Far Cry 3(Xbox360)
So after really enjoying Blood Dragon I had to play FC3 really and was pleased to find out this is much the same, minus the neon blood and, well, dragons (unless you count komondo's).
One aspect this game has that was absent from Blood dragon is a really annoying, badly written girlfriend character. Seriously, you stalk through the jungle, murdering all in your path to get her and her friends to freedom and she wants to have "the talk"? Good grief.
I seriousness though, the disconnect between your characters actions and how his former friends perceive them is the weakest part of this game. Your character looks like James Franco in his profile pic, but you end up controlling him more like Stallone with all the one-man assaults and explosive tipped arrows. Far Cry 2 had a similar disconnect when it tried to retell Heart of Darkness through the medium of flamethrowers. FC3 has allusions to Alice in Wonderland that don't really pad out because unlike Alice, Jason doesn't want to leave, he wants to make wonderland his bitch.
The other thing that bugged me were the boss battles. Asides from making them QTE events, they also betray the very core of the gameplay experience, that is, the freedom to tackle obstacles with the tools you have available however you want. I didn't want to knife fight Vaas away from the action, I wanted to set a few tigers loose in his compound while I chucked grenades about. If Ubisoft wanted to get to my inner psychotic they should have just given me the choice.
Otherwise I really enjoyed the game, and my criticisms only make up a small fraction of the overall gameplay experience, the rest is excellent. Far Cry games excel in making you feel like a one-man army and giving you choice. It looks gorgeous, is packed full of things to do and people to meet(kill) and you can lure tigers into enemy outposts and watch on as he does the dirty work for you.
Transformers: War for Cyberton(Xbox360)
I played and loved Fall of Cyberton on release and have finally got round to WFC.
I am not in any way a transformers fan and never was even back it the day, but you can see how much High Moon love the franchise with this game.
They've taken COD's approach to spectacle and bombast and applied it to the transformers canon, so now instead of a wave of russian troops parachuting into DC by nightfall, you have a thirty storey dinosaur-robot falling from orbit while you blast at it's jet thrusters and avoid it's heat breath. Unsurprisingly, I find this preferable.
Combat is tight and punchy being more like a PS2/xbox third-person shooter than a Gears cover clone. Think Metal Arms (or the 2004 PS2 Transformers game) but with the ability to turn into a tank/plane/truck at will.
The plot is actually quite good too, reminding me a bit of Jack Kirby's New Gods, with all the crazy super-tech and godlike beings ripping apart a planet in a cataclysmic war. You can play as either side in story and multi-player as well.
File this one with it's sequel and X-men Origins: Wolverine under "did not expect to be so good tie-in game" folder for this gen.
Crash Bandicoot(PS1)
I thought I was quite good at this game before I popped it in. I am not good at Crash Bandicoot. I beat it with a 75% score in one sitting so make of that what you will, but I seem to remember 100% this thing quite easily not so long ago.
Anyway, this game is a blast. I like how there is no faffing about, you hit start and you're in jumping and spinning about. I'd say this game has also aged very well, better even than some N64 games of the time. It plays a lot like a Nes/Snes game in essence, with two button inputs, jump and spin, and strictly liner level design. This is not a bad thing in my book, after having gone back to Banjo-Tooie recently and finding it very hard to get into with its claustrophobic settings and pointless backtracking. Conversely Crash can be beaten in a sitting, has just enough secrets to keep your interest and fast snappy gameplay and colourful if slightly unvaried levels to beat.
It's not all great though; the controls can be a little slippery, especially on rotating platforms, and the bosses are either stupidly easy (Papu Papu, Pinstripe, Cortex) or irritating (Ripper roo, N. Brio). Also, it doesn't bother me, but some may not like the fixed camera some levels have as it can make depth perception a bit difficult. Double also, fuck bats in every game ever, most especially this one.
