First of all, a warning. Do not watch the latest trailer, as it pretty much spoils a number of things you will want to know nothing about. Speaking of which, stay away from reviews and random blogs about MW until you have it in your hands. I know that’s a bit ironic to say before a review, but just be warned. This game will spark a ton of those “what this scene in MW2 did to me” blogs that you will agree or disagree with, but ultimately waste time on that you could’ve spent on gaming instead.



I went into MW2 not really knowing what to expect. I knew it was going to be one of the biggest games of the year. I knew that I liked the COD4 campaign a lot, especially because of the cinematic style and the way they tried to tell a story in a COD game. Because let’s be honest: IW are not master storytellers. They showed they are able to create memorable characters in COD4 and that they mastered the FPS pacing well enough to do some new and interesting things with it, such as when your soldier dies in the nuke shockwave. But who of you remember the exact storyline of COD4? Because in my memory, it consists of: training mission, some Russian guy is behind things that happen in the Middle East, and then at the end you kill him. Oh, and there was an 80’s mission that was awesome, but don’t ask me what part it played in the storyline.

So, I didn’t really expect a masterfully written tale. Definitely not after playing some Dragon Age: Origins before MW2. And this is probably a good thing, because the story in MW2 is basically just as flimsy as it was in COD4. As a true sequel, it follows up on events in COD4. But in the first 3 hours or so, you will be fighting all over the world while you don’t really know what the hell the common theme is. You shoot some evil Arabs. You shoot some evil South Americans. You shoot some Russians. But what ties it together? I had no clue for most of the game. Thankfully, the last couple of levels tie it all together, and the writing becomes more of a part of the scripted levels. In the end, you won’t really care what you did in the first half of the game, but mostly because the second half blew you away.



There is something weird about MW2’s campaign. COD4 usually started you out with entering a level, slowly escalating combat to keep the pacing going and then ending with a bang in most levels. But it always felt manageable, as if you felt in control for most of the time. In MW2, it is like IW wanted you to feel the chaos of combat. This is a nice idea, for a movie or something. But in a game, it is pretty annoying if the enemy uniforms look a lot like your fellow soldiers’ uniforms. It doesn’t help that you switch between a couple of characters with different uniforms.

I shot a LOT of friendly soldiers in the first couple of missions. Not because I hate them so much, but because I just couldn’t really distinguish them all that well from enemies, and better safe than sorry. The game doesn’t really penalize you for friendly fire too much though, so IW probably found out that the combat was sometimes a little too chaotic. Does it feel like war is chaos? Yes. Does it feel like it makes the game more fun? Not really.

In fact, after playing the game on Normal for 3 hours, I felt like I was only still playing it because it was a Call of Duty title and that I was supposed to play it and enjoy it. Truth be told, I got bored a couple of times. Looking back though, it was probably because I was a bit tired, and didn’t really know what I expected. I just didn’t expect what I got: a chaotic mess of combat in what felt like totally separate missions.

However! The game picks up around the halfway point. And it doesn’t just pick up, but it starts rolling and keeps on rolling to the point where you feel like “Hey, this is more like how COD4 felt, the first time I played it”. Some great set pieces keep the action flowing and you will even care about what happens in the next mission! So you keep playing… and playing… right up to the end. And when you reach it, you will definitely feel like you have just had a 3 hour rollercoaster ride. MW2 is not long, it’s about 5-6 hours on Normal, just like COD4 was. But other than the kinda awkward feeling start, it is an amazing 3 hours of FPS gameplay. Once you get to the point where all hell breaks loose, that is.



This is about as vague and nondescript as I can talk about it without spoiling anything. And I really don’t want to spoil a thing for those of you that loved COD4. Some questions that all of you will have are: “is there a level like Ghillies in the Mist?” or “is there something like when you died of the nuke?”. Well, yes and no. It feels like IW wanted to continue on the path they started walking with COD4’s now-classic missions, but wanted to one-up them. And let’s just say they did. Big time. Some of this gets spoiled in the latest trailer, or at least it would give you some cues that you will make you go “ohh I saw this in the trailer!” So don’t watch it!

I am really not easily surprised with games anymore, but there is one section in particular that made me go “Hey I did this already (in a game), this isn’t very interesti…. OHHHH! Oh.. my.. god. Oh wat, seriously? Wow I did not expect that.” Another section was also very nicely done, but it’s best to not even talk about it. Just expect some people to go wild about it and spoil the shit out of it because they are all excited and need to share it. IW basically took first person cinematic gameplay and cutscenes and took it to the next level.

To be honest, if you strip the COD name from the game, strip the IW tag from it and remove all the typical IW-style first person immersion sections, it would make a good/decent but not “omg great” game. However, the way these things are done and how they impact you as the player, will probably surprise you in a way that you didn’t expect. Or is that the definition of “surprise”? Hmm!



So is it good? Yes. Is it the best game of 2009 or ever? That depends on how long you will play the multiplayer, if you like the multiplayer, if you like to coop the unlockable SpecOps missions, etc etc. For me, it was a surprise that the campaign ended up making me go wow. Because when I started the game, it didn’t really do much for me. Look at it like watching all the Treebeard/Hobbit scenes from the Two Towers before Fellowship of the Ring starts. You would just go “meh” and then go “hey this is pretty good”. But then just forget about the “if they are standing next to Gandalf for 5 minutes, why don’t they just pull him up?” part in the movie.

If you like shooters, you will have to at least play through it. If you don’t care about the multiplayer or COD, just gamefly it or torrent it to your gaming pc or something. Whatever, just at least play it, and see what the next two years of cinematic-FPS clones will look like. You may feel like some missions are familiar, but they are not just copies of the COD4 missions. They are more like natural evolutions for a true sequel that doesn’t do a Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions. And as such, the whole game feels like a true and natural sequel. Some parts may feel a bit uneven at first but any criticism ,or feelings caused by not really knowing what to expect from a sequel to COD4, will be gone after the credits stop rolling. At least, for 90% of you guys.



