Third Platinum

Today I got my platinum in Borderlands. This platinum is for the main game, not DLC, but it gave me the plat anyway, which is nice. Working on the DLC now. On the 360 version I played the Hunter and did everything on him, but on the ps3 version I tried out the Siren. I don't like her at all so when I beat the game, I started again as the Hunter and things went a lot better. Siren is fucking easy mode incarnate :( Not in a good way. I always have preferred the Hunter/Ranger/Sniper anyway. I'm happy about this plat... took some effort and time. Third platinum trophy for the ps3. Nice times.

Silent Hill: Downpour

At the time of this writing I've almost completed my second play through of Silent Hill: Downpour on the PS3. I'd heard that it got bad reviews & negative feedback, but that doesn't add up to feedback I've personally got from it. People I know who've played it really enjoyed it & I'm no different. Silent Hill: Downpour has now replaced Silent Hill: Homecoming as my favourite game in the series. A big claim, I'm sure, & it comes from having played all the Silent Hill games there are, excluding Arcade, which I can't find for the life in me. So what makes this game so incredible? Let's move on to the review with a warning that I'll be including some spoilers here & there, but I don't think anything massive. The game play of Silent Hill has always been one which manages to suck me into it & Downpour is no different. It took me a little while to realise that as you got hit, the amount of blood on your outfit showed how damaged you were. You can check on the Statistics screen about your health %, but I found that just paying attention to the state of my clothes was easier. I didn't realise it at first because I automatically assumed that my clothes would always be drenched in blood or tattered.. this is a Silent Hill game after all. Moving around Silent Hill is a chilling experience which is only heightened 

Creepy fog & unnerving drizzle

by the dismal weather; rain & fog. If it's not foggy & wet, it's drizzling or even a full on thunder storm with bizarre lilac lightning, reminiscent of a screaming ladies scream, but we'll get to that in a few. One thing that usually annoys me in games is being able to hear your own footsteps, but I didn't mind it too much in Downpour. It sort of fit & the footsteps made sense. Like on grating, it would sound like walking/running on grating, & puddles splashed. It became natural & part of the background noise, which is nice. Doing tasks & moving through inventory was also done well as I never felt aggravated at a move I had to do or something I needed to get from my pockets. It was handled really well.

I'll move right into the combat now & say that it was miles better than Homecoming. Whereas Homecoming has good combat ideas, they came off a bit awkward at times; especially with jumping back up or dodging. Downpour doesn't let you dodge or jump back up, but it does let you block & something I found awesome about that is your block is dependant about what item you have as a weapon. Like if you block with just your hands/arms, you take damage, as you're blocking with your body, but it's less. If you block with a frying pan or something, then you can block a little damage, but it will probably break. Blocking with things like chairs or harpoons or fire extinguishers will prevent damage for several blocks. The monsters have patterns you can follow if you pay attention & that is a key factor in beating them. You need to keep your eyes open & sometimes it's better to just run. Seriously. You need to run from some battles or you will die. This is a great thing they pulled over from Shattered Memories. All the monsters have names you can find at the awesome Silent Hill Wiki, but since I don't check anything the first time I go through a 

Beware the screams of the damned

game, I had to come up with names for them all & they sort of stuck lol. It will be easy to determine what I'm talking about though; the names are rather descriptive. You can use loads of things to attack with from guns as melee to rocks on the ground to rakes & shovels. One part which also belongs in the combat section is the Otherworld. In Downpour your trek through the watery Otherworld will, primarily, involve you fleeing from the Void, which I nicknamed Wtfisthatthingomgrunrunrunrun. It involves quick thinking, paying attention to your surrounding, & using every second in the best possible way as you run down halls & through obstacles without getting sucked into its disintegrating grasp. It's a little harrowing, actually.

Following the combat system is going to have to be the graphics. They are not the best graphics to have ever been & the monsters are the best graphics in the game. That isn't saying that the graphics are shit; they are quite good, but not the best of games out there. Silent Hill has never had the best graphics available to the gaming community, but it hasn't needed to. The only real issue I have in the game is the FPS issues that are hindering it as you progress through the game; I actually attribute it to all the save files you can have as the game auto saves & doesn't delete the auto saves, but makes new ones, creating huge caches of auto saves that it searches through constantly. 

