Bloodrayne: Betrayal Review October 3, 2011

I’m happy to see that Majesco is getting back to taking up their major properties and making games with them again.  I had stated in the Psychonauts top five video that after the end of 2005, the company switched over to value software and stopped producing triple-a titles, which really upset me because I liked their properties a lot and hoped they would do more with them.

The first Bloodrayne game in over five years, Bloodrayne Betrayal has been released for download on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 and I got to play it on the Playstation 3.

I know what you’re thinking.  Awesome, a new Bloodrayne game.  That means we get to see things like this!

Well… no, not exactly.  The developers decided that the series would get a new gameplay style and a visual aesthetic to match that would be more in line with anime or a comic book.

I am not saying that this new style is a bad thing at all.  I liked this game’s art style a lot.  I am a huge comic book art fan and I didn’t mind the new style to go with the 2D gameplay.  The 2D combat perspective with a focus on fighting and platform navigation harkened back to earlier platforming games like Castlevania.  Now I’m sure every reviewer on the internet is going to make that comparison, as well as plenty of gamers, so let me just join in on that parade right now, but that’s only because it is a fair comparison.

When I first started the game I noticed the music is actually pretty good.  Sound on the PS3 is limited to stereo…for…some…reason.  For those of you who need a slight audio history lesson, the PS3 can do uncompressed 7.1 audio through HDMI.  Stereo sound has been in games since the days of the SNES.  You will find yourself closely listening to the stereo music through the game (which is not that bad) because there’s no voice over work.  The little dialog there is in the game is spoken only by text bubbles over characters.  This does fit with the comic book art style, and I can see what the developers were going for.

On the other hand when you look past the art and music to focus only on the gameplay, you get to the bad of the game.  This game can get downright sadistic.  There were some stretches of levels that made me want to throw my controller across the room.  Just when I’d think the game was getting good (or I was getting better at playing it) it would throw me a new sadistic stretch of a level or a boss fight.  I know a lot of independent bloggers found Catherine sadistic in this respect and the difficulty of some of that game’s levels lost them some points in their review of that game, I had no problem with Catherine’s difficulty because anyone could just look up a solution to Catherine’s puzzles online.  In Bloodrayne: Betrayal, no walkthrough or guide can help you, you have to beat the game out of your own sheer force of will.

It seemed to me early on there was a really fun game in there somewhere, if only the game showed me how to play it.  Since the game is downloadable, there’s no paper manual you can look up for gameplay tips while playing.  You’ll occasionally get a small tip sprinkled through the first few levels, but it would have helped a lot better to have a whole training level devoted to each of the new gameplay mechanics early on.  Major gameplay features, like the ability to corrupt enemies by biting them, and then using them to detonate other enemies around them are not explained early on, and when they are they are poorly explained as to how important the sequences are!  Corrupting enemies was a new feature that we’ve never seen Bloodrayne do in any previous incarnation, and it’s a major gameplay device in this game you’ll need to survive some of the more swamped fights!  The game doesn’t even show a tooltip as to how to do it until several chapters into the game, and by that point you’ll have referred to either the manual or an online FAQ and learned how to do it.

Never in my life have I had to refer to a game manual as much as I have for this game, and since the game is digital only, there is no paper manual for you to refer to.  You will find yourself constantly checking the in-game menu, breaking up the game’s flow, just to see the button combinations for doing the moves that are essential to progressing through the game.

Fighting enemies, espessially early on, can get very boring very fast.  The game will just keep throwing in the same enemies you’ve fought over and over again just to pad out a chapter and there are very few total enemy types in the game, with no diversity among them.  You can be in a section of the game and fight four enemies, then have to fight four more of the exact same enemies.  This kind of grinding can get VERY boring very quickly, and it even happens in the first level.  Later in the game, boss fights will include padded battles with respawning enemies that will get more difficult.  This just serves to soften you up before the boss battle, oh and there will be no checkpoints unless you can defeat all the enemies, and the boss in one life bar.  Even with the ability to take life from normal enemies, this can still be VERY difficult, since you can’t take life from the bosses.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some fun gameplay segments in the game.  In one chapter, you have to control a bird and navigate through a narrow section since Rayne cannot navigate through it herself.  While playing it, I thought “well this is a nice little segment, maybe the level design has improved from here on,” and then I would be forced to play the most sadistic, frustrating platform segments you can ever imagine with poorly placed checkpoints.  It will be in these segments I actually had thoughts that the people who gave me the code to review this game must’ve hated me!

