How The Saints Saved Christmas DLC Review

The last piece of downloadable content included in the Saints Row IV season pass released last week. Titled, “How The Saints Save Christmas,” it centers around the Saints and their mission to rescue Santa Clause and defeat the evil Clawz who will take over the world in the future if he is not defeated by the end of Christmas Eve. The Saints are decorating the inside of their ship with various Christmas ornaments when suddenly Shaundi from the future, minus a body part of two, arrives to inform them of this mission. Given how the last DLC package fared, this most recent content is a very welcome addition to Saints Row IV.

 

The enemies the player is faced with have transformed from aliens and murderbots to gingerbread men and toy soldiers respectively. While their actions and behaviours remain the same as their original counterparts, the similarities are not so undeniable that you feel these new enemy skins are merely a shortcut, they seem like a fairly fresh opponent. The primary antagonist to the DLC, Clawz, also undergoes a transformation as you progress through the missions. In addition to new enemies, you will also receive new weapons, outfits, vehicles, and homies which you unlock after you complete some of the missions. These new items will range from a candy cane baseball bat, to a mechanical reindeer, to even Santa himself.

 

The trademark sense of humor is not lost in the holiday theme. The humorous moments do not feel as forced or awkward as some attempts in the previous DLC or the game itself, and consistently appear through the missions. Whether it be witty one-liners, references to A Christmas Story, Braveheart, The Human Centipede, or Dr. Who, or the absurdity of everything occurring, this DLC provides plenty of laughs. At one point in the second mission, the player is given a choice of how to progress past a candy cane barrier. It is highly recommended that the player lick their way through said barrier. There are also a number of collectibles for the player to locate in the form of letters to Santa and another text adventure similar to the one found in the initial game.

 

Unfortunately, there are only three missions to complete, the player does not receive any new abilities, and there are only a handful of new locales to explore during the content. However, upon completing the final mission, new activities are made available within the simulation. It is somewhat disappointing that the burning question of why future Shaundi has a robotic arm is never answered within this DLC, so we can only hope that a future installment of extra content or a retail game will answer this question. The lack of this answer feels like a missed opportunity unless there is a larger picture in mind, as it would have extended the length of the DLC beyond the 60-90 minute mark.

 

How The Saints Save Christmas is a highly amusing addition to Saints Row IV and feels like a more appropriate DLC package for the franchise than the previous entry. There are a large number of easter eggs for players to locate, referencing various pop culture items, as well as a version of Mrs. Clause you have never seen before. Despite the fairly brief amount of time required to complete the bonus content, the fact that it rewards players with so many new items and activities helps mitigate some of the pain. Both die-hard fans of the series and more casual members of the Saints will find How The Saints Save Christmas to be an enjoyable add-on, especially at this time of year. Using telekinesis on presents, shooting coal out of Santa’s sleigh, running through the streets dressed as an elf, and locating the “Turdis” are all things you can look forward to from this package.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive Review

 

 

Failure in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is, as it always has been for this series, the greatest way to learn where you should have gone, what you shouldn't have done, and how you could have done better. Counter-Strike players spend a lot of time learning -- consequently, they are always getting better.

 

Growth is an important factor in Global Offensive, especially if you're coming into Counter-Strike fresh or after a sabbatical. This is an extremely hardcore, skill-based first-person shooter, and it forces you to think differently than other modern shooters. If you’re a Call of Duty player, you’re going to need to change your play style to succeed here. Counter-Strike also tries developing into something new here as well, despite doing little to push itself beyond what it’s always done best. Global Offensive modifies old maps to keep veterans on their toes, and introduces official new modes that encourage different play styles for the first time in almost 15 years.

For the uninitiated, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a small-scale, team-based first-person shooter with permanent death. When a counter-terrorist kills a terrorist planting explosives in a classic Defusal match, or a CT escort swallows a sniper round in Hostage Rescue, the victim is dead for good and doesn't respawn until the next round. As such, players on both sides must exercise skill and care. The bomb objective, meanwhile, gives everyone a purpose. Of course matches end when everyone on a team is dead, but a clever and coordinated terrorist team will give the CTs the slip, plant their bomb, and protect the bomb site. Between rounds, everyone spends earned cash on better gear and guns, and the cycle continues.

