Xbox One Update

So yesterday Microsoft surprised everyone by reversing a majority of their restrictions on the Xbox One. Claiming that they listened to their consumers and decided to do what we wanted they committed what was one of the biggest flip-flops we've seen in the gaming industry.

The changes are as follows:
 No 24 hour online check in
No Used Games restrictions
No Region Lock
Internet is required for console SETUP only, afterwards, it can stay offline for eternity unless playing a game that requires an internet connection.

The Kinect was mentioned, but only that they are still requiring it to be connected to make the device function. So, other than requiring the Kinect and the $100 difference in price, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are basically on the same ground now.  It will be interesting to see the systems compete now that the field is leveled. If you've got thoughts on the matter, please share them with us in the comments below!

Xbox One and PlayStation 4

After spending some time watching both conferences and thinking about the systems I feel that I've got enough information to weigh in on my take on the systems.

Sony definitely had the stronger press conference in terms of what gamers want. That said, Microsoft had some better games but the issues with the Xbox One are going to hinder people's like for the system.

Sony announced that the PlayStation 4 will support used games without restrictions placed by Sony. The publisher must decide if they want to allow a gamer to buy a used copy of their game. PlayStation also seems to be supporting the indie game developers much more, bringing several indie games to the console first, and allowing the developers to self publish over the PlayStation Network. There is also no online check in for the PS4, and players are allowed to swap games with their friends at will. Also, the system was revealed and I think that it looks more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. The PlayStation Eye is also not a requirement for the system to function.

Xbox showed some more of their exclusive titles, but seemed to be more focused on announcing that DLC for several games was coming to the Xbox first. Not that it was exclusive, but that it was coming first. There were several great looking exclusives, like Titanfall and Quantum Break. Xbox One has placed a one time use license code in their games, and only allows you to gift your games to one of your friends once, providing they have been on your friends list for at least thirty days. There is also a once every twenty-four hour check in online while playing games on your own console. If you are playing your content on another Xbox you have to check in online every hour or the games stop functioning. Xbox does also support a much more robust suite of entertainment features than the PS4, but that comes at the cost of freedom for playing your games.

Both systems have pros and cons, as is with all systems. The thing is, Xbox says that they are for the gamers, but are being extremely restrictive on how the players are allowed to play. Sony has placed it into the hands of the publishers to decide how restrictive they want to be. At this point, I think that is I were to buy an Xbox One it would be for the entertainment aspects, not the games. That said, I do have a preorder placed on the PlayStation 4, but not for the Xbox One. I want to see how things play out over the first year or so with Xbox before I decide to join in.

We are still here.

I swear we haven't fallen off the side of the planet or anything. Just had a lot going on and haven't bought any new games lately. We all apologize sincerely for that, and I'm hoping I'm going to be getting "The Last of Us" when it comes out. We'll also be watching the news outlets to see what's going on at E3 and have that for you guys so bear with us a little longer. Brighter things are on the horizon!

Also, Scorpion is the next DLC character for Injustice: Gods Among Us... I don't like that very much. What is a Mortal Kombat fighter doing in a DC Universe game!? Oh well, at least they got Jim Lee to redesign his look and he does look pretty cool.

So to recap: Scorpion is in Injustice and we are not dead.

Thanks for reading our blog!

Injustice: Gods Among Us Review (PS3)

Upon first booting Injustice I couldn't help but think that this is just going to be a reskinned Mortal Kombat. I could not have been more wrong. While the core fighting game remains the same, the rest of the game is changed up enough to make Injustice feel similar, but very different from Netherrealm's previous game.

Playing the game is a treat for anyone who is a fan of the DC comics. Injustice looks great during the fights, not so much during the cutscenes. Animations flow smoothly and transitioning between moves looks fantastic. Environments are nicely made and highly interactive on most levels. The only complaint I've got, and it's not even a major one, is just the way that some of the characters look. The art design at times seems a bit interesting, with most of the characters, including Superman, look like they are armor plated. There are also an incredible amount of unlockable and alternate skins for the characters.

The voice acting in the game is top notch. Netherrealm took the time to get some of the voice actors who work on the various DC Animated Universe projects to come in and do voices. Kevin Conroy is Batman, Adam Baldwin and Jennifer Hale also lend their voices to the game. The sounds around the arena are pretty well done also, most notably with the level transitions.