Still, it’s not the best singleplayer campaign ever and you will probably rage on Veteran mode. There is criticism to be had, but you will probably just not care. For instance, the game asks you to set brightness before starting up. But on LCD TVs, you'll end up with too-bright display settings when you use night-vision. Small things like that, which are easily overlooked or remedied in a game that is all about rapid and increasingly fast pacing. It’s a great campaign, it is required playing for 2009 and by early 2010 you will be sick of all the MW2 blogs. In a way it is like COD4: not flawless, but surprisingly better than you would think.

There is a lot more to say about the game, like how the vehicle sections are pretty fun and not too hard. But I'll leave that for the other reviews. This is just me saying: enjoy playing this game guys, but try to go in with an open mind, not expecting the world and as unspoiled as possible.

If MW2 was a prison, and you have homosexual tendencies, then the campaign would be worth:
9.2 “Soaps” on the floor


Edit: for some brainfreeze reason I had "Modern War 2" in the title and didn't even notice it. At least it started with a W!

Sooooo, Dragon Age eh? I'm going to keep this relatively short, since you probably all either preordered/are preloading/preloaded the game or at least know what the deal with this game is.



Basically, you know that it's the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. But, that doesn't really do it justice. Even though the graphics range from "alright" in conversations/cutscenes to "my eyes!" in some environments, the writing is top notch. After only a few hours in the game, you will be totally engrossed in the world of Dragon Age. There is political intrigue, religious people who either want power or just want ease of mind, epic war, Elfs that don't fit the stereotype, and much more.

I don't know how BioWare does it, but the world of Dragon Age feels more like living a fantasy novel than any game from the last couple of years has managed to do. Actually, I don't remember any game doing it since Neverwinter Nights. Don't get me wrong: I loved Mass Effect, but it felt more like you were playing a great scifi movie or series than anything else.

Dragon Age is more akin to the old BG/NWN games than the newer Mass Effect. The conversations are even more like KOTOR II with a large area of gray rather than the standard obvious black/white choices. Will your action lead to eventual good or evil? It's not always that clear. Even though it's easy enough to see what the "good" and "bad" choices are in many conversations, sometimes you will have to make a really big choice where it doesn't really feel like there is a good choice. You may want to try to make a good choice, but you won't know if it will stab you in the back later on, which makes you really think about such choices for more than the 5 second attention span we all have nowadays.



Also gone is the Mass Effect dialogue wheel. I'm not sure if this is a step back or just a good call for the game. One the one hand, the dialogue wheel only had Good/Neutral/Evil choices on the right hand side, which were really transparent, with some extended options on the left hand side. This made it easy to read and go through the conversations in Mass Effect, which helped the flow and the feel of the scifi epicness in my opinion. In Dragon Age, conversations are just a list of options where some will end the conversation and some will open up new paths. They are not hard to identify, but they require you to read and think consciously rather than just automatically pushing towards the top-right or top-left depending on a Good/Evil playthrough in Mass Effect.

Since I played this for a while on the 360 (some 5-6 hours with maybe 10-15% progress), let's talk a bit about the combat. You see, it plays a bit like KOTOR did with its 3rd person camera. However, there appears to be NO pause button for combat. This button was and remains the most important part of BG and NWN, as you can approach a battle tactically and assign attacks, skills and spells with maximum efficiency. You can hold the left trigger to open a radial menu, which does pause the game, but you can't switch between characters while doing this. Luckily, you can change the options to make LT toggle the radial menu instead of having to hold it, which does allow for easier pausing of combat and choosing your approach.



If you choose not to use pausing though, it changes the 360 version of the game to a kind of different game than BG/NWN. If you really want to play it as an action game, you can. But you'll likely have to choose between a few ways to play.

One: you play with just your main character and let your party allies do their thing on their own in real time. The AI for allies can be scripted to a level you may not even care to fiddle with, with basic options like "if HP < 25%, do spell X" or "if Enemy is visible, do action Y" and even more advanced options available if you wish.

Two: you use the bumpers to switch between party members. This leads to some confusion if you don't know which quickslot icons mean what skills or spells. Also, it kinda removes some immersion with your main character, as it just becomes just another party member that way. However, this does give you the opportunity to play around with different classes and builds without having to start over with a new character. But because there is no pause button, you kind of lose sight of the battle by switching between party members which can be deadly.

Three: you micromanage all your party members as if they were your main character. This involves a lot of management and oversight, as there are a lot of skills and spells to choose from between the classes. This does mean you'll have more control over encounters, which pays off of course.

I'd recommend just changing the options so you can easily pause and plan, it's the way the game is supposed to be played. I guess it's nice that console gamers with no patience have the option to go for a more action oriented approach. Then again, there is so much dialogue and story that if you don't have patience, you shouldn't be playing this game. If you play it with a lot of pausing, you'll still need to know what skills/spells everyone has, but after giving the orders you can just go back to your main character and stick with him/her for most of the combat.



And make no mistake: the combat is brutal. Not only is there plenty of blood which can splatters your characters' textures (making it look like it's period armageddon if you decide to play a clothless female) but combat difficulty ramps up pretty steep as you get past the introductory story quests. I am playing on Hard, which means that there is 50% friendly fire damage (the hardest difficulty has 100% friendly fire). I have no idea if this impacts the HP and damage output of mobs, but I get raped pretty often if I just go barging in. It's not unfair though, as you don't have to grind to get past a combat situation. You just have to approach it more intelligently and learn from your mistakes. Just be sure to save a lot if you are in a large open area, even though the game autosaves before some tricky encounters.

So, the combat is good. If you like these kinds of games that is. It's definitely a hardcore western RPG and even though the D&D rules are absent for the most part, they remain present in a kind of casualized manner to make it more approachable to a more mainstream audience. Still, there is a looooot of depth in choosing how to spec your characters which kind of defeats the whole mainstreaming aspect. It works as long as you are willing to get over the initial information overflow, let's just keep it at that.

