Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – Ultimate Sith Edition Review - PC

Summary:
You’re obviously a PC gamer who’s reading this and you also realize how painful the wait has been since Star Wars: The Force Unleashed released last  year for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Now it makes its presence felt on the PC will all the DLCs - the Jedi Academy, Tatooine and Hoth levels. But now that’s it here, does it measure up?
Good:

• Amazing story line, the best of any Star Wars stories so far
• Awesome level design
• Super cool moves, you can actually FEEL the force
• Nice costumes, skins, saber options

Bad

• Frustrating targeting
• Loads of glitches
• Some game sequences are really ridiculous.

Ugly

• WTF system requirements!
• Poor game engine

The Story:
You play StarKiller, Darth Vader’s very handpicked secret apprentice.  In the years between Episodes III and IV, Darth Vader trains your and puts you to work. You mission:  mopping up the few remaining Jedi.

Graphics:
The graphics are nothing short of mind blowing. From the opening sequence where you play as Darth Vader and face off against the wookies to the stunning levels of Hoth, it’s a Star Wars visual treat! If you played it on the Xbox 360 or PS3, you’ll know just how awesome it was! However, since it’s in for the PC, you’d expect some sort of change, better graphics, better physics etc. but nope, you receive pretty much what you saw on the console…and trust me, it’s a bad port. We tested it on our lowly dual core machine with a 4850 and it ran like sucked nuts. Make sure you have a Core2Quad at least with a 9800gt+ card or better.

Controls:
The controls are… well, annoying at times. The Keyboard mouse combo is easier than playing with the game pad, but the overall experience wasn’t great. Blame it on poor camera angles and frustrating targeting mechanisms.

Gameplay:
I’m inclined to say such great things here, but I can’t. To be very honest, it does some things very well and bombs on a few others. For those of you who’ve played Star Wars: Jedi Academy, you’d think this was the same game on steroids, but it’s just a scaled down version of its game play. The biggest surprise and let down,  is that there are only four main force powers: Push, Grip, Repulse and Lightning - they’re upgradable though and can be used in devastating combination. But really…just 4 is a let down.

But whatever little they give you, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed doles out your powers at a leisurely pace over nine missions, from the gorgeous fungal terrain of Felucia to the vivid metallic graveyard of Raxus Prime, but the coolest are available right from the start. Using Force Grip and Force Push, you can pick up and throw or just knock around parts of the environment, from enemies who reach out in mid-air for a handhold to exploding barrels and scrap metal. Lobbing debris around is fun and deviously entertaining as  you send crowds of stormtroopers hurtling through glass and chuck exploding orbs into passing Tie Fighters, you can almost forgive the piss poor targeting system.
Then there is my favorite - Force Lightning and heaving your lightsaber around like a boomerang, but I found that Force Grip and Force Push made the most entertaining use of the clutter in the early missions. One fault I found with Grip and Push, however, was that larger objects like AT-ST laser turrets take a lot of force to lift. That makes sense logistically but standing still in the middle of a laser spray to mentally heft a huge piece of  debris leaves you like a sitting duck waiting ready to have its goose cooked!

In terms of the additional content, what you’re getting here is an extension of the base game, something that simply adds more content to the experience but doesn’t actually change (or even fix) anything. At very start you’ll notice that the three additional levels are standalone options, so you don’t need to play through the game in order to get to them.  The downside to this is that none of your powers or anything else carries over, nor does anything that you earn carry back into the main game. However, that largely doesn’t matter as you start almost fully powered-up for each of these levels anyway. What the DLCs are like, I’ll leave it to you to discover, but I’ll talk a little about the Hoth level, which again is the only exclusive bit to the Ultimate Sith Edition. Now it isn’t quite as exciting as either the Jedi Academy or Tatooine levels as the Hoth base is essentially just a series of square rooms and corridors connecting them. It looks great, mind you, and is pretty much dead-on with what you see in Empire, but it doesn’t really make for the most interesting level to fight through.

After slicing and dicing for a while, you’ll face off with Luke Skywalker. The battle with him is much tougher than the fight against either Boba Fett or Obi-Wan, but that’s because he can be pretty cheap. He has attacks that are very frustrating, and there can be guys out of the area that you’re in that constantly shoot at you. It’s not a terrible fight, but it’s not nearly as fun as I had hoped it could be…or it should have been.

Sound/Music/Score:
Its Star Wars god damn it!! What more do you need?? But yea, I had a lot of sound issues, it might be just me, it seems soft and almost lifeless.  I really needed to crank up the volume during the game and turn it down during the FMVs.

