Red Faction 2 - Episode 1: The Nano A-Team

Red Faction 2 is set 5 years after the events of the first game, and takes place on Earth instead of Mars this time around. While the game is pretty fun, the geo-mod destruction pales in comparison to how the first game handled it. Combine that with a short single player, and you've got a sequel that is nowhere near as good as the original. The version that is being played for the LP is the PC version, which is the worst version of the game as it was a port from the console versions. If you are ever interested in playing this game, just get one of the console versions instead.

The Adventures of Dead Rising 2: Terror is Reality MP Review

     Oh wow, it's been I while since I did a blog entry. I think the main reason why I barely updated this was because Christmas and New Years kept distracting me. That, and I kept playing a number of video games between that time, so go figure. One of those games is the one I'm going to be talking about today, Dead Rising 2. I was originally going to do a text review on GoldenEye 007 for the Wii, but I wanted to get this one out of the way first and take care of GoldenEye later. In case you didn't read the title of this blog entry, this is technically not a review of Dead Rising 2. Instead, the only thing I am going to review in Dead Rising 2 is the competitive multiplayer component of the game. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the pay-per-view TV game show..... TERROR IS REALITY!

No, it's not a show about wrestling zombies.

     Before I begin, I might as well quickly summarize my thoughts on Dead Rising 2 as a whole. If you liked the first Dead Rising, you will love the second game. If you didn't like the first one, then the second installment will not change your mind one bit. I fell into the former category and ended up really liking this game. The combo weapons, the co-op (although it still has some issues), and the fact the survivors didn't suck all helped me enjoy this game more than the first one in a number of ways. But I'm not here to talk about the main game of Dead Rising 2, I'm here to talk about the multiplayer component.

     First off, Terror is Reality is a zombie killing game show in Dead Rising 2 where contestants earn points by, you guessed it, killing zombies. It's hosted by Tyrone "TK" King (the lone black guy in the above picture), who is one of the main characters in the game. Regardless, you pretty much play one mode from TIR at the beginning of the story mode, giving you a taste of what you can expect from the online mode. In order to see the other modes, you have to go online. So let's stop stalling and see what TIR really has to offer.

     When I first selected Terror is Reality, I was greeted to a wrestling style intro scene showing off the logo for TIR 17 (what happened to the other 16?). Yeah, in case you were wondering, the multiplayer here has a full on game show style presentation. When waiting to find a match, you watch TK introduce the show itself, and while waiting in the lobby, you'll hear the two announcers of the show commentate before the actual match begins (more on them later). To be fair, I do like how they presented it this way, as it makes it feel distinct instead of just being a tacked on multiplayer mode. I've heard reviews say that this presentation made it feel like an episode of American Gladiators, but I have to disagree in a way. For me, especially after playing all nine of the games, I personally felt that TIR was more like this...

Don't judge me. Double Dare is awesome.

     Yes, after playing TIR for quite a bit, I felt that I was playing a violent zombie killing version of Double Dare if you took out the question segments and only kept in the physical challenges. I think the main reason for this was because of how all nine games were both goofy and creative in their own way. Hell, playing the theme song fit perfectly when I was playing each game. So yeah, consider this multiplayer to be Double Dare for adults.

     Anyway, let me explain how the multiplayer actually works. Each multiplayer match gives you four of the nine events to play, which makes up one episode. The first three events are randomized, and the last event in the episode is always Slicecycles (which you got to play in the story mode). Even though I said the first three are randomized, there is a pattern in how they appear. The first event is either Zomboni (which the game calls Zombi Tank for some reason. Way to screw up continuity Capcom), or Ramsterball. The second and third events have a set path with each other. For example, if the second event is Pounds of Flesh, then the third event will always be Master Shafter. Same goes for Ball Buster, which always goes to Headache etc. At the end of every episode, the winner is determined by who has the most points. Then the points you earned gets converted into cash to use in your main story mode file. Even if you get first or last place, you will still win money. This is possibly the main selling point of the multiplayer, as it provides an easy way to earn cash for story mode.

     Now I'm going to explain how each individual event works, along with my thoughts on each one. I may also include a little experience I had with some of these events as well, hence why this blog post is called "The Adventures of Dead Rising 2," instead of just "Dead Rising 2 Multiplayer Review." So lets start this off with one of the first events I had to play when I started up multiplayer. That event in particular is Ramsterball.

