Tales From the Borderlands - Episode I: Zer0 Sum

[Tales From the Borderlands - Episode I: Zer0 Sum, Telltale Games, 2K Games, 11/2014]

What-tale Games?

I'll be honest, until The Walking Dead, I'd never heard of Telltale Games, yet now they seem to be dominating the market on some of the biggest titles in all types of entertainment across the board. From The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us to Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and the upcoming Minecraft series, none of which has yet to receive anything below an 80 on Metacritic, Telltale has put together what may be the most impressive library of titles in recent memory. They're making EA look like a small, indie production company that just figured out how to make Hexic into a high definition game for the PS3. On top of their plethora of quality releases, Episode 1 cost a whopping $2.50, which is quite possibly the best deal in gaming since The Orange Box. 

Choose Your Own Adventure...Wizard or Warrior?

One of the new gameplay additions that makes this Borderlands game different from the others is the ability to affect the outcome through decisions you make throughout the game. Unlike other games where your decisions can alter the plot, your decisions about how to respond to situations immediately effect how other characters feel about you and parts of the story as immediate as the following scene.

Is This REALLY a Borderlands Game? 

While making game-altering decisions is a great new addition to the gameplay in Borderlands, Episode 1 just didn't feel like a Borderlands game without the massive arsenal at your disposal, discovered and earned through hours of tireless grinding and mission completion. Although it's pretty clear the future episodes will contain plenty of the old-style FPS game mechanics that made the first three games so much fun to play, but they were sorely lacking in the first go-around in Telltale's 

Borderlands product. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't have the feel of the Pandora we've all come to know and love. 

So If It Doesn't Play Like a Traditional Borderlands Game, How DOES it Play?

It honestly did remind me of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, except you couldn't go back and switch to the other outcome if you didn't like what happened as you could with the books. Once you'd spent that ammo or made that other character angry, you were stuck with the repercussions. On top of that, you didn't get much time to consider your responses, like maybe five seconds, tops. Not only does this add to the sense of immediacy each time you are presented with a challenge but it raises the replayability significantly. This is due to the fact that you want to find out what would have happened if you had just been nicer to that one character or showed more of a spine with another. Although it felt as though many of the "choices" were just going to end up with you getting insulted no matter what response you chose, there were plenty that definitely affected how the game progressed. It will be interesting to see if they carry over your decisions from the first episode into the next four or if the decision-making effect is limited to each episode. Hopefully it's the former. 

A Little Bedtime Story

As usual, I don't want to get too far into the story line so as not to spoil the game for those who have yet to play it. I have to supply a little bit of backstory, but to give away the ending would probably get my figurative Interwebbian head chopped off by crazed jihadi gamers. To that end, I'll just give you the setup and some critique and let you decide if it's worth a play or not based on that. You start the game as Rhys, a lower-tier suit-and-tie at Hyperion who has dreams of middle management. However, instead of the raise and promotion you were expecting, you quickly learn that your former boss has been "Blown out of the g@&&^m airlock," to borrow a phrase from Aliens, and replaced somehow, repercussion free, with your arch-nemisis Vasquez. 

Needless to say this doesn't do good things for your career, with you ending up as Vice President of Janitors. You and your sidekick, Vaughn, come up with a quick plan to get back at Vasquez by stealing a deal he has set up to purchase a vault key for $10 million. Things get a bit off track from there and you end up trying to salvage what you can from the leftovers. 

At the same time, Fiona is a con artist that lives on Pandora alread. Rhys is lucky enough to at least live on the space station where there are working toilets and people don't eat one-another's eyeballs. Fiona is working with some other shady characters trying to set up the deal for a Vault Key planet-side. However, all hell breaks loose and you're being dragged through the desert that looks strangely like the male version of Princess Leia's bounty hunter from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi. You know, the one that's holding a thermal detonator and says, "Yoto, yoto." 

"Where am I?"

"Jabba's Palace." 

"Who are you?" 

"Someone who loves you!" 

