The Review Thread

[Alessar]

This is for people to plop down their reviews of new games. Just spam away with 'em folks.

A good review should include the following info:

*platform the game is on (at least the one you're on, if you can comment on others great, if not, no biggie, but since there are differences sometimes, people should know)
*comments on the type and quality of the graphics and sound
*describe the gameplay/game engine/character growth systems
*some info on the sort of story the game involves (if it has one) would be good, but should not include spoilers (unless you cover them with spoil tags)

Mostly though, it should be your opinion. What works for you and what doesn't. Why do you like the game, or did you hate it? Was it worth your money?

When you post your review, put the name of the game in the subject line so it'll stand out in the thread. Be prepared for questions and answers!

[Kane Magus]

Katamari Damacy.
(Playstation 2)

Note that this is for the first game and not the new sequel, We Love Katamari. I'd have gotten that one yesterday too, but EB was sold out.

Controls: The controls are non-standard so will take a wee bit of getting used to. You only use the two analog sticks to move around. For example, pushing them both up moves you forward, both to the side moves you in that direction, etc. For the most part, they are fairly responsive, in general. The dash feature (alternately move the two sticks up and down) is somewhat hard to use, though. Going to higher elevations from lower ones is a bit of a pain at times too. Also, there have been a couple of occasions where I've somehow managed to get stuck behind or under objects and then not be able to move to the point where I'd have to restart the level, which was an annoyance.

Gameplay: You roll around a ball, called a katamari, and pick up random objects in the game world. The objective is to get the katamari as large as the target size, and larger if possible, within the time limit. That's about all there is to it. It's quite addictive, and the quantity and variety of things you can pick up is pretty vast. There seem to be several unlockables if you get the katamari to certain sizes beyond the target size or reach the target size within a given time under the limit, and there are also secret "Royal Presents" to find in most levels as well, which also unlock things. Another thing: this game is short. Incredibly short. "I got home with this game at 6pm and was watching the end credits roll by midnight" short. I haven't unlocked everything yet, true, but still...

Graphics: The 3D graphics are very cartoony. Most of the in-game representations of real world items are simplistic and very colorful. The humans characters are blocky, though this fits with the cartoony theme. The size of the items scale pretty realistically, depending on the size of the katamari, so in most cases you'll eventually be able to dwarf things that seemed giant before.

Sound: Pretty basic. What little voice acting that was there was fairly mediocre. Animals make appropriate noises where applicable, and people scream convincingly enough when you roll them up in the katamari. Otherwise, just your basic generic game sound effects.

Music: This is an area where the game shined. The music was upbeat and quirky and fit with the game completely. The main theme is one of those things that'll get stuck in your head and which you won't be able to remove with a crowbar.

Story: Not much to it, not that there needs to be. The King of the Cosmos apparently went on a bender and destroyed all the stars in the sky. He then makes his son, the Prince (you), fix things and return the stars to the sky. You do this by rolling things up in the katamari, which the King then launches into the sky and turns into a new star. The Prince has no personality to speak of, but the King is pretty awesome. There's also a human family that the game follows, but it's not terribly important.

Overall: I'll be picking up the We Love Katamari sequel probably next week sometime, so Katamari Damacy was at least that good, if that tells you anything. And since it's only $20 new, it's possible to get both games (the sequel is around $30 iirc) for about the price of a normal new game.

--

Kane Magus (who'll probably try to write up something for Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy next, after he goes through that at least a second time.)

[D.M.Jewelle]

I'm wondering, can we put up reviews of import games?

[Danners]

I don't see why not DMJ. Personally you giving us a heads up on some game would surely be appriciated.

[Alessar]

Definitely DMJ! Though, I am debating starting a specific thread for retro games and gameplay challenges for them. (But, I'm talking stuff earlier than PS2/Xbox/GameCube/GBA/DS/PSP platforms when I say retro.)

Oh, and about Katamari Damacy, though cartoony, it used cel shaded or stroked graphics, didn't it? The one time I saw it played it looked super clear and sharp. I actually got to play it 2-player split screen. It was 2 people in an arena competing for the most stuff. At one point I managed to roll up my opponent in my katamari, but he got free before I built up a good layer. Man, that was so much more fun than it had any right to be. ~

[Mad-Hamlet]

Greetings,

For some unfathomable reason I received, quite out of the blue, encouragement to review the latest FPS craze F.E.A.R.