The ultimate zombie killing device!

     Ramsterball requires players to run over zombies in order to earn points, but then you have to run into one of the many bumpers in the arena in order to bank the points. You can still earn points by just hitting the bumpers without running any zombies over, but you wont earn as many as running over some zombies before banking the points. There is a catch to this however. You can only do the things I mentioned above if you have the power.

No, not that kind of power!

     Yeah, as I was saying, the game randomly selects one of the four players at the start of the event and gives them the power. The event then basically turns into a game of cat and mouse as the person with the power is trying to earn points while the other three players are hunting him down. In order to get the power, you simply need to run into the person who has it. After you obtain it, you get roughly a 1.5 to 2 second invincibility time so you can get away from the other players. I'm guessing that was put in to prevent the power being switched instantly back and forth when all four players get clusterfucked after crashing into each other (this happens a lot in this particular game). Also, if you lose the power before you bank any points, you lose all the points you were saving up before hitting the bumper.

     I have mixed feelings about this event in particular. My initial reactions to it were not that positive, since controlling the ball's movement felt a little weird at first. Having a bunch of bumpers getting in the way doesn't help out much either. I thought that your character moved a little too slow initially, but there is a sprint button in order to move around faster anyway, so you'll most likely abuse it during this game. I'm also not exactly a fan of the rules in this game, as I would have just liked this event without the power system implemented. The camera also locks on to the person with the power, which is helpful since it can be easier for the players to go after the power. However I do have one issue in particular about it, but I'll get into that much later. Also, lag can be especially noticeable here, as you can see players pop up out of nowhere, sometimes magically stealing your power if you have it. Yet, after playing this event a couple of more times, I had a quite a bit of fun with it. So overall, Ramsterball is decent, but I felt that it could have been a bit better. Now let's move on to Zomboni (or Zombi Tank, make up your mind game!)

Couldn't find a clever picture, so here's

a screenshot of the actual game.

      Zomboni has all four players riding in tank/lawnmower things running over zombies in order to fill up blood in their tanks. Then the players have to shoot the blood they have stored into one of the four open mouths on the sides of the arena in order to score points. Some of the mouths will be either open or closed, so you basically have to find an open mouth and shoot your blood into it before it closes. Oh wow, that just sounded wrong on so many levels.

     Anyway, I didn't have any problems with this event in particular. It's simple, it's easy to play, and I had fun playing it. There really isn't much else to say about Zomboni, it really is one of the easiest events to play in TIR. My only problem with it is that it showed up WAY to frequently whenever I played online, so it wore out on me pretty quickly. Other than that, Zomboni (or Zombi Tank, if you prefer) was fun to play. Now it's time to move on to Pounds of Flesh.

Thankfully, it's not as annoying as this fucker.

      Pounds of Flesh has players wearing deadly moose helmets (yes, I'm serious), which is used to fling zombies onto a weighing scale in order to earn points. Focusing on the fatter zombies is important, since you earn more points for getting heavier zombies on the scale. If you run out of zombies to fling, you have to hit the button in the back of your platform (players get their own platform) so more will be placed on the platform for flinging. As always, the person with the most points wins.

     This event was interesting at first, but I ended up not liking it after playing it a couple more times. For one, flinging the zombies onto the scale is a little finicky, since the scale and the platform are separated by a gap. Therefore, it is very easy to either fling them off to the side, or not fling them far enough to reach the scale. The trick to this is to charge into the zombies by holding the X button, then tapping X to fling the zombies into the scale. This only tends to work sometimes, but it's pretty much the best method to get the zombies on the scale. Again, that's all there really is to Pounds of Flesh. Some people might find this fun, but I found it to be boring after playing this one for a while (having this as another common game didn't help either). Next up is Bounty Hunter.

He's a bounty hunter, so why not?

      This event sets all four players in their own separate towers with sniper rifles that contain infinite ammo. The goal is to get the most points by shooting at the zombies in the arena while they move towards the grinder in the middle. Certain zombies have pink balloons attached to them, and shooting them will give the player bonus points. Also, at random points in the game, the target above the grinder will be available to shoot. Whoever shoots the target first gets extra bonus points, along with raising the barriers on the other players to prevent them from shooting zombies for a couple of seconds.

