Aramation Games

John Woo presents Stranglehold, sequel to the movie Hard Boiled in a game format. Starring Chow Yun Fat as inspector Tequila, the game chronicles his adventures trying to save his kidnapped wife and daughter. To do so, he must kill many and destroy everything he can using different guns, which is a typical John Woo movie. At least the game gets the feeling right: it is a John Woo movie in a game form. Tequila automatically slide over obstacles, time slows down to a crawl as you leap, you can go up/down ledges, hang from chandelier to kill enemies and even lie on top of a rolling cart to bring destruction and mayhem.

What the game needed was more time for polish. The visuals are just ok, and some of the textures are downright ugly (especially buildings), water effects are incredibly mediocre and enemy AI is, simply put, stupid. Oftentimes, they’ll get stuck and it’ll be up to you to go to them and put them out of their misery. As an incredibly resilient police detective, you can get stuck in scenery as well and navigating tight areas will show you bad camera angles unlike in the movies. Time slowing down, and incredible amount of destruction, were already done in Max Payne games, and this seems to be a cheap homage.

The single player’s incredibly short length doesn’t help much: at least it prevents you from getting tired of time slowing down every time you jump, or you spot an enemy. After you spend a few hours blasting enemies and environment, you’ll quickly realize that the concept is great, but the execution incredibly shallow.

Rating: 50%

Ratchet and Clank series has always provided solid and reliable action/platforming game on PS2, and its first entry on the portable world is a great success. equaling, and sometimes besting, PS2 game graphics, Size Matters maintains the classic gameplay, great visuals and smartly written dialogs.

Ratchet and Clank are having some time off from saving the world, when they get embroiled in an universal conflict (as usual). Rescuing a kidnapped adorable little girl ends up being something far different. To get through the game, you will need to familiarize yourself with the arsenal: Ratchet has his signature gigantic wrench and many series favorite weapons return. As you use the weapons, they level up to become more powerful and useful. You can also collect pieces of armor, and when you equip an entire set, you get specific bonuses.

What suffers the most is camera control as it moves from PS2 to PSP. Since the lack of 2nd analog stick is a given, there aren’t too many solutions. In Size Matters, you use L and R to control the camera, and pressing both at the same time pulls the camera behind Ratchet but it doesn’t work all the time. This camera issue is one of the few rough patches this game has.

In conclusion, Size Matters is a great Ratchet and Clank game no matter what platform it is on. If you are a fan of the series, this is definitely not to be missed.

Rating: 85%

In Assassin’s Creed, you get to play the role of an elite assassin tasked to killing 9 men in 3 fairly open-ended cities Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. The storyline is fairly complex, and there is a lot of exposition and characters with ulterior motives. Of course the big reveal is that you actually are in the modern-day New York, reliving your ancestor’s memory thanks to a super-special machine called Animus that can extract memories from DNA…

The struggle between the order of assassins and the Crusaders has never looked this good as this is arguably one of the best looking and sounding games on both Xbox 360 and PS3. Visuals are crisp and faithful, and even minor details are rendered incredibly well. The game suffers from little slowdown and several graphical/collision glitches, but they are just minor inconveniences in this epic game. Truly remarkable feat is the open-endedness of the world as you can climb any building you desire in the city. Assassin’s Creed suffers from a little repetition as you are tasked to climb tall buildings to scout out the city, bully informers into revealing their plans, snatch important documents and, of course, assassinate your targets.

While doing the same thing over and over for 9 times is a bit dull, you will have plenty of fun while doing it. Combat is dynamic, and animations are incredibly fluid. Short blade is best for assassination, long sword for open combat and you even get throwing knives for some long-distance killing.

In the end, the repetitive nature of the tasks is a blemish on what is easily one of the best games of 2007. Here’s to hoping that the inevitable sequels can flesh out the gameplay and offer us another thrilling chance to become assassins.

