Dark Void Review

     A review of Dark Void that I recently watched had quite a few negative things to say about the game. I would call it a mediocre to poor review. But all I could think while I was watching it was that the game looked amazing. I love the feeling of disagreeing with a reviewer, of seeing the good in something that others don't like. Sometimes these situations don't pan out, and the reviewer is totally correct. In the case of Dark Void though, my first impression of the game was right. It is awesome. 

     Dark Void is a 3^rd person shooter with some unique elements. The main one is that for the majority of the game you have a fully functional, unlimited-use jet pack and are set looses in massive levels to fight however you want. Amazingly, this angle is pretty fully realized. Many levels are GIGANTIC, requiring you to dogfight your way between key locations. My favorite level has you flying between multiple gigantic flying bases while dog-fighting in a gorgeous waterfall valley. You must raid the bases on foot and then use a combination of on-foot and jetpack movement to navigate massive shafts inside the bases to get to your targets. There are quite a few levels with this kind of great mix of dog-fighting, on-foot combat, and something in between. The fact that you can take off at great speed and fly around freely at any time is great. It's a sense of freedom that I have only felt in a small handful of games. The levels do have limits; flying too far away from the action results in your character turning around automatically. But, within reason, you really can fly up to and walk around on almost anything you can see. This leads to some great moments of exploration and some interesting combat tactics, such as finding sniper nests, or flanking enemy cover by positioning yourself above or behind them.

     The controls for the on-foot sections are the standard cover-based 3PS scheme. The left stick moves you and the right stick aims. Clicking L3 makes you run. The right stick controls where you look. X is jump. Pressing X while in the air lets you boost around at slow speeds with the jetpack for a limited time, after which you will slowly hover back down to earth. Pressing O while hovering cuts the engines. O is melee while you are on your feet (which is extremely powerful, btw. Like, much more powerful than almost every weapon, which is kinda weird). Square snaps you to cover and allows you to do cover-based maneuvers on a contextual basis, such as vaulting over cover or quickly switching over to other nearby cover. Holding L1 makes you take more careful aim, but slows you down to a slow walk. R1 fires your weapon. R2 is manual reload, and L2 makes you throw a grenade wherever you are aiming. I like this grenade throwing system, mainly because it avoids the thing that's present in most shooters where you can throw a grenade with pinpoint accuracy while totally behind cover. In Dark Void you have a lot of control over where the grenade goes, but you have to aim with your normal reticle, so you have to pop out of cover. Pressing any d-pad button will switch you to your other weapon (you can only hold 2 at a time).

     Pressing triangle twice (or once if you are already in the air by jumping or falling) makes you take off with your jetpack. You move at very high speed while flying, so hitting anything is bad and will probably kill you. You may need to work on your take-offs a bit, as I died by crashing into the ground or a nearby object several times immediately after taking off. But after awhile you will be taking off an landing like a pro. You land by pressing X, which snaps you back to hover mode. While flying, you control your movement with the left stick, but the y-axis is now inverted, so you control like a plane (you can change this in the options, but it works well and has a nice feel to it, so I'd encourage you to leave it that way). The right stick controls your rotation, which are far as I can tell is not too useful, but fun to mess around with. Holding triangle makes you fly faster using limited after-burners. While flying, you can't move your reticle around without moving your body, you can only fire straight ahead. R1 fires your twin machine guns. L1 fires your secondary weapon (which is mainly used when you are flying an aircraft, more on that in a second). Holding R2 makes the camera freely movable using the right stick. The d-pad buttons snap the camera to make it look to your left or right or behind you if you hold them down. And holding L2, the most useful of the camera options, makes you look at the nearest enemy without altering your course. Using L2, you can set up some great maneuvers during dog fights with enemy air craft. You might see that they are coming up fast on you and slow yourself down to get them in your reticle. Or you might see that they are above or below you, or to the side, and set yourself up to swing around and get them in your sights. I've had the experience in several games of trying to swing around and get targets in my sights in a 3d space, but oftentimes it doesn't work. In Dark Void, it somehow does work. It just feels right to see where the enemy is and then maneuver them into your sights, making it feel like you are in a real dog fight.

