Armored Warriors - Arcade

4 way mecha melee chaos coming up.

Capcom has shown time and time again that they're more than capable of creating some very influential games, particularly in the brawler genre of gaming. Regarding Armored Warriors, it seems Capcom may and may not have topped their own lofty achievements of Final Fight.

From the off, it's chaotic and action-packed with an overblown scale

Armored Warriors takes the giant mech approach to brawling. You're a captain/pilot of a giant mech of your choosing from one of four setups. Each setup has its own advantages and disadvantages including different combat and weaponry while focusing on melee combat, strength, speed and stamina, (all of this will make sense shortly) and all have the standard, Attack, Jump and Support Weapon functions to be used within game. Like a lot of other brawlers you can also run, run and attack, switch attack by pressing forwards THEN attack quickly for an alternative attack, leaping running attacks and so on and so forth which is something Capcom seemed to bring to the table during the mid 90s with a lot of its games.

The obligatory bonus levels

However, the novelty of the approach of this game is that certain enemies are equipped differently than your mech is, which means you can break them apart and steal their components. Aside from the core body part, you can replace your legs, your weapon and your support weapon from any dropped component, resulting in a veritably high combination of results and customisation for your mechs. Multiple different arms carry weapons including fists, drills, laser swords, claws, lightning rods and so on. Tracks and treads for the mechs range from standard legs to tank treads, hover boosters, spider legs while support weapons are the largest in variation including machinegun types, bombs, rockets, missiles, flame throwers and more. There's something for everyone but if you die, you drop the lot and have to reacquire it. Annoying but that's the price of upgrading to awesome.

And of course, the bosses are even bigger.

Despite the concept and the possibilities, there's still the core of the game of Armored Warriors in that it's a brawler game, where you and several friends (possibly, if you have those) can march through nine missions of mech-blowing-up-ness (it's a word now) which range from walk right and blow up stuff, run right and blow up stuff, blow up stuff quickly before you die and blow up stuff THEN move right and blow up more stuff.

Some times MUCH bigger

Armored Warriors does have some context to the situation and certainly a lot more than Final Fight did with its constant walking and fighting. In this game however, there's regular points where plot is revealed, discussions are made between key characters regarding the wars between two worlds and progression is shown on a map of both planets as to which side is conquering the other fastest. While it can add to the sense of the game and enhance it as an experience, it'll like be ignored in favour of players wanting to get back to the action of blowing up mechs.

Customisation and powerups a plenty here

That said, the game is nothing short of bright and colourful and by comparison to the appalling idea of today's games decisions to brown-out almost everything to be gritty and realistic, this comes across as a light hearted comic book when put next to games of this day. Some may dislike that but I say it adds to the appeal and atmosphere of the game, it's not overly serious and doesn't take itself to be that when 50ft tall mechs are slamming each other around and firing more rockets than could possibly fit on screen rather than in the mech itself. It's bright and bold and it shouldn't be any other way for this game. The mechs themselves are well designed and follow on from the anime-esque style they take the origins from, bosses and bigger constructs look stunning and it's evident there's a lot of focus and attention on everything from the smallest mechs up to the final boss.

And of course, the compulsory, repeating boss fight

The audio, there isn't much there that sings out within the music as anything particularly memorable but there is an attempt to do synthesised voices and have a sort of commentary running with every item you pick up to replace parts on your mech, while also the characters shout, scream and yell when doing special moves or getting killed. But all of this is overshadowed by the explosions and metallic clangs and clashes of skyscraper sized robots duking it out, it adds to the feel of the game and is highly entertaining but it does mask the other sounds that one might want to hear, leaving them a little redundant in that regard.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYY

As a game, Armored Warriors does have a lot of replay factor. There's different ways occasionally to beat specific levels, there's the huge combinations of weapons and items to pick up and use and you can almost guarantee that it'll take a few play-throughs before you start to get repeated sets of weaponry. But then there's also the option to try something different and see whether it's more or less effective than the previous setup for the upcoming boss you know you'll have to fight. Trial and improvement it may be but learning and using all of the attacks and power moves accompanying those items will leave you always questioning if the next upgrade is better.

It's a good game, but gets a little overcrowded at times and for those that explore the mechanics behind the engine of the game, a deep brawling system with lots of potential.

Rogue Legacy - Steam

So it begins, a legacy of dead characters.

