Mongo Nation

Already has my vote for game of the year.

By Jeremy Azevedo

It’s been a great month for gaming… We’ve been bombarded with so many class A titles, from Fable 2 and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia to Guitar Hero: World Tour, Little Big Planet and maybe even Wii Music, if you’re into that I guess…

Well, I hope you saved a few crispie$ for Fallout 3, because it’s the shit. I’m sorry to have to ask you to shell out again, what with the economy being as crippled as it is, but consider how much money you’ll save by not going out, because once you start playing Fallout 3, you are unlikely to leave your house for weeks.

Like Fable, Mass Effect and KOTOR, Bethesda Game Studio’s new crown jewel offers infinite ways in which to play. Your actions truly do shape the world around you, and what seems like the “right” or “wrong” course of action may have totally unforeseen consequences. At one point some asshole that tried to encourage me (via a tasty bribe) to detonate the nuke sitting dormant in the center of the town of Megaton. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you exactly what happened, but my attempt to do the right thing ended up in a particularly shocking and tragic turn of events that I was entirely caught off guard by. And had I decided to actually take the dude up on his offer rather than play the hero, there’s no doubt in my mind that I could have simply destroyed the entire town and everyone in it. This is the weight that is applied to all of your actions and decisions in the world of Fallout 3.

Character development allows you to make any kind of hero or villain that you like: Cannibal freaks, science dorks, gunsmiths, highwaymen, politicians… You are the sum of the skills that you choose to develop. Furthermore, you can upgrade your character with a wide range of abilities that range from obvious stuff like higher critical percentages to weird shit, like a guardian angel that sometimes appears to blow your enemy’s head off before mysteriously disappearing back into the wasteland. I would imagine that different playthroughs might offer entirely different experiences, which puts the replayability of Fallout 3 pretty much through the roof.

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A step forward, or more of the same?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Some people have been complaining for years now that every portable Castlevania title is no different than the last. Same enemies, same bosses, same combat system, same effeminate hero, same Metroid-vania collectathon…

…Honestly, It’s never bothered me. I look forward to each return to Castle Dracula, and have played every game since Symphony of the Night into oblivion. So you can imagine my surprise to find that “Order of Ecclesia” plays less like “Symphony of the Night” and more like “Simon’s Quest”.

For the first time in ages, Castlevania has moved out of it’s comfort zone into a whole new world, one that doesn’t involve Belmonts or a magically appearing castle for once. Instead of traditional weapons, you fight with an ever-replenishing pool of magic, not unlike the secret “sisters” characters from last years “Portrait of Ruin”. You even have NPCs to interact with in a central hub town, that help outfit you with items, armor and accessories in exchange for performing little fetch quests. Some might find the fetch quests annoying but I seem to find everything I’m looking for fairly easily, and it’s a hell of a lot better than fighting the same goddamn enemies a thousand times or resorting to cheats to come up with the obscene amount of money required in previous games.

The magic combat system works great, although it does pose some unique challenges. If you are out of magic, you must wait for it to replenish before you attack again. Also, each enemy type is particularly susceptible to certain attack types, others, not so much. You have to figure out what works best when, and fast, because the other new thing about this game is that it is bastard hard. Seriously, the last Castlevania game was a cakewalk compared to this. I have had my ass handed to me more times than I would like to admit; sometimes you walk into a new area, and the very first thing that happens is that you get totally pwned by some gnarly boss. But it’s never unfair; you just have to figure it out, and adjust our strategy in order to win. Defeating the bosses feels quite a bit more rewarding after carefully unraveling their attack patterns and weaknesses, and you can always head back to the safe haven of Wygol village to regroup if things get too hairy for you.

If you’re one of those people that has been crying about a lack of “hardcore” games on Nintendo systems… you still won’t find one on the Wii. But DS owners are in for a treat with Konami’s latest entry to the Castlevania series, a fresh approach to an old classic and a uniquely challenging adventure that will certainly reinvigorate the interest of longtime fans.

Score: 9 out of 10
+1 if you like a real challenge and are an experienced vampire slayer
-2 if you are a fumbling, unskilled n00b with little-to-no twitch action prowess

Is it the masterpiece that was promised?

By Jeremy Azevedo

The original Fable was one of the greatest games that I have ever played. Along with Knights of the Old Republic, it was the reason why I bought the original Xbox in the first place. (I am a huge action/RPG nerd.)

