Najirra

Xenoblade is one of the most difficult games I've ever had to put a rating on... it pushes and pulls at me from every direction, every aspect that I find important in a videogame is both genius in this game at certain points, but also terrible at others. The story is wonderful, nothing truly groundbreaking but what can you truly expect here? the world has become desensitized to storytelling as a whole, and there is very little left that hasn't been done before, regardless, it keeps you interested. It's one of the biggest selling points of the game as a whole in fact. This along with a world that is so vast, and not to mention interesting from start to finish, considering all of the game takes place on the bodies of two stationary titans. The characters are well written, not to same old emotionally unstable tripe one is used to in Japanese games these days, again nothing groundbreaking, but it is definitely a breath of fresh air in a JRPG. But now comes the tricky part for me... while all the above has virtually no flaws in this game, the overall feel of the game is that of an MMORPG. And this may sound like great fun to people, but it truly isn't. You see, MMORPGs are virtually never ending, and the stuff you do along the way playing them actually holds meaning, be it progression, itemization, but most importantly, it serves to expand the story of the world. Xenoblade utterly fails at doing this however. A game sporting over 450 sidequests, of which at the very least half of them are utterly pointless, menial tasks that serve no purpose but to serve as filler content. Truly monolith could have kept out at least this half, shortened the lifespan by about 50 hours, and pumped this game from being great to simply amazing. That's right folks, this is a game where the length is actually a downfall considdering how that length is generated. The other half that is good sidequests however, and do expand the world as a whole, are most welcome. The combat is another push and pull matter for me. Given that game is on the Wii, you can expect slowdown when the going gets rough, and while this may not be the most detrimental thing in the world, I couldn't help but ask myself "why on earth is this on the Wii...?". The biggest sin in this combat system however, is that it is incredibly restrictive. You control one character, you have virtually no control over the others except at certain points when certain conditions are met. This is heavily restrictive and I simply wish I could have just pressed one of the shoulder buttons to switch to another character on so many occasions. Something they will hopefully fix in the next installment. Overall, I do believe this game is great, certainly deserving of praise, but as much as I enjoyed it, I had an equal amount of moments where I wanted to throw it out the window. So why the 7? The story and characters completely make up for the horrid aspects of the game, add to that the music and decent combat system that will hopefully get fixed for the better, and you have my score.

While I initially didn't expect much from the game, going into it being a longtime fan of the character, I am sad to admit that this game disappointed at almost every turn. I will start by saying that the one good thing about this game is Deadpool himself, if you are into the kind of chauvinistic potty humor that could only come from a **** insane mutate superhero who revels in murdering bad guys then this game, despite its horrific shortcomings, will get quite a few laughs out of you. Unfortunately, that is where the actual fun part of this game ends. In fact I find it a tremendous shame that his own game doesn't do the character much justice at all. Even hack 'n slash games need some semblance of quality, and this game lacks it in every way. The gameplay is just horrendous, I have no other word for it. Deadpool has very little to offer in terms of attacks, and even fully upgraded, the small nuances to his kit are basically differences in speed and power, there is no such thing as comboing or stylish combat, it's pure button mashing. Now you might think that is fine if there is at least some enemy variety right? Well don't expect that either, almost every enemy in this game is a carbon copy of each other, melee fighters, ranged marksmen and the occasional heavy guy that takes a million hits to kill and is simply there for the sake of annoying you. Boss fights are the same deal, no innovation, just pure button mashing hell all the way through. The platforming sections are abysmal as well. Deadpool controls like a limp noodle, it feels as if you are oozing your way through the generic levels the developer came up with, yet another complaint there. Deadpool jumps around like he is on the moon and carries no real weight in the game world, which can make the platforming incredibly frustrating, and at times very glitchy as well. The graphics are decent, though only for the main character models, the levels are uninspired and don't feel alive in any way shape or form. The music in the game is forgettable at best. Overall I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone but the most die hard Deadpool fans out there, But for those among you who are looking for a decent hack n' slash game, I regretfully have to urge you to keep looking. This game is frustration on a disc, with a wonderful coat of pure Deadpool genius poured over it. Once that coat is gone however, only frustration remains. And to Marvel I say this: Deadpool is awesome, but if you ever want to make another game starring him, seek out a better developper. I wouldn't touch High Moon studios with a ten foot pole anymore after this disaster.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I can appreciate a good old Gust game once in a while, perhaps not to the point where I can suffer through 2 of them back to back but these games have a certain charm to them that I just can't find in any other games. Be it the cheesy dialogue that can only come from the mind of a japanese developper, the use of adorable sprites wich Gust are known for in almost all of their PS2 titles, the recurring sound effects and environments, all of these things contribute to a smile forming on my mug when I play these games, and Ar Tonelico II was no different. After having played and thoroughly enjoyed the first game in the series, I had very high hopes for this one, and it mostly did not disappoint. The soundtrack is typical Gust, beautiful and sweet, the hymns alone are worth buying the soundtrack for (or if you're lucky and got the collector's edition you already have it). The story, while cheesy is memorable and will keep you interested for the most part, overall there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this game, game play has been dumbed down, which saddened me somewhat and combat has been easy in any Gust game to date, no point in complaining about that now. I do however have one major complaint, the localization... oooh boy did NISA screw up with this game, I would go as far to say that if I were the translator for this game, I would be utterly ashamed of myself. I have seen typos in games before, it happens to the best, but some of the text in this game is littered with mistakes, ranging from typos to mixing up genders to even grammatical errors that would make a 12 year old cringe. Suffice to say that in a game relying mostly on text for dialogue, this becomes very annoying rather quickly, and while not game breaking whatsoever, I must say that the localization for this game feels incredibly unprofessional if not downright a complete mess, wich is strange for a game coming from a company wich has delivered amazing localizations so far. Overall I would recommend this game to die hard RPGamers, casual gamers might find this game just a tad too japanese for their tastes, but it is still worth a try at the very least. Though I will warn you, if you're someone who can't stand spelling errors, stay far away from this title, you will not live through it.

