Nathan Drake, you've gotta love em'...
UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THEIVES
STORY
Some time after Drake's Fortune, Nate is just hangin' round' a bar, when two old freinds approach him. They have a "job" they need him to particpate, in which would see them braking into a museum, and stealing a ceramic peice that belonged to Marco Polo, and Nathan just flat out agrees to help. Upon retreiving the artifact, they discover ta map, and a chip of lengendary Cintomani stone. After Nate talks a tad bit too much, he is stranded by his partner flynn , captured and sent off to a prison cell. Sully eventually bails him out, and they follow in Flynn's footsteps, and find the entire cintomani stone. They both deduce that Marco Polo, was on the trail of Shambala, the mythical city that housed the tree of life.
Nate then leaves off on a daring quest, to stop the tree of life's power from falling into the wrong hands, by stopping thousands of baddies singlehandedly, because he can do that.
GAMEPLAY
Uncharted 2, keeps many of the elements from the original game, and also introduces new ones. We have the same run n' gun style action of the first game, and more climbing and jumping segment's akin to mario. The level of action in this game is tremendously amped up, including a fight on top of a train, and running on the roof's of collapsing buildings. In other segments, you just walk through a village and intoduce yourself to non-english speaking people, or admire artifacts in a secret room.
GRAPHICS
Uncharted 2 is huge graphical improvement from the first entry. The character models were the best I'd seen until Uncharted 3, the enviroments look extremeley realistic as well, with the snowcaped mountans of nepal, or the dense jungles of burma as your background, with rubble, changing scapes of snow, and leaves blowing throughout the jungle.
CONTENT
Uncharted 2 features alot of profanity, almost everyword short of the ones that make a film rated R. Violence is amped up as well, with a bigger focus on hand to hand combat, with moves such a neck snapping, and pulling the pin on grenades attached to the other guys belt. Blood is more present than in Drakes Fortune, but not in the gory style of Call of Duty.
A suggestive scene is shown in one of the first cinematics, but it implies more than does show, and I would say it's at the PG level. On another note, this game established Drake as a thief, so he's not exactly your perfect role model.
CONCLUSION
When it was released, Uncharted 2 won the highest amount of game of the year awards ever. This number was only surpassed by Uncharted 3, a later the last of us, another Naughty Dog game, if that tells you anything. It is a phenomenal game, and not only that a buttload of fun. I highly reccomend it to any PlayStation gamer, and if you don't have the PS3, when the price goes down, get one, this is one of the no brainer games to go with.
9 out of 10
go buy it....
DETAILS
Developed by Naughty Dog
Published by Sony Computer Entertainment
Released in 2009
Rated T by the ESRB
For PS3
The long forgotten PlayStation mascot...
CRASH BANDICOOT
STORY
Crash is a peacful bandicoot living in the austrailan islands, who is genetically modified by the evil Dr. Neo Cortex, to become a milliatry leader. After being found unworthy, crash is abandoned and thats where the game begins, with a wacky plot full of wack. But we do have to admit, games like this usually aren't the best at story telling.
GAMEPLAY
Crash is a platform game akin to Mario in some respects. You guide Crash along narrow jungle paths, collecting strawberrys, smashing boxes, dodging crabs, skunks and other animals, and avioding obsticles. This is a "3D" game, but the way the levels play, it's more like a 2D game from a different camera angle.
GRAPHICS
The basic PS1 chunkies, nothing special by today's standards, but for then awesome.
It goes for a cartoon look (obviously).
CONCLUSION
A fun platformer exclusivee to PS1, but not as good as Mario/Sonic other like games. The makers of Crash later made 3 sequels, and the developed the Jak and Daxter series for PS2, and even more recently, the Uncharted series, and the last of us. If your looking for a fun classsic title to play, I reccomend downloading this one from the PSN.
8 out of 10
While admitedly not the greatest game ever, the originality is always a merit for a higher score. Spinning being the only attack, the querky characters and enviroments, and the strawberries, all contribute to this score, although being modeled on other games,
Crash Bandicoot is certainly a one of kind.