     The controls for barrel rolls and spins and swoops are all controlled by clicking R3 and then moving the analog sticks. Moving them right or left makes you barrel roll, and moving them down or up makes you turn around by either losing or gaining altitude. Moving one up and one down makes you turn around in place in a way only a jet-pack can. All of these maneuvers take up your boost meter, which also drains if you hold triangle to increase your speed. The meter is pretty big and recharges quickly if you stop using it, but if you do run out of boost and try to execute a maneuver, you'll go into an out of control stall.

   Finally, O lets you hijack enemy aircraft if you get close enough to them. You land on them and then resolve a quick-time event that prompts you with button presses. It's quite the spectacle to see you land on an enemey craft, dodge it's guns, force its cockpit open, and wrestle the pilot. If you are successful, you hop into the craft and seemlessly take control of it. These enemy craft (as well as the friendly craft you can land on and take over) control very similarly to the jetpack, but they manuever slightly differently and they have a compliment of high-powered missiles. These missiles have an interesting lock-on mechanic. It seems like if you fire them when an enemy is directly in your reticle (indicated by it turning red), the missile will lock on and follow them. I like this as you don't just automatically lock on, you have to work at it. If the craft gets damaged or you just want to leave, you can jump out by pressing O twice.

     Dark Void's on foot sections are pretty fun. They would be pretty standard if it weren't for the jet-packing you can do to get around the many vertical levels they often have. The enemies are also quite the bullet sponges, which gives the game a nicely different feel than the usual 1 head-shot and you're done play of other shooters. The weapons all also have a nice feel and look to them. There aren't a ton of weapons, but they are all pretty unique. There's an awesome disintegrator that actually disintegrates enemies. There's a cool sniper rifle that always zooms a medium amount when you aim with it and is semi-automatic. This along with its larger than usual clip gives it a different feel than the sniper rifles present in other shooters. These guns also have great upgrades that make them do even more unique stuff, like giving you explosive rounds, or making enemies explode when they die. You get these upgrades by spending points you get for killing enemies. You'll only be able to afford a few upgrades during a game; just enough to upgrade a handful of your favorites. I liked this because when I re-played the game on hard mode, I upgraded the other weapons and had a different experience. There are a few other unique guns as well that do cool stuff. I'll let you see them for yourself.

     There is also this thing called vertical combat where you either jump down to lower platforms or use your jet-pack to rocket between platforms by pressing square when you are lined up, all while taking cover underneath and on top of said platforms as enemies shoot at you. This is really fun as the camera shifts behind you and enemies fall toward you if they are above you or away from you if they are below you. Melee is really cool during these segments as you can throw enemies off of the platforms. Watching enemies fall past you as you shoot them, and watching the inhuman way the robotic enemies flip around the platforms and grip them to get a good angle on you is very entertaining. It's also quite the mind melter to switch between the normal camera and this camera view. It's just another way the jet-pack and the level verticality are fully realized.

     The jet-pack dog-fighting sequences are a lot of fun. It can take some effort to take down enemy fighters, especially if you don't upgrade your jet-pack's weapons. High-jacking a UFO is often a good idea so you can get access to it's missiles. The QTE for high-jacking UFO's is fun and stays fun, but I kind of wish it either was a bit shorter or required a few extra button presses. As it stands, there are certain parts of the QTE where you have to wait for a few seconds, which kind of interrupts the flow of the battle. Still, they are great to look at. Switching between flying your jet-pack, hijacking UFO's, piloting friendly fighters, landing on foot, and having the option to control stationary AA guns in some stages keeps the flying segments fun and interesting.

    The game's visual design is really great. The robotic enemies and their tech are especially impressive. They are sort of like Terminator skeleton robots, but a bit bulkier. They have a great metallic look to them. There are a few organic creatures and enemies that are really well designed as well, including some downright scary lizard-like creatures that spookily slither toward you and some characters with surreal, ever-flowing appendages. The aircraft also look great, from the retro-high-tech look of your allies' planes to the incredible gyroscopic cockpits on the enemy flying saucers. There are a lot of great details and moving parts on all these different characters and items. Very impressive stuff.

