Update!

Whew! Finally with my english project done I have free reign over this blog. For the people who are reading this, what does this mean?
Well first off, I'm going to start taking my own time reviewing games and will probably update every other sunday. So I have a week to play and beat the game and half a week to review it.
Next, I'm going to be adding a few authors to the blog (once I figure out how to work the stupid adding system). This owuld mean there are more people ranting and whining on here than just me.
Finally, there will be more swearing. Not to the point where i'm a clone of other reviewers, but enough so I can emphasize how good or bad things are.
Anyhow I have to leave to finish up Fable II and Dead Space (No I haven't beaten the game yet, I pumped out the previous review to hopefully get a good grade, now that I'm done I need more time to get down every single aspect of Dead Space).

A sorta review of portal... Okay so its more of a preview of my review of portal....

"Hello. And again, welcome to the Aperture science computer enrichment center..."
-warning: there are spoilers in this review-
Do you know what its like to have your head repeatedly dunked into a toilet? How about being dragged choking and sputtering across the room and thrown immediatly into the holocaust?
Well, if you were to take all of those emotions and shove them into opposite world you would have Portal, arguably one of Valve's best video games to date.
^ Portal's teaser trailer gives you a brief taste of the wit and humor involved in the treachorous puzzle solver
The game itself centers around your character, an android in an orange jump suit. During the course of the game, you dont' find out much about this android's backstory, but you do find out your just a robot made to solve little puzzles in the Apeture science facilities, so backstory isn't really needed.
Most male gamers will notice that the specific android they're playing though is a woman. Yes thats right! your no longer the testosterone drunk Master Chief and his magical suit of protective armor nor are you the dumb beardy mute Gordon Freeman. Your chromosomes in this game are XX. Get over it.
An interesting note on Portal is how, for once in gaming history, there are no female support characters. Instead, the female cast of the game actually take the reins as both the protagonist and (secret) antagonist. This interesting little quirk with portal further enhances the unique feel of the game in contrast to the other FPS games out there that star testosterone-man and his trusty sidekick info-woman.Another interesting note is how the game doesn't have ridiculously large breasts that fulfill every lonely fanboy's dream. While this may not seem very much to people who aren't familiar with video games recently, this is a huge moral leap in the right direction for the video game industry, where oversized watermelons glued onto female chests is slowly becoming the disturbing norm.
What truly sets this game apart from other FPS games is the creative uses of the "Portal gun". A fun little device that fires a blue portal using the left mouse button and firing an orange portal using the right one. These two portals are linked in the sameway the entrance and exit to a tunnel would be and allow the player to travel from one point to another using the two portals to contruct mini-pathways to certain points. For lack of a better term, you point the gun at a wall and fire a blue one, then you point it at another point on the wall and fire an orange one. If you jump into the blue one, you appear out of the orange one and vice versa.
Through this mechanism, the game calls upon you to go through 19 test chambers with your portal gun solving small puzzles while GlaDos, a computer AI, will give you brief messages to help you along each test chamber.
Its here that the dark wit and humor everyone has come to know and love really shines. For every room you go through it feels as though GlaDos has a smart crack to tell you. The usage of talking turrets also further immerses you into the world of Portal.
Puzzles range from "its a sphinx" hard (Oedipus riddle), to "2+2 = cake" easy.

Well thats all for the review this time. I'll probably redo this one becuase its so horribly incomplete but I'm running late for an appointment. Next blog will be on dead space though, and I'll have some actual time to sit down and really review it. Mark my words though, after dead space I'm going to revisit Portal and make this review worthwhile.

Review of Dead Space

Ah Dead Space. Let me give you a little history of this game. A long time ago, in a gaming company not so far away (for some of us) there was a made up, magical kingdom of EA. Now EA was already known for making a few good games, like the sims and a few good sports games. But the king wasn't happy with their recent accomplishments and demanded more money. So his magical elves worked late into the night, coming up with a solution for their furious king when one of the magical elves looked up and said... "Wait! lets re-release our old games in better graphics with a few tweaks!" The next day, the elves brought it before the king and told him of their plans. He applauded the little elves, but agreed the games must only be okay with him. So, they all set off to work, churning out the same games again and again until the little woodland creatures in EA were sick of it. They complained to the king for years and years to give them something new otherwise they'll mutiny and move on over to the magical kingdom of Nintendo or the wartorn realms of Blizzard out of defiance. The king of EA was aghast at this. In order to remedy the situation he demanded the elves to work on a new solution, giving them free reign to create any kind of game they wanted that would please the little woodland critters and keep them in the kingdom of EA. Of course, the elves had no idea how to think on their own anymore and so they went to the bar and got so hammered they all stumbled into work the next day and vomitted all over their computer screens. One little elf saw his mommy in his barf while another elf saw a skull and a space ship; thus Dead Space was born.

