Resistance: Retribution on my PSP

As you may have read around or experienced, Resistance: Retribution is awesome, incredibly fucking awesome.

Resistance: Retribution is a third person shooter released in 2009 for the PSP. Set between Resistance: Fall of man and Resistance 2, the story revolves around the British Royal Marine Lieutenant James Grayson in a one man army battle against the Chimera looking for vengueance over his brothers fate; During battle, Grayson discovers a Chimera conversion center and there he finds his brother Jhonny who has been partially transformed into the Chimera; as protocol demands, he is forced to kill his brother but this sets him on a Chimera killing frenzy, as he abandons his troops and goes on a solo mission destroying every Chimera conversion facility he finds. He destroys plenty of this places and becomes a war hero, but the British don't take desertion so lightly, as Grayson is placed on trial and condemned to death. While awaiting the gallows, Grayson is offered a reprive by Lieutenant Raine Bouchard from the "Maquis" European resistance movement in exchange for his help on delivering a serum that will counteract the Chimera virus; Grayson agrees and the game is on.

Grayson's character is one of the best game characters I've ever played, his role in the game is so well stablished since the beginning of the game and many of his comments as the game progresses make the gaming more intense or interesting; the overall history is great too, beautifuly paced by Parker's voice on the chapter transitions, the ingame secuences and the cinematics, tell the story well enough to keep you interested; the game graphics don't stay behind either, a Modified Logans Shadow engine -From Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow- makes R:R's world a great sight, with pretty characters and astonishing enemies.

The game is a third person shooter, one of the most amazing things of this game is the combat; it's great, it's fluid, it's fast and it's satisfactory. While facing an enemy, Graysons crosshair will automatically choose an enemy and direct the bullets to it; the aiming is helped by 4 yellow markers, if you center you enemy on the yellow markers, the crosshair will automatically go to it; this is a great help when fighting, because R:R will throw at you hundreds of enemies at once, all of them shooting crap at you from all directions, allowing you to keep the shooting fluid and accurate on your side while dodging and looking for cover without having to tilt you crosshair awkardly on your enemies with the face buttons -this option can be cancelled on the menu if it's not hardcore enough for you- ah! the cover system, the cover system kicks hairy ass all the way to Chimera invaded Paris; While facing enemies, Grayson will automatically lock onto a nearby object that can be used for cover and... cover there; and while taking cover, you can make him attack by just pressing the fire button, and as you release the button, he will automatically go back to cover safety, swift and smooth. And the music score, it's just great, from beginning to end.

The weapons are great too, what is a shooter without amazing guns? You have your standard bullets rifle, a Chimera rifle resembling the Bullseye, sniper rifle, chaingun, grenades, rocket launcher, the Auger, and some other unlockable guns. I have not to much to say on multiplayer because I'm not so into online multiplayer, and I have no friends to play with on ad hoc -my fiends just play FIFA games and shit-. R:R has an amazing characteristic too, if you connect it to a PS3 while Resistance 2 is loaded, it unlocks some amazing stuff on your R:R like new outfit, guns, gameplay characteristics, new intel and the main story changes -tho I've heard that no so much, I haven't played it myself- making the replay value climb the fuck up. In my country, the UMD is about 40 US dollars, so, all this characteristics make the 40 bucks worth it a lot.

But that's enought of ass licking, the game has it's flaws -no game is perfect- and I don't mean to be rude on it, but there's just some things that fucked my gaming at times.