Overall:
Now whether you should pick up this game or not, I’ll leave it to you. But if you’ve never played this game, yes, pick it up. If you are not a Star Wars fan, you’ll still find it enjoyable, but might be a little frustrating. If you already own the game on one of the consoles, this is not worth picking up. Just download the DLCs and you’re not missing anything. Overall a good game with a flawed experience, but an awesome story line which will keep you engaged right through out. I would easily rate this one of the better Star Wars games…but not enough to make it the best.If you wondered why I’ve not reviewed this on other consoles. To be honest. Its the same. So you’re not reading anything entirely different that’s gonna happen on the Xbox 360 and the PS3

Release Info:
Available on:  Xbox 360, PS3, Mac and PC
Genre: Action
Release date: November 3rd 2009.
Published by: Aspyr
Developed by: LucasArts

System Requirements for PC
Our recommendation for the full experience:

• Core2Duo Extreme or Core2Quad
• 4870 or better
• 4gigs of ram
• Creative X-Fi series sound card

For the casual gamer:

• Core2Duo 2.8 GHz or better
• 4 gigs of ram
• 9600gt or better

Wet - PS3 Review

Don’t go by the name,its not some 2 cent porn game. In fact this raucous bloodbath is fun, has intuitive and exciting acrobatic combat and a great soundtrack making it very entertaining!

In the first scene of Wet, you slide down a long table in slow motion, smashing through towers of champagne glasses and a giant cake as you gun down thugs who are trying to kill you. Then you leap off the table to fly over a dragon-shaped ice sculpture as you pump bullets into even more goons. After you whip out your sword to finish the last one off, you’ll have killed a dozen enemies in a bloody display of stylish, slow-motion savagery within a few short moments. Wet’s gleefully bloody combat is a combination of high-flying acrobatics and brutal gunplay that is consistently entertaining, despite some rough movement mechanics. And while the seedy plot and cuss-happy characters aren’t anything to write home about, the story is very well paced and propelled by a fiery soundtrack that perfectly suits the over-the-top action. Wet is a high-speed thrill ride that barrels over its own speed bumps and potholes at such a rollicking good pace that you can’t help but have a riotously good time.

You play Rubi Malone. When things go afoul on a job she’s hired to do, she wants payback, and she’s got the skills to get it.  Rubi’s substantial move set is introducded at a measured pace, giving you just enough time to get comfortable with each ability before you unlock a new one. You start out jumping and sliding, but you’ll work your way up to pole swinging, wall jumping, and a host of other acrobatic maneuvers. You’ll use your abilities to traverse a variety of gritty environments as your work your way through the underworld to get at the guys who wronged you. For the most part, navigating is straightforward and fairly easy, though the loose controls ensure that you’ll make your fair share of missteps. If you get stuck, you can hold a button to highlight areas that Rubi can grab onto or run to, which will generally get you on your way. However, some jumps are incongruously tough, and a few sections make your next step frustratingly unclear.

Rubi can run and gun fairly well, but it is much more entertaining and rewarding to gun while doing something besides running. If you start shooting while doing anything remotely acrobatic, time will slow down and the real fun begins. Rubi is a dual-wielding kind of gal, and when you enter the slow-motion shooting mode, one of the guns automatically targets a nearby enemy. You can then aim the other gun freely, which allows you to take down multiple enemies without breaking a sweat. This pairing of auto-targeting with free aiming is intuitive and uncomplicated, and Rubi’s flexibility allows you to cover a wide degree of firing angles. The shooting mechanics and slow-motion effect combine to imbue every enemy encounter with cinematic potential. To take out a cluster of enemies, for example, you could leap toward your enemies and use your pistols to stop the charging swordsmen. Then you can land in a slide, switch to your semiautomatic guns, and spin your torso around in a full circle, spraying hot death in every direction. The slow motion not only makes this massacre possible, but it also allows you to revel in your deliciously deadly abilities.

The only other places you’ll encounter awkwardness are in the cutscenes and character dialogue. The character models aren’t particularly sharp, and there’s a good amount of graphical clipping and lip-syncing clumsiness. The plot is a serviceably violent romp through the underworld and takes you to a variety of detailed locations that, while not exactly beautiful, have a number of nice flourishes. The voice acting is solid but not great, and some of Rubi’s quips wear out their welcome pretty quickly (”Say goodnight, Gracie!”). The whole game is overlaid with a grainy filter (which you can turn off) that echoes Wet’s grind house inspiration, but the best part of the presentation is the soundtrack, which boasts a robust number of grimy surf rock tracks. These chime in at timely intervals, punching up the action and psyching you up to do some more killing.