Dead Space is EA's newest attempt at showing everyone they aren't just cutthroat, cop-out, bum pirates (see Madden series). Yes, the EA we used to know and hate has released this game in order to prove to us they have turned over a new leaf. Based upon everything within Dead Space, I think its safe to say they have. Luckily enough for me, I could test this game on some of the biggest screens known to man along with a surround sound system strong enough to make a deaf man on the east coast file a noise complaint. The game begins with a stereotypical "here’s a creepy pixilated chick" video. After all it can't be a horror game without a creepy girl in it right? It also begins with yet another stereotypical "show the place you'll be stuck in for the entire course of the game/movie/what have you" scene followed by the ever predictable "oh no something is wrong! time for an emergency landing" gig.
This is where you finally are able to pick up the game and actually play. Once the game starts you'll notice the screen is nearly clean. Hell its a sci-fi game, we should have more shiny heads up menus than lights in Disneyland. But EA, in a rather rare stroke of genius, decided to make the displays projections against the background. While this may sound rather bothersome to the game, it does have its own charm in reeling the player in and making sure they drown in the oceans of blood and decapitated limbs soon to follow. It even gives you the feel that you’re looking through Isaac's eyes despite him standing right in front of you getting nibbled on. An interesting side note though, if a player were to take out Isaac's model completely, the camera view would be highly identical to an FPS.
The health and "stasis" bars are conveniently located on Isaac's back. Which, while it may sound like a detriment to game play, is yet another lightning bolt of genius for this game, since it clears the game’s screen in order for you to appreciate the bone chilling horror it’ll be ramming down your throat every other minute? As another genius usage of the display less interface, if the player is ever lost, then he just needs to press the right joystick in and viola, Isaac summons a nice line to guide him to where he needs to go. The only time this serves to inconvenience the game is when you’re stuck in a cluster of items and you only want to pick up one. This leaves you to run around the room like a drunken maniac till you’re the right distance away from the item you want. Thankfully, you'll rarely be found in that situation. But when you are, it’s a very bothersome thing. As the game progresses, your taken through the many layers of the "Ishimura". Plot wise it’s called a planet cracker ship that, surprise, cracks planets. It then takes the bits of the planet and turns it into fuel for the rest of society (a statement on the usage of fossil fuels by EA perhaps?). Once you’re in the Ishimura though, the game's atmosphere constantly keeps you so close to the edge of your seat you might as well fall off and start eating floor, if you weren't constantly jumping at the slightest movement within a 10 mile radius of you.
An example of this is when poor Isaac is forced to go through a tram way to another part of the ship. EA really showed how dedicated they are to really scaring the living hell out of you by making this one tram ride one of the most bone chilling parts of the game. I mean, you'd think "it’s just a bloody tram" but once you get on the atmosphere almost comes to life as it begins to pick up speed and the lights slowly start to die out ahead as the tram way takes you into the black maw of the tunnel itself.
It could just be because I played this game in surround sound, but it seemed like one of the scariest portions of the game was the soundtrack. From the gurgling ghouls in the air vents to the bone chilling, orchestrated scores used to alert you death just so happens to be relaxing in a Jacuzzi near you, the game plays upon your sense of hearing to keep you on your toes and to ensure that if you want to survive each room and puzzle you need to listen closely (no matter how much you don't want to) for the scratching, gurgling, or pawing of anything undead. You know, kind of like in Hollywood. I would just like to add that hearing all of this in surround sound made the entire experience all the more frightening. In a way, it suddenly felt as though the room your playing in has become part of the Ishimura's halls, and the many sounds to alert you of the monsters coming can either be from the speakers or the air vent right next to it.
Once you hit the combat though, the game starts to love some of its horror charm. Yes the monsters are scary, and yes they are hard to keep down at times. But the problem comes when all of your battles can be summed up as "pop a cap in their knee, then blow their arms off gangsta style." I mean, the whole idea of murdering them in the arm is intuitive, but it makes little sense. After all, the entire idea behind blowing off someone's head is so you disable the nervous system so the alien can't use it anymore. Blowing off the arm or leg shouldn't be that much of a detriment since they aren't worried about bleeding to death anymore. This idea is so stressed in battle they might as well have renamed the game "Dead Space" to "Knee capper 5000".
Of course, not all enemies will have knees, but the simplest way to deal with them would be to shoot the glowing orbs or the tentacles that are popping out all over their bodies. Melee is accurately portrayed as a desperate, last resort, flailing action to give yourself some space. Although, it'll never get old to pimp slap an infected man to death. The curb stomp seems a little out of place for a lowly engineer, but when you have boots heavy enough to make you move at the speed of a retarded, legless hippopotamus, you may as well put them to good use.
Death is a very interesting mechanic in this game. While you may die and restart at the beginning of the room, there are times where you just don't want to die because of how graphic it is. There are times where you'll be ripped to ribbons as Isaac feebly tries to resist. Other times you'll lose your head and Isaac will feel his stump before collapsing to the ground in a blood heap. Of course, the best way to avoid some of the most gruesome death scenes are to just stay at range, and in this field, Dead Space excels at. The Guns are well balanced, since no one gun will be your cure-all like in some games, you'll be forced to switch guns periodically depending on the situation you get yourself stuck in. Such as if enemies are crawling out of the air vents in hordes. You could use the plastma cutter, but the Pulse rifle might be better in this situation.

