By Edlund Gerard

They explain the origin of Adam Jensen’s prosthetics through a tutorial that teaches you the basic mechanics of the game. Then we’re off! We are flooded with missions, side quests, social interaction, loot, and crazy conspiracy theories. Deus Ex H.R. is never short of things to do.

Difficulty levels don’t really matter too much. Even when on “Give me Deus Ex” difficulty, it is still quite easy. As a matter of fact I was quickly disheartened when I broke the game. As soon as I acquired a grenade launcher through the games story, I was able to defeat most bosses in 10 seconds.

Do not let that detract you from getting this game. It’s worth every penny. There are so many different ways to finish an objective and about 40 hours of content if you like to collect things and do side quests. There are tons of augmentation upgrades to make you stronger, faster, stealthier, and enough to get your hacking skills to Anonymous levels. With the right augmentations, I can hack terminals and gain access to enemy robots, turrets and cameras and turn that against them. You’ll find virus software that can aid you into getting past high level security. Modifying your weapons is also an excellent feature. I was able to take a lowly machine pistol, and turn it into the most powerful weapon in my inventory.

The soundtrack is wonderful and goes well with the pulse of the Deus Ex universe. Following programming 101, the tempo is raised anytime there could be an intense situation ahead. There are moments of definite raging where techno music seems so obvious, but it still feels like it belongs with the style of the game. The voice acting leaves something to be desired. Adam is a very typical gruff, emo, deadpan sounding individual and it screams “I’m cool!” There aren’t any silly one-liners, but that doesn’t save the game from the rest of the voiceovers. I understand the need to make a game with diversity given the storyline. But they try too hard with the voice acting, and I felt uncomfortable atsome points.

Even with the silly animations and the undesirable voice acting, I’m still begging for more. Most of the games story is told through hacked email accounts. Therefore I felt the need to see and collect absolutely everything. This game would be a perfect candidate for a New Game +. Unlocking a harder difficulty and keeping your modified weapons and body for a second play through would be more than enough to justify the price tag. But I do see more DLC on the horizon! Can’t wait!

This game gets a whopping: 8/10

I am a sucker for superhero video games. I bought Iron Man 1 and The Incredible Hulk’s last game, although I wisely skipped Iron Man 2 after playing the demo and seeing that it was rancid garbage compared even to the first. But Thor and Captain America coming from Sega in a few months?

Oh they are on my radar for the moment and all being well I will have them.

Check out this new trailer released by Sega today of the upcoming Thor game.

I am a TEKKEN PHEEN! I need this. Specially after this trailer.

Watch it now!

Another heir apparent to the Angry Birds thrown has risen from poop covered birdcage and that new challenger is WWE Superstar Slingshot.

Released early this month, you the gamer take on the role of one of ten WWE Raw or Smackdown superstars to reclaim the WWE Championship after Mr. McMahon has stripped you off your belt on The Road to Wrestlemania.

Sounds good so far right? But you don’t wrestle. You angry birds wrestle. Unlike in Angry Birds, where each bird comes with a different ability, all the wrestlers are exactly the same. You pick the one you want to look at, pull them back against the ring ropes and then fling them at the walls that have been constructed between you and your opponent in the middle of the ring.

Why do these walls exist I have no idea? Perhaps it is a new type of hardcore elimination chamber style match. Perhaps Vince Russo has returned to book new wacky WWE angles. In the end it leads to a definite lack of variety as basically every board feels the same. Try to find way to knock enough stuff down to eliminate wrestler inside. The end.

If this game were free I’d recommend it for someone who was an Angry Birds fanatic, but its not. It’s $1.99. Typically a fair price, but a price I kinda wish I hadn’t paid because I don’t think I’ll ever play through all 150 levels as I just ended up bored.

Its a good first try for the WWE into the world of digital content and games, but it definitely needs to step it up cause this game has no stamina to go the distance and dethrone the king of throwing things at other things and breaking things to win the game.

To download “WWE Superstar Slingshot” from the Apple App Store ($1.99 USD), click here.

It’s easy off the bat to see the first major departure. This game was developed by Nintendo in conjunction with Team Ninja, a developer whose style of doing things seems almost counter to Nintendo. Nintendo games are awash in bright colors and family friendly characters while Team Ninja games are known for brutal violence and bouncing breasts around every corner. However, their partnership for Other M isn’t all that strange considering both are known for making games that are simple, yet fun to play. Have Nintendo and Team Ninja come together to create a game worth playing, especially for one of Nintendo’s main franchises? Hit the jump for the review and an image that would be difficult to explain to your boss and/or spouse.

