A Devil's Playground: A Look at Sandbox Games (Part One)

When people think of Sandbox Style games, they usually immediately think of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, or any other Rockstar Game. Then, the passing glimpses of the Spider-Man games come to mind. But what about the games that could have had that moment in the sun? Mercenaries 2 and The Saboteur, while not exactly stand out games, were open world games. The one that comes closest to GTA 4 is Mafia 2, but it still doesn't hit off among most Sandbox fans.

This is kind of sad, to me, really, because the over all mechanics of the whole open world system is done better in Mafia 2 than in Grand Theft Auto. Hand to hand combat feels like a game instead of a chore, each vehicle does drive differently, but all do respond to your commands. The world feels alive with actual people other than pallet swaps of the same three people. There are more variations in missions. Even the collectables, wanted posters and (while anachronistic) Playboy centerfolds feels right.

GTA 4 has one leg up: mini games. Yes, Red Dead Redemption had mini games too, but it also had a story everyone could relate to. GTA 4's story, to me, feels unpolished due to the fact that the mini games are essential to the over all game itself where RDR's are optional. The story in GTA 4 feels less relatable to me due to the fact that I was born in America, but I can still feel sympathetic for Niko Bellic because he feels lied to by his cousin, and, moreso, by his own over zealousness for the American Dream and revenge. Revenge is perfectly a human relatable emotion, and one that's a little over used for this type of game, in my opinion.

Part of what makes The Saboteur and Mercenaries 2 fall in the sandbox game is the lack of mission variation. Blow stuff up, run away, hide, repeat (hide in Saboteur, stand there like Chuck Norris in Mercenaries 2). For a $9.99 downloadable game, that's not bad. For a $60 game... that's not a whole hell of a lot. The Spider-Man games did it a little bit better by adding more mission variation, such as stopping robberies and saving falling civilians. But the over and under load of missions only serve to distract from what the sandbox game is supposed to be, often pulling you away from the exploration. GTA 4 does the same thing with the main missions being cell phone calls that will put a marker on your map, making it so the only path way you can have at the time on your GPS is to the mission.

This is unacceptable when you start off in a game. You have no way of setting a point to save your game without ending the mission. The map the game comes with doesn't even have the save points marked on it, but has everything else. Combined with the sheer scope of the city, it makes the game over complicated for new gamers, giving them too much to do, introduced in too little time, hoping that they'll catch on by the end of the game. Some will stay dedicated to it, but most new comers will flee from it like a lobster from boiling water.

Next time, I'll be talking about how other genres can be made into open world games, and how genres beyond action/adventure integrate into the system so well that you may not realize it at first.

Umm... Wolverines?: The "Homefront" Review

In the year 2013, gas will be $20 a gallon. By 2019, we'll be fleeing to Mexico because it's better there, than in the US. By 2026, Korea will unleash an EMP that blacks out all of America, and take over. On top of all this, the Army will be so badly managed that they'll be scattered into two teams of, I'm not kidding, a platoon each.

This is the plot of Homefront, and while the premise of Korea taking over the US could be interesting and scary, the improbability of some of the events happening this fast is one of many things that makes the game's story less intense than it should be. The game seriously seems to forget that the world is suffering from a bad economy, not just the US. It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't look at the recession with a myopic view. What makes the story all the less impacting is the fact that the team of people you're working with range from bland to undeveloped to being as bad as the enemy.

You're character is saved by Conner, a Resistance member who takes pleasure from torturing the enemy. He leads you to a helicopter that you have to fly in order to steal fuel from the Koreans. This is all your character is good for, because you will die from everything. It's not uncommon to die in one hit in this game. This wouldn't be as bad if it weren't for the fact that you can die because enemies can shoot through and around your cover. I died more times from a bullet turning around a wall I was behind than from getting shot outside of cover.

At its core, there's a almost decent shooter somewhere. That is, when you can get the game to work. The auto-snap aim never works properly, either not snapping onto an enemy within sight range, or missing completely despite having the sight right on them, or by the enemy knowing exactly where you'll hit, and moving an inch to the side. I want to know how exactly every FPS has these enemies, and why our military can never seem to be able to do that in games. What technology is this? Or is it witchery?

