The big VR game review

Seeing as how theres a film review thread and theres a lot of gamers on VR I thought there should be a proper VR games reviews thread. You can review any title you like, retro, modern even online games. what do you guys think?

Hows this for the basic layout?

Title: Assasins creed
Format: Xbox 360
Genre: 3rd person action adventure
Basic plot: er well your an assasin and you take people out as in kill em.
Hows it play: Really well, similar to the prince of persia series but far better executed, combats a bit easy though.
Graphics: True next gen, amazing on an HD tv
Fun factor: This lets it down as it quickly gets repetitive, not very exciting side missions and a bit predictable.
length: Lenghty story mode with loads of things to find and side quests... there just not that exciting.
Deaths: Thousands, your like superman on steroids but with a sword.
Soundtrack: Mostly medieval sounds and Arabic music, pretty good though
Highlight: Riding the horses and mounted combat, and swan diving from the top of huuuge towers.
Lowlight: repetitive, and a bit dull
My Score: 7/10

God, I really want a Sloppy Joe right now.

Quote: Captain_Stupendo

Hows this for the basic layout?

Title: Assasins creed
Format: Xbox 360
Genre: 3rd person action adventure
Basic plot: er well your an assasin and you take people out as in kill em.
Hows it play: Really well, similar to the prince of persia series but far better executed, combats a bit easy though.
Graphics: True next gen, amazing on an HD tv
Fun factor: This lets it down as it quickly gets repetitive, not very exciting side missions and a bit predictable.
length: Lenghty story mode with loads of things to find and side quests... there just not that exciting.
Deaths: Thousands, your like superman on steroids but with a sword.
Soundtrack: Mostly medieval sounds and Arabic music, pretty good though
Highlight: Riding the horses and mounted combat, and swan diving from the top of huuuge towers.
Lowlight: repetitive, and a bit dull
My Score: 7/10

I'm really not a fan of this layout of reviews, much prefer to actually discuss the games rather than sumarise with vague bullet points, but I'm more than up for reviewing some games.

I'll start with what's been about the only game I've played in the last week, Pokémon Pearl (which could also be a review of Pokémon Diamond I guess, seeing as it's the same game but with slight variences in Pokémon numbers). Pokémon Pearl is a member of the fourth generation of Pokémon RPG's this time for the Nintendo DS. As ever it's created far more monsters to catch, the total being 493 this time to fully complete the games Pokédex, (even more if you go after every version of every Pokémon).

The plot is the same farce from the last God knows how many games; you're a new trainer, who gets hold of his first Pokémon from the games professor expert, and are encouraged to go and beat the Elite Four. Along the way you'll be fighting eight gym leaders, and dealing with the evil plots of the villanous Team Galactic. You'll also be taking up lots of little sidequests, such as going from a to b with item c to clear the path to d. Oh and you've just gotta catch 'em all!

The game is, in all respects and purposes, is as deep as a childs paddling pool in terms of plot, but as deep as the pacific ocean in terms of actual battling. While each monster can still only know four moves at any one time, with nearly 500 monsters to choose from (though obviously not all of them are availiable from the start), and a whole slew of items, abilities, and a weakness and reisistance chart that makes it "the worlds most complicated game of rock-paper-scissors^TM", makes it a very deep and strategic game. Or you can just do what I do, accept the innevitable grind of levelling up, and take on each gym with a team that's about five levels tougher than the gym leaders Pokémon.

This is the problem with RPG's I feel. If you have the patience for it, you can just sit around, and become stupidly powerful to the point where the entire game becomes a walk in the park. Items like the Vs Seeker, which finds which trainers are ready to re-fight you, means you'll have a potentially neverending source of money, and experience points, so as long as you have the free time and patience you can start the game with powerful monsters. The Gym badge system initially stops this, but if you dedicate yourself to just six Pokémon, they will grow to like and respect you enough to obey your commands even though you don't own the gym badge that says they must obey you.

As I said earlier, a key point to any Pokémon game is the concept of "catching 'em all". Unfortunately, with more games into the series this has become harder and harder. Initially you only have to see all the Pokémon in the Sinnoh dex. I'm told this is possible by merely battling every trainer possible (I haven't actually finished it yet, hence why I'm still playing it). Once this is done, you unlock the national dex, and can thus begin properly going after every Pokémon.