Admit it. When you saw Team Ninja attached to the project, you expected the same thing.

Basic facts:
Metroid: Other M
Release Dates: 8/31/2010 (NA), 9/2/2010 (AUS, JPN), 9/3/2010 (EUR)
Genre: Action-adventure
Game status when reviewed: Completed on normal mode at 100% completion

Likes:
Very good graphics
Let me start by saying how beautiful everything is in the game. Other M is undoubtedly one of the best-looking games on the Wii. The entire game takes place on one space station called the “Bottle Ship,” but I never had the feeling that I was running through the same place a million times (unlike how I felt in other Metroid games, where I literally was running through the same place a million times). Sections of the ship are designed to simulate different environments, such as forests and frozen tundras, which gives the Bottle Ship a good variety of locales. Enemies and other characters are nicely detailed and look great. Samus herself looks great in game and in cutscenes. Personally, I wanted Samus’ suit to change colors as she, well, “turned on” new upgrades, but that’s just me being nitpicky. To make up for it, her cool factor gets cranked to 11 now, as she dodges attacks and kills enemies in brutal and sexy new ways.

Minimalistic Controls
Something I didn’t like about the Metroid Prime series was how much more complicated the controls became. Granted, the change in control scheme and perspective was interesting and refreshing, but it still lacked the basic simplicity of the side-scrolling Metroids. This game marks a return of the Metroid series to a third-person perspective as well as simpler controls. The game is played with just the Wiimote. To my surprise, controlling the game with just a D-pad and two buttons works surprisingly well. For more in-depth analysis of the environment (which will be necessary to collect energy tanks and missile expansions and such), you can switch to a first-person mode reminiscent of Metroid Prime by flipping the Wiimote into “the Remote Control” position. Switching between first and third person takes some getting-used-to in the beginning, but the controls make sense and work really well once you do get used to them.

Improvements to Combat
“Aim in its general direction and shoot it till it dies”— whether in 2D or 3D, combat in Metroid basically boiled down to this same boring mantra. Team Ninja decided to throw some Ninja Gaiden into the mix and shake things up. Basic shots in third-person mode are auto-aimed for you. When running through a room of smaller enemies, you can just run through blasting without really worrying about aiming, simulating the feeling of running through a 2D corridor shooting enemies in front of you. For larger enemies and bosses, combat is now focused on evasion, pattern recognition, and counter-attacking. Evading enemy attacks is very simple, involving a simple tap on the D-pad in third-person mode or by moving the aiming cursor off-screen in first-person mode just before something hits you. By evading, you can instantly charge your blaster and attack back with a powerful charged shot. After the enemy is in a “downed position,” you can instantly defeat them in a flashy and brutal fashion. Some enemies you just blast in the face. A few you can throw into other enemies. This evasion-based combat is very stylish on-screen and creates a more engaging experience. My only complaint is that there aren’t enough enemies that you can throw into other enemies. Combat is also enhanced by the game’s use of first and third-person views. Players now have to choose between staying in third-person view, which has weaker shots but more mobility, or switching to the first-person view, which allows access to missiles but makes Samus unable to move. This interesting new decision forces the player to choose the best course of action during the (now-existent) heat of battle.

Faster-Paced
Something that always turned me off about Metroid was the amount of time needed to explore and backtrack through everything. I want to continue through this door to the next part of the game, but I have to go all the way to Place-X to get Weapon-Y cause the door doesn’t open without it. Oh wait! Place X is after Uber-Death-Corridor-P, so I’m gonna have to kill these crawling enemies for 5 minutes to refill my health and missiles. These aspects combined with mundane combat always killed my ambition to finish the game, resulting in my abandonment around the halfway mark. Other M, in addition to the new combat system, sports various changes to eliminate the need for backtracking and grinding. The main game is now more linear. During the initial playthrough, most of the ship will be locked off. The ship doesn’t become completely open for exploration until after beating the main game. This type of design is good because it satisfies more completionist players that want to explore and collect everything while not burdening others who just want to beat the game quickly.

