Demo Review: Shank

Shank!

Stop reading now if you don't like Mexploitation films.

I don't think I can talk about Shank without thinking about the upcoming mega hit super summer smash film Machete. It's not that I haven't seen other films in the genre, it's just that the name Shank is so reminiscent of Machete. It's almost like I would accuse the makers of Shank for ripping off and cashing in on the clear popularity that Machete is receiving. If I cared. I don't. I think derivative works are great.

Our hero, Shank, was recently beaten close to death and had to bear witness to listen while his lovely girlfriend was raped by a giant lucha libre guy named The Butcher. Strong start. The animation and character design are all there. We have giant beefcakes looking menacing. Throw in a bar scene that's clearly evocative of the opening to Desperado and a shadowy figure, and we're good to go.



Alright, it's not THAT awesome, but you get the idea.

The game play is pretty solid and engaging, especially for a 2d beat'em up, enough that upon a replay of the demo I was still entertained trying new things. Shank starts his vigilante career with a chainsaw, two knives, and two handguns, all of which he gets to use in interesting ways to savagely murder his opposition. Clearly we're looking at strong, light, and ranged attacks. For our added depth we're given the grapple and leap options. Both are pretty self explanatory, but the key in their use is timing. It seems like other enemies can't, or won't, attack Shank when he's holding onto someone.
And you can shoot the guns in two directions at once! COOL!

As far as the environment is concerned... it's pretty standard fare as far as backdrops go. You've got your run down desert city that looks like it would be a nesting place for scum and villainy. However, there was one bit that blew me away:


Now that is some cool stuff. I just enjoy the heck out of the shading and the badassery it contains. It's just a short part of the demo, but it really elevates the experience.

For breaks between busting the skulls of a seemingly endless wave of goons, you get to fight mini bosses and boss battles. Mini bosses are a lot like the normal goons, except that they deal more damage, have specialized attacks, and are harder to damage (harder to grapple specifically.) They add a healthy amount of thought into what could be hack and slash game. The first boss battle was solid as well. You fight against a guy who is easily four times your size and only a very limited range of attacks are effective against him. While the first boss wasn't entirely complicated, I remain hopeful that other boss battles are more inventive.

I'll probably get around to buying this someday. The promise of more levels, more weapons to play with, and more of the story has me pretty hooked.

Demo Review: Monday Night Combat

Welcome to Monday Night Combat!

Before we get started, let's keep in mind that this is a Demo Review. Since it's a demo, that means I can't play this game like I imagine it was meant to be played: online multiplayer. I can only imagine what this badboy plays like on line... so that's exactly what I'm going to do!


Monday Night Combat is a pretty simple game. Simplicity, when it's well executed, can breed the heck out of fun, and this is exactly the case here. You have six classes to choose from, each varies in special abilities and combat prowess. You have one goal: protect your moneyball (flag) from the hordes of robots (online you can play against other live opponents, I imagine this is more fun than beating back the robots) that are attacking you. To help you with this goal, you can build up a handful of turrets for some automated defense.

I'm going to rock this backwards.

Turret defense is huge. In fact, it's the only thing you need to use in order to beat the demo. I'm sure this is less of a giant advantage in multi, but just against the bots it's an auto win. Get yourself a few Level 3 Laser Turrets and you can prop your feet up as you watch bits of bots fly. Did I not mention there are 4 kinds of turrets that you can build? There are. I only played around with the Laser Turrets. I saw the word Laser and was completely satisfied.

The object of the is to protect your moneyball. Think capture the flag, except replace "capture" with "destroy" and "flag" with "moneyball". FYI, the moneyball is a big yellow orb (or ball) that hovers in the center of your arena. Fortunately, it takes a bit of damage from the bots before the ball's shields are lowered and the ball itself can be damaged. I haven't lost yet, so I can tell you the ball can take a solid amount of damage before you lose.


Here we get to the fun stuff, character classes! From left to right we have: Gunner, Support, Assassin, Assault, Sniper, Tank.