Anyway, sorry for the Star Wars flashback. Back to the game. While I will admit to being a bit disappointed with the lack of a real control mechanic and firefights, the place where this game really shines is in its story. Whereas Borderlands 1 and 2 seemed to be a bit disjointed at times when you got off on a side quest run for a few hours, Tales From The Borderlands never suffers from such side trips off the main course. Telltale Games was free to focus on creating a top-quality story set within the Borderlands universe, and they squeezed every ounce of goodness out of the opportunity. This game is fraught with the irreverent, sometimes dark humor of its predecessors. Where it lacks in control scheme, it more than makes up for with a hilarious and overwhelmingly engaging tale of Pandora and its unique and often freakish inhabitants. The only real problem I have with this game is waiting for the next installment to come out!

The Math

Objective Score: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 for having possible the best Borderlands story to come out yet and leaving me starving for more.

Penalties: -1 because, come on, Borderlands is a first-person shooter. I can count on one hand the number of times I fired a weapon in this game. Heck, I'd still be able to count the shots on one hand if half my digits got sheared off in a thresher accident at age nine. I know there are guns coming to the series from hints in the story, but I was a bit disappointed in the almost total lack of them in this episode. 

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10. A standout in its category. Very high quality. You should REALLY go buy this game, especially for just $2.50! If you don't like it, I'll personally refund your money. 

(But not really.)

Destiny

[Destiny, Bungie, Activision, 2014]

One of the Biggest Video Game Releases in History, You Say?

Well, probably, but not as big as Activision Blizzard initially reported. Although they announced $500 million in first day sales, they only shipped $500 million worth of units to stores, but the actual sales were quite a bit lower. They really only made about $325 million in sales during the first five days on Destiny. However, that's nothing to smirk at, and Call of Duty: Ghosts did the same thing claiming $1 billion sold on day one when the actual number was also significantly lower. It has been one of the most hyped games the public has ever seen with the television marketing campaign costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.7 million. However, the fact that they didn't release early copies to critics for release day reviews was a bit disconcerting. When a movie does that, you know it is going to be a stinker. The reasoning Bungie gave for the decision, and it does make sense, is that they wanted critics to have the ability to play a fully populated MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) rather than one with only a few other critics online at the time. With MMOs, there are thousands of people online at the same time occupying the same virtual worlds, so it would make a difference in how the game appears if critics gave it a try without all of the actual players running around doing missions in the area. It would also make some parts of the game unplayable as they require three-man teams to even begin, much less complete. Anyway, enough with the hype, let's get to the meat of the game!

Gameplay

I'll cut to the chase. This game is about as polished as they come with regard to mechanics. It plays like a Porsche drives. Smooth. You start out by choosing between three types of protagonist. There are Titans, which are the tanks of the game. They can take massive amounts of damage without dying, but lag drastically behind the other two in movement and damage recovery. The second is the Hunter. This character class moves quickly and easily with a high agility score. Unfortunately it takes forever to heal with the lowest recovery setting of the three classes. The third type is the Warlock. This is your typical mage that can recover quicker than the other two, but doesn't have very dangerous attacks outside of its special magic moves. The Warlock isn't the quickest of movers, either. All of that said, I've played all three characters and it seems like Bungie did a pretty good job of balancing out their various skills and deficiencies. Each character also has two subclasses that define their special moves. You should choose your subclass early because any upgrades to one won't transfer over to the other. Pick a subclass based on its special moves and stick with it throughout the game. 

Beyond that, you can choose between Human, Awoken, and Exo. You can customize the look of your character, but race and the appearance are only cosmetic. They don't effect how the character plays at all. Humans are, well, like us. They managed to survive the destruction wrought by the Darkness, dubbed the Collapse, and are just trying to survive in the last city not controlled by its minions. The Awoken are humanoids with bluish skin and an ethereal glow about them. They are based on mythological creatures such as elves, vampires, ghosts, and angels. The Exo are either machine or cyborg, I've read both definitions. They supposedly survived the Collapse but have no memory of their history before that. 