Pieces of the Counter-Strike formula are dated at this point, but the superb heart and soul of Global Offensive is timeless. Teams are small, guns are lethal, and rounds are short. There's an addictive just-one-more-round quality to it, because there's a constant desire to do better than last time, to earn a satisfying kill, or to win in a new way. Call of Duty and Battlefield vets will wonder why they can't sprint to escape enemy fire or look down the iron sights to improve aim; Counter-Strike players will feel like they walked into their redecorated home. Certain map redesigns will catch hardcore fans off guard, but the changes are for the best -- the underpass choke point in de_dust, for instance, has a new escape route.

 

Even in the face of genre evolution, Global Offensive doesn’t care to adapt. CSGO is so dedicated to Counter-Strike's aging ideals despite market and trend changes that it brute-forces its way to success. Part of what makes it such an engaging competitive game is that killing in Global Offensive requires a wholly different skill set than other shooters. Everyone is limited to what they have and can see, with little room for character modification or on-the-fly advantages. Running and gunning is a useless play style, even if you've bought a helmet and kevlar that round, to the point that someone standing still is more likely to score the kill. Walking, crouching, or standing are your best bets to reduce the inaccurate spray of machine-gun fire.

 There's a sickening sensation to dropping someone dead because you know they're not coming back. It's also satisfying knowing you used limited resources to play smarter than your victim. If players aren't watching corners, providing covering fire, or using smoke grenades and flashbangs, they're more likely to take a headshot from a more delicate and patient triggerman. The desire to experience that distinct feeling is a strong motivator to keep playing, even when you're getting steamrolled by an obviously better team.

If you've played Counter-Strike before, Global Offensive probably sounds a whole lot like Counter-Strike. Like Counter-Strike: Source before it, Global Offensive exists simply to modernize the look of the classic competitive shooter, while doing little to disrupt the core form and function. At the same time, it does enough to color outside the lines of tradition to justify your time and effort.

Fire is one of the most interesting new combat variables. Molotov cocktails and incendiary grenades either roast groups of guys or force them in another direction. Flames are a useful distraction or scare tactic, too. They're particularly useful during Demolition matches, which focus the fight at a single bomb site rather than giving terrorists two to pick between. The new and modified maps in this mode aren't as big as classic Counter-Strike arenas – entire sections have been cut off to direct teams toward a central location – but their thoughtful design is as intricate as ever. The Lake map is a standout -- there's a wide open yet densely populated yard around the bomb site, which is inside a sizable lakeside home with plenty of vantage points and hiding spots. To separate Demolition from Defusal, players can't buy between rounds. Instead, it takes a cue from the other new mode, Arms Race, in which each kill unlocks another weapon instantly. The better you do, the more you have to switch up the way you play, and because Demolition is so fast you'll need to be quick on your feet.

 

Unlike other game types, Arms Race allows for respawns. It's the most chaotic and care-free mode in Global Offensive, with players throwing caution to the wind for the sake of climbing the kill ladder as quickly as possible. It's a shame there are only two maps in Arms Race -- a problem that will more likely persist on consoles than PC.

If you have the option, playing the PC version is unquestionably the best way to experience Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Mods, mouse and keyboard, and the usual PC-only options are better than the ports. Plus, Valve is much better about long-term PC support -- it abandoned Team Fortress 2 on consoles, and Portal 2's level editor was PC exclusive. If you prefer to play on consoles, Global Offensive is the same great game, with the following special bits:

For those who want to play on PlayStation 3 but don’t want to deal with the imprecision of analog sticks, Counter-Strike: GO supports mouse and keyboard, giving it a pretty noticeable edge over the Xbox 360 version. If you’re feeling saucy, Move is another option, although nuance dies with the motion controller. Move is accurate, and your quick reflexes will score kills, but the unavoidable instability of holding a remote will give your cursor some seriously unpleasant wobble. Worse, moving the wand quickly can confuse the controller, which often and irritatingly misinterprets basic left/right looks as a want to turn around 180 degrees.

