Review: Duke Nukem 3D

Here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, Duke Nukem is both a celebration and a parody of 80s and early 90s action movies, and Duke Nukem 3D is the same thing, only with 90s first person shooters. It doesn't take itself seriously; it revels in stereotypes and exaggerates bits and pieces in the name of humor. With references to cult films such as Big Trouble In Little China, Army Of Darkness (even going as far as to have the cover look like the movie's cover), They Live and many others, That isn't to say that the game is Doom with a more colorful protagonist – in fact, this was one of the first games of its kind to have more colorful, urbanized level designs along with sci fi settings and just a lot of attitude in general. Sonic The Hedgehog may have gotten the kids, but Duke Nukem got the teenagers and adults! Doom, Quake and a lot of their contemporaries – past, present and future - were gritty and serious, but Duke Nukem 3D was more lively in its setting, look, feel and the unserious nature of the whole situation.

I mean, it starts with aliens invading Los Angeles and shooting down Duke's cruiser! Outside of a cutscene at the end of each episode (of which there are three in the original version and four in the Atomic Edition), it's largely unimportant and simply serves as a backdrop to the gameplay. Then again, it is about an alien invasion, which opens up the floodgates for some rather fun shenanigans, and being both a celebration and a parody of 80s action movies... well, I think that ought to speak for itself. In terms of fun shenanigans, it's Duke Nukem who jumps through the glass and opens up a massacre with a one liner. A lot of it is very tongue in cheek. At the same time, it does at least try and serve as a deeper backdrop than Doom's “kill the cyberdemons” and Quake's “kill the aliens” plots, so there's that to consider. Not to mention, it does offer more variety in its locales than dinky dungeons and creepy castles – you'll go through a strip joint, a movie theater, a movie set, a subway, a hotel, a supermarket and outer space in an effort to stop the aliens from taking over Earth. In that regard, it has more creativity and ingenuity than the shooters of its time, making it a world that you really want to save in comparison to some dark, dull dungeon or whatever.

But Duke Nukem 3D is no mere celebratory parody; it actually manages to improve on a lot of the mechanics present in 90s shooters. Not only can you use the mouse to aim, but you can also freely use the Y axis. No more will you need to circumnavigate your pinky finger to the Page Down and Page Up buttons to use the Y axis if you need to look at something above or below you (the guns have an auto aim on the Y axis). Nope, now you have to have good aim on both axes. Thankfully, the aiming is smooth and the response you get from each of the guns is spot on. Damn, does it feel satisfying to shoot enemies with your arsenal of automatic pistols, small chainguns, shotguns and various alien weaponry like shrink rays, lasers and an automatic rocket launcher – seeing aliens either blow up or look as if they're about ready to decompose is exactly what Duke's looking for. The most satisfying is when Duke rips off a boss's head and shits down its neck. After having to fire enough bullets to stop herds upon herds of aliens, nothing beats using the boss' neck as a toilet - especially if the fight itself involved having to circle strafe to avoid constant fire, collecting resources once you start to run low thus running the risk of getting hit, and then blowing your load all over them.

Really, the crux of the game is shooting up aliens and pigs wearing LAPD – sorry, LARD shirts whilst finding your way from Point A to Point B, with the last level of any given episode involving an intense boss fight. Actually a lot of encounters can be intense as you have to shoot down your foes without getting shot, although your foes are trigger happy if you're visible to them. While the game's level layouts are reasonably straightforward, there are also a fair amount of branching paths and secret areas to look for. Said secret areas tend to hold health, ammo, weapons you may or may not have and items. Items add a layer of depth to the gameplay as you can either apply a first aid kit or steroids (the latter of which increases Duke's running speed) in the heat of battle, or strap on the jet pack to fly around and either attack from above or scale across gaps. More often than not, it simply leads to rooms on the beaten path with some ammo and health pick ups, but there are some points where it'll be necessary in order to progress. But nothing beats the scuba gear as there are sections of levels where underwater traversal is required – thankfully, you'll have your trusty scuba gear to rely on.

If I was to pick on the game for something, it's that it's touchy about interacting with objects underwater, which can be a pain when you have to interact with doors while swimming away from aliens (usually, you don't have enough time to stop and shoot – keep moving to the next place with air or Duke will drown). On land, it's easy enough to align your cursor with a switch, a door or something that you wish to interact with, press the interact button and something happens; underwater, the touchiness of it all combined with Duke's limited air supply can result in mind annoyances as you have so many directions to aim your cursor, especially underwater where there is no ground to stand on. Another niggling annoyance is the game's reliance on key cards. Now, I understand that it's a shooter from the 90s and as such, every area is like a secret government building or something where you need color coordinated key card security. Needless to say, these parts can either feel like an afterthought or just not feel right in general. The door is either somewhere nearby or on the other side, and when it comes to the latter, it can result in aimlessly wandering around for a while, trying to either remember where you may have seen that door or even just looking for the key card in the first place. It doesn't usually last too long, but it happens too often for it to be a mere coincidence.

It's a bit of a shame because the levels are otherwise very well designed. It's easy enough to follow whether the path is laid out to you blatantly or through looking around and using basic logic. While I criticized the key card puzzles for often devolving into running around like a headless chicken, I'm quick to praise the game for making you use your curiosity and noodle to figure out where to go. The not-so obvious parts of the level are never that cleverly hidden as each section flows well enough with one another. In that regard, it's never a hassle, plus exploring big levels full of things is always fun and it becomes rewarding when you quickly manage to find your way through. Finding secret sections is especially rewarding as it's like “ooh I found something cool”, especially if said cool things are items, ammo and health kits that'll help you out. Having interactable objects like drinking fountains, toilets and strippers you can tip are some rather nice touches as they give levels more of a personality than the bland, bleak dungeons found in Doom or Wolfenstein 3D. Bit of a shame games don't do this anymore unless it's a part of some cinematic set piece...

The game sports a mix of 2D and 3D graphics, with the scenery being in 3D, the ground having 3D textures and the enemies and yourself being in 2D... like cardboard cutouts. It can seem a bit off at first as the enemies can appear to be paper thin, not to mention it's a bit jarring to see huge pixellated sprites on top of 3D environments whose textures aren't nearly as pixellated, but give it a few minutes and they won't seem so bad. At the very least, they were designed rather well. The traditional weapons looked as they should, the alien weapons look like they were lifted out of some cheesy sci fi movie and the obligatory badass weapon... well, let's just say that it's the last thing people will see before they die; people behind you should duck and cover, it's that badass. The settings look like what you'd expect them to; places you'd find in cities like strip clubs and theaters look like actual strip clubs and theaters, and spaceships look as they would based on what one would see in sci fi movies (rooms with alien technology and full of gray). Admittedly, the city levels are much better looking than the oftentimes drab looking space levels as there's more variety in locations and color schemes. The aliens, either looking like something out of HP Lovecraft or John Carpenter's “The Thing”, gives the game a bit of that creepy sci fi vibe. Speaking of vibe, Duke Nukem's design makes you feel like a badass as you have builging muscles, sunglasses and blonde eraser hair.

Keeping in tune with vibes, John St John gives Duke the kind of voice that just works so well with his character. There's quite a bit of bass in his voice and the way he says his dialogue feels just right. It captures just the right attitude for not just the dialogue, but his look and the situation. I'd even say that the sound effects feel just right as the aliens scream in pain as you shoot them down with your bassy sounding guns. It just makes you feel powerful! I can't quite say the same for the soundtrack. It veers between a tense song that's like as if you're skulking around an alien world... and a nondescript one that doesn't do much. Now, a nondescript song always feels like background noise that can still give a level life if it's not meant to be silent, so it's not all bad; just that I've always felt that the soundtrack could be so, so much better than what's on offer here. For instance, Doom has At Doom's Gate, which is an energetic way to begin a game from an aural standpoint given its fast pace. Duke Nukem 3D just sort of drones on by, and while it can often provide a solid unsettling ambience, it also tends to just exist. It's also a bit jarring when the game revolves around blasting aliens to oblivion, rather than doing what you can to survive. It's a bit more fitting for something like Alien than something like Aliens.

At the same time, it's hard to deny everything that Duke Nukem 3D did right. It took first person shooting outside of the gloomy depths of some hellish piss stained fortress and put it into a more urban environment... intersperced with alien motherships because hey, it's an alien invasion! It added another layer of interactivity to the mix by making most of any given level's objects interactable, and curiosity will lead you to secret rooms, items or at least a cool little detail. Hell, even with the firmly established mechanics, it feels a lot tighter than its comtemporaries, making each gunshot feel like an extension of Duke's general badassery. If you were to look at what this game did right, Duke Nukem 3D coule easily be a fantastic game. However, its excellence also highlights the issues that it and similar games have with sensitive interacting controls and a reliance on lame key card puzzles. In other games, it wouldn't be a big deal, but here, it's like there being a few too many freckles on an otherwise attractive girl's face – whilst it doesn't hurt the game, it does stick out and it can be bothersome. But hey, you've probably played this already and you're just reading this because you feel like playing it again and want to know if it holds up. Well good sir, it fucking does! Go play it.