    Now for the bad parts. The story is awful. Actually, the story is fine (it's about the Bermuda Triangle, the famous people who have been sucked into it, and the other world that lies below it and the race of beings trying to break through that world to earth). It's the writing and cutscenes that are bad. The story scenes are completely nonsensical, and you leave nearly every one thinking to yourself, “I have no idea what just happened, and I don't care.” Because of the bad writing, the journals you can pick up as collectibles feel like a chore. They are really boring and pointless, so it takes the fun out of collecting them. It's a shame since the basic idea of the story and the character and mechanical design is so inspired. The voice acting isn't half bad either. Fortunately you can get through the game without caring about the story too much, so it doesn't weigh the experience down all that bad.

     There are also a few bad choices in the overall game design. Recharging health makes absolutely no sense, so it really shouldn't be included. It's also kind of hard to know how damaged you are as the screen just blurs a little when your health is low. It plays pretty well with its re-charging health system, but you can waltz through a lot of battles without much overall strategy for the level as you only have to survive to get back to full health before the next conflict. There's also some weird pacing, with a few super-long levels followed by a 5 minute level, things like that. I also noticed that auto-save doesn't really work like the game explains it to you. It tells you that whenever you see a certain symbol on-screen, the game is auto-saving, but it really only saves your progress at certain checkpoints. The game also forces you into new game + mode once you beat it, so in order to play hard mode without my weapons' power already jacked through the roof I had to delete my save game data. The Last of Us and this game really don't get the point of new game +. I want to play hard mode for a challenge, not have it be the same difficulty because I'm starting with uber-guns! Not a big deal though, just delete your save.

     The final bad part is that there is a bad, bad trophy glitch. I've read that many of the game's trophies are glitched and won't pop, but the one I couldn't pop (and many, many others have had problems with it) is the most time consuming trophy that you get for upgrading all of your weapons. It doesn't pop for a lot of people and the only solution the internet offers is to replay the game and farm a lot after deleting your save, a solution which takes about 5 hours. I'm not doing that. No platinum for me. This is a big slap in the face from the developer, especially since I put a lot of work into the platinum only to have the game fail it for me. I'm just hoping that when I get the DLC and the accompanying patch it will magically pop, but I doubt that will happen.

     I know these flaws sound bad, but Dark Void is a really, really fun game. Only a handful of games deliver on the promise of a sense of open freedom. Dark Void's massive levels deliver big time on this concept, maybe more than any game I've ever played. The cherry on top is the great visual design. These two great strengths far outweigh the garbage writing and the other quirky flaws. They push Dark Void up to a Great Game, tier 2.

Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 3: In Harm's Way Spoiler Post!

Spoiler Warning! You have been warned that spoilers are ahead!



 Here are my choices (at least the ones I can remember, since I can't actually review “My Choices” (see review!):

At the beginning, I just stared at Carver, causing him to slap me (this was the first episode where I remained silent several times on purpose because I thought it was what Clem would do).

I tried to get Kenny to calm down and not try to escape when we were riding in the truck.

I think I said that it was my fault that Sarah was talking, but she still got slapped by her Dad (who died later!)

I helped Sarah with her work. Then I told Carver that she didn't understand (man, she is dumb, talking while Carver is talking and then not working!) but he still killed that guy who was watching us.

I said we should do both escape plans at the same time.

I tried to help Kenny and got a rifle butt to the face.

I didn't watch Kenny kill Carver. I wanted to just shoot him and get it over with, but Kenny is going crazy!

I chopped Sarita's arm off. Then when she screamed, I thought that I should have considered that she would scream and attract more zombies. Maybe I shouldn't have helped her and just chopped the Zombie, then cut her arm off later. But then she might not have survived the bite. That thing was going to town on her arm!

The big questions for me are the fates of Sarita and Sarah. Based on the preview, it seems that Sarah is still alive but has run off. It's a big ? For Sarita though. Kenny is looking awesome with his eye-patch. Wonder what he'll look like without it. And is Clementine going to run away with Jane? It doesn't seem like a bad idea. I think the next episode is coming out this month, so we might find out soon!

