Nicholas Hilton - Student Game Designer

What can be said about this game that others haven’t already written about? The game is amazing. I’ve put in 135 hours into the game and its substantial expansion, Awakening, and I am blown away. RPG’s have been my game of choice for as long as I can remember. Final Fantasy was the best story driven RPG that made it onto my NES and then Dragon Quest. But, because a lot of them have become interactive movies of late I’ve quit playing them. They ceased to require a lot of my input in favor of watching beautiful cut-scenes while I sit idly by waiting for my turn at the helm.

Enter Bioware. I was first introduced to them through Knights of the Old Republic and from there the rest is history. From Kotor 2 to Baldurs Gate to Mass Effect I have tried to play as much of their titles as I could within my budget and my ownership of required platforms.

Dragon Age is not a perfect game. It’s damn near perfect in my opinion and will have a spot on my PC for years to come, but it does have its flaws. This will be a review from my perspective as I am not a hardcore tabletop D&D player but I do have an understanding on how the system works.

Dragon Age is a game that is easy to pick up but can be frustrating to play. Shortly into the game it stops holding your hand and throws an ogre at you that can be hard to kill at first. For me it took a few tries to get him down. This is nice if you are an experienced player and don’t like extended tutorial opening acts. This also might be frustrating to someone new to the system as the learning curve goes up a bit. Fortunately I have found that with the game setting on easy even the newest player can hold their own long enough to figure out what is going on.

What sets this game apart, and what I want to focus on in this review is not the gameplay but the very mature take on the way the world works and the way these mature ideas are presented in the story. The story of this game is handled with as much attention and care that was extended to the gameplay and Bioware has become the master of RPG worlds and story lines.

 There is almost never a situation in your life where the answer to a given problem is completely black and white: Your kid steals from you and you file a police report before you learn it was you son that robbed you, what do you do? Do you take it on the chin, leave it alone, and hope the kid doesn’t take to a life of crime or do you let him get arrested hopefully teaching him a lesson and straightening him out? Or does letting him get away with it lead him to come clean and clear his conscience or does letting him get arrested start him on a path to crime? The game gives you scenarios where your actions are a lot of time gut reactions, because you have no clue how it will affect you later down the road. Example follows.

There is one part of the game where you come across a mother who is distraught over her child being possessed by a demon and is wreaking hell all over on his hometown causing mass death. He is the son of the Lord of the Land and his death would sever the bloodline until a new heir can be born yet the little bastard is causing mass death. The kid has an affinity to magic and magicians in this world are sort of a cursed people in that they have tremendous power at their fingertips but using such power always keeps them open to possession by spirits that inhabit a supernatural realm known as the fade. Most of the demon spirits that cross over are very destructive in their intentions and have no qualms about killing and maiming their victims in any way possible. It comes about where a Blood Mage, who uses blood from victims or willing participants to fuel their spell-casting asks you to decide if you are willing to sacrifice the mother’s life, required to help the boy and given willingly, to help snap the boy back or will you attack the kid and kill him or a third option which requires you to seek out a person who can get you into the fade through other less bloody ways? I chose the first and let the mother die to save her child. It was the easy way out I believe but this led to a rift in my characters relationship to a party member that led to me getting very annoyed at his actions and shunned him later on in the game which ruins his life. He now is a drunk who wanders the land. Ha ha, Alistair you are a fool! Decisions in this game rarely play out the way you want and a few times I felt bad for the actions that I took. I found myself thinking: what would be the way I would handle this situation in my own life? That is the mark of good story-telling, and rivals great cinema and literature. No mediocre, delusional Disney story here.

Anyways, what impressed me was the fact that an adult game came out for adults and dealt with its situations in adult ways. Bioware did not treat their customers like children, which happens a lot in games that are beloved by adults (I think Nintendo believes their only demographic for Zelda games are still in Jr. High). They took the chance and gave us a game that has a real story that makes you feel like a part of what is going on in the world. I hope that it becomes successful in the long run and modders and expansions keep it going for years. What Bioware has accomplished in this game leaves me very hopeful for future RPG’s from this developer. I give it an A-.