The bosses can start off as boring at best with tedious ways to defeat them and scale up to outright overwhelmingly frustrating very quickly.  One boss fight starts off with a battle royale against many enemies all at once that spawn in, while random danger zones appear in the area which can hurt you very badly and kill the enemies.  After you’ve cleared out the enemies, you’re then given a boss fight with no checkpoint or heal opportunity in between, and some of those boss’s attacks are unavoidable.

Finally I want to talk about the game’s price.  After everything I’ve said about the game I completely understand that there are gamers out there that eagerly yearn for challenging 2D platform games harkening back to the original NES or Super NES game systems.  This is that game.  However, I remind you that this game is being sold for $15US in 2011, whereas you can already get games like Castlevania through the Wii Virtual Console for 5-8 dollars!  Even if I had
enjoyed the game more than I had, I could have an easier time recommending it to fans who enjoy challenging 2D platform games had it been priced at a much more reasonable $10.  At that price, I would say that it would be a fair value to people who sought a challenge.  Other retro-style titles already have come out for download for $10 on all the consoles, like Mega Man 9 and 10 from Capcom.  But for $15, you’re putting the game on par with modern downloadable games with a Triple-A budget, and modern gameplay, and this is not that kind of game.  Be it the price, the frustratingly hard platform segments, and the padded, repetitive fights, I cannot recommend this game to the vast majority of you.  If they ever drop the price to a more reasonable 10 dollars, I would recommend it only to people who craved an intense and frustrating challenge, and all the personal accomplishment you’ll get from completing it.

However, a nice thing that’s being included with people who purchase the PS3 version of the game is a Playstation 3 dynamic theme.  It’s automatically added to your download queue when you purchase the game (or redeem a prepaid code to download the game).  However, this was billed as a limited time offer, and by the time you read this review, I don’t know if the theme will be still offered for download with the game.

Part of the reason why this review took so long to write was because it took me so long to actually force myself to beat the game.  I had to force myself to play through the game’s very difficult, frustrating segments in order to continue in the game to conclusion, and I would not be able to look at myself with any respect if I were to review a game without first beating it.

However, I would like to applaud Majesco for bringing its franchises back from the dead, and hope that they will continue to produce games from their back catalog of properties.  I would love to see this momentum continue with a new Bloodrayne sequel, and many have requested a new Advent Rising game.  But if I had to choose one property Majecso should revive that I enjoyed the best, (and Psychonauts doesn’t count because they don’t own it anymore) it would be a new Infected game.

ESPN for Xbox 360 Review July 31, 2011

This weekend marks the 17th X Games and like so many people, my schedule did not permit me to watch every single second of the event as it aired.  But then I remembered my Xbox Live Gold Subscription (which I just renewed) did give me access to the ESPN program, and I hoped some of the X Games broadcasts would make their way onto the service.  Low and behold, every second of ESPN’s coverage of the X Games were online for me to watch at my leisure.  Since Thursday night, I’ve been using the ESPN app for the Xbox 360 and I have plenty to say about it that I wanted to share with all of you.

I just want you guys to know right now before I get into the technicals is that this only a review of the ESPN application for the Xbox 360 and not a review of ESPN (the channel) or the website ESPN3.com, which also has a lot of the same content which is provided by the Xbox 360 app.

I came into this review thinking that this program was kind of redundant, and not worth being one of the plugs to why Microsoft jacked up their yearly Xbox Live Gold subscription costs to $60US a year opposed to $50US.  The only people who will have access to the program are Xbox Live Gold customers who have an ISP which supports access to ESPN3.com.  As a cable internet subscriber, I figured that would make the program kind of unnecessary since in all likelihood anyone who would have access to the ESPN program through Xbox 360 would already have access to ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3.com!  So why bother to use it?  Well, the X Games is on this weekend, and I found out the answer why.

