Working Title 02.19.09: Working Reviews Vol. 1

Posted by Jordan Williams on 02.19.2009

It seems I've been bitten by the review bug and I seem to have some time laying around. What does Working Title think of Afro Samurai, Mirror's Edge, and The Maw?

Welcome to the #1 Column to GET A PROMOTION AT WORK, WHOOO!! I am now officially Supervising Lead of Quality Assurance for a certain Cellphone Company's Call Center (I'll give you a hint, you can hear him now.). Outside of getting a sweet promotion I also get the ability to slack off even MORE at work do things like write this week's column.

Sorry I missed lack week, though. There was a bit of bad news with a friend of mine and I had to go take care of it, but now I am back and since HBFS wrapped up last week I really have no idea what in the world I am going to talk about THIS week. The only thing that has really changed for me in the world of gaming is that I have been renting a LOT more games recently and have actually had quite a bit of time to play most of them...

Hmm...

I might be onto something there. As you know here on 411mania.com we also review games as well, but it couldn't hurt for me to go ahead and do some mini-reviews of games I have been playing recently would it?

You can' tell from this, but I actually typed the above paragraph a full day ago because I actually wanted to think about this week's column, and I've come to the decision that yeah, we are going to do some mo'fuckin' reviews this time. Biatch.

Before I begin, I'd also like to point out that I still find it terribly funny that I'm supposed to be assuring quality and making sure everyone is doing their job yet I am slacking off more than anyone. Ain't business grand?


Working Title: Working Reviews

Note: These reviews are the expressions solely of myself and not 411mania.com. Also these reviews are not meant to be a 'Second Opinion' or any type of companion to an already existing review of the game on the same sight. In all reality this was the only thing I could think of doing at work.


Afro Samurai - Xbox 360

Now I am not the biggest anime or manga fan in the world, in fact I would say in some cases and I am the Anti-Fan. Now back in middle school I used to be the biggest weeb this side of the Mississippi. I still dabble in the occasional anime or manga now and then, my tastes have changed to more Cromartie High, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu and generally the more 'lol' animes and not the action Naruto weeby shit. Although last year on Spike TV I managed to thumb across Afro Samurai and it quickly shot up on my list of new awesomeness. I went and bought the manga, watched the anime over again and as we speak I am downloading the second movie to my 360. Needless to say I was pretty damned jazzed when I heard there was going to be an Afro Samurai game that would stick pretty true to the source material.

The end result was a giant mixed bag of awesomeness.

When I first started up the game I was pretty damn impressed. I am normally not a fan of cel-shaded graphics but when they are done well and actually fit with the direction and image of the game. I would say that although the graphics as far as the characters and animations were fine, the one thing I noticed right away is that the levels are boring as hell. They are tons of fun to play in but not a lot of fun to look at, especially seeing as the world of Afro Samurai (and just that era in Japan) was just full of nice looking stuff we still ended up with the levels and areas looking very barren and dead outside of a few levels (namely Okiku's Story and Kuma's Story).

A big point of gripe that I've seen almost everyone have with this game is the fact that the camera is one of the biggest exercises is idiocy ever. The camera for the most part does a good job of staying behind Afro during the action and fighting sequences, but when it comes to the platforming parts as well as just maneuvering the damn camera it seems like it goes from being a badass to functionally retarded. Also while there is an option to invert and revert the Y Axis of the camera, there is no option to do so for the X axis of the camera. Meaning that when you tilt to the right on the analog stick you actually look to the cardinal right instead of the inverted way that most games do. This takes a bit of getting used to but before you know it you are already used to it and slicing people up with the best of them.



Now onto the actual gameplay, if you are looking for another super gory beat'em up game that seems all the rage nowadays, then you are in luck because Afro follows the blood laced footsteps of Kratos and Conan before him. Which also means that near the end of the game you are so overpowered and awesome that fighting actually becomes a bit of a bore. Not to say the fighting isn't fun, it's just once you learn all of the moves (most of which you will never use) you are just too damn strong for anything to be a real challenge outside of the boss fights. On some of the fights it's very easy to know what you need to do to win, but with other fights like Kuma and Justice you can die a ton of times without knowing if you actually did any damage to them or were even on the right track.

I would review the music and voice acting, but it's done by The RZA and Samuel L Jackson. That means it's awesome. Period.


As far as Working Title is concerned, Afro Samurai gets 3 Angry Suns out of 5.





The Maw - Xbox Live Arcade

It's very rare that I buy DLC or games from XBLA. In fact, to date I think I've only bought 4 XBLA games ever and those were only because someone else had them and I wanted to play them. But when I played the demo for The Maw I actually didn't know it was an XBLA game until the very end and I was surprised. A full 3D game that looked like it could've went for retail was on XBLA and managed to stay under the size limit?

That and it was so cute that it made me want to hug a puppy.



Anyway, I downloaded The Maw and actually fell in love with it for a bit, it was a pretty fun game with a simple premise. You just eat everything on the screen with The Maw and then solve the puzzles as they present themselves. Sadly, this formula got pretty old pretty fast, but that's what you must expect from an XBLA game. The Maw was pretty good for what it was, unfortunately it probably won't go down in DLG history like Braid and Puzzle Quest will, but it does show us an interesting look at just how big downloadable gaming is going to get on the console. Now we have completely new and original full 3D games on XBLA and not just ports of previous games or Xbox Originals. Sure, this has been going on for the better part of two years now but for some reason when and indy company puts out something like The Maw it just makes everyone take notice.