The king was murdered; the betrayer stands within the castle and rules in his place, he is your ancestor. Something it keeping him alive and while he lives, the injustice remains rife. You attempt to right the wrongs that have been made to set order and balance back on the path of righteousness. The loss is more personal, your father went into the castle to resolve this issue and was never seen again, now it’s your turn as you leave your children behind and head to the traitor’s keep. Charon, agent of death stands before you and relieves you of your worldly possessions as you enter with but your armour and weapons and inside you step to continue the Rogue Legacy.

The only stable room in the set up

This is the gist of the game without giving too much away at first. It’s a platformer rogue-like and the rogue-like element here is that the cast you enter changes its layout each time (unless... you unlock the ability to keep it), and each entry into the castle will cost you your remaining cash but all cash found in the castle is kept for buying upgrades, armours, runes (empowering modifications) and the such. Within the castle lies a wealth of traps, monsters, mini-bosses, 4 main bosses and then finally (if you get this far) the last boss and a definitely final boss if we’re talking tropes at this point.

Select your sprog to go and die for your cause.

Much like games like Infinity Blade, we’re talking about generational progression. Your character, of whichever background (more about that in a moment) will be killed and stored in the gallery for all time. When you start hitting around the 40 lives lost mark, you begin to realise there’s quite an enormity behind losing. Not unlike the original Cannon Fodder which had tombstones for every single person lost in combat that would soon litter the level select screen.

Looks a bit crap, but later the castle will be quite a size with all unlocked items accessible

Each time you begin an attempt on the castle, you get to pick from one of three offspring of the previous attempt. Or basically a randomly generated set of characters which includes their classification, perks and demerits. Ranging from having Barbarians that have slim builds and more likely to be knocked back on a hit, to ninjas that don’t activate spikes because they lack a pulse in their limbs (it makes sense in context) to Paladins that are colour-blind, or longsighted (around you is blurring) short-sighted (around you is NOT blurry) to not being able to see incoming projectiles from off-screen and so on. It gives a very large pool of variation which can include being gay (a fan of the man/woman depending upon your gender and then makes one wonder how there’s a next generation... but I digress). This also includes the spell you will be taking with you ranging from throwing axes, knives, fireball walls, bouncing balls, homing attacks and more.

You died. And there's all the people you killed. Also, this one suffered coprolalia

As said, it’s a platform game, levels are randomly generated and each castle layout has the objective of killing 4 bosses and then the final boss to beat the castle before New Game+ is activated. The problem is you will die, a lot, and as a rogue-like you need to accept that fact and realise it is part of the game mechanic. Dying will return you to the HQ where you keep your cash from that run and can spend it on upgrades to stats, abilities, classes of characters, how much money Charon takes from you, unlocking new helpers that will give you new abilities and improving battle %’s for things like critical hits (if your particular class CAN do critical hits... Hokage, looking at you).

New equipment? Costs money. New runes? Costs money. Pattern much? Costs Money...

Graphically, the game is a strong call back to less serious looking platformers with plenty of cartoony styled graphics and animations (seriously, I love the hero’s running animation), monsters are sufficiently detailed with bosses really taking the biscuit on account of their size while scenery and backgrounds are lavished with those cute little nods and tips of detail that really bring the whole package together.

Spikes, Skeletons and monsters, oh my!

The music is select of a nice set of compositions, depending upon which area of the castle you’re in or if you find a juke box, there’s nothing overbearing or underwhelming and everything plods along at an agreeable pace while stopping short of becoming that ear-tick where you end up humming the same few bars over and over. It’s sufficient and fits the bill with some interesting use of instrumentals within the pieces themselves. The sound effects are diverse enough with your character having multiple sounds for being injured; spells and attacks use diverse effects to accompany their use.

Some of the locations are rather otherworldly, that's a huge moon too.

Overall it’s a fun game with a lot of replay factor though the random number generator can really stitch you up if you’re unlucky and have to play through multiple, horribly and awkwardly laid-out rooms. Sometimes you’ll die in the first few levels, other times you’ll die after a few bosses are beaten, but the random generation and the upgrading mechanic will keep players playing this for a long time. But not as long as it could have been, eventually there will be a point where insufficient progression will be made, where it’s impossible to continue on with the game and there’s nothing left to attain or unlock and then it’ll wither away because everything’s been done and there’s too much focused direction for the player to hold onto, the game being more rogue-like than rogue leaves it satisfying for a while but eventually unfulfilling.

Fallout 3

And so it begins, a mad little adventure in radiation

Stunning, amazing, awe-inspiring. These are words I use to describe myself on a regular basis. But enough about me, let's talk Fallout 3. I won't be using this to reference between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, but to look at the game purely from the angle of the game itself. It's an intriguing and impressive game given the scope of the development and to bring about what seems to be a sort of 1960's sort of America into a nuclear (don't...) apocalypse and subsequent aftermath of the world.