8.5/10 (Great)

Second Opinion: Mark Of The Ninja

Made by the same boys and girls who made the Shank games and eventually Don't Starve, Mark Of The Ninja carries a very similar philosophy in that it rides a singular note, but my god, it'll do everything it can to kick your ass until shit comes out of your ear. Unlike Shank, it doesn't flat out fail in every other department, but it's clear that Klei Entertainment pick a main style of play, focus most of their attention on that, add a dash of smooth Flash cartoon looking visuals, and then come up with some other shit at the last minute. In Shank, it was about beating enemies up with a different assortment of weapons; in Mark Of The Ninja, it's about stalking fortresses in the night, sneaking up on your victims until their backs are turned or they're left dazed and confused. From that moment, you draw your sword and stab them in their cold, black hearts, or jam your sword up their jaw bone and right through their cranium. Or both. Either way, nobody has to know that you did it.

From there, it becomes clear that Mark Of The Ninja is a game where you play as a ninja and you have to *gasp* use stealth! I mean, a ninja sneaking around, making sure not to get caught, and killing whenever it's necessary? Holy shit, what a unique concept, I've never seen that before! Seriously, what ninja game besides the Tenchu series can hold such a claim that you play as an honest to god fucking ninja!? Most ninja games focus more on being a badass one man army like Joe Musachi or Ryu Hayabusa, and here's Klei Entertainment, the one company you'd expect to make a sidescrolling Ninja Gaiden-esque game, making a game that feels like a sidescrolling version of the Tenchu games! Mind you, Tenchu actually lets you draw your blade in direct combat while Mark Of The Ninja forces a karate chop combo onto you in a vain attempt to knock a guard down before killing him. But then part of me thinks that it's not only Klei trying their hardest to deviate from the Shank series' blend of relentless, downright badass action (I mean holy shit, he stabs his foes with a running goddamn chainsaw), but also their response to how in the shit the stealth genre is – and how appropriate that it's released at roughly the same time as Dishonored (essentially the yin to this game's yang), Hitman: Absolution (basically Splinter Cell: Conviction with a half broken disguise system) and Assassin's Creed 3 (which was just really, really fucking boring)!

But yeah, to kick things off, the story is... okay. It revolves around an unnamed ninja who must defend his clan from a corporation who had just attacked them. He's branded with a tattoo mark with special ink that sharpens his senses and gives him shaper reflexes, but it comes at the cost of his sanity, meaning that he has to kill himself once the mission is over. But there's more to this mission than meets the eye, and the plot twist in the second half makes you wonder “whoa, what are they going to do next”. Well, just wait for the ending – or should I say, one of two endings, where you'll either find yourself in amazement over what the clan is really about and how badly the ink really screws with you... or just wonder what's going on. At the same time, the last mission is where everything truly comes together; every moment of the story is building up to this entire mission and by the end, you'll be wondering if the story itself was any good, or if it's just the euphoria derived from the last mission. Then you realize that the story, prior to that point, felt like filler. Not counting the mid game plot twist moment, each scene just felt like justification for carrying on your mission without really turning into anything resembling a compelling story. I suppose that's just Klei being Klei, but one day, they'll manage to string together a 100% compelling narrative.

So while it flounders in the story department, it more than makes up for it with the gameplay. As I've mentioned, you basically sneak around and either slip past or kill guards so that you can make your way to Point B. Now, you may be looking at a screenshot and wondering how in holy hell stealth works in a two dimensional setting. Simple – using cones to signify lines of sight and lighting (and that's another thing... lighting, in a MODERN stealth game? Are these guys the most off the rail cunts or what!?), as well as the addition of a run button that'll let you move faster at the expense of silent movement (and soundwaves are generated as clear circles), turns a simple game of hide and seek to a somewhat more complex game of chicken. Should you risk getting seen in the light while running and potentially either distract your foes or get caught and have them call reinforcements onto you, or should you sneak up to them using background objects to hide behind and go in for the kill? Then Mark Of The Ninja throws you a curveball partway into the first level with the addition of darts, which you can throw at enemies or at objects to either shut off light sources and/or distract enemies before either slipping past them or killing them. Doors start to open at that point and then you have to make a decision on whether to use noise as your ally or to bug the guard by throwing a dart at them (they don't kill guards) to draw them close to their death or to at least slip by.

As you're given more toys to play with (either through progression or from buying them at flags found partway into levels and at the beginning of levels), the game further opens itself up and by the end of the game, you'll probably be able to equip what you think sounds good (so long as the game doesn't force something else onto you – not that it'd matter because they give you advice on how to use it) and be able to use it like it's second nature. That's the thing with games like this; it's only as easy as your mental capacity allows it to be. If you're somebody who can use the tools and the environment at your disposal, then it's a matter of timing, patience and knowing how to use everything around you to your advantage. If, on the other hand, you're a fucking idiot who can't learn from your mistakes, well, tough shit buddy, enjoy losing points from setting off the alarm before you die and get sent back to the last checkpoint. Unfortunately, this game does coddle you a bit – there are lots of checkpoints and the points reset to however much you had when you first got to that last checkpoint; can't really say it's 100% idiot proof unless said idiot is lucky enough to get away from the guards or kill them without getting themselves killed and just be 800 points short of what they could've had at the end of the level if they just didn't set off the alarm.

Mark Of The Ninja is both a throwback to when stealth games actually felt like stealth games instead of The Bourne Identity on bath salts, and an accessible game in the stealth genre instead of just trying to be a complete bastard. Because Klei Entertainment had to make sure that their effort felt genuine while having it be a sidescrolling game, they employ a lot of deceptively simplistic design choices to make it happen. On paper, the guards' AI is easy to exploit as they're attracted to noise and will investigate right about where the source of that noise came from; they will investigate where they last saw you if you're caught in a light and they're a fair bit away from you, meaning that you can make a clean getaway if you're quick enough; they hardly get suspicious of the ducts; they almost never leave the area that they're patrolling even when backup is called for (only the guards in the area and MAYBE ones that are nearby will jump in). In practice, you should just not tempt them unless you can make a getaway or kill them before they call for backup. I mean, you might as well just tempt a British royal guard while you're at it! Oh... did I forget to mention that you don't have much health? Did I also forget to mention that, unlike in Whose Line Is It Anyway, the points do kind of matter if you want to unlock everything?

Might as well talk about points, unlockables and all that jazz right now – there are a few things you can do to acquire points. You mainly get points from killing guards, but you can also get points for having them walk past you without you getting noticed, distracting them with noise and hiding their bodies. Just get the button prompt for killing right, because screwing that up means you'll get less points and they'll scream, and since they scream really loudly, you'll have guards around them rousing suspicion, so... don't fuck it up. Getting as many points as possible is great because at the end of each level, you'll be given between one and three honors based on your score. You'll also get points if you scour each level for artefacts and haikus – each haiku collected gives you an honor, by the way. But the third is obtained through a special course where you'll use the ancient ninja arts of climbing walls, pushing blocks, pulling levers and teleportation in order to navigate through lasers and open doors to the end point. They're not as tedious as they sound; they're actually rather cool brain teasers, testing you on how much you've actually learned from that point in the game. Would love to have some with enemies in them to really test ones' skill, but whatever. The third and final way to acquire honors is through mission specific challenges. From getting to an objective as quickly as possible to killing certain guards to restricting the usage of certain items, it really forces you to think outside the circle, especially since some of them force you to use methods that go against your usual stuff. If any of them sound tough, don't worry – the sections and even levels are designed in a way that'll help you (not coddle you, not spoonfeed you; just help you) accomplish each mission and checkpoints, like I said, are pretty forgiving so if you screw up, you can just reset to the last checkpoint and rethink your approach.

“What are these honors you speak of???” - they're currency for upgrades. But if I'm being honest, they range from worthless, to “why don't I have this already” to “oh wow at least this makes sense being an upgrade”. Like how Spec Ops: The Line, Tomb Raider 2013 and The Last Of Us shoehorned multiplayer because the developers thought every game needed it, not even Klei Entertainment is immune to shoehorning elements and making it clear that they're, indeed, shoehorning elements into a game. Not every game needs an upgrade system. Okay, cool, so I can buy a cardboard box and then buy an upgrade that lets me kill from insi-- umm why the fuck can't I do that with my purchase of a cardboard box? Better yet, a lot of methods of assassination have to be unlocked. Methods such as killing while dangling from your chain, to killing from a ledge up above, to killing through doors, to killing through shaft openings – wow what the goddamn shit guys, I should have this crap from the start! This isn't a question of making the game easier; it's a question of making the game more what it is, which is a test of your instincts. When you're dangling from a chain, you're running the risk of exposing yourself to a guard whose gun has a torch. When killing from above, you run the risk of being seen by other guards who may be nearby. Oh, and what kind of master ninja has to learn methods of assassination? Did Master Azai arbitrarily restrict us to only being allowed to stab enemies in the back until we become honorable enough to earn the right to use the other methods of assassination?