The guns and uses are as follows:
Plasma Cutter:
Main fire- it fires a horizontal shot.
Secondary Fire- it changes the shot from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.
Usefulness- Gets the job done. Good Side arm.

Pulse Rifle:
Main fire- full automatic fire
Secondary fire- alleluia it’s raining bullets
Usefulness- This gun slices, it dices, it makes your salad and does your laundry. Sadly it sucks up so much ammo you'll be forced to prostitute yourself to keep up with its high demand.

Line cutter:
Main fire: giant cutter of death
Secondary Fire: Explosive mines of death
Usefulness: It’s like dominoes. When all the enemies are in a straight line, you make them all fall down at the same time. The mines make people do mid-air ballets.

Contact Beam:
Main fire: Big beam of death.
Secondary Fire: shockwave of death.
Usefulness: Its like the Spartan laser, except it doesn't go through things, and blows up in their face instead. It sucks up quite a bit of ammo when they're coming in from all sides and it’s still warming up.

Chainsaw thingy:
Main fire: You fire a chainsaw and control it for a good duration
Secondary fire: You fire said chainsaw and watch as it mutilates everything.
Usefulness: Have you ever seen Evil Dead and wondered what it'd be like to have a chainsaw arm? Now make that arm extend. Yeah that’s pretty much the equivalent of this gun.

Flamethrower:
Main fire: Disco inferno
Secondary fire: Hadoken
Usefulness: It’s a lot like the pyro's flamethrower from Team Fortress 2. You fire a stream, things go on fire, takes a while for them to die.

Those are all the guns I've used so far, there are several more but I'll come back and edit this section once I've gone back and used them. Of course, the guns all run on ammo you find throughout the ship or you buy from the store. The current ammo system keeps the survival flavor and gives a good balance to the guns. There’s enough bullets to make sure you down what you need to, but not enough for you to go and recreate the sistine chapel on your enemies and your neighbor's yappy dog.