I played RE5 yesterday for the first time and I gotta say I am really disappointed in the direction they took with the control scheme, or lack of direction. Yes I read the fanboys posting that the controls from RE4 were what made the game scary and it wouldn't be a RE game without them, yadda, yadda, yadda shut the hell up. I am a fan of the originals and from what I remember from each iteration was that the controls got a little better with each game. Right?

RE5 throws away ANY attempt at refining the controls of the previous game and in a way they made them worse (or worser). Example: the game spams enemies at you now, more than in the 4th game. This makes it impossible to fight in the directions they are coming from (all directions) because of the lethargic controls. This does nothing for the scare factor and actually adds to my pissed off factor. What kind of cheap lazy move is it to say the controls make the game scarier when it is more like taking a stroke victim to a Street Fighter IV tournament? It's a cheap way to make the game harder, and and and it's not like it was an accident. This was a pre-meditated move on Capcom's part, they admit to it: "we were trying to make in Resident Evil 5 to place the player in that situation of fear, and to have them feel the tension of not being able to move as freely." Joystiq

Ok so if I don't like the game don't buy it. Screw anyone that uses this argument. I expect innovation in franchises that I am a fan of. I am a Resident Evil fan damn you. Make the characters easier to control. Survival Horror my ass. When a huge hulking blood thirsty enemy is barreling down a hallway and your gun goes *click* and you brace with a knife to take him on or run your ass off, that's Survival Horror. When he kicks the shit out of you because you can't use a knife and run at the same time or you try to turn around to run but turning is as slow as Rosie O'Donnell getting off the toilet, that is not Survivor Horror, that is hamstringing you so you freak out or you throw your controller after the 10th time you die unnecessarily or you do what I do and uninstall the piece of crap and never look back at it again because that is a cheap move and you know I'm right. Thank you. Capcom can bite me.

This is an old review that I did for Sinacism's website a while ago and I thought it would go good here. Enjoy.

Ok, first off, I am heavily biased towards liking anything that has Leisure Suit Larry in it. I cut my comedic teeth on his original EGA game where you kept typing “look at her ass” to every female character you came across. Whether my mother liked it or not I used to stay up very late at night to see that censored black box move up and down blocking my view of Larry ploughing a hooker in the sack and then dying of AIDs from not wearing proper protection . Yes I am the immature 30 something that begs for a Larry game that is worthy of the originals. I don’t care if people are offended, the more the game offends the more money I will spend to get it. And it was made by Team 17! I am a huge fanatic of everything Worms 2d and 3d. It is potentially a match made in heaven.

That said, this game sucks..... HARD. So I will explain first why I think it sucks. It re imagines Larry’s every character trait and changes how he operates. No longer is the wannabe gigolo strutting his stuff for the last-call drunken slutty piece of ass (that brings back memories). I need to say that again and let me be very clear what us fans expect: the whole point of the LSL series was to get this lovable loser some strange (it gave us wankers some false sense of hope). That was it, no more no less and you could argue against that but you’d be an idiot. The point of Box Office Bust (BOB) is for Larry Lovage (Magna Cum Laude) to find out who is trying to bring down Larry Laffers movie studio, which produces something between soft porn and badly acted Ed Wood movies (was there ever any difference?), and expose them so that proper action could be taken to remove them. Whatever ass Larry get’s is a bonus (as far as I know it isn’t required). All of the voices are changed and Larry’s whiny sleazy voice is nowhere near the original. It was like they had a game that had all these characters in it and it was almost done and just for the hell of it they decided to just put the Larry stamp on it. It’s that different.

