Nintendo Power gives Metroid Prime 3 perfect score!

As if I wasn't excited enough for this game! Check out the scan here, I'll let it speak for itself.

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DOXOreview: Spider-Man 3 (Wii)

I'm just going to come out and say it, there isn't much good about this game. It was clearly a rushed effort and the final product...well I wouldn't go so far as to call it final, considering it isn't finished. The game makes it obvious that publishers were consumed by the black symbiote themselves, and by Symbiote I mean profit. Hit the jump for the full review.


Aesthetics 2/5

Unfortunately this game looks like an awful mess. Plain and simple Vicarious Visions was rushed to get this game out in time with the movie, as was Trey Arch in fact, and over all most versions, save for the DS, have suffered greatly. With that said the time limit is still little excuse for just how terribly unfinished this game is. Why not delay until the DVD release? I know the sales may not be as impressive but, call me old fashioned, I like buying games that are finished. The big problem with the graphics is the …well, just about everything is bad. While some of spidey’s animations are fluid but the environments make this one good aspect forgettable. The city is flat, to say the least. Textures, while remaining crisp even close up are none too inspiring. The buildings look like cardboard models, its horribly primitive. The worst thing about the city is that the textures disappear and things aren’t always drawn before we can see them…Yes, that means that buildings suddenly pop up. The game is clearly not finished.

Sound: 1/5

The game is about as aurally impressive as it is visually. There is nothing really worth hearing, Tobey’s delivery of Spidey’s quips seem even worse this time around and things are overall very repetitive. One interesting quirk I found was that I would sometimes save women with voices that changed after I put them down, occasionally even to a man. Its pretty bizarre. The sound effects are bland, but the classic ‘thwip’ of the webbing coming out of the remote is a nice touch. Music seems to sporadically come in and out just like it did in spider-man 2.

Gameplay: 2/5

One of the only satisfying things this game offers (if not ‘the only’) is the swing mechanic. I have to say that it works pretty well and the motion control feels really natural. This isn’t to say there is no learning curve, no, it’s a pretty steep climb but after about 20 minutes you’ll get the hang of it. Unfortunately though, this one aspect of gameplay doesn’t make up for the awful combat system. Total wag fest, I felt like I was tempting a dog to fetch the whole time. Motion does nothing to help the combat, it actually seems rather unintuitive and becomes more of a mini game where you have to get your timing right, just not good. There isn’t that wide a variety of combo’s either which makes fighting all the more boring. I think if they had implemented a fighting engine much like that of the Godfather: Blackhand Edition it would have been much more successful. Webbing is actually pretty tight during combat the motion control works well (bring hands up to fling somebody over your shoulder), but the variation just isn’t there to keep you interested. The nunchuck controlled camera seems like it could use a whole truck load of revision. Dodging is also handled by the nun chuck , when your spider sense goes off give it a quick flick, you’d think it would work well but leaves much to be desired. I would have liked to the direction of the flick play a role in the dodging, as it is any direction will trigger the same dodge which is dependant on the analog stick. Sloppy. The cineractives (interactive cut scenes ala RE4) stunk horribly of after thought. Not one of these ‘mini games’ offered an intense moment of anticipation like RE4 or GoW, in fact they were often too short to pose any sort of challenge and the fact that motion was involved just felt uncomfortable, luckily the motions were recognized rather well. You would think that I would talk about the black suit but frankly, I never really used it. It makes you stronger, supposedly fast and requires going through another of those cineractives to take off…maybe that’s why I never used it. Truth be told the suit made combat slightly less of a chore and I think that’s mostly due to the fact that fights are over faster when in the suit and in this game, the less time you spend fighting the better. Another couple things that annoyed me was the fact that there was no sprint button was an awful oversight, running and climbing was really slow and this would have helped immensely. Spider-sense seemed somewhat ignored, sure it flashes above your head prompting you to pump the nunchuck but its hardly intuitive, why no slow-mo? That was a great mechanic in Spider-Man 2 and the 360/PS3 version of the game. Missions were few and far between, and there was little variation.

