Avatar Review:

AVATAR

     After a decade of anticipation, Avatar has hit theaters both living up to its hype and being a box office smash. Avatar tells the tale of a paraplegic veteran named Jack Sully, who ventures to the planet of Pandora in 2154, but is soon torn between siding with his people or the natives of the planet. As the movie continues, you find out the reason for the human occupation, but you are given an even more insightful look at the native people and why they fight for their homeland. The film does a superb job of establishing its narrative and conflict, but at points felt like a revamped “Dancing with the Wolves.” The films narrative features a typical romance, but also an endearing back-story that helps make the conclusion all the more intense. Avatar has also received high praise for its technical aspects, mostly due to the photorealistic characters interacting with the live action characters. The visuals are breathtaking due to the terrific 3-D technology, which literally makes you feel like you have entered the world of Pandora. James Cameron puts a lot of detail and back story surrounding each character which makes them all engaging, and the world all the more stunning, but toward the end many of the plot twists are predictable and make the film feel cliché. All in all, Avatar is a war movie chronicling a final battle between humans and the natives, but without falling into the category of “Pocahontas-In-Space.” The action is intense, but never feels out of place like most films of the genre. Avatar is a perfect film for friends and family, but is the one movie that you have to see in order to get the full 3-D experience.  Avatar is a cinematic landmark and is truly deserving of all the praise that it has received.

3 ½ out of 4

Running From A Naked Woman in Fear 2

Title: Fear 2

Designer: Monolith Productions

Company: Microsoft                                       

Number of players: 1 (1-16 online)

Platform: Xbox 360

ERSB Rating: M+17

Genre: Horror
Fear 2 Review

You are apart of a elite team of soldiers that are given the task of fighting the paranormal and enduring the supernatural. Alma is free and has released her rage upon the earth, so its up to you to uncover the conspiracy, and bring a end to the horror. You play as Micheal Becket who is apart of a elite team of soldiers that are tasked with fighting the supernatural. The opening mission picks up at the same time the ending of the first game is occurring. Your first mission is to apprehend Genevieve Aristide who is the head of the organization, that imprisoned Alma. Alma was a young eight year old girl that had psychic ability's that made her a outcast. When her abilities were discovered she was put through numerous test ending in her death. The events surrounding her death made it so that even though her physical form was gone, her psychic abilities allowed her to seek revenge. In Fear you constantly see hallucinations of her in the shadows, along with interactions as she sets revenge on her enemies.  Thier will be moments where you will see alma killing enemy troops or stalking them. Their are numerous audio logs and text, that help give you a little back story to what happened. These audio logs are well implemented into the games and help make each level worth exploring. As you unravel what happened to Alma, the game becomes more and more engaging, but at the same time horrific. Many characters die to her hand, and these moments were truly emotional and horrific. While in Fear one Alma was a little girl, in this sequel she is a woman, which make your interactions with her are more personal and mature. Fear one followed a similar storyline, but the events and clues that were found throughout are constantly brought up in the sequel, so if you haven't played it the story is hard to follow. The games pacing and layout was well made and some of the more frightning experiences were memorable. Fear has been known for having some of the best AI in the business and that assumption holds firm in this sequel. The game is simplistic as far as gameplay, but has alot to master when fighitng alot of enemies. When you shoot at enemies they'll hide behind cover, or try to flank you, these reactions make the games characters more endearing. Each level i harder than the last and gives you a larger amount of enemies or harder ones that require most skill. Your character is given the ability to slowdown time which may sound like it makes things easy, but instead adds even mroe depth to the combat and is highly satisfying. You could lose hours with Fear, just with its single player campaign, but its multuplayer will keep you playing for months. The amount of work put into the atmosphere and characters help bring you into the world of Fear and actually make you care about each one of them. Thier are plenty of audio logs that add to the atmosphere, along with plenty different pathways and objectives that will leave Fear in your console for months.Your goals are well implemented into the game and help make it so that you dont have to go from menu to menu, in order to find out what you have to do. When you complete a objective your given another one or rewarded with a new weapon and awards. Thier are instances where you will not understand what is occuring, but these instances are few and dont effect the experience. Fear was a solid game as far as combat, but really the story didnt become as engaging as the first, until the end. The ending was annoying and the campaign felt short. The multiplayer was fun, but unbalanced compared to other games. I would still recommend Fear if you want a fresh take on the genre and solid gameplay.
Final Score
8 out of 10
Pros:

• Solid Combat
• Great characters
• Good scares
• Fun multiplayer

Cons: 

• Ending isn't satisfactory
• Lacks the amount of Story in the Original.