The set piece battles are thrown in, but at points pretty good... especially considering that most of them have been done before. The lone one I can think of that wasn't done to death was hijacking trucks from a helicopter. The rest of them feel like they've been done before and better. The same goes for the graphics and acting. The graphics look like the were done in the beginning of the seventh generation of consoles, when we didn't know the extent of what the tech could do. Characters don't seem to animate properly, mouths never close, and the textures are blurry. Voice acting feels like a "C" movie. If Bruce Campbell, Chuck Norris, and Sylvester Stallone can all out act you, you're doing something wrong (note to them... please don't murder me).

This is disappointing too, because the game has the spark that it could've been good. To top it off, it took me about four hours to finish it, and it just ends abruptly. I understand setting up for a sequel, but can we at least end this chapter properly? Even Halo knew that!

Homefront isn't worth $60-- hell, it isn't worth $40. It's a budget title with an advertising team big enough to make it seem more important than it is. Give this one a pass, because even if you buy it for $20 in a few months or a year, you're more than likely going to give it a passing play anyway, and then forget about it.

Overall:

D

+ Almost a good shooter

+ Interesting story...

- ... Made improbable by a rushed timeline

- ... and Characters that are unlikable

- Guerrilla tactics? That's head-on assault right?

- What's cover?

- Acting?!

- Good graphics?! What are these words?!

Cover Won't Save You, Now... Nor Will Stupid Name: The "Killzone 3"

It took me a year to beat Killzone 2, mostly because I was enjoying, but also because while it was fair, it was very, very difficult to me due to the control scheme, and the fact that weapons have a sense of inertia behind. It took me four days to beat Killzone 3. I was used to the controls, and I figured that it'd have the same, natural feel as the second game did. I enjoyed KZ2's story, combat realism, and it's serious nature. War isn't fun and games, and KZ2 blended them very well, which is a challenge.

How I wish I could say that about Killzone 3. Let's start with story. Whoever said that the second's story was too serious, kiss my ass. I would gladly take another serious story over what this story was. After Scolar Visari's murder in the second game, two people are vying to be Helghan's dictator: Jorhan Stahl (Malcolm McDowell), a weapon's manufacturer who makes the Joker look sane, and Orlock (Ray Winstone), an Admiral who has no defining characteristics from a Helghast soldier other than a scar. The remaining Earth's Army (ISA), including Sev (seriously... Sev? I always hated that name), Rico, and the combat-eager Captain Narville, now have to fight against two Helghast Armies to get back to Earth, before Earth is destroyed. You may think I spoiled it, but the plot if that predictable.

The story is also horribly written. I about used the disc as target practice when Narville refused to warn Earth that they were going to be destroyed because he's there to "protect my men." Imagine this: A squad in Afghanistan finds that al-Qaeda has nukes aimed at the US. The commander decides instead of fighting to warn the US, or prevent the launch, that it's a better idea to surrender because his men would survive. Hint: They probably wouldn't survive, but it's better to fight for the cause that they are fighting for in the first place. Not only is Narville's choice very cowardly, but very unlike his character. In the second, he was the one wanting blood. Here, he wants to wave a white flag.

Added to the game play is a cover mechanic. You hold a button to stay in cover, and you can aim over cover to shoot enemies. The problem is that cover is useless seeing as your head will always stick out of waist high cover when ducking, and enemies can somehow shoot through a four feet thick metal wall. Figuring you die in one to three shots, this is aggravating, even more so when enemies take a whole magazine to die. Guerrilla Games had to have seen this in testing, along with Rico constantly stopping you in the middle of trying to get somewhere safe to tell you that he should lead the way. At first, I thought this was a bug, but now I'm sure that the son of a bitch was using me as a meat shield, shortly after he did this, I'd die, and he'd scream, "I can't get to you!" despite standing right in front of me. The solution to these issues was that your teammates can heal you, and ammo points are abound. The first one loses any merit because either your teammate can't get to where you are, or one of the two people who can heal you aren't in that mission.

We also have a lot of on rails parts, and vehicles. The biggest one is the Jetpack, which allows the player to jump really high. This is used in two sections of the game, one of them being absolutely useless. These sections feel half-assed, as if the developers decided that it was a cool idea at first, but didn't take the time to flesh it out. Again, that type of design doesn't work well.