For your general combat purposes you're going to want to use either the Gunner or the Assault Class. With the Gunner you have a class that's all about overwhelming power. You're going to be slow, but you have a big gun that shoots a lot of bullets really fast. The Assault class is more well rounded, in that you can run and gun effectively, but you make up for the speed with a softer punch. Both are fun to play, for my time I'd go with the Assault class. While I do love overwhelming power, I enjoy options a little bit more.

If you want to get up close and personal, pick either the Tank or the Assassin. The Tank is great for getting all up in someone's grill. Damage doesn't really faze him and he packs a nasty punch. He even has a great area attack that will hit anyone in a complete 360. Solid damage, solid damage reduction. He's slow as heck, but when you catch up to your opponent he's going to pay. The Assassin is just like the Tank... when it comes to close combat prowess. She tears through machines with her katana and has a nifty Predator-esque cloaking device to get in close. The problem with her is that she folds quick. I can see her doing well online, but for the demo...

Lastly, we have the Support and Sniper classes. I'm sure both can be interesting when it comes to online play, but for purposes of the demo... Support is all about healing turrets and hacking opposing turrets, which I'm sure is fun, but here he just doesn't do anything. The Sniper will likely play a lot like the Assassin in multiplayer, just, ya know from range, cause he's a Sniper. Here, his rate of fire sucks, so he's not going to help you with anything.

As it stands, I'm sure if I had 1200 Microsoft Points and a Gold Status membership I'd buy the heck out of and play the heck out of this game. As it stands, I'm not huge on Online gaming, so I don't have it. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point.

DC and Marvel November Covers

Every month I get all kinds of excited when the major comic book publishers release their upcoming solicitations. Not that I read what's going to be happening, but I love looking at the pretty covers. Here are my favorites from Marvel and DC.

Here is the cover to Sweet Tooth. I'm a sucker for stark contrast, and the blood covering the man really brings a visceral brutality to the cover that is nicely shocking.

X-Files finally crosses over with 30 Days of Night! Alright, I wasn't thinking that would ever happen, but I really enjoy the gritty feel of this one.

Superboy is getting a new ongoing, and it looks like DC is going to be focusing on the fun parts of being the Boy of Steel. I get a great positive vibe coming from this one, coming largely from the smirk on Connor's face and the bright yellow background. The whole piece feels really warm and welcoming.

Scalped pretty constantly has my favorite covers, but this one is significant for me thanks to, largely, the "desk". I like the smug sheriff, but the juxtaposition of his conceit and arrogance with the fruits of his labor is striking in a way that alters the sheriff into something sinister.

Sam's hat and hand make this.

I'll always enjoy an Usual Suspects homage, combine that with this excellent art and the attitude of the DV8 team, I'm happy. The carrier brings this home, showing the viewer that there is more to this crew than just a caper.

I love the grittiness and collage like feel to this image.

Jae Lee is a wonderful artist. Everything he draws grabs my eye. Look at Namor's face here. He's staring down a monster that would scare the pants off of anyone, but Namor looks at the creature with disdain.

This cover perfectly captures the feel of the book and manages to tell a story in the process.

I love the juxtaposition here between the artsy painting and the sketch. "Dream Logic" just seems like a perfect title.

Adorable.

The Expendables: Great Movie or Greatest Movie

I had the immense pleasure of watching the new smash hit movie The Expendables this weekend.
In case you're a terrible awful person and are unaware, The Expendables is the brainchild of Sylvester Stallone, Starring Sylvester Stallone, Written by Sylvester Stallone, and Directed by Sylvester Stallone. Aside from being a sweet Sylvester Stallone joint (which, frankly, is more than enough to get me to the theater, that man has great credentials [Rocky, Rambo, Cliffhanger, Cobra, etc]) the film also stars/features the esteemed likes of: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, and Mickey Rourke. I've been in love with this film since it was announced, no, I've been in love with this film since I thought of it in 5th grade while I was supposed to be doing something or other at school.