Puzzles have varying difficulty

We've seen this in other games & they will probably patch it, but for now, the graphics suffer a bit. That's more performance, than graphics, however. As I said, things look nice, not holy shit real, but nice. The water looks so real & the monsters are truly ghastly to look at sometimes. Especially the second to last boss you fight... wow, impressive in a very real way. The ambiance & dreary world permeates every move you make & it draws you in. This is also brought in by the sound & music. Together with the ambient tracks, & also the actual OST by Daniel Licht, Silent Hill eats your sanity away. The giggling, the echoing, the screams, the strange little noises here & there... together with imagery & sometimes lack of anything, unnerves you in a big way. Some of the buildings you head into are further creepified by the music that plays & it's not all original music... there are old songs, like Born Free by Andy Williams & Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen by Louis Armstrong, & some more modern sounding ones too that start playing & give the world a surreal aspect. I'll make a list at the end of all the licensed music, which I recognised, used in the game as I don't think there is a list out there that I can find. The music is amazing & I got the OST before I was even done with the first play of the game.

The story & side quests. I'll start off by saying that the side quests are a truly amazing addition to the world of Silent Hill. No more are we guided from start to finish, wondering about the town or wishing we could see more. These quests give you the chance to stray from the path & explore the town of Silent Hill. It takes you into the lives of people who lived there & lets you find out more about the inhabitants. It's often been said that the world of Silent Hill

Monsters?

that we see, is not the world that anyone else sees. Not only is it the world of our characters only, but it might be completely different than the inhabitants even. There is a part in Silent Hill 3 where Heather is speaking to Vincent Smith & she mentions the monsters she's facing & Vincent says 'Monsters? They look like... monsters to you? ' Even though he says he's just joking when Heather gets worried, he really isn't. The monsters being fought in the game are not monsters, they are people. Silent Hill bends reality, as Bobby says in Downpour, it does 'strange things' to reality. This is actually reinforced a little by the unseen scoring system in Downpour that determines your ending... if you kill monsters, your score gets worse, but if you just incapacitate them & go, then your score actually goes up; it gets better. I could talk forever about the theories around Silent Hill, but I'll stick to this game of course. This all comes into the side quest situation in that you can see how people are slowly going mad from Silent Hills invisible punishment system. As the people, who live in Silent Hill, become more obsessed with guilt or passion, or whatever, the town begins distorting their world & how they see life & it's amazing to go through the quests & take that journey into oblivion with them. The quests are done really well & give you a genuine creepy feeling. There are also quite a number of awesome Easter eggs pertaining to the other Silent Hill games; pictures of previous characters & locations, & also a room that looks exactly like Henry's from The Room. One quest in particular, The Gramophone, was so unnerving that even though I was in a well lit room with my nephew sitting next to me playing Halo multi-player loudly (this was my second run so I didn't mind the non Silent Hill noise), it was still so freaky that even he stopped his game, dying several times, his eyes glued to my screen as I controlled the slow, inevitable death that was occurring. It was all encompassing.

Henry's room from Silent Hill 4: The Room

The main storyline is not obvious at first. You're thrown into the game with blood on your hands almost immediately & you don't know why. You're told to do something that is much like skewering a pig, but to a person & the game wants you do to it for no known reason, brutally & without remorse. This sets a rather dark stage that ends up following you through the entire game. As you move through the story, you meet a few other characters, a few of them are not explained in the game, & their fate is unknown in every ending, with resolution only coming to two characters, & even then, it's left a little weird. I didn't figure out the entire canon story until close to the end & that's a good job on the game for keeping me guessing that long. It's a creepy story that opens you up to guilt & self delusion, & how that can become reality & the world you live in. You create your world by your actions & what you do effects how you see things. Living inside yourself is a big theme & the need to come to terms with that & accept truth instead of delusion is a driving point.

What is real?

In the end of all things, this game is not worth the disservice it was given. You can choose your difficulty for both gameplay & puzzles, each has its own setting. Silent Hill is a series that holds the award for being the only series that can seriously freak me the fuck out. It is entrancing, beautiful, creepy, & haunting, & if you're a fan of the genre of horror/survival horror, then you should pick it up. If it's not your style, then nothing I'm saying will really make you want to play it, & that's fine. I'll rank this game mighty high in my favourite games ever. 


