GAME REVIEW: Battlefield 3

Not a bad game. 

GAME REVIEW: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

        Spearheading a year of evolution, revolution, and profound gaming excellence, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a pristine role-playing game that gets almost everything right. What Skyrim doesn't do right, it does it in the rightest way possible, allowing for an experience beyond anything ever before expressed in the gaming world.
        As a gamer, I have tended to go for more casual, easy-going, multiplayer centric games in recent times, playing games like LittleBgPlanet, Fifa, and Rock Band (although I have played Infamous and Uncharted). For this reason, Skyrim was a completely new experience for me. Having never touched an Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim made me feel somewhat left out from a long-running tale of lore, myth, and fantasy. Luckily, this game is idiosyncratic enough to allow gamers to jump in and play, as it refers to ancient lore from previous games while containing a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque story if it's own. Skyrim's graphics are solid, it's music flawless, and it's gameplay astounding. But what makes Skyrim stand out is not it's production value or it's thrilling combat, it's Skyrim's awe-inspiring amount of missions, allowing hundreds of hours to be drafted into the game- each of of them more exciting than the last.
   
     GRAPHICS
     Bethesda's games are not usually noted for their graphical intensity, but they have always been solid. Everything in Skyrim is polished and the world looks amazing in it's full wonder. Some parts if the game are prone to glitches, with the odd frame-rate stumble now and again that becomes more frequent as the game progresses and the save file enlarges. With this easily patchable flaw aside, however, Skyrim is graphically impressive- it's presentable, atmospheric, and well-toned.

     SOUND & MUSIC
     It is impressive how Bethesda had the time to put in over 100 locations, 1000 missions, dozens of dragon boss fights and thousands of NPCs into a game and still produce an astounding soundtrack. One of my friends actually mistook the sounds of my brother playing Skyrim for the music from the Lord of the Rings- revealing the power of the music, the epic symphonies that are instrumental to the behemoth that is Skyrim. This titanic soundtrack is boosted by good weapon sounds, great ambient effects, and fitting (yet increasingly repetitive) voiceovers.

     STORY
     In Skyrim you get to create your own character. You choose the looks and race and name, and then begin life as an adventurer. The story takes place in the titular realm, Skyrim, where a bloody civil war is raging, only made worse by the revival of the long dead dragon race. You, the last of the almighty "dragon borns" must use your power of the "voice"- the language of dragons, to use "shouts"- dragon powers, to defeat the dragons and put an end to the madness. On the way you can help out many of the local Jarls (akin to mayors or governors) of towns, become Thanes (nobles) of towns, help out civilians, join guilds (The Thieves Guild, the Companions Warrior Guild, The Dark Brotherhood, and many more). Along the way you'll do missions in a plethora of locations, buy horses, houses, weapons, items, armor, food and animals, and tone your skills in fighting, magic, lock-picking, and many other areas. You can even get married, become a student, and fight villains from trolls to vampires, You'll meet witches, mammoths, pilgrims, salesmen, and priests, and you'll go to and escape jail, bribe guards, and hire guards of your own. Skyrim is something else- a game that could only be gotten if you went to an alchemy lab and mixed Fallout, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, Lord of the Rings, and Final Fantasy into one game and multiplied it by ten. Skyrim is 9000 times better than Duke Nukem Forever and it spent half the time to create. It's incredible.

     GAMEPLAY
     Control-wise, Skyrim is nothing new- L1 and R1 are the attack buttons (each hand respectively), and each can be equipped to combat weapons or magic powers (however there are powerful but slow two-handed weapons). Players can use first or third person, and have the ability to pick up items, talk with people, jump, run (a stamina bar checks this), wait, sleep, move items, sneak, lock-pick, attack, travel to locations, shoot arrows in first person, train in skills, absorb dragon souls, do magic, climb mountains, swim, aim, steal, cheat, lie, help, and heal all with the use of a fathomable control system. The combat is fun- although I think the melee combat is superior to the bow and arrow combat. You can explore catacombs, castles, dungeons, shops, houses, fortresses, lakes, rivers, mountains, barrows, farms, mills, mines and villages, on the way killing bandits, hunting deer, rampaging as a were-wolf (you read that right), doing good deeds for the king, and, of course, dragon-slaying. The game has an autosave feature and a manual save one, the manual one working to the players' advantage the majority of the time, and players can travel on foot, in carriage, on horse, or through teleportation depending on the location or the availability of transport. Weapons vary- axes, swords, daggers, bows, war hammers, and shovels among others, and destruction magic, dragon shouts, and good ol' fight-fightin' are also always avilable. Magic powers are upgraded and discovered as the game progresses, and range from healing to creating light to summoning the ghosts of animals (akin to Potter's patronuses). As missions continue, new options become available, and your inventory largens. Watch out as there is a weight limit (a good reason to buy a house to store stuff in). To talk of the gameplay in full would be to write a 900-page novel, but you get the picture.