Here begins the problem, as catching 'em all is easier said than done. Oh sure, or some Pokémon you'll just run into them in the wild, and can weaken them in a fight, then catch them in a Pokéball, or can level them up until they reach a certain level, and evolve, as has always been the case, but particularly in this game absurd evolutions have become more commonplace.

Back in the days of Red and Blue, the majority of Pokémon evolved through levelling up. A small handful evolved by the use of evolutionary stones (couldn't've been more than eleven but don't quote me), and four Pokémon evolved through being traded from one game to another. This was okay, it was simple, we could handle it, and for the most part the game did at least hint you in the right direction as to how this happened.

Not anymore though. Somewhere between Crystal (the last Pokémon game I played) and Pearl the rules for evolution sense, as well as catching sense for that matter, were thrown out the window. For instance, Combee will only evolve if it's female. My brother learnt this the hard way, and now has a level thirty five male Combee. According to his testimony, Combee is a sh*t Pokémon, and he was thoroughly annoyed to learn this. I only know this myself because I looked on Bulbapedia.

I find it to be particularly annoying for a game that stresses "gotta catch 'em all" as it's motto, that catching 'em all is nigh on impossible without an encylcpaedic webpages help. Some of the things you have to do to get all the Pokémon is ridiculously specific, and will be a real chore for any completist. For one, to complete Pearl's national dex you'll need someone with a copy of Diamond, and a spare DS, so you can get all the Pokémon not found in Pearl. You'll also need copies of Pokémon Fire Red, Pokémon Leaf Green, Pokémon Ruby, Pokémon Saphire, and (optionally) Pokémon Emerald all for the Gameboy Advance to be able to get all the Pokémon.

Lets assume for a moment you had a friend who was as equally as commited to completing the Pokédex. Not only would you have to play through two other games each, just to be able to obtain all the Pokémon in those, but also actually have to pay for these games as well. At £30 new, that's £90 each, or £180 and the cost of a DS (so £280), just to have the honour of a complete Pokédex. Even then you can't honestly finish it, as several legendary Pokémon can only be obtained through special promotional events held by Nintendo.

Of course, there is always the Nintendo Wi-Fi Global Trade System, located in one of the earlier cities to help your quest. Well in theory anyway. It's purely dumb luck what's availiable for trade on there, and you can bet that most of what's availiable isn't worthwhile. Another kick in the teeth for the GTS is that you can't actually ask for a trade for a Pokémon you haven't yet seen. Yes, that's right, you aren't alowed to seek out the very Pokémon you're after until you've seen one, either in the wild, or in a battle.

So it's basically impossible to fully finish the game without some sort of cheat device, or a multitude of time, patience, money and the ability to go to any and all Nintendo events, which makes the whole point of catching 'em all redudant.

Yet it's still a good game. Yes it's the exact same as the past three generations, yes the story is total b*ll*cks, and yes, you will find yourself having to stop and level up because the difficulty has suddenly spiked a good ten levels out of the blue. But despite this, the only complaint I have about the game is just how inobvious it is about some things. For instance there's a point after the fourth gym where in order to progress you have to chase a Galactic Grunt halfway up one of the routes, Naturally under the age old assumption of RPG NPC's (that nothing he says changes ever unless he moves in position), I ignored him for an age, and wanderred all around everything I had done prior to find the new bit to go to.

Otherwise it's a competent, and often enoyable RPG, that's as shallow as it needs to be, and as deep as you wish to make it. If you just want to finish it quickly, then that's possible, or you can spend ages investing in vitamins, and breeding Pokémon that start powerful and grow into total powerhouses.

Just don't ever expect to catch 'em all.

I haven't a game to contribute to at the moment, but sound idea for a thread. I'll probably do Football Manager 08 soon enough.

Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Platform: Xbox 360
Warning: Some spoilers contained.
Genre: Military/tactical FPS

This is the first CoD game I have properly sat and played, I have to say, its bloody amazing.

The basic plot follows a modern horror story, Nuclear Stockpiles being sold by Russian black market traders into the middle east for use in a massive scale terrorist strike against the western world.

This is told from the perspective of two main characters.
Sgt. John "Soap" MacTavish - 22nd SAS Regiment and Sgt. Paul Jackson - United States Marine Corps 1st Force Recon.