And while the combat is fun and challenging for the most part, the storytelling is just epic. I still can't explain why it is, but after a few hours many of the arcane names and institutions made perfect sense to me. And from that moment on, the main players in the world of Dragon Age keep coming back in many of the conversation you have with NPCs. Just trust me that it will make perfect sense to you that a peasant would seek refuge from the Darkspawn at the Chantry and adores the Teyrn of Ferelden.



With six different Origin stories (a 2 hour initial storyline), different races, classes, race/class combinations and up to four trees of skills/spells with each 3-4 four-tiered skills/spells to choose from, this game is BIG. One playthrough will probably end up around 30+ hours depending on sidequests and whether you read subtitles and skip dialogue or whether you listen to everything. And then you can play through it 6 times, with choices in morality if you want to call it that.

If you want a giant and rewarding RPG, don't really care for things like Persona, or grew up on the old PC RPGs that lead to Dragon Age, this game is a must have. There is much adventuring to be done, many optional party members to swoon and pet, and conversations about things like "escaping the Circle" "yes it was really hard" that are made hilarious when you are half-naked and two guys speak to you. If you do get it though, I'd recommend the PC version over the console version. Yeah yeah, you don't get any cheevos (nobody cares about trophies). But the PC version allows for a topdown view just like the old games. It's not that the 3rd person camera is horrible, because it works fine. It's just that you didn't want to zoom in all the way in NWN anyway, so why would you choose to do so in this game? If you don't have to PC option though, don't worry: it works fine on consoles as long as you know how to pause combat.

But it sure is one mediocre looking game with some (non game breaking) glitches. It doesn't detract much and since it's a huge game it's understandable. Still: meh graphics. Good thing the voice acting more than makes up for it

Random swine flu from the hat: 95 penises

P.S.: BioWare, what is up with your underwear texture designer. I mean, really? What the fuck. See the gallery for slightly NSFW underwear (the two redheads are different characters). It's ridiculous!

Ladies and gentleman, I give you a review of G-Force. And in fact, this is not just another “why the hell do you play this shit” game! Surprisingly, G-Force is by far the best licensed/movie game I have played in years. And that includes X-Men Origins: Wolverine...

G-Force awwww yeah!
To be honest, I had no clue what this movie was about other than that it involved CGI and guinea pigs. Which I will henceforth call hamsters, because guinea pig is too much effort to type, and because they are basically the same anyway. Yes, I know your little sister would argue with that. Now that I have played the game, I still don’t have any real idea what the movie is supposed about. There is a plot, but it’s a general Disney fare where the most Jewish looking character is the eventual bad guy (I kid you not).


So what makes this game better than the rest? Well, it’s a 3rd person platformer in the Prince of Persia tradition at heart. You can run around, jump, and use a jetpack to hover and boost upwards. You can also use this jetpack to run forwards really fast which works like running in Gears of War. The hovering mechanic is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a game. You know when a game has an option to glide or hover, and it involve pressing multiple buttons to do it.. so you always fuck up one button at some point in the game? Here you just press A to jump, press and hold A to hover, and that’s it. You never miss any ledge because of this, and it works perfectly. I actually can’t imagine having to go back to the likes of Prototype to fly around after this game.

This is a game
Design-wise, every level is pretty linear, but involves a lot of puzzles to progress. For instance, you may need to lure a laser turret to aim its laser at you while you are standing in front of a wooden door, and then it will blast the door when you move out of the way at the last moment. Or you have to do the same thing while you stand behind some glass that reflects the laser beam into an indestructible enemy to... destruct it. There are a lot of these kinds of puzzles, many of which become a bit harder as you progress, but never too hard.


Besides the platforming, there is a LOT of combat in the game! Combat is done by holding the Left Trigger to enter a Gears of War aiming mode, and then shooting with the Right Trigger. You can also just use RT to wield an electrowhip, which your hamster does with amazing grace. There are no combos in the game or anything, but you can lock onto a target with LB, dodge or backflip with the A button and all that jazz. You have seen this combat before tons of times, but usually you see the shooting in M rated games and usually you see the combat in games like Conan or the like.

The enemies are tied to the story, which goes as follows. A guy named Saber has a corporation that sells appliances. Some evil plan comes to fruition, and all the appliances turn into... Transformers. Remember that scene in de Michael Bay Transformers movie where the Mountain Dew machine and 360 box come to life when the Cube touches the ground? That’s what happens to all appliances in the game, which actually is pretty well done to be fair.


An Iron for instance, will use its metal bottom to block your shields and only open up to shoot at you. A microwave will suck in little spider bots and turn them into bombs, which you need to throw back into its open mouth in order to kill it. There are really a lot of different enemies in the game, that all benefit or require a different approach to kill them. This is amazing really, because games like this usually have only a couple of lame enemies that you just button mash against (*cough* Kung Fu Panda *cough*). The sheer variety and the different approaches to the enemies, who cover a large variety of long and short range attacks as well, keeps the combat fun enough to not slit your wrists for playing one of these games.

While the combat is fun enough, the level design quickly goes from seemingly straightforward and repetitive to still-linear but varied enough. You get to mix up different bits of vertical and horizontal platforming, while solving some environmental puzzles to get to keys and buttons. Sometimes you will need to use Mooch, your trusty remote control fly that nobody cares about if he dies. Using him, you can fly up where Darwin (your hamster character) can’t reach. He can also fly through ventilators by slowing time, which is probably something from the movie. Mooch is equipped with a short paralyzing beam. You use this to do stuff like flying over a forcefield-generator appliance and disabling it, so Darwin can get through and destroy the appliance.