Injustice feels like a licensed game done right, and it largely is. There are 24 characters from the DC Universe to choose from, with at least four more on tap to be delivered through DLC. The cast consists of twelve heroes and twelve villains. They range from Superman and Batman to the lesser known Raven and Killer Frost.  Each character has at least two costumes, but some have more than that, such as Solomon Grundy, who I currently have four costumes for. The story mode is crafted by Netherrealm and plays out very well. It kept me entertained for several hours before I moved on to the Battles mode. These modes are the standard ladder matches where you pick your character (most of the time) and duke it out with a bunch of enemies on a sliding scale for difficulty. There are a number of different options you can pick for the Battles mode, including Heroes only, Villains only, and Mirror Mode. These add a lot of extra replayability and challenge to the game. The next mode available for play is the S.T.A.R. Labs mode, which offers players 240 missions to play. You get ranked between one and three stars depending on how well you do on these missions with a trophy to get three stars on all of them adding a good bit of challenge.

Playing through the fights of Injustice is a lot of fun. Combos are easy to pull off and flow very well. There are numerous interactive elements in each level that help add a bit of strategy to your playstyle. There are also level transitions that can be initiated which look really cool, though when done by someone like Catwoman seems a bit over the top. The characters all play similarly, but differently enough that each one feels fairly unique.  The game allows you to tag certain moves you want to try and will display them on the side of the screen as a kind of on the fly tutorial for players who are having trouble remembering combos or special moves. Another change from Mortal Kombat is the removal of Fatalities. This game is only rated "T" so they had to tone the violence down a bit. So Fatalities were replaced with Super Moves which have a similar impact to the X-Ray moves from Mortal Kombat. You can pull them off as soon as your super meter is full and have potential to do more than one per match. One more small complaint I've noticed during my time with Injustice is that there isn't a traditional round over. You fight until one of the two combatants runs out of thier first health bar, then they start onto their second bar without a new round warning. The winning player of that round also does not get a restored health bar, they fight with what was left of their first one until they win or lose it and start into their second. This was an interesting choice that took a lot of getting used to, but I sort of like it now that I'm used to it.

All in all, Injustice: Gods Among Us is a great fighting game. There are some solid mechanics that help better the genre, but there are a few issues too. Graphically, the game isn't groundbreaking, the fighting is solid, but the between round break thing is a lot awkward. The story is interesting and is worth checking out. Overall, we are awarding Injustice: Gods Among Us an 8/10.

Bioshock Infinite Review (PS3)

Bioshock Infinite gets a whole lot of things right in making a game. Not just from a video game standpoint, from an artistic standpoint. The game has a masterful story,  amazing graphics and sound, a beautiful and fantastic setting, and phenomenal gameplay. The game hits quite a few right notes, but does make me wonder about some of the choices that the developer made while making the game.

The first thing that you'll notice when playing Bioshock Infinite is how similar the opening is to the original Bioshock. This didn't detract from the overall look of the game, but it's still an interesting point to think about. The second thing that you'll notice is how absolutely gorgeous the game is. Upon my first look at Columbia I actually stopped moving and just stared at what was around me. The world is incredibly detailed, with some terrific lighting work done. While I was walking through the city of Columbia, I truly felt that I was wandering through a fully developed city. It looked and felt like the utopia that it was supposed to be. The characters looked incredibly lifelike and moved very fluidly. I only noticed some slight graphical issues, such as some framerate hiccups and an occasional very odd pause to load while a lot was happening on screen towards the end of the game. The engine handles the combat and scores of action fairly well otherwise.

In the sound department, Bioshock is perfect. Character voices are incredible, with high praise to the twin characters. The back and forth between Booker and Elizabeth throughout the campaign is great and by the end I actually felt attached to Elizabeth. The voxophone recordings that you listen to during the campaign are remarkably clear, but take a backseat when more important story based dialogue starts up. Weapons sound respectably like their real world counter-parts. Even the background characters and enemies have some great voice work to them.

While not going too heavily into the story of the game, I will say that Irrational crafted an amazing narrative. I was kept guessing up to the end. The original objective takes on a whole new meaning by the time you view the ending. The middle section of the game does falter a touch, placing you at the heart of a civil war between the Founders and the Vox Populi. Some interesting themes from the early 1900's are explored, such as national pride, religion, racism, and segregation. These all come together to help move the story along, but also help the player get a glimpse into life in Columbia.

Playing through Infinite is where things got fairly interesting. First off, the powers are called vigors now, not plasmids. There are two sets of weapons to use, the Founder weapons and the Vox weapons. The mechanics work just fine; moving and shooting are very tight and the other controls are extremely responsive. You gain a shield ability, and a vigor that also acts as a shield, and you can only carry two weapons at a time. While these are standard conventions for most shooters now, they just felt a little wrong in Infinite. The weapon and vigor upgrade systems were fairly basic and while I never had enough money to fully upgrade everything (lets face it, there are way too many guns for that to happen) I did have enough to fully upgrade my favorite weapons and vigors.