Edit: 05 April, 2012: Silent Hill: Downpour is now my first platinum trophy. I love this game & the amazing ambience, voice acting, & story therein. I hope that the voice actors will return in other games, especially Murphy's voice actor. Amazing work on this fantastic game.


Now I will place the licensed music that I heard so you can check it out. Also, be sure to listen to the OST from Daniel Licht (he also did the music for Dexter).

Andy Williams – Born Free

Louis Armstrong – Nobody Knows The Trouble

James Vincent McMorrow – If I Had A Boat

Doves – Willow’s Song (Bury Version)
Anna Ternheim – Words of Love

Ed Harcourt – Here Be Monsters

Jonathan Singleton & The Grove – I’m Afraid of Storms
Highwaymen – Silver Stallion
The Coals – I Wanted A Lover, I Needed A Friend
Kris Kristofferson – Why Me Lord
Ed Harcourt – From Every Sphere

Anna Ternheim – Off the Road

Welcome to Silent Hill

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I can't tell you how long I was glued to my television, playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, because there's no timer or clock which records time and Raptr doesn't track PS3 playing time, automatically, for some retarded reason. If I had to estimate I'd say I've played it around 50ish hours at this point. Well then... graphics! Wow. Seeing some initial screens, I was a little disappointed, but coming into the game (which I got on the PS3 by the way) I was amazed. From the opening FMV to the actual game play, the graphics were beautiful. A lot of people complained about that bronze overtone, but I really loved it. It set a very desolate feel to the game and it got me into the setting a lot easier. Adam (lol at slew of Frankenstein references through out the game by the way) was very nicely done and all his actions and movements were fantastic. Some  commented how cardboard or messy the graphics were, especially for people, but I found them to be great. Sure some of the people were a bit rigid, but we can't do magic; there's only so much we can do with graphics right now and I think this game did them damn well. Those city scape scenes and flying over different lands... oh man. When you first come to Singapore.. my mouth was hanging open. Gorgeous. The music was great as well. I sort of felt like it reminded me of the more ambient music to a Bioshock or Fallout in that it really sort of sat behind everything, worming its way into your thoughts. Sometimes it lulled me deep, taking me into the 

Beautiful Cityscapes

story is a surreal way. In short; fantastic. I'll be getting the OST as soon as I can. I'd like to buy it, but if I can't find it, I'll download it from somewhere. It's so good and so well composed. Game mechanics and control. This is a two sided issue for me. First of all, why, oh, why do companies change the layout of well know controller configurations? It's annoying and aggravating and I hate it. Moving things like iron sights, sprint, and reload (to name a few) to buttons different than a slew of our established games is not innovative or challenging; IT'S ANNOYING. That being said, after the initial aggravation of a new controller lay out, I got into it pretty well. The interface is great, the weapons switching is smooth, hacking is awesome. I didn't run into any troubles dishing out my Praxis points how I desired and still having to deal with boss fights and hacking. In fact I ended up just putting points wherever because I had already got what I wanted. I didn't even put points in Typhoon until near the end because it just wasn't useful to my play style. I played it on normal difficulty by the way, but I want to play it on Tell Me A Story (Easy) because I have a feel I missed a lot of stuff because I was too involved in staying alive. I got 52% of the trophies on my first run, did a nice bunch of side quests (though I don't think I got them all and/or found their secret trophies). That being said, I still got a load of 

Take-downs are a thing of beauty

story from the game. I mean geez it's involved. Little things there and there which give you insight into the characters or just the life of people around you or in buildings. I read all the e-mails I could, all the e-books, all the newspapers. Talked to everyone I saw. I even found two quests by randomly talking to people. That's when it feels awesome... my manic OCD's granting me quests and game play. It is sweet caramel in my mind. Even now I've this desire to play it again. I did start my next cycle and am going to try to not kill anyone this round. It's already been very tough, to be honest. Mission one is down though; everyone lives. Saved the hostages, saved dudes wife, knocked out Sanders for the police. I'm an hero. During my first cycle I was forced to make some choices which were gnawing at me through the rest of the play. This time we'll see how the other choices colour my play. 