There are four species of alien enemies that fight for the Darkness: the Fallen, the Vex, the Hive, and the Cabal. The Fallen are scavengers that are attempting to take over the Earth. They are filthy urchins that constantly look for anything of value left behind after the Collapse. Vex are robots that employ a hive mind, all connected to a single consciousness. They came to our universe through warp gates from another dimension and mostly populate Venus. Hive are a species of undead that live on the Earth's moon. Their strength is in numbers and they tend to attack in hordes. Finally, the Cabal are massive creatures that employ thick armor and huge metal shields for protection. They generally stick to Mars missions and are the last species you encounter before finishing the campaign. None of the species like each other and you can often sit back and watch firefights where they kill off one another, leaving a much smaller force for you to take out before moving further through the game's many maps. Unfortunately I had to dig up nearly all of this information about the enemy species online because so little of their background stories is covered in the game itself due to the painfully thin plot. But more on that later. 

Special Moves

Each character type has two special moves. The first is called a Super Charge and it is the more powerful of the two. The second is a melee attack that has various effects depending on character type and subclass. All special moves can only be used sparingly and take time to recharge. Grenades act the same way. 

Titan

The Titan's Super Charges are titled Fist of Havoc and Ward of Dawn. The Fist causes the player to jump in the air and come crashing down, slamming both clinched hands into the earth causing high levels of damage to any nearby enemies. Ward of Dawn creates a small shield through which the player can fire but no projectiles can penetrate. The Titan's melee attacks are dubbed Storm Fist and Disintegrate. Storm Fist is simply an overpowered punch that does a lot more damage than your average pop to the jaw. Disintegrate actually has nothing to do with disintegration. After you smack an enemy you absorb any incoming attacks and transform them into ammo, health, or a quick recharge for Storm Fist. 

Warlock

The Warlock's Super Charge attacks are referred to as Nova Bomb and Radiance. Nova Bomb hurls a bolt of damaging light at the enemy. Radiance boosts your skill recharge speed, damage resistance, and melee damage resistance for a brief period. The Warlock's melee attacks are called Energy Drain and Scorch. The first one, strangely enough, drains energy. Heh. It removes health from your enemy and speeds the recovery of your health, grenades, or Nova Bomb. More than any other character class, I found the effects to the Warlock's Super Charge attack to be vastly superior to its melee attack. 

Hunter

The Hunter's subclass' Super Charges are Arc Blade and Golden Gun. These two are easily the most visually appealing of all the special moves. Arc Blade generates a knife of pure energy for about eight seconds, letting you attack as many enemies as you can in that time period. For most, one shot is all it takes. Bosses may require multiple hits, but the attacks come so fast that they can't do anything but reel in pain from the impact. With Golden Gun, you fly up into the air in a yellow whirlwind of flame, landing with a fiery pistol in your hand. You have three highly damaging shots with the revolver that, again, take out nearly anything but a boss with a single shell. The Hunter's melee attacks are Throwing Knife and Blink Strike. It's as if Bungie had to balance the beauty of the special moves with the plainness of the melee attacks. Throwing knife is decently effective, but no more impressive in graphic design than a knife thrown in Call of Duty. Blink Strike is also unimpressive, being merely an extended melee attack with more range than your standard stab with a kitchen knife. 

Bang Bangs and High Fashion

There are a plethora of weapons and armor to choose from in Destiny. Your character carries one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one heavy weapon. The primary weapons include auto rifles (machine guns), hand cannons (revolvers), scout rifles (hunting rifles), and pulse rifles that fire three-round bursts. The secondary weapons are the shotgun, fusion rifle, and sniper rifle. Heavy weapons are just a rocket launcher and a machine gun. Each weapon group can have a variety of upgrades. I won't bore you with every single option as that list would take up three pages and this review is long enough already. Some examples are Quickdraw, Upgrade Damage, Kinetic Damage, Extended Mag, Hawkeye, Warhead Verniers, Reactive Reload, and Void Damage just to name a few. Upgrades are available on every weapon and must be earned in battle. On top of that, you have to have enough Glimmer, the primary currency of Destiny, and, with many, additions like Ascendent Shards, Weapon Parts, and Plasteel Plating. 