After I pulled up the first day’s coverage of the X Games, I was disappointed to see the picture quality.  Thinking I might not be getting a full amount of bandwidth from my ISP (it’s been slow as of lately), I checked the transmission diagram in the pause menu and saw that I was indeed receiving the best quality HD transmission.  So, an occasionally blocky, sometimes distorted 720p image was as good as it was going to get.

So it’s not as good looking, even in a full HD transmission, in comparison to what you’d see on the dedicated ESPN HD or ESPN2 HD channels.  So for that loss of quality, what do you get as a benefit?  Actually, quite a lot.

In the ESPN program you’ll be able to sort through on-air live competitions and a pretty extensive on demand selection of competitions that already saw air.  What was sweet about this option is that they also had events in the program’s on demand option that never saw air.  This is a much better option to watch previously aired games because while ESPN has its own ON Demand through my cable provider, it is not in HD and does not air games, just ESPN exclusive content like independent movies.  They do not rebroadcast matches through my cable provider’s on demand, but on the ESPN app for Xbox 360, they do.

In contrast to the Hulu Plus program I reviewed some time ago, I noticed that these games on the ESPN app do transmit in 5.1 Dolby Digital just as they do through your cable or sat broadcasts (the X Games were sponsored by DTS), however I didn’t notice a good usage of the rear channels.  It’s nice to know that surround is something that is supported though, because the Xbox 360 can do it, and why Hulu doesn’t is beyond my comprehension.  Regardless, if you have your Xbox 360 hooked up to a 5.1 receiver, it will get some use when you run ESPN.

Kinect support for the application is pretty good too.  Just like with the Zune Marketplace and with Hulu, you will be able to control video playback with voice and hand gestures, making the Xbox 360 Remote Control even less of a good purchase idea.  Voice recognition is really good.  It is a lot faster to just say “Xbox, pause,” than to pick up a remote or your controller, and the control is quite responsive.  That said, you will need a controller to navigate the menu systems, although I have read on Major Nelson’s Blog that the next program update will expand Kinect functionality into the menu system, that probably won’t be coming until at least August.

The last thing I wanted to talk about with the program was the last thing I covered with the Hulu Plus application, the commercials.  ESPN’s app does show commercials, but unlike with Hulu Plus, I actually didn’t mind them one bit.  The reason why is because they are actually shorter than the commercial durations the ESPN channel has, and most of the commercials they show are simply just channel promos.  Also, since this is not a premium program which charges an extra fee on top of the Xbox Live Gold Subscription, simply watching a bumper for SportsCenter every commercial break and then getting back to the action doesn’t bother me one bit.  I wonder why the Hulu Plus program sees the need to require extra money from advertising revenue on top of what they’re already charging you for the ability to use the program in the first place if ESPN can make enough just showing channel promos and not charge any extra.  The only conclusion I can draw is the fact that since this is sports we’re talking about, there’s plenty of ad space you’re seeing when the match is on, as well as the sponsor promos for the event to cover the costs.

In conclusion I do not recommend using this application as an exclusive alternative to just simply watching ESPN or ESPN2 channel in HD through your cable or satellite provider.  You will undoubtably get a better picture on your TV watching the broadcast through the HD channel.  Heck, the X Games was broadcasting in 3D on the new ESPN3D channel, and if I had an HDTV (and that channel) that’s what I’d choose to watch a live broadcast on first.  However, if you missed a broadcast of something you wanted to see due to other commitments, this is without a doubt the BEST possible option to catch it again.  Totally worth a download, and since the X Games are on all weekend, there could not be a more perfect event to get people to download it.  Alone, it’s not a reason to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, but when you add it up with all the other services Xbox Live Gold provide, it does justify it’s price.

Hulu Plus for Xbox 360 Review April 30, 2011

The Hulu Plus service launched on the Xbox 360 this week and due to corporate sponsorship is offering a free trial to Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

I signed up for the trial last night and tried out the service for the last 12 hours watching various provided shows and movies and using as many aspects of the interface as I could.

Now, I must stress that this review is only of the Xbox 360 portion of the Hulu Plus service and not of the Internet based portions of it. I know that Hulu Plus subscribers on the 360 will get web access to the service and if you are a current Hulu Plus subscriber you can simply log into your existing account.

