User Reviews

All Reviews by ox

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow - Xbox

A great stealth game gets even better...

When Splinter Cell came out in 2002, many stealth action fans loved it and for good reason. It really made you feel like you were a spy, by being able to infiltrate places and shoot out any light you see. But there was a fair amount of problems with SC, such as it being too linear and short. The sequel, Pandora Tomorrow tries to fix these problems while also making a step forward for multiplayer gaming. PT's single player plays almost exactly like the original Splinter Cell; but there are some noteworthy additions. Whistling being one; where you can whistle to lure enemies near you. Gadgets like the spy camera and binoculars have also been carried over from the GC and PS2 versions of SC. Still, the level design of PT is very linear with few rooms giving you an opportunity to approach soldiers differently. The single player is short too, clocking in around 10 hours. Thankfully, there is multiplayer which makes PT more than just a mission pack. You play as either a Spy or a Mercenary in four player matches. The Spy is tasked with having to neutralize nodes, while Mercenaries try to stop them. Playing as a Spy is similar to the single player since the controls are essentially the same; but you can only stall Mercs for a few seconds with laser bullets. To compensate there is an array of gadgets given; such as chaff and smoke grenades to give you a chance to grab and kill a merc. The Mercs play from a FPS view and have a loose reticle; but that's to even up the match and give Spy's an extra chance to escape when seen. But Merc's also are given gadgets like wall mines and spy traps. Multiplayer is quite fun, but playing online you may experience lag with delays in windows coming up. Still, that problem can easily be overlooked; especially when noticing there isn't many online stealth games. Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is the essential stealth game this year; with a multiplayer never seen before and a solid single player, this game must be played.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - PS2

Very worthy of the small time it asks from you

Long M.I.A. the Prince of Persia has been, after an unsuccessful attempt at moving the Prince into 3D. The rights to PoP fell into the very capable hands of Ubisoft from their purchase of Mattel. PoP is everything you could have wanted from it being converted to 3D and then some. You still have to deal with jumping puzzles where you have to time the jumping just right and be able to react fast enough to things happening. You will mess up but thankfully this never becomes a nuisance because of the Sands of Time. Early on you get a dagger to suck up your defeated enemies sand and this sand helps for you to reverse time. So you can usually reverse time if you happen to fall to your death. Yet it's not always there to depend on because you can run out of sand which needs to be replenished by fighting more enemies. The combat is also nicely done because by using the analog stick and pressing the hit button you can hit in almost any direction; enemies will always swarm around you so it works nicely. Sometimes though you may find yourself using the guard button a bit too much since there may be too many enemies fighting you; which results in fights that drag out for a needlessly long amount of time. The presentation of the game really is one of the best aspects of the experience, such as when you stab a fallen enemy with the Sands of Time dagger the camera will zoom in. There is also a fog effect used that closely resembles the kind seen in Ico but it helps to give an immesive feel to the game; there are no load times either while playing which adds to this feel. The story is presented often through in-game scenes but there are some CG sequences and seeing those sometimes can take you totally out of the game world. The game is also very short, it can be beaten in the time limit of 10-15 hours and though you can probably beat it in a rental the game is just so good that you will want to play it over. PoP:SoT is easily one of the best adventure games of 2003.

Rainbow Six 3 - Xbox

Splinter Cell...but better

After the big commodity that was Splinter Cell and the well recieved Ghost Recon on X-box Live, Ubisoft basically set out to create a combination of these two games for Live. It suceeds for the most part, like Splinter Cell you are lead through very confined levels that allow for you to do very little,but here you command your teams of people to blow open doors and take out terrorists. It is a nice touch that you can use the microphone from X-box Live to command your team but their are menus that are easy to navigate through by holding down the X and A buttons. The A.I. works reasonably well shooting when you tell them to but sometimes they just don't listen. The enemy A.I. puts up a decent fight but sometimes you kill others right in front of them and they won't do anything. Still many of these problems were seen in Splinter Cell and if you liked the single player in Splinter Cell, you will definitely like the single player here. The main focus of the game is really the multiplayer and on X-box Live it suceeds on many levels. You can play through the single player with the ever popular co-op which really does show off some nice cooperative touches that you may have missed playing through alone such as opening two separate doors to a room at once. Team Survival is also a very popular game that plays out like Counter- Strike except without objectives; the brilliantly designed levels more than make up for not having objectives. In some ways RS3 is comparable to Crimson Skies and MechAssault, it provides a very solid single-player but the real fun is with multiplayer on Live.

Enter the Matrix - PS2

Terribly Dissapointing

From the start at the start up screen I kind of just let my controller go,wanting to see if a video would pop up and the video that did pop up was a trailer for the game,this is one thing that clued me in that this game was rushed out in time for the movie.Most games don't have the trailer included like that in a game,usually it is secret.So I went into playing the game with low expectations and those were met because the game didn't really exceed them.The rest of this review you are reading now will not be of my opion of the game but of the truth about the game.For one the games graphics have highs and lows,the animations just look really wierd,I mean just look at the way how they run and climb ladders or sometimes I kill someone and then they punch me.Also if you jump forward in slow motion off a ledge shooting you will spin once and then you will be stuck in that position until you hit the ground.The character models do look pretty good but the enviroments look like they are PSOne style on high-res.The sound is good,in slow motion you cna hear the bullets hitting the ground,the voice acting is solid and the music is okay too,the score was taken directly from the film.The controls just aren't that good,you don't really get a sense of control like in Max Payne,sure you can turn in mid-air but you can't turn in like a full 360 shooting everyone around you.The fighting is solid but it after a while you will find that it is pretty shallow and repetitive.The game's story though alone is really terrible because the plot is inconceivable but if you see the movie you can fill in the blaqnks for yourself.In the end this is a far dissapointing game,it is only worth a rental if you are a die-hard of the film,everyone else should ignore it.

TimeSplitters 2 - PS2

Guns,guns and more guns

This is the best FPS of the year for any console[Metroid Prime is not a true FPS,it's more of a adventure].The people at Free Radical have addressed the fact that there was no story in the original,this game has a story but it is very thin and incohesive.It just basically serves its purpose as a way to move you around through the different times.Through the times you find many different weapons from Sci-fi to old slow shooting weapons.Still even after your done with the story be sure to play through it again on the normal levels becuase more objectives are added and the levels grow longer.Then when you are done witht he story you can do either the arcade mode or challenge mode.Each putting you in a unique position to do different things and unlock much for the multiplayer mode.Some of these things can be easy but when some things are hard they are really hard to the point where you will be cussing like a sailor.You can unlocka wealth of multiplayer modes to play with friends or to play by yourself with the skilled bots depending on the difficulty.This game just has so much to offer that no FPS fan should be without.