As far as Working Title is concerned, The Maw gets 4 Angry Suns out of 5.




Mirror's Edge - Xbox 360

Yeah, I know this game came out a while ago, but I just now got around to playing it so I'm going to review it now. If you have a problem with that I'll just stab you in the face.

I was one of the main people that were on the Mirror's Edge bandwagon when it first came out. I was going to get it and love it and omg it was going to be came of the year and all of that. But when it actually came out my interest seemed to just fade away into nothingness. So at Blockbuster last week I finally got around to renting it and I can see why the game got mixed reviews.

I will say that the game is brilliantly beautiful and actually has a pretty decent story behind it. I do like how the first person parkour seems to be put into the game seamlessly and you really do feel like a badass whenever you link together a string of awesome moves or beat a time trial level. But unfortunately those feelings are filled with areas of boredom, frustration and an odd feel of confinement given the freedom you have.

Mirror's Edge boasts all of this free running and free falling, but yet somehow ends up being painfully linear. Don't believe me? Go ahead and load up a level and see how many ways you TRULY have to get from point A to point B? Odds are there are only two. The way you are supposed to go and the advanced way you go if you are trying to break a time trial or keep your momentum up. Also the game has a near Call of Duty like level of trial and error. I can't tell you how many times I was like "Okay! Let's go!" and ended up jumping clear off of a building to my doom because that really cool long ass jump that I wanted to make wasn't the right way to go, instead I was supposed to go to the side and hop on the much less cooler looking red pipe. This didn't irk me right away but on some levels where it wasn't clear where I needed to go it would just piss me off to no end.



Another gripe that could probably just be chalked up to me being angry is I really just don't like dying a lot in games. A simple solution to this is to be better...but still. I found myself falling to my death in Mirror's Edge WAY more than actually succeeding. I swear I must've died 10 times on the section after the sewers because I couldn't find out where the hell to go so I had no choice but to take on all of the insanely accurate shotgun guards alone. This was way less fun than it sounds despite the game having a hilariously fun fighting engine which I wish I could've seen more of.

In the end it just seemed like Mirror's Edge was almost too realistic for it's own good. I was sure this game was going to be an experience, but the experience didn't turn out to be what I had hoped for and I think the sales of the game were correct. This was definitely a mixed bag that felt like it was incomplete in some places and ground breaking in others.




Working Feedback


Once again, you rabid motherfuckers have given me more feedback than I can possibly reply to. So instead of replying to all of them like I usually try to do I am just going to pick out some of the ones that stood out a little bit better to me.


Nice! Love the F' Firepro. I agree. FPR is great for what it is & amazing when you play with peoples saves dl from firepro club, but it always runs out of excitement & replay value for me.

For SvR, I like 09 better than any of the past ones. However, I would still rather have a game with their Day of Reckoning/Wrestle Kingdom engine instead.

Perhaps Legend of Wrestlemania will be good, but from the IGN Comic Con preview it sounds like there's not to much control over things. Button pops up, hit it & watch move. The guy was playing WMXV in that preview & said he thought it was cool though.

As far as SvR itself, I would ditch the lame Ultimate Control Grapples, bring in a branching career/story mode, at least allow us to download (not trade) other CAW's since we can download Highlight Reels - why not download someone's CAW? Imagine all of the quality CAWS.WS submissions that could be on there for direct download instead of having to go thru all of those complex & time consuming formulas.

Totally agree you should be able to customize attire of in game wrestlers. No Mercy & even RAW2 did it. Come on.

"Free" DLC PPV lineups. If create a PPV comes back, why not the option to DLC the exact card (as long as participants are already in the game of course)

I hate the current blocking / countering method. Could just be my slow ass reflexes though.

How about it Extreme Rules matchups that it doesn't pause the action to zoom in on the CPU going under for a weapon? Nothing more irritating than a tornado tag match that keeps stoping because it zooms in on whoever is going for a weapon to show you the weapon wheel & what they are selecting.

Put the Legends back in the game too, or at least the more recent ones.

I'm sure I'll post more later~Byzdalmyt

I have nothing to say. I seem to have one of these types of feedbacks every week when they are so good that I can't add anything to them.


Every year, people say they simply want an updated WWF No Mercy. Why is this so hard for game developers to grasp? We want a game that plays like No Mercy, with updated graphics and features. It's so simple, but no one with any stroke listens.~Steve307

Honestly, while No Mercy is one of the best wrestling games ever. I really don't want an updated version of the game. It's control style and CAW options are downright old and busted now and I don't think there's any way they would want to go back to that. The only thing I would want to see carried over from No Mercy is the branching storylines, because there is no reason for a WWE game in which it's product revolves around storytelling to have the bland and lackluster stories we have been getting lately. Take that however you wish.


FIREPRO IS REAL WRESTLING SVC IS FACE WRESTLING FUCK YOU GO JHACK OF SEPREOTH

You can lick the sweatiest part of my body, sir.

And I am all for gratuitous Jessica Chobot licking a PSP pictures. You should definitely bring that back.~Toddo




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......Moving along...

Working Question

E3 says its going back to being the awesome balls to the wall fest that it was a few years ago. Do you care?

-OR-

PS3 and Xbox 360 both have great games coming out later this year (despite not many strong exclusives yet) do you think Wii's reign as king has come to an end or will they surprise as at E3 ala 06 and 07?

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams and.....and....and....and.....STREET FIGHTER IV IS OUT FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUCK YEAH!