While we're on things that don't work, why is there an unknown female character who contributes nothing to the story replacing a character from the second game that people liked? Natko's in the Co-Op campaign, but not the single player. Instead, we get Jammer, and I still have no idea what she was doing in the game. She does absolutely nothing until the end, and even then, that's getting her ass kicked until a nameless male soldier saves her. It's sad on more than the level of the man saving woman trope. The fight comes from absolutely nowhere (one second she's fine, the next second she's in the middle of the fight), and the nameless guy has more personality than her. He's the "Star Trek" red shirt, and he does more than her.

To say that Killzone 3 is a disappointment is minor. While it's no where near the worst game I've played, the fact that it's as poorly written and designed as it is, especially when compared to the first two games, is insulting. When I was assigned this and Bulletstorm, I thought this was the one I'd like more. I was wrong. If you want to see how the trilogy ends (and watch the depressingly abrupt ending that has no closure), rent it. Otherwise, play a better shooter... like Killzone 2.

Overall:

C-

+ Good graphics

+/- Nearly Capable Game Play

- Broken Cover System

- Bad story

- Bad writing

- Vehicle Sections that Add Nothing

- Poor Design Choices and Bad Programming

- Seriously... a Downer Ending?

- Jammer? Sev? Orlock?

(BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP) You (BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP): The "Bulletstorm" Review

I have become the horror guy for a good reason, yet, I enjoy being the "Shooter" guy a lot more as of late. I guess that's why I was assigned Bulletstorm, a game that makes shooters cry.

The plot for Bulletstorm is simple. You're Grayson Hunt, a space pirate drunk on booze and revenge (mainly booze) against General Saranno, a space confederation general who hired Gray and his team, only to betray them. Gray does something incredibly stupid (again, drunk) that causes his pirate gang to mostly die, taking Saranno's ship with them to the planet Elysium. The once paradise is now over run by mutants and bikers, and it's up to Gray to escape with his remaining pirate.

Aiding him is his new toy, the Leash, which allows Gray to toss an enemy (or "thump" a room of them) into the air. Along with that is the Skillshot system in which the more complicated or original your kill is, the higher score you'll get to spend on upgrades. The first time you accomplish a skill shot, it's worth more than the subsequent times i.e. "Mercy" (shooting a guy in the groin then shooting or kicking his head off) is worth 500 the first time and 100 the other times. These shots, while inventive and some of them taking a lot of practice, would get old over time, except for the fact that there are so many of them to do, and so many ways to combine them, that the game encourages experimentation. This, in turn, adds something we rarely get to see in FPS's lately, the "F" word.

No, not that one (we see that all the time, this game especially). I mean "fun." Yes, Bulletstorm is a lot of fun. Of course, how couldn't it be? In the course of it's lush 8-12 hour campaign, you'll drill enemies, free a cyborg from a man eating plant's belly, and control a robot dinosaur named Waggleton P. Tallylicker. The only low point is the poorly written climax, in which Gray seems to forget everything he has in his reach. This does lead to an inevitable ending, yet it feels more hopeful. By the end of the game, you want more of it. A lot more.

Luckily, there's "Echoes" mode, which allows you to replay parts of the levels, but with the emphasis on skill shots. The one multiplayer mode, Anarchy, plays like Gears of War 2's "Horde mode," in which more and more enemies come to attack you in waves. Playing on a team means team Skillshots. Too bad EA constantly closes servers before you can long on to play.

Despite some weird hiccups, namely getting stuck in walls, the game looks and sounds great. The voice work is over the top, but so is the writing. How can you take any of these character's seriously when they use "Butter Dick Jones" or "Dick-Tits" as a way to express dismay? What's tricky is the game isn't always laughs, and that's where the writing truly shines. On top of that, the characters look human enough to be related to. Ladies, you finally have a realistic depiction of a female in a video game that isn't supposed to be real. I mean, she doesn't have the impossible proportions of Lara Croft. This is very refreshing to see.

I thought that Bulletstorm would bore the hell out of me in the first ten minutes. Surprisingly, it;s more fun than any other FPS I've played recently. Drop your jocks and pull up your socks, because Bulletstorm is here to stay.

Overall: B+

+ Actually fun

+ Skillpoints

+ Great writing

+ A Robot Dino!!!!