While we're on the subject of the store, this useful place becomes the only thing you have to stay sane in the hellish world of the Ishimura. It’s nice neon glow massages away all your fears as you look onto its inventory screen and suppress a slight giggle as it shows you all the big new toys it wants to give you and dresses your armored bum in the best suits to date. Of course, this all comes crashing down when you realize the store will only do all this nice stuff for a price. Luckily enough, Dead Space keeps its money in check and since the enemies are just infected humans, you can rummage around in their naughty parts for a penny or two. So you'll be slightly scarce on money, and be forced to decide if you want to deck yourself out with a new piece of armor, or get a new gun for the level, or even buy a lot of health and air tanks.
Dead Space also incorporates genius usage of zero-g rooms along with rooms with no oxygen. This leads to moments where you truly feel the monsters can come at you from all sides. Even above you. It also leads to very interesting puzzles revolving around restoring gravity.
Rooms where your forced to use your suit's air though are truly terrifying, due to the limited amount of oxygen you'll have and knowing once that number display on your back hits zero, your dead. All the baddies in the world apparently realize this and decide to smear your face against every object in the room. Air canisters have to be used out of the inventory, which is slightly bothersome.
The plot of dead space is both intriguing and bothersome. While it may be interesting to see how this society works and how a ship the size of a large city operates, the plot is riddle with little bothersome inconveniences. For example, the other characters in the cast that aren't Isaac are a bunch of whiners. All they ever whine about too is how you need to fix the engines, fix the guns, fix the backed up toilet, and help their cat get out of a bloody tree. Next on the list comes, Isaac kill this, Isaac kill that, when the heavily armed black guy, who's in charge of the security of our team, sits back and does the hacking. Another point in time comes when you meet Osama Bin Laden. Yes, I said it. Osama is in it. Not literally of course, but quite like him. All he talks about is how the end of the human race has come and how we have to foster the way for the monsters to take over. How nice of EA to make a statement on the middle eastern conflicts too, just like everyone else. Another part of the plot that I don't fully comprehend is why an entire military war vessel can get corrupted and destroyed by one little monster thing. I mean for god sake, your all well trained soldiers! I'm just a weak little engineer! How the hell does an entire regiment go down while I down these things by the hordes?!
Anyway, puzzles feel as though you’re doing the exact same thing again and again, but after a while you really don't seem to mind. Reason being, while you’re trying to do the puzzle there’s some little filthy hell thing nibbling away at your ankles and which are you going to worry about, the hell-thing, or the puzzle? Some of the puzzles, while they seem repetitive, are a nice refresher though. For example releasing a giant asteroid into space, or gunning down more asteroids. Another example is defending some girl who helps you while she's all the way on the other side of the room and your both divided by a giant chasm in the center.

Anyhow, time to sum:

Graphics: Beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The enemies look real enough to rip your arms off. Projected displays against the background are just works of sheer genius and I wish more games would do this so the screen no longer becomes cluttered up with random menus. Sadly though, most parts of the ship seem to look the same and the atrium part needs more green to really set itself apart from the rest of the gunmetal gray. I would also suggest for there to be more colors than just gray on a space ship, just because it got so bothersome after a while I had to redecorate everything with fire. Red, orange and yellow > Crap loads of gray.

Sound: it really does sound like you've been put into some of the scariest situations possible. Eventually the sound will make you think every shadow has some sharp thing waiting to turn you into strawberry pudding.

Story: This is one of those bothersome parts, since everyone seems to rely on you to be their workhorse and marines are apparently well armed pansies who can't fire straight to save their lives (literally), but once they get turned into mutant freaks of nature they suddenly become hell bent demons who want to snack on your liver.

Conrols: Easy, fun and intuitive. Its slightly bothersome to only be able to do certain things in "aim mode" though.

Overall fun: If you’re the kind of person who gets a jolly out of being scared to death than you've just found your new Silent Hill, because this game delivers on the fright in almost every waking second you’re in it.

Multiplayer- None. Although it'd be fun to go through this with a friend.

Single player- The game is very fun and very frightening. I also recommend going through this with surround sound to make it sound like your actually in the space ship waiting to get your head hacked off. The environment your pressed into sounds and looks genuinely terrifying and the game keeps you immersed at all times by keeping everything real time, even when you’re looking through inventory.

Now then, it’s time for me to actually finish the game and edit this review to incorporate the ending and any other criticisms I can come up with.

Blog #4 Reply to the Gamespot review of Dead Space

Well, sadly Gamespot beat me to the review of "Dead Space". Especially since I'm taking my sweet time beating this game before I think of a good form of review. But in the mean time lets check out what gamespot really has to say about this game and whether they hold up to the current idea that Gamespot reviews are really reviewing the first few levels of the game then skipping to the end and reviewing that.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/deadspace/review.html

"The good:
Deeply engrossing story
Breathtaking visuals and nerve-wracking audio
Strategic dismemberment adds an entirely new, satisfying dimension to combat
Truly terrifying gameplay keeps you on the edge of your seat. "

While I can agree with the story at times, the "strategic dismemberment" really wasn't very strategic. The game itself eventually breaks down into "blow off their legs and smack off their arms to win." The only time you can't do this is when the monsters don't really have legs or arms, so instead you just aim for whatever object is flailing out of their bodies. Whats so strategic about that?
As for the gameplay, yes it does get very terrifying, but I have to add that there are times where it becomes a nusance when its in the middle of a puzzle your stuck on trying to solve.