First of all: the dificulty. This was one of the things that brought my piss to a boil more than one time; the hardest game is not the best and an easy game is just shit as well, but there were times that R:R was just being an asshole about it; having swarms and legions of Chimera coming at you with rifles and augers and chainguns and flying craps, and barely killing all those shits just to find out that giving two steps ahead spawned another legion of Chimera while having no health and no ammunition close was fucking frustrating as shit, those where times when I would just turn the PSP off and do some other shit. Sometimes the difficulty was not the hundreds of enemies, but enemies coming right in front of your face giving you a quarter of a fucking second to react and avoid getting hit -there's no regenerative health- or killing a lot of enemies just to get three flying turrets with machinguns right in your face. Whenever you die, you backtrack to the last checkpoint, and while some checkpoints are conveniently placed, some are placed fucking far one from another, and sometimes theres like a fucking thousand swarms of Chimera and big enemies between one checkpoint and the next; and that was fucking frustrating as well. Yes, choosing the right gun will help you go through with ease, but sometimes it just takes a lot of trial and error.

Another problem, well, for me, was that it was repetitive, yes, I know, it may sound stupid being this game a shooter, but considering the length of the game -I'm not sure how many hours my first playthough took me... a lot- the gameplay wears out on you by the last part of the game; it's like: walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, press button, Chimera swarm... it just grows weary on you by the end. sure, it has some parts where you drive a Hammer and are fucking awesome, but the game can be brought down to shoot, walk, shoot, walk -and considering that you will die a lot in some parts, and you'll backtrack a lot, it's just makes you get tired of gaming and leave it for another day-

Well, this was a short opinion, not a book, so, to wrap things up, despite a couple of things that personally bothered me, Resistance: Restibution is an amazing game and I really enjoyed playing it, of course, this already you knew, but there are some people out there who haven't played it -well, I know some "gamer" friends who haven't played or don't know about some great games like BioShock or Fallout or games like that, they only play FIFA and Call of duty-. In my opinion, it was a great game, sometimes hard and unfair and frustrating, but amazing overall. If you haven't played it, play it, it's definitively worth your money and time.

If I had to put a number... 8.5 out of 10. Thanks for reading, see you next time.

Reservoir Dogs on my PC!

Reservoir dogs has got to be one of the most satisfying games I've played lately; tho repetitive and short and all that, it's still a nice and enjoyable experience. I had stopped myself from getting it because reviews were actually bad, specially some IGNorant review around the web that qualifies it as 3.0 "Bad"; but once again, critics show they don't know shit.

Well, Reservoir dogs is a 2006 game by Volatile games and Eidos, based on Quentin Tarantino's movie of the same name, which is an awesome movie, and that was the reason I was wondering why was it such a bad game if it was based on an awesome movie -History has showed us that when movies are turned into games or visceversa, shit is gonna come out, but still I wanted to play this-, the game is a third person shooter with some driving stages. It focuses more on the aftermath of the heist, how everyone got out and the stuff that we didn't see during the film; you are able of playing the five characters from the heist and nice guy eddie and actually the game remains very faithful to the movie -that's gotta be worth a couple of points because that usually never happens-

Well, the game, as I said before, focuses on getting the hell out of the jewel store; the game is separated into 16 chapters where you alternate between on foot third person action and driving as fast as you can without getting you car exploded; there are only two difficulty settings Normal and easy, what the hell is that?! the game's graphics, I must admit, could have been better, I mean, it was 2006, there were nice graphics out there already, but still, it's not ugly either; the characters don't actually look that much like the movie´s charaters, except from Mr Blonde, everyone looks alike, but you know they are not the characters; but I must say something... This is a FUCKING GAME! if you're gonna bitch and moan about how everything does not look like the movie, then go ahead and watch the fucking movie! -or design the game yourself-. The enemies are lazy, besides a couple different ones, they all look the same! you have four non playable characters, first the civilians, there are times you'll see the same guy standing in two different places of the same location -I guess everyone has a twin in this town-; second, the shitty cops, dressed in brown, they are worthless; Third:, the regular cops, dressed in blue, they are a little bother, I could see about five different, so you'll be killing the same guy over and over and over... and fourth, the SWATS, this are a real bother, but killable, they all look the same.