     I personally found Bounty Hunter to be pretty fun to play. However, I do think it's a bit too exploitable at certain points. For example, you can really just aim at the zombies that come out of their spawning door and keep shooting at them, especially when the specially marked zombies start to enter. Also, it is very easy to win if you can quickly hit the bonus target when it becomes available. If you consistently check back on when it will activate again, you can easily shoot it and get the bonus points along with a few free zombies kills. Sure, the target is hard to hit since it moves around a lot, but if you're fast, you can easily hit it first and get the points. Like with Ramsterball, lag can be noticeable here, mainly when firing the sniper rifle. The firing can either be a bit delayed, or it can make you miss certain shots. Despite my complaints about it, Bounty Hunter is fun, but there really isn't much to it. Next event please!

"It's a family game. Fun for children!

And for adults, it's exciting!"

     Ball Buster equips the players with, well, a ball launcher. They each have to try and shoot the zombies that appear behind the open elevator doors in order to score points. The "special" zombies return in this mode, but they are much more important to hit here than in Bounty Hunter. Shooting one of them does either one of three things. It will either give the player that shoots it bonus points, rapid fire for the ball launcher, or it will jam all the other player's launchers (in which they have to press a sequence of buttons in order to unjam them). Again, most points earned = YOU'RE WINNER.

     This event was another one I had some fun with. It may just be an old fashioned shooting gallery with zombies and balls, but it is still pretty fun. The only complaints I have with it a really just nitpicks, such as how the aiming and firing is a bit slow. But like I said, that's what the rapid fire bonus is meant for. One other slight problem I have is that certain players can have a minor advantage over the others. There are two players on the top platform, while the other two are below them. The players on top will have a slight advantage when it comes to shooting the zombies. However, it is very minor, so it is still easily possible to win regardless of where you are positioned. So overall, it's a fun event, and it is another favorite of mine. But then, THIS fucker had to come along...

Basically what I was like every time I played this.

     Headache starts players off with three blender buckets and a stick of dynamite. The goal is to put the buckets on the zombie's heads and hit the button at one end of the arena in order to set them off and score points. Players can refill their buckets by going to the dispenser in the middle, while the dynamite returns to the inventory after a while. The more buckets you put on the zombies before hitting the button, the more points you get. The dynamite is used to sabotage the other players since explosion will knock the buckets off the zombies, denying the player any points they were saving up if they don't hit the button before it explodes. Most points earned wins, as usual.

     Now, if you didn't already guess, I fucking HATE this event. I hate the rules, I hate the way it plays, and I hate how you can easily get screwed over in this event. Player movement is slow as hell in this event, which is especially annoying when you are in a rush to hit the button to score before that ONE dynamite explosion will fuck up your chances of winning. Also, unlike in single player, you can't push the zombies aside, which means that they will act like a brick wall when you are trying to score points. It's annoying as all hell. Every time I played this event, I had the worst experience with it. I'll explain one particular experience later on in this unnecessarily long blog post. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded this event if movement was faster and it played a bit better. But as it is, I don't like Headache one single bit. At least this next event is slightly better than this one.

This event isn't all that funny.

     Stand Up Zomedy (yeah, nice one Capcom) has the players dress up zombies using three different joke items. There are six dispensers around the arena, two of each that contain either a tutu, stick pony, or a flower pot. Players can earn points by putting the joke items on the zombies. If one player gets all three of their different items on one zombie, they get bonus points. However, another player can prevent this by putting one of their items on that player's zombie and deny them the points. And yes, you guessed it, most points win.

     I didn't like this event that much either, mainly for the slow character movement yet again, but I liked it better than Headache. It was far less frustrating than Headache, but it still wasn't that entertaining to play. The event itself is kind of interesting, but it just didn't hold my attention that much in the long run gameplay wise. I will give the event some credit though, I found it to be the closest thing to a Double Dare style game out of all the other events. But aside from that, I just don't much more to say about this one. I simply didn't like it that much. The next event is yet another one that came up way too often for me in TIR. That event is Master Shafter.

Not exactly the same, but whatever.

     Master Shafter requires players to impale zombies that are shot into the air before they hit the ground.  Targets appear on the ground to designate where the zombie will land, and the player has to stand under it in order to impale the zombie when it lands. If more that one person stands under the target, the game will then turn into a button-mashing fest to see who can hit the button combination the fastest. Whoever does it the fastest will knock the other players away, scoring more points than normal depending on how many people were engaged under the target as well. You should know how the player wins by now. If not, where the hell have you been?