"The Bad
Repetitive mission objectives
Close-quarters combat is troublesome. "

While I have to slightly agree on the repition of the objectives, I feel that was just a small matter. Yes, I do admit some of the missions were constantly "run here", "press that", "fix this", you as the player really start to care less about such them and instead stare into the darkness and twitch at every shadow while your "fix this" job goes on.

Close Quarters wasn't as troublesome as you'd think. If they were on the ground, you stomp them. If they were at least at your waist then a normal melee strike would have covered it. What trouble are they talking about? Could it be that they were talking about how you can't slap around all of the zombified enemies to death? well the main thing about them is that they're supposed to be faster and stronger than you. Which is why we have to use guns to kill them. So whats wrong with the melee system? This question is never even answered throughout the entire review.

"As Isaac, you are separated almost immediately from the rest of your team by the former crew of the Ishimura, which has been transformed into horrifying monsters called Necromorphs. Forced to fight for his survival, Isaac makes do with the tools at hand to defend himself with, which are for the most part repurposed mining instruments like plasma welding guns or buzz saws. These improvised weapons are put to graphic, gruesome work as bodily damage and even severe head trauma isn't enough to kill a Necromorph--only by severing their limbs can you put them down for good. This nuance, referred to as strategic dismemberment, vastly alters the way combat is approached in Dead Space from the typical 'aim for the head'-style gameplay seen in most action games and zombie apocalypse scenarios. "

As a reviewer, shouldn't you also question whether this makes sense to the player? At least when you shot someone in the head it makes sense because your shattering their nervous system and making it harder for whatever is infecting them to control them via their nerves. Although I have to say its interesting how Gamespot is able to point this out without saying whether this is good or bad just saying its there.
As for making do with the tools at hand, it seems as though Isaac has a "Military grade pulse rifle" (as the game puts it) at hand too becuase we're allowed to use those. I wonder why this little bit of information was left out of the review.
Funny though, becuase that exact description "makes do with the tools at hand to defend himself with" is in the player's manual as well. Strategic dismemberment isn't mentioned within gameplay at all. Its only mentioned within several interviews with the EA staff.
Could it be that Gamespot is only listening to the game companies instead of playing the game? I swear someone else has charged Gamespot with this.

Well, my review of Dead Space will be up by next wednesday. Hopefully I won't make some of these mistakes.

Blog #3 "Can a good game be bad?"

Most people would automatically answer, "Thats impossible, a good game has to be good cause (insert critic, friend, accomplice, person in higher authority) said it was a good game" or "Its good because everyone loves the game."
The largest example of these are with the absolute love given to Halo 3 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The main arguments I've seen for these games are "Such and such make this game good" and "everyone loves it so I have to too".
Well, if you love listening to higher authority so much then I'm sure you must love that collar as well becuase they match the color of the price tag on your forehead.
In the mean time, gamers with actual frontal lobes will start trying out games and doing the equivalent of rocket science in your world. They call it formulating an opinion. Which, surprisingly, can actually disagree with what other critics say.
But this asks the question, "can a good game be bad?". Taking out what everyone else says and what the "official" reviews say, how can you judge whether a game deemed "good" be bad or good?
In my own opinon, I believe its based upon whether the game is fun or not, and whether it truly does keep you within the world of the game instead of having you look around scratching your head muttering furiously the word "what?" and its many variations.
Of course, going along my own ideas, I also start my opinions with most games with "I hate this game" until it proves itself something worthy of affection. Its amazing how far in life this approach gets you as well.
Anyway, its through this approach that try to prove to myself whether a game, despite it's compliments earlier, is good or bad. In the sameway someone can always compliment a very pretty android while ignoring the fact that its powered by money, evil and garbage.
"Wait!" some people will say, "Doesn't the fact thats its an android powered by such things make it absolutely brilliant? afterall now we have a new feul source." Well heres the thing, you might say its pretty and a new form of feul, but it means that your going to have to throw ridiculous amounts of money at it to keep it running, punch little orphans on the street and be more wasteful just to keep the stupid machine happy.
Okay so I'm a little carried away with this simile, but the gist of it all is, if people keep reviewing terrible or mediocre games and declaring them some of the best games of the century your just poisoning the well that is the gaming market and turning it into a single monotone theme. Such as how everything now a days is stuck in the sci-fi gray ruins idea, while the main protagonist is constantly a male, space marine knock off. Just look at the Half Life series. Gordon Freeman is a mute male in a space marine like suit. At least Valve got the idea of keeping their environments new and colorful instead of a trip through disneyland in a 1960s documentary.
One must wonder if Portal could have ever been as important and loved as it was if it wasn't sold side by side with half life. Just having fans and developers alike realize that a new and innovative idea (such as portal) would go rewarded.
Why would gaming companies be so blind to what gamers need? Why would they further keep making games that clearly have little to no fan base? It also seems like most gaming companies out there are going by the motto of "Mediocrity is normality." Why can't gaming companies actually grow the testicular fortitude to make a new game? I mean, has anyone else noticed the overwhelming swarm of sequels, prequels, and trilogies? Where are all the new ideas?
Well, at least the acknowledgement of Portal's existance makes up for some of this. Dead Space had better be overwhelmingly terrifying EA, because your the biggest culprit of some of these crimes.