Dark Void: Demo Impressions

Dark Void was created by the award winning team of Crimson Skies. The game mixes aerial and ground combat throughout, it also implements a cover system much like "Gears of Wars". The aerial combat looks and feels like Crimson Skies along with adding in other elements that help change up the pace. The demo is short, but does offer up a taste of both gameplays, weather your shooting down alien vessels or mowing down infantry. From what i could tell from the demo, you will be given a wide variety of objectives and will be awarded with points in order to upgrade your suit and weapons. Dark Void tells the story of William Augustus Grey who is sent to a parallel, after crashing in the Burmuda Triangle. Augustus is now given the task of helping humanity fight a alien menace called the Watchers along with trying to get home. Dark Void seems to even have a variety of bossfights which could be seen at the end of the demo, which appeared to be a giant lizard. Now for the verdict, From what i could tell from the demo Dark Void is organized well and the transition between flight and ground combat feels in place, but the controls are sometimes to diffentuate. Although the voice work is well done, the main character seemed too cliche and less than engaging. The camera was a huge frustration for me, and way to complicated to target a enemy. Although a demo, the fact that the game is a few weeks away means that what we see is what were getting, and with that Dark Voids visuals look like they could be on the original Xbox. The controls were confusing and hard to get used to because of the mixture of ground and aerial combat, such as you could be in a intense firefight and all of the sudden your character will fly, hit a wall and die. The games AI is as dumb as they get and with my time with the demo they would usually stay in one place and not even fire at you until you shoot a round. Once again these are the isues that I found in the demo. Hopefully these issues are only for the demo, but once again the fact that the game is only a week away means that these issues could be seen in the final product. I would like to see how the story develops and also understand more about the main protagonist, yet the annoying camera could interfere. I had high hopes for Dark Void and I hope that the issues that I found in the demo stay there and it turns out for the better.

2009’s Biggest Gaming Disappointments

2009 was a good year for gaming, but it still had its share of disappointments that can’t be excused. Mostly this year we saw our share of multiplayer and single player games that were over hyped and didn’t live up to their potential. Other disappointments would include the increase in hardware failure with the Xbox 360. Game or Console, 2009 should have been a groundbreaking year, but instead was just a decent one. These are 2009’s top disappointments.
5) Halo ODST

Now I am a huge Halo and have followed the series from day one, but Halo ODST was one of the biggest wastes of money this year. The single player campaign was by far one of the shortest that I have encountered, even on the hardest of difficulties. Bungie promised a brand new experience and a long campaign, yet ODST never feels like a new Halo, but rather just a revamped Halo 3. I was hoping that ODST would live up to the hype, which it did as far as delivering new characters and environments, but the whole open world gameplay became rather annoying. Hopefully Reach will deliver a longer campaign, unlike ODST’s four hour run-time. The new mode firefight is fun, but could hardly justify the full price of the game. ODST did have one good aspect and that’s the Beta that came with it, but who knows when Bungie will finally release it.

4) Delays


2009 is a year for the books, as far as the numerous delays that occurred. Many games were pushed back weather do to Modern Warfare 2 or issues with the company. Games such as Splinter Cell and Bioshock 2 were set to release late 2009, but were soon pushed into early 2010. 2009 did still give us a decent amount of games, but the inconsistency in reviews and releases, such as the summer drought is still a big disappointment. Although 2009 was a fairly good year, as far as the releases that made it, it still would have been nice to of seen more variety than FPS after FPS.
3) Movie Tie-Ins Still Suck


Movie tie-ins have grown a reputation for being mediocre and rather awful experiences. This year we received some of the worse including Terminator Salvation and most recent Avatar tie-in. Movie Tie-ins would be bearable if only more effort was put into them and given new gameplay rather than borrowing from other games. GI Joe proved that developers could care less about what their putting out there, but rather the money that they make from it. The fact that their have been promises for much improved movie games, and very little results is a disappointment on its own.
2) Lack of hardcore games for the Wii

2009 should have been a great year for the Wii, but instead it showed that Nintendo’s best games are in the past. With few exceptions such as Dead Space: Extraction, the Wii has a lot to live up to which should hopefully change next year. The wii has lately only had mini party games, that don’t cater to the hardcore market. Their have been exceptions such as “The Conduit” and “Dead Space: Extraction”, but the fact that this year alone has offered very few of these games, is a disappointment.

