Road of the Dead F.T.W

This F.T.W is a fun first person driving game called, "Road of the Dead" developed by "EvilDog"

Online Game
Free to play
Mature Age Rating

In Road of the Dead you play a survivor of the Zombie Apocolaypse as you try to make your way from city to city to stay alive. The game style is reminiscent of games from the NES era such as excite bike where one keeps going and going to avoid obstacles.

You must keep driving while avoiding obstacles to reach the next city, if you take too much damage your car will explode.

If your mood for something dark and different, check it out,

ENJOY!!!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550714

Persona 3 F.E.S Review

Persona 3 F.E.S Review

"Get back here you son of a b----"

PSN re-release
Game: Persona 3 F.E.S
Developer: Atlus
M.S.R.P: 9.99
Platforms: Ps3

The persona series by Atlus has a massive cult following, they are little known RPG's that often place you in the perspective of a highschooler tasked between balancing school work and fighting demons. This game was originally released for the PS2 and is now available for download on PSN. Is this game worth it's asking price, or is it better left as a forgotten relic?

Story:

Persona 3 begins with you being a teen who has just transferred to a new school. The protagonist is silent in the hopes that you will feel like you are the individual himself. You begin the game by choosing your name and are told you will have one school year to overcome all the obstacles life has for you and to "use your heart as your guide."

The character is put in a dorm with other students who all attend a wealth private boarding school. All goes well until one night a dormmate kicks open your door at midnight and asks you to come with her, because your dorm is under attack. The two of you escape to the rooftop where you are attacked by creatures called shadows. The dormmate helping you, pulls out a gun and points it to her head and screams out, "Persona" but nothing happens. She becomes disarmed and so you take the gun and try it yourself, causing a god to appear before you and fight with you. Later that night your fellow dorm mates reveal to you that you were chosen for this dorm because you have the ability to summon these gods, these other forms of yourself called "Personas" and that they all have that ability and would like you to fight with them.

Every night at midnight there is a hidden hour that occurs where these demons appear and only those with the power of persona are awake to fight them. On top of that every night a giant tower appears in the middle of town, and they believe the answers for why the shadows and the secret hours appear must be at the top. You decide to help them climb this tower, balancing school and a social life as well to put an end to all this once and for all.

Interesting story huh? 


Grade: B+

Gameplay:

The game is a simple RPG with a social simulation aspect involved. At night, if you so choose you can climb the tower known as "Tartarus" to fight enemies and become stronger. During the day you attend class, hang out with friends, do homework or hang around town. Ya know, typical highschooler stuff.

This all takes place in the course of the year in game time and a day usually consists of going to school then doing at least two activities of your choice. So essentially you go to school, then hang out with people then go to "Tartarus", or go to school, spend time at an arcade then go home and study. When fighting the game is a turn based rpg, you and your dormmates make up your "party" (the groups of individuals who will fight with you every night). You can only control the main character in combat and the rest of your party is controlled by the games computer.

Your party members don't always make the smartest moves in battle but they are reliable enough and if you want them to focus on something especially (I.e; healing) you can command them to be the healer for most of the battle. Every turn you can only make one move but if you make a move that exploits an enemies weakness (i.e hitting a tree enemy with a fire attack) then your characters can do something called "AN ALL OUT ATTACK" where your party throws taking turns to the wind and bum rushes the enemy doing extra damage and not costing a turn.

Aside from that the game is essentially just walking around and talking to people. The better friendships you get the stronger you are in battle, and you can even date some of the people you are closest to. It becomes a weird cross between an rpg and a social sim and it really makes the highschool experience seem a lot more fun than it is in reality?

Did I also mention you take midterms???

Grade: B+

Graphics and Sound

Being a port of a PS2 game the graphics are a bit outdated. The game is mostly cell shaded but even so, its art style shows its age horribly. There is a lot of hand drawn art in the game as well however,  like when people talk / descriptions of personas and they still look amazing.