I'm sorry for railing on that for so long, but when a game gets damn near everything else right only to have something so jaw droppingly baffling, I can't help myself. Oh and defense upgrades are worthless, especially if you play the New Game+ mode where one hit kills you anyway. The lighter footsteps barely matter because you hardly ever need to drop from really high edges or run at the risk of enemies detecting you. The other upgrades though, like quieter spike traps, more lethal jacks and tranquillizer darts, remote noise making mines and flares and other such items, are worth it. I just get the feeling that they added in the rest or this feature in general because everybody else was. Don't forget X ray vision, Klei; I hear that's a hot feature to include in stealth games. But like I said, this seems like a sore spot in an otherwise fantastic game because not only does every design element congeal into a cohesive and immersing experience that forces you to use your instincts properly, but its deceptively simple design also allows Klei to focus on what makes it feel like a legit stealth game.

The presentation helps it feel like a stealth game – it's easy to tell when you're in the light and when you're in the darkness. In the dark, you're basically an outline, giving the feeling of being hidden in the dark, silent as a mouse with the visibility of somebody's imaginary friend... kind of like a ninja; but in the light, you're in color, giving you the feeling of being exposed to your enemies if any happen to be around. Then you get to the killing, and boy oh boy, I think Klei's animators went above and beyond on this one as each of the animations look pretty fucking brutal. Okay, so on one hand, you have a back stab. On the other, you stab their back, rush right in front of them and slice them up their abdomen. Want more hands? Try stabbing their brain from their chin! Hey, we can go further if you want – let's include the chain by having it wrapped around their necks... after getting stabbed, of course. Look, the point is that these over the top, verging on performing riverdance on their nutsacks style killings are very well animated, with fluid transitioning between frames to give off the feel of a quick, brutal slaying. In general, the game's pretty easy on the eyes with its clean tablet drawn Adult Swim Flash cartoon look. Special props go towards the last level's imagery – fuck, it looks impressive with just the right scenery and colors to give off the impression that it's trying to give!

As for the sound design... well, the voice acting won't be winning any awards, but the soundtrack works pretty well with the rest of the game. The sneakier sections have this quiet sort of Japanese folk music in the background – that, or some quiet symphonics. Each of these songs also give you that feeling of being watched, or the possibility of getting spotted and killed. Then you eventually got spotted (or you're in one of those moments where you have to escape from a building) and the music picks up with either these loud tribal drums or this intense violin track that inspires you to either kick ass or get out of there. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot to really say about the soundtrack because despite its limited quantity, it's something of a forgettable affair. But man, I swear, the last level was where Klei really pull out all the stops because the sound design there is just fucking brilliant! Like the visuals, it really gives off just the right feeling and given the amount of weight that particular part has, you bet your ass it's a damn good final level!

One question you'd probably be asking yourself throughout this review is “why are you gushing so much, it just sounds like you enjoy the novelty of a sidescrolling stealth game that reminds you of old school stealth games” - it's the fact that what it does right, it does fucking right! Oh sure, the story's a drag until the end and half the “upgrades” seem like filler, but then you get into actually playing the game and it pulls out all the stops. Its brand of stealth is not only something I miss, but it's also very well done with some deceptively simple techniques and multitude of options at your disposal, as well as some well designed levels that let you fully immerse yourself into the game. That's what stealth is all about; immersion. Allowing you to get into hiding in the darkness, only killing your prey when they don't see it coming and stalking through fortresses as if you were never really there. That, my friends, is a true ninja. Look, I love Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi too, but sometimes, you have to remind yourself that ninjas are the assassins of the night, not John Rambo in a robe or tights with a sword. Mark Of The Ninja does just that, and then some.

9/10 (Fucking Awesome)

Review: Mark Of The Ninja

In October came two stealth games on the PC – one was Dishonored, which was heavily flawed and, had it not facilitated its mechanics towards a more straight up action game, would probably wind up being a bad game. The other was Mark Of The Ninja, which honestly feels like a 2D version of the Tenchu series where you played as an honest to god fucking ninja – the assassin of the night. Funny enough, Assassin's Creed 3 and Hitman: Absolution were on their way... and did absolutely nothing to make you feel like an assassin, at least not without overpowering you to the point where stealth feels like a waste of time when a direct confrontation would lead to a much more favorable result at a much quicker pace. So really, Mark Of The Ninja is a refreshing sight to behold – a stealth game where being stealthy is encouraged? Where direct confrontation might get you killed because ninjas only have a black garb and not heavy armor or superhuman abilities like Ryu “I Can Swim In Lava” Hayabusa? Where staying out of sight and sound, having patience and a well timed strike, concluded with a quick getaway or repositioning to kill the other targets is the preferable method, all supported by the overall design of the game?

Pinch me, because I must be in heaven.

Well, I suppose the story will be doing that for me because it's mostly... blech. You play as an unnamed ninja who is branded with a tattoo that sharpens his senses and reflexes, which is tantamount to being some sort of hero to the unnamed clan of ninjas that you serve. However, it comes at the cost of it chipping away at your sanity, so the precaution to branding such a tattoo is that you commit suicide once the madness begins to take hold, or as you're told by master Azai, when you complete the mission. The mission is to take down a group of people who have attacked the dojo. There is a twist that begins the second half of the story, but it does little to really... matter. It serves as justification for why you're going through a series of strongholds to kill certain people, but to call it a compelling masterpiece would be quite farfetched. I suppose a good story wasn't really Klei Entertainment's intention, but I don't know, if you're going to have a story, at least make it worth a damn. Actually, they do try to make it worth a damn with the last level where everything that's said and done comes down to a decision that you have to make, and while it's brief, for a moment, you believe that you're experiencing a strong ending that makes it all worth it... that, or a crappy ending that makes virtually no sense, depending on your decision at the end.

Thankfully, everything else makes up for the lackluster story. For instance, the gameplay is simply wicked. The idea of a sidescrolling stealth game may seem perplexing at first, but once you start playing through the first level and get an idea of what's going on, you'll catch on quickly. The idea is that you either have to sneak past or kill enemies, making sure that nobody knows you're even anywhere near the area. You're given a sword, a killer karate chop and darts at first in order to carry on your mission. But given that it's on a 2D plane, how would a ninja sneak past his prey without killing it? You're occasionally given pots, dumpsters, doorways and other background objects to hide behind/inside, and at times, you're given alternate pathways. For instance, you can either enter through the front door (so to speak) and try to sneak through lights, praying to the nine divines that you don't get caught (technically in the light, you can get spotted; it's just that a guard will investigate that area rather than outright setting off the alarm – it's when you're close to the guard that they'll call for reinforcements) and get to the next area; or you can enter a ventilation shaft and skip a few lights or even the room altogether. While the game is linear in the sense that you're going from Point A to B, the levels are quite big and there are often some nooks and crannies that allow you to bypass certain areas or cause more trouble for the guards than the main path, and some even have collectibles such as scrolls and artefacts, so it's worth exploring the levels. Not to mention that the way it goes about sound is simple yet effective – walking is quiet while running is noisy, so try not to run unless you intend to distract them.

Speaking of scrolls, you'll earn honors through finding the three scrolls found throughout each level, as well as doing three optional missions and getting a high score. Now, by optional mission, I actually mean that you carry out the main mission, only you do certain things or do it a certain way. Stuff like not breaking a single light or not using any distraction weapons – look, the idea of being restricted may sound like a drag, but the levels are designed in ways to allow you to easily accomplish these missions if you put in some effort. Sure, it might seem tricky to not be able to destroy lights, but if you look around, hide from enemies and get through portions with grace, you won't need to destroy lights. There are plenty of opportunities to hide, stab enemies and hide their bodies (or avoid them) and make your getaway without any issues. This applies to the other optional missions. If you can't accomplish them, then you can simply try again and rethink your approach to it. Mark Of The Ninja offers you, the player, a series of choices as to how you can cover each level. Get all stabby stabby, distract enemies, use traps, go through one of two or even three routes when given the opportunity – it all depends on how you'd rather cover things. It's really refreshing to be given a choice of what you can do in a generation where you're forced upon a set of ultralinear hallways with set pieces and combat zones to look forward to.

Now, you probably just read that last paragraph and wondered to yourself “score? huh?” - well, you acquire points for doing things throughout the level that benefits you. It's not just by killing enemies that you get points; whether enemies walk past you without sounding off the alarm, get distracted by you, get their dead carcasses hidden by you or crap their pants and go crazy by the sudden deaths of their companions... through traps or hanging them with your chain; simply finding dead bodies will have them call for reinforcements. That brings us to when a guard needs his buddies. When you get caught or they suss out a dead body and successfully manage to sound off the alarm or radio some reinforcements, you lose a lot of points. If you're OCD about points, you'll make a point to never get spotted, but for those who don't care about points, all you have to worry about is possibly dying if guards do manage to find you as unlike Corvo from Dishonored or Connor from Assassin's Creed 3, you don't have superpowers or a million hit points. Hell, you don't even draw your sword in direct combat; you just have the karate chop combo. So many times, I just wanted to slice up a guard. I wouldn't even mind if it gave me less points to kill guards upfront like this because that's what the Tenchu games do, but what Mark Of The Ninja does instead is have you use the karate chop combo to maybe knock them out and then stab them for half the points you'd get if you did a stealthy kill, which is half of what you'd lose if you get caught or they find a dead body and call for reinforcements. Thankfully, you do acquire smoke bombs partway into the game, which can aid you in making a getaway.