Review of "Too Human"

"Too Human" is Silicon Knights artisitc depiction of Norse Mythology featuring Baldur as the main character. Within the game, Baldur is part of a race of humans so advanced by technology they begin to call themselves "Gods" (Aesir in Norse) in order to fully differentiate themselves from the rest of the humans in the world.

Within mythology though, Baldur is a horribly depressed teenage boy who hates everything in the world because he knows one day something will end up killing him. In order to make her son happy though, Baldur's mother personally visits every object, thing, human, freak of nature, atom, cell and quark to ensure they will all place nice with her emotionally deranged teenager (you know, in the same way a real mother would for their depressed teen child). The end result has Baldur bragging to his little friends about he can't be harmed by any object on the planet and in doing so creates the great Asgard past time of "Throw dangerous objects at the invulnerable idiot". Eventually, one of the dangerous objects thrown is a spear made out of the one object his dear mommy didn't talk to thus leading to his death and subsequent traditional Viking funeral where they end up burning him, his ship, his wife, his mom, his toys, his room and a dwarf Thor decided to punt into the bonfire.
Within the game though, all of this excellent back story was seemingly excluded in order to preserve the "super human hero" mold Silicon Knights tried to shoe horn Baldur into, leaving the player with the mutant child of Marcus Fenix from Gears of War and Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender (glowing eyes and all).His personality, instead of a whiny teenager, has become a monotone, cliché superman with the character depth of a a road killed squirrel singing "Hello ma baby!" It’s intriguing to see at first, but its still flat and it doesn't cover up the blatant murder nor the unoriginal idea.
The character depth of some of the other Norse gods portrayed in “Too Human” are either incredibly plain or act nothing like their Norse counter parts. The best example of this was the character named Tyr, who lost everything that made him unique as the god of war in Norse mythology in order to become a faceless background character.
The plot of the game mainly revolves around a war the Aesir are fighting and the murderous robots left over by some crazy war in the past that involved two societies being too lazy to build up their military thus making murderous robots to throw at each other’s faces. The plot also goes into how the Aesir are doing their best to defend the world and things about a traitor Aesir named Loki. While Silicon Knights could have taken the time to draw out the tragedy of the Aesir and how they have sacrificed all of their human parts to become super human and how there might be something wrong with their god complex, they instead take the time to keep showing "We're the Aesir. We are awesome. Watch us as we totally fug ourselves over".
Execution of the plot also suffers from the incoherency of the cut scenes, such as times when the characters are explaining an object or character new to the player but never revealing the point in the object's existence in this new world. An example of this is the Valkyries and how they drift down to pick up the dead to bring them to Valhalla. The game explains who they are and what they do, but never explains the purpose for these Valkyries to be doing their job and how they came to be within this futuristic society. This further suffers when the player needs to wait 5 minutes on the starting screen to see the real opening cut scene left out in the game.

Since we're talking about the game's opening, when the player first begins the game he is asked to pick Baldur's class from the following: Berserker, Champion, Bio-Engineer, Commando or Guardian.
The over-glossed summary of each class are as follows:


Berserkers deal a lot of damage but die if something even winks in their general direction.

Champions are the well rounded and possibly most boring class in the game due to their lack of
any noticeable strength or weaknesses.

Bio-engineers are the only class in the game who is allowed to heal themselves, but in all other respects fail miserably. For example, the damage you would do by throwing a wet sponge at a wall is the equivalent to how much damage this class can do.

Commandos focus on guns, but due to the fighting system, the commandos will be forced to go into melee anyway.

Guardians focus on defense but flail around miserably when forced to murder anything other than a large marshmallow.