The music in the game can be catchy especially the battle music. All the tracks are memorable and given that this is a game from way way back and the tracks still got stuck in my head from time to time, thats saying something.

Grade: B

Verdict:

I say get this game because you will never play anything like it. The dialogue is believable and witty and you will find yourself caring and falling in love with the characters in this world. It is blaintantly apparent the developers spent alot of time making this game and it shows, this is definetely something to pick up. This version also comes with the add on "The Answer" which takes place a few months after the end of the game adding another 20 hours to gameplay. All this for such a meager price should not be passed up.

Final Grade: B+

Is it worth your money: Yes, for 9.99 it's a steal.

Angry Bees F.T.W

For this F.T.W Im going to introduce a cute and fun, wave shooter. This week's F.T.W is "Angry Bees" brought to us by developers, "Shahsoft" and "c0rupt3d"

Online Game
Free to play
No age rating

In this simple wave shooter you are the King of the Bees. Your fellow bees had worked for you day and night creating honey for you, but now have started an uprising to take all the honey away from you. You must defend your crown and honey but shooting down and killing any bees that come towards your glob of honey.

The game is a wave shooter, if you are unfamiliar with the term it essentially means enemies will keep coming to you in wave after waves and you have to try to last as long as you can. You are given a handgun and everytime you complete a wave the game gives you the option to upgrade to use more powerful weapons. All you need to do is click at an enemy and keep clicking until they're dead.

Sounds fun, no?

ENJOY!!!

You can play "Angry Bees" here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/593406

Alan Wake Review

Alan Wake Review

"I know everyone says this, but Mr. Wake, I am your biggest fan."

Game: Alan Wake
Developer: Remedy
Rating: Teen
Platform: Xbox 360
M.S.R.P: 19.99

This is another game that I am late to the party on. However I have just recently purchased a 360 and felt compelled to review what is apparently a cult exclusive for the system. Taking the genre of survival horror to a new perspective, Alan Wake promises to be a game you will never forget. Is this game truly something to remember, or is it b rate game with the same gags over and over.

Story:

The story of Alan Wake follows a successful writer who is plunged into these unfortunate circumstances. Times are hard for Mr. Wake as he has had writer's block for several months now and can't seem to even be able to write a page. He then decides to go on vacation with his wife to a quiet little mountain town to recharge his creative chi. Upon traveling to his destination Mr. Wake has a dream that he accidentally hits someone with his car. The person turns out to be a character from his novels and then proceeds to chases him with an axe. A light intervenes telling him that the man is possessed by darkness and only light can save him.

Mr. Wake then wakes up and finds that he had been napping, and he and his wife have arrived. Upon going to their lodge, while Alan is outside during the night he hears a struggle and his wife screaming. He soon cannot find her, and on top of that the power and telephone lines are down. Alan must venture into the forests to reach the town to get help, but in the forest people are waiting, shrouded in darkness to kill him. Alan must brave these people who are possesed by darkness if he has any hope of saving his wife.

This is an interesting story, I will give it that much but it is VERY reminiscent of "Silent hill". Silent hill if you are unfamiliar is a popular game in the survival horror genre, in which an ordinary individual is trapped in a foggy town of sadism, blood and macabre. Alan wake carries that same feel but more....g rated. When enemies are around the world gets dark and hazy, almost fog like, just like in "Silent Hill" and even the set up itself is essentially the same as the first "Silent Hill" as well. A man trying to find his wife yada yada yada. There are many more similarities that I won't go into, but so far nothing feels completely genuine about the game.

Grade: C

Gameplay:

The gameplay, at least to me feels broken to a fault, but is still playable. Alan has a few simple actions, jumping, shooting, and flashing his light from his flashlight at enemies. The game also calls for some quick time event actions when doing things like starting generators and moving objects but that's about it for the controls.There are no health items but Alan can recover health by standing under a street light for a few moments, because he is surrounded by darkness and darkness possessed enemies lights are the only "safe havens" in the game.