The armor consists of four different pieces: the helmet, gauntlets, chest armor, and leg armor. Each one carries with it bonuses, just like the weapons. Not only do they have the same upgrades as the guns, but they also hold bonuses for Intellect, Discipline, and Strength. That's just a short way of saying your Super Charge, your specialized grenades, and your melee attack, respectively. You also wear a class identifier, which is a scarf for the Titan, a cloak for the Hunter, and a bond for the Warlock. You can also purchase these pieces of clothing in order to ally yourself with one of the cults (More on them later). While wearing a piece of cult clothing, all of your reputation points go toward that cult rather than your Vanguard score. It makes little difference beyond allowing you to purchase items from specific vendors. There is no bonus or upgrade given by wearing one piece over another. 

Campaign

While the gameplay in this game is fantastic, its one shortcoming is in the story. I suspect the reason for so many of the hot-or-cold reviews that have been coming out is the plot. It is very vague and there isn't much to it. The Traveler - a massive, moon-sized, planet-looking thing - comes to Earth and teaches us about space travel. Humans populate Mars and Venus. Then, the Darkness, the Traveler's ancient enemy, destroys nearly all of mankind. A small group of humans, Awoken, and Exo survived and are fighting the minions of the Darkness. There. That's the whole thing in four sentences. Of course there are more detailed mini-stories in the missions, but that's the gist. The missions usually consist of traveling to somewhere, killing a bunch of minor enemies, then killing a boss and going back to the Tower for a reward. Usually I'm worried about giving away too many spoilers in a review but with Destiny it's hard to do so because there's just not that much to spoil. It's unfortunate that the story doesn't have much depth because the rest of it is spectacular, but sadly that's the case.  

For players that were expecting the next science fiction epic like Halo or Mass Effect, they will be sorely disappointed with Destiny. The universe is sparse and barren. The massive hype of the next epic science fiction masterpiece has fallen painfully flat. For players that just wanted a finely polished FPS MMO, there are few out there that are better. I believe that the main culprit behind all of the highly polarized reviews, both from professional critics and users, is the thin plot. It's like Bungie spent so much time building lush, verdant landscapes and intelligent, believable AI that they ran out of time and threw the story together in the last thirty minutes before the deadline. I fully expect that Destiny 2 will flush out the universe quite a bit due to all the negative press. At least I hope so, because the franchise has such great potential that it would be a crying shame to let it remain so unfulfilled. 

There is a soft cap of 20 on every character, but it is possible to go beyond that ceiling by collecting "Light Points." The only way to get light points is by equipping gear that has a certain light point amount assigned to it. With this light-infused gear on your character, your level can rise above the level 20 cap. I've seen players online reach as high as 27, but I'm not sure there is a true cap on your character. Due to the limit of 100 Vanguard/Crucible marks (other currencies) you can accrue per week, it's hard to tell this close to the game's release what the true limit is, if any. It isn't necessary to join a cult in order to get gear with high light points, not to mention damage/defense numbers, but it helps. 

Multiplayer Games

Initially the pure multiplayer aspect, dubbed the Crucible, left me feeling more than a bit disappointed. There was only a single game type on the Xbox One. I'm not much of a multiplayer addict. I just prestiged my first character on Call of Duty: Ghosts last month if that's any indication. Due to that fact, I've done less-than-spectacularly in the Crucible. That said, I've managed to level up to 24. They equal out the leveling for the purposes of multiplayer, but I suspect from my numerous deaths that the same can not be said for the weapons and armor. I'll shoot someone five times with a high-powered rifle and they just hit me once with a machine gun and I'm the one that goes down. Something's not right about that.

