your breath and get yourself situated.

Say Hello To My Little Friends: Using mining tools for weapons is a great idea, and it’s even better when you have cutting tools that fire flat lines of plasma, saws that hold their blades suspended a few feet out in front of you while they spin, and other assortments of death-bringers. It makes it even more interesting that you have to use them to dismember the limbs of your opponents to bring them down, as headshots and body attacks do little damage to the Necromorphs. You also get a concentrated slow-motion suit add-on, to freeze the enemies, and a Half-Life-esque kinesis module that allows you to pick up and move large objects.

What’s Annoying

Die And Die Again: Trial and error in some games isn’t that detrimental to the experience. A lot of games — especially puzzle and rhythm games — thrive on the “one more try” model. It will even work in the occasional action/shooter. Because of the checkpoint system in Dead Space, it does little harm to enter a room, and get so overwhelmed by enemies, that you just let Isaac die and try again, to learn the patterns. This goes somewhat against the survival theme, and may be cheap, but I’ll trade this little annoyance for the truly challenging experience that Dead Space is.

Incoming Garbage: The tiny asteroid shooting gallery section of the game is just pure garbage. It’s frustrating to try to shoot incoming space rocks with guns that overheat too quickly and have slow reaction times. It makes sense for the story — and is thankfully short — but I could have done without it.

If you couldn’t tell by my ridiculously long review, I really liked Dead Space. It has all the elements that I like in video games: interesting story, cool environments, creative game mechanics and an immersive aesthetic. If you’re a fan of the survival horror or third-person action genres, Dead Space is definitely something you need to try.

Official Site

About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.

Thanks for reading.