The concept is this. Nukes were coming and the world was going to radioactive war and the powers that be decided to build a series of underground Vaults to hide people away. It worked to a point. A lot of people were left top-side to burn in the radiation fires and some managed to hide away under the ground to survive and thrive there while at the same time, many other situations arose where the vaults were used as experimentation sites.

Time for VATS, pick your body part and roll the dice to take your chances

YOU! The Hero(ine) are born, literally born from your mother straight into Liam Neeson's arms where upon you're aware of a situation where your mother dies and you're brought up by your father inside of the Vault. Jump forward a bit and it's baby's first steps time where you get to determine all the lovely number-crunchies that equate your stats and perks, a few more jumps give you a quick rundown of gunplay and the VATS system for targeting and attacking enemies, then we've a little situation where you're taking a test... or dodging the test, or just pratting around with the settings. Giving us a lovely little introduction to the idea that you can quite simply talk your way out of various situations and settings.

So you've got yourself a series of ways to play the game. The straight up, brute force method; the negotiator that can out-talk and out-think a ham-sandwich, or the middle ground of being a sneaky little bugger and doing all the naughty things that one would love to do, like planting bombs in people's pockets.

However, invariably the game world decides that shit has to go down, hit the fan and send tits up with a lead balloon before I mix up any more metaphors and launch YOU The Hero(ine) out into the world with a quick pause to double check if you're sure on the things that have happened so far, i.e. This is it, no way back now. Next stop the wide, wide world outside. And dear god it's big out there and very bleak.

The first time I stepped outside I was actually left in awe of the desolation wrought upon the landscape. The damaged buildings, destroyed villages, burnout shells of structures left with the chaos of their scaffolding in place and the dark oppressiveness came crashing down after creeping up like a stalker that stabs people with a knife made of suicidal impulses. It's really THAT bleak looking. Then I happily gallivanted off to go enjoy the world and kill things.

Rundown but stunning to behold, an ugly beauty.

However, this game is HUGE. I can't stress that enough. It's not quite like Huge on the scale of Just Cause 2 scale of games but there's the whole indoors thing going for it instead and a lot more variation in game and plot direction which compensates for the situation somewhat. Trust me when I say it's big, bleak, bad and will happily hand your arse to you on a silver platter and wipe it for you before slamming it back in your face. Because of this size, you get to do whatever you like to do in the game whenever you feel like it, though not as freely open as Daggerfall. If you want to follow the main quest, feel free to do so, if you want to raid some slavers then go do that. If you would like to run around and get into fights with the locals or nearby wildlife, do it! Or just rob the place.

So you're out and about, picking up lead pipes, pistols and getting chased by the nearby gangers while trying to find a place of refuge before realising that maybe you need to go find out what happened, what went wrong at the vault and why you and your father where rushed out of the door faster than Speedy Gonzales with a rocket stuffed up his arse. During this tour of the land you'll meet inhabitants of established towns and be given the chance to help them while levelling up your stats, or hinder them and become a bit of a demonised prick around the wastelands.

This is the sight that greets you upon exiting the vault and it's breath-taking.

There's a lovely little levelling system within the game. Kill something and get experience points, complete a quest for even more. Once you hit the level limit you can then choose a perk and boost some stats depending upon your intelligence and other perks already selected. So you could focus on hacking machines, learning science (which lets you shoot better with lasers...), getting better with light guns, heavy guns, your fists, fixing things, medical stuff to heal yourself and others, bombs and explosives, picking locks and so on. Though it all depends upon what you want to run for and how you want to play the game. Sometimes it's worthwhile going through the game as a smooth-talker and con/lie/cheat/seduce your way up the ladder until you get to the final boss and talk them out of doing whatever they're doing.

On top of this is the karma meter which swings back and forth depending upon a) how you resolve issues and b) how many non-combatant people you kill. Usually. The more of a fuckpig you are, then you'll get roving gangs of do-gooders coming to kill you and claim the bounty while the same is said for the other end of the good/bad spectrum with high level shitbags hunting you down because you're making everyone else look bad by comparison. The hardest way to play the game is be in the middle of it all and remain neutral to all situations. This does mean you can't hire certain people if you're too good/neutral/bad as they won't acknowledge your interests are in tune with their own, or some pseudo-bullshit along those lines.

Act effectively, because THIS one, will end you quickly.