Aside from the lack of keyboard/mouse input, the Xbox 360 version of Global Offensive is functionally identical to that on PS3 -- the new radial user-interface on both platforms is as elegant as it is on PC. Because it’s a hardcore competitive game, Counter-Strike blocks party chat in an effort to combat cheating, forcing players with headsets to play with friends or brave the Wild West of obscenity that is Xbox Live.

Global Offensive is definitely a Counter-Strike sequel -- it looks and feels familiar, with minor tweaks here and there to help balance old issues and surprise longtime players. This is a demanding, skill-based multiplayer game that's as satisfying now as it ever was, but it's for a specific kind of player. If you're not willing to learn to play different than you're used to, look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is a top-tier tactics game that will probably share the long-tailed legacy of its predecessors.

NES Remix Review

NES Remix is something greater than the sum of the 16 classic Nintendo games that provide its source material. With 204 carefully constructed challenges based on the likes of Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Excitebike, and others, NES Remix is a frenzied, chaotic, and fun retro experience that's more enjoyable than simply replaying the straightforward ROMs of most these games on the Virtual Console.

In NES Remix's Achievement-like challenges, Remix deconstructs old Nintendo games -- some you probably know by heart -- and asks you to dominate small moments in them: challenges like searching for a secret entrance in The Legend of Zelda on a timer, Defeating Bowser with only fireballs in Super Mario Bros., or hitting a hole-in-one in Golf. In their original context, these actions make sense, and might even seem mundane, but in its frantic WarioWare-like "microgame" presentation, NES Remix offers a clever way to revisit old games. There's something about adding strict constraints that can make moments in a familiar game (or a crummy game) more fun.

NES Remix presents its challenges in a way that encourages you to improve, with instant restarts, ample continues and on-screen guides. You can trust NES Remix to present a surmountable task, even if it doesn't seem that way at first. How can you possibly make it through a tough, flying-fish-filled level of Super Mario Bros. when you can't stop running? Learn the level, time your jumps, and when you hit that goal post, you'll feel like a superhuman speed-runner. Plus, each is outfitted with an Angry Birds-inspired three-star rating to push you to improve your score.

The best of these challenges are "remixes" based on lovingly hacked versions of 1980s Nintendo games, which is why you'll see Luigi running through a mirrored version of Super Mario

Bros. World 1-2. Classic games are modified in absurd ways: Slick ice and blizzard conditions are added to Super Mario Bros.; Link replaces Jumpman in Donkey Kong (hilariously, as he’s is unable to jump); and the screen zooms in as you play Balloon Fight, your pixelated balloon dude filling the screen and eclipsing obstacles. When Nintendo's various franchises are thrown together for no reason it can feel like exploitative fan service, but the developers of NES Remix (the same team behind Retro Game Challenge) studied the source games, broke them down, and aptly built them back up to present clever puzzles and gameplay that feel both new and familiar at once.

The DJ spinning this Remix occasionally stops the party with a cringe-inducing needle-scratch. Even NES Remix's crack team of ROM hackers can't make Ice Climbers, Tennis or Clu Clu Land control sensibly. Or make Pinball fun. Though I trust NES Remix to present challenges I can eventually overcome, not all of them felt worth doing – but hey, if you’re a hardcore NES Pinball fan, you’ll have something to do after you complete the approximately 190 much more fun challenges.

In a startling oversight for a competitive game like this, NES Remix features no multiplayer – at all. Even in remixes of games that originally had it. And while passing the GamePad back and forth kept several IGN editors from doing any actual work this week, a competitive mode, or at least an online leader board would have been a natural fit for Remix. That said, the ability to share tips, drawings, and comments on each level, like the bulletins you might have seen in Super Mario 3D World, is included – and augmented by a selection of really great, unlockable stamps inspired by 8-bit sprites.

Tom Clancy's The Division Review

Tom Clancy’s The Division is about a devastating pandemic that sweeps through New York City, and one by one, basic services fail. In only days, without food or water, society collapses into chaos. The Division, a classified unit of self-supported tactical agents, is activated. Leading seemingly ordinary lives among us, The Division agents are trained to operate independently of command, as all else fails.

Fighting to prevent the fall of society, the agents will find themselves caught up in an epic conspiracy, forced to combat not only the effects of a manmade virus, but also the rising threat of those behind it. When everything collapses, your mission begins.

