Top Down Perspective 13/02/10

Here is the third episode of the Top Down Perspective. It is now stationed at a new website along with it's own domain account. Now you can see each episode and nothing else if you wish. Along with the new updated podcast, I have added a new sidebar widget that allows you to see some of the more recent episodes and play then from this site. Without further ado:

This week we get in deep about the new Heavy Rain demo, Nathan’s opinion of Dante’s Inferno and Jon’s list of old GameBoy games that (for some reason) he is running through. Also, we wrap up any unfinished business regarding No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and Jon beats, once again, another game while we chat - this time Contra.

On the news side we discuss Microsoft’s X10 event. This brings up our opinions on everything from the Xbox Live Game Room to the new Perfect Dark XBLA. Dead Rising Case Zero is also discussed along with Dead Rising 2 being talked about at length.

You can access the episode here.

Top Down Perspective: 07/02/10

The second installment of my (and by "my", I mean what I'm included in) podcast The Top Down Perspective is now live. Like before, it can be found at its main page here. If you would like a direct link, here's one. And if you want a quick download to your iTunes library, well here you go. Here's a recap of the episode:

This week's episode has taken some of the feedback from the first episode to heart and is a little more structured. A smaller file, shorter length (At 1 hour 10 minutes instead of 2 hours) and just a little bit more focused (but only a bit). We're also trying out a new sound setup and meeting in person to do these, so bear with us.

This week's episode deals with the closing of the Xbox Live servers for original Xbox games, last year's top selling XBLA games and overall games, along with Project Needlemouse/Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and the new reality show on the PSN, The Tester.

As always, any questions, comments, feedback, fan/hate mail, etc... can be sent to topdownperspective@hotmail.com

Here we go

It's live! The first episode of Top Down Perspective is now live and can be found here. I think Jon put it elegantly when describing it as such:

The inaugural episode of the Top Down Perspective introducing your three hosts: Nathan, Sean and Jon

We talk about the latest news in the gaming industry while also talking about new releases such as No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Mass Effect 2, and more.

Any questions, comments, feedback, fan/hate mail, etc... can be sent to topdownperspective@hotmail.com and who knows, maybe we'll read it out next time!

So go on and take a listen, or download it onto iTunes if that's your thing. Soon (as we get more episodes up) we will be putting it on the iTunes store. I hope you enjoy it.

Top Down Perspective
Here's the RSS feed (cause I know some of you like that)

Last week's thoughts

Here are some thoughts about what I played this last week:

• Dark Void ended in an awful way
• Darksiders is really good
  
• Muscle March is still great
• Bit. Trip Void is still boggling my mind in concept
• Mass Effect 2 is great despite my grand dislike for the first one
• I need to get back to Dragon Age: Origins
• No More Heroes 2 looks incredible so finishing the first is now a mandatory task
• Why did I buy the second No More Heroes with only three hours clocked into the first?
• Spirit Tracks is still a great game and I'm quite enjoying the heavy music aspect
• Battle for Forli is garbage
  

Top Down Perspective

With two of my friends, Nathan and Jon, I am starting up a podcast again. Like Blown Speakers, it will be weekly and all about the games we're playing and the industry surrounding them. It will be called Top Down Perspective and I am very excited to get it going.

The difference between this and my previous podcast is that I have much more faith in this one. Doing a podcast with one other guy can be very hard. If only one of us has played the game, the discussion on it will be short. If one of us isn't available to do it, it can't be done. With three people we are able to have much more engaging conversations and can bring extra flavors to the news. the guys I'm working with on this are great, their passion for games is as great as, if not above, my own and they really know their stuff.

So far we have been doing these on Friday nights but it will most likely just be one day each week that we're all free. We will be doing our first official recording tonight and hopefully it will be up by the end of the weekend.

Uncharted 2: Why I love it

So I finished Uncharted 2 a little more than a week ago. As I'm sure you have heard, it's great. The thing is, I disliked the first game. In fact, I almost hated the first game. The second game however really fixes everything, like everything. Overall it was a great game, but let us explore just why I enjoyed it so much despite my hatred of the first.

The Combat
In the first game the combat sucked. It had all the mechanics that it should have but the difficulty of them and the execution wasn't the best. First off, the enemies never died. Those guys could take so many hits without even being fazed. And the ones that could get knocked around a bit seemed to be able to take even more bullets before dropping.

Along with this, you ended up having to use a LOT of bullets, bullets that can't do much damage, bullets that need to be picked up off of fallen enemies. You can see the problem. Countless times I wasted several clips on a group of enemies to end up finding myself having to run into the group to pick up some more. Leading to an easy death.

This brings up the idea of the hand-to-hand combat. It wasn't very good too. The only time you ever wanted to use the melee attacks was when there was only one man remaining. If you do it with a few guys around, they will kill you before you're doing beating the first guy down. What ruined it was the very precise timing you needed to have when hitting the square and triangle buttons. Don't get me wrong, needing a sense of timing isn't bad, but needing that precise of it when being rained down on by gun fire is very hard.

Difficulty
So you might be thinking that I just sucked at the game and should have changed to an easier difficulty. Well the thing is, I was playing on easy throughout the whole game. I choose this off the bat since I had heard how good the second game was and needed to finally start the first. I had to get through it quite so I could experience it and know the story and characters.

So you can see why I had become so frustrated with the game when I was losing so much on what should have been easy, at least the choice of difficulties lead me to believe this.

