James Skemp's StrivingLife

A wonderful short story

When Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was first being discussed I was keeping my eye on it, as I had picked up Heavenly Sword when I picked up my PlayStation 3 and thorougly enjoyed it. However, after lackluster reviews I opted to wait until I picked it up. Unfortunately, it took this long to finally do so.

The gameplay consists of combat and exploration, and I found both to be rather satisfying. The former does allow you to get by in normal difficulty without too much strategy, which in this case I liked perfectly fine since I was playing it mostly for the story.

The exploration is extremely fluid, allowing you to quickly and easily move around, as opposed to having to move to just the right spot, or hold the left stick in just the right way.

But what I really enjoyed from the game was the story. I had no intention of finishing the game as quickly as I did (over the course of two days, maybe hitting double digit hours), but I had a very hard time putting the game down after completing a chapter. In fact, the only time I was disappointed with the story was at the very end, since I felt the ending was far too abrupt, and expected for there to be an extrended, or true ending if the game was completed on hard (which doesn't appear to be the case).

Each of the main characters has personality, something I also got from Heavenly Sword, and by the end of the journey, despite it being so short, I actually felt I had some understanding of each of the characters.

In regards to length, while it's true the game is short, it doesn't feel rushed, and there's enough to keep you playing for a little while longer, such as finding collectibles or purchasing the DLC, if you so choose.

If you enjoyed the experience that was Heavenly Sword I believe you'd enjoy this experience as well. If the combat appeals to you, I'd also recommend picking up a copy. The climbing/exploration is fairly simple, so if you'd like a complex experience in that regard, or if you want a complex combat system, you'll want to look elsewhere.

Overall, I give Enslaved: Odyssey to the West 4 of 5 stars, and I will be going through the game at least one more time.

Over the top antics delivers just what I needed

After the bombardment of commercials online for this game, I had it on my list to pick up after the price dropped into the $20 range. However, since PlayStation 3 users can get a free copy of Saints Row 2 by picking it up before January or February of next year, and the price at retailers had dropped to $40, I decided to pick up a copy early. And Rooster Teeth's videos on the game influenced me fairly heavily as well.

Before I go any further I should note that I've played GTA 3 and Vice City on the PlayStation 2. However, I don't think I ever finished the story of either, since it just didn't work for me, and I generally got bored doing what I felt was the same thing, over and over again. Now I generally play RPGs, so I'm used to grinding, but these two GTA games just didn't match my expectations. I might put Prototype in this grouping as well, for a game of a similar type, that I had a blast playing because of the variety.

Note also that this is also my first Saints Row game, but based upon reviews I had previously read, understand that when I play Saints Row 2 I may consider it a step up.

Saints Row: The Third is so over the top that my 31+ hours of play (so far - I haven't even touched co-op which looks like a blast) were an absolute joy. To be honest, the humor almost turned me off from picking up the game, but I came in expecting it, and found no issue with it.

The variety of side missions (activities) matches this, so I find myself actually challenged by what I need to do, instead of finding the desire to actually start. The story itself might be short, but I personally found it be rather long, as I played these side activities between main story missions. I just finished both endings of the game, after approximately 31 hours, and have approximately 85% of the game complete. Perhaps the story would be over in a few hours if you ran through, but having done this I'd say the story and the rest of the game meld rather well together, and recommend this path.

At this point I fully expect that most people have either seen me saying GTA isn't fun, or that I haven't played the previous Saints Row games and assume I'm going to jumping up and down over this game, and have given the review a thumbs down. If you're still reading that suggests to me that you might be like me. If you are, and can overlook a bit of crude humor, I'd say give a few gameplay videos a look and if you like what you see, pick up Saints Row. By the end of the game you'll be so overpowered that you'll rarely even take damage, will never have to reload, and will have infinite ammo for all your weapons. But despite that you'll still have a blast blowing things up, flying around corners with a hostage in the car, and perhaps even starting the story over with a new character, in a co-op (like I'll be doing). And at points you'll probably laugh, and you'll generally be smiling.

Amazing value, for a great RPG

A while ago a friend lent me his copy of Dragon Age Origins for the Xbox 360. While I enjoyed the game, I had a number of other games that I was playing, and I returned it without finishing it. With the price drops of the Ultimate Edition, I decided to finally pick up a copy, for the PS3, but it sat unused until a short time ago.

This collection comes with the original game as well as all the DLC. You'll still be prompted about a new DLC when you're on the start screen, but it's actually telling you about one that collected two of the DLC together, which I think is just an oversight on their end.

The DLC display as a second disc when you put the game in (there's only one physical disc) and require that you install each separately. I have an idea of why they did this, but it's unfortunate that you have to install each, as you can't just start the process, walk away to do something else, and then come back to have them all installed.

As for the game itself, I wanted this because of the RPG elements, and that I had played games of this type on PC many years ago. While initially people were worried that PC gameplay wouldn't cross over to the consoles, I don't think that was really necessary for this game.

However, there are times when I wish I had a mouse so I could better control which enemies my character attacks, but over the course of my many hours this only came up a handful of times, and in all but a few cases it didn't matter much.

The story for this game is actually quite good, with a nice variety depending upon your actions. There are different origins for each character type (with race, birth, and class all determining who you start as), and whether you care about the trophies/achievements or not, I'd recommend playing through them all, especially since you'll meet a number of the characters later, no matter your origin.

I ran into one glitch where a battle never ended, but at this point there's enough information about the game to know what to do to prevent it. I also found the initial loading screen to take a heck of a long time. I don't think this is related to the number of saves I had, and my network connection is fairly quick, but I didn't care enough to actually research it too deeply, so I can't complain.

This was my 10th platinum trophy, so I obviously enjoyed the base game enough to play the heck out of it (although the base trophies are more time consuming, depending upon what you do, than hard).

I honestly have a hard time finding any faults with the game. Is Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition really a five-star game? I could certainly see myself finishing the DLC that I didn't get through (including Awakening, which was once a game sold by itself), and have basically gone through all the main story options, so ... I supppose it is.