- A Bit buggy

- Online servers are crap

"I Am Nothing" Chapter One

Chapter One

How long have I been in this city? Was it years? Months? Weeks? The only thing I remember before waking up on the bus to Minxton was the blood on my knuckles from her bruised face. Her tears... oh God, her tears as she begged me to stop. I felt her bones break with her skin, time and time again, blow after blow. There would've no mistaking it for falling down the stairs after that last time. My dear Micah, did I actually kill you that last time before I left?

No, I couldn't have. You threatened to call the police, and I ran away. Some would call me a coward for that. I call her a coward for letting me hit her in the first place. She screamed for me to stop, but never once did she stop me before I knocked her down. I almost thought she enjoyed covering for her scars, or for me. But that night was different. I can't remember for the life of me why she deserved to be punished. That's not the weird part, though. The weird part is that I know it, but something since I got into this city has blocked it out of my mind.

It must have been months. I'd already had my BFA, and I was starting my Masters in Bailey State University. The only reason I started thinking about how long I've been in this city is because it seems so long ago that I enrolled. This was my first quarter back in school, and I barely remember talking to an advisor about my degree. Come to think of it, I don't remember taking an entrance exam for college in the first place. What is wrong with this city? Maybe the air is fucking with my head.

I get off of the public bus, the trash heap that it is, and make my way to the Atrium, a three floored hang out for all of the busy-bodied Freshmen playing foosball, ping pong, video games, or watching mindless liberal drivel. I pass the gym, the radio station, and head for the tunnel system that connects the schools many buildings, making my way to the Arts Center.

“Long day ahead of us, eh?” The voice, a low, almost too deep for a woman's voice, belonged to Katie. She was the type of girl that I'm A Little Teapot was the perfect song for. She was roughly 5'1,” but weighed about as much as I did (roughly 174 at 5'7”). To make the joke that genetics (and, possibly, fast food) played on her, she sounded like a pig. Despite all of this, she was a kind heart, the type people couldn't help but like to be around.

“Don't remind me,” I sighed. “I barely slept last night. Maybe about four hours.”

“Ha! Two!” Katie gleaned, as if it was a contest of who could function on less sleep. Micah did that once. She learned after that. But, the way Katie said it, her blonde hair bouncing like Micah's did that day, struck me. It was almost as if Micah was next to me.

I shook it off as quickly as it came. “Look, I don't have time to talk right now. Katie,” I said with a polite smile. “My advanced drawing class awaits, and I don't want to piss the teacher off.” Before she had a chance to say anything else, I turned to the hallway, to catch the elevator. Unusually, only a minute after pressing the button, the elevator showed up, Rachel Morris waiting inside. Finally, someone I could genuinely tolerate! I related to her in a way. She was a little taller than me, thin, gawky, but her straight red hair and giant grey eyes took away from that fact, as did the scar on her left cheek. She claimed it was from an accident with a broken window, but I knew better.

The only thing that threw me off when ever I saw her were the bruises on her arms and neck. She had no family, no boyfriend, and barely a social life as far as I knew. It didn't help that I potentially knew the truth behind the scar, which only served to confuse me even more. Who did this to her?

“Augh, I'm so damn tired,” she said as the door closed. “I couldn't sleep last night. I must have gotten maybe--”

“Four hours?”

She looked at me, fairly sure I somehow became a psychic. “Yeah, how'd you know?”

I chuckled, trying to not see the eeriness of two people I knew not being able to sleep at the same night as me. “I'm in the same boat. I ended up drawing until 3:00, woke up at 7:00.” Rachel stared at me like the world was about to fall apart. Coincidence doesn't exist in Minxton, even for the most ironically devout Agnostics like her and Katie. For some reason, everyone in Minxton was convinced that everything happens for a reason. I, on the other hand, don't buy into superstitions, believing them to be childish inventions to scare others, much like the boogeyman.

We opened the wooden door to the drawing lab to see the set up of the day. Three human torsos, two of the decapitated, and a cast of Michelangelo's Moses. No doubt, our teacher would tell us stories of how he got these items, and why we need to draw them perfectly. I was usually too tired to listen unless he was teaching us something new. This was the tenth drawing class I've had in my learning career, and I was beginning to think that I'd hear the same things over and over.

I turned my head ever so slightly, and that's when I saw it. Next to the torso with a head, coming from a hole at it's base, was a sticky looking pink tube. It was dripping red from the outside, and seemingly pouring out. As soon as I realized that it was there, I turned to face it.

