Phoenix Gamer Review - Fallout 3

Fallout 3

Well, unless you've been under a rock for the past few years, you know that Fallout 3 is by far one of the best games out right now. Set in a world where you can choose everything about your player puts you in an immersive the likes of which hasn't been this interactive since KOTOR (Knights Of The Old Republic). But now onto the review (By the way this review covers the DLC as well):



Graphics: 9/10

Graphically, this game is fantastic. Running off the same engine as Oblivion, The environments are beautiful and the enemies are scary. That being said there are a few drawbacks, namely the facial animation of the NPCs give a definite "Deer in the headlights look". They look dead and lifeless. Also, the weapons choices are limited at best. There is not a whole to choose from. It's your basic: pistol, shotgun, hunting rifle and the like. Melee weapons are a bit more varied but could've done more.

Story: 6/10

As much as I love this game, the story is not the strongest part of the game. You start the game.......being born. You pick your sex, name and how you'll look in about 19 years (Apparently in the future you can do that) and then just like that, your mother dies and it skips ahead to you a few months older. You crawl to a book were you establish your stats for later in the game. Fast forward to your 12th birthday, you get a BB gun and shoot some over-sized roaches, big whoop. Ok, skip ahead to you at 16. You have to take an aptitude test to establish what your job in the Vault is gonna. Skip ahead to you at 19. Daddy's left the Vault and for some reason the Vault people are after you. You get help from the Overseer's daughter and escape to the outside world where you must find your father.

Audio: 10/10

By far on of my favorite parts of the game. The 1940s soundtrack gives it a real sense of nostalgia. The soundtrack included artists such as Roy Brown, Billie Holiday, Billy Munn, Cole Porter, and Bing Crosby. I was raised on music like this so it's refreshing to hear these classics.

Gameplay: 9.5/10

The gameplay of this game is damn near perfect. Aside from the occasional bug or glitch it plays flawlessly. The world is entirely open-ended, you decide how you play. Prime example in the beginning of the game you have the choice of detonating a nuclear bomb in the middle of the town, turn the guy in to the sheriff or do nothing. The freedom you have in this game is unparalleled there are multiple ways to complete an objective. The DLC packs offer an expanded world to explore from a simulated battle in Alaska to outer space with people and weapons that round out the experience in a very fluid way.

Overall Score (Averaged): 8.6/10

While not a perfect, Fallout 3 is an excellent game. I wish the story could've been a little more original but the gameplay more than makes up for it.
Review submitted by Tony of 3FG

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (Disc 1) Review

First of all, its a great addition to the series. That being said, the game is unforgiving,it will not give you any hints to where you've got to go next. You will feel a mixture of emotions: confusion,vertigo,and pure RAGE. After you figure out where you need to go, and if you haven't rage quit the game, it becomes a very fun beat 'em up game. The first disc you'll fight hulking werewolves, giant spiders, huge trolls and finally giant stone titans aka colossus. Now the action is pretty solid, you get XP points from each kill that you can use to buy combo upgrades or magic power moves. You can at any point choose to play any of the levels you have completed to find fallen knights you might have missed that upgrade your health bar, to unlocking unattainable power ups with your new found powers. The game screams high production values and rivals any SyFy movie effects, but that is not hard to do. It almost feels like a good horror movie ala Van Helsing. Like I said, the graphics are amazing and the gameplay keeps on par with the production values. That being said, the soundtrack is lacking some of the old Castlvania classic tunes, it has a new orchestra production sound, which adds to the game. Sadly, us Castlevania fans will miss the classic staple songs of the previous installments. What they fail in sound they more then make up with action gameplay. The controls are solid, you won't have any problems performing any combo in the game. The story revolves around Gabriel Belmont wanting to kill the Lords of Shadow and bring his girlfriend back from the dead in the process. Yes, he does use the Belmont family weapon of choice, a whip.

TITANS: On the first disc there are two titans you must fight,you must climb them and learn their attack patterns, whilst they try to shake you off their bodies. You must navigate their bodies and hit power orbs located across their limbs. The first titan requires you to avoid two of his ground pounds after that you can climb him, but the second titan is a little more complex. If you don't know what to do with the second titan as far as, how to climb his body, you will be stuck. For the second titan you must stand still as far as you can from her and she will ground pound the floor with her leg, then she will throw a stone at you at which point you grab it with the right trigger and spin the left thumb stick. This will throw the rock back at the titan and allow you to climb and finish her.