I mean, why me?

Well, whomever they were must not know me that well…or they do…partially. Wait that…right.

What?

F.E.A.R.

Summary: Blah, blah, blah, new recruit, blah, blah, blah typical operations, blah, blah, blah something goes wrong, blah, blah, special abilities, blah.

You've read this all before!

You've HEARD this all before!!

You've PLAYED IT ALL BEFORE!!!

And yet….

Of course you're the central figure in this drama that is about to ensue. It'd be a pretty boring game if the hero was an AI driven NPC and all you did was sit around and serve waffles. (But if you fail to get the waffles a perfect golden brown the hero will fall and ALL will be consumed in darkness!!)

F.E.A.R. was a touch different; you the character didn't talk to anyone and so it was never boldly announced that you're 'special' up until the very, very last second. Sure you know it but the game itself doesn't acknowledge it really. No one ever goes: Whoa, you're like, the hero dude and we'd be totally screwed without you.

Throughout a lot the idea seems to be: With or without you, this story is going to grind on.

I liked that. True it's a subtle thing but not one I'd run across in games often. Of course this is not the main selling point in F.E.A.R.

No, that would be the….

F.E.A.R. factor.

Sorry I couldn't resist.

This game is creepy. True, this game was a bit of a one-trick pony when it came to inspiring nerves. It was pretty much always 'Did something…Holy SHIT!!' and then something lurches out of you to result is a variety of little shivers. These would range from a shadow that flickers or arcing electricity to OH MY CHRIST I'M HIP DEEP IN BLOOD!!

Beyond this all though were a couple of really concrete twists; first off the repeating image of a child as a basis for terror. We can thank 'Ringu' and 'The Grudge' for this. It's an effective tool though. Children represent hope, future, resilience and sacrifice (Ie. We die for them) At least until recently. George A. Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead' used a pregnant woman and her child being born to symbolize hope and the continuation of mankind. In the 2004 remake Hollywood decided, 'Fuck that; here America, meet the Abortion that Talks Back'.

It was all downhill from there.

Another reoccurring theme stemming from children is the mystery. In other words how is it they tick? I mean, there are child psychologists, people who spend decades in schools learning to think like children do; at the same time how often do parents say: Just What Were You Thinking?!

And these are all people who were themselves children!

So you've got the child who is the agent of blood soaking the ceiling, reality itself screaming in agony, trained killing machines pissing their pants evil and the mystery of the child compounded by children being, just by existing, objects of the unknown themselves.

This can equate to a serious mindjob.

The second image are the nastier trips you take when the girl shows up into vision world. A long hallway, darkness, blood, fire and a door. Behind that door you can see shapes, an angry, shouting voice, screams of agony…all these add up to a mockery of something akin to birth. And yet this too is being twisted somehow. It's right about here that things go really fuck-all and the mindjob hits fifth gear.

So. Two powerful images of 'Good', child and birth, being the prime catalysts for evil and pain. It gets quickly to the point where, upon entering a room full of cloned, razor fast, lethal super soldiers, one feels a sense of positive relief.

Of course, as I said, it IS a bit of a one trick pony and toward the end it gets kinda tiresome. But, hey, Super Soldiers!

Which brings us to the other part of the game.

The shooting.

God damn.

If you don't have at LEAST a Raedon 9800 with 1GB of DDRAM you're screwed. The guns have kick here baby. The walls, dust… Okay.

Go back to 'The Matrix'. No, the first movie, the one that was actually good.
Right, picture, if you will, Neo and Trinity walking into the lobby and engaging in that gun battle. It's kinda like that. Hell, there's even the bulletime. That's all I'll say about the graphics. Other reviewers can do it better.

In other news the bad guys got brains. This AI is not stupid and I mean REALLY not stupid. There are three soldiers in a room, you come around the corner guns blazing, one goes down. The other two will not seek cover and engage in a protracted firefight. One will dive through the nearby window, the other will back out the door firing. You tear after the one that went through the door; he leans around a corner only to catch a face full of NATO 5.556 lead. You creep forward, ready for anything…except the other guy who circled back to the front door you originally came through, crossed the room where you gunned down the first soldier, went through the door you did to follow the second and is now standing right behind you with a shot gun at the back of your skull.

This happened more times than I can recall. It got to the point where I could hear my computer sniggering at the tactless, hapless, gun crazy human.

