Deadly Premonition -- Initial Impression.

With major releases a little over a week away, I'll be filling in the time with Deadly Premonition for the Xbox 360. Deadly Premonition was developed by Access Games and published by Ignition Entertainment for the budget price of twenty dollars. Access Games have developed Spy Fiction and The Dodgeball: World Championship Dodge Baller. Yeah... so I'd never heard of them either. Deadly Premonition is their third effort and it went under the name of Red Seeds Profile in Japan with the PlayStation 3 version going by Rainy Woods. Deadly Premonition can best be described as the Japanese take on sandbox titles like Grand Theft Auto meets survival horror. You play as an FBI profiler who has come to investigate the murder of a young girl in a small north western American town. The game features an eight kilometer square game world to explore. A full town and surrounding wilderness with day and night cycles and townspeople going about their daily lives. From what I've played so far the game has a pretty decent combat system. The controls are certainly workhorse at best. The graphics are well below the standard. The voice work bad. The story is insane. The main character is insane. Everyone in the town is insane. The music is inappropriate to the setting. They've also seemingly taken from every survival horror game in existence. There is a bit of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, D2, Clock Tower, Siren and more in this game. But with all of this I have to say there is something intriguing. You can clearly see the parts are bad, but somehow the whole is feeling fun and worthwhile. This might be one of those I'm glad to have in the collection years from now. We'll see.

Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing with the full one-thousand points. I absolutely loved this game and would go so far as to call it the best kart racing game ever made. The gameplay really is OutRun with weapons. And I still consider OutRun 2 to be the king of the hill for arcade racing. It's just pure drifting fun. And the weapons they've added to the OutRun style are great. There isn't anything game breaking like Mario Kart's infamous blue shells. The catch-up aspect as it is isn't offensive and is balanced by default. They've even given you the option of turning off the rubber-banding entirely. The Xbox 360 version of the game features twenty-two racers and twenty-four tracks. You essentially earn points called SEGA Miles from doing anything in the game. You'll earn more points for finishing in first of course, but even finishing in last place will earn you a healthy amount of SEGA Miles. You unlock new music, race tracks, and characters with SEGA Miles by spending them in the store. You'll find you'll have unlocked everything quickly with very little effort. It's a great system for handling the unlockables. The characters themselves are great. They all handle surprisingly well and I was amazed by the level of animation they have. They're always reacting or doing something and the karts themselves are amazingly detailed. An enormous amount of attention was paid to the details. Like how Big the Cat's tail animates and reacts to the speed of it all or down to the detail Sonic's kart having gold-ringed twin exhaust pipes. There is also a very large amount of game to be had. The game offers single races and grand prix circuits of course as well as time trials with staff ghosts and leaderboad ghosts. And there is the online racing and even split screen couch racing. They've also included a mission mode which features sixty-four challenges. These challenges are amazingly fun. I was impressed with how creative they were. Just when you'd thought you'd seen it all there would be something new. And earning the score of AAA on those missions will provide you with some serious challenge. The track design is fantastic. In both mechanics and aesthetics. Mechanically the tracks are brilliant. They're all fast tracks, wide and open. There isn't a bad track in the bunch. Sure, the Super Monkey Ball tracks really need to be learned, and they contain brutal turns, but even then they're all amazingly fast and fluid. Aesthetically the game is top notch. I don't think I've ever seen a more colorful or active racing game. The tracks are all an explosion of color and background activity. The game looks great. The music is another area that is just full of win. They've cherry-picked the best music tracks from the represented games to use. The only faults the game has aren't really faults and are tied what's missing. It's me asking where are the music, tracks, and racers from games like Shinobi, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star Online, Shining Force, and Panzer Dragoon. Which can always be fixed with download content. Download content which they have confirmed to be on the way. I for one can't wait to see what it is. I'm giving Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing for the Xbox 360 a 9.

Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing -- Initial Impression.