The gameplay is very repetitive, it's just run and gun everyone -the ending you get depends on how cold blooded or professional are you-, you get to the place, you kill everything, you survive a lot of enemies, you get out, rinse, repeat -pretty much like Halo- and the whole game is repetitive too, you do one or two missions on foot, you do a driving mission, then you are on foot again, then you drive, foot, drive, foot, drive... the scenarios are something repepitive too and many people complains about that... but I have an opinion; They are escaping from the same place, how the fuck is the landscape gonna change if they are supossed to come from the same place?! the first missions are the ones I found this problem, but I guess that was the reason, the latter missions are different -a little... I wonder why no one complains about Halo's repetitive levels-

The game is very linear, you don't have much places to go than forward, and that I didn't like, but still, many third person shooters are like that, American McGee's Alice for example, and that game is awesome! During foot missions, you control one of the guys making his way out of the place, the controlls are nice, standard, I couldn't find a problem there, perhaps some moments when you're shooting someone in the head and they don't die, or the locking that is really worthless and you end up not using it and better using the precise shooting that is just a zoom, but besides that, it's ok. You order people around so they open locks, safes or avoid them to touch alarms; you can take them hostages and disarm cops; the blue shits -I mean... cops- don't surrender untill they see you hit the civilian, the SWAT don't surrender untill you have a cop hostage.

You have this adrenaline meter that allows you to do special moves, one is like a bullet time, you move really slow and mark where you're gonna shoot the guy in front of you -Reminds you of a more recent game?...- the second is when you have a hostage, you hit the hostage a lot of times and lit out a cigarrette in one if his eyes, this way you can disarm everyone on location.; you can shoot hostages in the head too. The driving scenes are just that... driving, and surviving. They are not that hard, the controlls are fine -people complained about the controls here, but I thought they were ok, only the brake is a little bad, but besides that, it's ok- the adrenaline bar allows you to speed up and resist car crashes for a while.

You can play the game as you like, you can be a professional and do a nice clean job, or you can -as I did xD- just kill every person on the level. One complain I read too was that crowd control can be hard because you move people around with the mouse look and sometimes that lets you open to be shot by a cop out of sight... but i must say... isn't that what happens in real life? I guess that if I was a criminal with a hostage with a bunch of cops pointing at me and I'm trying to get someone to do what I say, I guess the last thing I'd do is let the cops out of my sight or on my back -IGNorant idiot fuck- also, the complain is that when you neutralize someone and let his out of your sight for a while, the person escapes, and my opinion is the same as before.

Some stuff that does not work well are: First, the Adrenaline system: and don't get me wrong, it's awesome, and the slow motion dying cop covered in blood makes it more awesome, but there are times when you shoot a wave of bullets and if the cop moves a little, the bullets can miss him. Second: Some respawning cops, specially when you've cleared an area and one kills you from the back or when you've disarmed everyone and again, one kills you from the back. Third: some cops taking a full clip to die. Fourth: The lenght -it's very short, I got it in two nights, about six, seven hours- and the fact that it's repetitive -Even with this, you get to enjoy playing it, well, at least I did- Fifth: The characters not being alike -but as i said, this can be obviated later in the game-

Well, to stop boring you, Reservoir dogs is not the most awesome game there is, it's not the revolution of games, it's not the best game out there, but also, it's not a bad game! It's a really enjoyable experience and I assure you you'll have fun while playing it and that will not let you see that flaws. Play it if you can, I really recommend it, besides, it's not that expensive, around ten bucks I guess. My score: 7.0. not awesome, just enjoyable.

007 Nightfire on my PC!

While not entirely crappy, 007 Nightfire is a game I'll never play again. I will try not to praise GoldenEye all the way, first because I know and you know that one's a freaking awesome game and second, because this is not GoldenEye, this is Nightfire.

Ported by Gearbox in 2002 -the same that gave us the Half-life expansions and Halo (I guess)- Nightfire is your standard FPS bringing you Pierce Brosnan as James Bond! -I think that's pretty cool- I don't know much about the Bond books, only the movies, but it appears that this one is not taken from any of them, it's like a made up plot from both the books and the movies. The intro of the game is just awesome -and in my opinion better than many of the openings from the movies-, The song is "Nearly civilized" by Esthero by the way, it's a collage of all the cheesy images we like from the movies, very pretty.

