The Best Game Ever Made. Period.

I am going to make this very short.
For over a Decade there has only been ONE game that I called "The Best Game Ever Made", and that game was Ocarina of Time. For over 10 years I have played games that have come close, but none have dethroned the number one spot from Zelda. Games like Mass Effect on the 360, and Metal Gear Solid 4 came so close, but not quite close enough. Nothing came close enough. Until Now.
Uncharted 2 is, and I mean this, The Best Game I have Ever Played. There is no question about it. And this is coming from a Non Fanboy. I would say the same thing if it came out for the 360, but it didn't. The PS3 is now home to the Greatest piece of entertainment I have EVER laid eyes upon. Uncharted 2 is perfection on a disk.
Why is it so good? Uncharted 2 follows a simple rule that makes the difference between a game, and an experience. Uncharted 2 makes sure that YOU are part of the experience. It wont cut away to a movie scene and show your Nathan Drake doing something that you yourself can't do in the game. It won't cut away to a movie scene when an awesome action sequence plays out either. No, it makes sure that YOU are a part of everything. If a train derails and comes flipping down the tracks while pieces of it's body are chipping off and explosions keep it gunning directly toward you, you feel like you are actually there because the game manages to make it look like you are watching a movie, but at the same time, you still have control of your character.

There are dozens and dozens of scenes like this. Scenes that no other game has even attempted to do. And your heart will race and a smile will go from here to eternity when you play this game and experience what I can not put into words.

If you ever wondered what it felt like to be in an action movie with a fantastic plot, characters, and action, there is no Equal. Uncharted 2 is the Best Game Ever Made.

We Be Fast

Let me just say this right off the bat, anyone who was going to buy Ghostbusters already bought it. This review is simply for the Gamers still unsure of making the leap to this game. If you are one of those people who are still unsure if you should make the purchase, read on, and put aside about $60.

First things first. No, Ghostbusters the Video Game is not as good as the movies. I am a self proclaimed Ghostbusters fan. I even loved the second movie almost as much as the first, so I do consider myself somewhat of a fanatic. That being said, you should put your expectations in check right away, because this game is not going to be the coveted 3rd movie of the series. What this game is, essentially, is a half retelling, half new adventure.

All the old crew is back, as I am sure you already know. And thankfully, each one puts forth some great voice acting. Everyone sound almost exactly like they did 25 years ago in the first film. Special credit needs to be given to Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who really sunk back in to their characters and gave it everything they had. Even the music, which was pulled directly from the first film, will bring shutters to your spine as you fight countless ghouls while Dr. Raymond Stantz is screaming in your ear.

The Graphics are a bit of a mixed bag, but they certainly get the job done. Cutscenes often look stiff and badly compressed. The voices are also out of sync, and this can be a bit annoying. However, the in-game graphics are where this really shines. Everything has been designed and textured with love, and it shows. The Developers smartly never make you stay in one place for too long. You are always on the move and the environments are always changing, which really helps build the games scale. The combat does end up getting a bit repetitive toward the end of the adventure, though.

If you are lucky enough to have a few buddy's who also own the game, you can hop online and bust some ghosts with friends. I can not stress enough how fun this is, since there is nothing quite like it currently available. I never experienced any lag, though I did find I got booted from some games because of faulty programming.

The bottom line is this. Although this game does not compare to the original movies, it still managed to live up to expectations. Everything from the Voice acting, to the script, to the music, to the Environments do an excellent job of capturing most of the magic that made the films so great. There are some drawbacks, like your teammates insistence on always dying, and a severely out of whack difficulty scale. But none of this manages to take away from what is, essentially, a fantastic Adventure with our Favorite group of Ghostbusters. Do not hesitate anymore, I promise you will not regret it.

Prepare for Shadows

Velvet Assassin is a World War 2 game.........Are you still there? Ok, good. Velvet Assassin is a stealth game.........Your still there huh? Alright, if your still reading this review after those two revelations, then Velvet Assassin might be for you.

Velvet Assassin tells the story of a English female spy named Violette Summer. Violette's job is to infiltrate the German war machine and scalp as many Nazis as she can within a given time limit. Wait, no, sorry, I was thinking of something else. Violette finds herself in a coma from the very start of the game, and you play the mission leading up to her inevitable accident that brought her to this makeshift hospital. This was an odd decision from Replay Studios, the developers, because you play the game in the past, while Violette talks about things your seeing in real time as if she is dreaming it in the first person. Sound a bit confusing, right? Well it sort of is, and this was one part of the game that really could have been tightened up a bit.

Most of the story is told through slide shows before every mission, and any cutscene that we do get is a little too artsy and brief for its own good. It gets the job done though, although it is disappointing they did not go a different route with the story.

Velvet Assassin, as I stated earlier, is a stealth game in the vein of Splinter Cell. I argued with myself over whether or not I should make that comparison, but in the end, I won my argument. Velvet Assassin is no Splinter Cell. This is the very first thing you need to understand. At the start of every mission, you begin with a knife, and maybe a pistol with 7 shots. Scattered throughout most levels are weapon cabinets where you may find some ammo or a new gun to play with, but this is not a shooter, and ammo is scarce. Although the last few levels plays like a shooter, and ammo is aplenty. This is where my second complaint comes from.

Velvet Assassin feels like there were 2 different directors behind the scenes arguing for dominance. It just doesn't know what it wants to be. One second your sneaking around the shadows in a stealth title, and the next your handed a machine gun and told to kill everything. This does not necessarily hurt the game mind you, it is just always noticeable. The gameplay is very solid otherwise. The Controls are tight and responsive, the graphics are dark and creepy, the music and sfx are well done, and the atmosphere is as tense as can be.