Do I have a beef with F.E.A.R.?

You bet.

A major one.

The STORY.

Oh my Christ on Acid Turning Turtle wax into Cream Cheese….

There was so much potential here.

Without giving too much away, or rather anything, the story was introduced incredibly fragmentally. Tiny pieces that seem to not make any sense at all falling into place with a quiet 'Click'. Interaction, bare bones at first then growing as the game continues, with people you first want to save, then puzzle over, then murderously want to kill. There is horror, desire for revenge, pity for the killers, loathing for the creators of the killers and the creators themselves.

But at no point do they let you actually KILL any of these motherfuckers!!

Oh NO…you just get everything happening AROUND you or TO you but the people who deserve to be kneecapped with a ball peen hammer die through the hands of another, or their own damn selves. There's no visceral satisfaction to be found ANYWHERE!! No one, not one damn monstrous creation of these writers, flowing in blasphemous parody of Athena from Zeus' brown gets their richly deserved reward at your hands.

It's so FRUSTRATING!!

And don't get me started on Alma.

Fun little note: In the language of my current homeland Alma means 'Apple'.

In this case, the apple is rotten to the core.

In this case, the apple makes Snow White's little snack seems like the perfect playground lunch-able.

In this case, the apple would have eaten George Washington.

In THIS case the Apple would have scared the shit out of Adam, Eve, that fucking snake and even God!



Let's wrap this up.

F.E.A.R. is a definite chiller. Well, it freaked me out a little and I'm the man who saw the movie 'Aliens', in the theater, when I was eight, and I was laughing my ass off the entire time. People were coming up to my parents, total strangers mind you, and whispering urgently in their ears. I can remember my father's pained smile to this day.

It's not a flawless game. Not in terms of graphics, enemies, or plot. It had a lot more potential but I think the graphics ate up a LOT of the time. I'm not sure about the multiplayer though I have heard good things about it. I'll have to check that out but multiwise I'm booked completely. I just don't have that much time in the first place and I like to focus on one area at a time.

Is F.E.A.R. worth buying?

Mmmmmmm….yyyeeessss….

Should F.E.A.R. have a sequel with the time and quality spent on the graphics now shifted over to actual story?

Hell yes.

Is F.E.A.R. better than say-

Stop right there.

That's one last thing to make note of: F.E.A.R. is a bit of a first. This game was made to scare the player. From an FPS, where typically the hero is a bad ass, no shit taking, trigger happy, bad-mama-jama and they want to freak you the hell out.

So, my only real advice is this: Don't try and directly compare F.E.A.R.

Oh and play in the dark.

I remain, as always,
Mad-Hamlet

[Alessar]

Civilization 4 was released last week and I was pretty skeptical about what they could really do with a new one. It took several expansions to really add enough polish to Civ 3 (and it never did get some of the functions of Sid Meijer's Alpha Centauri, like being able to send units on patrol routes, and to terraform the landscape) but with Conquests, it was a pretty good game. One of my friends, however, picked up the deluxe pre-order edition and I was pretty impressed with the packaging, enough so to think about getting it. Last night, I found out another friend picked it up already and he offered to loan it to me for a couple days because he's finishing up a Civ 3 game currently.

So, I gave it a try last night. First off, the interface is 3d, your units are actually little groups of people that run as a squad across the map. Everything has the semi-cartoony art style of World of Warcraft. Readable but a bit busy. If a square has a bonus resource like horses, cows, or otters, the tiny animals actually stand there and frolic. You can zoom in to real close up of them, at a middle point you get a view similar to the traditional look, and with a far enough zoom out, you can see the globe.

The granularity (and in general, all options) of everything you can choose is massively ramped up. You not only have religion, you have different major world religions. One of my towns founded Buddhism. The one next to it founded Judaism. If you upgrade a unit, you don't just get another point of attack power, you can choose between various merits. In the case of archers, for instance, you can give them a bonus to acting as city defense troops, or an extra chance at first strike, or a small static attack bonus. Likewise there are all kinds of extra resources and extra upgrades to unlock them, any given new technology may unlock city buildings, units, unit upgrades, tile upgrades, government components (civics - similar to the social engineering elements of Alpha Centauri), or game abilities. They've tried to put icons and color bars on formatting on city names so you can see immediately whether a city is growing or not, what it's building, how far along it is, etc.

I hate it.