1)System Failures still over 50%

The Xbox 360 May offer one of the most entertaining and most addicting experiences out there, but it all comes at a price mostly due to the increase in Xbox failures. The Red-Ring plagues the 360 even after nearly five years of being released. I myself am on my third Xbox and know many that have had to send theirs back more than once this year alone. Who knows, maybe next year will hold the solution to this rather annoying epidemic.

Unraveling the Truth in Dead Space

Title: Dead  Space

Designer: Electronic Games

Company: Microsoft

Number of players: 1

Platform: Xbox 360

ERSB Rating: M+17

Genre: Action/Adventure

Premise: You are a engineer sent aboard the mining ship Ishimura after hearing a distress call. You soon find that the ship is overrun with a alien infection and you are soon separated from your squad. You alone must complete numerous objectives in order to uncover the horrifying truth beneath the outbreak.  

Story: You play as a engineer named Issac who is a mining engineer sent aboard the ishimura in order to investigate a distress call. In the beginning of the game you are introduced to Isaccs motives, which include a quest to uncover the fate of his girlfriend. That aspect of the story becomes more fascinating as Issac's perception of what is real of hallucination becomes more changed. By that i mean that throughout the game you see things that may not be there and those moments have a overall effect on the games conclusion. In the beginning the game starts out as a tutorial giving you various weapons and enemies to dispose of. The story is handled through your HUD and by various audio logs that give clues to what happened to the people of the Ishimura. The story pacing is flawless as you make lonesome tracks from each corridor of the ship, fighting bosses, unraveling the truth, and fighting the necromorths. The necromorths are the enemies that you encounter in the majority of the game. The enemies are the crew of the mining ship and can come from any direction. That is what makes Dead Space so memorable where at every corner you could be attacked or dragged by the alien menace. Each chapter has a dead conflict and meaning, but also helps to move the story along, without having it drag on. The characters are well design and acted out and even though Issac doesn't talk, you still grow a deep bond and actually care about what happens to him in the conclusion. Each part of Dead Space is fantastic, but the most engaging character is the Ishimura itself. Throughout the entire game its the Ishimura that helps set the mood and the atmosphere which help make the campaign more engaging and more likely to venture through again, long after the main game is finished. 

Challenge: Dead Space is a hard game, that barely lets up on the intensity nor action. Around each  corner is a potential enemy and in every vent is danger. You never feel safe in dead space, thanks to the well throughout and original combat. Rather than shooting your enemies in the head your objective is to strategically dismember them, by cutting off their arms legs and making them immobile. The Necromorths are living tissues that has been reanimated which makes it harder the cut them down and kill them, making each encounter with one of them a interesting and intense fight. The game only gets harder as the game progresses, giving you new enemies and objectives that require different skills and weapons. The game also includes a detailed progression system that allows you to upgrade Isacc giving him new armor and weaponry in order to take down the harder foes. From start to finish Dead Space is a hard and atmospheric shooter that never lets up until the last credit rolls. 

The Transformation of Time/Engagement:: You could easily lose twelve hours along on the single player campaign, but when the game is done you are given the opportunity to do another run through with a pimped out Isacc. The game is a bit on the short side, but with the in depth back story ranging from hundreds of different viewpoints and characters you could lose even more time exploring the various rooms of the Ishimura. The game has depth and well worth playing thorough multiple times in order to get every part of the story and characters out of it.  The games characters are engaging and the the levels are well thought out and well made, but more of how the story unravels is what really makes Dead Space one of the most memorable experiences to date. The fantastic voice acting and engaging story help aid Dead Space differentiate itself from the other horror games out there. I found the back story of the various character the most engaging part about Dead Space. Dead Spaces story is cut into three parts the colony where the Artifact was uncovered, next the Ishimura where the artifact was brought to, than the story of Issac and his crew. (The artifact is a huge piece of the story thats value is uncovered as the game goes on). Dead Space gives you a engaging main story along with a fantastic side stories that make you wish that you could have seen the full set of events that led up to the present endeavor.

Information Structure/Clear Goals and Feedback: The game implements very little HUD and most of the information that is given to you will show up on the start screen. The game shows you how to get to your objectives by the player clicking the left thumbstick. Doing so puts out a blue light that sends you to your next objective, this helps keep you inside of the world, rather than have you going between title screen and the in game screens. Whenever you complete an objective you are rewarded new gear and weapons along with more objectives that must be completed in order to advance to the end of the game. 
Authors Note: Dead space was one of the most memorable and scariest games that i have ever encountered. It is definetly going to be remembered for its well thoughout plot and characters along with the breathtaking atmoshphere. Dead Space is a amazing game, and i would recommended it and the movie and comics that are out now. Dead Space 2 cant come soon enough.