We live in a fragile and complex world, a web of interdependent systems we rely on every day. When one fails, others follow, creating a deadly domino effect that can cripple society in days. In Tom Clancy’s The Division™, immerse yourself in a frighteningly chaotic and devastated New York City, where all has failed. As a Division agent, your mission is to restore order, team up with other agents and take back New York.

Welcome to an online, open-world RPG experience where exploration and player-progression are essential. Use your skills, weapons and wits in combat. Play in a persistent and dynamic environment that combines the Tom Clancy™ series’ core authenticity and tactical decisions, RPG action, trading and much more.

You could team up with friends in co-op, jump in and jump out at any time and use your combined skills to fight the crisis, investigate the sources of the virus and engage all threats… even your own citizens. Seamlessly engage in PVP, player-to-player trading, and experience suspenseful scenarios where danger can come from anywhere and anyone.

Powered by their new game engine Snowdrop™, tailor-made for next-gen consoles, Tom Clancy’s The Division achieves a whole new level of gameplay quality. Snowdrop takes full advantage of the new consoles with dynamic global illumination, stunning procedural destruction and an insane amount of detail and visual effects.

As part of The Division, harness state-of-the-art technology: both networked and prototyped. Loot fallen foes and craft new, improved gear. Completely customize your go-bag, an agent’s only supplies in the event of collapse, and communicate with the other agents at all times with your smart watch. Customize your agent with thousands of weapon types, skill combinations, gear and much more. The choices you make can help forge a recovery or plunge the city deeper into chaos.

On your smart phone or tablet, join your friends in real-time gameplay with exclusive characters. The app gives you a bird’s eye view of the battlefield, the ability to attack enemies and to place targets for your allies or enhance their capabilities.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Review

The best thing about LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is that it delivers almost everything a Marvel fan could want. From Abomination to the Wizard, this game is an A-to-Z (well, A-to-W) love letter to the Marvel Universe that starts with the Silver Surfer gliding across the title screen and ends with a credits song that could not have been better chosen. A few technical glitches and some carryovers from the franchise history keep it from being an outright masterpiece, but it easily ranks as one of the best superhero games I've played in years.

It starts with the characters. Where LEGO Batman 2 offers a sizable roster of heroes and villains, the campaign in LEGO Marvel delivers more playable heroes in a much more coherent story about collecting cosmic bricks around the world before villains do. The first mission starts with Iron Man and Hulk, but the selection of playable characters soon grows to include the rest of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, loads of X-Men, and even Spider-Man. You'll even switch heroes mid-way through many of the missions, with Cyclops and Jean Grey rescuing Storm and Iceman during an assault on the X-Mansion, or the Human Torch flying in to assist Black Widow and Hawkeye as they infiltrate a Hydra base. The entrances and exits are all handled as part of the story, which gives you a chance to play several characters who all feel like they're part of a single narrative.

The same is true of the villains. You can start by chasing Doctor Octopus from the Baxter Building to the Daily Bugle, but you'll soon be flying off to thwart Dr. Doom's plans in Latveria and taking the Rainbow Bridge to stop Loki from stirring up the frost giants in Asgard. I particularly liked how each mission played out as a sort of protracted chase, with the heroes in pursuit of folks like Magneto or the Red Skull, while battling lots of lesser villains like Pyro or the Leader along the way. As great as it all is, telling such an earth-shattering story without major characters like Dr. Strange or Sub-Mariner present feels off. Still, when a game features lesser-known characters like Black Bolt, Captain Britain and HERBIE, it's hard to complain. Maybe they're saving Kang and Ultron for a sequel?

The puzzles in the LEGO games are almost always solved by matching the right power to the right problem, and the Marvel take on this mechanic is particularly inventive. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes offers an original storyline in which Nick Fury calls upon heroes spanning the Marvel Universe to save Earth from such threats as the vengeance of Loki and the hunger of Galactus, Devourer of the Worlds. 