Vanguard

The Vanguard is a game mode where you take on Strike missions with two other players. There are four levels of Vanguard mission to choose from of varying difficulty. The game requires that you undertake these missions with three players, but that doesn't mean you have to have two other friends online in order to complete them. The servers do a good job of matching you with similarly-leveled players. These missions offer you Vanguard Reputation and Marks that can be spent with the Vanguard and cult merchants in the Tower to purchase special armor and weapons. There is a limit of 100 Vanguard/Crucible Marks per week that can be earned. I'm not sure if that's to keep the multiplayer from becoming an unbalanced mess, to keep players coming back each week for more, or a little of both. Either way, I've maxed out my Vanguard/Crucible Marks for the week so my desire to run these slightly more difficult missions has wained until next Monday. 

Crucible

The Crucible is the game's true multiplayer portion. It started with only one game type on day one of the release, but it has since expanded to four. That's still a sadly low number for the developers who essentially created the multiplayer craze with Halo, but it's enough to keep a casual multiplayer participant like myself happy for the time being. The four game types are called Control, Clash, Rumble, and Skirmish. In Control, two teams of three players have to capture three zones and hold them. Doing so increases your point total for every kill. Clash is classic team deathmatch with six gamers on each team. Rumble is an every-man-for-himself game where every one of the six players is out for the others' blood. Skirmish is just a smaller version of Clash where the teams are made up of three players instead of six. In Crucible matches, you win Crucible Reputation and Marks, which are spent on weapons and armor from one of the three cults. 

Join a Cult

There are three factions in Destiny. Bungie refers to them as "cults." They include The Future War cult, the Dead Orbit cult, and the New Monarchy. You have to reach level 20 before you can join up with one of them, but they're the only way to get the most powerful weapons and armor in the game. Well, almost the only way. You can stay non-affiliated and use your Crucible Marks to buy things from the Crucible salespeople in the Tower. All four factions' pieces of armor contain a light point amount. As mentioned before, light points are the only way you can level up your character above the soft 20 cap. From what I can tell, the cult contacts in the game (there are three, one for each group) and the two Crucible salespeople (a non-political, general group) have the best weapons and armor for sale when compared to the Vanguard leaders.  

There are advantages to choosing one cult over another based on the way you choose to play. Each one has an effect on two of your three attributes, those being Intellect, Discipline, and Strength. Choosing a cult will give you the opportunity to gain bonuses to these attributes through their armor. If you purchase Dead Orbit armor you get a bonus to Discipline and Strength, reducing the cooldown time of your grenades and melee attack. Joining the Future War gives boosts to your Intelligence and Discipline (grenade and Super Charge cooldown). The New Monarchy offers you the chance to get bonuses in Intelligence and Strength (Super Charge and melee). Each group has a history that isn't really covered in the game and I won't get into here. You don't use Glimmer to purchase items from the Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, Future War, or Crucible vendors. Instead, you have to earn Vanguard and Crucible Marks. These are an entirely separate type of currency that must be earned by doing Strike missions for Vanguard marks or Crucible battles for theirs.

Music and Environment

Two places apart from the gameplay where Destiny really shines are the lush soundtrack and the impressive, varied battlegrounds. That shouldn't be a surprise, though. Bungie used the same duo of composers that wrote the music for the Halo series, Michael Salvatori and Martin O'Donnell. Even Paul McCartney collaborated on the project. Yes, that Paul McCartney. The music fits the game perfectly, building with the action and easing off into lush soundscapes for the menus and load screens. The suspenseful parts of the game were made even more intense with spooky ambience. There are even seamless transitions between portions of the game where there normally would have been only silence. 

The environments are as sumptuous and varied as the planets on which they represent. The Earth portions take place in what used to be Russia and it is every bit a decrepit wasteland as Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The moon looks just like the footage we've all seen dozens of times in movies and on television. The Red Planet appears like the shots that were beamed back from the Curiosity rover. Some poetic license was taken and "ancient" ruins were added to give the maps some variety. Finally, Venus emerges as a tropical rainforest after it had been developed by terraformers. Suffice it to say the graphics in this game are second-to-none. 

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock...