Ever get a new game and you pop it in the console just to check it out without any real intention of starting it and the next thing you know hours have passed and you've earned over a third of the achievements already? That right there is enough to sum up my initial impression of Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing for the Xbox 360. The game was developed by Sumo Digital and published by SEGA. Sumo Digital are the ones responsible for the amazing home conversion of the OutRun 2 arcade game and SEGA's Superstars Tennis. Sonic & SEGA's All-Stars Racing is of course a kart racing game based around SEGA's intelectual properties featuring all of the modes one would expect. The gameplay is pure arcade racing. In fact, it's OutRun with weapons. That's enough to insure that I'll have a great time with the game. I had intended to start Heavy Rain, but with its technical issues and it being in need of a patch, Sonic & SEGA's All-Star Racing looks like it'll be the perfect game to tide me over until that happens.

Assassin's Creed 2 -- Final Opinion.

I have fully completed Assassin's Creed 2 with an in-game synchronization of one-hundred percent and the full one-thousand Gamerpoints. Assassin's Creed 2 is a great game. A game that improves nearly everything about the original. Visually the game is vastly improved. Most of the improvements come from the aesthetic side of things as renaissance era Italy proved to be full of visual splendor from an architectural perspective alone. As in the first game, the cities of Assassin's Creed 2 are intricately designed and teeming with life and rank among the best designed locations in gaming. On a technical level the game features improved character models. Although a few less than impressive ones show up from time to time. There is also constant texture draw-in. The gameplay of Assassin's Creed still features great free roaming platforming and exploration with the absolute best swordplay combat ever devised. They improved the combat by adding in different enemy types that come with their own styles. So you're constantly having to switch up weapons and tactics to deal with them in the most efficient manner. I was constantly amazed by the number of animations in battle. Having disarmed an enemy with a spear and killing him with it I was then facing an enemy with a two-handed axe. He proceeded to attack me and I blocked it with my spear only to have it break in two which led to a finishing move where I stabbed him in each side of his neck with broken sections of the spear. The battles are fluid and adaptive and thoroughly impressive. The story of Assassin's Creed 2 works on both levels. Advancing the present with Desmond and witnessing the past through Ezio are equally entertaining. And also like the original game Assassin's Creed 2 will leave you with more questions than answers, but in the best possible way. The conspiracies deepen, the implications are more grand. The game leaves you wanting more. They also greatly improved the structure of the game as to make the side missions and optional material far more interesting and varied. The game isn't flawless however as you'll still have issues controlling Ezio every once in a while. He'll jump off in a direction you didn't intend to go. It can be frustrating in the heat of the moment. I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed 2 and I'm glad I don't have to wait very long for part three. I'm giving Assassin's Creed 2 a 9.5. It's a game that makes my Game of the Year selection process far more difficult.

Assassin's Credd II -- Initial Impression.

Now that both sets of download content are here I'm finally able to start Assassin's Creed 2 for the Xbox 360. Because Ubisoft pulled some sections of the game out for preorder bonuses and the like, the in-game percentage counter was busted. That might not sound like a big reason to not play the game, but for a completionist, that's enough to drive one insane. The download content adds everything back in, and fixes the counter. So away we go with what was probably my most wanted game for last year. Assassin's Creed II was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Whereas the original Assassin's Creed had Desmond reliving the memories of Altair Ibn Al-Ahad during the Third Crusades in the Holy Land, Assassin's Creed 2 has Desmond reliving the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze a few hundred years later during the Italian Renaissance. The original turned out to be one of my favorite games this generation so I'm really looking forward to the sequel. From the time I've spent thus far I can say that the game has improved visuals. Especially in some of the character models. Lucy hardly even looks like herself anymore as she's so improved. I've only managed to wander around the initial section of Florence, finding treasure and advancing through the story that's essentially still within the tutorial stages. The non-player characters and the city itself seem to have much more detail. Florence in the renaissance is a far more colorful place than Jerusalem during the crusades. Truth be told I've had some issues readjusting to the controls and the combat but I'm sure that's just from being rusty. The initial story wastes no time in moving Desmond along to a new and interesting situation. They've also lessened the number of feathers to collect to a mere one-hundred. Feathers being Assassin's Creed II's version of flags. They've offset that by adding in treasures to collect. They've made it so you can track how many you have collected in each area. Even down to the individual districts within the large cities. This change won't make the collecting any easier, it will however let you know you've cleared an area and can move the search elsewhere. The initial impression seems to be that we have another sandbox game set in a historically fascinating time and place and that if the story and gameplay are on par with the previous entry then we'll have another great game. Only one way to find out...

Dante's Inferno -- Final Opinion.

