New Tomb Raider Movie

To go along with the recent reboot of the Tomb Raider game series, MGM studios has announced that a Tomb Raider film is in production. MGM will be working with GK films on this project. The film will be based on the new Tomb Raider, and is not related to the two Tomb Raider films that were already released.

Crysis 3 Review

Crysis 3 picks up some time after Crysis 2 with Psycho ( protagonist of Crysis: Warhead) who has recently been taken out of his Nanosuit storms a CELL facility to free Prophet who has been captured. Once freed you take control of Prophet who along with Psycho enters the New York Liberty Dome to take down CELL. But then Things go crazy and the alien race from the other games known as the Ceph return and Prophet must once again stop the world from being destroyed. The Story while not great is definitely the best in the series. This is primarily because Crytek has decided to make Prophet more than just a husk that the player inhabits. Although sometimes the tale told can get way too melodramatic. But I the story doesn't really matter because it's still bogged down by the other games continuity, so it still just winds up being nonsense.

Crysis 3 as you probably already know is absolutely gorgeous especially the over grown areas of New York City. For Crysis 3 Crytek has decided to go for a healthy medium between The wide open world of the original Crysis and the guided nature of Crysis 2, with the beginning being more guided and the later stages becoming a lot more open with multiple paths and plenty of areas that are off the beaten path. Crysis 3 has you going from wide open sections of an overgrown New York City and the completely unremarkable structures set up by the Cell corporation, with the later seeming to be the majority of the game. Crytek has also added an incredibly boring driving sequnce in the middle of the game. 

Crysis 3's gameplay is all about the choice of playing stealthily with your cloak or going guns blazing with maximum armor, but since neither is done incredibly well it just leads to the game being a bit boring. The really big addition of Crysis 3 is the bow and arrow which allows you to stay cloaked while firing, but since it's a one hit kill it just winds up being overpowered if your playing stealth. Meaning all you'll do is enter an area mark all of the enemies in the environment and pick everyone off with the bow, then go and collect your arrows and do it all again in the next area. If your playing guns blazing then the bow becomes absolutely worthless because of the slow firing rate.

Once done with the single player you can jump into the multiplayer which is proficient if not soulless. Coming packed with the standard multiplayer fare. The only mode that is interesting is the Hunter mode which has two players as guys in Nanosuits with unlimited health and a bow going up against a group of cell operatives who as they fall become Hunters.

This game is an incredibly successful tech demo that gives a look into what the next generation will look like, but lets hope that Crytek lets Crysis go and does something else. But Crysis 3 remains a consistently well made game if not one that is incredibly uninteresting.

6.0/10  

        

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Review

Metal Gear Rising is finally here after a rather interesting development time, including the project being canceled at one point and changing devs from Kojima Productions to Platinum Games. The story of Rising is one that doesn't make a lot of sense but hey it's a Metal Gear game. But anyway here's the basic idea the game starts off 4 years after MGS4 with Raiden working at a PMC called Maverick, which has him protecting Prime Minister N'mani. N'mani is then kidnapped and murdered by a group of terrorists and this then leads Raiden down a path of revenge and vengeance, which is how you get the awful tittle Revengeance. Where Raiden finds out that the groups main goal is to kidnap children and turn them into cyborgs. My main complaint is that the new characters introduced are really boring and flat. Also Why is Raiden a cyborg again after having the seemingly happy ending in Metal Gear Solid 4. Its not awful they just don't do a good job of catching you up on whats happened over the last 4 years but it's still nice seeing some of the characters from previous Metal Gear games.

Platinum Games has managed to make one of the coolest looking games I've seen but with some small problems when it comes to control. First off this game is nuts but peaks really early with the first level being the highlight with a fantastic boss battle with Metal Gear Ray. After that the game while still incredibly cool still seems to constantly be trying to get back to that level of cool. 

But the main problem comes with the games horrid parrying mechanic, which has you tapping the light attack button and holding the left analog stick in the direction you are being attacked, this all feels incredibly imprecise. Rising also has plenty of camera problems that doesn't help the parrying problem constantly being caught in awkward positions. Also the combat isn't very deep and just becomes random button pushing at a certain point. But aside from the simple combat the main gameplay mechanic Blade Mode is always fun to use. Blade Mode allows you to enter a state that slows down times and allows you to control your sword with incredible precision. The game also features some great boss battles besides the aforementioned Ray battle with a particularly fun final boss. Platinum has done a great job of injecting their crazy over the top action into the Metal Gear universe.

With all that said I still find Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance a welcome addition to the Metal Gear universe and I feel as though the sequel to this game will be great. Metal Gear Rising is a game with some minor control problems that never stops looking cool.

7.5/10