     This event is definitely one of the more simple ones to play. All it really boils down to is who can hit buttons faster in order to score more points. It is possible to score without having anyone fight for the target spot, but that earns you less points, so the event encourages fighting others for the zombie kill. As for my opinion on it, I actually kinda like this event, but just like Zomboni, it appeared way too frequently for me. Yet, at the same time, I honestly wouldn't mind this one turning up from time to time. Now, there is one more event left to cover. The one that everyone plays at the end of every Terror is Reality episode. It's time for Slicecycles!

Needs more chainsaw.

     Slicecycles is the only event in TIR where your ranking position in the episode really matters. If you are in first place by the time you reach this event, you will get a head start. If you are in the other ranks, you will have a time penalty before you can go out and play, with fourth place getting the longest penalty. This event is the simplest of all the events, since all you need to do is run over the zombies to earn points. Once the bonus round starts, the "special" zombies will show up as well, giving the player a massive amount of points if they run over a good number of them.

     I'll just go out and say this right now. This event kicks major ass. For being the most simple event, it is also the one that was always fun to play regardless. Sure, I have said in the other events that I didn't like how simple some of it was, but none of those events had the entertainment value that Slicecycles had. Now I can see why Capcom added this event to the beginning of the story mode. My only complaint about this event is a major nitpick, so please take it with a grain of salt. The issue was that I found the motorcycle to be a little too sensitive to my turning, making it easy for me to miss that one important bonus zombie cluster. But like I said, that's just a nitpick, and it doesn't detract from the fun I had with this event. So yeah, best event in TIR hands down for me.

     Overall, I feel that the events in Terror is Reality are decently well rounded for the most part. There is a nice amount of variety in each one, and most of them were at least fun to play in their own right. At the same time, I don't think that this multiplayer has much staying power either. Sure, some of the events are fun, but they each can become tiring after extended play time. The only real reason I can see people coming back to this is if they need some easy cash to earn for their single player game, which is a huge plus might I add. So as a whole, the events in TIR are nice and varied, but can easily lose its lasting appeal.

     Oh, and I almost forgot, I wanted to mention the announcers that commentate during each multiplayer episode. At first, these guys were pretty funny to listen to, adding in a couple of crude and mature jokes here and there. But after the tenth match or so, I already got tired of hearing them since I started hearing lines and jokes that I have already heard many times before in previous matches (the remark about seeing the Michael Jackson zombie came up quite a few times). Anyway, these guys became tiring to listen to, but I didn't hate listening to them whatsoever. And besides...

The announcers in this game were better.

     But wait, there's more! Now there was a particular reason why I wanted to call this "The Adventures of Dead Rising 2," and that reason is to recall some moments I had while playing it. I'm warning whoever is reading this right now, this might contain me ranting for a bit. So with that out of the way, let's get started.

     I'm going to be perfectly honest right now. I can be considered an achievement and/or trophy whore. Usually if I exhausted whatever main options a game has given me to do, I go after most of the game's achievements in my spare time. Whether it's grinding for kills or having the game make me furious while playing on the hardest difficulty, I usually find that earning achievements can have a sense of accomplishment. Now, I don't play games for achievements, I play games for the "game" part of it. At the same time, I do have standards for what I believe are good achievements. One particular example of bad achievements for me are multiplayer achievements (unless the game is online only like MAG). And of course, Dead Rising 2 had the balls to have multiplayer achievements. I was not looking forward to getting them at all.

     For the most part, the multiplayer achievements were not that bad, since there were only three of them. Two of them were simple to get, such as winning an episode and winning one of the nine events. But the last one was the worst of them all. The goal was to win all nine events at least once. This may not sound that bad, but in reality, this was a pain in the ass to get for reasons I stated much earlier in the blog. The big reason was how frequent and/or infrequent some of the events showed up, meaning that the events I didn't win were mostly the ones that barely showed up for me. So getting this one achievement meant that I had to play a lot of TIR episodes hoping to GOD that I didn't lose if one of those elusive events showed up.

