WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2011
WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2011 is – most unexpectedly for me – one of my favourite games from 2010. As someone who gave up on wrestling games a long time again, returning to the series with a PS3 version of the game was a very welcome surprise.
Not having played it’s recent predecessors, I can’t claim to make a clear comparison between the last version and this one, but one thing which is new is the WWE Universe, and that alone is most fascinating. The most enjoyable element of wrestling after all, has been the endless soap opera of alliances and rivalries and the almost comedic fashion with which loyalties change and trust is broken.
WWE Universe is your key into that world, and this is something that the game-makers have handled with great panache. As long as Universe is on (and there’s little incentive to turn it off) every match you play is part of a bigger script. There’s a career mode – the Road to Wrestlemania with which you can take one star and lead him to the championship belt, but even if you want to play a quick match the results that take place are recorded in the game and woven into a larger storyline.
Check the alerts and you might come to know for instance, that Randy Orton and Batista are now enemies, and I admit that I had no small part to play in that. Sounds silly? Well, isn’t that the charm of wrestling? And then of course, when Orton interrupted a match between Batista and the Undertaker to help me (now the Undertaker) out, it all made sense and fit with the larger narrative that I had, intentionally or not, been scripting.
Not everyone will notice the minute details of the way they are impacting the Universe if they are playing with one of the 70 existing characters, but the moment you create a character – a robust and intuitive experience – the whole thing becomes much clearer, and even more enjoyable.
The game looks okay. It’s not what you’d call bad looking, but we’ve all seen better by this point. The sound is very enjoyably crisp, and if you don’t wince when someone grabs you and runs your face along the chainlink walls of a steel cage match, then you’re just made of stone. The combat system is a little annoying at times, as the entire system is context sensitive, which can feel simply amazing around half the time, when the game does what I want, and simply absurd the rest of the time, when I’m busy beating up the referee by accident. The counter system, which was talked up a lot by the game-makers leaves me a little cold. Simply put, it’s overpowered and takes a lot of the fun out of the game at times, drawing them out into mindless stalemates where the reverse button is the only one anyone is paying any attention to. I spent most of the time running and then grappling because that’s hard to reverse, until my opponent was groggy enough to pull of signature and finisher moves, which are just a lot of fun.
The game, all in all, would come in at a slightly better than average 6-7 if that was the end of things, but the real fun, and there is a lot of it, comes when you have a friend over. The game is not a high skill brawler and it’s not something that is visually overwhelming, but it’s still an 8 or a 9 in my eyes. Somewhere along the way, the developers created something that is so addictively enjoyable that a half hour long Ladder match was instantly followed by all the participants shouting “again”. A lot of this is based on the combination of dumb luck, familiar faces and easy to understand gameplay, and sheer, ridiculous, outre possibilities.
Climbing to the top of the steel cage while your opponent is down and then changing your mind and not exiting (to win the game) but rather jumping back down on top of your friend? And then, while he shouts and begs for mercy, reaching down to pull off a Pedigree? Yeah. Again. Definitely.
Videogames get gamers jobs!
by gSathe
Now we all know that gaming is good for us. Okay, so not too many people would actually agree to that out there in the big bad world, but if you’re here and reading this, then you’ve likely got a better idea about games, have probably seen an Xbox 360 and a PS3, and are pretty likely a lot smarter than most people out there in the big bad world too. So I think we really can all agree that gaming is good for us.
But did you know that gaming can help you get jobs too? For at least one professional camera-person here in Delhi, DOA sessions and Gears of War action translated into a better paying job, within his own profession at that!
The Metal Gear Saga Explained: Part 3
by 28
Welcome to the third and final part of our ongoing series on our interpretation of the meaning behind the Metal Gear story, where we’re trying to figure out what’s coming up in MGS4 and later installments based on what we’ve seen so far. The first part can be found here, and you can also read part two here, and then carry on:
Son’s of Liberty also clears things up about The Patriots – they are no longer confined by secrecy, but rather, they are out in the open with both Solid and Liquid (Via Ocelot) trying to hunt them down.
Since Liquid was unable to find the true identity of The Patriots, he turns the world into a battlefield on its own, so when the world is in chaos and shambles The Patriots will finally reveal themselves and his vengeance will be complete. This war that he wages brings out both Solid and a part of the Patriots’ next project.
Happy cards and flowers day people
Happy Hallmark day everyone, it’s been a bad week here and no updates could take place, and I thought about bunging all of the stored up updates in one go today but I’ve decided to drop most of them instead. There’s an update which will come up a bit later today and more will follow on a regular schedule from now on, so keep visiting!
Why Gears of War 2 will not be anounced at GDC-2008
by 28
The rumour mill has been grinding overtime of late, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of what the insiders and the credible sources who can’t be quoted have been saying, and trying to make sense of it all. Facts seem to have been deleted from the industry with almost all major publishers and developers keeping their prized creations under wraps and gamers are left wondering what really is happening, since most exclusive information is kept with hostile security and sold to the highest bidder.
And the latest one is that Gears of War 2 is under works – or rather is possibly under works – and will be announced and showcased in a really big way at GDC-08. Which is great for all Lancer loving fans, but it won’t exactly be happening that way.
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Tetronicle – A Tetris Chronicle!
by OZ
Brian opened his eyes, and blinked.
He looked at the stark landscape in front of him. Giant, crumbling blocks of stone lay in front of him, once perhaps beautiful, but decayed now, into twisted shapes and rotted into grotesque colours. The looming stacks of stones, lined up in row after jumbled row like mismatched teeth seemed to leer at him. Where was he? Brian looked around, wondering what had happened to him, where he was, and how he got here.
Since he wasn’t the hero of the story, he didn’t have a chance to go exploring, and have all sorts of wonderful adventures, and discover the true meaning of life, the universe, and mother’s home made apple pie. This wasn’t really that kind of story, and he really wasn’t hero material. Instead, what happened was really rather obvious.
Who’ll save us from the lesbian aliens?
by gSathe
The recent controversy over Mass Effect, the purveyor of alien pornography, has shown us one thing. We gamers are all under thirteen years of age, and we clearly need to be saved from the vicious and pernicious evils of digitally rendered breasts because lets face it, we can’t be nearly as mature as the people who read a book or watch a movie. Because those are culture, not entertainment.
Except for one thing of course. If you start to quote statistics then serious studies tell us that the average gamer is now 33 years old. I played Donkey Kong back in the day, did you? So why are games still seen as kids stuff, and kids stuff only? Or is it perhaps that my old enough to vote and old enough to drink and old enough to drive and also old enough to watch adult only content on film mind also needs protecting from the evils of some, quite honestly tame digital loving? Isn’t this why there are ratings and isn’t this why people are supposed to actually pay attention to their kids, so that they know what they’re playing?
Hell. Remember Bloodrayne? It had a cheat code for “jiggy mode”. Dunno why, but it took a few minutes for me to realise what that was about. The answer becomes as obvious as… umm… the nose on your face, once you start playing the game, of course. Lara Croft is the woman we all remember though, gamer and non-gamer alike.
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Outta Town!
Is there anybody out there? Sorry about the delays on updates, and fixes, but I’m out of town right now and so while updates will continue, the normal schedule will take a day or two to reassert itself. In case anyone’s listening, my apologies!
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