New powerups are either found during story progression, or given authorization by Adam at certain points (Samus technically still has all her abilities from Super Metroid, but Adam restricts them to protect the soldiers she is working with). The permission system does irk me a little, which you can read more about in the “Samus is at times an incompetent moron” section below. However, gaining an important ability in the nick of time makes for some interesting and exciting situations during the course of gameplay. In addition, it’s an attempt to actually explain why you can’t use all the cool abilities right away that you had in Super Metroid. It’s not a perfect explanation, but it’s not much worse than not explaining why at all (Super Metroid) or having a silly reason like having all of them break at one time and not bothering to repair them before the mission (Metroid Prime).

Another major change to the classic Metroid formula is that enemies no longer drop items to refill health and missiles. When Samus is low on health, she can use a new technique called “concentration” which allows her to recover some health and missiles. Although this new technique is kind of random and a bit silly, it prevents players from having to grind for items when they are near death. However, concentration takes a while to actually refill health and it doesn’t refill the health completely, which keeps the new ability from making the game too easy.

Lastly, for a game with many story filled sequences and cutscenes, the game manages to keep its pacing without burdening the player with story. Though the story is pretty heavy in the beginning and end, the game switches constantly between gameplay and cutscene, which keeps the player alert to what’s happening onscreen. At times this switch is similar to a quicktime event, where the game will switch out of a cutscene and into gameplay so that the player can react. There is a framerate difference between the actual gameplay and the pre-rendered cutscenes, which is somewhat jarring but nothing too bad.

Samus is an actual person
Something that this game has that almost all the other Metroids lack is actual character development for Samus (though unfortunately only for Samus and Adam somewhat). Samus has many inner monologues about her feelings and her past, and though they can be longwinded at times, it’s nice to see that the developers are trying to make Samus more than just another silent protagonist. I am aware that her development has come under fire for making her too dependent on others. I’ve seen much criticism about Samus trying to impress Adam Malkovich, her commanding officer, because of her “daddy issues.” Some even call her portrayal sexist because of this reason alone. Considering her past of being orphaned at a young age, how could she not have these daddy issues? How could anyone not have these issues, regardless of gender? Adam helped train her and guide her through life. When he was forced to restrict Samus’ suit to protect his crew, she wanted to show that she had matured beyond the brash and defiant youth in the space marines into a respected bounty hunter that puts the needs of others above her own, just like he did. Honestly, I’d be more angry about such an obvious issue in her character remaining unresolved for eight games over her working for someone that happens to be male.

Dislikes:
Inconsistent maps
In the top right of the screen, your current position is shown on a mini-map of the ship. You can pause and open the menu to see a bigger map of the ship. The main problem I had is that the map in the top right is often oriented differently from the map shown in the pause menu. A lot of times I went left when I should have gone right or up when I should have gone down. I had to constantly open the pause menu to make sure I was going the right way, which was frustrating. During the main game, there is a little pointer that points you in the right direction, which kind of helps. However, after the main game is completed and you are exploring the ship, the little pointer is useless and these map orientation issues become quite apparent. A simple problem like the map orientation shouldn’t have been so hard to detect and fix.

First person “looking” sequences
Once in a while, the game will automatically switch to first-person mode. You’ll then have to lock on to something specific in order to advance the story. The problem is that often the game doesn’t give you any hints as to what you are supposed to look at. An early example in the game is when Samus has to look out the window at a sunset, despite a cutscene that just happened involving Samus looking out the window. A very egregious example is during a certain scene when Samus and the rest of the team is standing in a field, and the player is expected to turn around and look for a green blotch on the grass. A GREEN BLOTCH ON THE GRASS. I spent 20 minutes just trying to figure out what the heck I should look at. It also doesn’t help that you have to make sure you position the cursor exactly on the spot or the game won’t pick it up, which makes just spamming the B button over anything not work too well. Fortunately, these sequences don’t happen too often, and many of them have hints for what to look at, but these scenes can be very frustrating.

Samus is at times hilariously incompetent
I already addressed my approval on Samus’ characterization in this game. However, there are times that Samus acts like such a rookie that I want to bite the Wiimote in half like a frozen Charleston Chew. For example, when Samus runs into the sector full of lava which causes damage just by being in the room, Samus doesn’t turn on the heat-proofing feature of her suit until Adam gives her permission. This happens several times in the game, and is used by the “game is sexist” argument to show that Samus can’t save herself unless she is told what to do by a man. I don’t feel this is an example of sexism as much as an example of basic stupidity. Imagine if it was Eve Malkovich instead of Adam. The same situation would still happen, and Samus would still be incredibly stupid. I am aware that in Japan this kind of adherence to a superior’s order is normal, but no matter how much she respects her superior officer, she should still have enough sense to turn on the “not burst into flames” feature of her suit when she needs to.

