Resident Evil 5

I wasn’t looking forward to play this game but I had a chance to play it and there wasn’t anything better around so I did. I have to admit that I haven’t seen any of the movies or played any of the games. I do intend to watch the movies but I had no intention to play the games.

I played most of the coop campaign with a friend and I the game looks really nice. The graphics look really smooth and the lighting in the game is really awesome. You really notice the light pouring over the characters in some of the landscapes. As you can expect from a Japanese developer, parts of the game are really over the top but I’m not saying that’s bad. Some of the melee attacks are really cool but I didn’t like the over the top one liners in the cut scenes. In my opinion when you have an over dramatic cut scene it does the opposite of making the situation dramatic, it makes it seem silly.

The one thing a game needs is good controls and this game doesn’t have it. I struggled turning around corners, it felt like I was lower than the lowest sensitivity and to my knowledge I couldn’t change it. I like the idea of picking things up around the map to aid you in your game but when I fighting off a horde of infected to change a weapon I had to go into my inventory and find a weapon that had ammo, in terms of seconds it doesn’t take long but when you compare that time to pressing ‘Y’ to change your weapon, it’s a huge difference.

I liked that the game was centred around team work with Sheva and some of the missions were cool, in that you couldn’t do it unless you were cooperating with your partner. One thing I expected to be cool was that there was no hip fire sights or reticle but a laser from your gun. That idea was really cool but when I played it seemed really hard for me to hit specific places on a body e.g. the head. I played this on coop so it was even harder when my portion of the screen was smaller. I mentioned ammo previously, throughout the whole time I played this game I was 80% of the time out of ammo. If you ask me, that’s ridiculous. You’re not playing the game to its full potential if you’re only using the horrific knife melee attack. The knife attack is probably the worst thing I’ve seen in a game for a while. When knifing you pull out your knife but you can’t move. Not only do you have no bullets for your guns but when you pull out your knife you stab enemies you have to stay in a stationary position and let the enemies come to you.

Now this is just my personal opinion and I don’t want it to affect this review, I’m not a huge fan of boss fights unless it’s something like Sonic fighting against Doctor Eggman, something fun like that. In a serious game I’m not a huge fan, it feels like the pace of the game has been intentionally slowed down so the bosses in the game feel more powerful when a good action game should consistently be fasts paced.

I know this review has been extremely negative but it’s just my take on the game. I’m probably not the best person to write about the series, that’s why I haven’t talked about the story too much. I haven’t watched any of the movies or played any past games so I don’t feel like I should comment on them. I’ll finish this off on a positive note, the enemies look amazing in this, the flying monsters and the creatures that come out of the infected look insane. That’s all I have to say.

Portal 2

I have to admit, I wasn’t the greatest at the first Portal, it took me a little longer than some people, not like 5 hours longer or anything but it was a different story regarding Portal 2. I finished Portal 2 a couple of days ago and have been meaning to write about it. I finished it over 2 days. The first day I was so excited I played it for like 8 hours straight. The next day I polished it off in 2 hours. Gameplay wise it was approximately 10 hours or so and what a 10 hours it was!

It’s amazing how much content you can squeeze out of the Source engine and it still looks up to date with current games. It doesn’t look as amazing as games like Crysis 2 or anything but no one plays Portal 2 for the graphics, you play it for the gameplay and I think this is a perfect game to explain how I am trying to look at games currently and in the future. A lot of review sites review games based on gameplay, graphics, sound and longevity but I want to add another factor that people don’t seem to take into account when rating a game, how fun it is. All the other factors are still hugely important but I think the fun factor trumps them all and that’ll play an important part in this review and others to come.

Portal 2 takes place years after the first Portal. Aperture Laboratories are overgrown with nature and you have just come out of stasis. GLaDOS is dead. As you progress through the game the laboratories are slowly rebuilt. Portal 2 is even more funny than the last one in my opinion. With the addition of Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant and Cave Johnson, (every line he has is hilarious) voiced by J. K. Simmons there are more hilarious quotes than the last. And of course GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain, comes back in the sequel who is equally funny if not more.

Now into the meat of the game, the puzzles. In the first one there wasn’t too many puzzles. I believe there were 19 test chambers and more puzzles when you escaped. In Portal 2 I think there are 41 test chambers, that sounds way too much but I think there are 22 in the first section then 19 later on and that isn’t including puzzles when you escape… I think. Don’t hold me to those numbers. Basically there is a crap load more puzzles to solve in Portal 2. I don’t know what it was, maybe because I had played the first one and knew what I was getting into or Portal 2 was easier but I zoomed through the singleplayer. I got stuck on 2 or 3 puzzles but I solved them in the end. Most importantly I didn’t use a walkthrough! In Portal, if you get stuck all you got to do is keep on moving around the test chamber until you see the puzzle in a different way. I did that (and stayed calm and didn’t throw my controller across the room) and I ended up solving puzzles I got stuck on and it feels pretty good when you’re stuck on a puzzle for 45 minutes then suddenly you get a brainwave and you solve it!

I know I can’t complain because Portal 2 is a lot longer than the first and it could be because I played it a lot on the first day but I really wish there were more puzzles to solve! I hope Portal 2 is supported with a crap load of DLC. And I haven’t had a chance to play coop yet, hopefully that will take up a lot of my time.

There isn’t much else to Portal other than voice and gameplay. It’s a really fun game. The puzzles aren’t too difficult that you get frustrated and you never feel as if it’s the games fault. I was really pleased with the ending of it too but I won’t ruin anything. If you haven’t played it, go play it. It’s a different game to others and it’s a lot of fun even if you aren’t shooting at people.