Signing up for a new account became almost scary at moments. You have to create a Hulu account to watch any content on the service although anyone can browse what’s offered. Oddly, you can’t create an account in the program, you must use your computer or smartphone to create an account on Hulu’s website. The program will provide you with an unlock code you can redeem a few free days of service without the need of a credit card. However, something terrifying happened while I signed up. When I redeemed the provided code and created a Hulu account the program suddenly and without user prompt froze and I started getting notifications of very suspicious generic sounding files downloading. I almost terminated the program I thought someone hacked my 360. Actually because I redeemed the code, this notified Hulu that an account was created and it was automatically setting itself up with my user account without any prompt from me. As a PC user, this kind of scared me, I want to be prompted about stuff like this, and I didn’t like the system automatically logged me in based upon just the unlock code being redeemed.

I used the program at first to search for typical shows I enjoy that I knew were provided through the Hulu service. I did like the amount of options offered of both popular and obscure shows. Unfortunately some of my more obscure tv loves were not offered, but this is no slam on the service.

What I didn’t like was that there were a lot of shows that were listed as offered by the service but not watchable on the Xbox 360. These were mostly older episodes of currently airing shows and it was annoying that I couldn’t watch some specific episodes of shows I liked. I know these episodes can be watched on Hulu’s website but if I’m paying money to watch a service only on my tv through my Xbox 360, I want to be able to watch EVERYTHING offered through the service on the Xbox 360.

I did like the fact that a lot of niche movies were made through the service. This could be the best way that most of these movies could get viewed. I enjoyed watching the film “Jedi Junkies”, which was not a film I had heard of before and probably never would have seen it had I not signed up for the service. Also I can assure you that these videos are not censored in any way. I will admit to watching a featured movie just to see how uncensored the service was. Needless to say, nothing was blurred out or beeped. I appreciate that, we are talking about an online service, the FCC’s censors have no place in it.

I also tried the Kinect features of the program and I must admit while I loved having voice command during video playback (preventing the need to pick up a controller or remote) the Kinect version of the Hulu Plus interface was extremely lacking. Any major functionality with Hulu Plus requires a controller. That said, the Kinect’s audio range is fantastic, it just won’t be able to understand you while you’re brushing your teeth.

You will only be able to access popular videos with a hand gesture interface. If you want to do a full search of the Hulu videos (and there are FAR too many options to simply list here), you’ll have to pick up a controller to go looking for them.

Finally I want to talk about video quality. I’m sitting on a 12Mbit/s service and a wired connection to my HDMI connected Xbox 360 slim, outputting in 1080p. At first I noticed my obscure shows were not coming through in HD, and the bandwidth monitor was confirming that. When I switched to alternate content that came in HD I noticed that the show I had previously watched, even though it was shot in HD and premiered on tv in HD, did not have an HD option in Hulu, and I was extremely disappointed. That said, video quality, even in standard, has been fantastic across the board, as well as the quality of the images in the interface.

Audio so far has been limited to PCM stereo. It sounds perfectly fine, but the 360 can do 5.1 Dolby Digital, I haven’t watched any content on the service that supports it.

So, for my final thoughts. It’s not a perfect system by any means but with a few tweaks it easily could be. However I do not plan on renewing my service after my trial expires, nor do I plan to register a credit card to extend the trial. There are too many other free options I have for watching this content including Crackle (which has the obscure shows I love) or even my cable provider’s On Demand, which I’m paying for anyway.

The biggest flaw to me is even though this is a paid premium service (on top of a Gold Subscription), I’m still forced to sit through commercials. There is no excuse for that.

Bioshock 2 EVE Hypo Light-Up Replica Review February 20, 2011

In a first for gameXcess.net, Maniac does a game related product review.  I take a look at the replica EVE Light-Up Hypo seen in Bioshock and Bioshock 2 and gives his review of it.  I got it free with a case of Bawls a while ago and never opened it up.  So I crack it open and use it on camera for you guys to enjoy.

Enjoy the first video shot in VERTICAL WIDESCREEN!  Your smartphone will appreciate it.

On a side note I might now actually have superpowers.

Spike TV Video Game Awards Show Review, One Day Later December 13, 2010

I’ve had a day or two to sit down and digest everything that was presented over the course of this year’s VGAs, as well as read a lot of comments by others who had seen it.  I have to say that the initial enjoyment I felt when watching the VGAs (and you can see it in the live video review) has passed and now I can really talk about overall what I felt about the show.  Like with anything, you really need some time to digest your opinions, and while that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop videotaping live reactions, I’m going to start taking them with a grain of salt.