It's too much. The whole thing is way too busy. There are so many choices you might as well just leave the AI running everything. Frollicking otters are really cute but I don't need to have my bonus fur resource indicator putting on a show for me. Overall, I felt the mix of what you can easily directly control and what is best left to the AI was bad. For instance, your civic options affect your upkeep, but it's all very nebulous; one civic has low maintenance costs, another higher. Exact amounts? nope you don't get to see that. Production que? I didn't see one... most of the time I wasn't prompted to pick a new construction goal either, I mean, really, I hate invasive AI like that. Easy enough to change that but with it so busy, it was hard to see what was going on. And, during the tutorial, Sim-Cid Meijer is talking to you from a window that covers the part of the screen that announces game events so that was a hindrance too.

There are also technical issues. A lot of people have reported various graphic card problems. I was able to get the game to run (I had to re-install directX 9c though; apparently the game uses a component that not everyone may have) but the wonder movies were wholly corrupted.

It's not a bad game. I'm not saying that. Some people will probably love the mix in this version, I'm just not one of them. First time Civ players, if they're not too overwhelmed, will probably get into this game. For a change, the game shipped with multiplayer support, including play by email. I was hoping that I would like it enough to make it worth getting some PBE games going since I know a couple people who are Civ players. The animations, graphics, background music, are all wonderful. The opening movie was pretty jaw-dropping. But I am not seeing $50 worth of fun coming out of this game.

In conclusion, I guess what I'm saying is that this game is just like a remix of all the other games in the series and the 1 spinoff game, gussied up with fancy new graphics and enough options to make your eyes go @_@. If you're a new player, it'll probably be a great package, if you're already familiar with the series you may find it lacking depending on which of your favorite elements are emphasized in this one.

I, however, will dust off my copy of Civ 3 conquests. Right after I finish up my current replay of Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Xander77]

Oddly enough, the latest game I've become addicted to is Skyroads. You know, Skyroads. Way back at the beggining of the 90's this is the game that game with every computer, along with Supaplex and Hexxagon...

http://www.bluemoon.ee/history/skyroads/

PC, basic graphics - you're driving a space-car of sorts on various racing tracks over various planets. No other contestants - all you have to is get to the finishing point in one piece and before your fuel runs out. You get various fuel supplies, gravities, surface types...

It's dangerously addictive, very hard, particularly the last levels and has awesome electronic music... that I can't manage to play in the game, but have downloaded and play in the background.

[rmsgrey]

I'm going to kill three birds with one post, and review the entire recent Prince of Persia trilogy (PS2 versions):

The Sands of Time

"Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you - they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm!

"You may wonder who I am and why I say this. Sit down,
and I will tell you a tale like none that you have ever heard."

So begins the Prince's narration of the game. Throughout, he narrates significant events, either in cutscenes, or, more often, through voiceovers. In addition to the obviously location triggered comments, he also comments on certain optional actions in-game - For instance, the first time you use the Rewind power (provided it's still early enough in the game) the Prince will say something about being able to deliberately control the miracle that saved him earlier.

The Prince is very athletic - he can run up and along walls, vault over enemies, swing on bars and from chains. The first time he performs a given feat, the game goes into Matrix-style slo-mo so you can appreciate the effort that's been put into the animations (or something).

The real genius of the game, though, comes from the ability to mess with time itself. By defeating enemies or collecting sand clouds, you fill your sand tanks, which can be used to pay for various effects - the most useful of which is the ability to rewind up to about 8 seconds of gameplay - it's almost like having good old fashioned extra lives. Even if you run out of sand, though, dying isn't the end - the Prince exclaims "No, no, no, that's not how it went" and you get a continue screen - which only rarely leaves you with more than a couple of rooms to replay. It's when you find yourself without these abilities (at the start of a replay, for instance) that you realise just how useful they've been.

A nice touch is that the Prince is healed by drinking water.

The problem of not knowing where to go is alleviated by several factors - firstly, the game is very linear, and also pretty much one way - while there is occasionally a short diversion available to get a powerup, back-tracking is rarely possible, and never far. Secondly, upon entering each room (or equivalent area) the camera tends to go for a quick wander to suggest routes, or highlight points of interest. Thirdly, most save points also show you a quick series of clips that hint at the solutions to upcoming puzzles.

The game is a little on the short side - clocking in at around 6 hours, and the combats tend to run on rather with wave after wave of enemies appearing, but those are the only two significant flaws in an otherwise excellent game, particularly worth getting since it should be available cheaply by now.