According to www.howlongtobeat.com, Destiny takes ten hours to complete the main story and seventeen-and-a-half for the campaign plus extras. I found that to be a bit of an underestimate. I did all of the missions in the game including the Strike missions and easily spent twenty-plus hours on the campaign before I even touched the multiplayer modes. Now, I'm a bit of an OCD perfectionist when it comes to finishing a big game that I'm enjoying (That's a nice way of saying I'm anal), but even so, it isn't something you can do in a day like the Call of Duty campaigns. So plan on a good week or so unless you're one of those people who partakes in eight-to-ten hour marathon gaming sessions. 

The Math

Objective Score: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 for being one of the smoothest games I've played, mechanics-wise, not to mention it's just plain beautiful. Plus, your sidekick, Ghost, is voiced by Tyrion, Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage!

Penalties: -1 for the paper-thin plot. I mean, come on! What did they spend, twenty or thirty minutes writing the story? This is supposed to be the next big science fiction franchise, but instead it's merely an FPS MMO, albeit a very good one. Here's hoping Destiny 2 brings a lot more to the universe than Bungie's first outing did. -1 for the painfully long load screen scenes. I realize that it would take light years to reach Venus, but that doesn't mean you have to take it literally in the game for the sake of realism. I probably spent at least 2 hours of my life during the last week watching my ship hover in space between missions as it loaded up the Tower or the next mission. 

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.  Well worth your time and attention. 

Dead Rising 3

[Dead Rising 3, Capcom Vancouver, Microsoft Studios, 2013]

low expectations

Let me start out by saying that I wasn't really hoping for a lot from this title. I own the first Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 but I didn't make it very far into the game. The control scheme was horrendous and I never really got involved in the story. I played a few hours of it and put it away, never to be picked up again. It got decent reviews and I usually enjoy a good zombie game/show/movie, but for some reason the first Dead Rising didn't grab me. I never picked up the sequel. Due to those facts, I didn't expect a lot from the third entry in this trilogy. I'll be honest with you, I only picked it up because of the somewhat depressing dearth of games for the Xbox One and my having beaten everything else out there that's even half worth playing. 

Knowing that, you can imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a really creative, well-honed, bloody good time (pun fully intended). The story is well-crafted. The control scheme is fairly deep, yet quickly graspable. The graphics are quite nice. The protagonist is likable. The open-world is large and fun to explore. In short, Dead Rising 3 is a really decent game, much to my surprise. 

why does this keep happening?

The events of Dead Rising 3 detail the third major outbreak of zombie-itis. They take place ten years after Dead Rising 2 in a fictional city called Los Perdidos, California. This is the third outbreak of its kind. A small group of uninfected including the protagonist, mechanic Nick Ramos, his boss Rhonda, and a runaway named Annie is holed up inside a diner in the city. They see a news report that the city will be the recipient of a nuclear bomb in six days and decide it would probably be best to get out before that particular package arrives. The rest of the game follows Nick and his friends' attempts to escape the bomb and the explanation of the genesis of the outbreak, which, as it turns out, is a huge government plot. Don't worry, I won't ruin the twists and turns for you if you intend to give this game a run. Suffice it to say that the plot is quite interesting and Nick plays an integral part in both the creation and solution of the outbreak problem. 

man, that's a LOT of zombies!

The gameplay in DR3 is very impressive. Nick, being a mechanic, is able to craft various useful tools from the plethora of items found around the open world map. Not only can he create extremely useful and often funny vehicles, but he can generate some 300-plus weapons as well as various food recipes that have varying types of effect on him and his companions. The crafting is so deep that I didn't even cover half of the options in my first playthrough of the game. 

Some examples of this piece of the game are the RollerHawg, which is the welding of a motorcycle to a steamroller. It has the speed of a bike with the destructive power of a two-ton crushing machine. A 2x4 and a lead pipe created a particularly effective bashing weapon called Heavy Metal. A sledgehammer and a car battery created a beast of a beatdown melee machine titled the Electric Crusher. Among the most hilarious bits of crafting is the addition of a leaf blower and a massager to make a gun that fires...well...it shoots dildos. 

