I promise that Bioshock Infinite review is coming soon, as soon as I finish out school.
And as soon as I BEAT LADY GODDAMN COMSTOCK.

Bioshock Infinite Review

last-of-the-english-girls:

I want to do one!

Okay so you reblog and a week later you’ll get this cutie in your inbox

After about a week a Pokemon will hatch!

Some people might get special Legendary, It all depends :)

It’s going to be any Pokemon from all the regions

and I promise I will do every each one of you.

This will be open until the 29th and then I will be sending the eggs off to you all :)

Well why not?

Pokemon!

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver versions are modern remakes of the much-beloved second generation of Pokemon games, minus Crystal version.  I bought SoulSilver, because Lugia has a much neater design then Ho-oh.  Look at it.  Look at that dumb little plume on top of his head.

Anyway, for the purposes of this review, I’ll be taking a look at SoulSilver.

In the grand formula for Pokemon games, this is pretty much par for the course.  You take control of some adolescent hero in a world where schools don’t exist unless they revolve around Pokemon.  In fact, not much of anything exists that doesn’t revolve around Pokemon, but I guess that makes sense when god itself is a Pokemon.  You pick your starter pokemon from a selection of three and embark on your journey to become the Pokemon Champion by collecting the 8 badges and defeating the Elite Four.  The deviation from the norm lies therein, because like the original Gen II games, completing that goal is only half the game.  After becoming the Champion, you gain access to Kanto, the original region from Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow, where you can challenge the significantly more powerful Gym Leaders of the region.

As always, the gameplay revolves around catching and training your own team of pocket monsters with the ultimate goal of being the very best like no one ever was.  No changes there.  But upon becoming the champion, you still have so much to do, and I felt that Pokemon Black and White were a bit of a step down regarding that.  Yes you have the hunt of the remaining sages, but that’s hardly the same as having an entirely new region with new gym leaders. 

I guess this is going to be a shorter review than my previous one, mostly because SoulSilver is a Pokemon game, and going in depth on the mechanics would be beating a dead horse.  The main reason it stands out is that its length and size put other versions to shame, and that’s why it was review-worthy.

I realized that I’m not doing anything with this blog, and I always have thoughts on games, so I’m just going to start reviewing games that I’ve played.

Starting with Assassins Creed III

Assassins Creed III is the latest entry in the wildly popular franchise from Ubisoft Montreal.  Previously, players took control of Desmond Miles’ ancestors Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, a Syrian Assassin tasked with reclaiming his honor during the Third Crusade, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian nobleman who sets out first for revenge, then for justice, and finally for closure during the Italian Renaissance.  In this game, yet another leap forward has occurred, and the player finds themselves in the virtually rendered shoes of Ratonhn… Ratonka… Rattata, who’s adventures take place during (and directly influence) the American Revolution.  Rattata’s story is noticeably shorter than previous installments, but that might just be me repressing it.

I didn’t care much at all for Assassins Creed III, which I found to be odd, having thoroughly enjoyed the series so far.  I think the major flaw I see in it isn’t gameplay (though the removal of dodging was a bit frustrating.  Aren’t assassins supposed to be nimble?).  The issue at hand is twofold; pacing and character development.  The former being done poorly, and the latter being non-existent.

The game begins with an assassination in a London Opera house, which goes all well and fine, target dies, artifact is retrieved, bing bang boom.  Then the game proceeds to drag its feet through the dullest boat trip in history, and it brings you along for the ride.  After suffering through the monotony of sea travel, you play several normally-paced missions before finally taking control of Rattata, the main character.  Great, so now the game should really pull me in and get the plot going, right?

Nopey dopey.

An agonizing amount of time is spent explaining the games mechanics with a young Rattata acting as the medium.  After reintroducing a character as the main antagonist and Rattata experiencing a hackneyed tragedy, we depart on our journey to become an Assassin!  Though, the journey is wrought with peril, where peril means running through snow and wrought still means wrought.  Running through the snow is such a slow, arduous process, one can only think that the reason it exists is to maintain historical accuracy.  Thankfully, the majority of the game is spent without it.

I understand that the mechanic exists to highlight free running through the trees, but this is an Assassins Creed game.  Free running is kind of a staple to the franchise, and should be marketable enough on its own that ground movement wouldn’t be handicapped on its behalf.  Maybe I wouldn’t think this as much a problem as I do if the sluggish snow movement didn’t invite all the beasts of the world to swoop down and claw at Rattata’s supple flesh.  Animal encounters are basically a quick time one-two punch, before skinning your opponent, because Rattata skinned all the animals he killed, damn it!

Now, to the big one.  Characterization was absolutely the biggest issue with AC III.  Everyone is so… generic.  Throughout the story, I could scarcely tell which founding father I was interacting with.  They were really just carbon copies of one another.  The media surrounding the game’s release seemed to depict Rattata and George Washington as the best of pals, but in actuality, ol’ Georgy gets a very small amount of focus indeed.  Oh sure, there’s an entire arc about protecting him, but we see very little of the man himself.  In a deviation from standard Assassins Creed protocol, there is no helpful guild of Assassins to assist you on your way, just a cranky old man in a cranky old house, who I will admit had some fine moments as a character.  But Rattata himself is probably the worst offender of lacking characterization.  Throughout the story, I never once felt any sort of connection or sympathy towards him.  I didn’t even feel dislike or disapproval.  I just felt nothing for him.  He was very dull and very bland to me, just a device to move the plot along, which was incredibly disappointing to me.  I never felt that he grew as a person or character.  This was especially a letdown after Ezio had so much character development.  Maybe that’s not fair, Ezio did get two more games to grow.  But then, Altaïr only got one game, and he had a major change of character by the end.

Of course, being an Assassins Creed game, Ubisoft made an effort to innovate gameplay, and it shows.  I’m a huge fan of the new intelligence gathering objectives, like mobile eavesdropping, and new varieties on combat, like directing troops and naval combat.  Those were well and good, but naval combat deserves gold in my book.  The little managements and calculations you need to make to hit your enemy broadside while trying to avoid smashing yourself into the nearest cliff like some sort of reverse lemming all come together to form a new combat system entirely, one that I enjoyed far more than the streamlined melee combat.  This diamond in the rough gives me very high hopes indeed for Ubisoft’s foray into pirate territory later this year.

Overall, I can recognize that this should be a good game, and to many it is.  But to me, it never felt like a proper Assassins Creed game.  However, I remain optimistic that some of these wrongs will be righted in the following installment.  A rare miss from Ubisoft Montreal, but I won’t hold it against them.