Why, then, has it only received 3 stars you ask? Repetition, and split personality Enemies. The reason I was so cautious to compare this to Splinter Cell is because this is not, by any means, Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell has varied environments, smart A.I, and a vast selection of gadgets and weapons. Velvet Assassin has none of these things. For instance, what you find yourself doing in the first level of the game, you will find yourself doing in the last. You go through about 13 or so levels, that all look the same, and do the same exact thing in each one. Find a shadow, hide, poke out and kill a soldier, rinse and repeat. If you love Repetition, you will love this game. The other reason for the 3 stars is the A.I, which has two minds.

Often, the A.I can be extremely cunning. If I am spotted, they will flank me and try to pull me out of cover. They will search the shadows and call for their comrades with scary precision. There were a few times I was outsmarted by the A.I. Other times, however, they will stand still while you savagely murder their friend 4 feet away from them. Or, they will get stuck on a wall for minutes at a time, leaving their backside open for a nice stabbing (wait....wha??). These complaints can, and will, sour the experience. They were serious enough to take me out of the game, and that is a big no no. If, however, you are able to look past it, you will find a good, competent, and suspenseful Stealth title. One that could have been much better, but is fun nonetheless.

Damnation is a Fitting Title

Damnation was and is an interesting idea. Not to many Games try to take the Civil War and make an experience worthy enough to quench the thirst of Blood Thirsty gamers of this generation. Sure, the History Channel has released their idea of a Civil War game, but the results were less than satisfactory. Who knows, maybe the Civil War is incapable of being interesting enough to carry a full game. Or, maybe no one with the right stuff has attempted it yet, and maybe one day we will get our epic Civil War Shooter.

Unfortunately, today is not that day, and Damnation is not that game. The second you put Damnation in your disk tray it will become immediately clear that you have made a horrible, horrible mistake. Right from the get go, Damnation disappoints with its archaic graphics. I was actually unsure if I was looking at a Next Gen game made with the Unreal Engine, or an early gen PS2 title. Everything from the textures to the Character Models to the frame rate seems utterly unfinished. There is a point early in the game where I found myself on the top of a mountain. Once outside, I turned around to see a row of houses far off in the distance built into the side of the massive rock formation. How cool, I thought, as I zoomed in for a closer look with my sniper rifle. But as I looked closer, I saw that all of them were sloppily thrown up there in such a rush they were glitching through the mountain, and they lacked a floor.

It is things like this that make it immediately clear that Blue Omega, the Developers, cut every corner they could find. Take the A.I. for instance. Now, I can not be 100% sure, but I think a few years ago I took a poop with better Artificial Intelligence than Damnation. Enemies often stand still and shoot at walls, obviously an over ambitious attempt to kill an annoying fly. Sometimes, enemies will kill each other for you, failing to look ahead before blasting their allies in the back of the head in a futile attempt to hit me with a shotgun from 800 feet away. This can can cause a few unintentional laughs from players, as it happens often enough to become amusing. What isn't amusing, however, is the amount of bullets the disgustingly Low Res enemies can withstand before falling down. I counted about 80 bullets from my machine gun at one point, but your character can only take a few shots before succumbing to the inevitable.

This is odd, because the pathetic amount of damage you can take before dying would lead you to believe that this is a cover shooter, like Gears of War. It is not. I spent the first few firefights slamming my character up against walls and jamming every button on the controller trying desperately to figure out which one would attach me to said wall. None of them do. All you get is a duck button, which is about as useless as the voice acting. Yes, Blue Omega must have spent all their money just thinking of a cool Civil War Shooter, because some of the lines read in this game can stand next to the original Resident Evil and say "Ha ha, I'm more cringe worthy!". Each actor delivers their lines with such wooden appeal that you wonder why they even bothered. I honestly can not think of even one spoken line of dialogue in the entire game that wasn't insultingly awful.

The acrobatic angle the game tries so hard to engulf you in just ends up falling flat do to wonky controls. This is one of those games where no matter where you adjust the sensitivity, your crap out of luck. The story is convoluted. The graphics are glitchy, low res and uninspired. The voice acting is horrific. The enemies clinically retarded. The aiming severely broken. The multiplayer community non existent, and the entire experience is lazy, unfinished, and unprofessional.

Please, do not think that Coop with a friend can help make this wreck any more fun than it already isn't. Nothing can save Damnation.

Pass this Furon up

Im going to be quick and simple on this one. It's dreadful, absoultely utterly dreadful...That is, if your looking at the graphics. Path of the Furon looks about on Par with an early Gen PS2 game. The texturing and lighting is last Gen at every turn, and I can not be convinced that this was developed from the ground up with the Xbox 360 in mind.

Gameplay wise, it is the same old "Destroy all Humans." If you loved the original two, and found yourself dropping a duece at the thought of playing the Wii version, then you will probably find some enjoyment out of this one. The gameplay mechanics are still solid enough to find yourself having a good time with the game. The crazy and imaginative weapons offer something for every freak out there, and the controls are simple and intuitive.

But when your forced to listen to the awful and completely phoned in script and voice acting you might turn Emo and start cutting yourself. The script is the equivalent of a Uwe Boll movie, it tries to be creative, but I have seen more creativity in mokey thrown poo than this trash. It's saddening to think that this was somehow approved.

You should also be warned about how glitchy this game is. I will not list everything off, but be warned that it obviously went through no quality testing before being shipped.

So, if you can withstand an awful story, terrible voice acting, intrusive glitches and dreadful PS2 graphics, then you will find some fun in this installment.