When you’re done with the story, you can replay each level to try to beat a target point score or take on the obstacle-course challenges, though the latter tends to expose some of the game’s weaker elements. Wet isn’t a particularly pretty game, and a lingering awkwardness can interrupt the acrobatic platforming from time to time. Fortunately, you’ll usually be too busy enjoying the action to notice. The combination of auto-target, free aim, and slow motion makes combat relentlessly entertaining, and the vigorous soundtrack and great pacing give the game a satisfying sense of momentum. Though there is a certain roughness to the action, Wet is still a raucously entertaining adventure.

Quick Facts:

Compnay: Bethesda Softworks and A2M

Genre: Action

Release: Sep 15, 2009

ESRB: Mature

Here’s the trailer for it:

The Punisher: No Mercy - PS3 Review

Castle’s back! but does he impress?

The thumbs up:

Shyte load of unlockables!! Whoo ho!

The thumbs down:

Very Very Short story line | Unlockables take forever | Online play frames

Like most bargain games; The Punisher: No Mercy seems like a decent value. For only $10, you get an online multiplayer shooter with eight unique levels, a bunch of characters from the comic books to play as, and enough unlockable weapons and gadgets to keep you occupied for quite a few hours. But when you discover how shallow and generic this first-person shooter is, any bargain bin thrills you get from shooting up your friends will quickly dissipate. You can blow through the Story mode in less than a half hour; after which, you have only repetitive shootouts to look forward to when you take your guns online. For such a cheap price, No Mercy fills the mindless shooter void in a pinch, but any fun is over before you know it.

The main draw in No Mercy is the online multiplayer mode, but there is a perfunctory campaign thrown in for those who want a little practice shooting up brain-dead bots before they pit their skills against more challenging adversaries in competitive play. The four story levels begin and end with hand-drawn story segments that show Frank Castle’s confused reaction to fighting clones of his arch nemeses, but they abruptly end with a nasty “To be continued” tease before this seeing-double tale is resolved. The Story mode should provide either a conclusion to the narrative or train you for your online matches, but it does neither. Your bot opponents are devoid of tactical abilities and health, so your time spent shooting up your foes in single-player does a lousy job of preparing you for human-controlled enemies. By the time the story ends, you unlock every playable character, along with a few powerful gadgets and weapons, and a skirmish mode to extend solo sessions, but it’s a pretty mundane experience.

Online play is broken up into cooperative and competitive modes, but given the fact that artificial enemies are unnaturally moronic, you have to opt for competitive action if you want opponents who put up a fight. There are a number of different modes to choose from, but all of them offer only slight variations on the classic deathmatch formula. The lack of diverse objectives leads to a monotonous feeling that even the well-designed levels can’t overcome. The stages have plenty of hidden passageways and deadly sniper spots, but the intelligent layouts are largely wasted because there isn’t a reason to carefully sneak around to seek out the best positions. Each fight is over in the blink of an eye. If you can shoot enemies in the back, they’ll most likely die before they can even turn around, which makes for an abrupt and unsatisfying experience.

Because fights are usually over before you can think up a clever trash-talking line, matches are slightly more fun with fewer players. Most maps can accommodate up to eight people but the action is at its best when that number is cut in half. With a few seconds to breathe between encounters, you have a chance to reload your gun and pick up some much-needed health packs, giving you a chance to stay alive for a little while before finally succumbing to an onslaught of bullets. But even when you find the perfect balance of competitors, playing online still has a lot of problems. The matches often lag so much that the only option is to ditch the unreliable automatic weapons, fill the screen with fiery blasts from the rocket launcher, and hope for the best. Worse, still, are the frequent drops. When the host is kicked out, everyone gets booted to the title screen, and this happens so often that it’s difficult to get into a shooting rhythm.

The upgrade system is the most interesting aspect of No Mercy, but it messes with the already tenuous balance. By earning kills and picking up power-ups spread across the maps, you can level up your guns, which makes them more accurate and powerful. These upgrades disappear each time you die, but there are permanent rewards you can earn by playing longer. If you chalk up a few hundred kills online, you unlock even more powerful weapons, as well as mods that give your character special abilities. You can only equip two mods at a time (one active and one passive), but they have a significant effect on the action. You can unlock a motion sensor, health regeneration, and even the ability to become invisible. Having upgrades to strive for is a cool idea, but the requirement to unlock the better tools is way too high, forcing players to log in hours upon hours to see the high-end offerings.