This game also has stuff
During the game, you can hunt for Silver Discs that give you a cheevo and let you upgrade your weapons at Vending Machines. You can also collect money to actually buy this stuff, or to buy a map that shows the locations of these discs. Sometimes the Silver Discs will be easy to find, but a good 50% of them will require some exploration to find them. Good thing you have a map that shows where they are :P

Most of the levels are surprisingly well-paced for a game like this. You go between fast paced combat and “bosses” that are basically just waves of enemies without being able to replenish ammo or health. Then you may have to do some exploring to find out how to progress. Then you may have to kill some enemies to get to a puzzle part. Or maybe you’ll need to disable some switch or forcefield with Mooch. It doesn’t really get very boring unless you play it for more than 3 hours at a time...

There are also 2-3 vehicle section in the game, which are short and only work to break up the pacing a bit. It’s a welcome addition, but these parts are you standard moviegame/generic title fares. You drive around in a hamster-ball vehicle... with guns. The brilliant thing is that these sections work to explain how you get from one area to the next, as if that requires any explanation!! You get some first-person cutscenes at the end of them, which was a surprise. I guess if Portal was that special in that it used... text on walls to tell a story.... then this game is a marvel in storytelling as there is no game that uses first person storytelling in a transparent hamster ball bike vehicle with guns:



Wasn't that just the most innovative way to tell a story in a movie-game, EVER? Hell, if the game has a theme song at the end, I'm sure it would be a hit.

The game’s difficulty settings indicate the amount of lives you are, which work as vita-chamber checkpoints. As in: you die and start at the checkpoint location, but that pesky enemy you tried to kill will have the same amount of health as when you died. Or sometimes you die and have to redo a section if it’s a platforming-based section, it depends. On the Hard difficulty, you have 3 lives which seems like a lot in the beginning. But in later levels, you may curse at some enemies or sections that rape your lives. Thankfully, you can find extra lives to, of which there are usually quite a few to find if you explore a lot.

I have to say, the Hard difficulty is definitely not a walk in the park. Usually on the movie games, you can just go for the Hard difficulty and hope that the game isn’t so horribly developed that you’ll get stuck on totally unfair sections. But this game will really rape any child that tries to play it on hard. Later levels especially will throw a lot of enemies at you, and if you didn’t stock up on ammo or the cash to buy it: you will be fucked. And sometimes even if you did, you will just run out of ammo at some point. It's challenging enough for gamers like us, which is probably why the difficulty is called Challenging...

Switching between melee combat and shooting is pretty easy, and you will soon look like a graceful blackops hamster when you do AoE attacks, melee whips and some shotgun blasts inbetween. It’s pretty fun to do too. It doesn’t really rival Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry, but at times you feel a kind of flow of combat that you really shouldn’t be feeling in a Disney game.



So what?
Well, that is pretty much the core of this game. It’s not supposed to be as good as it is. Granted, it is not a must-buy in any way. Although the campaign is lengthy (I failed to get the “under 8 hours” achievement on the Hard setting) and a Hardest difficulty is unlockable after one playthrough, there is no multiplayer and no real reason to go back through such a long game. However, the same can be said for games like Conan. Games that we look at and say “that game is a total rental”. Games that get reviews in the 7-range from the review sites because it’s not bad but nothing special either. The biggest surprise for G-Force is that it is one of these games. And we all know what movie-games are supposed to be: utter crap.

If I wanted to be a dick and complain/nitpick the inadequacies of this game, I easily could. The level design can suffer from the over-use of some puzzle elements at times, you only play with one of the G-Force characters throughout the entire game if you don’t count Mooch, there is little character building, no real story, etc etc, bla bla dickitydick.

But disregarding that stuff that you don’t care about in a fun rental, you get pretty good graphics, fun gameplay, a lengthy campaign, pretty precise controls and most importantly: a Gears/God of Hamster War game. Oh and it’s also available in stereoscopic 3D, but I didn’t play. Probably because that’s only for the PS3? No idea, who the fuck plays a game through colored glasses anyway...

All in all, this game is a pleasant surprise. I expected a shit movie game with cheevos. I got a great movie game with cheevos that weren’t even that easy to get. If you look past the license, there is a pretty decent rental to be found here. And that’s all it is really: a good rental. And let's be serious, that’s not what anyone could have expected after trailers like these:





Also, look at this vid to get a good idea of the combat:




Happy ratings time!
So, a surprisingly good title for a Disney movie game that's worth playing even if you are playing a goddamn guinea pig with a shotgun and a laser whip. Fighting PC's and toasting irons. It's awesome.

I rate this game:

42/40 DEAD WOLF FURRIES

or

8.5/10 rentals



Here, have a Monkey Island Dance remix to boot!

This is where I say something to make it obvious I don't have any sense of sarcasm, humor or the ability to use bbcode, as is obvious from linking to this http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Denkai/why-infamous-is-better-then-prototype--136213.phtml. Or do, and then you could just click here for reference.

1. Alex Mercer isn't a pussy:

Cole is better because he runs on superior hardware that allows you to experience EMOTIONS! Not fun, as videogames are usually meant for. EMOTION! [INFAMOUS] has a much better storyline because you shoot people with lightning from a mile away. Then you repeat that.

2. Chain link fences:

Realism is awesome and since I went to middle school, I am an expert on electricity and how it interacts with metallic objects. Obviously since you are all xbots, you do not know this or you wouldn't have bought a RRODbox LOL!

I will conclude this by ignoring that even though it wasn't even a real "point" in Jim's writeup, you don't want artificial barriers when you can't run up a building to elbow drop a hobo with a rifle behind a fence.

3. Upgrades:

I will concede this point to distract people from thinking I am a fanboy

4. Prototype isn't spelled all stupid:

[INFAMOUS] looks way better! And it's not on the 360!

And stupider isn't a word you dumb fuck: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stupider. Even a 14 year old girl can use google!

5. Enemy variety:

Since the definition of more is hard to grasp, I will say something weird like this: Prototype has more variety but COMPLAIN COMPLAIN it's only 3 types. Which means [INFAMOUS] has even less types.