Once you've got Baldur's class figured out, it’s time for the player to walk into their first battle and discover all of the terrible horrors Silicon Knights have put into this game.First off, the npc (non-player character) companions you begin to travel with never shut up. Their scripted dialogue always range from whining about their current predicament to boasting about how great they are at fighting before they cower into a corner the moment the first enemy shows itself. On a normal occasion, this kind of incoherent, inappropriate dialogue would serve to be more amusing than anything else. But in the case of "Too Human", almost every battle Baldur will find himself in will have your random companions speaking the same lines, in the same pattern, in inappropriate moments, enough times to make you want to bludgeon the wires out of your Xbox 360. Maybe if these little dialogues could be a little more relevant to the plot and change more often, then they could serve as a useful tool to the makers of the game instead of a nuisance to its overall enjoyment.
It’s also during the first battle players will realize the controls have become a horrid sin against god. The right joy stick, normally used in third person games such as this for camera, has been press-ganged into serving as Baldur's close combat attacks. The effect leaves the camera free from the tyranny of the player's control, as it happily begins to stare at random bricks on the ceiling or robot monster cleavage instead of aiding the player in exploration.Melee soon feels blocky and repetitious as the only thing needed to win most fights is to move the joysticks as though you were suffering from an epileptic seizure in the general direction of the enemy.
Failing this, Baldur has the option of resorting to the many guns at his disposal. The problem for this comes when you realize the bullets are made out of pillows and achieve the same effect as shooting little bits of paper at the legions of blood thirsty, robotic foes clawing their ways toward you. The guns also rely on an auto targeting system controlled by the right joystick as well. This portion of the controls seems to work just as well as the melee, because the right joystick tries to aim at everything except the target you want to shoot at. Even the random bricks on the ceiling the camera seems so enticed about seem like a better target to shoot at then the forty foot tall steel behemoth charging your way.
Some of the enemies are also blessed with ailment-causing, elemental explosions. These said enemies are also immune to bullets apparently, so the only way to ever deal with them is through the blocky melee system where the only thing Baldur can do in that position is to take these explosions to his face and then suffer/wade out the ailments caused by the explosions at point blank range. By the time the ailments are finished, Baldur will either be limping, dead or on his way to dying in a few short steps.
By the time this first battle ends you've probably already become acquaintances with the death system as a result of the combined factors listed above and have realized how extremely annoying it is. First, once you drop dead, a valkyrie slowly floats downward as though she has all the time in the world and lightly picks you up like the whiny brat Baldur was meant to be. She then floats into the gently glowing light hovering in the sky at the same pace most people would take to finish several of these paragraphs. It finally all ends when you teleport back to where you were with almost no penalty for dying like an idiot. Through all of this, death becomes a momentary inconvenience that serves to break the flow of the game just so you can stare at a heavily armored woman fly down, pick your corpse up and fling you back to the entrance of the room.
Beside ridiculously long death animations, "Too Human" also suffers from "mountains upon mountains of loot" syndrome. Symptoms include killing one enemy and soon after drowning in the money, weapons and armor gushing from its body. The amount of money, weapons and armor Baldur will receive from either taking several steps into a room or massacring a horde of foes becomes so ridiculous that even the rarest, top of the line items for that level become outclassed by the fecal droppings of a monkey a few steps later. This syndrome makes every drop in the game feel insignificant and pointless, leading to the murder of any feelings of accomplishment the player may have after spending hours upon hours of work in order to obtain a rare piece of equipment.

The levels make the game feel as though it just drags on and on as Baldur seem to be running on a treadmill with the background rarely ever changing to anything significant. Many of the levels you'll be playing in are ruined snow covered futuristic building to ruined futuristic ruins. Baldur's little journey into "cyberspace" doesn't help this at all since everything in cyberspace looks like the tree you just passed several seconds ago.
The levels make the game feel as though it just drags on and on as Baldur seems to be running on a treadmill with the background rarely ever changing to anything significant. Many of the levels you'll be playing in are ruined snow covered futurisitc building to ruined futuristic ruins. Baldur's little journey into "cyberspace" doesn't help this at all since everything in cyberspace looks like the tree you just passed several seconds ago.