Despite a few good features, it’s not worth dealing with No Mercy’s unsatisfying gunplay, connection issues, and dearth of multiplayer options just to get your hands on a few unlockable items. The grating voice acting doesn’t help matters either, with a near-constant stream of vulgar one-liners peppering every match. You’ll hear “May the *expletive* rats eat your meat” so many times that the words will lose all meaning. There are a few hours of middling entertainment to extract from this comic-themed package, but other than the bargain price, there is little reason to play The Punisher: No Mercy over any other shooter on the PlayStation 3.

Check out some of the screen shots below:

So is it any good?

No it’s not…we give it 2 stars on 5

MLB 09: The Show - PS3 Review

There is no room at Cooperstown for baseball games yet, but if the hallowed hall of fame ever adds such a facility, you can guarantee that MLB 09: The Show will be one of the very first inductees. Everything here is brought to life in such an exacting, authentic fashion that you finish games feeling like you’ve actually spent time out on a real diamond. Driving gappers to the wall, painting corners to ring up Ks, and making running catches on the warning track deliver a sense of satisfaction typically reserved for Little League memories or big-league dreams. This outstanding look at the grand old game is not merely an adaptation of baseball; it is baseball in just about every conceivable way.

Sony’s San Diego Studios has done a tremendous job of building on last year’s stellar effort, subtly improving most aspects of gameplay while not reinventing the wheel. Granted, this sequel isn’t as much of an overhaul as it is a refinement. A fair bit of MLB 09 is a straight rehash of its 2008 predecessor. Modes of play remain fundamentally unchanged from when you left them 12 months ago, including exhibition, franchise, rivalry, online one-off games and leagues (online games are silky smooth, too), and the superb Road to the Show. Nothing here will force you to do so much as glance at the manual, although some extras have been tossed into the mix such as the intense Legend difficulty setting, salary arbitration and the waiver wire in franchise play, and flex scheduling and live drafts in online leagues. Controls also remain pretty much the same, with the addition of a handful of amenities such as the ability to quickly shift fielders on the fly and a more interactive baserunning interface in which you use the analog sticks to steal and retreat.

Batter up!

The look and sound of the game mimics last year’s game as well. As with the above, though, nearly everything has been improved in one way or another. Presentation is virtually identical to a Major League TV broadcast, especially with quick game turned off so you can see all of the close-ups and slow-motion camerawork in-between plays. Player detail is amazing. Not only do faces look almost photorealistic, but the detail is also so sharp that you can recognize Major League stars from halfway across the diamond. Animations are superb. Hundreds of batting stances are depicted, and all of the fielding moves could have been taken directly from SportsCenter. Stadiums are packed with fine details. The grass looks so realistic that you might be tempted to mow it, and the infield dirt practically shimmers in the sunlight. Sound effects wrap right around you, with crowd noise and chants placing you on the diamond in the middle of a raucous stadium. The broadcast crew of Rex Hudler, Dave Campbell, and Matt Vasgerian do a good job of keeping you involved in the action, although they are a little too prone to repeating phrases and relying on stock sports cliches. Nevertheless, they provide good information, if not much in the way of cogent analysis.

Very high, clean textures

So you could fairly say that MLB 09 is the same as last year, only better–a lot better. The game on the field now feels almost entirely organic. Although the pitcher-batter duel in 2008 was very good, it now mimics real at-bats so accurately that it is uncanny. Ball physics are simply perfect. The ball comes off of the bat exactly as it should, depending totally on your timing, the location of your swing, and the location and movement of the pitch. When you hit a nubber, you know right away that you deserved to hit a nubber. When you crank one into the upper deck, you know right away that you deserved to crank one into the upper deck. Most at-bats are struggles when you’re wielding the lumber. They play out just like in real baseball. You fight off tough pitches by getting a bit of wood on the ball, you can get jammed inside with bat-breaking results, and the pitcher will try to hoodwink you with garbage after getting ahead in the count. Drawing walks is now possible, too. You have to have a great eye and a lot of patience, but at least you can work your way aboard with a free pass now, which generally wasn’t possible last year due to the supernatural acumen of the computer-controlled pitchers. Hitting mechanics are so well done that it’s best to step into the box with all of the visual helpers switched off. In most baseball games, frills such as the strike box are necessary to get a handle on hitting the ball properly. Here, this graphical junk only interferes with reading pitches and taking cuts.

Pitching is equally brilliant and just as grueling. Every at-bat is a knock-down, drag-out scrap. Opposing hitters are extremely devious and very tough to fool. You can paint corners for Ks, although as in the real Majors, you’re better off playing mind games and trying to mess up batters by varying pitch types and speeds. Opposing batters are a little easier to ring up than they were last year, given that their skills at reading pitches back then were so acute that it was just about impossible to get them to chase garbage even when they were behind in the count. Now you can get them to bite more often on pitches a little out of the zone, or freeze them with a heater down the pipe when they are expecting junk. It all adds up to an amazingly lifelike confrontation every time you hit the rubber.