Also, that's Tavia from 400 Days, and this is the community she was recruiting people into. That is very upsetting. And Vince is there! And guess what? Vince didn't go to the community at the end of my 400 Days playthrough! This thing needs to load my choices better!

Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 3: In Harm's Way Review

      We're in the middle of Season 2 of The Walking Dead. Maybe that's why this episode was a little slower paced than usual. Not that being slow paced is bad in itself. Something just seemed a little off this time around, at least for the first hour or so of the game. Don't worry, this is still a great episode with a lot of developments and interesting choices, and quite a few interesting new characters that I enjoyed a lot. I also want to point out that playing 400 Days, while not at all required for enjoyment, is really starting to add some significant meaning to what is going on now if you have played it. Although part of what happens in this episode does not match up with my results from 400 Days. That's just a preview of my ranting about these games loading saves right that is coming up.

     So how did it run this time around? Pretty good, in general. The load times are still disturbingly long in places, and almost every scene started with a weird framerate glitch that made it look like you just fast forwarded into the scene, but beyond that it ran pretty well. I did have another big problem though...

     At the end of the episode, the “My Choices” screen came up blank for me. And now when I select “My Choices” from the main menu, there is no entry for episode 3. Looking at my choices and the statistics of what percentage of players did the same thing you did is one of my favorite things about The Walking Dead. It's fascinating to see how sometimes the majority of players agree with you on a hard decision, but disagree with you on something you thought was pretty obvious. I'm feeling a lack of closure on the episode without this review at the end. Very disappointing. I'm also terrified that my choices aren't going to load right into episode 4, especially since season 1's decision didn't properly import for me into season 2, as I talked about in my posts about Episode 1 and earlier in this post. These failures are more than a petty glitch; they're more like a failure of the game to operate. I can only hope that my choices are buried somewhere in the saved data and will load into episode 4.
     Because of this problem and because the beginning of the episode felt a little off, this is the first Walking Dead episode I'm giving a score of Great Game, Tier 3. It's still amazing and a great experience with some real interesting stuff, but this time around, the story wasn't so absorbing that it pulled my mind away from the technical flaws, especially since the main technical flaw this time around was story-related. Still, I love The Walking Dead and can't wait for what is next, and I really enjoyed this episode too! Check out my spoiler post for my choices!

DS Bucket List

Here's my DS bucket list, in order of interest! It includes GBA titles!

Orcs and elves – fps turn based fantasy – very cool

Adventure time – cool platformer

The Dark Spire

Scurge: Hive – action game, looks great

Ninjatown – td with cool design

Denki blocks! -GBA version is good

Capcom classics mini mix – has bionic commando nes version, the one I want to try