A nice thing is that the graphics are really good, and the modeling of the characters is just perfect -2002 perfect for the stupid kids that dislike old games because of the 'Shitty graphics'-, the faces look nice and the environments are well done too, visually, I have nothing to say. The music is nice and the sounds too -despite some that i'll talk about later- but overall it's ok; the controls are fine too, tight and responsive; weapons and gadgets are nicely made and all, nothing to say there either...

One thing that I must admit is that, even if the plot is well made, It felt rushed and I always felt like I was left out of it, even to the point that I didn't get it right at all, I don't know, it was like getting someone to resume me Moby Dick, you can get to know what happens, but it's not like you actually read it.

One of the shittier aspects of the game is AI, they are plain dumbasses! I don't know how to explain myself, but they are simply dumb, sometimes you shoot one from a distance and he turns around and runs the other way while the soldier besides him is just standing like nothing happened, or he runs and shoots the hell out of a wall or runs straight at you while you shoot him, or shoots a rocket to you while standing just in front of you, I mean, they feel dumb and odd. One thing I just hated is that sometimes you shoot the shit out of them and they keep on shooting you -pretty much like the soldiers from Half-life, but at least those where smart- or you shoot them in the head and they don't die -the inverse is totally likable, sometimes you shoot them in the arm and they die instantly :D-, also they scream things, but all of them say the same thing, like "Identify yourself" -while you're shooting him- or some things in japanese that sound really stupid, at first it seems ok, then you get bored of it.

Sometimes I felt that there was a lot of unfair challenge, I know this is some kind of stealth game and you have to avoid enemies and all that, but there are times you are walking and just killed a bunch of dudes when the door behind you opens and a guy with a rocket launcher blows the shit out of you! Come on! I don't have an eye inside my butt hole!

While playing I felt that there was no technique or tactics or anything, yeah, you can go past by some guards and all that, but I preferred to run and gun everyone because there are times that you are going stealth fine and a dude like a kilometer away spots you and alerts the 50 guards you just left behind and they shoot the shit out of you -Pretty much like the mercenaries from Far Cry-

Your partners are crap too, there's this mission where Allura -I guess it's her- joins you and she is carrying a sniper rifle, but damn she's so dumb! she never shots that shit! sometimes the guards are in front of her shooting you and she just stands there watching! sometimes when you reload, she respawns in front of a guard and neither of them does a damn thing xD

The game is really buggy at times, sometimes you try to open a door, but you have to be standing at a very specific spot to get it open, also, there is a part near the end of the game that a camera spots you and alerts the guards, but I’ve never been able of finding where the hell that camera is placed! On that same spot, there’s a security room, you can’t open the door, the guards come out and you’re set, but sometimes they don’t open the door and try to shoot you through the door, and this is a game stopper, I stood there like ten minutes trying to get them to open the door and eventually had to reload the game. Sometimes the corpses fly away when they die xD

A special mention goes for the ninjas near the end of the game, they are just fucking shit! You can’t shoot them because they run around and they take like a million bullets to go down while they can bring you down in no time -I mean, it’s James Bond, not Chuck Norris-

Even walking in the game is odd, you feel like you’re floating or something; and the guns feel odd, I don’t know how to explain it, but they are odd, they don’t feel like when you play other games and you feel the shots, remember playing Return to castle Wolfenstein? Remember how it felt shooting Nazis with a Luger? Remember how it felt shooting vortigaunts with a shotgun, like a real shot? Well, that doesn’t happen here, it’s an odd feeling that makes it even more bothersome and crappy to kill the dumb soldiers, even the sounds of the shots sound odd, and that makes your experience even crappier.