That's another thing – you're given an arsenal of equipment that can be used to either kill or distract enemies while you make your way through each level. Each of these items have their own distinct use, like killing an enemy as they walk past, making them go “oww my toe” as they step on some three corner jack looking things, make them stare into a pretty light and make them hallucinate, among other things. But of course, what game would be complete without a cardboard box, am I right? To be fair, it's quite useful when dealing with guards that move back and forth, and when you upgrade the cardboard box, you can kill them from inside of it. That's one thing I don't quite like about this game, though; you have to unlock methods of assassination. Seriously? I get unlocking the other bits of equipment; I get upgrading my health and defense; I get upgrading the lightness of my feet; but needing to spend honors just so I can kill enemies from inside a cardboard box, or from above, or from the other side of a door? I don't know, it just baffles me, but it's a minor inconvenience and once you get an upgrade, you keep it forever until you erase your game or install it onto a different PC, so nothing worth getting pissy over.

This game has some replay value, don't you worry if, for whatever reason, 8 hours is too short for you. The New Game+ mode presents a trickier challenge in that your sight is limited to what's in front of you, you have to use your instinct to gauge whether destroying or throwing noisy stuff will get the guards' attention or not as there's no visual on that, guards' field of vision is invisible and you die in just one hit. From there, you're basically forced to further sharpen your instincts, choose your equipment carefully (you can only carry one distraction item and one attack item or trap as I like to call them – same deal in the regular game, by the way) and judge whether your next move is one that'll get you to the next area or six feet under. Liberal checkpoints do make things quite a bit easier as you don't have to redo too much upon death, and you know what, games like this need liberal checkpoints. Leave me starving for checkpoints in games like Thief and Hitman where each and every event is a link in the chain that is the level, influencing events to come in said level; Mark Of The Ninja, even as a score attack game, works best when you're not repeating – frankly - fragmented sections of a level because this one fragmented section had a guard or a laser sensor that caught me by surprise. Each part of the game has its own challenge; repetition of earlier challenges just feels like a waste of time when it's this one you're trying to get done.

Now, if there's one thing I love about Klei Entertainment's games, it's their visual style, and with Mark Of The Ninja, they're in top form! It's very cartoony with some vibrant colors and very smooth animation. It's at its best when it comes to the kills, which look very brutal. I mean, you got this ninja who grabs you, stabs you either in the heart or up your skull, and then either lets you down without alerting so much as a dust mite or slices your abdomen. Naturally, blood splatters everywhere and the way that it spreads is also very well animated. Besides the animation, I found the lighting rather impressive, or more specifically, how they handled the lighting. When you stand in lights, you're fully colored, but in the darkness, you're just a silhouette with a gray outline. It's simple, but it's rather effective in determining whether you're in darkness or not, and hey... at least it matters whether you're in the dark or not unlike in Dishonored! Where the visuals really shine is in the final level... oh my god, it's just so beautiful.

The sound design is also rather good. The voice acting tries to carry the ultimately uninteresting (until the end) story by at least sounding competent enough to work, but nothing about it really stands out in a positive way. Instead, the music is what kicks ass. While you're sneaking around, the music is more low key, just staying in the background. It often sounds like traditional Japanese music, which goes well with the fact that you're a ninja. But then you either get caught or there's a scripted sequence where enemies are out looking for you after you do a mission, and then the strings start to blare out in a fast paced fashion to convey the feeling of excitement. Like with the graphics, the soundtrack truly shines in the final level, and like the visuals for it, the song is just beautiful. It's like a whole otherworldly experience that's like a dream... which I guess is the point when given its context in the story.

A point I made in the introduction was that the design choices were facilitated in a way that made you feel like a ninja. Honestly, with everything that you're given, you do feel like a ninja. Stalking your prey and gracefully moving through levels as if you were never there is about as easy as it gets while offering quite a challenge – it all depends on your instincts. You could either find ways to avoid conflict with enemies or murder all of them. You could graceful leap around and then climb up the sides of buildings to skulk through vents, or run through and murder everyone in your way. It all depends on what the area around you offers. All of this culminates towards an ending that, in and of itself, feels like a journey before the very ending itself satisfies your every orifice.

9/10 (Fucking Excellent)

Review: The Longest Journey

I love me some point and click action, so when a game like The Longest Journey drunkenly stumbles itself into my life, I can't help but want to love it. Not in a way two drunk uni students would in the middle of the uni bar or two trashy bogans would in the middle of whatever pub they happen to be in; more in a way where we're both in my bedroom as we gently caress each other before we make love. In short, The Longest Journey offers naught but excellence in most any given field of not only basic game design, but also in how we truly play video games. For a lot of people, stories are either an arbitrary add-on to justify why we do what we doing in games or can add a layer of depth to a game... for a lot of people, video game stories can be seen as complete shit when taken on their own terms and it's a viewpoint I tend to agree on. Planescape: Torment, Red Dead Redemption and the Mass Effect trilogy may have great stories, but Final Fantasy games have the sort of story that'd bore readers to tears and only really work in context of being a video game. The Longest Journey is the kind of game where the story has more than enough depth to justify its existence, could easily work well in the form of a book and best of all, the setting and the gameplay compliments it to a point where the game flows at a natural pace, swallowing you into the world portrayed in the game. Many games claim to do this kind of thing, but very few actually succeed in truly immersing you into their worlds.

But what is this game actually about? It's about a normal everyday girl named April Ryan, an art student at the Venice Academy Of Visual Arts in the Venice district of Newport City. She is plagued by nightmares involving dragons and black vortexes - among other things – that take place within a world much more colorful than her own. The thing is however, the dreams are real enough to be real as you learn throughout the game that not only are there two parallel worlds, but that April has the power to shift between the worlds. The thing is that she doesn't realize it until she meets a guy named Cortez who reveals to her that there are two worlds and that she can shift between them. The thing is that Newport City is a part of an industrialist world full of gritty landscapes known as Stark. The thing is that outside of some flying cars, this is about as realistic of a portrayal of the future as it gets as while it seems not a whole lot has changed between 1999 and 2209, it just feels rather different given the more corporate landscape. The other world is Arcadia, a world full of whimsy and wonder. Both worlds are full of chatty people as, especially in the beginning of the game, people can and will talk your head off, although unlike a Metal Gear Solid game, the writing comes across as natural and with some genuinely funny lines (along with enough swear words to make Samuel L Jackson blush, though not quite enough references to sex and drugs to ban this in Australia), it never really impedes on the game's progress – if anything, it adds more personality and depth to the game.

The idea is to restore the balance between the two worlds, but throughout the journey, you'll watch April grow and truly develop into a truly amazing character. Her interactions with the worlds – including people she knows, people she doesn't know and each object that she can interact with – allows you to feel for April's character as her dialogue is rather witty and can elicit some chuckles. But where her character works oh so well is in her development. She starts off as a rather plain Jane (albiet one with a good sense of humor) who ran from home to chase her dreams in Venice... by working at a cafe, doing an art class at a school, finds herself annoyed by her best friend and life in a small room, and finds solace in small talk with her landlady while being ignorant of her powers; the world of Arcadia deeply intrigues her as it's vastly different from her own, almost dreamlike in appearance. It's like what she would paint, only it's real. Eventually, she meets a man named Cortez, who tells her about her powers. Over the course of the game, she'll find herself more confident with her powers as she has to restore the balance between the two worlds. Even thirteen years after release, April is still one of the deepest characters in the realm of video games and experiencing her journey is – as much as I hate to use the following term, I feel like it more than applies here – unlike many, if any that you've experienced before, both in the concept and the quality of the writing.

But good writing cannot succeed without some masterful voice acting, so here's some good news - the voice acting is fantastic. It excels where it needs to excel, and that's in April's voice. Goddamn, talk about fantastic voice acting – every breath of every syllable of every word from Sarah Hamilton brings April to life as her voice conveys just the right emotions for the situation at hand. Whether she conveys the humor at a fine tone or distraught at just the right amount without it being hammy, there's no doubt that you'll be more than willing to pay attention to everything she says. Same with a lot of the other voice actors. Sure, they're not quite as good, but they still do a fine job of bringing their respective characters to life and their interactions with April are certainly entertaining to listen to, especially in tandem with the excellent writing on display. If anything resembling a flaw exists, it's that it's rather obvious that multiple characters have the same voice actor, and even then, there are only so many voices out there that some are bound to overlap. So really, the voice acting is fantastic.

The music is just as good. It's not exactly melodic in the sense that you'll be humming it well after playing the game, but it's more melodic in the sense that enhances the emotion conveyed in each and every scene, or it provides the player with the appropriate ambience while sitting in the background somewhere. Stark's music tends to be more classical and feels like you're exploring a cave while Arcadia's music has more flutes and sounds more fantastical than anything else. The music during certain scenes tends to have chanting choirs to build up an epic atmosphere – and why not? The scenes usually depict big events like crossing over into another world or some other huge event. The choir does a fine job of making these scenes dramatic enough to feel significant without going overboard, which is something I can appreciate when games nowadays can hardly, if at all, get that right.