6. The Prototype comic book has an awesome rapetrap story in it:

If you like Mature games, you are going to be a murderer. Jack Thompson and FOX news say so, hence it must be true. Murderer! MURDERER!



7. Running up buildings > Climbing like a spastic monkey:

Once again, back to the realism thing. Jim is fat and therefore can't climb buildings like all less fat people powered by the superior Cell processor who can. LOL!

8. Water:

Wow, think game play. What fun is it when you can regenerate your health in cover. I don't like pussy because I love the cock. Only when it's black though. Like my PS3!

9. The head of developer Sucker Punch is racist:

LOL YOU ARE GHEY FANBOYS SHITBOX DERPDERPDERPDERPDERPDERPsize=18]DERPDERPDERP[/size]
DERPDERPDERPDERPDERPDERPDERP
DERPDERPDERPDERPDERPDERP

10. Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360:

And finally, look at "sells" for both games seeing as XIII has nothing to do with this article that is not a review. XIII being either the old PC/xbox1 FPS, the comic, the miniseries or a kind of tiger creature.

11. (my own think tank here.)

In my opinion prOTOTYPE has better game mechanics, but a shitty story line and half ass excuses for why they wanted to throw in a feature. prOTOTYPE is to 360 what Vista is to Windows. Because it has DX10 support, shoddy drivers and is marginally harder to pirate. Just like Prototype. Except that you can pirate Prototype. Compared to Windows. Just like Leopard compared to Apple OS. Xbot.

[INFAMOUS] has better graphics which makes it a better game, although it has slightly less game mechanics. I would rather play a game with slightly more game mechanics than slightly less. In short, they are both good but prOTOTYPE is like a Dynasty Warriors sandbox games, meaning that it is completely unthinkable to me that Jim would prefer this game to [INFAMOUS}

DERP PS3 RULEZ 360 IS GHEY. PENIS.

It’s that time again! Time to review a perfectly good excuse to waste 5 hours on and getting some cheevos in the meantime. Let me start by saying that I’ve never seen any episode, upcoming movie, video/dvd or anything of the Disney Hannah Montana show. I do know Miley Cyrus though, she even sent me a cute picture of her mug to tempt me into giving this an 11/10.


Nice try Miley, but no tits or vagoo means gtfo you old hag!

Since this is the game of the movie, I figured I would check it out and get an easy 1000/1000 in the meantime. I didn’t expect what I would find...

The game is broken up into parts where you play Miley… Something who is actually secret superstar Hannah Montana. Her dad keeps her true identity a secret, in order for her not to become yet another superficial slutty drunk ass holier-than-thou L.A. bitch. Which didn’t work out too well in RL, but hey it’s still a fantasy world eh? For the game, this means that you spend 90% of the game as Miley in Tennessee, which is way more Southern than I thought it was, and the remaining 10% as Hannah Montana playing some songs from the movie in Performance Mode.

While the Miley stuff isn’t too bad for a tween girl game, it’s not exactly very hard either. Basic adventuring in the style of: ‘follow this arrow to an objective and press the big green A button’ is the key design element for traversing the world. A couple of minigames are available for your leisure. Things like riding your horse Blue Jeans over one track (do it 10x for an achievement), while Miley exclaims “Come on Blue Jeans!” which sounded to me and a mate as “Come on Boobies!”

Another set of minigames are available at the country fair, which can range from annoying to ridiculous. In Frog Hop, you move the LS up and then down to launch a frog to land on a couple of rotating platforms that are rotating around some center axis. The closer to the center a platform is, the more points it is worth. In Ball Throw, you have 5 bag balls to throw a set number of tin milk cans or bottles with. Actually, this game has the best milk bottle physics ever seen in a game. They are really a sight to behold, as you throw your ball with grace after first fondling it a little with your 16 year old fingers, only to then see the results of shooting your ball load into a group of empty bottles who then fall all over the place in a realistic way. Yumm! However, to get the cheevo for this minigame, you have to pass all ten levels which is actually not thaaaat easy. It’s hard to see where exactly your throw till go, and since you throw by flicking the RS down and then up, it sometimes won’t register the upwards movement very well and make your balls drop their load’s momentum too soon. And Miley doesn’t like premature ball failing :(



The final minigame is a Horse Race carnival game. Here you have 4 lanes with flat horses on a stick, that can go faster by shooting the right target. The key is to find the target that has the highest multiplier (1x – 5x) and then shoot that as much as possible. If you shoot the wrong target, another horse will benefit and go faster. However, the game does not explain this at all and I never played such a game in my life. Suffice to say that after retrying it 15x I started to hate this game. Worst of all, it’s apparently possible to multiplay this game by connecting 4 controllers. After winning a game with 4 controllers, you get a cheevo. Not after playing the game 1,5 hours straight and trying to think of ways to get the cheevo by winning in different ways…. Oh well.

From time to time, going through the story will let Miley get some creative ideas. For instance, when she finds a safari outfit she will dream away of a concert with a safari theme. This will cue 2 songs you will have to play through in succession.


Dude It’s a safari themed Llama! So disappointed that the original vid wasn’t on youtube..

Now, these performance levels are partly horrible and at the same time strangely compelling. You see, you have to do a number of minigames during the song that kinda switch around on the fly. You can use the dual analog sticks to strike a pose; holding both sticks upwards does a raised-arms pose while moving the LS downleft and the RS left will do a one-arm-down-one-arm-on-your-hips pose. The same system was done in High School Musical 3 on the Wii where you had to strike that pose with the wiimote and nunchuck, and I bet it was done the same way on the 360 as it was done here.

