Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

I'm a fan of the Prince of Persia series starting with the Sands of Time. I always said gaming needs more puzzle platformers, and this is as good as it gets. There was a little hiccup with Warrior Within (it sucked), but the ship was righted with The Two Thrones and the book was closed on an epic storyline. 2008 introduced us to a new prince...who for some reason was not a prince (at least not yet; not until he knocks up Elika) and is played by Nolan North, the guy who does the voice of pretty much every single mother fucker in games lately. Jesus, if he keeps this up, he'll put Steve Blum and Cree Summers out of business and that's no easy accomplishment.....and it just occurred to me that you have no idea who I'm talking about. Despite the overused voice and a wardrobe that looks like a runaway ninja crashed into a Skittles factory, 2008's POP was a good game all around and a good launch pad for the next trilogy. I was getting syked about what they would for a sequel, then I finally got to see that the new POP...has nothing...to do....with this contingency.....wait what?

To make as much money as they can off the new movie coming soon, Ubisoft released a game in the Sand of Time storyline, effectively confusing everybody including me who thought they were fuckin done with that storyline and moved on. There's gonna be some trouble when both games are shelved side by side at Gamestop. You play as the Prince, not to be confused with the Prince who is not yet the Prince but probably will be Prince if he hooks up with...ah fuck that shit; let's just give them names. In the Forgotten Sands, you play as the Sands of Time Prince (who we'll call Sandy). Despite popular belief, this is not based on the movie, nor is this a sequel of the 2008 game starring Reject Ninja. The events takes place after the Sands of Time and before Warrior Within where Sandy visits his brother who despite actually having a name we'll call him Spongebob to keep with the theme here. Spongebob's kingdom is under attack and is about to go down like almost every Xbox 360 before 2009, and in order to save it he's releases the legendary Solomon's Army to aid in this fight. Sadly, evil sand pours from the vault...AGAIN...and creatures I'll called Beach Shoes emerge to destroy everything in their path. Now it's up to Sandy to do what he always does and hop, skip, jump, and repeatedly die his way to victory with some help from the woman who helped seal the Beach Shoes centuries ago: Water Hoes. It's a fine story but doesn't add anything to the overall story-arch. Hell, I don't know if it's really relevant at all. In my opinion, you can put Stone Cold Steve Austin in the game and it wouldn't make a difference, and in hindsight that might be for the best. We don't need a side project to fuck up to story here. Ask Metal Gear Solid fans.


As I describe the gameplay, stop me if this sounds familiar. You will run, jump, climb walls, climb poles, jump from pole to pole, wall jump, wall jump repeatedly between 2 walls, run on walls, run up walls, hang from poles, swing from poles, balance on beams, jump from beam to beam, dodge traps, solve puzzles, and inevitably fail a lot at trying to do all of the above. It's a tried and true formula that never gets old despite how many times I do it. It's one of those games where you say to yourself "Okay, I'll stop at the next checkpoint", and you're still playing 7 checkpoints later. Instead of sand, all your powers are given to you by Water Hoes to do what you need to to get from point A to point B. You can also upgrade Sandy like every other action game, making his health and attacks unfairly awesome, which leads to the biggest and probably only worth-noting change: combat. Instead of the stiff combat of Sandy's past games or Reject Ninja's stupid ass one on one move as slowly as possible duels, combat in this game is a little more fluid and a hellava lot more fun once you upgrade yourself to badass proportions. Not only that, but as much as 50 Beach Shoes can be on-screen at once. If you can win that fight without getting hit:
1) send a video of it, and
2) let's see you do that shit on Batman
If there's one thing that Reject Ninja has on Sandy, it's that he has a partner who won't let him die, unlike Sandy who is only as alive as how often you're allowed to do a rewind. Now I know everyone made a big deal about not being able to die in Reject's game, but after playing Sandy's game, I can confidently say that you guys can shut the fuck up about it. In the Forgotten Sands, it's filled with so many save points. It seems like every time I go into another room, the game autosaves. It's funny how everyone likes how you can die in this game, but the effect is still the same. Am I the only one noticing this shit? Yea, in Forgotten Sands, you go back a little further, but a lot of times I don't even use my rewind because I know I'll spawn close by. How is that much different from Reject Ninja getting saved by Floaty Bitch? At the end of the day, Reject Ninja made you feel like you got bailed out, whereas Sandy makes you feel like you can't fail, but it's the same shit.


Rating: Sweet


NOTE: What was that? A closing paragraph? Bitch, I got too much to do today. I don't have time for a closing paragraph.

Split/Second

One day, a little company that could called Black Box came along and created one of the best, if not the best skateboarding game of all time called Skate. Then I did my research and found out that the company I'm actually looking for is called Blackrock. My bad. Blackrock is known for the under-appreciated and very kick ass game Pure, which funny enough was published by Disney Interactive, probably the last company you would expect to publish an ATV version of SSX. Instead of making a sequel to Pure (damn), Blackrock decided to make a good ol' fashion arcade racer - the kind of racer you would expect to find in an arcade somewhere, except more awesome. I haven't played an arcade racer this fun since the San Francisco Rush series, and despite being rated E10, I've blown up more shit than GTA4 and Just Cause 2 combine. Needless to say, I fuckin love this game.