COMBAT SYSTEM:The combat system has great combos,even the jump button is integrated into the system. By pressing the jump button you can launch enemies into the air and perform air combos. Projectiles come in the form of daggers that can be charged and released at enemies. If you hold down and charge the projectile button the dagger gains and area of effect. There are no health potions in the game, so you must rely on your combo and evade skills to heal yourself. How does this work? Well, you have a combo meter that fills up with each successive hit you perform on an enemy. The more the combo meter fills up the more light orbs an enemy will drop when it dies, but if you get hit the combo meter diminishes. So the key to success is, not to get hit and achieving big hit combos. When an enemy dies you press in the left thumb stick and it will suck in light orbs replenishing your light magic meter. At any time you can press the Right Button and it will activate light magic, you will glow with a blue aura and do a little more damage plus your health bar will regenerate while your under this mode. You can also collect dark energy which does not heal you but does a great deal of damage to enemies. I recommend you start the game on easy because the game can save during a mid boss level, and if you have no health when it auto saved you are screwed, unless you pull a clutch out of a chicken's corn hole. Which I had to magically do. I started the game on knight mode and it made things a little more difficult. I forgot to mention there are parts in the game where you must button mash on a specific button to accomplish a final kill or to escape an attack, I personally hate that. I would much rather prefer quick time button presses then that (insert explicative of your choice here). Oh, and yeah, the game is narrated by Sir Patrick (we are not worthy) Stewart.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS: Ok, so aside from combos you are going to be doing a lot of platforming and back tracking with new skills to unlock more power ups. Another thing, when you replay a level, challenges will appear on the top right corner of your screen. One challenge I noticed had me fighting a titan under a time limit. Of coarse, I failed the the challenge. You will be using your whip a lot to climb ledges and to cross pits of death. Lucky for you, if you fall the penalty is not death but merely a loss of health. You will respawn back on the previous ledge you fail from, and be given a chance to try again. Once you loose all your health its game over, and you have to restart from the last save point. The level design is pretty good as the levels themselves become puzzles. For you must figure out where you have to go next and how to get there. Some areas require you to use beast mounts to traverse, wolves can climb roots and jump chasms, giant spiders can pull objects with webs and giant trolls can SMASH stuff.

I'm barely on the first disc, so I can't rate the game yet, so far so good. Rest assured the game is long and you will get your moneys worth.

Written by Ron Zambie, Contributor for Phoenix Gamer

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops, First Strike: Pack 1 (DLC)

The price for this new dlc (downloadable content) is 1200 Microsoft points, that translates to 15 bucks,but is it worth it? Well, if you plan on playing Black Ops for the next 3 months, then yes, it's worth every penny. The dlc consists of four multiplayer maps:Berlin Wall, Discovery, Kowloon and Stadium; it also includes 1 new zombie map Ascension. I'll go into the regular multiplayer maps first; Berlin Wall is a map set in an urban sprawl separated by turret guns that will turn on you if you step on prohibited zones of the map. Discovery, an abandoned outpost along the coast of Antarctica filled with dangerous crevasses you can fall into if your not careful.Kowloon is set in a Vietnamese favela; where you can zip line across the map. It offers close quarters combat with no safe place to hide. Stadium is a midsized map with scaffolds to climb and buildings that overlook a courtyard; a very solid map. Now, let me talk about the new zombie level Ascension, it is a very big zombie map, you will get lost the first couple of times you play it. It's also a bit more complex then previous zombie maps as you have to activate 3 lunar landers before you can use the pack a punch machine; and that's after you activate the power switch. The lunar landers transport you to different parts of the map when you need to escape the zombie onslaught. The lunar landers aren't the only new things offered by this new map, there's also 2 new special grenades. The Gersh grenade, an awesome black hole creating grenade that sucks in zombies by the dozens. You can use the Gersh grenade to buy you some time to pick up fallen comrades, it basically replaces the monkey bombs from the previous installments. And the matryoshka dolls, about 3 to 5 other smaller dolls pop out of the main doll and blow up, mowing down zombies in the process. They also added 2 new perks the stamina-up, which grants you infinite sprint; and the Phd Flopper a.k.a the Floppy Nuke. In order to activate the Floppy Nuke you must run and jump off a ledge, when you land on your stomach it will cause a mini nuke to go off killing all zombies around you. It is rumored that you are more likely to get a power up drop from zombies when you do this. I haven't confirmed this as I don't use the Floppy Nuke much. Now, this time around instead of dogs attacking you every 5 to 6 rounds, space monkeys will attack you; they will fall from the sky and attack you with area effect stomps. The space monkeys will only attack your party if you buy a perk, they will also attack the vending machine for the perks you have bought. If you don't protect the vending machines the monkeys will destroy them and you will loose your perk. If you protect the vending machines for the activated perks you have, you will be rewarded with a free bonus perk at the end of the round. I found this new map to be very fun as it gives you a lot fun new toys (death machine power up) and space to move around in. If I had to rate this dlc, I'd give it a 9 out of 10 if only because its a bit pricey, but it is full of high quality maps.

Article written by Ron Zambie, contributor for Phoenix Gamer.

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