The game jumps every so often between these and one or two other characters, which if you weren't expecting it initially, like myself can be disorientating and somewhat confusing. However the system does make sense. The intertwining of two separate stories to make a single whole is handled very well also and manages to give a sense of the scope of the situation.

[highlight]In addition to these two characters, you will jump into the bodies of one or two others, one purely for story telling purposes, the other few for alternate takes on the mission or for a bit of background. Like when you shoot 15 years into the past into the body of your CO: Lt. Price - 22nd SAS Regiment to do a quick stealth/snipe infiltration mission. (Creating, to me a massive plot hole, since someone should not be alive in the modern timeline of the game.)
The other gameplay related jump is into the body of an unnamed gunner of an AC-130 Gun-ship, providing covering fire part way into the game for Soap and his squad mates. [/highlight]

Graphically, the game is stunning, again, a HD TV will help matters here. It has to be said, their were a few moments between missions, when I forgot I was playing a game and thought it was a news report.. [highlight]Watching a nuke go off, even from a characters viewpoint scared the living sh*t out of me.. It was then in particular I forgot it was just a game as I saw one of the biggest horrors of the modern world occurring.[/highlight]

My biggest gripe about the game is one major flaw in the plot. [highlight]The fact, you assassinate someone, 15 years in the past, only to kill them again at the end of the game. - Just did some reading up, it seems I stand corrected - the sniper shot only removed his arm from him.. However, when I played it, the fact I got a headshot off on the guy kinda f*cks this fact up a little.[/highlight] Also the cover system needs reworking. The fact its a military/tactical shooter with such basic cover use as hiding behind a wall or simply ducking really doesn't cut it. Particularly when stacked up against the likes of GRAW and even the likes of GoW, both of who's use of cover was pretty well thought out.

If you are a fan of the series, or even if, like me you are new to it I'd highly recommend this game.. The missions are hard, but not so hard as to be impossible. Granted, part way through I decided to drop the difficulty a notch, but I have a habit of playing games on the highest or second highest setting by default anyway.

The one thing I find amusing is the fact that this and the MoH feel almost interchangeable in terms of gameplay.. The fact I have recently just worked through MoH: Airborne probably didn't help this mind set though.

Completion of the campaign mode gives an arcade mode option, where you play for points and have lives to lose, something I half appreciate the addition of, while not quite seeing the point of it.. I have yet to try multiplayer, though it looks to be quite interesting. I'm just waiting for a few more in the group of usual suspects I play with to grab this before I venture into that arena of the game.

Overall, I'd give the game a resounding 8.5 out of 10 sniper rounds to the head.

[quote=That Thing link=1195654301/0#11 date=1195675137]Quote: Spider_Jerusalem

Worse than that. It's an addiction. Nintendo are shooting our veins up with rich, thick Pika-smack.

I dunno, there are much worse cash cows on the market than Pokémon. Pro Evo for one has been near enough the same game year on year, and is getting as bad as FIFA in terms of "this years update for last years game", and the Smackdown series has actually gotten worse since Smackdown Vs Raw '05, with all it's unnescessary "improvements".[/quote]

Yeah but you only need one Pro Evo every couple of years to "complete" a master league, but to complete, truly complete a Pokemon game you need slightly different versions of the same game! Tack onto that the Card games and cartoons and then you have a massive huge cash cow, the DS games alone in japan sold something stupid like 1.5 million copies and overall they've sold something stupid like 60 million games across the franchise in total!

[quote=That Thing link=1195654301/0#13 date=1195679376]Quote: Substance

[quote=That Thing link=1195654301/0#11 date=1195675137]Quote: Spider_Jerusalem

Worse than that. It's an addiction. Nintendo are shooting our veins up with rich, thick Pika-smack.

I dunno, there are much worse cash cows on the market than Pokémon. Pro Evo for one has been near enough the same game year on year, and is getting as bad as FIFA in terms of "this years update for last years game", and the Smackdown series has actually gotten worse since Smackdown Vs Raw '05, with all it's unnescessary "improvements".