Immersion: 1/5

While swinging around does feel pretty good the graphics just aren’t convincing, I’m no HD junky but I don’t like my cityscapes disappearing. Further more the story is just an awful mess- I know what your thinking - I loved the movie- this is not the movie, this isn’t even X3. The game borrows little from the movie and instead focuses mostly on the Lizard, Morbius and Shriek which I wouldn’t have minded if it wasn’t for the dumbed down presentation and rushed story telling. The game is short and so not much gets developed making it all feel like missions rather than a living narrative. The cut scenes are terrible. Some of them are comprised of 360/ps3 in-engine (And actually are taken right from the other games) while some were created by Vicarious Visions. This doesn’t SEEM too bad since it’s true that both games do follow the movie but also that both games have unique story lines as well. Well it IS bad, the difference in artistic design is jarring, so much so that it begins to cheapen the integrity of the product, and just takes you out of the story (just as if they had cast two actors for each role in a movie and played half with one cast and the other half with the others.) What’s worse is that Vicarious’ cinematics were less impressive than the 360/PS3 in game stuff (though I did like their rendition of venom over Treyarch’s) The voice overs added very little to the game despite some of the actors lending their talents, or rather, what was left of it after doing the movie. It seemed that the actors really weren’t too concerned with the game, voice acting was almost lifeless at times and often cheesy. The lines were also FAR too repetitive, and the longer the fight, the more you notice all three of those lines aren’t funny after the 400th time (heck after the first time they aren’t funny). I found myself playing through the game not because I was interested in it but rather because I am such a huge spider-man fan, and that I should play it. It was almost a chore., though swinging feels pretty good after a long day at work.



Recommendations:

If you just need to be spider-man I’d highly recommend Spider-Man 2 or even the 360/PS3 version over this. Alternatively I hear Crackdown is a pretty fun sandbox game with some super hero elements.

Bottom Line:

The Symbiote has obviously corrupt Vicarious Visions, they pull an Eddie Brock in trying to play this off as a real game.

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DOXOreview: Medal of Honour: Vangaurd

Aesthetics 3/5

Graphically this game does deliver some crisp textures and some nice lighting , but overall falls flat due to the animation, cinematic follies, and horrendous special effects.

The game, in every regard looks better than Call of Duty 3 on the Wii, but it still doesn’t look that good. The soft lighting of outdoor environments creates a pretty realistic atmosphere and actually makes some of the blocky obstacles a bit easier on the eyes. There are some really nice moments of high contrast action when your gun fire actually illuminates a dark corridor, creating a strobe light effect that any dance aficionado could cut a rug too. But really, it looks good when you fire in the dark. If only the game could have held onto this same high contrast look the rest of it wouldn’t have looked so plain. The lighting sometimes washes out the character models making them look flat and highlighting some of their imperfections. Animation is rather unnatural in this game, and a lot of the time characters mouths won’t even move when their talking. Firearm technology has apparently come a long way since WWII seeing as being shot actually hurts a little these days. In the game Germans don’t always react to being shot, in most cases it isn’t until their dead that the next animation is triggered. The special effects are where the game really falls short though, explosions are usually handled by one shared animation which seems to be two or three white cloud images cycling through at 30fps. It makes for a very disappointing explosion, a rather stagnant effect. Another explosion animation is that of the tanks, this is a single orange puff that manages to crawl through the polygons of an unchanged tank model, followed by some bland black smoke. Ugly. The textures hold up pretty nicely though in some spots, but the overall simple modelling sort of makes the textures a moot point.

Hit the Jump for more disappointment!


Sound 2/5

The games soundtrack is pretty well orchestrated piece of music, which is suitable at most times, its too bad the ambience and voiceovers don’t match.