The shooting style slightly reminds me of Shadows of the damned, except more annoying. To even do damage to an enemy Alan must flash his flashlight at an enemy for a good couple of seconds until the darkness has completely left their body. Then you have to immediately switch over to your gun to shoot at the enemies a good couple of times before they die. It just strikes me as a really annoying and time consuming way to kill enemies, the flash light idea is cool I will admit, but how long it takes....isnt.

Now the reason I found the gameplay broken is that in every enemy scenario it is either ridiculously easy or obnoxiously hard. In most games a player has the choice to run or fight the enemies head on, yet that is not the case in Alan Wake. When enemies appear the game usually alerts you from afar giving you ample time to get the drop on enemies making them nothing more than a slight inconvenience.There is no challenge because you can do so much damage from so far. And yet, if one wants to conserve their ammo and instead run past them into the light the enemies are relentless. If you have more than one enemy coming for you and you didnt shoot them from far away, and are running from them, consider your ass grass. I died on multiple occasions from waiting too long to fire my gun in the hoops of just running past the combat. If all you are supposed to do is shoot things and run then its not a survival horror, its just an unconventional shooter.

Grade: C-

Graphics and Sound:

Here is where I have to admit Alan Wake does alot of things right. The graphics for the game are beautiful, the landscape is very life like and believable and all the tiny detail in the game's enviornment really shine. There is some oddity with the character models as the faces do look real when still, but when animated such as talking, or walking it is impossible to not be aware that you are playing a game.

The game thrives on the atmosphere it creates of the dark silent mountain town. I found myself turning around with my flashlight and gun ready to what I thought was an enemy, but turns out it was only just a tree. The environment is truly something deserving of praise, its just a shame the rest of the game doesn't live up to it.

Sound is alright, there's nothing to memorable about the music as it is a horror game. The games sound effects while effectively creating the ambience of an evil town, just gets annoying after a while. Hearing the wind blow heavily and almost statically caused me to turn down my speakers after a while because it wasn't luring me in more, just bugging me.

Grade: B

Verdict:

If your a fan of the genre I say check it out. However I'll be honest, I was bored. It didn't engage me for the entire run through, and while it does alot of things right I couldn't help but say, "so....what." Alan Wake does what other games have done before, and doesn't even do them better, it does them slightly worse. The enivornment is the only thing this game has going for it, and its a shame it was wasted on such a poorly executed game such as this.

Final Grade: C

Is it worth your money: Even at 19.99 I feel kinda cheated. I mean if you haven't played survival horror before then you can have a lot of fun with this game. But if you have...your better off just buying one of the new "Silent Hills".

UNO F.T.W

Everyone loves UNO, so why not play it online when your bored at work/ home! This F.T.W is "UNO ONLINE" brought to us by "HitPointStudios"

Online Game
Free
No age rating

In this version of UNO you play against 4 computerized opponents as you try to be the first person with no cards left. You play uno by stacking cards on top of each other based on either color or number. So if there is a yellow eight on the table and its your turn, you can put down an eight of any color, or a yellow card of any number. When you are down to your last card you have to hit the UNO button and then try to put your final card down.

No brainer if you played this before. Have fun!

ENJOY!!!!

You can play UNO online here:
http://www.gamehouse.com/online-games/uno-online

Fallout 3 Review

Fallout 3 Review

"War never Changes"

Game: Fallout 3
Developer: Bethesda Works
Rating: Mature
Platforms: Xbox 360 / Ps3 / PC
MSRP: 9.99

I do realize I am a bit late to the party on this one. Fallout was a game I was told about so much and I never cared to try it until recently. When "Skyrim" came out (a game by the same developer but set in a mystical dragon fantasy setting) I was told that If I liked "Skyrim" I would love "Fallout". Well I hated "Skyrim", but I found myself really digging "Fallout". Is this game worth your time? We'll find out right now.