Powder – free roguelike

Mega Man Battle Network – GBA

Wario Land 4 – looks really good

Wario Ware gba and ds – twisted looks great

Drill Dozer gba – platformer – cool

Fist of Mars - just put it on the list already

Contra 4

Giana sisters ds – mario clone

Picross 3d – crazy 3d picross

Astro boy gba – yes

Kirby – canvas curse – draw lines to guid kirby

Lost magic – draw spells – rts elements

Air Traffic Chaos – cool puzzley simulator

Barnyard Blast swine of the night – cool funny story, boring gameplay

Chibi Robo – looks fun

Children of Mana – action rpg – straightforward

Chu Chu Rocket – cool puzzle – like idiot squad

Ninja 5-0 gba – looks cool

Mario vs. Donkey Kong gba – puzzle platformer – looks ok

Super Dodge Ball gba – looks fun as requires reaction time

Super Collapse 3 – simple but frantic puzzle game

Klonoa – if I like PS1

Shining soul 2 looks cool. Maybe try 1 also... doesn't look as good

Larry boy – looks good

Gremlins – cool platformer

Ripping friends – supposed to be bad, but ripping friends are great

River city ransom ex – good version

Sabre wulf – rare platformer – get treasure, then run from wolf

Dementium 1 only – 60 frames fps

Draglade – 2d brawler, looks ok but generic

Mr. Driller drill spirits – if I want more after playing psone version on ps3

Braid Review

     Braid is real close to getting a perfect score from me. It excels to the top of its class in every category. There is really only one reason I'm going to give it a less than perfect score. It's a puzzle platformer that is very similar, in set-up, at least, to Closure, the only game I've give a perfect score. And Closure is better than it. Braid's gameplay is at least equal to, and possibly even a bit better than, Closure's gameplay. But theme-wise (and I'm including music, visuals, and story in this category), Closure is the clear winner, despite Braid being extremely, extremely strong in this category as well. Closure's story and theming is perfect. Braid's is real close, but I prefer Closure's. And since they are very comparable games, both being 2d puzzle platformer games with ingenious mechanics and a similar feel to the movement and level structure, I have to compare them in my mind. And Closure is the clear winner for me. Not that their can't be 2 games in the same genre that both get perfect scores. It's just that these two games are very similar. That's why Braid is a Great Game, tier 2. 
     Once you beat Braid (which only takes a few hours), there a few things to do. A speed run mode unlocks that challenges you with completing certain levels within really strict time limits. I thought that was a bad idea, but when I tried it, I had a blast finding ideal routes and tricky time-manipulation tricks to shave time off my playthroughs. There is also a challenge to beat the whole game in 45 minutes, which I failed miserably at. It would take several hours of practice that I don't want to put in to get that time. There are also some very, very hidden secrets to find in the game that are worth the trouble, both for the experience and the little bit of light they shed on the story...
     Braid's graphics are also top notch. It basically looks like a moving, breathing painting the whole time. It's really gorgeous, one of the best looking 2d games I've ever seen. The music is also top-notch. It ranges from happy violins to disturbing ambiance, to lullabies and creepy vibes and back again. The music really follows the game's themes; the potential of youth, relationships, family, disappointment, restriction, horror, etc. That list goes on and on.

     Re-winding time is actually just the very tip of the iceberg. Each new set of levels introduce other time-bending powers that are just as fully realized and executed as re-winding time. One of these abilities stands out in particular as something I've never seen before. This concept is also so well implemented that it just works intuitively, just like the rest of the game. It's really great stuff. And I'm not saying what it is, because that would spoil the fun of discovery.

     Because you can re-wind time, puzzles often include elements that wouldn't work in other games, such as deadly surprises or the necessity for extremely precise movements. These aren't a problem, since you can instantly re-try a puzzle after dying or missing an opportunity, and you'll have the knowledge of exactly how enemies are going to move and what is going to happen since you have already experienced it. And then the mind-bending really starts. Braid's level design is sublime. The puzzles are ingenious and work perfectly. There are so many stand-out moments of brilliant creativity and excellent implementation. I'll give you a few simple examples. Some levels might require you to get to an area very quickly after completing a task. This can be done by going to where you need to end up first, then completing the task and re-winding at max speed until you end up back where you need to be. Other levels might give you mutually exclusive goals, but since you can re-wind, you can find a way to do both tasks. These are the most simple and general examples I can give without spoiling what you need to play to properly experience. It gets much more complex than that. Many levels end up being a mini mind trip on the level of a two-hour movie with a perfectly orchestrated mind-blowing twist. 

     Pressing and holding square re-winds time. You can do this as many times as you want and can rewind all the way back to the beginning of any individual level. It's really cool how there is almost no limitation to this very powerful ability. Death means nothing to you; if you fall in a bed of spikes or get bitten by an enemy and die, no problem, you just re-wind back to before you died. Tapping L1 increases the re-wind speed, and R1 decreases the speed. The only other controls are X to jump, circle to use switches, and the left analog stick or d-pad to move.

     Braid is very much in the vein of Mario, and makes no bones about throwing in many very direct references to that series (as well as nods to Donkey Kong and Banjo Kazooie, and probably others). You run around in small levels that are usually only a few screens long at the most. Your goal is to collect puzzle pieces, which are guarded by obstacles and enemies. In order to get to these puzzles, you'll often have to exploit Braid's main gameplay hook; re-winding time.

