In this weeks episode of Game Seers – the guys all talk about Dead Space, a whole lot of dead space. As well as “the man” (Nintendo) – and their practices of late. Lots of other random things happen as well, see this page (http://www.thegamingseers.com/archives/170) to see a bunch of things we talked about.
Oct 16
I’ve been playing THQ’s new title De Blob for a while now over the past few days and feel its about time to write a fair and descriptive review of the game that perhaps is a little less biased than some of the other reviews out there. To clarify that statement, it seemed to me that many other reviews were written by people who were somewhat close to the game – or people who really wanted this to be an amazing game.
The Story: Essentially you’re a blob whose objective is to save the black and white city that lost all of its color to the evil INKT Corporation. Playing as De Blob, you must make your way through the city returning color and saving the Greylings by coloring their apartments and then adding color to them, destroying INKT propoganda devices, and there are some other challengs too. That’s really about it.
The Premises: As stated before you’re playing as De Blob whose mission it is to return color to the black and white city. How you do this is to attack these monster things that have colored ink in them (which you can also blend multiple colors) and just touch everything to turn it that color. Basically the game is a big puzzle.
The Controls: This is De Blob’s number one problem. The controls are awful. To jump it requires you to flick the wii mote and then you have to haphazardly guide yourself in air with the nunchuck’s analog stick all the while battling the less than perfect camera system. De Blob has a Kirby-esque feel when he goes airborne but has far less control which can add a lot of frustration when you’re trying to scale some buildings and meeting tons of Resistance. Not because the game is hard but simply because it seems to be a serious design flaw.
Thoughts: Overall De Blob is moderately fun in spite of the horrid controls. The premises is neat enough and the animations are pretty pleasing to look at. Yes, it can be fun at times to go around acting as a giant paint bucket but this alone does not seem to justify the $49.99 USD Price tag. Realistically the game is worth about $29.99. I feel the game got hyped up unjustifiably and that is why so many people have written such praising reviews. The music is quite nice to listen to and does add to the environment but if you’re anything like me – which you may or may not be – you will see it hard to justify having to flick the wiimote to jump when a simple button press would have sufficed. Perhaps I’m being to knit picky but to me I am greatly disillusioned in just how the game feels. Great concept, not so great execution. Overall I’d say the game is a 7.1 and that’s pushing it. If you’re really into this type of game pick it up, otherwise rent it or wait for a price drop.
The Breakdown
Graphics – 8.5
Controls – 5
Music – 9
Replay – 5
Concept / Story – 8
OVERALL SCORE: 7.1
Oct 15
This week in the Game Seers, Jeff and Ryan hate on De Blob. Aaron talks in depth about his experience playing Call of Duty: World at War. Lastly a teaser on Dead Space – more to come next week.
Oct 08
In lieu of no real releases this week the Game Seers resort to talking about Silent Hill, De Blob, Duke Nukem 3D, Little Big Planet, the new DS and most importantly their choice hot babes. A special video release of this episode will be featured on the website – thegameseers.com
Sep 28
When reviewing a Star Wars game, it is very difficult to review being completely unbiased. By that I mean – depending on how true a game is to the Star Wars franchise it is easy to inflate the rating, or conversely – if the game is a bit too far fetched for the Star Wars universe it is almost without a second of after thought that it is fed to the sharks and put completely out of mind. That being said, my initial reaction to playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (on Xbox 360) was inflate – I have to say the story is very genuine and doesn’t feel like a poorly manufactured tale was woven together just trying to make bank on the Star Wars cash cow. However, even at only 30 minutes into the game I began to see some pretty unfortunate flaws. Right away you’ll notice how easy the game is (I beat the game on Sith Warrior difficulty) – the automatic deflecting of laser bolts feels a little cheap though admittedly I really don’t see many other ways to correct that on the 360. You’ll also notice that your light saber will make quick work of any droid slicing them in half like butter – however, when dealing with actual life forms your light saber functions more like a light baseball bat and you really just are beating the hell out of your enemies until they eventually die, perhaps out of boredom. The cut scene boss battles leave you feeling a bit cheated as with the simple push of a button you are delivering the ‘coup de grace’ to your enemy that you had to senselessly bash your way through entire drones of light saber immune bastards just to get there. SWTFU is however an awesome display of power for the 360, the game is rendered amazingly in full 1080P HD, I cannot even imagine sacrificing the resolution to play it on the Wii (I will try to play this on Wii though to be fair) – what the game does absolutely right is tell a great story that fits in with the current 6 films in between episode 3 and 4 and also explains how some Jedi managed to escape the dreaded clone attacks. For what it’s worth the Force Unleashed is pretty decent game. It won’t be in my list for game of the year 2008 but certainly will not get too dusty in the collection. I definitely recommend renting it for everyone, and for the die hard Star Wars; fans dive into your pockets and fork over the money – it looks like Georgie Boy didn’t get his hands into this one to ruin it. When you get to the end you get to make a decision on dark side or light side – either choice effects the outcome of the story. (Check youtube for spoilers for the opposite of your decision unless you want to play through again, which unless you’re a achievement point junky you probably will not do)
Rating Scale 1 being bad 10 being perfect.
Graphics: (8.5)
Story: (8.5)
Game Play: (7)
Music/Sound: (8.5)
Replay Factor: (6)
Overall Rating: (7.5)
Sep 25
Game Seers: Sub Episode XI.007
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Shortly after the release of Episode 11 Ryan remembers something very important and decides to release a sub episode!
Sep 25
In this week’s episode the Game Seers talk a lot about the Force Unleashed – good bad and ugly (a lot of ugly) – as well as some thoughts on Pure for the 360. Jeff and Ryan agree Mega Man 9 on the Wii’s Virtual Console is the most difficult game of all time and our new resident PC gamer Mike Frangione stops by to give his thoughts on Spore as well as the Socom beta that is out. We also discuss the TV series Lost.
Sep 21
In this Sub-Episode of Game Seers Ryan digs up an old treasure and finds a prank phone call he made to Nintendo about 3 years ago as a disgruntled NES owner named Chet – but with an unwaveringly allegiance to Nintendo and thirst for Bill Gate’s blood.
Sep 10
Aaron, Ryan, Jeff and Kyle discuss some of their all time favorite games on basically every console; a light hearted talk about the death(?) of Kim Jong Il; the Dark Knight; holding your Wii (or Pii) for wayyyy too long; Call of Duty 4 (like always) – all in all, another week in Game Seertopia.
Sep 03
In this episode Aaron and Ryan are joined by two new game Seers, Kyle and Jeff as well as a return appearance from Joe Wesolowski. Kyle and Jeff discuss their top 3 favorite games though Joe thinks Morrowind sucks. Technical difficulties ravage the Game Seers, still hilarity ensues. Join us for this weeks episode! Don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes!
