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Dragon's Dogma (PS3)
by amazonia
Dragons Dogma is an action RPG (role playing game) its set in the same sort of ye olde world of so many RPG's where Thank the maker! ye olde inn is never far away to rest your weary armor clad bones after a day wandering the wilds and friendly yokels wish you good morrow in dodgy accents at every turn.
This arena is not new ... and generally has me nodding off to sleep but strangely enough Dragons Dogma had me hooked.
Dragons Dogma is familiar but different. It introduces new elements to the RPG arena, borrows bits and pieces from other games and rolls them all up into one immersing and fun package.
Okay, first of the story and the setting aren't that original. You play the arisen a lowly villager who bravely faces up to a fearsome dragon who attacks your village and takes something of yours that well, you just cant live without. So off you go on a giant quest to recover what is yours and the fun begins.
As with most RPG's you create your own character deciding whether you will play a fighter, a warrior, a mage a strider or an archer you can also upgrade your choice during the game you can mix it up a little and become a mystic knight or a mighty sorcerer amongst a number of other choices. There is a lot to choose from in terms of class. You will be able to design how your character looks and their gender. I choose a female mage dabled with being a mystic knight and then became a sorcerer.
I have read some disparaging comments about the graphics however, I personally thought this game looked good and was pleased with the appearance of my character.
If you enjoy creating your characters as I do you will be in your element with Dragons Dogma as you also get to create a pawn who will be your trusty companion throughout the game.
If on line your pawn can be selected by other players to assist them in their quests and in turn you can enlist other peoples pawns to help you on your journey. Once you are finished with someones pawn you can select another and send the pawn back to their owner with a little parting gift and some comments on their performance. Choose your pawns wisely, I suggest you find pawns that are of a higher level than you or have already completed a mission so they can help you out with some useful pointers. I found this element to be a nice change from purely competitive on line play.
The monsters you encounter during this game and varied and entertaining. Some are immense and frightening. Your task will be to furnish your party with the right range of skills, find weaknesses and battle the beasties.
The combat is hack and slash with a nice range of abilities and skills its fast exciting and fun.
There are plenty of places to adventure and explore and side quests to fulfill. Wandering at night is creepy and brings another atmosphere to the game. There is no fast travel but their are ferry stones that will take you back to the capital city if used.
With the open world you can have the usual fun of finding ways to entertain yourself personally I like to buy silly clothes and walk around town in my pants at one point I threw my pawn off a cliff which amsed me greatly but...moving on.
The only elements I wold like improved in Dragons Dogma are the mage outfits I felt like I was wearing a shabby old sack! And I would like fast travel ... I find wandering the same areas can gets repetitive and perhaps a bit more interaction with the other characters in the game may have made you feel for them more but overall its a great game and I had fun playing it I would highly recommend you give it a go.
Thank you for reading this review and I bid you all good morrow.
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Dead Rising 2 (PS3)
by TimStain
Before I get into the merits of the game, let's get one issue out of the way. The writing is crap, because Capcom are to scriptwriting what I am to success and large amounts of money and decent metaphors.
The game is set in a clear parody of Las Vegas called Fortune City, several months/years/like it matters after the first game ... and the zombie outbreak is now under control. Better yet, now we can use zombies for our cynical entertainment in cruel and demeaning game shows! Hey, when you've taken your entire situation from Dawn of The Dead you might as well steal ideas from Shaun of the Dead too. You play as Chuck Green, the kind of protagonist you end up with when you spend the night flicking snot at your co-writer and decide to name the games protagonist after that hilarious evening.
Chuck is a miserable participant in one of the aforementioned zombie game shows called Terror is Reality, wherein he must ride a motorbike with two chainsaws sticking out of it into crowds of zombies and whoever slaughters the most is declared the winner, instead of a terrible psychopath. Chuck isn't proud of taking part in the show but he needs the money to save the life of his little girl. She's been bitten by a zombie, and needs constant doses of expensive zombrex to keep her from turning into one of the walking dead. Unfortunately Chuck's daughter can't be saved from her fate as a child character in a Capcom game, dooming her to being unlikeable, uncharacterised and hard to care about.
Inevitably zombies break free, Fortune City is in chaos and Chuck must save survivors, find zombrex for his daughter and solve the mystery of what caused the outbreak in the first place (although the obvious cause of 'keeping highly contagious brain-dead cannibal alive in large numbers with low security' is never considered). You have 72 hours until the military shows up, and the game starts properly.
This is the closest you're ever going to get to feeling like a survivor in a zombie outbreak, as hundreds are always on screen at any one time. Zombies are weak and easily killed on their own, but in large numbers they become a significant threat. Almost anything can be used as a weapon, from practical things like knives and handguns to novelty items like traffic cones, golf clubs and gladiators style giant balls that you can roll around in, wiping out all the zombies in your path. Temporarily at least as all the weapons degrade after several hits, stopping you from relying on a few core weapons and ensuring that you're constantly mixing up the weapons you're using, smartly keeping the game varied throughout. New for this sequel is the brilliant weapon combination, where you can take two items and create new more powerful tools from them. The logic of these combinations is a little dubious (e.g. gems + torch = Lightsabers) but it doesn't matter in the least when it's this much fun. Every kill earns Chuck experience, making him more powerful and combined weapons reward you with more experience. Not enough games reward and encourage you for using their best features like Dead Rising 2.
Not that the experience system is anywhere near perfect mind. After Chuck gains a certain amount he'll level up, but the difficulty curve is far too steep for you to possibly level up to the appropriate level in time. For example, when the first few boss fights appear about seven hours in, you'll probably be just breaking into double figures level wise, meaning you'll barely take a pinch of health off the terrible, far too unfair bosses. Meanwhile these bosses will happily slaughter you with ease. The game counters this by letting you restart the story from scratch at any time with all the experience and levels you've gained through your current play through. A nice feature, but clearly Capcom have used it as an excuse not to balance the levelling properly. Survive till about level 13; be forced to restart the game and have to play several compulsory missions again before you can progress past the unfair difficulty spikes.
These are the biggest flaws in an otherwise excellent game. The weapons are satisfying and fun to experiment with, messing around in Fortune City's various locales is fun and the constant pressure of the 72 hour time limit (not real time, much faster) keeps the pacing strong. The sequel is a step up from the original in every way except for the lame protagonist. Chuck's aforementioned daughter and guilt over what he has to do to make money to save her is what drives the weak plot, but if Chuck is so miserable then why is he dressing up in a tube top and beating zombies with park benches just for the fun of it? Well he was when I played anyway but regardless of how you play the protagonists personality is in direct contrast to the actions you commit in the game. Compared to the hero of the first Dead Rising, photographer Fred West, who was just driven by his want for a big story, Chuck is a damp squib of a main character. A shame, but it won't stop you enjoying this ridiculously fun game, just make up your own story. In fact, I'll make one up for you:
'Hank Yellow is an untalented method actor pretending to care about a little girl in research for his next role as the lead in another remake of Cheaper by the Dozen . Hank is told by his agent that due to extreme rewrites, the film is now called Chomper of the Dozen, a zombie killing horror/warm hearted family comedy in Hollywood's latest dumb attempt to mesh together two overcrowded genres. Can Hank kill enough zombies and save enough daughters to get the part?'
You'll have hours of fun finding out in this excellent zombie apocalypse sim.
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