     It's a 2d puzzle platformer. In it, you play as Tim, a guy who is off in search of the princess whom he has had a falling out with. At least, that's what the game is about at the outset. Braid has a winding, ambiguous story told mainly through text excerpts that you read at the beginning of each set of levels. The story goes through themes more than it does a direct narrative. It's very well written and gets across all kinds of emotions and meaning. It's pretty remarkable, actually. And amazingly, the gameplay really gels perfectly with the themes and ideas put forth.

     I recently picked up Braid during a PSN flash sale for $.99. I can't think of a more clever intro than that, sorry. But don't worry, I thought of a great gimmick for the review.

Child of Eden Review

            Awhile ago I was considering buying Playstation Move just so I'd have an excuse to play Stranger's Wrath again since it got patched to add Move support. I couldn't quite justify it for just that game though. Luckily, my cousin got me Child of Eden for my birthday, so with two games waiting for me to try Move out on, I went ahead and pulled the trigger. After resisting some too good to be true offers on Craigslist, I was able to get an Eye, motion controller, and nav controller for $25 bucks on e-bay.

            Child of Eden is a sort-of sequel to Rez, the PS2 on-rails shooter that featured trippy visuals and synesthetic music. Child of Eden is also an on rails shooter. It progresses you through themed levels, and you don't control your motion at all. You can control where you look with a greater degree of freedom than I expected although, except for a few segments, in general you need to keep your focus straight ahead.

            These levels are not your traditional videogame locales. They are more like meta-physical representations of their theme. I don't want to give too much away about what the levels are like, but, for example, one is called “Beauty” and takes place partially in a giant garden and features lots of flowers and butterflies all floating out on a giant ocean. There are five of these levels, and in general they last about 10 minutes. It's an intense 10 minutes though. Although the levels do a good job of representing their theme, there are also lots of enemies that look like microscopic organisms or creatures of some kind.

            It's hard to describe the game's look and feel; there are so many trippy environments, backgrounds, textures, lighting effects, and great use of live action. Live action used to be kind of looked down on in videogames (at least by me), but in the age of HD video, the actress in this game fits right in with the graphics.

            The actress plays Lumi, a girl who died a long time ago who you are trying to sort-of recreate using data stored about her in cyberspace. My interpretation of the game is that each level has you searching through an archive to find out about and free certain aspects of her. It's really breathtaking when she suddenly shows up in a level after many minutes of trippy visuals and wildly fluctuating shapes and colors and sounds. You really feel like you've found her and need to free her.

            I played the game primarily with Move controls. There is a brief and super-effective calibration you must perform, and then the motion controls work brilliantly. Navigating the game's menu with the Move controller is really fun; you never have to use a button, just hover the reticle over what you want for a second and you will jump to where you want to go. The placement of the icons is designed very well, so it's really entertaining and makes you feel like you're in Minority Report or something.

            During gameplay, you control a reticle with the move controller. If you pass over an enemy, you will automatically lock on. You can lock on to up to 8 enemies at once, or you can lock on eight shots at an enemy if it can take more than one hit. Once locked on, you can fire your homing lasers by flicking your wrist. It worked best for me to jerk the controller toward my body and then toward the screen. If you do this in time to the music when you have eight targets locked in, you will get a multiplier bonus. To me, this is really hard to do on purpose. From what I've read, it's essential to scoring high, as you loose your multiplier if you don't continuously hit on the beat. There's usually not a visual representation of the beat on screen, and it also just feels weird to me to not shoot as soon as you are locked on since you need to kill enemies fast so they don't return fire. Still, in certain segments, you can get in a groove and build your multiplier up. For me, these moments were fleeting; I never really got the hang of shooting to the beat. You can also hold the trigger down to fire a rapid-fire laser which you aim with the reticle, which is useful and also necessary against certain enemies. There is also an expendable Euphoria attack you activate by pressing the move button, which shoots out like-a-hundred lasers. This acts like a bomb from a more traditional shooter; it usually kills all on-screen normal enemies, damages bosses, and clears out any bullets that were headed your way. You start levels with 1 Euphoria attack, but can find more ammo as you go.