I need to say it: The Expendables exceeded each and every one of my expectations. I thought it would be a fun action flick. I like fun action flicks. There is an absolute need for them. Not every film should be a testament to the capabilities of the medium, some should just be a testament to the insanity of the over indulged adolescent male brain. Stallone, despite being 40 years my senior, can tap into that little hyper active boy far better than I could hope to. As far as I'm concerned, that makes Sly a national treasure. For a good two hours I was on the edge of my seat watching brutal fist fights, massive gun battles, and explosions galore.

Watch this film.

Demo Review: Dante's Inferno

Yesterday I decided to go hog wild downloading demos off of XBox Live, wow, what a fantastic experience. I'm going to be playing little 15 minute vignette's of video games for quite some time. It's going to be a nice little time running through them and then agonizing over whether I'm going to buy them or not. Knowing me, by the time I'm done thinking about it we'll be on to a next gen system (XBox 1080?) and the games will be at a price so negligible I won't hesitate to purchase them.

Anywho...

The first game that I previewed was this little gem called Dante's Inferno. It's made by the same people who made current all time favorite video game experience Dead Space so I figured it had to be some sort of quality. And it is! Yay!

The game is some sort Streets of Rage/Devil May Cry kinda thing set during the Crusades so it has this interesting pseudo religious bent. The atmosphere is pretty sexy. The main character, Dante, is all kinds of overly serious, which I guess you have to be if you're running into Hell chasing after your dead wife who is accusing you of committing some kind of heinous crime which you're unaware of. Women, am I right? So it's interesting, because you get to run through these crazy settings and kill these crazy monsters in crazy ways. But the best part of the game, for me, was the first boss you fight. Oh yea, it's a goody. See, after running around murdering what appear to be some innocent peasants that you had locked in jail, you get to go toe to toe with this guy:

That's right kids, the first level boss is the Grim Reaper. I think it takes some serious stones to fight the embodiment of death. Is everyone going to do it? Probably. I certainly don't want to die, and if Death showed up at my door I'd probably try and have a little conversation with him about the worth of my life and the value that I bring to the lives of others, but I don't think I'd engage the man/entity in fisticuffs. Which is exactly what Dante does here. Moreso...

Dante steals the Reaper's scythe and jams him in the face with it! That is so awesome! "Oh, what's that Death? You want to take my soul to some kind of afterlife? Really. No, I'm gonna stay here, I've got some business to handle." So you murder Death. Then you get to use his scythe for the rest of the game. I imagine anyway, since it harvests the souls of the things you kill and you use those souls as currency for power ups. I'm calling badass.

So I love this bit of the game. I do. But I'm not sure if I want to buy it. I've never been all that into the button mashing beat 'em up games. There's something about the timing that I'm off on or the combo memorization. Will I pick this up? There's potential. But I think if you enjoy these types of games it's a must buy. The atmosphere is far too fun to pass up on.

Coming up next...

Limbo: Four Hours of Dying Happy

I finally got around to playing Limbo on Wednesday and I loved every minute of it.

My love for the game has nothing to do with the graphics. Even if they are lovely, making the absolute most out of what a 2d platformer can offer.

It's not about they story, which may or may not exist, come to your own conclusions, I've read some interesting thoughts on the matter.

It's not about the music, which is sparse and helps to really set the tone and immerse you in the game play.

This game is 100% enjoyable because of the dying.

Oh the dying. It happened so often and it was glorious each and every time. There wasn't one time I was frustrated with the game; it was so forgiving, I'd restart play moments before my most recent death. Dying is the way you learn in Limbo, it's trial by error, but you'll find that there are very few errors that don't end in cartoon death.

Are the traps and puzzle hugely innovative... not if you've played a good amount of puzzle games. Again, the unique point of the game is the glee in my characters death.

As an aside, for whatever reason this game reminded me of Portal (a unique cult classic puzzle game, remind you of anything?), so I felt the need to replay that before writing this. I'm not sure why I needed to do that, but it made both experiences feel all that more rewarding, I recommend it highly.