     After losing at Headache one too many times since that was the last event I needed to win in order to get the achievement, I finally managed to win in one particular episode. But playing that episode also gave me the most fucked up experience with Ramsterball ever. Remember when I said that lag was noticeable in this event the most? Well, the lag in this match decided to completely fuck me over when trying to get the power from other players. The weird thing is that the issue wasn't players teleporting around the arena as usual when it lags, the issue was the camera working against me completely. For some unknown reason, whenever another player had the power, instead of following the person with it as usual, the camera kept turning in the OPPOSITE direction of the player, making it impossible to chase the player with the power. This was the worst experience I ever had with this event, but since I didn't need to win it anymore for the achievement, I simply didn't care at that point. Thankfully, Ball Buster went along just fine even though one player quit after the previous event. As for Headache, the player that quit might have been my saving grace since I won the event with almost no issues in comparison to the other attempts. And I'm glad I finally got the achievement, because I wanted to return the game and rent something else in its place since I got the most out of it by that point.

     As I said before, the Terror is Reality multiplayer component is a fun little diversion from the main game. Even though it's an easy way to earn cash, the staying power wont last that long. So if you plan to play Dead Rising 2 if you haven't already, give TIR a shot. At the same time, if you are going for the achievements, don't be surprised if you end up getting frustrated at it from time to time. As for me, I'll be busy trying to get back in the groove of writing blog posts more often.

Just a little reminder to myself.

The Death of the Guitar Hero Franchise

"Activision confirms that Guitar Hero is no more, writing "due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011.""

Goodbye Guitar Hero, that's what you get for releasing an entry SIX TIMES in one year! The full story.

Text Review - Quantum Theory (PS3)

     As much as I want to get an actual video review out for once, I never seem to have the time to be able to make one. Issues include college work, procrastination (by far the biggest reason), and how Sony Vegas tends to shut down my computer during rendering. Because of these reasons, I am unable to properly get reviews out as much as I would like. So instead I decided to go ahead and start up a blog and do text reviews on here. That way I'll be able to get my thoughts out on some games, as opposed to working on a video that I probably wouldn't be able to start or finish working on.

     So with that out of the way, let's start this blog off with my review of Quantum Theory for the PS3. Good god, why did I have to pick this game out of, well, anything?!?

This isn't going to end well.

     I really don't know what drove me to go out and rent this from Gamefly. I had already played the demo of this game, and I ended up hating it. In fact, this blog post was initially going to be my thoughts on the demo instead, similar to what Blondeguygamer did on his blog. However, for some ungodly reason, I felt compelled to see if the full game was actually worse than the demo. After hearing reviews about certain parts of the game, I had to see it for myself. Unfortunately, there were almost zero videos on Youtube that showed those said segments in the game. So instead, I simply said, "Fuck it!" and decided to rent the PS3 version of Quantum Theory. After fully playing it, I can safely say that I wasted my time playing this game more than I did playing Terminator Salvation.

     This game is made by Tecmo-Koei (when the hell did they merge together?). I never exactly played any games by either company, as I don't see the Ninja Gaiden series as appealing to me, and how Dynasty Warriors never changes with each iteration. Do I hate the developers? No, I just don't find any of their games to be fun, for me at least. Quantum Theory is apparently Tecmo-Koei's answer to Gears of War, and their way to appeal to western audiences. This may not seem like a bad thing, that is until you actually play the game. This game might give me a good enough reason to hate both developers now.

     The story starts off with your typical generic buffed up soldier, Syd, and a woman named Nyx, escaping a tower after destroying it. They fight their way out, but Nyx stays behind and dies since she is actually connected to the tower itself. The game then fast forwards to Syd and a bunch of other soldiers fighting their way through hordes of enemies, known as the "Diablosis", while making their way to another tower. Syd's main mission is simple, destroy the tower. However, all the other useless soldiers get killed and Syd is the only one that manages to get inside and live. Along the way, he meets a woman named Filena, who is out to save the tower from "the erosion." He helps her out in a firefight with the Diablosis, the two almost shoot each other in a standoff, and they go their separate ways. They eventually meet up again, this time fighting each other to a stalemate. Once more of the Diablosis show up, however, they are forced to team up in order to get through the tower.

It's "Diablosis," not "Diablos."