Another section requires you to do a whole lot of short and fast moves with the sticks, rather than holding any direction. The problem is that there are around 10-15 moves that only get explained in one subsection of a tutorial. So while you are busy not paying attention, you’ll probably forget at least half of the right moves. Not that it matters much, because you can just flick the sticks in any direction until you have found the right one. Still, it is actually pretty fun to do once you get the hang of it, mostly because you have to react pretty fast and have to remember a lot of moves without any on-screen cues other than an icon saying “do the cowgirl rope swinging move!”

Then there are the vocal sections where you have to either press the A button (indicated by a blue colored circle) or hold the B button (a yellow circle with a bar next to it) in an EBA/Ouendan way of gameplay. It’s not quite EBA, but it works remarkably well in such a game. Finally there are guitar and drum sections. Guitar is done by press A to strum, and moving the LS up and down for notes that are above or below the middle snare. Pretty easy, but still fun to play and actually weird to see them depart from the tried and trusted Guitar Hero formula. The drums work by having the LS left and up for the left two drum pads, and the RS up and right for the right two drum pads. Notes fall down, you have to move into the right direction at the right time.


Not quite..

All in all, the Singing, Guitar and Drum gameplay works pretty well and is actually fun to do. Which is really weird, because games like this are supposed to suck. In a way, it still sucks because A) the songs could be considered as horrible and B) you hear lame “good”, “fail” or “perfect” sound effects for every note you play or miss. Of course, this interferes with the great soundtrack that Disney provided for this game. Especially when playing the drums, you just hear “POOM” whenever you hit a note correctly.


I wonder what she does with those two fi… never mind

Because the core gameplay elements have some promise, I can see devs expanding on this in future games in the genre. I think it’s possible to translate a lot of the Wii movement stuff with the dual analog sticks as long as you explain the moves properly and design it well. Likewise, the 360 controller (and PS3 controller of course) seems to allow for EBA kind of games that are normally reserved for the DS. The game shows a lot of hidden potential under its layers of tweendom kiddieness, but I hope that potential will be worked on for future games. They will probably still be casual games, but more rhythm games on the tv are never a bad thing.

Minigames and performances in (dream)concerts give you coins that you can use to buy clothing, shoes, wristbands and jewelry. One coin equals one piece of clothing, just like it is in real life! Everytime you select one in a store, Miley will say “Sweet ….!” So in a pants store she will say “Sweet pants!” when they are VERY TINY PANTS, and in the shirt store she will say “Sweet shirt!” when you found some ultra slutty shirt to go along with her tiny pants and high heel slutshoes. What is best about all this is that you will find yourself buying as many clothes as possible for the ‘100 clothing bought’ achievement, but in the meantime you will lol about all the slutty clothing that Miley looks hot in. Even though her face looks normal and the rest of her body looks completely anorexic…


I wonder what she does with that tongu... wait why the hell are you still reading this?

Overall, this game wasn’t toooo bad. I’ve played worse games, and this game is right up there with Barbie Horse Adventures on the xbox1 as one of the better tween adventure games. There is a good balance between adventuring/walking around, and you move from location to location enough to not get bored with any one location. Because you can choose when to ride Blue Jeans/Bewbies, it doesn’t feel like too much of a chore. Plus you get 50gs for doing it 10x… doing the minigame, not Miley (which is a legal 16gs). The fairground minigames can be a bit frustrating when you have to figure out what to do exactly, or when you just fail at it. But the performance sections are fun enough to play, and there is enough to do in the 4 hours that the game lasts, that you won’t really get bored any time soon.

Negative points are the fact that the game tells you that:
- Everything pretty much comes for free for the rich and famous, even if they are undercover.
- Tennesse is a backwards place where everyone is innocent and people still live the southern comfort style everywhere. Oh and people live on farms and wear farm clothes.
- Economic development is evil, and must be stopped by holding County Fairs or something, ending in using a popstar to raise money to stall said development and keep away the specter of progress
- All girls are thin. What?
- Snobby bitches will OMG! tell you about a new store you totally haaave to go to. What happened to the hate on economic development and wearing farm clothes?
- Miley is a bitch to her brother, who will one day return the favor by throwing pig blood over her at her during her prom queen acceptance speech. Go bro!
- It’s not very hard, or long. Unlike what’s in my pants when I was playing dressup with Miley? Ehm, disregard that last part.
- One you reach the last stage or are near it, you can't teleport anywhere using y our Z-phone which means you can't make money or buy other clothes. This will cost you the 100gs clothing achievement if you were foolish enough to buy shoes and jewelry and not actual clothes!!!

The weirdest part about this game is that I started and finished it after finishing The Godfather II. After GF2, I really wanted to watch that movie again. But after Hannah Montana: The Movie: The Game, I wanted to see the Hannah Montana movie even more! That is an amazing achievement by itself and I applaud the game for that. Going in with 0 knowledge about the show, I finished the game kinda understanding why 12 year old girls get wet panties for Miley Cyrus. I still don’t get the Jonas Brothers though, are they non-heterosexual like that Twilight dude or something?


Distracting you from the score!

Verdict: 6.0/10

Not a bad game for your kids and laughably playable enough for achievement whores. This kiddie game offers the Beeeeeeeest of Boooooth Worlds!




OMG WHAT A FATTY!

<3

No idea why I even started it, but I did and when it was done... an hour had passed. I've been asked to cblog it, so here it is. Proceed at your own risk. It's been formatted to make it a bit more readable with some IRC quotes in between. Bearcremento is Excremento's bear alter ego.

As Gandysampras was dinging level 15 in City of Heroes, he felt some excitement in his pants. He didn't know that he had not known excitement until what would happen later that night.

[22:54] * Bearcremento finished and wipes his bum on Gandy|Sleep
[22:55] <Bearcremento> thatth mines

Bearcremento was having a rough day at work, someone had tried to shave part of his hot body hair as a trophy and it had taken some energy to teach the man not to fuck with a bear. As he was driving home, he noticed a blinking indicator on his dashboard: 'Out of fuel...'