Warrior Within

Released a year after Sands, this game takes up the Prince's tale some years after the events of the previous game - years the Prince has spent fleeing from the Dahaka - a deadly being that serves as a guardian of the timeline - because the Prince messed with time in the previous game, the Dahaka is now after him. Attempting to discover a way to lose the Dahaka, the Prince heads for the Island of Time, to discover the origins of the Sands, and attempt to prevent their creation.

The Prince has the same athletic moves as the previous game, with an extended range of attack options, and an array of secondary weapons - each with its own characteristics. The linearity remains from the previous game, but this time, there's a little more freedom - there's a central location from which several linear one-way routes loop out and return. There's a fair bit of actual time travel going on this time round - as well as the messing with time that was in the previous game.

Also in this game, it's possible to keep track of how many collectibles you've found - with a bonus for getting them all, and saving and restoring health have been combined into one single drink of water to do both - meaning you always load the game at full health.

On the other hand, I consider this to be the weakest of the three games in the trilogy. While, on paper, it's superior to Sands, the elements fail to come together in quite the same way. Also, there're a couple of minor bugs, and one deal-breaker - During the late-game backtracking to collect missed power-ups, it's possible for an unwary player to take a wrong turning and find himself trapped in a dead-end with a save point - meaning that, if he's unlucky, he's saved over any previous saves by the time he figures out that it's a dead end, and has to restart from the beginning...

It's still a good game, I jsut don't rate it quite as highly as Sands.

The Two Thrones

The third game in the trilogy starts with a female voice-over explaining that there are those who believe [worse ending of Warrior Within] happened, when, in fact, [better ending of Warrior Within] happened.

The game builds on the mechanics of the second game, with a few innovations: the "speed kill" - if you sneak up on an enemy you go into extreme slow-mo and have to button press at the right moments (cued by distinctive audio-visual effects) - for the bosses, speed-kill becomes the way to finish them; specialised wall plates that you can stab the Dagger of Time into to allow yourself to hang halfway up a wall - letting you wall run sideways, jump up or away from the wall, or, of course, drop straight down; and the Dark Prince - the Prince's sand-corrupted alter ego, who has a dedicated whip-like secondary weapon that can be used Spiderman-style with appropriate furniture to extend jumps and wall-runs, as well as being ridiculously powerful. You need the powerful weapon as the Dark Prince because your health slowly drains and can only be refilled by collecting sand.

The Prince/Dark Prince duality lets the game reconcile the contrasting styles of the two previous games - the Prince moves back towards the innocent nobility of his first-game self, while the Dark Prince revels in the memory of the violence and anger of the second game. The internal dialogue between the two also serves as an occasional hint mechanism, with the submerged personality pointing out things the player may have missed.

The plot is a little on the confusing side, but does make sense if you pay attention, and does bring together elements from the previous two games fairly nicely. The ending also has a nice touch which I won't spoil.

The other major innovation is the introduction of a chariot-driving mini-game which you have to do a couple of times during the game in order to get through. It's not a great addition, but since it only happens the twice, it is tolerable.

Having only played through once, I'm not sure quite how I rank it relative to Sands, but I definitely prefer it to Warrior Within.

The three games came out over three consecutive Christmasses, and seem to use pretty much the same underlying engine, so in Two Thrones the technology is beginning to show its age a little, and none of the games is exactly long - though neither Warrior Within nor Two Thrones tracks your time spent in-game so it's harder to tell how long they do take.

I enjoyed all three games, though Warrior Within is definitely my least favourite of the three. The rewind ability alone smooths over a vast number of potential level-design flaws, allowing trial and error when you're stuck for where to go next (as long as your sand lasts) and meaning that the rare camera glitch or error in judgement can be recovered from gracefully. The shorter length means you may not want to buy them full-price, but they're well worth getting if you find them cheap.

[D.M.Jewelle]

I'm not sure if I need to finish a game first, but I could clarify further as I keep playing...

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Playstation 2

Controls: DoC uses the normal controller, but at hard mode a keyboard and mouse are highly recommended by the game, which can be plugged into the USB ports to make the game really feel like an FPS (not that you can't play with the controller, but don't expect miracles). However, the default controls have everything set to reverse, so unless you're accustomed to pressing down to look up, you're better off running to options and changing the camera movement the first chance you get. The options also gives you the chance to change aiming sensitivity, so you won't keep sliding past an enemy or taking forever to scroll.