I truly wanted to like this game, I really did, but the flaws in it are just too hard to ignore. I will say straight off the bat that the visuals and music are top notch, and it likely won't get much better in that department. But if music and visual made a game great... the gameplay is atrocious, camera control in an action game like this is so rarely done right and this game doesn't get it right either, The whole cutting thing is beyond gimmicky, making me wish they had just stuck to QTE's and make Raiden do some sick moves to finish off his opponents rather than resorting to this mediocrity. Sure it's fun the first 5 times but after that it's done, and you just wish there's an auto function for it. The story is the same thing we've come to expect from Kojima, convoluted beyond belief and way too much in love with itself. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the years it took to develop this game were spent writing the script for it. I literally spent more time listening to pointless codec conversation than actually playing the game. The fact alone you can get a GOLD trophy for listening to most of the conversations is proof enough that they are way overdone. But the thing that truly drove me over the edge was that the game completely wiped my progress clean without warning whatsoever. I finished everything on easy and normal, upgraded the majority of everything, and then decided to go to hard mode, now my entire profile's been reset... truly atrocious, mind boggling how a game so infinitely hyped by the metal gear fanbase has turned out so ridiculously mediocre. The best I can do is recommend a rental of this game, for that's exactly what it's worth, you pay 5 bucks rental to play a 5 hour game (+10 hours of listening to pointless codec garbage). Do not pay 60 dollars for this disc of fail.

This game is... quite honestly this game is rather bad... this is coming from a guy who has quite a high tolerance level for glitches and just general bad gamedesign. I can stomach a glitch here and there, I can take unresponsive control, in Assassin's creed 2 and Brotherhood these existed as well and those are my favourite titles in the franchise by far... but this game just takes it to a whole new level, begging me to question wether Ubisoft really finished this game, and this is coming from someone who's played the game nearly half a year after it was released, and hearing the game was even buggier back when it hit the storeshelves! The story is a complete boring on-rails experience, woven into a mission system that almost seems afraid to let go of your hand out of fear of you getting hopelessly lost. This is coming out of personal preference but the colonial times are just not as appealing to me as renaisance Italy was, probably because I am european and I'm not too educated on american history I don't know but the setting, aside from the graphically amazing frontier, felt incredibly bland and most buildings seemed more like a copy paste job than anything else. The combat, while definitely fun on its own, is a case of don't fix what isn't broken, what was wrong with ACII's combat? The music, wherever it is present, is still amazing, Jesper Kyd's feel for making this series sound awsome is still very apparent in this title. But none of these things come even close to how utterly broken this game feels. free running is a disaster, i can't count how many times I have pressed forward on my controller and Connor ACTUALLY went backward! the mission constraint don't feel like bonus objectives at all, they take the fun out of the game for any completionist out there and in some missions they actually punish players for being thorough, such as some of the naval missions where having a fully upgraded ship actually makes achieving bonus objectives a complete and utter excercise in frustration. I have loved this franchise since day one, the pseudo-sci-fi backstory of Desmond aside, I adore the historical feel of these games, but the way I see it this game was a nail in the franchise's coffin. One final word of advice to Ubisoft, give us an ASSASSIN's creed! If I wanted to play an action adventure game I would go play God of war.