Story:

Fallout's charm lies in its aethestics and story telling. The game itself is retro armagedon, in the sense that the style of the game is what the 50's thought the end of the world would be like. In this world, the cold war ended up with nukes hitting all the countries, ushering us into what humanity calls the wasteland. Nothing grows really, and survivors have to scavenge and fight each other to survive. Before the war began however the U.S government built safehouses or Vaults to keep a select few groups of society intact for when they would be needed to repopulate the planet. You play as an inhabitant of one of these vaults, the war has been over for at least 100 years but no one you know how dared to go outside. You, of course have to.

The character you control is speechless and of your own design. When talking to people the game gives you a wide list of things to say as a response to most things, meaning that you control the character's destiny, actions and story. In turn this engages the player to the story more because the game is trying to make you one with the character your controlling. The main quest of the game is to find your dad who escaped the vault and that simple task will take you on some wacky adventures until you find him. Fallout is the kind of game in which you reap what you sow, the more time you spend playing it, the more rewarded you will feel afterwards with the stories and events it throws at you.

Grade: B+

Gameplay:

This is by far one of the most violent games I've ever played, way past "Grand Theft Auto". As an inhabitant of this world you can explore the wasteland ruins of what was once Washington D.C and its surrounding towns and countryside. There are about 3-4 places that act as towns where you are safe and can get rest, and buy weapons. The rest of this world wants you dead, enslaved or to eat you. Everything in this game is your enemy, from radioactive flys, to overgrown crabs and even other canibalistic humans want your blood. And the game gives you an arsenal of weapons to fight back with, like Ak-47's, machine guns, grenades and bats. As the game goes on you can level up your character and make them stronger with certain weapons giving you a customizeable edge, but in the beginning most things can kill you easily.

Running with the plot the game implements a karma system. Depending on your actions in the world you can either by loved by the world, or feared by it. Most significant actions fall under the frames of good or evil and when you fall into the extreme of either category, perks happen. For example if your really good, people will bring you food and give you free items. Or even simply give quest objectives to you instead of having to run around for them. When your evil some of the bad characters instead of attacking you will revere you and people become easier to rob. Either way you choose to play the game is up to you, it is fun however to see that every action has a consequence in ways that arent clear at first.

Grade: B+

Graphics and Sound:

This is an incredibly gorgeous game to look at, even now. Released in 2008 all the detail in the game still shines as if it were made this year. There is some oddities with how humans are made however, when people talk to you they stay perfectly still and only their lips move, but aside from that most of the game seems very lifelike.

The music of the game is provided by a little handheld computer the character carries. Being that the bombs dropped in the 50's all thats left of the worlds music are hits from the 50's. The soundtrack has songs from "Billie Holliday" and the "Inkspots" to name a few. Dont know who they are? Play this game for a few hours and you will and you will love them.

Grade: B

Verdict:

This isnt a shock to those who already own this game, but Fallout is amazing. I'm late to the party I realize but it really is something that you don't quite get too often these days. While it may not be as expansive as "Skyrim" I found myself caring about this world and the setting alot more than I did about the former. This game is grand and if you haven't played it yet, go to gamestop right now and buy it.

Final Grade: B+

Is this game worth your money?: For 10 bucks its a steal right now.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!! F.T.W

I don't usually like to do console games for my F.T.W's but this game is so quick, short and awesome I had to put it up. This is a game from the Xbox live arcade entitled , "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!" by "Independent Ska Studios" and it is awesome.

Xbox live arcade
1.00
No age rating

This is a simple shooter that gets needlessly complex over time. You begin the game by shooting zombies in a grass field, the zombies change into weird symbolic snakes, then into zombies then into weird seizure inducing diamonds. The background of the game itself becomes all techno like and it becomes incredibly hard to see while you are playing, in the sense that you cant tell what an enemy is from the background.

The game is simple but really fun. The highlight of the game, and the reason why I gave it a chance has to do with the song that plays in the first round. Rather than leave you with a two images, I'm leaving you all with a music video of the song that plays. It is awesome, and yes it was written by the games creator.




Did I also mention this game is just one man's project? Pretty sick.