The crafting options also extend to food. As you are attacked by zombies, either hit, tackled, or as they try to bite you, your health meter will deteriorate. Nick has to eat in order to replenish his health. It isn't particularly hard to find food lying around the world, but culinary items could be added to one another to give specific boosts to Nick's abilities. For example, adding candy to coffee creates Quick Step, allowing Nick to sprint without getting winded for a short period of time. Three cups of coffee and a bottle of vodka makes Energizer, which causes Nick to become invulnerable to attacks. A ham and three bottles of liquor creates Spitfire, which, as the name suggests, allows him to breathe fire on the undead in his immediate vicinity. 

what are you wearing?!

Probably the most humorous part of Dead Rising 3 is the costumes. As you can see above, one of the many options was reminiscent of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction. In an adult store, you can find a full S&M suit along with go-go boots. Although Nick will complain every time you force him to put on the getup, I loved playing in the leather-zippered outfit because I just couldn't stop laughing at the poor guy. Among the other clothing options are a disco suit straight out of Saturday Night Fever, a tuxedo, a child's superhero outfit, a woman's Star Trek uniform, and even a Blanka mask from Street Fighter II. 

that about sums it up

I could go on for hours about the story, but I'd hate to spoil any of it for those of you who are going to play the game. It isn't Shakespeare, but it has enough twists, turns, and jokes to make it a very enjoyable experience. For the completionist gamer, there are tons of collectables. Not only are there weapon blueprints that are necessary if you want to make some of the more than three hundred combo weapons, but there are books that give Nick advantages in some areas such as more XP, increased damage, or weapon durability. There are also bodies of the dead that tell little stories about their sad endings. It has statues that serve little purpose beyond the joy of collecting. Finally, there are side quests that allow Nick to help other survivors along the way. 

how it ends...

Kidding. I'm only kidding. I won't tell you how it ends. What I will tell you is that there are multiple endings to the game depending on decisions you make throughout. I wouldn't have learned about this nice little addition had I not failed in my first attempt at finishing the game. However, it was very nice to see that Capcom allows for more than one outcome. Although I still love Titanfall, one of its major drawbacks, in my humble opinion, is the fact that the game's result is the same whether you succeed or fail in your missions. Dead Rising 3 isn't so uncreative. 

My final judgment of Dead Rising 3 is, as stated before, that it exceeded my expectations by a wide margin. I picked up the game to pass some time, not even sure that I would finish it due to my experience with the first Dead Rising. What I got was a thoroughly enjoyable, well-crafted game that sucked me in and surpassed my hopes in all areas. While I doubt it will win any game-of-the-year awards, you can be assured that this one isn't a dead end like its predecessor. If you're a fan of the Walking Dead or Left 4 Dead 1 or 2, give this game a try. I don't think you'll be sorry that you did. It is much more fun than the former and much deeper than the latter. If wiping out zombies is your thing, then this is your game. I killed over 27,000 of the undead in my first playthrough and I hope to top that number in my second, which begins tonight. Happy hunting!

Objective Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the unexpected and hilarious sense of humor in the game.

Penalties: I honestly can't think of any. While it isn't the best game ever, it does what it's supposed to very well. Kudos, Capcom!

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention. 

Titanfall

[Titanfall, Respawn Entertainment, Electronic Arts, 2014]

Can it save the Xbox One?

Microsoft is banking on Titanfall, big time. This is the first truly fresh release on their new flagship console with expectations that couldn't be higher. Forza 5, Call of Duty, and Assassin's Creed are all either ports from the 360 versions and/or extensions of existing series. The next Halo won't be out until Christmas and Gears of War is at least two years out. The Xbox One has been lagging in sales compared to the PS4 of late and the kids at Bill Gates' house are REALLY hoping this game turns things around. It may not be the complete game-changer that Microsoft is looking for, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. 

What it gets right, it gets very right!

This game is REALLY fun. Don't get me wrong. I've been completely addicted to it despite some drawbacks. The gameplay is totally new, and that's tough to do in today's world of a plethora of developers and distribution companies. Everybody is looking for the next big thing...and Microsoft found it. The standard FPS portion is a bit like Call of Duty mixed with Halo and given a healthy dose of steroids. Your character's ability to wall-walk combined with his or her mini-jetpack help create entirely ways to move around the map. Add to that the Titans and this is clearly different from anything that has come before it. 