Another gripe that I have is the story. The writer for this game smokes crack. Sorry dude, your premise is total ass and I would happily say that to your face if you want. But your mom would blush if she heard what I REALLY want to say to you for raping my buddy Larry (you see South Parks take on what Spielberg/Lucas did to Indy? Yeah, you did that….. asshole). Ok. Lets do the rundown of the voice talent in alphabetical order: Tom Arnold, Nikki Cox, Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Peter Graves, Artie Lange, Jane Lynch, Jay Mohr, Jeffrey Tambor, and Patrick (Brock Sampson) Warburton. How can you F that up? And why would they sign on to do it? I just don’t get it, they’re not A-listers but the work they do doesn’t suck like this.

Play this game with a noob-stick, don’t even try the mouse and keyboard, there’s no reason to. It also took me a few days to learn how to control the camera movement because it literally made me sick. Motion sickness. I have put in countless 8-10 hour play sessions throughout the years with crazy ass 3d motion going on and this one made me sick. I got an iron stomach when it comes to motion sickness and games I have found the great satan that could take down the best of us gamers. I do need to comment though on one part of the game where as the Titanic is sinking you have to make a completely impossible jump to a ledge that --is SO hard-- I almost quit playing it for good, uninstall-trashcan-done. The fighting was stupid too, since when did Larry stop running from fights? He’s a GD lover not a fighter WTF?. This game could have been so much better.

Now for the good points. This game does have a few redeeming values. I actually liked Magna Cum Laude which also got bad reviews, but at least Larry was a pig and you got to see polygon tits. It does have some funny moments in it (imagine a sketch comedy show that sucks but has something funny every once in a while - SNL) and I laughed during Warburton’s scenes where he tries to F every horse and goat he sees (yes beastiality can be funny and we get to hear -but not see- a horse/man orgy). Artie Lang was okay as was Dave Attell. The level design was pretty good and there was a lot of good platforming portions, excluding the gay ass titanic jump described above. The graphics were courtesy of the Unreal 3 engine and I gotta ask why the hell go with that one it doesn’t look much better than Magna Cum Laude. Oh well. I did see some pretty good T and A modeling going on and was impressed. I read another review that said something about the teeth shining not looking right and I think that with all the other problems a shiny toothed slut was the least of my complaints. Plus who really was looking at their teeth, anyways?

In conclusion it wasn’t really the worst game I have ever played, it was just a horrible LSL game with tons of profanity (lots) and no nakedness. Yes, Magna Cum Laude had WAAAAY more nudity in it. Larry also gets laid more in this game than any other previous Larry games that I can remember, the problem is you see them go to the door and then hear stupid stuff they say as they are doing it. A sensor bar going up and down does more for me than that. If Super Fly was Blaxploitation at it’s best then Leisure Suit Larry was Titsploitation at it’s best. It’s just too bad that they couldn’t get it right and even with the $20 price tag it still isn’t worth it and I am really sad at that. It won’t sell for crap and they could, quite possibly, kill Larry for good. I will always remember Larry the way he should be: “bird-dogging bitches and banging beaver” and that’s how it will stay. Screw you for making this game guys, thanks a lot. I give it a sad F+.

Let me be blunt. Bioshock 2 is a very short game (about 10 hours for me). I think they added the multiplayer element to add more play time to a short game and it might be a nice diversion for a while. That said, it is an awesome game on its own and the pacing of the story and game play are top notch (kind of: explained later). I have not played a series of games like this that grabbed so much of my attention with its story in a long time. The story is the games strength.

This is my review of the single player game (I could care less about the multi). Without playing the first game you will be at a loss to what is going on in the game as well as in this review. So if you didn’t play the first good luck in keeping up, go out and get the first, it’s worth it.

Sophia Lamb is now in control of Rapture and the Splicers follow her almost with religious devotion more so than when they followed Ryan. She was invited by Andrew Ryan as a psychiatrist to help the population of Rapture with the effects of living under the ocean. She is an altruist; she is the extreme opposite of Andrew Ryan’s extreme. Basically the argument between the two starts with each ones fundamental belief: Uplifting self and thus society vs. Uplifting society at the expense of the self. Where Ryan followed Ayn Rand’s train of thought Lamb believes that the self should be forsaken for the good of all. Think Star Trek.

