Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict

Sorry for not posting in a while. I kind of ran out of games so yeah… But now I’m giving you my first Xbox review. (Woot!)

Unreal has been around for quite a while and pretty much anyone who has ever looked into FPS has come across Unreal. This game is pretty much the same exact Unreal that has been out for over ten years except for better graphics and expanded gameplay.

The storyisn’t really what you would call deep, instead you would call this more of a story lengthener, since the cut-scenes are completely useless. In other words, the story is pretty much your basic Unreal storyline.

Unreal has never been much on the story, so let’s move on to where it lives, the game play. UC2 has some of the best FPS/3rd person shooter qualities mixed into one. You can play the game in 3rd-person the entire way (Which I prefered, since I like being able to see who’s standing behind me shooting me), but you can also play it in a mixed mode with FPS for the shooting and 3rd-person for the melee attacks which are a new addition to the series. The game itself is fairly simple; kill or be killed, but there’s plenty of ways to do both. One of the main things I noticed this game was missing was the selection of weapons; Unreal has always had a decently large arsenal of weaponry, but in this game you get eight weapons, a melee weapon, and a basic handgun depending on your character, which isn’t very much. Another thing is you can only take in two of the main weapons into battle at once, instead of picking them up all over the map. Your weapons will consist of one that uses explosive ammo and another one that uses energy ammo, so it’s easier to find ammo for your guns. There’s plenty of characters to choose from, but they mainly fall into three main classes depending on their weight. There’s six game modes to play on and a ton of maps to get killed on. The game modes consist of deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (Those are staples), but it also brings in Nali slaughter (which as the name implies; you slaughter Nali), overdose (Which is kind of like playing with a radioactive soccer ball. Yay!), and survival (Which is sort of like king of the hill deathmatch). The game, aside from the story line of all the characters, includes a challenge mode where you battle nearly impossible battles for the chance of unlocking Malcolm, and TRUST me these are challenges. The multi-player is also VERY smooth offline, but I’m not going to pay 50 dollars a month for Xbox Live. Also as a little side note, There’s a semi-gore-off for people who like to kill, but don’t like the blood (Wha…?).

The graphics are amazing (*cough* Selket *cough*) and everything is fairly original.

The music is non-exsistent unless you turn the battle sounds off, but you wouldn’t want to turn them off, because they are very well done.

Overall, this is a decent FPS, but it still can’t compare in any way to something like Halo. I’m giving Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict a 6 out of ten

New header.

I’ve made a few new headers for the website, but I don’t know which one to use, so I’m going to post it up and let you comment on it.

You may remember this one from a long time ago…

This is the current one…

This is the first new one…

And here’s another one… (Note the slight markings in the background.)

I’ll post the new one on April 20. Happy voting!

More buddy icons.

Okay now you guys are just being spoiled. Here’s a few new buddy icons I made.

 

Finally a new YouTube video.

After little work and anticipation, a new video has been posted on YouTube.

Metroid Prime: Hunters

Time for some more Metroid madness! (Wait… there’s no Metroids in the game?)

Today I feel like reviewing Metroid Prime: Hunters for the DS. No, this isn’t yet another side-scrolling Metroid game, but it’s actually 3D (Gasp!).

Let’s start out with the story line since it’s pretty much non-existent. You received a telepathic message and you decide to investigate it; that’s it; no deep intriguing background to the message; just one boring message floating through space, which just HAPPENED to come to Samus. Well, Metroid games have never really been big on story lines, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

But now let’s go to what really matters in the Metroid series, game play. This game pretty much plays just like Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for the GameCube, except for the usage of the touch screen. The touch screen allows you to change weapons and roll into your morph ball and can even be the way you aim. The touch screen works surprisingly well with this game, so that makes me wonder on how MP:3 will be on the Wii. You have your missles, your morph ball, your charge beam, and your scan visor. And yes, you will get more weapons than that, but those are just to start you off. There’s hunters that appear throughout the game (As the name implies) and each of them have their own special weapons, alt-forms, and special attributes, which makes each of them completely unique from the others. All of their weapons are also completely unique ranging from rapid-firing green balls (Battle Hammer) to a sniper beam (Imperialist). There’s five worlds to explore, but the fifth one is pretty small. And all the worlds are almost the size combined as the entire Metroid Prime worlds, which was a surprise since it’s on a hand held. But the one annoying thing is the enemies. There are not that many enemies in the game and most of them that are there are just copies of other ones (Such as a Psycho Bit V1, 2, 3, and yes, 4). Also the bosses follow the same pattern, because there’s only three different bosses, and you battle two of them FOUR times and the third one twice (That’s very lazy if you ask me). Also, did I mention the Scan Visor was in here; must I say more? (If you don’t know, the Scan Visor is some thingy in your helmet that allows you to scan enemies and items to put into a database and it contributes to the complete percentage in the game.)

But enough rambling on about the game play and let’s look at it’s multi-player. Nintendo’s WiFi didn’t really impress me that much up to this point, but this game is perfect for the WiFi. It’s real simple; just log on and search for people to play. But the problem is is that you can’t create your own games, unless you’re on wireless with a buddy about ten feet away from you. Yes, you can set up games on the WiFi, but for them to join they first have to be on you friend or rival list, then you have to make a game and HOPE they decide to look into their rival/friend list for no reason. But anyways, apart from that utter annoyance the online is pretty good, and no, you don’t play as a bunch of Samus-es (If that can be plural), but you could if you absolutely wanted to. All the hunters from the story are here and so are their weapons, also including a few new power-ups such as double damage and invisibility. Also, each hunter has it’s own special attribute whether it’s the ability to turn invisible of that some weapons act differently on different hunters.

Now the graphics are GREAT on this game, apart from the few texture repetitions throughout the game which is perfectly normal. The enemygraphics aren’t the greatest looking, but they’re way better than anything else I’ve seen on the DS so far. The hunters are well detailed and each one has it’s own uniqueness about their design. The weapons also all look completely different and they all have nice detail.

The sound is decent, but it can become repetitive sometimes. The music is pretty much non-existent and through the majority of the game you’ll never hear it.

Overall, this is a great game with great game play and great graphics with just a slight lacking of multi-player features. I give Metroid Prime: Hunters a eight out of ten.