Speaking of the scenes, the graphics... to put it simply, it succeeds more in the mood that's produced rather than raw power. Mind you, they looked good by the standards of its time, but by 2013 standards, it's clear that they haven't aged too well. It's not because they put 3D models on top of 2D backdrops; it's the 3D itself. In particular, the in game 3D models are a tad on the “blech” side of the fence as they tend to look like they're lacking a few polygons, looking all blocky and whatnot, and the animations tend to be indescribably lame. The cutscene graphics scream late 90s CGI as they look more like claymation models than computer generated models. But then you look at the designs of the worlds and their inhabitants, take a deep breath and realize that The Longest Journey has a hell of a look to it. From ugly, grimy looking ghettos to cheery looking villages ripped right out of a Tolkein novel (or some other fantasy adventure novel), the way that everything is constructed manages to suck you right into the experience. The colors, the designs, everything – it all looks as you would expect their respective worlds to look like based on whatever's established by the characters and the music. It's the kind of game that other games wishing to be more then mere play things should aspire to be – ambient. Not just shallow eye candy.

To compliment the overall package is the gameplay – being a point and click game, it's more about interactivity. Whether you're observing objects, putting objects into your inventory for later or talking to people, there's plenty of stuff to interact with. As with any good point and click game, you're given a lot of incentive to interact with everything you can as you can find clues to the puzzles that you'll encounter throughout your journey. Plus... why not get immersed into the worlds presented in this game? The cursor will change its shape depending on what it's highlighting, whether it's broken to signify that you can'd do anything with it or a certain shade of color to signify whether you can simply walk or run there, exit to another screen, interact with an object or use an object that you've just picked up. To help people out a bit, when you've picked up an object, if it flashes when you're highlighting something with it, it can interact with that.

The puzzles are generally what you'd expect from this type of game where you'll either use items in your inventory or interact with objects around you to operate a mechanism or cause an event to happen that'll allow you to proceed. Whether you'll need to search for an item you've missed or combine some items in your inventory together to make a new one depends on what the puzzle needs. There are some puzzles with bizarre solutions, but unlike games with outright ass-backwards solutions like The Whispered World, you'll be able to find the solution if you think a little outside the box. On the whole though, it's not quite as hard as you'd expect from this genre. Besides the cursor highlighting what you can and can't interact with, Oh, and advice to newcomers – pay attention to what's being said, because you can find some helpful clues from their dialogue if an item or a piece of scenery doesn't clue you in as to what you ought to do next. If necessary, you can look up conversations (among other things like saving and loading files, settings, FMV scenes you've already viewed and her thoughts on what's been going on in the game) in her diary.

The best part about the puzzles is how they're integrated into the game. Each logic puzzle, each inventory puzzle, each puzzle that contains both – they flow incredibly well with the rest of the game. They're all based on their location – whether it's a room in Stark or a portion of somewhere in Arcadia, if there's a puzzle, it fits within the context of that location and whatever characters and/or objects just so happen to be there, especially since puzzles are either triggered by interacting with certain items or whenever an event happens. To put it simply, Stark relies on cold, hard logic as it's a science fiction world, and Arcadia's puzzles require more creative logic as it's something of an abstract fantasy world. Understanding these simple rules will allow you to understand what is necessary in order to solve the puzzle. Due to being more story driven than your usual point and click game, The Longest Journey's puzzles are hardly a challenge, especially when compared to some of the brain busting riddles you'll find in Myst and King's Quest games. But given their implementation in the game and its story driven nature, it's more than forgivable.

That's what drives The Longest Journey well and above the rest of its contemporaries – ambience. Every action, every interaction, every piece of scenery, every note of the music, every vocal chord; it all conglomerates into an experience that makes it stand above the rest of its competition. Clearly, the story was the star of the game, but everything this game offers placate themselves to help it further stand out. It's through a culmination of everything that's integrated into the game that it becomes an ultimately captivating experience second to none and sits atop the throne as one of the best games ever made. There's really not much more to say other than this – buy it and experience it. You won't regret it.

9.5/10 (Fucking Excellent)

Review: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Platinum Games and Kojima Productions working together on a Metal Gear game? If you're the kind of person who digs anything and everything campy and crazy, this would pulsate your penis into a diamond carving machine. I mean holy shit, fun and exciting gameplay with some over the top set pieces to go along with an exposition heavy story full of crazy plot twists? Sign me up! Sure, it took a long time and the only reason Platinum Games was even involved was because Kojima had some issues and needed somebody to essentially redo it for him and Shinji Mikami was more than happy to help out, but it did eventually come and with everything at their disposal, I'm sure they've developed a fantastic game, especially since it's based on...

...Raiden? You mean the guy from Metal Gear Solid 2 that people hated because he wasn't Solid Snake? Who wound up becoming a cyborg ninja in Metal Gear Solid 4 and got people loving him and even wanting games based on him because he was doing some sick Matrix shit? Interesting – and really, that's a word I'd use to describe my experience with this game. Raiden is able to slice up robots, slow down time to cut them into tiny little pieces and harvest their spines for health (otherwise known as Zandatsu), and given that there are a good amount of enemies and bosses to take down, it makes for some frantic action. There are so many instances where the phrase “holy shit” is uttered to a point where my voice is hoarse and not just gravelly. 

This game's story is... pretty self aware of what the Metal Gear series generally does – introduce a basic concept relevant to the themes of war and morality, plop a bunch of characters into the mix with more exposition than necessary and keep things interesting via some crazy plot twists. Four years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, Raiden and some operatives from PMC Maverick Securities are out on a mission in Africa and all is well until he and his team are attacked by Desperado, a rival PMC that basically amount to warmongers. After a swordsman known as Samuel Rodrigues reduces Raiden's cybernetic armor to pieces, he's given an upgrade by the Doktor. From there, Raiden has to take down Desperado, there's some shit about him and his past of being a child soldier that changes his character piece by piece as the game progresses, Desperado has a Metal Gear, Samuel Rodrigues is the rival character and a bunch of ethnic stereotypes communicate with Raiden occasionally via the codec – it's certainly not as self indulgent as the Metal Gear Solid games because, for the most part, the cutscene lengths range between two and five minutes as opposed to five and twenty minutes, but it's still as crazy as you'd expect, especially given Raiden's transformation into the psychopathic “Jack The Ripper”.

The codec's main use is to fill the player in on plot details while adding in some funny dialogue exchanges every now and again. But when it comes to the cutscenes, it's the same song and dance that we've had with the main series – there's a lot of dialogue, but for the most part, it just seems to drone on and on about war economics and the history and other details about boss characters. It's funny - Revengeance is a fast game when you play it, but it slows down to a crawl when cutscenes pop up. I'll give it to Platinum Games for inserting their blend of over the top goofiness by inserting a bunch of moments where Raiden fucks shit up in such a flashy manner that you can't help but stare in awe, ending with some kid going “go ninja, go ninja, go”. Really, the story works if you sit back and take it as actually thinking about it will only serve to give you brain haemorrhage; most of the plot twists are either flimsier than a PS3 controller or about as ridiculous as you'd expect from the boys and girls over at Platinum, only the dialogue feels more like narration than actual dialogue at times. Just sitting back and revelling in the absurdity of it all is the only way you'll enjoy this game's story, and even then, it doesn't make up for the fact that it basically interrupts your game for extended periods of time to deliver some sort of anti war message to you.

Revengeance is all about carving up robots in a way that makes Raiden look like a stark raving badass. You're given the usual light and heavy attacks as well as a sliding kick to launch enemies in the air so you can cut them up from below or aerial style. There are a fair amount of combos at your disposal using combinations of these commands and  While it has a fast and furious feel, surprisingly, the style of play that's recommended to ensure survival is more defensive than you'd expect it to be. Why? Well, there's a parry system where if you hit the light attack button just as you're about to get hit and push the left stick in the same direction as where the attacker is, you can send their attack back and then slice them up. There are two different timings to get down – either a fair bit before the attack hits, or just as the attack hits. If it's the latter, you'll have the option to slow down time by entering Blade Mode as the screen shows a blue overlay on its edges and then you'll seriously carve them up and then harvest their cores in order to heal yourself up. In other words, the idea is to soak in the flow of the enemies' attack patterns and use it against them. Like any good game, the enemies get harder to not only counter but to even fight as it progresses as they'll be faster, stronger and even trickier with their attack patterns, meaning that you'll really need to get the timing down as you'll sometimes find yourself stepping forward and attacking rather than parrying at times.

Stealth kills and citizen saving add a bit more to the gameplay. There aren't heaps of citizens to save, but if you can perform just the right combinations to kill their captors, you will be handsomely rewarded. As for stealth kills, they'll earn you bigger rewards than straight up kills do. Whether you're in a box, slowly creeping up behind them or have the aerial advantage, giving them the shaft without them knowing feels pretty damn satisfying. Who says you couldn't integrate stealth into this game, Kojima? Someone's a bit out of touch. At the same time, presenting it as an option rather than forcing it upon the player is the better way to go in a game like this. So many times when you play a fun game and then you're slapped into a forced stealth situation that just isn't even that well designed or good even. At least the decision to make stealth optional with maybe a bigger reward makes sense. Yes, it's very tempting to want what would essentially be Mark Of The Ninja in 3D that's set into the future, but I don't know, not having the high velocity combat after a taste of it, especially after the scenes in Metal Gear Solid 4 involving Raiden, would just be lame.