[22:55] <Bearcremento> i am having a boooooored day

Living in the middle of nowhere, there was but one house with its lights on in the vicinity. Call it fate or just sheer luck, but that house was where Gandysampras had just reached level 15. Bearcremento decided to stop there and ask the inhabitant if he could help him out with some fuel, or maybe something else?

[22:56] <ME> true story?
[22:56] <Bearcremento> true dat
[22:57] <ME> if that is true, then it is one of the most awesome story ive read

Outside of the house, in the pale moonlight, something what looked like a skinned fox fur coat was hanging on some washing lines. Bearcremento thought to himself: that is quite a good skinning, the man who lives here must have artistry in his hands.

He walked up to the door and rang the bell.

After waiting for 5 minutes, a sight to behold opened the door... Before him stood a man as tall as him, almost his equal in hairyness! Yet, slightly lacking in girth. The seeds of a raging boner appears in Bearcremento's pants...

[22:58] <Bearcremento> boys
[22:58] <Bearcremento> boys
[22:58] <Bearcremento> boys

"Hello", he stumbled for a second, "I ran out of gas right in front of your house, could I ask you for some assistance?" The young Gandysampras appeared to check out Bearcremento for a second, then said: "Ehm, sure man, I was just playing some games." "Games you say?", Bearcremento replied, "Why, I love games!!"

<Bearcremento> i do
<Bearcremento> my favorite is hide the sausage

"Really?" Gandysampras replied, shocked that someone would just appear out of nowhere in the shithole he lived in; no one within 50 miles had even heard of games. "Yeah, especially Secondhand Lands, I love that game!", Bearcremento replied. Gandysampras was flabberghasted for a second, had this man seen his costume drying outside?



Finally, Gandysampras was able to contain himself and said in a stable voice: "Cool, I have played that game for a while myself, it has a great community. Have I ever seen you on there?" Bearcremento said: "Hmm, you may have? I dunno, my nickname was Bearcremento."

Gandy's heart skipped a beat that second.

Not for 10 years had his heart skipped a beat, not since his little brother fondled his balls 1 day after he was able to walk his first steps. "I.. I think we may have met, my nickname was Furst Lady on there."

These words struck Bearcremento as if a hammerblow of love had slammed to his chest. They looked into their eyes for 5 seconds, in what felt like an eternal moment of love.


At this point, another conversation started in IRC but I didn't pay much attention to it. It's been edited out.


These two hairy men had had more cyber sessions than a 20 year old just in college, with access to a 1gbit line and free porn leech accces, would've fapped in a month.

"I know you!", they both exclaimed in extacy. "Let's make out!", Gandysampras said. "Let's!", Bearcremento replied. And so they did.

As their lips touched, it was as if a choir of angels sang the song of Firegod in the background, and lo and behold: they did!

"Fiii aaaah gooooood!", they sang
"Fiii-hee-aaah goooood"

As their kiss deepened, Gandy and Bearcremento were caught in an epic embrace of love, while lust started to take over their very physiological state. Their heartbeats quickened. Sweat started to slowly gather in their skin's pores, ready to facilitate what was yet to come. They were just about ready to take off their clothes as a bright red and fiery light started to shine outside, casting a silhouette of two horny hairy men on Gandy's living room.

As they turned around, slightly confused and mildly annoyed of being interrupted, they were instantly smitten by the warmth of the light that was cast upon them. There they saw a choir of 13 Angels singing in midair, their very appearance similar to a Witch from Left 4 Dead, yet their voices sang ever so sweet. Between them, what seemed to be a fracture in the very fabric of timespace itself started to grow, from which the warm light shone ever stronger.

"Behooooold", the Witch-Angels sang, "Beeeeeeeee-hoooooooooooooooooooooold!" they reached ever higher. "The Firegod approaches!"



As the fracture in the air grew to a mansized hole, a flaming figure in a dark grey hoody with baggy pants stepped out, gracefully yet half crouching as if ready for a pounce; the lust of Bear on Bear interaction had summoned an otherworldy creature of myth: the Firegod Hunter.

"HYIIIAAAAAAH?", it asked them. Yet in their minds, it sounded like a song. "My name is Wilbo Firegodathan the Third", they heard... the creature was communicating to their very minds! "The immanent joining of your Two Towers has summoned me. I have come to you know, at the turn of the tide."

Bearcremento and Gandysampras would've soiled their pants in that very moment, were it not for the pure feeling of love and warmth that the Firegod bestowed upon them. Little did they know that they would yet do so.

"Let us go inside and continue what you have started", the Firegod spoke to them. Gandysampras and Bearcremento could only obey the Firegod, for he was Firegod. This was quite a surprise for them, as Bearcremento has just raped 2 little boys the day before and was not really the type to be told what to do. The same was true for Gandysampras, who spent most of his free time yiffing with strangers online and then breaking their hearts.

As Gandysampras took Bearcremento's hand, he guided him to his upstairs master bedroom. There, Bearcremento saw a sight to behold. What he thought was a fox skin hanging on the washing lines outside was not so much a skin as it was a costume! The bedroom itself seemed to be alive, the very fabric of the walls made of fur from the most delightful creatures, some of them which may be extinct now. A single window let in a shimmer of moonlight, while the back wall featured a cozy fireplace. The fireplace's light made the furry walls seem alive, almost breathing in anticipation.

"Now, let us get ready", the Firegod's second command sounded in their minds. For an outsider, this would've sounded more like "HRWAAAAAAAAH!" Gandysampras went to a walk-in closet and took out two suits: a shiny black panther costume with a unicorn for a penis, with a shiny black and white striped tail and the head of a Lust Badger, the most extinct of creatures known to man.



He gave Bearcremento a different suit: made from a mix of lace and panda fur. The suit turned Bearcremento into what looked like a mix between a panda, a wallabee and an alligator. "This is hot", the Firegod said.