Well, this has gone too long right? To wrap things up, 007 Nightfire is a good game but fails in many many aspects and that is what does not let this game become a great game –or get close to Goldeneye-, I enjoyed playing this game, but sometimes I hated it and wondered why the hell was I playing this shit. Play it if you can have it borrowed or something so you don’t waste your money in it –Or if you can get it for a console, try it there, I’ve heard it’s better there-

PD: At least, boobs look nice :D

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES!!

Hello! I was playing some NES games on this web page where you can play with no need to download today and stumbled across this one game: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; At first, I remembered the AVGN's review on this game, it's hard to forget when you see on someone's face the fear and hatred they feel about something, and, if I don't remember wrong, he didn't show a lot of gameplay on his video review, so I said "Well, could this game be as shitty as the AVGN said? let's find out n_n

Well, at first the game seems fine to me, the music is not that bad, it's like a creepy MIDI organ, but it sounds good. The start is a little odd, you have the credits as any other NES game and then the phrase "A strange case of Dr. Jekyll"... what is that for?... anyway. The start screen, I gotta admit it, I like it as cheesy as it might seem, the title is on big letters and a green blueish hand creeps from the bottom of the screen and you use it to select start or continue if you were playing and died. If you don't do anything you can see Dr. Jekyll working on his lab or something.

As the game starts you see Dr. Jekyll walking out out of his house, the music is fine, the graphics are pretty to see, 8 bit splendor xD, as soon as you get out of the house a woman apears behind you and hits you... what the hell?!... anyway, the game is a side scroller, and basically you have to walk forward avoiding the townspeople that wants to kill you; What's wrong with these people?!! Dr. Jekyll is youst walking happily and everyone wants to kill him, I mean, did he kill someone or steal or what?!! There are people that walk by and hit you, there are women that run to you and hit you, there are kids that shoot you, birds that shit on your head, dogs, cats, gravediggers throwing dirt and the most hedious and horrible ones, some purple wearing dudes that leave bombs to your side, those are the ones to hate! and when you get hit, you get thrown all the back way to the other side of the screen;
you jump with A and with B you use a cane like thing, but it doesn't do ANYTHING!! why would someone put a weapon on a game with no use!! it means that some idiot programmers said:
-Hey, let's give him a weapon, like a cane.
-Ok, so he will be able to hit people.
-Nope, this weapon will do nothing! awesome right?!!
-Yeah!

Trying to succed on this game is really hard; you have a life meter that measures... you life, and you have a "meter" meter... it's like an "angry" bar that depletes as you receive damage from people, when it depletes completely, you transform into Hyde, the world becomes all horrible and monsters appear, and you have to kill as many as you can to transform back. The first time you will do what you see on the AVGN video, you start walking, soon you are so beaten by the people that you transform into Hyde and a lightning strikes you and you're dead... fun right?...

Playing for a while, I got used to the game, my biggest problems where the purple guys, they are a real pain in the ass, but to bypass them, you have to wait until the sound of the bomb stops and jump, that way, the bomb doesn't reach you; The dogs are horrible too, they attack three times, they run to you, come back and attack you and turn around and attack you again! you have to jump over them to avoid them, but the jumps are slower than the dog, so most of the times, the dog will hit you on his second attack; besides those guys, there is not much of a challenge on the first level. Ah! and the l ightning thing, it seems that when you transform to hyde, he starts from the beginning of the level, and if he reaches Jekyll's position, then the lightning strikes and you die, don't ask why...

I managed to get to the second level or screen, and here it becomes a little harder; there are this stupid birds that fly across the screen and crap on you, also, the dogs and purple guys appear more often, you can get your ass kicked real quick, and worst, th e position of enemies on screen is random, so learning when one comes is not really that useless, but neither that useful.

I couldn't get past this level, if I had tried more I would have kicked my computer; This game is really frustrating, it looks good and all, but the gameplay is just awful! So, now you know how fucking awful this game is... don't play it, I have emotional wounds that will be hard to heal... :(

Well, back to playing Gun on my pc :D