Unfortunately, it gives rise to one of Revengeance's biggest issues – the camera. It has a tendency to either zoom in too closely because it's up against an object or a wall, or go all over the place. Either way, it'll get annoying during combat when you're trying to see what you're trying to do. It can drive you insane when you're fighting the fast enemies and faster bosses, and god forbid you lock onto enemies as once you change targets, there's a good chance that the camera will spaz out by spinning around and even changing angles altogether. Before you know it, the next enemy whoops your ass because you couldn't parry it – you pressed the left stick in a direction that wasn't quite where the attack was coming from because the camera swivelled elsewhere. Then you get knocked in the air, get caught in explosions, get knocked into corners, get out of corners and exit Blade Mode, and the camera just acts unruly for about a few seconds. Given that this game mixes in a weird blend of fast paced defensive play, a camera that spazzes out or has things obstruct Game Overthinker sized portions of the screen is the last thing you'd want.

But when the camera isn't dicking you over, the game is so fast and furious that you forget that there are other problems, like how most of the sub weapons like rocket launchers and grenades are slow and tend to be purely situational rather than a backup plan in combat; how you can't switch between main weapons on the fly; or how the second half seems to be rushed in comparison to the first half (for reference, the first half's chapters last between 35 and 60 minutes; you're lucky if any chapter in the second half lasts any longer than 20 minutes.. except the final boss). The only other big flaw that I could mention is that despite all of the foreshadowing and other such plot elements that'd say otherwise, the final boss comes the fuck out of nowhere and, cheapness aside (oh boy, one hit kill attacks, my favorite – oh, and it takes forever to beat? Sweet!), is such an underwhelming bore in comparison to everything else beforehand that when the credits roll, you're expecting the real final boss to appear and satisfy the deep, cavernous recesses of your no-no places, only to be disappointed by the fact that... well shit, that [i]was[/i] the final boss. I had no big issues with the second half being shorter than the first half as it still contained exactly what kicked ass about the first half – loads of enemies to fight, a robust combat engine and that sense of speed, that sense of excitement that comes from slicing and dicing enemies while harvesting their robotic organs for sustenance. The game was so much fun to play through that most of the flaws didn't do anything, but then the final boss comes, winds up being a lame fight and has you contemplating everything that this game does wrong. Fuck this shit!

It's a crying shame because the other bosses - ranging from fellow swordsmen to other mid sized cyborgs to giant war machines - are fantastic! Camera woes aside, these fights all have a higher sense of scale than enemy encounters. It's not just in the fact that you'll find yourself fighting bosses the size of skyscrapers, but also in the fact that bosses your size require sharper reflexes and cleverer usage of the features at your disposal. One thing that really stands out is the diversity of each boss – each one requires a different set of strategies. I mean, it could boil down to utilizing the parry and dodge abilities when necessary, using combo attacks when they're vulnerable, getting into a series of quick time events when prompted and then either weakening or finishing them off in Blade Mode, but not every boss utilizes quick time events and the timing for parrying and dodging varies between fights. Each use of Blade Mode also results in different things depending on the boss you're fighting – you'll either cut off parts of one boss, knock the katana out of another's hand and, during a set of quick time events, cut off the armor and eventually the entire boss. Really, each of these culminate into some damn good fights with plenty of over the top acrobatics and excellent usage of Blade Mode while keeping you on your toes.

Your reward is typically a lot of BP that can be used to upgrade Raiden's health and defenses or a weapon's power (how much you get depends on how quickly and badly you beat the boss up while getting hit as little as possible), but a handful of bosses give you a weapon as a reward. Then it dawns onto you – while Revengeance is about 5 to 8 hours long, replaying the game is necessary in order to experience the full package. It's hard, if not downright impossible to fully upgrade Raiden, and I doubt you'll be getting S ranks your first time through. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that throughout each chapter, you're graded on your performance during each enemy group and boss encounter, as well as on the whole. To get an S rank, you'll need to kill every enemy that appears as quickly as possible without getting hurt while chaining together long combos, carving up enemies into as many little pieces as you can and utilizing Zandatsu as much as you can (whether you rip off individual or multiple spines at once), and to acquire an S rank for the entire chapter, you need to S rank every single combat section. The perfectionist in you will want to S rank the entire game, probably by playing the game on the unlockable Revengeance difficulty – which is hard as fuck but really fucking satisfying once you complete it – but if you're content with just beating the game once, well, no shit you'll complain it's too short and then wind up missing the point like every other person on the internet who either only played it once or hasn't actually played it. Sure, the second half could've stood to be a tad longer, but other than that, the game shouldn't need to be much if any longer than it currently is.

Topping it off is a solid framerate. Revengeance stays fast and furious not just because of its combat scenarios, but also because it almost never lags and the animations are smoother than a freshly sanded piece of wood. Those moments when you go into blade mode and time slows down around you also feels smooth, and yet it also feels like you're going at the speed of sound while you cut robots to pieces. It's touches like these that make you feel like you're the badass hero in an action movie, and that's what an action game ought to do. It's especially effective during the quick time event sequences found throughout the game. On the cosmetic front, the game looks fairly good. You have generic bloom flavored city, warehouses, big buildings and sewer environments that are at least very detailed, offset by the excellently designed character models. Understandably, it takes place in a future that was wrought with war four years prior, but at the same time, when the best part about the environment is being able to enter Blade Mode and cut parts of it up, that's not exactly a good sign. Could be the washed out colors doing me in, though. Who knows? What is known, however, is that the characters have plenty of detail to them and seem to be significantly more vibrant and better on the eyes.

The sound design is a mixed bag of sorts. The voice acting ranges from serviceable to kind of good to flat out comical, especially Raiden. He goes from sounding normal, to occasionally sounding like his old whiny self, and then to sounding like the offspring of Skeletor and Christian Bale's Batman. His normal voice is actually pretty good and allows you to believe that he's in control, but then he has that “gruff” voice – it's meant to symbolize his descent into madness or some shit, but it sounds so over the top that it actually works against itself. It's like when you drink too much beer and then wonder where your pants have gone and then wonder where you are right now. The others who ham it up actually do a fantastic job of having you believe that it's a sillier game than you'd expect from the Metal Gear series, so it's not that being silly with your voice is bad; it's just there are limits, that's all. If there's one thing that's give the game that extra oomph, it's the music. Ranging from techno to rock, the music manages to kick your ass until shit comes out of your ears. It manages to pump you up through some energetic beats and fast rhythms, and a nice touch is that each of the boss songs have lyrics that are relevant to them while having the vocal delivery to keep up with the music. No, not death metal growls or anything, they're still clean, but the point is, it fits the boss to a tee and the atmosphere to the pixels that make up the letter.

I'm at odds with Revengeance - on one hand, the game is fun as shit to play through thanks to some robust combat mechanics, rocking music and over the top cinematics, and there's a fair amount of replay value to be found with the unlockable harder difficulty levels on top of the ranking and upgrade systems. On the other hand, the story sucks, the final boss sucks and the second half feels rushed in comparison to the first half, as if Platinum wanted to finish development as quickly as possible and didn't want it to essentially turn it into Duke Nukem Forever or Final Fantasy XV. There's just too much working against Revengeance to consider it a great game, though for what it does right, it most certainly comes recommended.

7/10 (Good)

Review: Super House Of Dead Ninjas

Super House Of Dead Ninjas is a fast and furious game, kids. No cutscenes, no interrupting tutorials and best of all, no bullshit. It gives you a quick run down of the controls, which you can reconfigure in the main menu anyway (especially helpful if you use a controller, which is recommended for better control... I mean, unless you've only ever played retro games on a keyboard and can't legally buy alcohol in Australia), and then you'll need to use what you learned in five seconds to cut up enemies on your way down the 350 floor tower. There is a story found in the comic book that can be accessed in the main menu... something about a legendary one armed ninja that descended down THE TOWER and found treasure beyond ones' wildest dreams, only to fall victim to the darkness within. That darkness is known as the demon Abarghus, and with whispers around it circulating around the village, the kunoichi Nintai Ryoko goes through the tower in search of answers. The comic itself also details the default control scheme and it looks pretty cool, making it worth a glance over, but the real meat is in the game itself.

Seriously, I haven't had this much fun with a retraux game in quite some time... well, okay, there was Cave Story+ that I played fairly recently, but other than that, these kinds of games tend to come off as lazy, boring and just really fucking lame. It's like “why play these hollow imitations when you can play the originals” - for every Mega Man 9 and Cave Story, there are lots of mediocre wannabe retro games that may bring you back to the past without actually providing any good fun gameplay. Super House Of Dead Ninjas, which came out in February of 2013, is a damn fun game that'll kick your ass until shit comes out of your ears, and like the stubborn mule you are, you'll keep coming back. Well actually, what'll keep you coming back are the various upgrades and different weapons that you'll acquire by doing various things like killing bosses or killing a boss with just the katana you start with, among plenty of other things. You'll either unlock more melee weapons, ranged weapons, explosives, spells, collectibles (x-ray specs to reveal the contents of boxes and enemies, smart bombs to destroy everything on screen, infinite ammo and a bunch of other helpful things) and stats (health, time, projectiles, explosives and spells) depending on what you do during each run through the tower.