You will get a few power sets that seem a bit out of place; Captain America's ubiquitous shield switches seem a little arbitrary, as does the notion that Wolverine should be really good at digging and climbing. There are also a few that make sense but aren't particularly well implemented. The special sixth sense shared by characters like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Daredevil is really more for recognizing what walls you can climb than for keeping those characters out of danger.

In between missions, there's a massive open-world map of Manhattan to explore, from the Statue of Liberty and Battery Park to the X-Mansion up past Harlem. There's also the massive SHIELD Helicarrier floating over the East River. The city has loads of attractions, complete with characters to collect and challenges to beat. Over the course of the side missions, you'll help Heimdall take out frost giants on the docks, battle Sentinels in the streets, or take control of a neglectful boyfriend's mind and make him climb the Empire State Building to apologize to his girlfriend.

The biggest pain is the inconsistent, confusing flight system. It attempts to use the same control scheme from the missions where the up and down motion of the thumbstick moves your character toward or away from the camera. Now you'll use face buttons to control the pitch of your character's flight. The problem is that the button you use to ascend is also the button you use to accelerate, and I frequently found myself flying into the side of buildings or massively overshooting my objective. Even with a week or so of playing, it still seems weird to me.

Even with that one chief complaint, there's just so much to love about LEGO Marvel that I've been playing it a few hours a day for over a week now and am still finding new charms. From unlocking Gwen Stacy and making her jump off the Brooklyn Bridge to watching the heroes dance at Tony Stark's house parties, this game is full of the moments that make Marvel one of the best brands in entertainment.

Call of Duty: Ghost Review

I think it's safe to say that Call of Duty defined, and then refined, the console-based first-person shooter experience. It's so prolific that the series' popularity might even suffer from its own success. Today, it's fashionable to beat the franchise up, which often happens with anything that over-saturates pop culture. Regardless, Activision claimed over $1 billion in sales on launch day. Love it or hate it, but Call of Duty clearly has a devoted following.

Does anything change in its most recent installment? Not really; the formula remains the same. That's not to say it's a bad recipe. You get high production value, excellent voice acting, solid first-person shooter mechanics, and a Hollywood story. But if you were hoping that Infinity Ward would redefine its genre with Ghosts...well, that didn't happen.

The company does change and add a few features, though. Ghosts introduce a Squads mode that lets you create and customize a team of computer-controlled soldiers. It's not part of the single-player campaign, but can be played offline or against other players. As usual, there are new multiplayer modes, too, such as Search and Rescue, Kill Confirmed, Infected, and Blitz. A four-player co-op mode called Extinction has players defend a base from alien invaders. Make no mistake, there's a lot to keep you busy once you're done with Call of Duty: Ghosts' campaign. 

The single-player story is the element that strays furthest from previous Call of Duty games. Infinity Ward must have guessed that gamers are tired of fighting Germans, Russians, Asians, and Middle Eastern countries. So, this time around, the bad guys are South American. Yes, our equatorial neighbors turned the U.S.' doomsday weapon against itself, crippling the country and forcing it into a 10-year-long defensive campaign against the evil (and technically superior) South American Federation. Oh, and the U.S. put up a 100-foot concrete wall along the border to protect what's left of the country, so illegal immigration is no longer an issue.

 Yes, the premise is utterly ridiculous. On the plus side, it gives you an opportunity to defend decimated, destroyed, and decaying urban American environments from invading enemy forces, which is cool. True to Call of Duty's formulaic approach, standard first-person shooter fare is mixed with mini-game-like tasks, such as controlling drones for airstrikes or robotic turrets that you have to engage in. There's also Riley, the loyal German Shepherd that you can send skulking through the grass to help you. The dog mechanic isn't particularly compelling. But that doesn't matter because humans are predisposed to bonding with canines, right?  I can't help but love the simulated dog. :) 

What it looks like in the game.

Man and his best friend.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is built on the IW6 engine, a modified and updated version of the technology used in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Some of the improvements include Pixar's SubD surfaces, which increases the detail of models as you get closer, real-time HDR lighting, Iris Adjust technology (which mimics how eyes react to changing lighting conditions), new animation systems, fluid dynamics, interactive smoke, displacement mapping, and dynamic multiplayer maps.