SPOILERS: 

Here are some of the choices I made during my first cycle. I didn't get the new chip because I remembered Elizabeth from the first Deus Ex (a game I didn't like, to be honest, but recall the information from anyway) and anything she is promoting as a 'good thing' is obviously evil. Not only that, but it's so obvious that it's going to fuck up your Christmas if you do get it. I saved Malik, but this was more that I thought it was actually what you're supposed to do. I didn't 

Exceptional FPS combat

realise, until after I had beat the game and was checking forums, that you can actually hurry into the building and Malik dies. Whereas I'm curious how this colours other parts of the game, I'm not too happy about leaving her to die, so I'll save her again. I do like her. Talked Taggart's aid out of killing himself for whatever bizarre reason I was thinking of at the time (was surprised by surprise trophy of surprise for saving him) though I did reload and see what happened if he died. Nothing interesting, so I re-reloaded back to saving him save and continued on. I didn't talk to Taggart in the base at the end as I decided I wanted him to die; unfortunately this meant I couldn't see his ending so I guess I will see it this time. I did reload my before ending save to see all the others, though I went with Sarif's ending first as I do believe in his cause (in RL too actually). 

SPOILERS END.

Hmm, can't think of other critical plot points that I did, but I've been awake a while and my mind is a smoking ruin. I recommend this game wholly. It is an FPS RPG in the truest sense of the term. It flawlessly combines the FPG mode of play with the RPG interaction and story. I wasn't going to get the game at first, because I didn't like 1 or 2, but after I read some other friends' comments on G+, I decided to give it a try. I'm so god-damn happy I did because it's incredible. Totally get this game.

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Best of 2010

This will be short and sweet, but I suppose I will make this post as soooo many people are asking me these things. My favourite games of 2010... I guess it had to happen. There were loads of games this year; it was an awesome year for video games. There were also a load of great games, but here I will put only my favourites. Note too that I don't play every game as I am not made of money so I will post only the ones I have played extensively and/or beat.

Wii:

Sin and Punishment 2

Monster Hunter Tri

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars

360:

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Dante's Inferno

Assassin's Creed Brootherhood

Resonance of Fate

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

Fallout: New Vegas

PS3:

Boshock 2

Darksiders

God of War III

Star Ocean: The Last Hope International

PSP:

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

DS:

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Pokemon Heart Gold/Silver

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey

Dragon Quest IX: Protectors of the Starry Sky

I'm already tired of this! Message ends.

Final Fantasy XIII

I guess it's about that time again to make a review for Final Fantasy XIII. I have tried to write this review four times now, but I always forget I'm writing it & then shut down the computer without saving. I suppose that is actually how I have summed up the latest installation of this wonderfully epic storyline. I'm well aware of everything else people have said about the game & I don't really care about that. I enjoyed the game to the end & for a bit of post-game as well, but after that... I just couldn't bring myself to pick it back up for the mission grind or the Crystarium grind... it just held ZERO interest for me. I had absolutely no desire to do those things. I'll get to that, though. For now, we'll start at the beginning. Graphically, this game is the best in the Final Fantasy game series, hands down. I played the 360 version, of course, & it was phenomenal. One day I hope that the entirety of all game-play in a game will look like Advent Children through 100% of the game, but until that mythical day happens, FF13 has come pretty damn close. It was very obvious, still, the differences between the full FMV's & the actual game-play (even on the PS3, the graphics really weren't all that different). Movement was incredible, but seriously, the footsteps? I'm all for realism, but I can't even hear my OWN footsteps when I'm walking (granted if I'm out walking I have my headphones on so I don't actually hear my footsteps...).

I really don't want to spend 80+ hours listening to my character running around, but alas, that is how it turned out. But this is for graphics! Audio will come next! The spells were breath-taking &, ladies & gentlemen, the Espers (Eidolon's! Ugh) were the stuff of legends. I really can't rave about the graphics more, just to say that at times I put the controller down, peering over landscaping forests, steep cliff-sides edging out into an expanse of ocean... it made me very sad that I couldn't be there & at times I felt that I was there. It was a fairy tale world & so lovely. Now we can get into audio. The sound was nice, yea nothing really amazing, I'm sorry to say. Actually, though, the soundtrack was awesome... away from the game. During the game I listened to the music for about 2 hours, then turned it off & just turned on the actual soundtrack on iTunes. Gorgeous composition for which I give it the highest recommendation, but while inside the game..? No, it got very irritating. I don't really have a lot of experience with audio in a game apart from the music, so I'll just leave it with my comments about the music & afore mentioned aggravating footsteps. Of course, we come to what everyone else bitched about relentlessly. The game-play OK, yea it is so very, very linear at the beginning... & for about 24 hours of game-play you have no choice in what you do & your actions are heavily controlled. This annoyed me at first until I just