     The plot itself isn't exactly that hard to follow, but it is entirely forgettable and makes it hard for the player to care about any of it at all. The characters are all generic, especially Syd who tries to act badass with his terrible one-liners. As for Filena, she only serves as a typical sidekick with sex appeal (yes, she has breast physics. *sigh*). There technically is a villain, Thanatos, but he shows up roughly halfway through the game, and doesn't really affect the main plot at all. The game tries to be epic at times, adding in some big set pieces, but it falls apart mainly due to the gameplay, but I'll get to that later. The game even ends with an anti-climatic cliffhanger easily setting up for a sequel, which I hope to god NEVER gets made. In short, the plot is dumb, boring, and makes it hard for anyone to care about what happens in it at all.

     When it comes to Quantum Theory's graphics, they are simply not that good. I'm not saying that they're bad either, it's just simply mediocre. The art style is a little interesting, but it also comes off looking a bit odd at the same time. For example, both the Diablosis' and Syd's armor looks like a bunch of black sea shells glued together. It also doesn't help that some of the textures look either bland or unpolished, for both the characters and the environments. At first, the game looks dreary and washed out, making the first few levels look like absolute crap. It gets better once you get inside the tower itself, but at the same time, it isn't particularly impressive either. The weapons have some interesting designs, but they also look low-res once you actually use them. The animations are very robotic and stiff at times, as if there is almost no fluidity to it all all. This shows up especially when you are either running or trying to take cover. Also, the game decides to randomly zoom in on an enemy whenever you get a headshot. This may seem cool at first, but gets tiresome after the fourth or fifth time you see it. In short, while it may not have the worst graphics ever, Quantum Theory's graphics falls a little short of simply being passable.

The game tends to look like this at points.

 

     The sound design doesn't fare much better either. All of the weapons sound like they don't pack as much punch as they should. The only weapon that tries to sound powerful is the one you can't get rid of, the Revenant, but that still isn't saying much. The voice acting, however, simply sucks ass. As mentioned earlier, Syd tries to act like this badass, but simply fails at being one all together. His delivery is monotone for the most part, and the lines he spits out are just retarded. The best example of this is the line, "Damn, I can't hit anything.", which he ends up saying if you miss a couple of shots on an enemy sometimes. Yes, the game INSULTS you for missing a few shots on the enemy. Filena's voice actor is slightly better, but is still pretty bad. Everyone else, such as the useless soldiers at the start of the game, sound like they don't even try to act at points.

     The only redeeming actor I found in this game was Steve Blum. First of all, he shouldn't be in this game. ANYTHING but this game. Second, despite being one of the only actors that seems to try with their roles, the dialogue is laughably bad. This includes the dialogue for everyone else in Quantum Theory. It is just poorly written and executed. One example of this is the first fight with Thanatos. If you take your time with what you are supposed to do in the fight, the dialogue ends up repeating itself. It ends up being very annoying, and it shows how lazy the developers were with this aspect. As for the music, I'm not to sure what to say about it. It maybe the only redeeming factor for the sound design. It's good enough to listen to in its own right, but it's still nothing that spectacular. All I can really say is that it fits with the game. That's about it. Overall though, the music alone isn't enough to save Quantum Theory's sound design from being bad.

     After all this time, how could I have not addressed the main issue of this game? The actual gameplay. Oh boy, where do I even begin on this one? Also, please note that I played this game on the normal difficulty setting.

Gears of War, this is not.

     First of all, the aiming sucks balls in this game. It feels very delayed at times, making it harder to aim at the enemy you want to shoot at, even with the aim-assist. Modifying the sensitivity helped a little bit, but it was still difficult to hit an enemy no matter what setting it was at. Moving Syd around in general felt very clunky and not smooth, unlike in other games like Gears of War (as much as I don't want to compare Gears and this game, it is hard NOT to). As for the cover system, it is very cumbersome and feels very unpolished. Hell, Terminator Salvation's cover system worked better than the one in Quantum Theory. At first, it may look like the cover system could be limited but decent. But instead, using cover can be more trouble than it should be. Taking cover isn't the problem, but trying to do things like move from left to right in cover tends to be problematic. Popping out and shooting is fine, but getting out of cover is slightly annoying as you have to press the X button (A on the Xbox 360) again in order to get out. You can run in the game, which clearly uses Gears' "roadie run" camera angle, and evade to dodge enemy fire. Evading is also used for something else, but we'll get to that aspect later.