The voices of your squad members, like in most WWII shooters is over the top, loud, annoying, and about as helpful as John Madden’s commentary during opening kick off. The main problem with the voice acting in this game is that it’s just not convincing, and more often than not aggravating. I don’t know much about Billy Talent but I had no idea the lead vocalist was around during WWII. Honestly, one of your team members has the most cringe inducing voice I’ve heard in a while. It’s a high pitch scream-talk, much like that of the vocals in Billy Talent. The ambient noise in the game, at times is okay, but is usually non-existent. Sporadic gunfire, explosions, and passing planes can be heard regardless as to where you are. It really seems funny when a plane flies by audibly and yet visually there is no representation of anything flying by. The sound effects are sloppy, bottom line. Thankfully the music makes up for it. I felt it was always very inspiring and appropriate, if not a bit sporadic. By the way, I think it’s worth mentioning that EA, for some reason, still feels that they need to flex their knowledge of authentic WWII weaponry, even though the game is nothing new. So roughly every five seconds Billy, or other team mates will yell about an MG-42. “It’s an MG-42!”, “I need someone on that MG-42!”, “MG-42!”, “Kegan, get on the MG-42!”. Wow. Redundancy at it’s best.

Gameplay 2/5

Medal of Honour attempts to play as you would expect a FPS to play on the Wii, except it falls a bit flat. While I can appreciate the option to tweak certain aiming controls, I feel it’s just a control scheme that could have been more fleshed out. The default aiming settings give the player control reminiscent of Call of Duty 3 but not as polished. It’s somewhere between that and Red Steel. It’s a bit loose and the turning if far too slow. To combat this problem however, EA has implemented a quick fix inspired, perhaps, by Resident Evil 4. A Quick 180 degree turn is mapped to flicking the nunchuck to the left. While on paper this seems like a good fix, it isn’t. It just feels unnatural and I found that I actually NEVER used this mechanic. Not once, and when it did happen it was by accident. Another problem the game presents is that you seldom need to turn around. The enemies are never really behind you, and if they are they don’t present an immediate enough threat to warrant the quick turn as a necessity. Reloading was handled by flicking the nunchuck to the right. This felt better than the quick turn, but was overall not very use full. For some reason EA made one of the most common weapons in the game something that you cannot reload until your clip is emptied. I found myself shooting one or two shots into a crate every once in a while, just so I wouldn’t be caught reloading in the middle of a fight. Of course, I still did get caught reloading, many times. I’m not really an FPS gamer, per se, I appreciate a good one, but I’m not big on them. Hence, I’m not great at them, but I’m good enough. So yes, I got caught reloading standing up, running through a German trench, and you know what? It didn’t matter. The AI is pretty laughable, almost at the same level as Goldeneye 007 on the N64. Ya that’s right, I walked up to a German, looked at him while I reloaded for a while and then preceded to shoot him down without so much as a shot from my opponent. The rest of the controls are pretty standard fair for the Wii. Joystick moves your character, C is jump and Z is crouch. Tapping Z twice will get your guy down on his stomach, much like CoD3. I don’t know who did it first but the two games seem to share the same graphic representing the status of your position. Odd. Disappointingly one of the games most enticing elements failed to deliver. Being a paratrooper was none too exciting. While visually it was alright, and the controls were passable, I felt like I was dropped from twenty feet. It’s a totally pointless gameplay element. While you can, theoretically land anywhere, the short drop doesn’t ever really allow you to get to anywhere that is particularly advantageous.

Immersion 1/5

I never once felt attached to the others in my squad, and those who actually spoke never really seemed to ever be in danger, besides the colonel you take over for at the beginning, but its all very anti-climactic. Something that really detracts in the immersion of the game is the fact that, cinematically the game is a failure. EA makes little effort in creating any sort of drama, or suspense. There is nothing that really makes you want to finish the game. WWII is a complex part of our history, a very compelling story. Despite this fact EA is not able to take any of the available documentation and create a realistic, and compelling story. The worst part about the WWII genre (besides the fact that it actually warrants its own genre now…) is that despite its history there has still not been a game that truly explores any of the meatiest parts of it. We’ve been treated to generic shooters in drab settings and low production values. This game is not immersive at all, and is just another sad exploitation of a dark part of humanities past.