Like most recent Call of Duty games, it looks quite good, but then breaks down under scrutiny. There are far too many objects and characters that lack shadows, even at the highest detail settings, and especially when you zoom in with a scope. Crysis and Battlefield are both a solid step above what Ghosts offers.

The game ending was really horrible. You turn evil at the end. Ok this is the first time in all of Call of Duty history that you turn evil at the end. I was happ y I beat the game, then it showed the credits. BUT AFTER THAT RORKE (FEDERATION LEADER, BY THE WAY FEDERATION IS BAD) STABS YOU AND TAKE YOU AWAY AND DRAGS YOU WHILE YOUR WOUNDED BROTHER HESH SCREAMS BUT CAN'T GET UP BECAUSE HE IS ALSO WOUNDED.

Your enemy, Rorke.

This is Logan.

This is Hesh.

RoboCop 2014 Movie Review

Next year in February 12, 2014 a new remake of the original movie RoboCop is being filmed. Director José Padilha is making this movie. The cast includes Joel Kinnaman acting as the main protagonist Officer Alex Murphy, who turns to RoboCop. Gary Oldman acting as Norton, Samuel Jackson acting as Pat Novak, Abbie Cornish acting as Ellen Murphy, Alex's wife, and Jackie Earle Haley acting as Maddox. This is the plot of the story. The year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front.

Alex Murphy is a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit. After he is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilizes their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex's life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but with issues a regular man has never had to face before. There are major differences between the old RoboCop movies and the new RoboCop. In the old RoboCop Alex Murphy dies by getting slaughtered to death by getting hit with lot of shotgun bullets by a drug company. In the new one I saw the trailer and it probably showed him getting killed by a car exploding and killed Alex.

 

There are major differences also on the apperence of the new RoboCop.The new one has a futuristic black suit with a really cool mask. The old one has a bluish suit, but it kind of looks like his suit is plastic. I have seen all of the RoboCops and I noticed that the new one is rated PG-13 and the old ones are rated R. His gun looks different. The new gun looks futuristic and looks like it's a gun from Halo the video game, but the old one looks like a desert  eagle pistol, but with a long barrel. I also noticed that the new RoboCop rides a motorcycle and the old one rides a police car. Also one big improvement is that he could run and jump. Well that's all the information I have for RoboCop. Hope you get to see it!

This is the old RoboCop poster.

This is the new RoboCop Poster

 



PlayStation 4 Review

The Playstation 4 or PS4 is the next gen consle of the Playstation 3. The PS4 is a video game consle that is coming out for people to play. It is coming out November 15, 2013 while Euoropeans have to wait until November 29, 2013. The PS4 is 299 dollars.The PlayStation 4 system provides dyamic connectedbgaming, powerful graphics and speed intelligent personalization, deeply intergrated social capabilities, and innovative second- screen features.

 

The new PS4 has new features so gamers could go to the next level. The new controller is the Dualshock 4, the new version of the Dualshock 3. The Dualshock 4 have new improved dual analog sticks and trigger buttons offer an even greater sense of control, while the capacitive touch pad opens up endless potential for new gameplay possibilities. The PS4 still has SIXAXIS, motion sensing systems on the controller.

Broadcast yourself in play with PlayStation®Camera. Become a community sensation by adding a picture-in-picture video of yourself in gameplay livestreams. Create and share narrated game walkthroughs in HD video and voice chat through four built-in microphones. Enjoy stunning new levels of immersion as the 3D depth-sensing camera and DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controller’s light bar track player movements through space. Log in instantly with facial recognition and navigate PS4™ system menu hands-free with voice inputs.

The PS4™ system has the ability to learn about your preferences. It will learn your likes and dislikes, allowing you to discover content pre-loaded and ready to go on your console in your favorite game genres or by your favorite creators. Players also can look over game-related information shared by friends, view friends’ gameplay with ease, or obtain information about recommended content, including games, TV shows and movies.

Remote Play on the PS4™ system fully unlocks the PlayStation^®Vita system’s potential, making it the ultimate companion device. With the PS Vita system, gamers will be able to play a range of PS4™ titles on the beautiful 5-inch display over Wi-Fi access points in a local area network.

Pictures:

All of the contents in the PS4 box.

 

                                                                            The PS4 box.