     You hold up to a total of three weapons, but are only able to switch two of them out for other armaments (the Revenant is basically your backup weapon). Most of the weapons are slightly generic, only looking interesting do to the art style, with only two or three weapons being unique. One weapon shoots saw blades at the enemies, another has lasers that can bounce off the wall, and one that shoot lighting at a very short range. Some weapons, however, are completely useless. I ended up using the shotguns and explosive weapons the least. The shotguns weren't even powerful as they should be, and the explosive weapons rarely had any ammo. Besides, you can beat the game using the more common weapons you find from enemies that decide to drop them once in a while.

     Oh, I almost forgot about your partner, Filena. After you fight her for a little bit in the story, she ends up fighting alongside with you. While her AI is smarter than the actual enemies in the game, she can still act pretty dumb when you don't use her for attacks. Yes, you can use Filena for attacking enemies by throwing her at one enemy for a high damage attack, or throw her in the air to trap multiple enemies for a short time. If she gets downed in combat, all you have to do is walk right next to her and she'll get right back up. How the hell does that work? Syd doesn't do anything to help her get up, so why is able to get up after you WALK PAST HER? Nevermind, it's not like this game explains shit as it is. In short, Filena doesn't exactly serve a big purpose in combat like she should have. It just feels like she's just another weapon in your arsenal. I almost forgot, you can also do melee combos on enemies with her, simply by pressing the melee button at a specific time. There are a small number of combos, but they don't matter that much anyway. Speaking of melee combat, I can just say one thing about it. It's bad. It feels very stiff just simply punching an enemy as it makes you stop and attack in one direction. Getting into a fist fight with an enemy is mostly suicidal, as they can easily melee you when you are try to do so as well, canceling your attack. It's just better to sit back and shoot them instead of shouting "I AM A MAN!" and punching them in the gut.

     Remember when I mentioned that evading was used for something other than dodging attacks in the last three paragraphs? Yeah, I should note that this game has platforming segments. Yes, FUCKING PLATFORMING SEGMENTS!

Take this game, turn it into a shooter, make the platforming

broken, and there. You just made Quantum Theory's platforming levels.

    I didn't think that these segments were going to be that bad, but these are definitely the WORST parts of the game. I read some reviews online (Destructoid's in particular) and they kept mentioning how the platforming was abysmal. They mentioned that the game told them to jump, which eventually led to their deaths each time. This was the reason I rented this game. I had to see how bad these segments were for myself, and yes, they suck BIG TIME. The segments are beatable, but it's baffling how poorly designed they are in general. The game tends to show the jump indicator at a certain time, making you think that you should jump immediately. Doing this will get you killed. Even if you time the jump right, sometimes the game can glitch and make you miss, thus resulting in your death. At one point in the game, the jumping didn't even work when it was supposed to. Instead, it made Syd get off the wall and fall to his clumsy death. These segments pretty much killed the game even more for me, adding in a mechanic that doesn't even work that well in this genre to begin with. This game would have been better off without these segments, even though everything else wasn't that good to begin with.

     I forgot to mention another thing. There are boss fights in this game. While there are only a few, they really aren't that fun to fight. One boss chases you up a shaft while you shoot endlessly at it, all the while trying to prevent it from attacking you as well. Then, another boss later in the game has you going up a spiral staircase while you have to shoot all the "fuck me lights" on his body. They may be epic in scale, but they are not that fun to go up against, making them almost boring in a way. One last thing, this game wasn't just bad. It was BORING. It felt like a complete chore just getting through the damn thing, with almost no reason to go back and play it (there are things you can shoot called "The Eyes of the Tower", but they just add useless backstory). And no, I can't talk about the multiplayer because NO ONE plays multiplayer in this game. I searched in every gametype, and even made my own lobby. Not one person was playing this game at all. Also, in terms of game length for single player, it took me around four hours to beat it on the normal setting. So basically, there really is no replay value for Quantum Theory. Overall, the gameplay tries it's hardest to be like a western third person shooter, but fails miserably in almost every aspect.

"FOUR HOURS!"

     

     Overall, Quantum Theory simply isn't worth your time or attention. After playing this, I don't even want to see what other games Tecmo-Koei has up their sleeves next. Even if you find this game in the bargain bin, hell, even if you find this on sale for ONE PENNY, don't even bother with it. Just look at it and give it the middle finger. Or laugh at it. Or do both. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and watch a few episodes of K-ON, which is infinitely better than Quantum Theory.

Better than Quantum Theory in every aspect. Wait, what?!?