This game is unquestionably amazing. Even if it has not aged well, one has to look past that and simply accept they're playing a 6 year old game here. I too was frustrated at first, but once you get past the rough edges it becomes an incredibly enjoyable experience. The story is well told and the sound and visuals are stunning. The gameplay is a healthy mix of FPS and RPG, even though at times I found this mix to be somewhat overdone. At times when the game needs to be a shooter, it tries too hard too hard to be an RPG and vice versa during other times. This becomes obvious during boss battles, wich for spoiler's sake I won't talk too much about but let's just say they feel lacking, even at harder difficulties. My biggest gripe with the game however isn't so much a problem with mass effect itself, it's with the developper/publisher. I don't know if this is due to the PS3 or the game itself but let me make one thing clear: if you want a smooth and bug free experience, do NOT play this game on PS3. Either go for the 360 version or better yet, play the PC version, it will save you a lot of frustration. This game (along with other bioware titles I've played on PS3 in the past) has caused my PS3 to freeze on numerous occasions, and while a simple reboot fixes this in most cases, there is nothing more aggravating than losing every shred of progress you've made due to the game crashing (I had to beat the final boss on insanity difficulty 3 times before I got through the entire ending without crashing...). Truly horrid coding on Bioware's part. Nevertheless I applaud this game, bugs and bad coding isn't the game's fault and won't affect my score in the slightest, I just hope the next installment of the franchise has better performance on PS3.

This game is one straight for the hall of shame, possibly one of the worst games I have ever played in my life and the fact that this garbage was ever printed on discs is simply beyond me. The story is just about anything that keeps it standing, but if I wanted a good story I'd go watch the movies instead of torture myself with this infernal piece of trash. the combat is beyond unresponsive, on higher difficulties you take an incredible amount of damage from even the most basic enemy attacks and you have absolutely no viable way to counter these attacks whatsoever, and if you do manage to guard, it's usually much too late anyway and you already lost a large chunk of health because this game does not allow you to cancel your combos so that you can guard against incoming fire. every action in this game, from opening your upgrade menu to your options menu will force a loading screen, one can only guess how that must have gone on the PS2 version of this game... the graphics don't stand out at all and the music is just a complete recycling of the same old star wars tracks we've heard in every single entry in the star wars franchise. This game is a complete and utter failure, and while I am glad I bought it pre-owned so the developers don't get a penny out of this whatsoever, the fact alone I spent the little money I paid on this kind of complete garbage feels more wasted than flushing hard earned cash down the toilet.

One of the biggest disappointments I have ever had the displeasure of playing, a game infected by the same corporate greed that has been plaguing this industry for the last decade and making no attempt to hide it either. I won't even go into the story other than saying it feels rushed, incomplete (likely to make way for expansions) and pretty much thrown together to give the game some semblance of plot. What truly becomes apparent rather quickly is how this game's aspects completely revolve around players using the auction house, be it real money or in-game gold, at every turn in this game one is being goaded into spending money, be it the lack of level appropriate loot dropping in higher difficulties, the fact that gear and not inherent stats determine everything from offense to defense, Blizzard's nerfing of classes who have the possibility to circumvent the gear requirements needed for inferno difficulty, everything in this game pushes people to spend money to get better gear. On an auction house where the economy has been broken since release wich (perhaps intentionally) pushes people to towards spending real money on RMAH. Even the now infamous DRM is all a means to keep that infernal auction house alive and I find it truly mind boggling how Blizzard can not seem to admit that Diablo 3 is being used as a cash cow at the expense of their consumers' enjoyment. The skill system feels heavily uninspired and simplified, the game has been advertised as being gothic horror, but even an 8 year old wouldn't get a scare out of this game. Diablo 1 and 2 felt dark and scary, the music felt ominous, Diablo 3 has abolished this feeling and made way for a game for all to play and enjoy... (and spend money on the auction house). The arrogance of Blizzard's "you play how we want you to play" aproach is another point of interest, classes and mechanics being nerfed leaving certain builds and gear (on wich players have spent quite a bit of money) completely useless, there is just no excuse for how much this game blows in the end. A game used to bring in money at the expense of the consumers' entertainment by taking a much loved franchise and putting a shiny new number on it. Truly sad.