            If there are bullets coming at you, a wide ring appears around your reticle with grooves in it that show you what direction the bullets are coming from. Bullets are a lot rarer than you might think, but it is essential to shoot them down with the rapid-fire laser as you only have five HP. The ring is really effective at pointing the bullets out to you, and makes for tense battles where you shoot away until you see that ring and then have to quickly swing around to knock down the bullets.

            Once you get past the first few levels, the game starts to really play with the dichotomy between the lock-on laser and the rapid-fire laser. You start to run into more enemies and bosses that require you to use one or the other, or a combination of both. For example, one brilliant boss fight makes you shoot down colored lights. One color is only damaged by homing lasers, the other by rapid-fire lasers. It makes you try to frantically lock-on to all the one color while avoiding useless lock-ons with the other color. There are a few other great uses of this concept, but I'll leave them for you to discover.

            I only tried using a traditional controller once, and instantly thought that it wasn't worth messing with since I had already played the game for several hours with move and was really used to it. Basically, you hold X to make the lock-on laser acquire targets as you move the reticle around with the left-analog stick. You release it to fire. R2 fires the rapid-fire laser, and circle uses your Euphoria attack. I'm sure the controller works fine, I was just already really used to using Move, so I didn't bother with it much.

            I want to call out level 4 as an especially stand-out moment in the game. I don't want to ruin it, so I won't even mention it's theme, but the level really nails that theme. So much cool stuff happens in that level, and it wordlessly conveys a lot of ideas about the concept like few works in any medium manage to do. It's also one of the most fun levels, and it ends in a great boss fight.

            Unfortunately, the game's music is not as great as it could be. Don't get me wrong, it has its moments of brilliance, but I feel that a game that puts as much emphasis on music as this game does needs to have a nearly flawless soundtrack (like Bit.Trip Runner 2 and Retro/Grade), and to me, there's quite a few missteps on the musical front. I know it's a matter of taste, and I've heard others say this is one of the best soundtracks in gaming, but to me only about 60%-70% of the music is really good. Some if it is really similar to music and sounds from the brilliant Lumines (which was made by the same designer), but unfortunately those sounds haven't aged too well to my ears. This game tries to be synesthetic by matching visuals to music, but doesn't succeed quite as much as it should.

            The game is fun, but doesn't have much appeal for me to re-play. To me, it was very experiential; something you experience and enjoy rather than game through over and over like an addictive platformer or shooter. It's more like the WalkingDead games ; you experience it and then there's not much point in continuing on unless you just want to see it again. There are tons of really hard to get score-chasing trophies in this game as well as a hard mode and a super-challenging bonus level, but none of these hold much appeal to me. I'm happy to have seen the game's play ideas and thematic imagery and sound, but I'm not feeling re-playing each level 12 times, which is what you would need to do at the very least to get all the trophies.

             Child of Eden is a beautiful game with some cool gameplay ideas. It's fun to run through it and see each level's theme play out and the gameplay changes and differentiations that go along with it. But once you're done, the multitude of post-game content is not that appealing, as it all involves re-playing the same 5 levels endlessly until you are perfect at it, and would require that you master the wonky art of firing homing lasers to the beat. I have to mark the game down for its music too. If it had a really killer soundtrack, it would be a much better experience. Fortunately the soundtrack isn't bad, and there are a handful of awe-inspiring combinations of sight and sound. But you can tell that the whole game was supposed to echo those moments, and unfortunately the soundtrack fully can't keep up with that idea. Child of Eden is a Mediocre Game, Tier 3.

  

         

Burger Time World Tour Review

            I don't really know about the original Burger Time. From what I understand from my sister-in-law who has played it recently at an arcade, it is pretty similar to World Tour. I do know that when I recently did my PS3 Bucket list, I watched a video review of it and I thought it looked pretty cool, so I added it to the list. Then I heard on twitter from Nick Sutner, who works at Playstation, that Burger Time World Tour would be leaving PSN for good. I immediately purchased it so that I wouldn't miss out on it. I wasn't planning on playing it for awhile, but since I had to put it on my hard-drive and I don't like games to sit un-played on my hard drive for too long, I went ahead and gave it a whirl. I don't know if this review is really useful to anyone as the game isn't available anymore, at least not on PSN. Maybe it's on other platforms or will re-appear sometime in the future.