It was a extra large glow stick, the fluid, still glowing, dripping out. I didn't dare move it, thinking it to be part of the lesson. Find the thing that doesn't fit in, maybe. Who knows? Once the class started, we sat down and started to draw as the professor told us what we were doing anyway. After his speech, he took the glow stick. I swear to God, though, when he did, it was limp, and none of the fluid was missing from it. I shook off my tiredness – that had to be it – and continued drawing.

Horrid Horror Movie Review: Stigmata

Have you ever watched a movie so bad, that you couldn't figure out what was wrong with it until you realized that everything was wrong with it? Despite reviewing bad horror movies, this doesn't happen to me a lot. I mean I can site a few, but over all it's usually one to maybe a few things that make the movie bad, whether it be plot, the science behind it, or characters doing something that goes against themselves. Never have I seen this combination: plot, acting, schizophrenic direction, and music. The link isn't even the worst track, though the fact that only the first bar plays ad nauseam doesn't help. Most of the music is the repetitive screeching of a bad techno track. And, yes, you read that right, Billy Corgan did the music. Sigh... can this guy just ever do anything right? With that note, let's pray that Stigmata isn't going to be a cardinal sin.

We start the movie with Gabriel Byrne playing Father Andrew-- oh, I forgot to mention this. Gabriel Byrne played a priest and Satan in the same year. He plays a priest in this movie, and the Devil in End of Days. Ironically, it was his portrayal as Satan that redeems him. How odd. Anyway, he goes to a church in Brazil to investigate a statue of Mary that's crying blood. Without him noticing, despite watching as it happens, a kid runs up, takes the rosary from the dead priest the statue is crying for, and sells it to a woman, who sends it to her daughter, Frankie. Frankie is a club-going alcoholic, sexoholic, drug addicted atheist. Keep this stereotype in mind (of which group, I have no fucking clue), because it's going to bite us in the ass later on. After waking up alone, Frankie gets a call from her "boyfriend" (they hint that he both is and isn't) and her mom at the same time. Her mom prods her into opening the package, in which Frankie finds the rosary. She then hangs up on her mom, seemingly forgetting her boyfriend was on the other line. I'm surprised I remembered considering just how bland the character was.

Meanwhile, Andrew tells Cardinal Houseman, played by Jonathan Pryce... Reaalllllllly?! Was work that hard to find in the late '90's? Anyway, Houseman isn't convinced that the statue is crying, or that miracles exist (he's Catholic?), and tells Andrew to wait for his next mission. Guess who's going to Frankie's place?

The same night, Frankie is violently attacked by... pigeons? During the attack, her wrists start bleeding. Suddenly, she's in the ER as Billy Corgan skins a cat with a cheese grater. As suddenly as the scene shifts - seriously, who called the ambulance? - she's lucid, and trying to convince the doctor that she didn't do this despite worrying about being potentially pregnant. She's then at home as her best (female) friend waits for her in bed. No, she's not a lesbian, her friend just didn't see the foldout couch in the next room... and she likes to spoon. Frankie goes to work the next day, but suffers an attack on the subway after asking a priest if he's Andrew. She then gets 40 lashes. By 40, I mean six.

Andrew talks to his friend because he thinks he's losing faith. Father Delmonico mentions that he knew this because, "God's here and we know everything." When Andrew asks him what he's translating, he mentions that it's a newly found gospel for the Vatican Gospel Commission. When asked what it says, he says, "I don't know." So much for that "we know everything" bit he said two seconds ago.

Back at the hospital, her doctor tells her its epilepsy. Well, that makes sense... except for the stigmata. She asks if she was pregnant, and this happens:

Frankie: Am I pregnant?

Doctor: No.

Frankie: Was I before?

Doctor: I dunno.

Apparently, after only hours of losing a baby, all signs of it will spontaneously disappear. She returns to work, after having tests that have nothing to do with epilepsy done. She yells at her coworkers to stop whispering about her when Andrew walks in. She cuts his hair, and they talk about the wounds. She mentions she's an atheist, and he attempts to close the case because stigmatics are devout. She goes off to research it herself. After hours of looking at pictures, she goes to the club, where her head starts bleeding.