The game itself revolves around you going through each floor, making sure to stay alive. You can either slice their heads off (and for good measure, keep slicing at the head) up close or from afar, blow them up using various explosives or use a variety of spells to make things easier on yourself if your other weapons can't do much. One cool thing you can do is, when you hold down while in the air, either perform a downward stab or a spinning slash to kill enemies easier. These attacks do double the damage but are risky because it's possible to undershoot your attack and get raped. In fact, getting raped is what will happen to you when you first play this. The first hundred floors won't seem too bad – enemies just bumbling about or running like they have propellers up their asses are what you have to contend with, maybe with some ranged attackers to keep you on your toes.

That much probably sounds easier than the middle school slut, but then you get to floor 250 and have to contend with your first boss. Now, the boss you fight depends on how much health you have. Having more than half of your health will have you fight a boss while having less will give you a different boss. Either way, getting a hold on these bosses can be a tad tricky as one will run across the floor, climb up a wall and either jump from wall to wall or just lunge onto the ground; or it'll jump around and occasionally fire a bomb at you that'll explode and damage you. This is also where you may want to make sure you have a grip on the controls as while Nintai can move fast, her jumping and even double jumping is fairly low and sometimes, the super jump won't even charge, which is a real bitch when you fight a certain boss that outright fucking requires it (oh, unless dying is what you enjoy doing). Oh, things get more interesting as you descend down the tower as there'll be more relentless enemies, some of which can only be destroyed via spells and explosives. The level design itself throws more spikes at you and bomb headed enemies, as well as enemies that throw small white bombs at you are a bit more common, meaning you'll probably get blown up...

...and then you fight the one armed ninja and find yourself in a handicap match against Vin Diesel and Brock Samson. What makes the fight hard isn't necessarily his attacking patterns, but when you can hit him. Hint – you can only hit him when he flashes orange, which is before he attacks and lasts about 2 seconds. Expect to die a number of times trying to get the timing down. Oh, and he has two phases. This one has a million hit points and a seemingly unavoidable attack until you learn how to make it avoidable and then learn how to hit him. You finally beat the boss and then get told “lol play on the hard difficulty to get the true ending”, because if you play this on normal, that's the end of the ride. Normal mode is essentially training wheels mode. Now, while I'd be quick to say that you're a pussy for playing on the easy mode, hard mode gets rid of continues so if you lose all of your health, that's an automatic game over – at least on normal, you're given 3 continues, but then you can't actually finish the game. The thing is however, you need to get the feel for it before you can be confident enough to get through the hard mode. From there, it dawns onto you that in order to truly beat the game, you need to unlock a combination of weapons that you can fuck about with and see what you get the best feel for. Maybe you'll be fine with the default weapons, maybe you need different weapons; either way, you need to play around with the different combinations that you have at your disposal, sometimes go out of your way to do some things to unlock other weapons (and on the select screen before you play the game, it'll tell you how to unlock extra stuff).

In other words, this game can be tricky dicky. Getting the timing down for the downward slash can be hard and the cost for failure is the loss of a bit of health. Enemies tend to be placed in ways that can dick you over if you rush your way through the tower and given that you generally kill enemies with one or two hits plus the short floors, you'll be quick to rush through. The time limit can also aid in you rushing through as you have at least half a minute before you need to find the nearest clock collectible, lest you lose health by getting hit by the reaper. But if you can take a couple of seconds to look at the next floor, you can plan and execute, or just use the downward slash and pray for the best as it, way more often than not, kills whatever enemy it touches. In other circumstances, the downward slash would be a game breaking kill fuck everything move, but given that only one or maybe two regular attacks are all that's necessary to kill an enemy, the downward slash requires you to cover a bit of distance and the ranged attacks and explosives have their own means of being balanced (ranged attacks are either slow or weak while explosives can take time to explode and require a lot of prediction), the downward slash is far from it. Oh and against bosses, unless it ensures a kill, it's basically suicide because you'll more than likely get hit either after it deals damage or before you even touch it. Another seemingly game breaking mechanic is the rage mode – you have a meter that'll fill up a bit after you kill an enemy, but it empties out unless you kill more enemies. If you kill a bunch of enemies in a small amount of time, you'll enter rage mode, which will make you invincible and stronger until the meter empties. Hey, that's another thing that makes this game fast paced! The reasons it doesn't break the game are that enemies die in so few hits anyway that the invincibility is the only real bonus you get, and you won't be using it against the bosses.

Speaking of bosses, while they have simplistic movements, they're good enough to give you hell if you don't beat them quickly enough or figure out how to beat them. Oh, you think the first boss is easy on paper? Cool – now let's talk about in execution. As I've already mentioned, you have a slash, a downward slash, a ranged weapon, an explosive and a magic attack at your disposal. You've been taught how to execute them in the first couple of floors. Now's definitely the time to put that to good use as-- oh you just got killed by the bomb toting jitterbug demon. Not so easy now, huh? Kind of. As per retro game design rules, experimentation is a necessity in figuring out the best way to kill a boss, but on the whole, most of the bosses aren't all that exciting and after a while, they generally come across as a distraction or a mild annoyance rather than a genuinely threatening guardian of the tower, unless the super jump doesn't fucking work (I make a point of mentioning this as often as I can because this can dick you over when you need it at times). Doubly so if you use the upgraded boomerang as it can travel a great distance and it comes back to you. Generally speaking, this game doesn't bullshit the player and that's what I love about it – I love the fast paced action, I love the different combinations of equipment and spells can either make things harder or easier, and I especially love how deceptively well designed everything is. Hell, despite my bitching, the bosses aren't terrible; it's just that the idea is to play this over and over again to unlock everything and the rest of the tower is semi-randomized, so fighting the bosses again and again gets pretty boring. Except the one armed ninja. He's quite the hardass.

It's funny that when the game loads up, it shows off a Super Nintendo box because if anything, it looks and sounds more like a Sega Genesis game. In terms of audio quality, it's not like it's a bad thing or anything, but with graphics, well, let's just say that somewhat washed out colors aren't everybody's thing. While Nintai and the bosses are brighter than the sun and some bosses coming out looking like a gay pride banner, everything else has a bit of dullness in their schemes. It at least helps Nintai and the bosses stand out, and really, besides the fluid animations, there actually isn't that much to the graphics. The explosions are a basic orange cloud looking thing, the enemies are either ninjas, guys wearing big bronze armor, guy in cloaks wearing crow masks or some sort of monster – the designs are good and like I said, the animations are fluid, but not much really stands out as great or anything. The graphics are good, no doubt about it, but that's about it.

When it comes to sound design, it's technically good, but it's not quite there. The music sounds suited more towards an espionage mission rather than a mission where heads must be rolled or reduced to ash. There are some beats in there, but overall, it's a bit too subdued for what it's trying to be. Besides, it gets drown out by the purposefully low quality sound effects anyway. The main menu theme inspires more heart pumping action than the stage themes anyway as it has a harsh drum beat, is moderately paced and doesn't sit comfortably in the background. The boss theme is fucking good – it, too, is moderately paced, but what sells the song is that it's got the feeling of tension in its composition. It's at a lower register and the rhythm has the same few chords playing again and again to motivate you to kick some ass and take some names.

Games like this don't come to us every day, folks. Super House Of Dead Ninjas might appear to be your typical retraux shitfest, like some hairy libertarians wanting to “pay tribute” to Slayer/Exodus/Kreator by trying way too hard to be them. But underneath the surface lies a game that's more fun than popping bubble wrap. It's not perfect by any means – not with those fucking bosses – but for the most part, it does everything it can to remain fresh with each and every playthrough via unlockables you can experiment with and a semi-randomized tower design. Whether you have a quick run before bed/going out or you go through multiple times because you're too stubborn to accept defeat, this game manages to accommodate towards your lifestyle as long as you have something resembling reflexes. So this is probably not for arthritic grandmas and slow witted people.

9/10 (Fucking Awesome)

Review: Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Mirror Of Fate

The reboot of the Castlevania series, Lords Of Shadow, was met with mixed reception – people enjoyed it for its refreshing take on the Castlevania series while people whinged about it for being a reboot, being too unoriginal and/or – and this is classic – not being a real Castlevania game. Really, I thought that this was about as close to being a true Castlevania game as it got, and by true, I mean more like the NES/SNES Castlevanias than being Symphony Of The Night. However, Mercury Stream thought that people wanted Symphony Of The Night with Lords Of Shadows' combat engine, because hey, it's on a Nintendo handheld and by law, it better be like Symphony Of The Night! Well, too bad that, more often than not, it just doesn't quite work as well in their favor as they would like it to. It's not so much about striking a middle ground between 2D and 3D – I mean, there are a couple of instances where that sticks out in a bad way – but it's more about the design choices in general. Really, this could've been a great game, but it feels like Mercury Stream didn't quite capitalize on much, if anything that they had at their disposal here.