            In Burger Time World Tour, you run through 2d levels. Actually, the levels are round; they behave just like any 2d game, but they are rendered in 3d and they connect to themselves so that you can run around in a circle forever in most of them as if you are on the outside edge of a merry go round. This interesting idea also gives you a great sense of vision of the level as you can see the other side of the level behind where you currently are. It's an effect I've never seen before, and it's awesome. You can really plan out where you need to go because you can see the whole level. If the level was in regular 2d, it would be too big to see all on one screen. The levels also have a great sense of scale; some of them reach high into the sky, and the graphics and focus really make you feel like you are climbing up to the heavens.

            The goal of each level is the same; make a certain number of burgers. The burgers are huge; each layer is probably 8ft. across and burgers can be up to 12 ft tall or mayber more. Each layer of the burger (such as the meat, the veggies, and the bun) are typically seperated in vertical columns. You must traverse a series of ladders, platforms, obstacles, and enemies and run over each layer of the burger, which drops that layer down to the next lower level. You quickly learn that you need to start at the top because if you leave the bun up at the top you'll have to go back and get it and push it down through all the layers to get it down to the rest of the burger. Normally a piece only drops one level when you run over it, but if you drop it while an enemy is stopped on it, it will drop two levels, and if there are two enemies on it, it will drop 4 levels. You usually accomplish this by hitting enemies with pepper to stun them while they are on the ingredient. The enemies are all anthropomorphized foods (such as sausage, eggs, and habaneros), and using them to drop the burger pieces will also cook them into the burger, which causes it to become a specialty burger that gives you more points based on what you put in it.

            You run with the left analog stick or the d-pad. X is jump, square is attack with your pepper, and circle uses a power-up if you have ran over one. Triangle is used to pick-up and throw enemies when they are stunned. Throwing an enemy at another enemy will stun it, and if you run over a burger piece while holding an enemy, you will drop it with the piece and get all the usual bonuses.

            There are 40 levels. They start simple and get quite large and complex. Each of the country-themed levels add lots of variety in the form of new enemies with unique attacks (like hot peppers that explode when stunned or carrots that can drill down through levels without using ladders), new obstacles (like platforms that break when you use them, elevators, and fires that go on and off), and power-ups (like an energy drink that makes you invincible and super-fast or the rocket that lets you fly for a few seconds). There is a ton of variety and the game stays fun the entire time. In one level you might be going through maze-like corridors and up and down ladders to get each burger piece. In another there might only be one path, but it's really dangerous. One level might be swarming with enemies, and another might be filled with deadly traps and obstacles. No two levels feel the same. Each world ends in a boss fight against a giant foe or unique enemies. You still build burgers in these levels, but they have a few unique twists to them due to the boss characters attacking you from the background.

            The way the game gives you a star-rating at the end of each level seems a little off. When I did my run-through to get the trophy for beating every level without dying (as you usually have a few lives and start over from checkpoints if you die), I beat each level decently-under the par time and without dying, yet I received star-ratings as low as 2 and as high as 5 even though I couldn't perceive any significant difference in my performance. That's why I don't really feel an interest in trying to get the star-ranking trophies; I don't have a clear sense of what I could improve on, and trying over and over again to micro-manage my clear time and points doesn't seem fun. Beating all the levels without dying is really challenging and fun, however. Some levels will require many tries to accomplish this, but it stays fun even when you do the same level over and over, perfecting your route and your response to enemy patterns. The only bummer is the long load time whenever you re-start a level.

            The music is pretty cool. It's bouncy, upbeat stuff that has a few nods to old-school 8-bit sounding game music. This is true of the sound effects as well; some are pretty modern sounding, others sound like they were ripped right out of 1982, which is a really cool touch.

            Burger Time World Tour doesn't stick out in my mind as some super-awesome game, but I had a lot of fun with its frantic gameplay and interesting take on the presentation of a 2d game. It's a Great Game, Tier 3. Now, where is the nearest 5 Guys????