Bottom Line: 3/10

The game is lack-lustre in presentation and is an over all generic game that accomplishes nothing.




Recommendations:

If you liked this game, you should: 1. Raise your standards, and 2. Try out Call of Duty 3 on the Wii. It isn’t a great game, but its much better than Vangaurd. Maybe you should just take a break from the whole WWII genre, and wait for Metroid Prime 3 to get your FPS on.

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DOXOfeature: We gots reviews!

Alright, you may have noticed a few make shift reviews lingering around the site; Pascuzzi's God of War 2 praise and my footnote of a Ghost Rider review.

We've moved on, we've come together and decided that in order to keep some consistency between editors we're going to need an outline or template for our reviews, previews, etc...
Here's what we're thinking, feel free to give us any feedback, good or bad.

Hit the jump for the in depth explanation.



We're going to be breaking games down into a few categories. The main ones being;

Aesthetics - pretty straight forward here, we'll be telling you what we think about the graphics comparable to other games on the same console, other consoles, and also other versions of the same game- if applicable. This will be an in depth review of strictly aesthetics: character models, special effects, cinematography, etc.

Sound - Again, this is pretty straight forward. We'll be judging everything from music to voice acting.

Game play - This is where is can get subjective. Not everybody will appreciate the same types of game play and that will be addressed here. We will outline the control schemes and whether or not they work, how they could have been improved, etc.

Immersion - This is where we will outline the story and how all of the above comes together to offer a totally immersive gaming experience.

All of the above categories will receive a score out of 5 (going up in increments of .5)

1 - inexcusable piece of garbage
2 - disappointing, sub-par
3 - the lower end of average
4 - the higher end of average
5 - Very satisfying, couldn't really be any better.

Recommendations - In order to fully get our points across we will be including this section which will list other games that the reviewed game plays like or reminds us of. Basically, if you like these games, you will like the game we just reviewed.

Bottom line- This is where we will sum up our impressions in one line and give the game an overall score out of 10 It will not be an average (going up in increments of .5).

A graphic will be accompanied by every review, because it's pretty.

Thought on reviews; Too often do websites use a scale from 7-10. What I mean by this is that the big websites will try to avoid biting the hand that feeds them (NIN!). If I were receiving free stuff and tons of money in advertising from certain companies I don't think I would want to piss them off. Unfortunately this creates bias in reviews and ultimately the gamers suffer.

Here at DOXOphobia we want to avoid game review inflation and to do that I will be outlining the point system, and every review will then link back to this post inorder for comparison.


1 - inexcusable piece of garbage. NEVER PLAY IT!
2 - hardley playable, frustrating, laughable.
3 - playable, but the amount of problems will make any good part of this game forgetable
4 - just under average, unless your a fan of this series you can pass on this game
5 - the lower end of average
6 - the higher end of average
7 - A good game worth playing through to the end
8 - A stand out game that delivers consistantly on all fronts
9 - An incredible game that fans of the genre should NOT MISS
10 - PERFECTION! (never going to happen)

We've got a lot of reviews coming in a few weeks so stay tuned!

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Ghost Rider Review

I went into this movie with high hopes, and I have to say that they weren't exactly met, but not crushed either. The movie had a few moments of greatness, but also some cringe worthy dialogue. The plot was pretty interesting if your into religious mythos, I'm not really too educated on the comic book so I can't compare the two origin stories, but I was convinced by the movie version.

All in all I'd give the movie a 6.8 out of 10

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God Of War 2 review

Here is a link for a God Of War 2 review brought to you by the fellows at ign.com
check out the video selection for the video review and other kool stuff!

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