Enslaved

Further continuing on reducing my rather shameful pile of games that I need to finish, I decided to choose Enslaved as my next game to take off the stack.

Only a couple hours in and I’m already loving the world that Ninja Theory has created.  How I’ve this far and not know that Enslaved takes place in New York is beyond me.  I’ve listened to so many podcast that gave Enslaved so much praise and still never had any of the story spoiled for me.  Now this may be stepping into spoiler territory a bit, it’s actually the very beginning, but I was instantly intrigued when the air ship your in goes down and clips Lady Liberty.  Seeing New York in its post apocalyptic incarnation is just amazing if not disturbing in some sort of way.

The graphics are amazing as well.  The interaction that goes on between the two main characters is on par that of the Uncharted series, especially with Trip, the female main character.  I feel such emotion with her facial expressions.  I’d say her expressions alone top Uncharted in some ways.  Could be that her character is just more likable, but it’s amazing to feel such emotion from a video game character.  Not to say that I’ve never felt emotion in a video game before, but Enslaved does such an amazing job with the interaction between the characters.  If I had to pick out the biggest draw for me in Enslaved, I would easily pick the interaction between the main characters.  So far I don’t think that the character you play, Monkey, is all too special as far as character design goes but still works within the game.

Like I said, I’m only about two hours in.  So far I don’t know much about the game or even know what is really happening other than the floating prison, or whatever it was, crashed into a post apocalyptic New York City and now I am a slave to a female character doing the best to survive.  Sounds interesting, right?  Either way I am intrigued and eager to continue the journey that Ninja Theory has created.

I’ll make sure to write more later on my journey through Enslaved.

Impression of Shadows of the Damned

Now that Alice is scratched off my list of my backlog, I decided to start up Shadows of the Damned. Not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I was very excited to dive in and see what Shadows had to offer. Four hours in and I can tell you that I am having a blast with it.

The game has a very Quentin Tarantino/Grind House vibe too it. Usually I’m not a big fan of this type of asthetic, but I think it works really well with the story. The humor in Shadows is great; not too much and also not too little of it where it ever feels out of place.

The controls in Shadows work pretty well also. It controls just like any modern day 3rd person shooter for the most part. The button configuration is a little odd though in some cases but not too bad to where I can’t get used to them with time. Now I just got to see if they work all the way through the games completion.

So far, I am really enjoying Shadows of the Damned. It’s one of those games where I keep telling myself that I’m just going to play to one more checkpoint and many checkpoints later, I find that I’ve been playing for hours on end. The world, controls, humor, and the story all really work well with one another and I can’t wait to see how Garcia’s journey ends.

my time with Alice: Madness Returns

Looking at my pile of games I bought on the cheap and have no time whatsoever to play, I decided to start up Alice: Madness Returns. From all the reviews I have glanced through, I initially got the vibe that the game play didn’t stack up to the awe and wonder the world that American McGee had created.

First of all, the game is a treat to look at. In some areas where the graphics lack polish, the art style makes up for it. I’m a sucker for the dark art and when it’s added to Alice in Wonderland, I can’t help but be intrigued. One thing is for certain though, if your not a fan of Alice in Wonderland, this game is going to do nothing for you. But then again, why would you be playing it?

The game does seem like it can get repetitive and some areas seem like that they go on just a tad bit longer than you would expect. While not game breaking, some of the platforming can get frustrating. Jumping from platform to platform can be a bit troublesome because its hard to pinpoint where Alice is going to land. This didn’t take away my enjoyment of the game too much but I can easily see somebody not heavily invested in the Alice in Wonderland fiction just give up on frustration. There’s no penalty for falling from a cliff either other than starting back on the first part of the area. No health is lost, so the only loss is the time it takes to do a segment over again. There are some areas though, where I will die over and over again but I just keep chugging along because I could not wait to see what was around the corner.

Another area where I found a bit frustrating is the combat. While fighting just 1 or 2 enemies isn’t all too bad, fighting a group of up to 7 enemies can really get tough. Occasionally I do find enemies that act like they pop a fuse and get confused on what to do and just stand in place waiting for me to attack them. Also, there are times when enemies will just disappear in thin air while attacking them. These encounters don’t happen too often and most of the time it makes me laugh rather then make me want to throw my controller.

The story seems a bit weak at first. I often thought to myself what my purpose was carting Alice around all these levels was for. Now it could be my attention span but everything started to fall into place around the 2/3 mark of the game. There are collectibles scattered around the levels that hint at the story a bit, which helped a bit, but there are times when I would still be a bit lost. Most of the time too, if you paid enough attention to the detail, you could find hints in the level design itself in regards to the story itself which I thought was really well done. Overall though, once the story wrapped up, I found it too be quite good. Defiantly wouldn’t mind playing through actual dlc – not skin packs – if the folks at Spicy Horse would develop any.