Two playthroughs later and I've completed Dante's Inferno earning the platinum trophy. My initial run through the game took nine hours, with the subsequent run taking six. I ended up liking Dante's Inferno quite a bit. It's not a great game. It's a good game. It has its flaws. The flaws as I see them are that the platforming sections aren't the most solid. You'll have to make some jumps at bizarre angles and the collision detection can be a little wonky resulting in a missed jump which normally means death. There are a lot of quick time events. More than there should have been. If you want health or mana from a font, pound that circle button. If you want to open a door, pound that circle button. The game also employs a generous amount of instant death situations, which I would hazard to guess that most people don't enjoy. Dying itself isn't so bad if the collected collectables remain collected. With Dante's Inferno, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I'm sure you can see how that could be considered a slight annoyance. I did actually enjoy the combat and the game does provide a different basic experience depending if you go down the holy or evil paths. Evil has you punishing souls and results in a combat style heavily focused on Death's scythe with the cross and magic as secondary. While the holy path has you absolving souls and results in a combat style heavily focused on Beatrice's cross and offers more magic with Death's scythe relegated to merely being a situational weapon. I also liked the few puzzles in the game a lot. The game has some really good bosses. Especially the final boss, who is a true step up in terms of challenge. I enjoyed the visual style of the game. The in-game graphics are great for gameplay. The in-game graphics for the real time cutscenes not so much. The character models don't look that good, especially some of the forms of Beatrice. The rendered cutscenes look great. And the animated scenes also look great. The game's graphics might be uneven at best, but the game's art style is wonderful. I really liked the designs of the enemies and especially the levels in the game. The backgrounds are all truly hellish and inspired. The voice work is decent all the way around. The music is really good. They've used an atonal cinematic score that really fits the imagery perfectly. I hope the game does well enough that Visceral get to make the full trilogy and that they're given a chance to fix some of the mistakes and bring their game up to the next level so to speak. I found the story of Dante's Inferno fascinating as a game and I'd truly be interested in seeing Dante's Purgatory and Dante's Paradise. I'm giving Dante's Inferno a 7.5.

Dante's Inferno -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is Dante's Inferno for the PlayStation 3. The game was developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. Visceral Games has been responsible for The Godfather: The Game, The Simpsons Game, and all the games of the Dead Space series. Dante's Inferno is loosely based on the poem The Divine Comedy written by Dante Alighieri in the 1320's. You'll be going through the Nine Circles of Hell in order to save the soul of the character's beloved Beatrice. Each level will mimic the theme of a particular circle. The Nine Circles of Hell are Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. From what I've played so far I can say that the game has a great look. I really like the art style. I also really like the animated cutscenes. The story is interesting so far as is the gameplay. The gameplay is very much in the God of War vein. Some would go so far as to call it a rip off. I'm not going that far yet, as the game seems to have an interesting leveling system. You'll have varied move sets based on what choice you make in collecting souls. You can further punish them for their sins or absolve them of their sins. To get specific moves you'll have to punish them. To get other moves you'll have to absolve them. Your actions cause you to level up allowing you to buy more powerful moves down the one path. From what I've seen the graphics have been pretty good. The first few bosses have been interesting. They've clearly decided to push some boundaries. The lust level features enough vaginal imagery to put a gay guy into a fetal position. Limbo features babies that haven't been baptized as enemies. That's a concept sure to offend more than a few people. Lust is an easy circle to visualize, I'll be interested in seeing how they pull off fraud and treachery. Hopefully the story remains interesting and the bosses continue to impress. If so, then I might not mind the God of War inspired combat. As always, we'll know for sure on the other side.

Mass Effect 2 -- Final Opinion.