It's a little broken in one regard, I blew up a town and slaughtered hundreds but were still considered to be a bastion of purity because of all the other tasks I'd done on the way there. Thankfully, there are some real brain-benders of situations where it's not so clear-cut as to the best way to resolve a situation. Namely, the Ghouls (intelligent... sometimes... zombie looking people) getting into a well-preserved, prestigious establishment. You could go on and try to change people’s ideas on the racism between one human and radiated one, you could wipe out all the ghouls, you could negotiate or attack the people with/without the help of the ghouls. But whatever is the outcome, it's never good. Situations like this need to be encouraged more often, force players into taking difficult paths with no clear outcome and even going into things with the best of intentions, can all backfire and blow up in your face.

Just a shame these happen so rarely in gaming.

Combat is a bit of a mixed bag, in that you can run in and take the usual first person perspective approach and go in guns blazing, or throwing explosives, or punching anyone out for it. Or there's the VATS system which seems to try to be something akin to Turn Based Combat in Real-time. You get to freeze time, pick a body part and see the % chance to hit the area and the resulting damage it could cause before applying the effect and seeing if it comes true and kill the target. All of these things can be improved and hampered by things like your arms being damaged (affects accuracy) using a weapon you're unskilled in (lowers damage effectively and/or accuracy) or being very familiar with such weapons which boosts your accuracy and damage to 95% and high hitting powers.

"After the last house party, we decided the riot wasn't worth the costs..."

Or blow them up into pieces if you're using the explosive perk that turns enemies into chunky dog chow. The added bonus of VATS gives you a lovely slow-motion effect of the fight while it plays out and if you kill the enemy, you get to watch them ragdoll it to their demise, best done with several rockets and send them sailing over the horizon. It's an interesting addition and comes in very hand in some of the more intense fights, or when sniping something over long distance... with a rocket. The bottom line is that for the most part, aside from the occasional odd camera angles, it is very fun.

I won't be reviewing the DLC for now as the overall gameplay doesn't change for the most part so the reviews I'll bring in another session on the blog as it'll be going over the story and missions and whatever little extras there are but the gameplay remains the same for the most part throughout all the DLCs.

Water water everywhere, and all of it to drink. But you won't want to.

Looking at the core game though, it's fun; it's shocking in the right doses and will happily draw you in with the effective pacing and engrossing gameplay and storylines, marred only by the game forcing you into a final choice that can be utterly pointless and stupid in the end-game if you've characters with you that can survive radiation. THAT aside, you'll spend a long time exploring, getting sidetracked to explore some more, explore and keep going until you've found ALMOST everything.

Then you'll play again to be an absolute shit to the world and become the evil bastard you rightly should be.

Super Smash Brothers Melee

"But why not the original, or Brawl?"

"Quite simply, I don't have those games, so this is the one I'm reviewing"

To answer a few similar questions over the last few months of "Why this and why not that?" I have to point people to the header of the website and the tagline, but most in particular "Leave disappointed" In which case, you got what was offered.

The premise of the game is an interesting one, take a whole bunch of Nintendo’s mascots, outfit them with platform game mechanics and give them a myriad of attacks and moves, then up the ante by giving them weapons, power-ups and other such pickups and let them go mental at each other until either the time runs out or the last one is left standing.

Nintendo certainly know how to milk a game these days, the initial starter roster featuring characters such as Mario, Fox, Pikachu, Link, Peach, Bowser, Kirby, Captain Falcon, Donkey Kong and a LOT more, with more becoming unlocked as the games continue and rounds are won and lost. The final roster has a lot to offer and plenty of variation between distinct characters, and variations of characters (Mario and Dr Mario, Fox and Falco).

The game presents as the ultimate party game, up to 4 players picking a character and systematically beating the shit out of each other in a variety of levels from various franchises. Paying homage to a lot of Nintendo’s history and structure of their games. Samus from Metroid appears and a few of her levels too, serving mainly as a nod and short trip down memory lane for the players that remember, or cared. The game can be customised fully to permit specific items appearing in matches, or none at all, or just Pokémon for a huge fight throwing god-knows-what at each other while creatures that fit in a pocket wreck havoc on almost interplanetary scales of damage.

Each char has the rudimentary move set of attacking in 4 directions, jumps, double jumps (sometimes more), blocking with a bubble that slowly fades, dodges in the air and along the ground, B-Moves in 4 directions for more specifically suited attacks to the character (Mario’s cape, Bowser’s flame throwing and shell spin etc), and 4 smash attacks where the player has to press the direction AND attack at the same time for a harder hitting attack that can be charged too. This is not counting moves that stack and build up, counter attack moves, catch moves and grab/throw moves which alone give the characters a huge variety of attacks and skills. Then they pick up a baseball bat...