She runs out of the club, her friend chasing her, as her boyfriend casually glances and orders a beer. That's his character, peeps. Andrew follows her into an alley, where Frankie starts carving into a car with a piece of glass, and speaking another language. Beyond that, I have no clue, because the way it's directed, I feel that Billy Idol is going to pop out and announce that it's a nice time for a white wedding. She collapses, and Andrew takes her to a church where Delmonico is waiting. So... he drove from Pittsburgh to New York?

They nurse her back to health as Delmonico tells Andrew that she was speaking Aramaic, but he doesn't know what she was saying. This is important, not because of the "God lives here, we know everything" bit. The next day, Frankie goes home, and Andrew stops by to see that she's writing on the walls with a marker. After Andrew takes pictures, Frankie collapses, and then goes out for a day with Andrew until she falls due to her feet getting wounded.

Once again getting nursed by priests, Frankie believes she's dying. Andrew emails the pictures to Delmonico, who tells him it's Aramaic, and that it's the Gospel of St Thomas. This is also the same thing that Frankie was saying before, yet Delmonico couldn't translate it because he didn't know Aramaic. Much to Delmonico's chagrin, Father Elliot diMoro sees the pictures and sends them to Pryce. Delmonico calls Marion, the priest of the Church of Deus Ex Machima.

Andrew goes to Frankie's place again where she attacks him for not giving in to her sexual advances. After the attack, she levitates and cries tears of blood. Andrew picks her up from the air, and prays with her, holding the rosary from the beginning of the movie. As he's doing this, Pryce and company burst in and take Frankie, sending Andrew to a church in Pittsburgh. It's here that Marion tells him that Pryce didn't want the gospel out, so he closed the Gospel Commission three years ago... despite it being active in the beginning of the movie. By this logic, Andrew figures out that Frankie is possessed by the spirit of the third priest, the one who died in the beginning of the movie. You read that right, she's possessed by a priest that is causing her bodily harm and making her attempt to rape priests.

I couldn't make this shit up. Yes, I understand that the message is that the priest is supposed to have the "true word" of God, but he possessed her in much the same was a demon would, and is causing her harm as well as making her sin (more than usual). The kicker is that the message is that God is found in us all, yet he's pretty much killing this woman so that the message wouldn't get through. The method is counter productive as well as stupid due to the fact that the obvious does in fact happen: Pryce, thinking she's possessed by a demon, tries to exorcise her. Maybe, just maybe, the priest's spirit shouldn't have done with the theatrics?

After Pryce realizes that she's not possessed by a demon, but by a priest, he tries to strangle her. ... Why not? Andrew runs in and stops him, telling him that he will not be a priest much longer for keeping the gospel a secret. Fact: The Real Gospel of St Thomas is considered Heresy in the Catholic Church. One of the reasons is because the author's true identity has been brought to question. Some of the other gospel's that have been banned contained such lessons like, don't go to church and that after Jesus died, God no longer existed. Some of these books, called the Gnostic Texts are, in fact, being reconsidered in the church. Those that are are obviously not the ones that say God stopped existing.

Moving on, Andrew goes into Frankie's room to see it's on fire. Frankie tells him the secret of the text (surprise, it's "God is within you, not in church"), and he carries her outside where she imitates St Francis od Assisi. Andrew returns to Brazil and finds the original gospel.

This movie is offensively bad. It makes the church look evil for maintaining its belief that a book called into question shouldn't be taken as truth (and, please, let's not argue over religion on this, I'm bashing a bad movie here), much like we'd sue someone for slander for lying about us. The direction changes scenes so fast that you don't know where a scene ends and another begins. And the music... Billy Corgan, for the love of God, stop.

For now, this is the Window Keeper signing of to confess in a church that he watched this movie. God knows I feel like I need it.

Consider the Ride... Taken (YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH!): The "Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds" Review

Besides school and car issues, I've been busy trying to save the world from a giant, purple, people eater. A succubus, a man that crawls on walls, a green power house, and even the world's most awesome politician were all powerless. Then, by the skin of my teeth, I won using a masked madman, who with the final blow, screamed, "Yo MAMA!" It fell, I did a victory dance. Then I realized something: it only took me three tries, even if the giant had moves that I couldn't avoid.