DETAILS
Developed by Naughty Dog
Published by Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated E by the ESRB
Released in 1996
For PlayStation, re-released on PSN for PSP and PS3.
The first person shooter genre just got better, well 11 years ago at least...
MEDAL OF HONOR: RISING SUN
STORY
Joe Griffin is your average joe for 1941, he joind the marine corps, and was stationed on the U.S.S. Arizona, and was on board when the December 7th attacks happened. But alas a few months later, his brother was taken prisoner, while they were helping each other out in the phillipines, and for his outstanding service record, he is drafted into the O.S.S.
GAMEPLAY
It maintain's the classic Medal of Honor run and gun, but adds more features, like veering off from the main path to find bonus objectives. Gun's are not picked up, like in newer games, but players instead have a pre-determined load out for each mission. Enemy A.I. isn't the brightest ever, but good enough. One thing is that the control scheme of games 11 years ago is slightly different from what it is today, so don't expect to find the Call of Duty control scheme in the pre-set control schemes.
GRAPHICS
They weren't very good back in 2003 for the time, and weren't much of an improvement from Medal of Honor: Frontline. It does go for a more cartoony look than other shooter games, and perfectly achieves it on the PS2/GameCube/XBOX hardware.
CONCLUSION
Rising Sun is a good game, but too similar to Frontline. The only way it's better is through the story telling, which is alot better than previous entries, but it falls short in other areas. I'm not usually one to judge graphics much, accept when a game is below the standard for when it came out, and this is one of those games. Although it does remind us a time when games didn't need blood and guts to be awesome.
7.5 out of 10
DETAILS
Developed by EA Los Angeles (now Danger Close Games)
Published by EA
Rated T by the ESRB
Released in 2003
For PS2, GameCube, and XBOX
Since our hero never heard the words that inspired him, did he continue to be..
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
STORY
Set a mere two tears after The Amazing-Spider-Man. Everything is going well for Peter Parker, as he is a symbol of hope to the city, he finaly graduated high school, and is with the girl of his dreams. Around this time, Harry Osborne, is called to see his estranged father Norman Osborn, founder of OsCorp(the lab that Dr. Connors was employed) in his final moments. When he dies, the company is left to Harry, and Peter an old friend of Harry's comes and reintroduces himself. Around that time Max Dillon, an OsCorp electrician is "killed" in a accedent, but when he arises from what was more like a coma, he's blue and can absorb and control electricity. Spider-Man will once again have to rise to save the day!(because who else would?)
CONTENT
Again as with all the films i've reviewed so far, this is a action film. That means it's violent, but it does maintain the PG-13 rating by a long shot. Electro kills people with electricity, is mad at spidey for some reason, and wants to be seen. The film deals with what it is exactly that drives heroes to do what they do, just more tragicly than normal. Again lot's of kissing spread throughout the film. Languge is again light when compared to the recent Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but still present.
CONCLUSION
It's a fun film, and I went to see it last friday(opening night), and had a blast. It took me awhile to muster up the courage to write this review, as the original Spider-Man 2 is my favorite Marvel film, and 2, how it left me thinking after the end. I've followed Spidey's adventures in film, games, and comics(off and on) for the last ten years, and I can tell you this is really good movie, but not the best of the series. It's main plot is good, but it also expands on Richard and Mary Parkers deaths a bit more, and introduces Rhino and Green Goblin for the next movie, so at times it feels as though it's just there to be there for no reason, but I know these things will be expanded on the next part. The bad reviews that have popped up, are from haters of the first entry of the series, and so alot of them are biased that the original Spider-Man 2 was better, and I'm here to say yes it is, but we're not talking about the old series we're talking about the new film having improved over the last one, and yes it did.
So with a non biased review from a biased person I give this one...
7 out of 10
The improvement may be small, but I bet that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will be...
AMAZING
DETAILS
STARRING
Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy
Jamie Fox as Max Dillon/Electro
Sally Field as Aunt May
Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborne
Paul Giamatti as Rhino
Chris Cooper as Norman Osborne
Directed By Marc Webb
Music by Hans Zimmer
Rated PG-13
Released May 2, 2014
Published by Sony Pictures