The aim of each fight is to knock the opponent out of the area. You can beat on them, smack them around and slap the shit out of each other until the cows come home, but the damage only increases the height and distance they get knocked back. Hitting someone on 10% damage will knock them back a little, hitting someone on 250% damage will likely launch them into the stratosphere (though not always). Smash them off the sides, the top or the bottom and you score the kill/point. Person with the most points at the end of the timer, or if it's a life game, the last one standing, wins.

Some of the levels are static, while most of them are themed from various characters and having changing aspects to the level. A flying airship that travels across an arena, eternally looping Ice Mountains, lava filling death pits, fighting across a race track, the choices and hazards are huge for the game's possibilities, down to the final battle arena that's a simple flat area with no platforms for those that like combat to be decided upon fighting rather than avoiding unbiased hazards.

The single player mode gives people the choice to play the adventure, which is a series of levels themed on various games such as Mario with a level taken from the series with minor enemies within it, to the duels with other characters and making your way towards harder and harder challenges like Metal Characters, mazes to boost your collections and the final battle with a large Bowser (and maybe Giga Bowser) or the Master Hand (and Crazy Hand if you did fairly well), or even worse... a lot of the Game and Watch nutcase characters.

Collectors will find trophies dotted around the games to collect and unlock further things, other collectors will try to receive every battle award from "Switzerland" where you never attack or get hit, to the more elusive "No damage run" where you beat the whole game without being hit even once.

The game doesn't stop there, with the single player challenge mode, 50+ varying challenges that have players trying to fulfil specific criteria while either choosing their character, or being dictated by the computer/setup. Such as a Pokémon match where ONLY Pokémon moves will cause damage and nothing from actual melee will work. To one-on-one duels to try and unlock bonus characters.

Otherwise there's the sandbag that you have to launch within 10 seconds to send it the furthest after beating it up. Or play smash-the-ten targets.

The control system is incredibly responsive, reacting to each twitch and flick of the analogues and button presses, making the characters as nimble as your reactions. You rarely ever feel that the game has stitched you up, but more that a loss or failure is down to the player rather than the game's mechanics. (Except in sudden death... random bob-omb explosions). Some of the levels are better designed than others, with combat taking a back step while people JUST navigate the level and failure to do even that, will likely result in a loss of life (if the fight waits that long).

The game seems to borrow a lot from Power Stone 2, with the moving levels, 4 player chaos and multiple items, but like that game, it also suffers from over congestion. 4 players on screen, each throwing a pokeball, gives another 4 Pokémon on screen doing their moves and some of those moves smother the screen in special effects, it's very easy for people to lose track of their character and accidentally try to control the wrong one, and walk themselves off the edge of the level. (Throw in 4 ice-climbers, leading to 8 characters on screen at once...).

Musically, Smash Brothers Melee comes with a huge accompaniment of remixes from earlier titles tracks, be it from Metroid, F-Zero, Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong Country and many others, enough to be significant of a change to warrant their inclusion, while also bringing a new flavour that will remind the older players while being upbeat enough to be interesting to the younger players.

Sadly, with the game's huge roster of characters, there's a tier of skill and ability falling in place. Some characters will constantly and consistently outshine and outperform other characters unless there's some heavy luck based pickups doing well for those characters. Though if the opponent is that high in tier, they should have no difficulty in navigating around the attacks and going on to win the battle regardless of the other character's ability and skills. It can get rather one-sided when you're competing faster characters against slower characters or fast-fall characters (gravity does what it wants here) with those that not only fall slowly, but can double, triple, quadruple jump and more. But then, it's not about balance but more about having fun and enjoying the game with the characters you like the most.

The game is the ultimate party game for platform enthusiasts, perhaps not for beat-em-up hardcore nuts. The combat is a little lacking in complexity when you compare it to games like Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive (ignoring the excessive tittage), or even the Street Fighter games, those looking for a more in-depth fighter will find this game coming short against the competition in that regard. Having said that, with the right people this game can become a huge boon to any gamers library of games, on its own though there's the challenge of getting through the single player modes with their difficulties, getting the fastest times but the game really comes into its own with 2-3 friends round and going silly with the fighting.

It's also a great game for settling those pointless playground fights of who'd win between Mario and Kirby, the answer is 'The Off Button'