Another complaint I had was the length and pacing of the game itself. The beginning and ending sections are awesome, but the middle just seems to drag on a bit. There are a lot of backtracking quest lines in the middle portion of the story, which feel like Irrational was trying to artificially inflate the length of the campaign. I managed to get the game beat in around thirteen hours or so, but I spent a lot of time exploring and backtracking to make sure I got everything I could before continuing.

Games like this shine in their replayability though, and  Bioshock Infinite offers a very great replay value. Upping the difficulty will add a lot of time to your game depending on your overall skill. I played on medium and there were several sections I don't want to play on a harder difficulty because I barely made it through. There are also a number of weapons and vigors to experiment with, so if nothing else play the game again but use different equipment. Another great thing about replaying the game is that you know where the story is going. Looking at the experience a second time adds a lot of additional perspective and helps to bring some things together that were confusing the first time. Additionally, the game is entirely single player. There is no unnecessary, tacked on multiplayer suite to artificially extend the life of the game. Thank you Irrational Games!

Several new additions have been made to the combat of Bioshock Infinite. A new item called gear has been added. Gear comes in four classes (Hat, Shirt, Pants, Shoes) and each piece has a different ability. Combining these with the various upgrades you get to your abilities makes for some great combat ideas. Sky lines are another new mechanic that allow you to fly around the area at breakneck speeds and drop down on enemies, or you can choose to shoot them while moving around. There are also freight hooks to grapple onto, and inter-dimensional tears that Elizabeth can open up to call in anything from health kits to automated turrets. All of these add some very interesting dynamics to combat, but to compensate, there are a lot more enemies to fight. There were several times while playing that I actually had to pause for a second to get my bearings as to what was going on. This was especially true when Handymen were involved in the fights.


Bioshock Infinite is a fantastic, story driven game. Gameplay is great, and the story is top notch. If not for some strange design choices, I think this could have seriously been a perfect game. I definitely think that anyone who considers themselves a gamer should pick this game up and experience it. Bioshock Infinite earns a 9/10.

Gears of War: Judgment Review (360)

Gears of War: Judgment is a game that up until a couple weeks ago I didn’t even think I was going to get. Then, I went to my local GameStop and placed several pre-orders and one of those games was Gears of War: Judgment. Here’s the good news about this, the game is great!

Graphically speaking, Gears of War: Judgment does some things a little differently than previous Gears games. Generally, with some exception to Gears 3, the Gears of War franchise has been based in a color scheme of grays. Destruction has always been at the heart of this series. Judgment changes this up a bit and shows a bit of what some areas of Sera looked like before the Locust and COG destroyed everything. There are a lot of brighter areas to look at while fighting through the war. Though, towards the end, things do turn bleak and dark and the game goes back to feeling like its set in the Gears of War universe we’ve all come to know and love. The characters move very fluidly with the animations going off without a hitch 99% of the time. Character models look great, though the age of the hardware and engine are starting to show, this is still the best looking gears game yet.   There were some hiccups with the chainsaw animation for the lancer, occasionally not lining up correctly when done on the stairs, or two people hitting the same enemy at the same time can look a little wonky. There were also a couple times when I went for the execution and the camera angle cut way back from everything instead of zooming into the kill. These were all very rare occurrences but they were there from time to time.

Gears of War: Judgment sounds exactly like any other Gears of War game. The characters sound great, with the original actors returning for their respective characters. The banter between the squads that was standard for the first three games seems a little lacking at times in this entry. There were times that I thought Paduk was literally just there because there had to be four people in the squad. There was a lot of underdevelopment for several of the characters in the game which left me feeling a little uncaring about what happened to them as the game went on.

Gears of War: Judgment plays like any other Gears game. It’s a cover-based third person shooter. The controls are tight and responsive, I had no issue aiming or moving my character around the map. This game does move a little quicker than previous entries, which is an absolute treat. There is an added measure of verticality to the levels that previously was not present in Gears of War. These maps have been designed to give the player some options when going into combat.

The game is broken up into six chapters; each played in short sections that never took me more than about twenty minutes to complete. Overall, the game took me around ten to twelve hours to complete the campaign. The narrative is set up as being told through flashbacks from each member of Kilo Squad. Each section of the chapters has an extra option of doing what is called a “declassified” mission. These side missions add an extra level of difficulty to the missions, but add a little bit of extra story to the game that was otherwise left out of the testimony. I had a couple complaints from within the campaign, chiefly that the main villain is completely pointless. The sole reason he’s even included is so that there is something enormous to kill for the final mission. I was also hoping that since this was a prequel there would be a lot more back story given to Cole and Baird, but they didn’t really develop the characters as fully as I’d like to have seen. Finally, while the declassified missions added a little story, sometimes it would have been nice to have them add new objectives or make the player take a different route through the level. There were a couple of the declassified missions that were just frustrating to play through.