The Platforming
This was the only part I enjoyed about the first game. It had some really good landscapes and made you scale some really crazy towers. The issue with this was that there wasn't enough. After around five minutes of climbing and traversing the environment, you had to go into another gun fight. The whole game was just moving from one gun fight into another. This really made me notice how short the one aspect of the game I enjoyed was and ended up ruining for me.

If Uncharted: Drakes Fortune had less of a focus on the gun-play, it would have been much better.

So what did the second game do that made me love it so much? I'm glad you asked.

The Combat
Fixed. Enemies now don't take ALL the bullets to go down. I can stay in one spot and shoot out people easily. This makes the gun fights last significantly shorter. One bad thing is that picking up ammo is the same but with the ability to actually kill the guys when you need to makes this not as bad.

The hand-to-hand combat is also much, much better. Instead of needing the exact timing when hitting the guy, you can just mash the square button until he is dead. They even add in a counter attack mechanic. This allows you to fight back whenever one of the enemies grabs you or blocks one of your punches. Much better.

Difficulty
Also fixed. I was able to go through the whole game on Normal and find it easier than the first one on Easy. With the enemies actually dying after a realistic number of bullets I found myself having a much better time and even enjoying the gu fights. The only downside was near the end when you have to fight these incredibly over powered enemies. They can kill you in about two hits from either their melee attacks or their crossbows. Thankfully this was only for about one or two chapters at the end.

The Platforming
Great. I enjoyed it in the first game but the way they set it up in this one was much better. They last so much longer, the gun fights don't take away from the traversing and the camera alone both helps point you in the right direction and forces you to look at how gorgeous the environment they created is. In fact, the movements of the camera are one of my favorite parts of the game. The quite cuts and ideal slow motion moments make seeing Nathan Drake jump from a collapsing building better than ever.

The Set Pieces
This is where Uncharted 2 really shines. Not only did it fix everything from the first game, but it managed to make some incredible lasting impressions by making you play incredibly one time moments again and again. Whether this be running down a city street while a tank follows close behind trying to blow you up, climbing out of a train dangling off the end of a cliff with a bullet in your gut or even fighting enemies in a tower that is falling over and making you jump through a window in order to live, everything was amazing. These moments - along with countless others - are what gives me such a good lasting appeal about the game and make it a hard one to forget.

Review: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot - 7

Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot is the second piece of downloadable content for the first-person shooter Borderlands and is centered around a wave-like cooperative multiplayer style of game play. The content sticks to the game’s gorgeous art style and sense of humour along with introducing new multiplayer modes and several new in game options. However, the content surrounds this new cooperative coliseum style fights completely and can cause the content to come up as slightly shallow in overall value.

The main feature about Mad Moxxi is the new coliseum mode to play in. The object of this mode is to survive a number of rounds while enemies flood into the area. Each round has five waves and contains different enemies and different handicaps or bonuses. These little add-ons can range from increasing the damage or one weapon while reducing the effect of others, to game play devices like making the enemies more accurate, have more ammo, or even taking the players shields away from them. There are a number of handicaps that can be set up for each wave and the more rounds you complete, the more bonuses will be added at one time.
The waves also differ from how the enemies will go about trying to kill you and as you progress through each round they will become smarter and stronger. One nice addition to the rounds is that the final wave of each one is called the Boss Wave and pits you and your team against either one of the main story’s bosses or a new one for this content alone.

The waves are formatted like Horde mode from Gears of War 2 or Firefight from Halo: ODST. Like these other games, the coliseum causes your team to stay together and work as one. Leaving to fight by yourself will quickly lead to death when playing on the higher rounds and finding precise locations to set up a camp is important. Each of the three coliseums are based on areas from the main campaign and are set up in very different ways. For example, The Gully consists of a tall sniper tower with three levels of arena beneath it, while The Angelic Ruins is wide open with not many closed off areas to make a safe place to hide out in.

There are a total of three coliseums and two different round caps to choose from. The first being a short five round game (25 waves in total) and the second being a long 20 round game (100 waves). A short game can take around 30 minutes to complete while the latter can last over four hours. Apart from these three arenas to play in, Mad Moxxi also includes an all new bank system and the ability to unlock two more skill points for your character. The bank is probably one of the more intriguing features to the game. It allows players to stash any of your guns and equipment. You can also purchase bank upgrades that will give you more room to hold your stuff. The bank is a very welcomed feature since you now have a place to hold those weird weapons that you’re only carrying to show off to your friends.

The one downside to this add-on is that it focuses completely on the coliseum battles and nothing else. This causes the content to feel a little short and shallow when you look at what you’re really paying for. Despite some of the matches lasting very long, finding out exactly how to position and use your team over and over can come off as a bit repetitive. With that said, the handicaps for each wave add a random element to each fight and can cause you to mix up each of your formations. This addition greatly s and alters the otherwise monotonous nature of simply kill everything.

Despite the short length of time between this and the previous piece of additional content, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot feels like a solid addition to the game. Even though the arena fights can get repetitive during your third hour of the 20 round games, the number of different bonuses and handicaps can still keep you on your feet. The bank system is very welcomed to anyone who has come across a weak but unique gun that they don’t want to have to sell off in order to keep some inventory room. And to anyone who has hit the level cap - but still wants to upgrade their character - the two unlockable skill points are a great addition. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot not only gets the wave-like cooperative game play right but alters it enough to make it feel new and very exciting.

Overall: 7/10