Regardless of your dog on the political fight you will take the role of a Big Daddy. Not the first I believe, you are Subject Delta (there are Alphas you fight but they are wussies). You retain your free will, unlike the finished zombie-like Big Daddies, but you are attached exclusively to a Little Sister, who is Lamb’s daughter, and you will die if you are apart from her for an extended time. In the beginning of the game Lamb has a splicer hypnotize you and then suggests that you shoot yourself, which you grudgingly do. Yes you do die and I won’t spoil how you come to be again, although it is a lot like Mass Effect 2’s beginning.

To the game play, it can get complicated. The controls are messy and you have to juggle between Plasmids and your weapons (which now you can wield at the same time). Example (look at your keyboard): W, A, S, D control basic movement, Q and Z cycle your plasmids up and down, Mouse wheel scrolls weapons up and down, mouse wheel click down changes ammo type,  F searches bodies and activates context sensitive areas, B hacks bots and cameras (in real time) and makes the Little Sisters harvest, T is aim down your sights, R is reload and hold R to make Little Sister s search out Adam, E is melee hit, LCtrl is use health pack, C is crouch; that is just the basics. It’s like playing Street Fighter at times. I constantly switched Plasmids on accident when I wanted to hit with the butt of a gun or switched to the wrong ammo type and had to keep clicking the wheel down to cycle back. It can get frustrating at times because the game will throw a lot of enemies at you at one time. What you do during the game to gain Adam is to steal Little Sisters from other Big Daddies and track down “angels” and protect her as she extracts Adam from the dead bodies. This can get pretty hairy as you progress through the game.

The first 8 or so hours is the same as the first game: you collect audio logs which flesh out the games story and save or harvest Little Sisters with the one difference being the Little Sister protect mini-game. The last 2 hours absolutely kicks ass. You basically become invincible and get to take on multiple Big Daddies and powerful Splicers at the same time with little effort on your part.

One thing I like about the game is that it makes you care more for the Little Sisters. They are cute and I can’t see anyone wanting to harvest them other than to get the evil endings. Also you can pick and choose whether you want to exact revenge on some of the characters that screw with your progress through the game. I chose not to kill them because I saw no benefit other than to be a dick. You do get to see Rapture in one segment that I never thought I would see and it was a nice twist.

The hack tool is a lot easier and you can hack in real time while fighting. You can hack remotely or just like the first game. Also the Hack tool allows you to throw a turret out to help when the Adam harvest situations.

One thing that I tried to avoid bringing up is the disappointment that the Big Sisters are. Instead of randomly showing up to kill you or to be a boss like Atlas in the first they show up like clockwork at the end of every level and they are pretty easy to kill. For all the acrobatics and posturing that they do you easily take one out within the first hour of play. They are a cool new feature but they get old after a while and they announce their coming with music and screaming long before you see them.

That is about all I can think of right now on the game. The controls take a little getting used to and once you do get used to it the game is over. It’s a great game, a little short, but the story and pacing are nice. I can’t see paying 50 bucks for it, It’s more of an expansion 30 bucks would have worked. I give it B.