Before you play Mirror Of Fate, you're basically required to play through Lords Of Shadow on the PS3 or 360 because its story revolves around the plot twist at the end of Lords Of Shadow. Yes, I'm aware that the beginning more than fills you in, but really, everybody should play through Lords Of Shadow. It might not have the best puzzles or beast taming mechanics, but the combat, the bosses and the story are all fantastic, and since they're the focal points of the game, then have at it! Besides, other than filling you in on the story of the previous game, this game barely has any real story. Basically, it boils down to Gabriel Belmont setting up the scene, which then boils down to Trevor/Simon Belmont needing to take down Dracula. Seriously? I get that this is a sidestory that takes place between Lords Of Shadow and its eventual sequel, but a little more oomph wouldn't hurt. There was plenty in Lords Of Shadow and it was a compelling narrative because of that; this is more like Mirror's Edge and Dishonored where there is fuck all to it, except some shit about the Mirror Of Fate and souls and really, I just lost interest in the story. None of the characters are particularly interesting and the story is just boring. Compounding this are unskippable cutscenes. No, fuck you, this is 2013, not 2003; this shit is inexcusable.

Mirror Of Fate is just weird. It wants to play like the 2D Castlevania games, but it has the feel of the 3D Castlevania games. It wants to be like the Metroidvania games in that there's a huge castle to explore, but given that you're playing as three different characters at three different time periods, some downsizing had to be done. As a result, it hardly feels like you're actually exploring the castle; instead, it feels more like you're a gerbil in a linear maze with a few small nooks to give the illusion of open endedness. A lot of the time when you're presented with a seemingly impassable obstacle, you're usually required to get a new item that you'll find at some point in the parts of the castle that you can explore. Even then, you'll only ever really find HP and MP upgrades, sub weapon ammo and experience points you can use to purchase new attacks. You can also acquire experience points from defeating enemies, but more on enemies in a sec – a lot of the time, it feels more like a superfluous detail than a legitimate design choice.

It wants to be like the Metroidvania games but it, more or less, has the linearity of the first Castlevania game on the NES, but yet it has lots of backtracking like a Metroidvania game... it feels like they couldn't quite think of a way to create an ingeniously designed set of castles so they just went “fuck it” and did the first thing that came to mind. “Exploring” this castle feels like a chore, like it would've been better suited as a set of levels rather than one big level that changes when the game decides to arbitrarily change your character every few hours. Before anybody cries “it's on a handheld”, I'll just say that Aria Of Sorrow, which is my second favorite Metroidvania game for what it's worth, was on the fucking Game Boy Advance and it had a much better designed castle than this hunk of shit! In fact, it was a better game on the whole, and that's because it understood basic game design principles, something Mirror Of Fate didn't quite get.

While we're talking about design, it's pretty cool that you can use your whip to swing on chandeliers, although it seems more like a cool afterthought than anything else as it doesn't require anything more than basic timing. In fact, platforming as a whole seems more like an afterthought than an integral design choice. I've played Kirby games with more demanding platforming! But hey, at least it's a cool afterthought, which is more than I can say for the sub weapons and special powers each character can possess – not even going to bother listing them because you'll either only ever use them to get through parts of the castle that you couldn't get through by other means or you'll use them like once before resorting to using the whip. Well, I guess I'd be willing to use Trevor's super speed more to make the one or two backtracking sequences less boring if it lasted for more than like 5 steps. Nope, it's just there to jump gaps, but you'll probably forget because you never really use these abilities. Oh... did I mention that you don't use each character for longer than maybe 3 or 4 hours? Don't get too used to them, you hear? Probably explains why they fight with the combat cross (or the whip as I kept on calling it) eerily similar to one another...

The combat is such a mixed bag, that it almost hurts the game in a way. For one thing, combat happens at pre-determined points. Instead of fighting enemies along the path, you'll get into what would appear to be an arena setting and fight a group or so of enemies. Another thing is that defense oriented gameplay is somewhat encouraged. Much like Revengeance and the original Lords Of Shadow for that matter, Mirror Of Fate isn't above letting the enemies pummel you into dust if you don't either dodge or parry. Thankfully, parrying is as simple as pressing block at the right time and then allowing you to let it rip while dodging has you press left or right while holding the block button. It can be easy to get cornered though, so watch your footing.. or rolling in this case. However, I did say that a defensive style of play is only somewhat encouraged; unless you notice that you're about to get hit, you can pretty much mash the X and Y buttons, only blocking or dodging before you get hit. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit too clear that this doesn't quite work on a 2D scale, mainly because when I look at the 3D graphics and watch the dance of life that is the combat, I can't help but want to dodge anywhere but towards and away from them. Not just that, but between getting cornered at times and just plain being locked on a 2D scale fighting mobs of enemies that magically appear as opposed to fighting enemies as I travel through the castle, fighting enemies is just... boring.

Look at it this way - in Aria Of Sorrow, you fight enemies that roam around the castle – whether they're shuffling about or flying from the sides, there's always something to fight, even if you don't expect it. There was always this whiff of tension to it, like you never know what's behind that door. But there was always a chance to escape or bypass the enemy on your way to the next room... maybe even the save room to heal up and then take that big bad living doll down while Medusa Heads come from the sides. But in Mirror Of Fate, you fight mobs of enemies and you have to kill them. Oh don't worry, there's a checkpoint/autosave system in place, and it's one of the most liberal checkpoint systems I've experienced in a while – for fucks sake, during boss battles, if you die, you simply respawn and they don't regain much if any health! However, none of the enemies or bosses really do anything interesting to warrant giving a shit, and even though you learn new combos via levelling up... there's hardly a need to use them.

Oh, and this game employs quick time events. Not that a single one is used for cinematic purposes or anything; they're just slammed onto the plate because hey, it's the cool thing to put into games. I especially love the ones encouraging the player to mash a button, because the 3DS can take it, right? It's not like these buttons are small and somewhat fragile, right? Oh wait... this drives me insane because the bosses are easily the highlight of this game. They hit hard, which encourages you to dodge and parry if you can while you seek the best time to wail on them. But then two things happen. One, liberal checkpoints that make the fights easier than they should be; and two, it takes like a million hits to beat any given boss, making each fight feel more like a test of your patience than a test of skill. Hey, you want to know how to make these fights challenging while making them fun? Get rid of the mid-fight checkpoints, lower their HP, and get rid of the quick time events! Just thinking out loud here obviously...

But hey, at least this game looks and sounds... alright, at least. In fact, Mirror Of Fate looks amazing on the 3DS, with some high quality textures and highly detailed models seriously showing off the 3DS's graphical capabilities. Needless to say, I was awestruck by the amount of detail put into everything, especially the animations. I didn't say “watch the dance of life that is the combat” for no reason; the animations are very, very smooth and detailed, which goes well with the defensive gameplay that Mirror Of Fate encourages. Not to mention, it's just plain mesmerising  like the Batman Arkham games and Sleeping Dogs, the animations manage to really suck you in. The scenery seems more like a castle featured in the Lord Of The Rings series rather than a piece of gothic architecture like in the older games – I mean, there are parts that are reminiscent of the old gothic atmosphere, but then there are parts that are plain and, despite the staggering amount of detail that surprisingly doesn't result in lag (unlike a certain other game I know of, right Kingdom Hearts DDD), it just isn't as immersing as it could've been. It's a shame – our characters' clothes and a lot of the monster designs are what you'd expect in old vampire slaying movies with maybe a few ripped from Lord Of The Rings (sorry, but Lords Of Shadow did make me think of Lord Of The Rings with its setting at first and that impression carries on here). Ah well.

The soundtrack at least has that gothic vibe, but it's more in the background than anything else. I guess it could've worked as the best haunting soundtracks are ones that lay in the background, ready to pounce – ask Akira Yamaoka! But where Silent Hill had masterful sound design, Mirror Of Fate simply has competent sound design. Well, okay, that's not entirely fair nor even true as the voice acting was good. Most of the vocal deliveries were convincing enough to work with a couple of scenes showcasing great voice acting, and some characters who could've been better. Simon Belmont is a standout amongst the crowd as he has an impassionate voice that suits his fiery demeanour  Most everybody else sounds good, but nothing noteworthy. It's a bit of a shame nothing else stands out because usually, Castlevania soundtracks – from the gothic yet upbeat NES games to the jazzier variants found in Castlevania 4, to even the Lord Of The Rings inspired Lords Of Shadow, there were tracks that stood out as fantastic, especially that one song in Castlevania 2 – you know the one I'm talking about. Here? Umm... it... doesn't blow every dick in a five mile radius...

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow – Mirror Of Fate is Mercury Stream saying “you losers wanted old school Castlevania, well here you go – enjoy your shitty old Nintendo game you fat geeks!” - you know the type of attitude; that grizzled look on their face, with the somewhat gravelly tone in their voice or that loud, hoarse voice depending on how pissed they are with their fanbase, all the while thinking to themselves “those idiots will learn to love my style if I blend it into the style that they love”. It's odd however, because even if I was somebody who can't accept change and think Symphony Of The Night is what Castlevania should be, Mirror Of Fate just doesn't get it right as it's pretty linear despite giving the illusion of open endedness, like most SNES/PS1 JRPGs. As somebody who did enjoy Lords Of Shadow while also quick to consider making love to the Sorrow duo, I found Mirror Of Fate to be a rather... underwhelming mishmash of the styles and an overall mediocre game.

5/10 (Average)