Authenticity is also more pronounced in the field. When balls are hit to players, they now react according to their stats, not according to stock animations. The end result is that you never know what’s going to happen. In most sports games, when you see a player going all out, you know that a highlight reel is about to unfold. Here, however, you might see that all-out run end up in a face-plant and the ball bouncing off of a glove. In the dozens and dozens of games that we played, not one play felt canned or preordained. Every single, every home run, every strikeout, every 6-4-3 double play, every routine catch in the outfield was its own wholly unique event. Establishing this random, anything-can-happen vibe is sort of the Holy Grail for sports-game developers, and as such, is rarely realized. Yet here the developers make it seem almost effortless. The visuals back all of this up. Players will bobble balls, pull off one-handed grabs in the infield, and make radically different catches in the outfield depending on the situation. You feel like you never see the same thing twice.

Difficulty is about the only drawback to MLB 09 on the field. Even on the Rookie setting, hitting, pitching, and even some fielding can be tough. Stats generated are nearly dead-on in comparison to the real Majors, so remember that even the best players in the league hit their way aboard an average of a little more than three times in every 10 at-bats. Casual gamers are apt to be very frustrated in the early stages. Until you start getting your timing down and exercising a lot of patience, hitting is extremely hard. You certainly can’t pick up the gamepad for the first time and start jacking balls over the fence like you can in MLB 2K9. The same goes for pitching because computer-controlled batters track your efforts and are quick to leap on pitches if you fall into a routine with type and location. Always leading off with that four-seam fastball is a recipe for disaster; your opponents will soon come to look for it and then crush it.

Fielding isn’t nearly as hard to handle as either hitting or pitching, although it can be problematic at times. Reading the ball off of the bat is a little tough due to the camera angles. If you go down too low you can’t see as much, and if you scale back all the way to allow for a broader view of the diamond, then the ball becomes a BB that you can easily lose sight of against the infield dirt. Another possible issue for some might be the adherence to old-fashioned controls. Whereas most sports games seem to be switching over to handling everything with the analog sticks, MLB 09 continues with tried-and-true button hitting for batting and either a meter or the classic “choose pitch and pick a location” for pitching. This makes the game feel a touch more “gamey” than the equivalent right-stick hitting and right-stick pitching in MLB 2K9, although the results on the field are so much more lifelike than the competition that the trade-off is more than worthwhile.

About the only aspect of MLB 09 that hasn’t advanced in a significant way is the Road to the Show role-playing mode. Creating a player and trying to get him to the Major Leagues through controlling him during every plate appearance and fielding chance is every bit as captivating now as it was when it was first introduced two years ago, although it still has a huge problem with load times. It takes a good 20-30 seconds to load up a game for your player, and then another 20-30 seconds at the end of that game to process your results and get back to the main player menu. This sort of wait is readily endurable if you’re getting into a game in exhibition or franchise modes, given that you’re loading up a full nine-inning contest that generally takes around an hour to play. However, if you choose to play as a batter rather than a pitcher in Road to the Show, you’re waiting all this time just to load up a handful of at-bats and a couple of fielding plays. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to be starting. If you’re coming off of the bench, which you almost certainly will be in your first season or two, you often sit through these long loads to fire up a single pinch-hit appearance that wraps up in less than a minute. This gets rather frustrating, and it really bogs down progression through a season if you want to actually play and not simulate your player’s actions.

With all of that said, Road to the Show is still amazingly addictive. Sure, it’s a time sink. But it feels like you’re really building a Major Leaguer one game at a time, earning training points through successes in games and buying skill-enhancing workouts. So it is well worth the commitment. New features such as training in the batting cages, and a revamped baserunning interface that involves reading signs from the third-base coach, further the illusion of being in a player’s cleats. Interactive training is probably the best addition because it makes player careers more engaging. Coaches are also responsive to what is happening during games. Have a rough outing against a guy throwing curveballs, for instance, and don’t be surprised if you soon get asked to spend some time in the cage with a pitcher throwing nothing but curves. The only complaint about training sessions is that there just aren’t enough of them. You seem to get called into one only every couple of weeks, which doesn’t give you enough time to focus on improving your skills.

MLB 09: The Show is more of a love letter to baseball than it is just another game. Of course, nothing will ever take the place of the real thing, but anyone with a serious fondness for the national pastime will find this an enthralling substitute.