Multiplayer for the series is largely unchanged. The strategy is still dive towards your enemy with a shotgun and hope you hit them for an instant kill. Though, I did notice more players not using this strategy than I have before, this was the predominant strategy online. Deathmatch and King of the Hill make their return nestled with two other modes that are class based. Survival has the player outlast ten waves of AI controlled Locust while defending a point. If you lose the first time, there are two more chances to win the game. Overrun is similar to survival except that players play as both the Locust and the COG. In Overrun COG must defend three points throughout the map, and the Locust must attack and destroy them. These modes replace Horde and Beast mode and do an adequate job of that.

Overall, Gears of War: Judgment is a great game with a couple of missed opportunities within it. Characters are hollow, the villain is completely worthless as a villain, and the declassified objectives feel like an artificial way to try and extend the campaign without actually expanding it. We’re giving a score of 8 out of 10 on this one. See you online.

MLB 13: The Show Review (PS3)

Sorry this one's a little late guys. We've been a little busy personally as of late. However as they say, better late than never!

MLB 13: THE SHOW

            San Diego Studios hit another home run with this year’s release of MLB 13: The Show.  Year after year this franchise continues to impress by taking an already astounding baseball simulation and somehow improving upon it.  It is like going to the movies for the release of (Insert Movie Title Here) 2 and having high expectations that are not met… except The Show meets them every time.

            MLB 13: The Show appears to take an old adage and modify it slightly: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… just add more of it.”  Gameplay in The Show 13 is relatively the same as in years past, the controls are identical with multiple configurations to chose from.  The major addition is a Beginner Mode which is, you guessed it, for beginners in The Show franchise.  The AI starts off by feeding you pitches that even an American League closer could hit until you get the hang of it.  Slowly the difficulty picks up as you advance through Beginner Mode.  It is a nice new addition to the franchise.  A new throwing meter is also introduced for those who have familiarized themselves with The Show over the years.  This meter has a sweet spot in the center and accuracy gets increasingly wilder as it fades from a green center, to yellow, and red at the ends.  It takes some getting used to, but adds a degree of difficulty to throwing.  This can always be switched to the old style by accessing the controls menu.

            The Road To The Show Mode returns and is as good as ever.  This year, San Diego Studios takes you onto the field with the presentation.  You still get the preshow experience of the television broadcast as well as occasional “Prospect Spotlights” on your major league hopeful.  The telecast experience pops up after your player has completed an at bat, batter faced, or fielding opportunity.  But for the most part, you hear what your player hears.  There is no commentary during your game events, just the sound of umpires, coaches, players, and fans.  Hitting and base running has been improved upon as well.  When you hit the ball, the camera drops to your hitter’s shoulder so you can more accurately track the hit from the player’s prospective.  You can also lock on to the ball or third base coach with the simple push of a button to see exactly what is going on.  Fielding opportunities now have a more personal feel as well by allowing the player the option of catching the ball by pressing a button when the virtual player should close his glove.  This adds a nice little timing factor and a little more realism, if the player so chooses.

            Two major game modes have been added this year as well.  The Show Live allows the player to jump right into a game scheduled for today’s date, similar to the NBA 2K franchise.  The other game mode addition is Postseason Mode which allows you to skip the regular season and jump right into the playoffs.  The atmosphere of Postseason Mode games is intensified to give you the impression that this game means more.  San Diego Studios recorded crowds from actual playoff games to accurately get a feel for the noise level.  The presence of rally towels also adds to the excitement.  Having been to three postseason games in the last two years, I can vouch that the atmosphere is pretty accurate to the way the postseason feels as a fan.

            Presentation received many new additions this year.  Steve Lyons returns to the series, replacing Dave Campbell in the commentary.  When creating a player, you now have the option for “warrior” style Bryce Harper eye black.  Batting animations have been broken down into stance, follow through, missed swings, etc.  Various scenes have been added to games as well.  For example, after your first virtual home run in RTTS, you just might receive the silent treatment from your teammates before being congratulated with high fives and back slaps.

            Overall, MLB 13: The Show took an already astounding franchise and made it better.  They did not tinker with things that work well, but did make some slick additions for new and old gamers alike.  San Diego Studios continues to impress year after year with easily the best baseball simulation available.