For the uninitiated, Titanfall is a first-person shooter that takes place in the future. The IMC is the government entity being challenged by rebels called the Militia. First, you play through the campaign from the side of the IMC. There are nine maps. Once you've finished those, you switch and play the same nine maps from the Militia side. The only real difference between the "campaign" and "classic" multiplayer game types are voiceovers that precede each mission and some short cutscenes. As an IMC pilot, you are fighting for Vice Admiral Graves. He's your standard military man looking to put down the rebellion whose control is taken over early on in the game by former IMC mutineer James MacAllen. He and Graves used to fight side-by-side before he went rogue. There really wasn't much to the story, to be honest. That's pretty much it. They had little bylines for each map, like taking down a fuel depot or destroying a spaceship while it was in dock, but the gist of the plot line can be summed up in a few sentences.

Gameplay

The best part of Titanfall is easy to identify...it's the gameplay. Movement is like a combination of parkour with jetpacks. You can run on walls, jump off, land and run on opposing walls, then fly through the air using your booster pack to get 30-40 feet up in the air. It's an entirely new type of mechanic unlike anything I've ever played before. Then there are the Titans... 

There are three types: the Atlas being a middle-of-the-road mech, the Stryder that is more nimble but can take less damage, and the Ogre that serves as a tank with massive protection. Every three minutes you are blessed from above with one of these giant killing machines, literally. The are deployed from space and come falling down from the sky, thus the game's name. You can climb into the huge robot and take personal control or choose "follow" or "guard" mode where AI takes over for the Titan and it will either follow and protect you or engage the enemy on its own, garnering you substantial XP as long as it survives. Personally, I've played about half the game each way. Sometimes I'm on a hot streak with my pilot and I just let my Titan wander off on its own to kill at will. Other times I prefer to climb in and put my personal touch on the giant's attacks. 

There are some missing components

My main complaint with Titanfall is the lack of a single player campaign. I guess I'm stuck expecting the standard format like Call of Duty and Mass Effect 3 where there are both single player campaign and multiplayer choices for the gamer. Here, there's not much difference between the two except for the voiceovers before you start a mission. The voiceovers could have used a little help from Bioware because they leave a lot to be desired. They aren't terrible, but they aren't as good as they should be, especially considering the relatively small number required for the so-called "campaign" mode. 

Not only that, but your success or failure in a mission has no bearing on the outcome of the game. Win or lose the match, the game continues on with the missions as if you were successful. I guess that taking into account the fact that the whole campaign is just a modified multiplayer game this makes sense because it could take a while to finish the campaign if you were dependent upon your teammates' abilities to clear a level, but it draws away from the sense of accomplishment you get when normally finishing a level.

Break it on down!

Despite my complaints, this really is a treat to play. I tend to lean toward story-driven games so the bare bones campaign left me feeling somewhat empty, but the fantastic mechanics and graphics more than make up for it. I hope that this, like many series before it, grow into a full-fledged, multiple-game epic in the same vein as Halo or Metal Gear. I absolutely love playing it. I was just looking for a bit more, to be honest. Maybe all of the hype and buildup led me to believe this would be the next Gears (or God) of War. It certainly has the potential to become everything those games are and more, but it needs a bigger, better backstory. One of the reasons Halo has been so successful is the completeness of the universe. I hope that Titanfall 2 builds on the skeleton of a plot that this game provides. It already has the gameplay down perfectly. Now it just needs a universe to inhabit. 

The Math

Objective Score: 8/10. It would've been a 9 if it just had even the most slightly serviceable story. 

Bonuses: +1 for the biggest improvement in unique and fluid gameplay mechanics I've seen since Nintendo went from a two-button layout to the six-button SNES controller.

Penalties: -1 for a nearly complete lack of plot. I almost would have preferred they simply leave out the Graves/MacAllen story and just include a few more multiplayer modes. 

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention.