Belated Game Review: Terminator Salvation

This review is not so belated as the game's only a month old :)

Something interesting to note with this game is that the same parent company produced both the game and the movie. You would think that the game would be much better then because they could work with the concepts that the movie side is coming up with without really having to wait until the movie is finished. However, that promise is unfulfilled much like this game. That's not to say Terminator is necessarily a BAD game, but that it could have used another month or two of development time.

You play as John Connor (naturally) and the game story takes place before the movie. In the game, John Connor is just a solidier in the resistance who is doubting his place in the world and in the army. While in the midst of a battle he gets a distress call from a team deep in Skynet territory and against orders goes to save them, picking up people along the way and learning what it means to be a leader.

The game studio was able to get every character's likeness and voice from the movie except for Christian Bale (who just happens to be the lead freakin' character). So in his place is a non-descript created lookalike who doesn't look real at all (it's always the eyes, they can never get them right).

Essentially the game consists of 2 parts, urban fighting where you are trying to find cover amongst the rubble and take out the various terminators that are sent and rail shooting, where you ride a set path and try to destroy the terminators that are chasing you.

The urban part is fairly decent, the big mechanic of the game is that while under cover, if you sneak to the edge of cover and hold the Left stick toward another piece of cover, you will get a pop up of the points you can run to. When you press X John will sprint to the next piece of cover. You can use this to get behind the enemies. The movements look really fluid and natural so that's at least one thing they did right. I would like to see that used more in other games.

You need to be able to get behind the terminators, because for a lot of them that's where the weak spot is. The AI in this game is semi decent as well because you can keep a terminator occupied and they will actually shoot it in the back. The other nice thing is that you can also play co-op if you want another person to help getting to the backside.

Rail shooting is frustrating though, there are too many machines and it's damn near impossible to center on them long enough to shoot. You will be able to make it through but it's tough.

That's realy all there is to the game. You can tell it's lacking as there's only 8 different weapons and 7 different terminators. The game can be knocked out in hard mode in 6 hours and as far as trophies go there's only 12, but they can all be gotten in 1 playthrough on hard and they are all gold.

Final Verdict: An otherwise promising game cut short by having to release on the same day as the movie. It's worth a rent, but not much more than that. I give it a 5.5/10



PS3 Trophies

Belated Game Reviews: Burnout Paradise

PS3 Trophies

I've been having issues with the ps3trophycard site, so I created an account over at Playfire which isn't blocked at work. The results of that are up at the top of the post here.

The next game in my series of overdue game reviews is Burnout Paradise, which is the 7th game in the Burnout series. This version of the game has an open world concept like Midnight Club. You can drive around at your leisure. There are 95 different events set up at intersections. When you are at one you want to start, you hit L2 + R2 and then you'll be given the parameters of the race. There are several different modes of racing:

-Race: Obviously, you are to go from Point A to Point B and come in 1st place
-Burning Route: There is one for each car you can find. All you have to do it go from Point A to Point B under a certain time. You're rewarded with an upgraded version of the car you are driving
-Road Rage: My personal favorite, you have to run a certain number of your competitors off the road in under 2 minutes (although you get +10 seconds per wreck)
-Stunt Run: Pull off chains of stunts to beat a given score
-Marked Man: Get from Point A to Point B, except everyone is trying to run you off the road. This one is frustrating because even if you are driving a truck you will still have cars run you off the road.

Additionally there are 2 scores per road to beat, the 1st is a time score. It starts when you hit the beginning of the street and ends at the end (duh). The second is a showtime score. You can hit L1+R1 to go into showtime mode where you deliberately crash into cars for points and boost, you can use the boost to propel the car down the road. It's graded on the number of cars you hit and how far you go, with buses added +1 to your multiplier.

To progress in the game you need to complete events to raise your license level up from D to Criterion Elite (SSS) [You only need to get Class S for the trophies]. Going from one license to the next will reward you with a new car and after a certain # of events you will be notified that a certain model of car is driving around. If you crash it you get to keep it. There are technically 35 cars in the game but each one has a souped up varient that you can get by winning a Burning Route

Graphically, the game is impressive (although I'd expect no less from the series) Car crashes look very realistic. There is a very nice selection of cars which are modeled on a wide variety of real cars. When you're boosting with the last car you get everything is just a blur.

Musically the game has 40 licensed tracks, with the theme being "Paradise City" by Guns n' Roses naturally. There are also another 40 previous Burnout songs and Classical Music. You might want to turn down the engine noises in the settings because even though they sound nice, they can be annoying after a while (just ask my wife).

I found the game to be extremely fun and replayable, especially because I'm not much of a racing person. It's like GTA in the sense that you can just fire up the game and drive around without worrying about the game. It's also nice because the game is still being updated (in fact the 1.9 update came out last night). Some of the DLC is free such as the motorcycle pack and Online pack. However, other's must be bought, such as the Cops and Robbers, Additional Car Packs, and Big Surf Island.

As far as trophies go, there are a shitload of them but the following apply to the main game only

37 Bronze / 10 Silver / 2 Gold / 1 Platinum

You only have to get all the original trophies for the Platinum, so when you get it your overall % will be around 47. The only hard one I found was getting all 8 people into the baseball stadium. What you can do is start your own online game and then tool around until you have 8 people (took me about 20 minutes). Then start Freeburn Challenge 2, which is for everyone to meet at the stadium and then as long as everyone participates (there are some asshats our there), then you'll get the trophy. Also 1 Bronze trophy requires a compatible USB camera for the PS3.

The Online Pack adds 4 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold.
The Bike Pack adds 5 Bronze, 1 Silver, adn 1 Gold.
The Party Pack adds 3 Bronze and 4 Silver (USB camera needed)
The Car Packs add 4 Bronze and 4 Silver (You need all the cars pack though)
Cops and Robbers add 3 Bronze and 5 Silver
Finally, Big Surf adds 7 Bronze and 3 Silver

Wooo, that's a lot. However, it only took around 20 hours of playing to get the main trophies (although there's a lot of stuff in the game to do), the add on packs (if you choose) will keep you busy for a while)

Final Verdict: Burnout is part of Greatest Hits collection (and rightly so), so a new copy can be had for $30 and used is around $15-30. I'd say buy it used and you'll get 65 trophies easy and maybe more if you choose. If you buy all the DLC, it'll be around the price of a new game but with a lot to keep you busy.

Score 9.5 of 10

Belated Game Reviews - Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Now that I'm going through some of these older games for trophies, I may as well tell all y'all what I think about them and the prospects of getting trophies in the games. I'm hoping to try and make this a regular feature here.

Anywho. Alone in the Dark is credited as the first survival horror game, with Resident Evil coming after it. Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the 5th game in the series and some of the ways I've been able to describe it is a smarter Resident Evil and the best bad game I've played.

You play as Edward Carnby, a private dectective/paranormal researcher who is suffering from amnesia. You wake up in the beginning being held at gunpoint in a New York City hotel by two thugs who keep talking about handing over a stone. As the story progresses, you find that not all is what it seems in New York City. Large fissures at random keep opening up in floors and walls, etc. swallowing people whole or corrupting them into the "zombies" of the game, Humanz. The fissures seem to be radiating out from Central Park, which is where you eventually end up and discover the secret of.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the occult and gateways to the afterlife, and is very good. The voice actors do a very good job at conveying the story and what's going on without going too over the top which is something Resident Evil has had issues with in the past. The story is also broken up into 8 episodes. A nice touch is that each episode ends in a cliffhanger and then goes to credits. You can then choose to continue to the next episode or quit out. If you quit a selection of cutscene from the next chapter is shown, similar to a teaser trailer you may see at the end of a TV show. Additionally when you start a chapter from a saved game you get a recap of what's happened which I think is a nice touch. [Trophy note: there are at least 19 trophies from just progressing through the story and not killing a thing, except when you need to]

The graphics are good but not spectacular. I guess the thing is that I've never really seen a bad graphical game on the PS3 so it's hard to say how good they are. If we are comparing to Resident Evil 5 then I would say they definitely not as good as RE5.

Evironmental interaction is where AITD really shines. To start, you're inventory is limited to what you can carry in your jacket. When you access the inventory screen your character actually opens his jacket and looks down into it, which is a nice touch. You only have 1 of two guns during the game, a 9mm and a Magnum, but you have so many other options for destruction. You'll find all sorts of flammable bottles scattered across Central Park (apparently everyone drinks gasoline or Everclear there). The bottles come in glass and plastic varieties and it affects how they work. Glass obviously will smash, soaking the area in gas and making things flammable. Plastic doesn't. You can also find aeresol canisters that can be used as impromptu flamethrowers when used with your lighter, you can even pour gas on your bullets to make them fire bullets [Trophy note: There are 5 trophies for killing creatures in inventive ways]

The combinations of items are quite numerous. Sure you could just use bottles as bombs, throwing them and shooting when they are close to the creatures. You can also wrap the bottles in doublesided tape so they stick to the enemies and then shoot the bottles at the right time to take out more at one time. You can combine a handkerchief with a bottle to make a Molotov Cocktail. You can tape a flare to a bottle for a time bomb or a box of bullets to make a spread bomb. Flares and glowsticks can be taped to walls to add light to a dark hallway. [Trophy note: there are 8 trophies associated with item combinations]

The smartness of the game also extends to the cars, if you come up against a locked car, you can smash out a window and unlock it. Once inside you can check the glove compartment for items, and then check the sun visor for the key or hotwire it. You can also shoot out the gas tank to make it explode, or punch it with a knife to drain the gas into an empty bottle. [There are another 6 trophies related to cars, 4 of which can be had on the 1st car you see]

So by now you're wondering why I say it's also a bad game. Weeeeeellllll, to start the method of killing creatures sucks balls. They have these cracks on their bodies that have to be set on fire or they'll never go away. There's (usually) no shortage of flammable materials but it literally make your aerosol + lighter combo the most deadly in the game and not your gun. Actually unless your gun has fire bullets it's pretty worthless, and even then it's not incredibly useful as you have to shoot 2-3 fissures with fire bullets to kill the humanz and that's hard unless you've knocked them out already.

Secondly, you can only shoot in 1st person view and do melee attacks in 3rd person. Also the 3rd person view isn't all that great (although it's better than the XBox version)

Next, driving sucks and is a pain in the ass. If you hit the smallest bump, you'll fly out of control. Also with some ramps, you can't hit them straight on or it registers as a crash

If you quit in the middle of the chapter, even though you can save you still have to start from the beginning of the chapter with none of the in-chapter progress saved. This is especially a pain in the ass on Chapter 8. Speaking of, in Chapter 8 you have to take on a stupid quest to destroy certain targets which magically popped up in areas you already were in. Of course you need to destroy them all if you want the trophies.

AI characters are kind of dumb, but at least you're not tasked with keeping them alive as the humanz are programmed to go after you only.

You can take quite a beating, but if you touch fire for more than 3 seconds, you're toast.

Also I had the game freeze up on me twice during play, and if you try jumping on a car as a stepping stone the game sometimes recognizes that as getting hit.

The game has it's issues, however, it's still pretty playable....for about 12 hours, because that's all it takes to finish it, and you could probably do it quicker than me. The game has 50 trophies and you can get them with a single playthrough (no difficulty level BS) The breakdown is like this:
-43 Bronze
-3 Silver
-3 Gold
-1 Platinum

Final Verdict: Even though it's about $15-20 now, I'd still say this one is a renter. It shows flashes of brillance but is saddled with some questionable bugs/design choices. I'd definitely pick it up if you're looking for some cheap trophies because there aren't too many games easier than this for the # of trophies. I give it a 6/10

As promised....

Here is a link to my photostream where all the photos are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cycoivan/3594426771/in/set-72157619158276159/

What in the hell happened to spring?

I've been lazy and haven't blogged for 2 weeks :( There's also just been a shitload of stuff going on. To start, Pam and I had quite the active Memorial Day weekend. Between her and I we got some of the outside trim painted, the garden planted, and a bunch of other little chores done that we've been sitting on for a while now. It's also been insanely busy at work (where I usually blog from). We have a large computer upgrade project right now and guess who get to deal with the computers that come back? That's right, it's me!

The other big part is that Pam and I went to Indianapolis this weekend for the NIN/JA tour show there. That was quite the adventure. I decided to go through Chicago, but I severely underestimated the traffic there. It took almost 2 hours to get from where Hwy 41 merges into I-94 to where I-94 meets I-65 in Indiana. On top of that, there was construction on I-65 so we were delayed by another half hour in addition to the hour lost to the Eastern Time Zone. Essentially we left at 11am CST and didn't get to the hotel until 8:30 PM EST. That meant our original plan of catching a dinner and movie was scrapped and we just got dinner instead. It was a very nice dinner though.

We went to Joe's Crab Shack and I liked it very much. We ordered 2 of their steampots which had quite a bit of food for the price. Pam got 2 bunches of crab legs, a pound of clams, sausage, corn, and potatoes. I got the Bean Town Bake which is 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, with shrimp sausage, corn, and potatoes. All of that ran about $55 which isn't bad considering the amount of food you get. For two lobsters (which were about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds) you would pay 35-50 dollars alone. Also the atmosphere was very nice and I do have a picture of me in my Joe's bib

Our hotel was a sweet deal through Hotwire. It was a single room, king size bed, with fridge, decent TV, free breakfast, etc. for about $40 a night. The breakfast was relatively decent, however the only hot food was biscuits and gravy and you could make your own waffles. Something about the food didn't really sit well with either of us (I think it was the gravy) Other than that, I can't complain.

I took Pam to go see Star Trek which was just fucking awesome. The best thing is that you don't really have to be a Star Trek nerd to enjoy it because it's a reintroduction to the cast and story (although you do have to kind of like sci fi a little bit). Even Pam had to begrudingly admit that it was pretty good. It's also kind of funny to take her to anything Star Trek because our first date some 14 years ago was to go see Star Trek: Generations. It's a wonder there was a 2nd date, let alone a marraige and kids.

After Star Trek went to the venue after that. It's really weird, there's nothing out there but the venue, some businesses and a upscale outdoor mall, which we killed some time at. As an aside, I got 3 new games from Gamestop (more on that later). The Verizon Music Center is a larger Indoor/outdoor ampitheater a la Alpine Valley so obviously there was quite a line when we got there. Even though we had preordered and got to go in before the rest of the general public, we still stood around for quite a while because they were late with sound check. It took about 30 minutes to get inside the outside gate and then we still had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get inside the seating area, and another 45 minutes still to showtime. It amazes me how much these places fuck you in the ass for food and drinks. $9 for a 16 Oz glass of Busch? Gross. We did end up buying a little merchandise and actually the one thing they had at a decent price was a full size messenger bag which I needed anyways. It's canvas with plenty of pockets and it feels pretty sturdy for only $55 bucks. That's a lot of money you say? Well it's a steal when baseball hats and t-shirts are going for $30-40, $55 isn't all that bad. Anyways, here's what it looks like.

Our tickets were for the pit, and of course the "pit" is only 1000 square feet that they're trying to cram 500 (according to staff, I think there were more) people into. Pam and I have learned our lesson from before about getting too close to the stage so we sat by the back railing all night Still I was no more that 75 feet from the stage at all times so that was cool.

The show was pretty sweet but kind of disappointing at the same time. Street Sweeper Social Club was the opener. The band is a collaboration between Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and they tore it up on stage. It's probably more funkier than Rage but still politically minded. They also did an awesome cover of Paper plates by MIA and I wish they would put that out somewhere but as of yet, I haven't found it.

Nine Inch Nails played next, which I thought was kind of bullshit considering this is a farewell tour (of sorts) for Trent Reznor, they should be closing. Maybe we've gotten spoiled from the Lights in the Sky tour but they didn't really do anything with stage effects. Yeah there was lights and stuff, but no video screen, no projections or anything of that sort. They also had a very mixed bag of music for the setlist, playing no more than 2 or 3 songs off of all their major released, and also doing their cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan. I like the song but I don't think it fit into their set.

Jane's Addiction closed and I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they put on a pretty decent show. It was mostly songs from Nothing's Shocking and Riual de lo Habitual but not too bad. The acoustic rendition of 'Jane Says' they played for an encore was pretty sweet.

Sunday we went on the most boring drive ever to get home. I-65 to Bloomington, IL then I 39/I90 to Madison and then US 151 home. Despite it being boring we still got home in only 7 hours (accounting for the time difference). I definitely am going to go that route if I ever need to go South of I-90 again. Well, it's either that or leave at 4 in the morning and then we don't have to worry about traffic.

We had a great time but it just makes me sad the with baby #3 on the way that vacations are going to be even fewer and farther in between because of the logistics of getting people to watch all 3 kids. Oh well, that's the price of admission for the parent ride. Besides it won't be too long before we'll be taking the kids on large scale vacations and if I keep them glued to a TV set in the car, it'll almost be like not having them there :)

The iPhone came in quite handy on our trip, helping us find all the places we needed without having to drive all over the place. We were able to stay connected fairly well. However, one thing that pisses me off is the coverage by AT&T. I had 3G outside the gates at the music venue, but when I went in it was Edge only and not good coverage at that. Spots on the Interstate were completely dead and it's still dead in Juneau where Pam works. Strangely enough when you are 1 mile east of there it's a perfect signal. I swear if the iPhone was on a different provider I'd be all over that. In the meantime I just hope that they continue to improve their infrastructure.

On the gaming front, I've been going pretty nuts with games. A week and a half ago I got Buzz for $20 at Walmart (buzzers and game) I'm almost to the Platinum trophy there (1 more to go). The games I bought at Gamestop were Bad Company, Burnout Paradise, and Alone in the Dark. It was a buy 2 get 1 free sale and all were 18.99. With my Gamestop card, I got all three games for $35 bucks, so that's pretty sweet. I had a day off Monday and managed to get my trophies for the Endless setlist on Rock Band 2 on Expert. That finally made me able to reformat my PS3 hard drive (I couldn't copy the RB2 save game). Now I can actually put more than one game's data on the hard drive :) Soooo, I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.

Well, I'm all typed out. I'll be posting photos of the concert later when I get home, but for now use your imagination :)

Getting back on the diet that threw ya

One of my resolutions for this year was to lose some weight and get down to 275 pounds. Being me, unfortunately, I had been slacking off hardcore and have actually started gaining weight again. So, I have started working on the weightloss again. Let me tell ya, it sucks ass trying to get back into a workout routine. I had been comfortable with it until I broke my leg last year and now just walking a few miles kills my legs and feet. Also there is no bike seat in the world that can really support 340 lbs. so my ass is killing me too. I'm just trying to lose enough weight so I can get on the Wii Fit so I can see if it's worth the money :)

In other news my daughter Genna is 'graduating' from Pre-Kindergarten this month. I think it's pretty cool, especially because I think she's really looking forward to both the graduation and to going to the "big school". On the other hand, I kind of freak out about it because I don't know where all the fucking time is going. Seems like yesterday that I myself was graduating from high school. Now, there's a wife, a house, 1 kid going to kindergarten, 1 going to pre-k, and another on the way. It's like Ferris Bueller says, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. " Truer words were never spoken.

I've been getting busy in Singstar. It is fucking hard trying to get all the trophies. First of all, it's impossible to get 9000 points on hard on 95% of the songs, which require you to buy more to get the right ones. Also if you don't have a camera, it's impossible to get people to view your stuff unless you beg them or do something really stupid, like dance around in a dress. I don't know if I'm really going to be able to get them all. I'll probably give it a few more weeks and then give up if it doesn't happen and move to some other games.

I've also been playing around with the iPhone more and venturing into the paid Apps section. I've found several to be useful in my Fitness work. The Daily Plate is a website where you can get healthy advice through Livestrong (Lance Armstrong's foundation) and also track stuff like what are you eating, how much you can eat in a day calorie-wise, how many calories you are burning by exercising, etc. The website itself is free, but the iPhone app is $2.99. I really don't know why they just didn't make a free ad-supported one. It seems to be the case for a lot of apps (I suppose because selling ads doesn't really pay for shit.) The other app is Trails. Trails is kind of sweet because you can take GPS readings of your runs, cycling, hiking, etc. then you can upload it to a website or e-mail it to someone else where they can download it and follow your trail. It's mostly for hiking and geocaching, but I'm using it to get accurate times and distances for my walking and cycling runs.

One last thing. How bout dem Brewers, eh? I thought it was going to be a shitty year after losing Sabathia and Sheets, but they've won 8 of their last 10 games and sit in a 3 way tie atop the NL Central. As I write this they are up 3-1 over the Marlins which, if it holds, will put them in 1st....at least until the Reds and Cardinals play their games. I know we're barely through a fifth of the season, but there is cause for some hope that not all is lost. I'd like to see another big aquisition by the trading deadline to help put us over the hump and back into the playoffs again. If the cards fall right maybe I'll find a way to see them play in the postseason. If not, I'm sure I'll make it to a game this year. Nothing beats the experience of actually being at the ballpark.

*ring* *ring* Hello, Josh...this is reality calling. You need to go to a meeting now so stop blogging *click*

Well, I can't deny reality, so I will take my leave now. :)

Jaaaaaaaaaaail-break

It's been a busy past few days. Spring is now upon us so I spent most of my weekend doing yard and garden work. I expanded the garden and we're actually planning it this year instead of just throwing whatever in it. I'm hoping for better results. Last year we got way too many cucumbers and no peppers. We got one bunch of peas and no tomatoes, etc. I'm not really an outdoorsy guy but I really don't mind gardening...at least not when it's 70 degrees out.

I've also been busy dicking around with AT&T this time. Pam's data use got shut down because they were saying that her number used 115 MB's of data in a week. The problem with that is that on her phone, you'd have to be on the Internet 24/7 to get that kind of data use. I looked at the usage and found that during the day they had our phone numbers switched that they assigned all my data use to her number. What the fuck? Can't they tell which model of phone is making the request? Especially because 80% of my use in those 2 days we to Apple's app store which obviously her Samsung can't reach. On top of that, she didn't use her phone for the first day because of problems with porting her number. Anyways, AT&T is going to fix the billing problem, but they can't until we actually get a bill....which doesn't make sense, but I suppose that they don't want to credit us the $1200, then we quit their service and they owe us that money....even though if we quit right now it would still have us at 115 MB of usage that are unpaid.

Essentially, it boils down to change sucks. When doing major changes like this there's going to be fuckups, but once you take care of those then usually theres's never another problem.

Soooo, the whole point of this post was to say that I jailbroke my iPhone. It's as freaking easy as advertised. Essentially you download either Pwnagetool or Quickpwn, and make sure you're getting the one for your OS Version (2.2.1 for me). Install it on your computer and follow the instructions. It's just that easy.

Once it's done, you'll have a program called Cydia on the phone. Think of that as an app store for non-approved apps. The main reason I wanted it was for the ability to put groups of icons into folders so I don't have to swipe 5-6 times to get the app I want. I got that functionality from the Categories app. There's also apps to turn your 4 column layout for apps into 5, giving you up to 20 apps on a page. There's "Poof!" which you can use to remove the links to useless apps such as Stocks, Weather, and iTunes. Winterboard is used to apply themes to your display, such as changing the lock screen and keyboard color etc. I was also able to change the unlock action from having to slide your finger across the iPhone to just hitting a button.

What's stupid is that all these features are not necessarily illegal. You could technically put your phone on another cell network or put a bittorrent client on the iPhone, but all I'm doing is changing the way it looks. I just don't get why Apple didn't include any options for different themes or colors for the display. Isn't Apple the "Think different" company? Well how can I think different when my phone LOOKS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE'S! Not to mention, I paid out all this money to use the damn thing, I should get to decide what's on it, not Apple.

Rant aside, I really do dig the new look and I'm glad that someone made it so easy that even an Apple user could do it (sick burn!)

Anyways, since I'm apparently the only one here taking calls (grrrr) I gotta get back to work