Fable represented a quantum leap in role playing, introducing a deep system of player interactions, personal choice, rewards and consequences. Fable 2 takes all these concepts and develops them further, evolving into what may be the greatest sandbox game of all time, even next to Grand Theft Auto 4. There is more to do in this game than you could possibly imagine, and none of it involves lame stealth, following or escort missions, either.

Everything in Fable 2 delivers on the promises made by Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios. The writing is top notch, the combat is fast and fun and the many, many different systems of interaction and moral consequence may extend the life of the game indefinitely. I have spent far more time dicking around, robbing houses, resisting arrest, scoring babes, practicing safe sex, treasure hunting, blacksmithing, highway robbing, cliff diving, dog grooming, hunting and dabbling in real estate than I have actually following the main story. Thankfully, an unobtrusive “trail of bread crumbs” is always present to lead you to the next objective, as you will probably wander off the beaten track at times for so long that you forget just what the hell you were in the process of doing in the first place.

Even the graphics, which look kind of weird in pictures, take on a life of their own in motion. The style and fluidity of animation is top notch, avoiding the hallow appearance of most realistic looking art styles by not really trying to look realistic at all. Everything in the game is bursting with character, from your incredibly useful canine companion to the goblin-like Hobbes… You almost feel a real sense of guilt every time you lead a villager to sacrifice or sell your wife and children into slavery. And I don’t think there is any character evil enough to abuse the aforementioned dog that accompanies you throughout the game.

The number of ways in which you can approach a moral dilemma are what makes the game so enjoyable. Nothing is just black and white, good and evil. Your character can be pious but feared, cruel but fair, a thieving, clowning jerk (like my character) or really anything that you feel like being. Your appearance and the way people react to you is affected by these choices, as well as the appearance of the world around you. For instance, decisions that you make in the childhood stage of your quest can determine whether the town of Bowerstone is a booming suburb or a crime-ridden hovel. Read the rest of this entry →

Like Deliverance, only with fewer banjos and more zombies.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Midnight Movies is an irregularly occurring feature whose purpose is to showcase little-to-no budget films that play at late night theaters in the slums of America and the bombed-out megaplexes of the former Soviet Republic Eastern Bloc!

Even if you’ve never heard of Drac Studios before, you have no doubt seen quite a bit of their work. They have done special effects and makeup for everything from X-Men, Pirates of the Caribbean and Titanic on down to Ugly Betty, Friends and Power Rangers. These guys have had their hands in everything, and are just about unparalleled when it comes to the lost art of live SFX. It’s only fitting then, that they should dabble in a little full-scale production of their own.

Trailer Park of Terror, which is based on a comic series by the same name, is the first feature length, in-house production to come out of Drac Studios. As you can imagine, a horror film made by a shop that has been nominated many times for achievements in makeup and effects makes a lot of sense. Even on a smaller budget, it is possible for them to use their own resources to give make a horror picture look like it had a multi-million dollar effects budget. Horror fans expecting gruesome thrills, explicit torture scenes and horribly disfigured zombie/demon monsters will not be disappointed in the slightest.

Director Steven Goldmann, himself a country boy and a comic fan, took great care to infuse Trailer Park of Terror with actual Appalachian bumfuck Ozark American flavor, gathered in his experience as a prolific country music video director. Granted, much of that aesthetic was already present in the comics. But little touches, like the way one character is injected with salad dressing like a turkey about to be roasted, or more noticeable elements like the soundtrack, come from Goldmann’s influence.

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The definitive version. For real this time.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is almost complete, and we’ve got some new screens that show just how well it’s coming along!

The hand drawn character art by Udon Entertainment looks so amazing, it sets a new standard for 2-D animation in a video game. To illustrate the difference, here is a picture of the actual in game appearance of Ken Masters, both in the original game and the HD optimized remake:

Notice the difference?

SSF2HDR will be available very soon on XBLA and PSN, and is expected to set records for the longest combination of acronyms ever written by gaming journalists. Anyone who has ever played a fighting game should be excited to get their hands on the definitive version of the title that started it all. For those that haven’t, SSF2HDR presents an ingenious way to expose a new generation of gamers to a classic, combining old-school action with cutting-edge visuals, not unlike a cougar with a really phenomenal boob job.

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