Yeah but you only need one Pro Evo every couple of years to "complete" a master league, but to complete, truly complete a Pokemon game you need slightly different versions of the same game! Tack onto that the Card games and cartoons and then you have a massive huge cash cow, the DS games alone in japan sold something stupid like 1.5 million copies and overall they've sold something stupid like 60 million games across the franchise in total! [/quote]

thing is though, with Pokémon at least, is that it is a different game each time. Sure, there's no real difference between Diamond and Pearl bar which Pokémon you can catch, but in terms of what you can do, where you go, who you fight, what Pokémon you can fight with/against, and what side quests there are, and Diamond/Pearl is a very different game to Ruby/Saphire, Fire Red/Leaf Green, and even Gold/Silver, and the original Red/Blue.

Pro Evo 6 on the other hand, I can't see a difference between it and Pro Evo five, bar new teams, with new players, and a couple of asthetic changes. Last major change Pro Evo had was the inclusion of snow, and if I recall correctly, that was in number five, not six.

I know it's a football game, and there's not a lot you can do to tweak it before anyone says, but I stand by my point that Pro Evo (and football games any professional sports game played on a track or field) in general is nothing more than a yearly update for correct upto date kits, and nothing else.[/quote]

But much like any game franchise, pro evo, Mario you name it, its still essentially the same game albeit presented differently, I could for example, argue that Pokemon is the RPG equivalent of Pro evo, in that you still end up fighting battles with pokemon, much in the same way you still play a game of football.

Im too lazy for a discussion so im doing the lame format

Title: Loco Roco

Format: PSP

Genre: Puzzle/Platformer

Basic plot: You're a giant squishy (but really cute) blob living all happy with your blobby existence when suddenly, some blobby aliens invade. You then tilt the planet from side to side moving your big Squishy blob.

Hows it play:Really easily. L-shoulder button moves you left, R-shoulder button moves you right, both together make you jump. Tis the stuff only geniuses can figure out

Graphics: Really, really cute. They're very basic colours and the farthest thing from photorealistic but it just works!

length: Not too long since i finished it in a few hours but it's got replay value!

Deaths: Well if the squishy aliens eat you then your LocoRoco dies

Soundtrack: It's a pretty cute moe-jpop soundtrack but after a while, it loses its cuteness and you just wanna blow your ears off so you dont have to listen to it...or you know...push the mute button

Highlight: When you get to the end of a level and all your little LocoRoco's sing and you just go "Awww i saved them ^^"

Lowlight: The music can be a pain in the a*s and the Pink LocoRoco annoys the hell out of me >>
My Score: 8/10

Title: We <3 Katamari
Format: Playstation. Also, Me & My Katamari exists for psp. very cool.
Genre: japanese (martin says: fun on a stick)
Basic plot: You've got this ball type thing called a katamari that magnetizes everything ever and you roll it around and collect all the stuff. The trick is that you can only roll up stuff that is smaller than the katamari. You generally have to get to a certain size within a certain time but there are variants. The storyline is that the King of All Cosmos rolled up all the stars and stuff in the previous game (Katamari Damacy which i have not played) so all the katamaris you make get turned into stars and planets. At the end you roll them all up into a big fat katamari and then roll up the sun. To which I say
Hows it play: Really well! This being the only video game I've played to completion I dont really know how to answer this question (Martin says: amazingly well, the analouge sticks have never been put to better use POINT)
Graphics: Colorful and fun!! Cartoonishly 3-D, but purposfully so. They don't look crappy and dated or anything.
Fun factor: 1,000,000/10
Enemy AI: There are no enemies YAY for peace love and katamaris!
Length: Pretty short I think. It's not so short you feel like something's missing, not at all, but it's.... finite. Yes.
Deaths: None! (See Enemy AI)
Soundtrack: Fun and neat, to channel David James. The songs get a little repetative after awhile but eh. It's not unbearable, and they add to the fun-factor
Highlight: The King of All Cosmos; also the cute little Cousins, in particular June and Itchigo
Lowlight: When you can't beat a level and you have to play it over and over in all its same-y sameness. Also your thumbs get very tired.

Rating: Best. Game. Ever.

[quote=That Thing link=1195654301/15#15 date=1195680961]Pokémon on the other hand, while still keeping the same gameplay elements it's fans love, could severly change the actual game, not to mention stop making it so essential to have prior games to be able to obtain that 100% complete status in it.[/quote]

Oh, they could. They definitely could. The point is that they won't.