Rating: 80%

Third person shooter is a genre that is incredibly crowded, and each new entrant needs something exciting and new to stand out. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men brings film noir storyline to the small screen, with great voice acting, and very cinematic experience. Unfortunately the game developer didn’t spend as much time developing the actual game.

The single player campaign tells the story of Kane, who has betrayed the evil shadowy organization known simply as The 7. In order to recover what Kane has stolen, The 7 kidnaps his wife and daughter: Lynch is tasked to keep Kane in line, and to make sure he does what he promised to The 7. To recover the stolen items, Kane’s journey takes us to crowded nightclub in Tokyo, prison, construction yard and Cuba.

All the atmosphere cannot save this game from mediocre enemy AI, even worse teammate AI, frustrating sequences (such as a boss battle with a gigantic dump truck that took me dozens of attempts to complete) and just ok visuals. The only saving grace is the implementation of split-screen co-op campaign where the second player takes control of Lynch, and expands the storyline by showing his issues. In fact, co-op makes the game slightly easier as you don’t have to depend on incompetent AI.

Ultimately, the game could have benefited from extra weeks of polishing as the storyline and voice acting clearly deserve a better game. As it stands, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men feels like a bad game adaptation of a Michael Mann movie, than a great game with cinematic storytelling.

Rating: 45%

Once upon a time, back in the days of PS1, Crash Bandicoot was almost the mascot for Sony’s new console. Nowadays, just like Sega’s Sonic, it is relegated to mediocre games and Crash of the Titans for PSP unfortunately doesn’t do much to change his luck. This game is actually a port of Xbox 360 version, and features mostly the same content except for multiplayer.

Deep down, Crash of the Titans is a platformer with minor puzzle elements. You’ll fight countless minions, and “jack” bigger enemies who each has unique powers such as ranged attacks, ground smashing attacks and even shockwaves. Jacking enemies is crucial to your success as big enemies are immune to your puny attacks and need to be taken care of by jacked enemies.

Action is decent, and the jacking idea shines through in the first hour or so… then it becomes evident that is the only concept that this game has going for itself. Controls are a bit sluggish, and camera angle makes it hard to see upcoming gaps in the level. Worse, it makes jumping, double-jumping and gliding difficult for no particular reason.

Production value is ok, the graphics aren’t the best on the console nor the worst, voiceover and sound effects are pretty good at times, but the music feels uninspired. In the end, this is a good entry in this tired franchise. With other action platformers such as Dexter and Ratchet and Clank series doing so much on the PSP, this traditional Crash game feels dated.

Rating: 65%

There is one important reason why you should be mindful of creating an action game with 3D camera for PSP: camera can make or break the game. Unfortunately for Dead Head Fred, all the good things they try to do are undone by unruly camera that’s hard to control.

 You play as Fred, and you wake up one day without your head, victim of a mob hit. It’s up to you to seek revenge on the guys who killed you. You lost your head, which means you have no memory of who you are… but that does give you one of the best game mechanics Dead Head Fred introduces: head swapping. You can literally rip off heads from your enemies and use them as your own. Doing so, you gain bonuses as some heads allow you to spew liquid out of your mouth, give you more strength and even talk to humans.

Head swapping is pretty easy and fun, too bad combat cannot match the game’s head swapping or humor. Combat consists of pummeling enemies before they kill you: many of the heads have their own special attack that can clear out a group of enemies, but you can never use enough of them, and the enemies will just gang up on you and kill you as you are severely underpowered.

Simplistic can be fun in other games but Dead Head Fred’s camera makes sure you become frustrated. Even worse is several sections where platforming (jumping) is mandatory, and sometimes all you can do is do a blind jump and hope you land where you have to go. It is possible to control the camera yourself, but that requires you to stay still, which isn’t possible when you’re getting attacked by a large group of enemies.

In the end, perhaps PSP’s hardware limitation is to blame for Dead Head Fred. Its head swapping mechanics and good productions value are better suited at a console with 2 analog controls.

Rating: 55%