     REPLAY VALUE
     Overall, Skyrim is devastating to the chances of a better RPG to be made anytime soon, but I know nothing of RPGS and I've heard a lot of hype about Mass Effect 3. With a millennium of gameplay available here, gamers really couldn't do better.

QUICK REVIEW: "Filler 2" is Intensely Difficult

Filler 2
Click to play this game.

"Filler" was a great game, a flash game where you had to fill up 2/3 of the screen with balls. Now Filler 2 is out, and it's even greater. With an all new challenge mode, this game is certainly recommended.

GAME REVIEW: LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars PS3

Last week, I purchased LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars for the PS3. It took me about 5 days and 25 hours of gameplay to complete the game fully, including 100% on-game completion and the platinum trophy (my first platinum). Now I bring you my review, the first review for the shoulders of Firey Vengeance blog, in both video and written form. 

Lego Star Wars III costs only $49.99 new at gamestop, a $10 downgrade from most other newly released PS3 games. This is both good and bad news. While it does allow many more to access the game easier, it also shows a considerable downgrade in the confidence TT Games have with their series. Still, the upcoming release of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean shows that TT are relentless and diverse in the production of their games. 

I hope that LEGO Pirates does well in its own right, but today I'm here to talk about LEGO Star Wars III (Although it is actually the fourth in the series, technically). LSW3 is a giant step forward from the previous LEGO games, and a small nudge forward from last year's excellent LEGO Harry Potter (Expect a sequel 3rd or 4th quarter).  While the ability to design customized levels and any online option are omitted, other new features bring the game forward in a new and improved direction. 

The first new thing I noticed about LSW3 is that it is abundant in content. Dozens of characters, including all of your favorites from the TV show, some returning characters from the movies (you unlock characters such as Vader and even Vader's Apprentice from collecting all the mini kits on a level) , and the ability to make your own custom characters, up to 18.

 Also, there is a giant boost level-wise. This time around, levels are bigger, more difficult (especially on the true-jedi front, if you don't get score x2), and, unlike some of the abominations of levels filling the blasphemy of a tribute in LEGO Indiana Jones 2, more true to the series. The cutscenes capture and lighten some of the great moments from the series, and, as a rare watcher of the show, make those who haven't had the chance to see the show more curious of the actually, pretty good series. In addition, a new mode, named "Assault" has been added. This mode is reminiscent of Star Wars Battlefront's galactic conquest mode. Although not as long-lived, completionists and those looking for an extra challenge will have their time taken up capturing bases (Basically command posts, except captured slightly differently), destroying statues of Yoda and Grievous, and building escape pods. There are a bunch of these missions, too many to count, and they are available as both republic and separatist campaigns. While fulfilling (and a requirement to get that prestigious gold brick collecting trophy), these levels are extremely repetitive and tedious, and take up hours of time better used when playing story levels. Another refreshing feature is the great new ability to both fly starships and walk on land in two levels. 

The main hub of the game is ridiculously over-done this time around. You can travel between two ships, the republic and separatist ships, and visit countless numbers of rooms. Some can only be unlocked by collecting a certain amount of gold bricks, which are rewarded when you complete, get true-jedi, or get all minikits on a level, and when you complete a bounty hunter mission or assault mission. the game isn't particularly hard, especially now that the red bricks are much easier to get (you don't even have to pay for something if you type in the code for it, and you'll still get the collect all red-brick trophy). Still, it's more difficult than previous games. Also, there are gold brick missions to do in between the two hub ships, where you can fly vehicles. 

All that's really left to talk about are the graphics, which are awesome. It's 10 times more HD that the previous lego games, and the lighting effects are superb. The game is almost completely glitch-free, although I had to restart my PS3 a couple times since there was so much content on the screen at once (they can now have like 500 characters on screen at once). Sound-wise, nothing much has changed, except for the addition of terrible elevator music on the republic HUB ship and awesome elevator music on the separatists HUB ship. The camera is not different from that of LEGO Harry Potter, and is pretty solid, at least in comparison to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. 

Overall, LSW3: The Clone Wars is a solid game, and a vast improvement over it's predecessors, especially in content amount. There are still improvements to be made, but TT Games have definitely taken the right step. 

Pros:

• An amazing amount of new content and gameplay modes
• Graphics have gotten a much needed boost
• Stays much closer to the parent TV-series than other LEGO games
• More difficult this time around

Cons:

• Republic elevator music sucks
• A lot of content creates glitches
• Assault missions are tedious
• Camera issues