I f*cking hate football games, too, so (barring FM, obviously)

Quote: Captain_Stupendo

I want to no when theyll make a proper 3D version

When I am lying in the cold, cold ground.

Quote: Rawr

Title: Rock Band
Format: according to geroge, ps2, xbox 360 and ps3
Genre: music playing kind
Basic plot: Pick an istrument: guitar, bass, drums, or vocal chords. Follow the onscreen prompts and make it sound like you're playing a song you've heard on the radio. feel awesome.
Hows it play: Quiet well. The guitar is wquieter than Guitar Hero ones; the drums seem to not always pick up on what you're playing, but maybe thats only if you suck a bit
Graphics: Infinitely better than Guitar Hero. Okay, so the actual graphics werent superior, BUT the singer's mouth matches each song exactly, as does each instrument. Also, the audience doesnt look like they made two animations and repeated them 20 times, it looks good.
Fun factor: 1,000,000/10
Enemy AI: There are no enemies
Length: Perfect
Deaths: None!
Soundtrack: Really good, lots of really cool songs I know, and cool songs I didnt know
Highlight: Feeling like you're really playing something good instead of tapping on some round sensitive pads
Lowlight: Erm..... NONE

Rating: Other. Best. Game. Ever.

I'm so very jealous

Mass Effect.

Many hours and multiple deaths later...


Genre: Futuristic, team based RPG.
Basic plot: You play the saviour of the galaxy

Lets start with the bad.
The death system irritates me, in the same way dying in Morrowind and Oblivion did.. Only worse. In each of the two TES games mentioned you die and can restore from your last save, if you enter a dungeon, thats not too long ago thanks to the autosave feature.. With Mass Effect however, despite their being autosave, it kicks in randomly, meaning you can go many hours without saving.. I have on a few occasions now, had to repeat a couple of hours of game play. Not a bad thing, but irritating.
The team AI can sometimes get on your tits in combat.
While being able to explore a fair few planetary systems, you can only land on a select few planets.
Their are one or two minor annoyances also.. Loading happens a lot. Far too often in my mind.. Though this cannot be helped and doesn't detract from the game. The graphics engine also has a flaw, the same flaw that any Unreal Engine games have - the textures/maps sometimes 'pop' into place (Players of Halo 2 will know exactly what I mean.
The game is taking over my life.

Now on to the good.
Easily one of the best team orientated RPG's I have played in a long time. Reminding me again of why I love Bioware titles. The game shows a natural evolution from the systems developed for the KoTOR and Jade Empire games.
Graphics Mass Effect is mind numbing beautiful, with lots of thought going into the interface, characters, races, locations... Etc, etc..

The plot seems pretty rich, with lots of history and information to pick up on. The levelling system works perfectly. Conversations feel natural, rather than the usual stilted feel you often get with 'choose you speech' games. You also finally get to properly palythe kind of character you want.. You want to be a hard a*s, go for it, squeeky clean so/daughter of humanity, the options are there..

Character customisations are well done, allowing both male and female main characters, to be of one of several backgrounds, types of people and multiple character classes.

Combat is awesome, they really learned a lot from KoTOR. Its all real time, like jade Empire, with the ability to provide orders to team mates via either the D-Pad or a HUD interface for advanced attack commands.

When you hit an uninhabited planet you really do feel like you're out exploring the frontier worlds... Lots of open space (No, you can't go over the whole planet, sadly) some nice side missions, that span the entire galaxy in some cases.. Great little subplots..

I'm too engrossed to say much else right now..

Suffice to say, you must buy this game if you have a 360.

Title: Mass Effect
Format: Xbox 360
Genre: 3rd person action adventure/ RPG
Basic plot: You are Commander Sheppard, kick a*s space marine or whatever you choose him to be. It s your job to stop the return of Evil machines from destroying all organic life in the galaxy.
Hows it play: Amazing, the combats great, even though your teamates can be retarded sometimes, the speech is fantastic and makes you feel as though your in a movie. Massive galaxy to explore with loads of side quests.
Graphics: True next gen, fantastic
Fun factor: I love every second of it, except the parts where you keep dying, autosave can be a pain in the a*s.
length: Epic storyline and you can spent weeks just travelling the galaxy looking for stuff to do.
Deaths: A lot, evil geth mostly but there is a shock later on.
Soundtrack: epic sci-fi score, love it.
Highlight: Being evil to aliens always makes me chuckle, and the exploration aspects are great.
Lowlight: annoying auto-save, and the graphics do glitch a bit but nothing ruining.
My Score: Excellent the true heir to knights of the old republic ( the first one). 9/10

