Syberia (NDS)

The $5 price was not enough to make up for this horrible port. They cut out a ton from the game, dumbed down the puzzles, made the soundtrack annoying and really fucked up porting the game over. After about 45 minutes of playing the DS version, I switched back to the PC version and placated my urge to play a Benoit Sokal game.

In order to make it up to you guys for even mentioning this game, here's an awesome picture of a linux fan I found:

Dead Rising 2: Case 0 (XBL)

Dead Rising (360) was the entire reason I bought an Xbox 360. I remember that day. I bought my 360 the day before the game came out so that I wouldn't have to waste any of my time working on setting up the 360. So, when they announced the sequel I freaked the hell out. When I heard they were releasing a prologue of the game: I freaked out again.

So, I bought it and played it. It costs about $5 and is an Xbox Live exclusive. The game follows the classic Dead Rising format, but improves in a couple of places. The game's cutscenes are par and the story in this prologue is fairly mundane, but more character centric than the original game. You find yourself in a small town infected with zombies with the military bearing down on you while you need to save your little girl and escape.

So, it's better than "you're in a mall, do what they say." The gameplay is almost identical, but Capcom decided to grace us with combo weapons. These weapons are built by you and included dual chainsaws on a stick, a bucket full of nails and a spiked baseball bat. The weapons seemed rather uninspired. The amount of guns in Case 0 made other weapons seem rather unnecessary, especially considering how precious guns were in the original game. It was fun mowing down hordes of the undead with assault rifles.

Survivors this time around are much more durable than in the original, which makes saving them much less of a task. As well, the text is much easier to read in the game. It was an enjoyable game, but was completely beatable within a couple of hours. Certain parts were actually frustrating, especially the idea of an economy in game. It literally consists of "break machine, buy things." Not too cool. The awkward platforming parts also stopped game play for some time while I tried to work out a way across the roofs. The boss fight in game was extremely one sides and cheaply played by Capcom. He's a big fat redneck who plays dirty and cheap. Very

It was worth the cost of admission, but was extremely short and not what I was expecting at all. There is no extended play mode, no free roam, nothing like that. You only get to fool around by doing a "new game +" type deal. Any experience you earn in one play through carries over to the next.

I highly suggest this to any fans of Dead Rising, zombies or just looking for a good value on XBL. Go for it!

Sound:8/10
Graphics:8/10
Story:5/10
Overall:9/10
Pros: ZOMBIES
Cons: Short, very little content
Play if you like: Zombies, Dead Rising, Resident Evil, Capcom

Coming Up!

I'll be doing a review of Mafia II and Dead Rising 2: Case 0 soon, as well as a hardware review of a monitor.

Mafia II (360, PC)

Mafia II is a wonderfully rendered and written game with top notch voice acting. For all the stellar effort that the programmers, developers and distributors put into the game, it still falls horribly short of the bar set by almost all other GTA Clones on the market and released in the last ten years.

The game takes some obvious cues and steps straight out of GTA IV as well as gameplay cues from several other games, what it lacks compared to others, is any sense or semblance of freedom. Mafia II at first seems like an open world game, but quickly exposes itself to be a completely linear experience. You cannot tailor the gameplay or story to your own preference. What makes it even worse is that any work you do towards advancing your character's home, bank and weapons are taken away multiple times in the course of the game. It does little to promote the idea of freedom.

Empire Bay, the city in which the game is set, is an absolutely stunning and beautifully rendered city. The problem with this is that the city feels as though it exists solely for the protagonist and that nothing happens without the player's consent. The stores are all identical, the police are inconsistent about chasing after you and the citizens of the town double up worse than GTA III. In the same block, you're liable to see the same woman or man four or five times.

The game also seems extremely rickety when it comes to testing. I encountered several glitches in the game that didn't break the game, but rather amused. I witnessed more than a couple of cars spawn upside down, at least one AI character repeatedly climbing stairs and jumping off the ledge over and over again and a magazine capacity of 1022 for the .38 Revolver. None of them made the game unplayable, but it did detract from the over all production values of the game.

The selection of cars and weapons is pretty pitiful compared to several other games, but still satisfactory. Often, a street would be littered with 30 of the same car. The weapons are neat, but why do I need a Thompson 1928, M1A1, M3A1, an MP40 and a Riesling for? They all do the same thing, why not just let us carry more ammo? The variation of the pistols made sense, but the variation of rifles and SMGs was rather perplexing. I did enjoy the variation, being a gun nut, but I saw no purpose. The cars all drove rather well, and given that the game starts in the winter of 1945 with 80hp RWD cars with no traction control the "speed limiter" came in quite handy. I was able to keep the cars under control in conditions that were less than ideal.

That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the game, I absolutely loved it when I could ignore all the issues with the game. But I didn't enjoy the consistency of the missions. A "chapter" of the game consists of Vito waking up, answering a phone, doing a mission, driving home. It was annoying that in order to complete the mission you had to make an insanely long drive in slow driving cars back to your apartment to go to sleep. The story is a classic "gangster" story from any GTA Clone ever made, it even has a facsimile of Roman from GTA IV. The character of Joe Barbaro is almost identical to Roman in every way, lacking only the accent.

I would recommend this game once the price goes down, but a $60 ten hour experience that you expect to be open world seems a bit much, especially considering the lack of a soundtrack, each of the three radio stations plays the same few songs OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, it gets annoying. The collectibles are pretty neat, playboy centerfold pictures and wanted posters, but that's it. Not to mention the game takes place in 1945 and 1951, but features music from the late 50's and playboy, which wouldn't exist for several years. If you pick this up, look out for the nod to the first Mafia game. For the PC version, modders have already added a "Free Roam" feature similar to the first Mafia game, so if you're interested in that aspect, the PC version will be your console of choice for the game.

Definitely worth $20-40 bucks, but not the full $60. Although, a car full of drunk Italians singing along to Dean Martin is well worth it

Sound:6/10
Graphics:9/10
Story:8/10
Overall:6/10
Pros:Looks beautiful, interesting story, awkward semblance of morality in the game.
Cons:Restrictive world, no free roam, guns sound crappy, only 5 or 6 different cars per era.
Play if you like: Story missions in GTA and like games, being teased by the idea of free-roam, good old fashioned racism.