The Firegod looked at an empty corner in the room and SWOOSH, a Throne of Iron Dongs appeared. He took place on his throne, walking slowly but with an air of majesty. As he sat down, the room was illuminated in a flash of red light for a second, blinding both Gandysampras and Bearcremento for a few seconds more.

As they regained their eyesight, they saw the room had changed. The furry walls now were actually alive, pulsing like a boy in puberty when his 30 year old milf French teacher was teaching him the other side of France. Bearcremento gently seemed to lie Gandysampras on the floor, which donned a carpet that appeared to be as alive as the walls; it was as if it was waiting for the two beary men to lie down on it and to bask in the glorious moment.

But as Gandysampras thought he had finally found true love, Bearcremento violently pushed him to the ground. He started to rip off Gandysampras's costume with his hands, which had suddenly turned into claws! "What are you doing?!", Gandysampras tried to say, but he was cut off by a booming voice of the Firegod: "You Shall Submit, You Shall Learn What Destiny Is Bestowed On The Furry Kind"

Bearcremento's costume started to slowly meld with his skin, the two very essences mixed into a glorious sight. As the transformation seemed to complete, the Firegod spoke some mysterious otherworldly words and Bearcremento started to slowly glow as if he were on fire. But he was not, this fire was of another kind.

"Time to do some furry flaming!", Bearcremento shouted. In the corner, the Firegod's image started to show what would look like a smile, if his face were not too FIREGOD to behold. Gandy tried to stop it, but he knew in his heart it was too late. There was no escape from this. In a way, he had known ever since his first yiff: nothing good would ever come from his furry antics yet he had always persisted in them.

Bearcremento had removed all traces of Gandysampras' costume by this point. He turned the young man around, slammed his face into the living carpet, and the most horrible sound Gandysampras had ever heard entered his ear: the unzipping of a fursuit.

With a lot of effort, he managed to turn his head around to see what was approaching... and then he wished he hadn't. A horrible giant penis hydra was slithering tis way outside of Bearcremento's crotch, each head more disfigured and ghastly than the other. He started to feel two of them pressing down on his upper thighs.
Three others pressed his lower back onto the ground, immobilizing him, or one might say: incapacitating him. The remaining 4 Penis heads started to open their mouths and screamed! Outside, the choir of Witch-Angels had moved to outside the window, their voices singing "DING DING DING DING DING DING DING"

Gandysampras had alerted the Penis Hydra from the Plains of Witchington.


But with penises for heads, coming out of a man's crotch, duh

With a single trust, two heads entered his not so virginly anus. Two other heads ripped off his penis and created a new hole to invade. The remaing head proceeded to enter his mouth, making him unable to even scream or block out what was happening to him. Gandysampras' colon started to rupture, blood and feces dripping out of him. As he thought all hope was lost, a familiar voice was speaking from the door's opening:
"Am I late to the party?"

Gandy managed to turn his head. In the doorway, DMV was standing, smiling his pedo smile. He did not know to fear, despair, or to kindle the flame of hope. At this point of rape, Gandy could not care anymore.
DMV entered the room. "Why, what's going on here? There is a surprising lack of underage girls in here", he said. The Firegod was startled. He had not foreseen this happening. "YOU! You cannot be here! I cast you down into the Tentacle Pits of Bukkaketon and saw them devour you!", the Firegod shouted, emotion clearly taking over his otherwise holy visage. "Ha, tentacles are my minions, you fool!", DMV exclaimed. "To war, my loves!", he commanded.

From every orifice of the living room, small tentacle penises started to grow. Out of every penis, 3 more penises grew. Then 5 more grew out of those!! Soon the entire room's walls, ceiling and carpet was littered with tentacle penises. They started to bite and then devour the Penis Hydra of Bearcremento, making him scream in pain. After mere seconds, Bearcremento was no more than a bloody mess on the floor.

"NO!", the Firegod screamed, "This cannot be!" "It can, and it will", DMV simply seemed to state as if it were a mere fact; something that had already happened but the Firegod was simply unaware of. "I have forseen it. Now go, my loves. GO and cleanse this fire from this world!"

All the tentacle penises started to aim at the Firegod...

Their necks pulsing in concert. One pulse per 10 seconds. One pulse per 5 seconds. One pulse per half second. Until finally, they all exploded their holy semen on the Firegod, extinguishing not just his flames but his very essence. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO", it screamed! "Save me, my Witches!"

[23:47] <Vexed_Alex> Pew, ryu says he wants you to be involved in his song. (I only read this line, didn't notice that ryu was opposed to his inclusion in the fapfic but... it was too late at that point)
[23:48] <ryu89> alex
[23:48] <ryu89> burn in hell
[23:48] <Vexed_Alex> :D

The Witch-Angels broke through the wall from outside and slew the tentacle penises with their claws. In their valiant fight, 6 of them fell. 7 remained. The holy 7 picked up what remained of the Firegod and started to extract him to the fissure in timespace what was still glowing it's horrid warm light outside. There it was that Ryu, a little boy who was just minding his own business and walking his dog outside, came across this unholy scene. "Witches!", he yelped.

"Here boy" he said to his dog, which transformed into an autoshotgun. "Time to bag me some cheevos!" he cried in a hysterious laughing voice. Ryu proceded to one-shot the Witch Angels one by one. Until only two were left. One of them managed to throw the Firegod through the fissure. As he flew, he shouted "You will fall, DMV, I will see you fall yet! My day will come!" Ryu proceeded to shoot the remaining two Witch Angels.

In the broken wall of Gandysampras's bedroom, DMV looked down upon the scene. "Ha, my day will come over your day any time!", he mocked, and exploded into a thousand slowmotion doves who flew away reaaally sloooowly. Gandy had no idea what just happened. All he knew was that the pain had stopped. The exploding tentacle penises' cum had healed his wounds and reattached his penis!

Ryu went inside to see what the fuck had just happened. There he came upon Gandy's healed but still scarred body.

"Dear Diary", he said to himself, "JACKPOT!"

the end