I'm not sure how far I am into the game yet but I wanted to get some thoughts out about my first 8 hours into the game. This game has a different feel to it right off the bat. For example, you are a Big Daddy in the game. You are THE Big Daddy, kind of the original who is still human and can think for yourself. Also you are a Big Daddy who can wield Plasmids (magic). This makes for some very interesting game play situations.
For instance, the original character in the first one would simply get his ass kicked in minutes in this version of Rapture. Flat out, he'd be dead, dead, dead. Action is so intense that even your more powerful character will take a good beating every now and then. And the character must also navigate outside of rapture at bone crushing depths which would not have worked in the first game.
The action and pacing of the game is different also. The fights can get intense, especially if you decide to use the Little Sisters to collect Adam before harvesting (killing) or freeing them. The controls need more concentration than the first game. If felt like Street Fighter for me while I was playing switching ammo and guns and keeping track of Plasmids. At times I was pushing the wrong buttons and had to run behind something for a moment to heal or get my offense ready. Really puts the screws to you action-wise. Not sure how the game plays with a controller I am sure it is just as frustrating.
There is also a more intimate relationship between your character and the Little Sisters. They call you daddy and you have to protect them. For me harvesting them was out of the question. Where as in the first game I really didn't care and harvested a few of them, this one I made it a point to protect them as much as possible. Which is weird, cause I really don't care too much about being the good guy in games.
For the most part I really like the story. This one is more collectivists versus individualists. I see a lot of what our current political landscape is going through right now which makes this game scary relevant. It's nuts to think of a video game as a philosophical analysis of communism vs. capitalism but there it is. Do you give up the self for societies sake or seek to enhance the self and raise society higher through individualism? Pretty heady stuff but it's there if you want to learn about it.
I like this new rapture. The stakes are higher and the action is more intense. I can't wait to play it through to see what twists they have in store for the player. T

Been having quite some time trying to get Internet Explorer to work with Fatcow. Turns out I had to download Firefox to get it to go through. Thank you waste of time and another program that does the same thing of the 2 other programs I have to do the same thing. Oh well.

Been playing a lot of Borderlands for PC lately with Sinacism and I must say, once you get the unofficial configuration editor for it, it's a really good game. We've been playing co-op mostly, well, I should say exclusively, but it's fun, challenging, and addicting thanks to the looting system. There are so many guns you can use that it makes the selection almost limitless. The network code was patched so I don't have any complaints on the co-op crashing anymore, no hiccups at all. Recommend it: B+.

One game that I want to praise is Mass Effect 2. I don't feel like getting too much into the details on what makes this one a good game (trust me there are a lot) but I will get into a few. Fighting is squad based with characters that mess up every now and then but for the most part they have solid AI. You have to use a cover based system now more so than the last game, no more running and gunning, at least my character does not last long without cover. The character development is first rate and the story is exciting. You feel like you are part of an epic struggle every time you are on the battlefield. Also the missions are scripted better with cut scenes and spoken dialogue, no mission feels generic. And last but not least goodbye to stupid exploring in the stupid vehicle. Did I mention I found that in the last game really stupid? The vehicles are gone and instead exploring is a game of hide and seek using scanners and probes that "collect" resources for you. This can get tedious but you feel like you get a lot done because you can move through planets pretty fast and deplete the resources with well placed probes.

All in all ME2 is a really solid game that can take a lot of your time to beat. Although I have put in over 29 hours into the game I really feel like I have accomplished a lot in the game. There is really zero down time and exploration can be done whenever you feel like having a break or not at all. It does pay off to do some though. I agree with GameInformers 9.75 review. I give the thing a high A.

What is it really? I am playing the new DS game Mario & Luigi and I swear every new Mario game that comes out is the best there ever was. I thought Galaxy was awesome and immersive but this one is just as good. The graphics aren't better but the polish is amazing. Even fans of RPG's like myself will love it and it's simplicity. You don't command units that you give orders to you have to actively time jumps and punches to win.
I don't want to analyze it too much but after all these years (I've been with them since the beginning) they still manage to make Mario fresh and entertaining and keep the magic that always existed with Nintendo. The game is worth full price. I dare you to not like this game. If you've got the 30 bucks laying around grab it. I'm going fishing tomorrow and I'm bringing th DS with and I'll be playing. It's that good.

Here is my first post. Not going to be long winded or anything like that but I will explain the whole Prison Break thing. I created the logo to emphasize breaking free and freedom taken. It sounds corny but I want the games that I create to have this theme. They are not to be limited on what is accepted for that particular type of game. I enjoy games that you can't classify, that sometimes make you think, and always hide from you the fact that you are playing in a virtual world. Those are the kinds of games I want to make.