This is where one would say, "Then I woke up," and it'd all make sense. Unfortunately, my story is true. I saved the world from a planet eater. Of course, this was in a video game. Also, in my defense, yes, the fight was incredibly cheap.

That's the biggest bad thing I can say about Marvel vs Capcom 3. The final battle is cheap and highly improbable for someone out of practice (like myself) or someone new to pick up and play. Yes, you'll build up skills during the course of the game, but here's the trick: the hits are completely unavoidable. He has moves that you cannot block. Period. The last boss can also kill you in less than three hits, at full health, depending on the move, too. Before that, you have to fight two characters at the same time. Capcom has had an issue with cheap bosses before this (Street Fighter 4), and yet, despite my griping, this one is still easier than Seth. Seth took me 20 times to beat... on Easy. Of course, I sucked back then, and Super Street Fighter 4 is less cheap...

In speaking of difficulties, there are no levels for it. At first this didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I figured out why later on. Instead, you have a "Normal" or "Simple" control scheme. "Simple" binds a button to a hyper combo, and binds other buttons to certain, difficult to pull off moves. This does, in fact make the game a lot easier, but still no where near accessible for new players. A big part of this is some balance issues with certain characters. The biggest ones are M.O.D.O.K. and Jean Grey. M.O.D.O.K. can barely pull of a combo because his moves are slow. But, the most unforgiving is playing as Jean Grey: two well timed hits and she's down. This is bad for a fighting game, but interesting for someone who knows how to use her, seeing as she does have some powerful moves. ** EDIT: Yes, there are difficulties. My stupid ass didn't see them at first, but they're the first option after selecting characters. This means I beat the game on normal mode, though, so awesome.

Normally, I don't harp on the bad things in a game first. Why change it up for this? Are my reviewing juices running dry, and I'm turning into a bitter British "Journalist?"

No, it's more simple than that, actually. It's because this game is an absolutely brilliant piece of technology, and I'm turning into a hyperactive British "Journalist." All I have to do is loose my American accent, find a car, and meet up with Captain Slow and a giant smoking baffoon. But, I digress.

I can't argue that the controls, while simplified, are very well implemented, if not dumbed down. We went from six to four attack buttons. Really, this makes sense, considering no one used the weak attacks. To add to this, all of the characters seem to fit into the game. Instead of having three or four Ryu like characters, we have Ryu and Akuma. Though, we still have two Wolverines, only one is faster and has breasts. For the most part, though, each character is different, and plays to how they're supposed to fight.

To add to this, each character seems like they were all a labor of love. She-Hulk and Hulk call each other by their first names, and Jean apologizes to Wolverine for having to fight him. My personal favorite is the character specific banter when starting a match. Especially Deadpool to Magneto. Let's just say that it references one of the greatest and cheesiest arcade game moments in history. It is a little jilting that, once again, there are characters missing from the game that were announced as DLC. It feels like they thought of them at the last minute, and decided to slap them in at the end. But, we do have cameos that are funny, too.

Graphically, it's beautiful to watch. The faux comic style adds to the feel of the game. Sadly, the music is hit and miss. Yes, the "Gonna Take You For a Ride" song returns, but everything else feels stale and sampled. For example, why is Rammstein's "Hallelujah"sampled in Asgard? Lastly, voice work ranges from acceptable to amazing. Nolan North returns as Deadpool, the woman who voices She-Hulk sounds like her (and like she enjoys the script). But, really, Wally Wingert as M.O.D.O.K? No Dee Bradley Baker for Viewtiful Joe (and he doesn't say, "Henshin a Go Go, Baby!" anymore, either). It's not bad, but not the same, or in some cases, the character sounds, well, not like the character. M.O.D.O.K. doesn't have that villainous high pitched voice that he should have.

It's not flawless, but Marvel vs Capcom 3 is definitely a very good game. It's pretty to look at, fun to watch and play, and feels like a labor of love. While still a sequel, it could also been seen as a tribute to MvC2. Chances are, it you're reading this, you're tossed up about it, or actually curious of what I'm going to say. If you're the former, get it... NOW! If you're the latter, why the hell aren't you playing it?

Over all: B+

- Cheap boss battle

- Some questionable characters

+ Most aren't duplicates

+ All feel like they fit in

+ Amazing to play

+ Tributes!

+ ... seriously why are you still reading this review?