stopped caring & enjoyed the beauty of the game. Combat in the game was... well it's hard to say. I tried to queue up my own spells & choose what I was doing, but 99.9% of the time, just spamming 'Auto' is really the best thing to do, unless you want to do one of your OMGabilities which are quite OMG to be honest (or an Esper ability or item). FF13 employs an event in combat which has NEVER been good in ANY game EVER MADE & for some reason games still fucking put this in! The character you control, if they die... it's game over. WHAT. This is never a good idea, developers. Why on earth can't your party members throw a rez down? It just boggles my mind endlessly whenever this crops up in a game. It's like in DMC4 when you first run into the Dice room? And you finish & think wow that was the most annoying experiment a game dev has put in a game, glad that's over, but then for the last 40 minutes of the game when you have to do five more Dice games & you're thinking WTF is this shit, did they actually think this was a good idea? Yea, well it's like that.

So after your initial stint in Cocoon you get ferried down, by Bahamut no less, to Pulse where the game expands in quite a Deer-In-Headlights way & you are thoroughly humbled by how lame your characters actually are. You're introduced to more mobs than you could take in an entire evening & the wonderment of Missions. Don't be blinded by this beautiful, forever-stretching landscape though, your game is still pretty linear. You can only do so many missions before you're scooted off to the next area & your exposure to the most difficult mobs you've had to encounter. Good luck levelling up for the next three hours. My biggest disappointment in this was that I really thought there would be more LIFE on Pulse, but it's almost like everyone is either a monster or Esper down here. No towns! I was so distraught by this! My favourite thing is running around towns & taking in the life of a game. Well after you're guided around Pulse for a little while & finish up some more missions (or not as they get way too hard to even contemplate) you're glided back up to cocoon in an owl-ship (I'm serious) for more linear-linear game-play instead of the semi-linear game-play on Pulse. I finished the game at 59 hours I believe & I didn't really have to spend time levelling except when I first got to Pulse. The last boss is not hard at all... it's just very long. It's a stamina battle, so make sure you have two cans of pop next to you instead of just the one. The ending sequence is almost 1 1/2 hours.

Post-game! Wooo...? I was very excited about post-game. I really love doing things around the world & taking my characters to trounce the evils I could not vanquish before, but unfortunately, nothing at really changed. My Crystarium was open to the max now & all my people could be... anything. It kind of lost it's beauty at that point, to be honest. Sure, some characters are better at one thing that the other, but they can do everything -_- What happened to being stuck with a Thief, White Mage, Black Mage, & Bard & having to really try to make it work? No. Now you can do anything with anyone & you won't really fail. Well I took my awesome characters of awesome back down to Pulse to work on Missions. Okay, it was cool finishing all the D level ones, the C ones mostly done, & a lot of B & A one's taken care of... this is getting really boring. What? Now I have to grind even more CP because everything takes 2839472394 to level? This is really boring. That sums up the post-game for me. Really, really boring. I have absolutely NO desire to play this game any more, unfortunately. Not to mention it has ZERO replay value at all! There is nothing you can do differently. Nothing at all, not one thing that you can change to do in another way. Everything, right to the end is determined & you are guided along that path. Don't get me wrong, the game was awesome to play through & I do not regret getting the CE of the game. I loved to go through it, but I will say, I probably won't play it again for a while & then when I do, it will be to get the achievements specifically, not because I want to play it again for fun & joy & love. This is a great installation in the Final Fantasy series, I really did have a good time. There are some glaring flaws in it, some of which crippled the game-play a bit, but being crippled myself ( har har ) I am used to setting those flaws aside & focusing on the better areas.

I recommend this for rental or buying it used most likely. Unless you're crazy obsessed with Final Fantasy, don't buy a CE or new issue of the game because you'll probably be disappointed when the game decides to play 80% of it by itself & just let you watch. Also, you have to switch discs twice, which isn't anything big at all & once you're on the 3rd disc, you never go back.