In the end though, the only redeeming factor this game has is the online multiplayer. The multiplayer itself allows you to go online, play with a few people in a level you've completed and just beat the game without the crappy cutscenes, plot lines, whiny dialogue, or annoying NPCs. Wow, its almost as though Silicon Knights knew about their single player failures and made a way to circumvent all of it. Suddenly all the classes have a purpose against the numerous hordes of enemies, and dying carries the consequence of leaving your friend all alone against a mob calling out for blood. It’s strange how easily a game can be fixed just by throwing in a buddy to play alongside you. My only two gripes with this is how in the manual it says "You can play with anyone!", when in reality you can play with everyone except the person sitting next to you. My other gripe is the lack of any form of PvP. I mean it'd be nice either versing my partner or seeing who can kill the most enemies in an arena setting.

Anyhow, this blog has gone on for too long so on with the summary!
Graphics- Gameplay looks fine and the enemies look very glowy/menacing. But some of the human models look like they've been through the toilet several times before making their appearance in game.
Sounds- Sounds like your in the battlefield based upon the clangs and bangs. But since the enemies don't make too much noise it kinda feels like your just swinging at sentient buckets instead of bloodthirsty robots intent on carving you up.
Story- Its entertaining in the worst way possible. They might as well just crack puns every other step of the way to keep you interested.
Controls- Who the hell puts the right analog stick as melee?!
Overall fun- Its something to do when you have alot of time to burn.
Single Player- Horrid, the plot might be entertaining here and there but it certainly didn't keep me wanting to play it again after I beat it.
Multiplayer- Far more entertaining than single player was and has alot more replay value. Fixes some of the earlier issues with the game but lacks any form of PvP.

Community- The great "Theory of Xbox live" states that everyone online is an idiot time bomb waiting to blow up at the slightest thing going against them. This theory, for once in its nice history, doesn't hold completely true on "Too Human". While some of the people you will meet online will be the occasional jerk, everyone else seems to only care about getting better equipment for their character. Also, once your online, your going to notice how everyone and their mums are berserkers who only ever fill up the role of "leap into nearest crowd and die", so expect to do alot of the killing yourself.

End notes:
So was buying "Too Human" at 60$ worth it? Fuck no. Maybe 50$, but even that's stretching it. Somewhere in the 45-39$ range sounds about right.

Intro

Hello and welcome to the first of a hopefully, soon to be daily blog that reviews video games and other such gaming related things such as consoles, the console war and the shadowy society of geeks that shroud each and every game you'll ever think of purchasing. Most of them live in a dark alley near you, playing D&D, and flicking their D20s menacingly.A few things you will need to know about the way I review these things though:

1. I don't use numbers such as "5/5" to show my thoughts on a game.While I've tried this in the past I always get hung up on which number best describes the game and whether its a "4" game or a "3" game. Eventually I came to the conclusion that every step of an opinion cannot be condensed into a numeral and still keep most of the meaning.For example I can say "Barbie’s wild adventures in pimptown made the seven remaining brain cells in my head huddle together for warmth followed by a prolonged death as the game impaled its terrible ending through the sockets of my eyes" but that wouldn't be the same as saying "this game got a 3/5."

2. I do break up the game into more bite sized delectable chunks that just so happen to smile back at you. Toward the end of most of my reviews I will do a quick recap on all the points I will make on these points of the game:
Graphics - "Its so pretty! I feel like my TV is radiating rainbows!" Sound - "John Williams could have done better..."
Story - "how does 'and then the sci-fi hero rode in, killed everyone and ran off with big chested girl into the sunset' make a good plot?!"
Controls - "A = murder. B = Kill. Y = Jump. X = Pick up idiot and throw him in the nearest dumpster"
Overall fun - "I've had more fun injecting several gallons of LSD into my bloodstream and then watching 'Sesame Street' until I hit a coma"
Multiplayer and Single Player - Really. This is self explanatory by now.

3. I'm also going to be reviewing the glitches and community for certain games. While I should join this with number two, the two primary differences of this number and the last one is how the last one will review games based upon the way they were meant to be played and this will review the games the way the players actually play it in a competitive scene. A good example of this is Halo 3. I can say both game's graphics are lovely and make the master chief's armored bikini pop out like the pedophile in your closet or that the game play is fun because the controls really put you into the main character's place (These are not my real opinions of the game), but it wouldn't fully cover some of the more advanced forms of gunplay such as how to frag any opponent within 4 shots no matter where you hit them and how that puts the battle rifle as the most competitive weapon. Then I'd have to go on and on about other further uses of the battle rifle and how it overshadows every other weapon to a damning silent existence.

With all of that now aside, the first game I'll be reviewing for sure is Too Human, which is about a Silicon Knight's take on Norse Mythology and their sad sorry attempt to turn it into a game.