However, the worst example of this incompetence issue is when Samus meets Ridley. Oh, by the way, that was a spoiler, but if you didn’t already know Ridley was going to make an appearance, you should probably be playing a different Metroid, or at least more Brawl. Anyway, Samus meets Ridley, the creature responsible for killing her parents in front of her eyes, then has a panic attack and becomes completely unresponsive and unable to defend herself until a certain situation arises. Of course, considering her past, this kind of reaction is to be expected, and I am told that this scene is a realistic depiction of someone with post-traumatic-stress-disorder. However, by this time in the Metroid timeline, she’s already defeated Ridley several times. There is no reason she should be freaking out about him now. It was an attempt at characterization that was ruined by the game’s placement in the timeline. I feel that this whole section probably wouldn’t be necessary if the game was canonically earlier in the series instead of after Super Metroid. That way, Samus being an inexperienced greenhorn would make sense then instead of after she saved the universe multiple times.

Closing:
Metroid: Other M is a solid game that is enjoyable to play, attempting to keep longtime staples of the series such as exploration and item-collecting while limiting the more annoying aspects like item-grinding and backtracking. However, longtime fans of the Metroid series may not enjoy the changes that Team Ninja has brought in. Samus’ role being changed from a lone bounty hunter in the middle of a distant planet fighting for survival to a mercenary for the space federation that talks about her feelings constantly while taking orders from her “father” may not sit well with some fans. Whether or not these changes will become a fixture or a footnote in the Metroid series is yet to be seen. No matter how you may feel, the changes brought to the table bring new life to the series, and I can’t wait to see if Nintendo and Team Ninja will partner again for the next chapter in the Metroid series. Heck, the game definitely sets up for it.

With 16 new cases to solve, this sequel improves on the original, by adding more great minigames and over 40 levels of I-Spy style game play. Think you’re up to task? Be warned it’s not as easy as it seems. Players can choose different styles of game play, making the game fun for a quick lunch break or an evening campaign of mystery solving. By choosing to skip out on a lot of the fun dialogue players can get right to the meat of the game, while fans of good plot and story can join the duo at 221 Baker Street, for an adventure of magnified proportions. The timer also makes for an interesting element, as players race against the clock to solve the various crimes before it’s too late.

The game’s core concept is simple. Hunt down various clues in the form of bizarre objects hidden in cluttered scenes. From there however, all manner of odd puzzles and tricky minigames are introduced as players get further along in their search. One such hunt leads to a dissasmbled robot in a mad scientist lab, that then turns into a puzzle where players must align the proper gears to get the robot up and running and get another clue. These puzzles then lead to an interesting memory game that again starts off simple, but quickly turns into a intriguing brainteaser.

Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective series will find all the familiar hallmarks of the classic adventure stories present, while newcomers may find the references fun and rewarding as well. With special appearances by other famous Victorian figures such as H.G. Wells and even Jack the Ripper, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes 2 pays homage to it’s antique Victorian roots, and in the end, it certainly pays off. A map of old London town shows various locations that players must venture to including: Stonehenge, the lab of a mad scientist, a number of old English pubs, and at one point even a pirate ship, among other unique locations.

As games set in the Victorian era go, the steampunk aesthetic is lacking abundance in The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes 2. While at times certain clues include miniature gyro-copters and other whimsical devices, the game by and large is not a steampunk game, and players looking for goggle-eyed heroines and steam powered jet-pack races may be a little disappointed. That said, the historical aspects of the game are right on point, making it enjoyable for those found of the history behind one of the greatest literary figures of all time.

With the popularity of Sherlock Holmes at an all-time high, there couldn’t be a better time for Legacy Games to release The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes 2 than right now. However, the game does well on its own by providing simple fun in a game that is simply fun to play. So whether you’re looking to fine tune your powers of astute deduction or are just beginning to sharpen them, check out The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes 2. It’s elementary my dear Watson!

Check it here and then hit the more link for some in game footage.