The button to switch to first person mode AND shoot uses the R1 button, so the upside is that you won't have to hold it down in order to aim and keep holding it to use another button to shoot. There's one button each for menu, action/jump, melee attack, and shoot, which might reduce confusion but gets a little unwieldy when you have to go through the menu to get to the map. Reloading and switching between your guns (there are 3) uses the R2 and L2 buttons respectively, so it never feels like a chore.

Gameplay: The only RPG in this is when you collect money to pay for upgrades and level up at the end of each stage. Otherwise it's FPS all the way.

When Vincent's running around it's all in 3rd person, but for shooting you press R1 to switch to first-person (which is more similar to RE4's version than anything). In FP (1st person), Vincent can still move using the left analog stick and fine-tune his aim with the right analog stick. Depending on the difficulty, the aiming reticle varies - Easy lets you fire headshots as long as you're aiming at the body, while Hard gives you the smallest aiming reticle allowing only precision shots. The biggest downside is that you CANNOT RUN WHILE SHOOTING, which means you had better hope you're good at going first.

Throughout the game, defeated enemies will drop ammo or potions. There are 3 different types of ammo in the game and (so far) potions, high potions, and phoenix downs. Unfortunately the item cap is at 50 and Vincent can only carry 4 potions, 2 high potions, and 1 phoenix down at any given time, so hopefully you're not an item hog. On the bright side, items don't disappear into thin air, so if you're low on potions and ammo you can backtrack to pick up the item you previously couldn't because your item bag was full.

Weapon parts are acquired as you go through the game, and you assemble your own guns based on the parts you get. There are 3 slots for each weapon, and only one piece of materia can be attached to each weapon, where elemental bullets can be fired with the L1 button. Online play requires the PS2 HardDrive with Playonline installed, so I highly doubt a lot of people will be fiddling with that.

The game also has an autosave feature at checkpoints, though a quick save is possible before you quit the game. The game is divided into stages and chapters, and there is a ranking board at the end of each stage where it calculates how well you did and give you money based on that. It's a good motivator to finish the missions as high a ranking as possible for that, since money is rarely found in the game.

Graphics: There is a large discrepancy between in-game graphics and fmvs. We're talking Advent Children quality for the FMVs, and something that looks only a little better than Devil May Cry 3 for in-game. The majority of the game's cutscenes are done with the in-game models, so after the opening FMV, you'll start weeping as you recall when Vincent's hair didn't look like it was painted onto his cape.

Sound + Music: Music was pretty good (it's by the guy who did SaGa Frontier 2, Masashi Hamauzu), and most of the voices are ok, though you wouldn't expect Cait Sith to sound so...low. In fact, I haven't seen a game like this where except for [spoil]Lucrecia, Shelk, and the FF7 women[/spoil], everyone else is a baritone. I suppose it's good that they're moving away from the squeaky voices, but this is a bit...weird. The gunshots sounded pretty good as well, though Vincent's voice goes weird when it's not being low and angsty.

Story: First off, the premise already adds extra to the original game besides what's been reported such as [spoil]Hojo not being dead the first time you killed him at the Mako Cannon, [/spoil] and then it gets a bit dark due to the atmosphere and the opening scenes, which then slides into a bit of high drama [spoil]like Lucrecia being responsible for Vincent's Chaos limit break - we're talking like maybe she *altered* him for that[/spoil], and then climaxing with REALLY SILLY stuff [spoil](One scene has the FF7 cast in a 5-way split screen cheering Vincent on like he's Captain Planet)[/spoil], before ending with a bit of ambiguity and the much-hyped Gackt song, which isn't too bad, I hope they keep it for the English version.

The game has a small sidequest where doing it yields the Special Ending [spoil]a.k.a The Worst Plot Twist In the History of Gaming Ever - Gackt the singer is Sephiroth's OLDER BROTHER, yes I really wish I was kidding...it's even in live action[/spoil].

Overall: I would recommend picking it up for the story and the FMV, but unless DoC has a price drop, I don't see anyone in the forum buying it as it is a FPS first and foremost. It's not Half-Life or Doom, but it's decent enough that you can pick up the controls once you finish Tutorial Mode, and there's Easy mode if you're not too good at FPSes, like me. ^^[/b]