Title: Super Mario Galaxy
Format: Nintendo Wii
Genre: Action Platforming Adventure
Basic plot: This mean dude with some crazy red hair turns up and runs off with this Plumbers bit on the side so the plumber runs off to beat the sh*t out of him and win back his fair lady.
Hows it play: Without a doubt the best gameplay found in a platformer since mario 64, easy to use but hard to master. Jumping around planets in space and mucking about with gravity is some of the most fun you can have without breaking several laws.
Graphics: The best seen so far on nintendo wii, the lighting effects are spectacular, simply beautiful art design.
Fun factor: 10/10 all the way, like I say it's very very fun
Length: You have to collect 60 stars to fight the last boss which shouldn't take yo too long but there are 120 to gather in the game and that will take you quite a bit longer and then once you've done that you unlock a new thing to play through the whole game again with and then you unlock one final level once you've got all 240 stars. So it's prety lengthy if you want to do everything
Deaths: Not really no.
Highlight: If I had to pick one bit......no I can't it's all too good.
Lowlight: It doesn't last for ever
My Score: 10/10

As are many people it seems, Wiis are hard to get hold of at the moment even a year after release whereas PS3s litter the shelves. Justice is sweet

Quote: Zeus_Carver

As are many people it seems, Wiis are hard to get hold of at the moment even a year after release whereas PS3s litter the shelves. Justice is sweet

So very, very tempted to flog mine in the next few weeks, then replace it come January. I reckon you could easily fetch double for them on ebay.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. You need to time it right though. get it on early enough to be able to get it posted before christmas, but late enough to be able to hit the buying rush.

Plus their is the added problem of being Wii-less between when you flog it and when you replace it. Which I don't think I could do.

Title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warefare

Format: Xbox 360

Genre: FPS

Basic plot: Something to do with Russians and terrorists and nukes and being killed by a grenade every other minute.

Graphics: Not very good. Pales in comparison to COD 3.

Fun factor: I'll pass.

length: As yet I haven't completed it but it doesn't seem that long. I'm close to completion after two afternoons.

Deaths: Rather alot. If you don't move forward the enemies keep spawning and as such you can build up quite the pile of corpses.

Soundtrack: Random and varied.

Highlight: Bombing things in the helicopter. It feels like smiting the weak. ^_^

Lowlight: Repetitive, with some extremely frustrating areas (e.g. the 'you has 12 minutes to get to missile thingy' mission where there are no checkpoints and a constant barrage of flailing russians - if you die, you restart, I have wasted so much time on this, it feels like chinese water torture) which once completed don't leave you with any sense of satisfaction.

The weapons and gameplay are almost identical to COD 3 - so much for the hype.

Getting killed by a grenade every other minute is a common fixture of the game, as is running around madly trying to avoid grenades.

Also you have to kill dogs which I find unpleasant. :-[

My Score: 6/10

If you enjoyed COD 3 you'll love this once you get used to the graphics.

Quote: vespertilio

Graphics: Not very good. Pales in comparison to COD 3.

WHAT?

Are you playing it on one of these by any chance?

On a decent HD set the game looks damned near photo-realistic at times.

Seriously it looks like Counterstrike. -_-

Quote: vespertilio

Seriously it looks like Counterstrike. -_-

What kind of TV are you using to game on? I wonder if it could be the optimisation of the game that's at fault here.

I know early games on the 360 (King Kong and Dead Rising being the first two to spring to mind) were optimised for HD gaming only, causing the games to look either average or pish on SD TV's
I know Dead Rising's text is impossible to read on SD TV's due to this.

Yeah, a lot did, but the 'calls' text that would pop up from time to time is horrible, it really is.

Check the difference between SD and HD in the game at some point if you can, you'll see exactly what I mean.

You got a Desktop PC? If so I recommend getting a 360 - VGA adaptor and use your PC monitor from time to time. It'll let you play in HD that way.