Some forty plus hours later and I have completed my run through Mass Effect 2. The game fixes most of the issues with the original Mass Effect while only adding one or two new issues. The coolest aspect of Mass Effect 2 is its imported save feature. You're able to carry over all the choices you made in the original game. It goes well beyond the obvious ones like whether or not Wrex survived. The carried over choices number in the dozens and most of those will come into play within Mass Effect 2 in some form or another. This gives Mass Effect 2 a real connection to Mass Effect going beyond it just being a mere sequel. You really get the sense of a single story here. A story with numerous and truly far reaching possibilities. At some point in Mass Effect 2's story you will become very aware that your actions are really going to affect you later in Mass Effect 3 giving you pause and making you really think about your choices. It doesn't hurt that Mass Effect's universe is filled with a wonderfully deep lore that's fascinating. Nor does it hurt that the game feels like a cross between a space based western and a detective story. Mass Effect 2's story isn't doing anything original. It liberally pulls from the best in the genre. A lot of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, and a little Star Trek. Mass Effect 2's story is being deftly told. Mass Effect 2 also sees BioWare stepping further away from their character archetypes. Mass Effect 2 easily offers up the most diversified group of characters they've ever produced. Mass Effect 2's story structure allows roughly half the game to be focused on the playable characters. They are all very well written and voiced. I was continually surprised by their loyalty missions. Every last one of them was great. Mass Effect 2 takes place a few years after the first game's conclusion and that allowed for the returning characters to experience some growth. Again I found myself surprised by how they had changed and how time and the situation had changed their opinion of my Shepard. Mass Effect 2 provides a very satisfying middle chapter to the trilogy and I can't wait to see how it all wraps up. As far as gameplay goes, most of the changes are for the better. The Mako and exploration of planets is gone entirely, and it's not missed. The fuel system is painless and doesn't detract from the fun in any way. The scanning for minerals is relatively painless and falls short of tedium. The weapon and ship upgrade system works well and is integrally tied to the plot. The new class weapon structure is vastly superior to the original game. The cover system works for the most part but it's slightly annoying that you need to get into cover before climbing up anything. And the cover system will flake out on you a couple times during the game. Graphically the game is great looking. I personally play with the grain filter off. I prefer the clean look. The environments are all dissimilar this time around. No more cookie cutter locations in design or visual style. The alien character faces still all look amazing while the human faces still look less than amazing. Musically the game once again provides a wonderful and creative blend of styles to produce a truly interesting soundscape. The voice work is top notch all around. Not a bad voice in the game. The achievements for Mass Effect 2 are a vast improvement over the originals. Although they're still forcing numerous playthroughs and level goals. But the squad member ones have been removed entirely. Now you can switch out your party members as you see fit. It also seems that the game is far more stable with hardly any glitches. And they've learned from one of the major mistakes of the first game in allowing you to play on after the story so you're not locked out of any potential download content. I really enjoyed Mass Effect 2, and I can't wait to import this Shepard into the final game of the trilogy. I'm giving Mass Effect 2 a 9.5.

Mass Effect 2: Initial Impression.

I've started the second game of the Mass Effect trilogy. Mass Effect 2 was developed by BioWare's Edmonton division and published by Electronic Arts. Mass Effect 2 begins by showing you the events directly after Mass Effect and then picks up a few years later. The player once again plays as Commander Shepard and sets out on a grand space adventure that should play out with generous mystery elements like the original game. There have been numerous changes from the original game that have initially made themselves readily apparent. BioWare's and EA's download system rears its ugly head once again. A variant of the one used by Dragon Age. This one has been titled the Cerberus Network and has been integrated into the game more than the Dragon Age version. The Cerberus Network actually went off without a hitch compared to the nightmare it was in Dragon Age. After entering the numerous codes and downloading roughly six pieces of download content I was ready to begin the game. I immediately turned off the film grain filter and began to notice how good the game looked. Mass Effect 2 isn't making a giant leap forward in graphics compared to the original. It's more about refinement. The little touches that come with the game being a sequel. The result is a really good looking game. The character's faces are still hit and miss. And their eyes are still dead. The story is initially fascinating. The world is still as deep as you want it to be. Going through the codex will provide you with massive detail on just about everything in the Mass Effect universe. They've changed how your shields work. Opting for the Halo style regenerating shield and health. You still use Medi-gel to heal your team though. They've changed how the weaponry works as far as reloading and how they're applied to classes. They've added in resource management for research and development of weapons and upgrades. Which brings about the added mining of planets for materials. Which also adds needing to be concerned with fuel for the Normandy. They've merged a lot of core concepts of the old Electronic Arts published and Binary Systems developed game Starflight into Mass Effect 2. And that's actually rather cool. It initially seems that Mass Effect 2 is going to be as good as or better than the original. That's saying a lot as Mass Effect is one of the best games this generation.