It seemed like the awards were taking a backseat to the premieres tonight.  This is good, since a lot of games won awards I think a lot of people will disagree with.  When I was recording the video I was hesitant to really express how I felt about some of the games that won a few of the awards, because I was concerned that the people who enjoyed those games would be angry I would insinuate that their opinions were not as valid as mine, and I don’t want to do anything like that.  That said, people write reviews of things.  Reviews are opinions.  A reviewer is going to make someone mad eventually!  I mean seriously, it’s not like any movie I enjoy has won an Oscar in the last 30 years.  I’m aware I express a minority opinion in most cases, but I have seen a lot of comments that have cried foul about a lot of the winners at the awards.  In other cases, some of what I felt were the best games of this year weren’t even nominated.  Then there were the ones that looked so obviously rigged it’s not even funny (Seriously, the host actually won an award for a game nobody I know actually played).

I think what was really telling about it was the fact that at least a half-dozen awards were just announced in a thirty-second segment just before one commercial break.  What?  These developers don’t get to stand up and make a speech?  What makes these awards any less important than the others?  This is an awards show.  Show the awards!  What do you think you’re hosting, the Grammys or something?

Some of the jokes were funny, some weren’t.  Some of the presenters were decent, some weren’t.  My video review broke all that down already.

At least this year it didn’t feel like they were mocking their audience.  It has been an epic improvement over the past few years, and this year did indeed feel like a MAJOR step forward with the show.  If I may make a suggestion on how to further improve it (which I have already mentioned), why doesn’t Spike instead go for an Academy ™ system of voting?  Get all the best developers, game gods, critics, journalists and independent bloggers to place a vote in each system?  Keep internet polls out of it, they can be stuffed far too easily.  It’s the best option in this genre, and it is used in other mediums.  I’m sure many developers, even the super famous ones, will be more than happy to voice their opinions and place their votes for you.  If you want to improve your image, start with the awards themselves.  The rest will fall into place.

So, VGAs, I will see you next year.

Halo Reach Legendary Edition Commentary Review September 18, 2010

As you know from the unboxing, I purchased the Halo Reach Legendary Edition, and last night I finally went through the last of the content in the edition, the Legendary Commentary. While this is technically DLC, it’s DLC done right, and I want to talk a little bit about it.

The best special feature of the Halo 3 Legendary Edition by far was the audio commentary for Halo 1 and 2 done by Jason Jones, Martin O’Donnell, and Joe Staten. They gave so much insight into the first two games, far more information that had ever been released to the public before.

Well, for Reach, the commentary is back, and done even better.

Four developers are doing the commentary this time around. Jason Jones and Joe Staten are oddly absent, but in their place is Marcus “Reach, Reach, Reach” Leto, Lee Wilson (namesake of the Lee Wilson Memorial achievement in Halo 3), a third guy who’s name escapes me right now (Steve Scott), and the Returning Champion Martin O’Donnell.

The commentary is viewed through Halo Waypoint once the Legendary code is redeemed. One code unlocks everything specific to legendary and limited (Recon Helmet was separate because it was a short promotion, as was the gamestop multi-threat chest piece because that was a GS preorder incentive), and the legendary video will be ready to stream in waypoint the next time you load it up.

The video is in HD, an improvement from the non-anamorphic DVD transfers of Halo 1 and 2 (yes, even Halo 2’s were non-anamorphic and that game was fully anamorphic), and the commentary session was even filmed in HD cameras. All the Reach cutscenes are commented on, as well as some of the gameplay. When applicable the video cuts back and forth between the commentators and the game, or occasionally it will split screen the two. The editing on this is very good, and never jarring. The editor did a really good job. In all, the video is two hours in length, mostly because they show a bit more gameplay than they should have from the first half of the game, but because a lot of the story is told through scripted scenes and not cutscenes in the first act I see why they did that.

All in all, it makes another great reason to choose the Legendary Edition, on top of everything else included. I hope the developers go back to Halo 3 and ODST and do this, and release it on the Waypoint too.