The game is set up like one of those shows you would see on FOX, with the cheesy music ripped straight out of Jerry Bruckheimer's Ipod and everything. When you play through Season Mode, each stage is setup like an episode of the show. There are 12 episodes in all and 6 races (2 that have to be unlocked) in each episode. It doesn't sound like a lot, but you would be surprised how long it takes to complete it, especially if you gonna try to get 1st place in every single event. Shit the only thing missing from this game is the promos for a new season of House.

I guess the best way to decide this game is it's the love child between Burnout and...pretty much any and every game that has random shit exploding. At any moment, pieces of the environment can randomly attack you and the other racers, and these events are triggered by you and the other racers. You fill a meter by drifting, drafting, jumping, and other stunts, and once that meter is full enough, you can trigger one of these power plays when you have racers within range. There are 2 levels of power plays, and while level 1 normally gets the job done, level 2 is just ridiculously awesome. Trigger a level 2 and you can either cause an event that can take out pretty much everyone in the race, or take out pretty much everyone in the race AND fuck up the course so bad that you end up changing the route. As cool as they look, level 2 also takes the longest to build up, so it may not be the best option. Besides the usual race, elimination, and time trials, there are special events that you can do, one of them is seeing how long you can dodge missiles fired from a helicopter.

This is an arcade racers, and like all arcade racers it suffers from the same exact problem that causes people like me to curse every 5 minutes: unfair AI. No matter how far away you get, or how good you're driving, they will always catch up. A big lead doesn't mean shit in this game and eventually someone will be on your ass. I guess it was done to make the racing more exciting, but what's the point of trying so hard to get to first if I'm just gonna lose it anyway. Might as well just wait till the last lap to even try. Oh wait, you can't do that because that leads to you ending up in last. Unless you get a lucky sequence of power plays, if you're behind, you'll catch up. It's also worth noting that you won't win a lot later on until you know the courses, but the game is more fun when you have no idea what the course layout is, and shit is exploding around you. It's a conundrum.

Despite the AI, this game is kick ass, and is worthy of the company that produced Pure, and for the love of god, go out and get Pure. It's like 20 buck now and it kicks ass. Trust me on this. It's only fault is that there's no split screen multiplayer. I don't know why that was left out. It's not left in Split/Second though, so we're good there. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try it online because my internet is acting retarded, but maybe it'll work if and when I do my next VS: Split/Second vs. Blur. That should be fun.


Rating: Fuckin Awesome

NOTE: I like the running on the Backbreaker demo. Passing....not so much. Also, memo to ESPN, stop it with the fuck Lebron James coverage. Jesus Christ, if it's not him, it's fuckin Farve. Fuck both of them!

Just Cause 2 Easter Eggs

One thing I forgot to mention about Just Cause 2 was the easter eggs. In fact, I showed you a video of one of those easter eggs in the review. Not only are there many of then, some are just downright awesome. Ask anybody who's been to the island all the way up on the left hand corner. Instead of talking about it, which is what I originally intended to do, I'm gonna take the lazier approach and show you as many easter eggs that I was able to find on youtube, most of them presented by the guys at Achievement Hunter.If you're wondering, yes I found some of these on my own, all by accident.

Quick Thoughts on Super Street Fighter 4

Before I rant about my point today, let me just basically tell you what's new in this version. 10 new fighters join the fray, including some from SF3, Alpha, and never before seen characters (if there is someone who can use Hakan, I'll be fuckin amazed). Everyone's complained by how online is structured. That got completely re-worked to be or streamlined and...well...fun. Everyone now has 2 ultras you can chose from, balancing between fighters have been tweaked (except with Seth apparently), and Bonus stages are back....for what it's worth. I'm sure somebody's happy about.

I've heard a lot of people complained that all this could have been done as a downloadable (some of them don't even own neither game so whay the fuck are they running their yaps?) and that Capcom is lying when they say they can't. I have to agree with Capcom for 2 reasons. The first reason is the revamped online mode. Explain to me how that would have worked out with the online mode already on the disc. You can't delete the old one. You can't rewrite it. You can't do shit to it because once it's written on the CD, the content is permanent. You know when you get an update on a game, and it fixes some of the problems in the game (like lag)? It normally uses save files or creates its own files into your hard drive. If you were to take that same game to someone's house and play it, none of the fixes would be there because they're on your hard drive, not your drive. What you are basically asking (and some demanding) is that for Capcom to fuck with the CD, which is fuckin impossible. Point number 2, and the most important part I might add, is that even if it is possible that they can do that, even if they can add all that shit by downloadable, what difference would it have made? YOU WOULD STILL HAVE TO FUCKIN PAY FOR IT! Would it have been cheaper? I doubt it. The fuckin extra costumes in the first game set you back 10 bucks. Imagine what just one character would have cost, let alone TEN! Then you have the ultras, the bonus stages, the new stages, and online mode that'll probably have to be added so everyone can play online. At the very lowest, we're looking at 30 bucks here. A $10 difference here is basically just splitting hairs (just ask GTA4 owners). Besides, why wouldn't you want a disc to carry around to a friend's house or two? You that lonely? The only reason I can see people complaining about it not being a downloadable is because they either don't want another CD (which is reasonable) or they thought that shit would have been free, and that's fuckin retarded. Damn, now I feel like playing Street Fighter

Someone asked me if I would do a review for Super Street Fighter 4. I say no, but I'll think about it when they release Super Street Fighter 4 Turbo.

Just Cause 2

Just 5 minutes ago, I sneaked into a military base, planted C4 on most of the jeeps, stole one for myself, got chased by the military police who were driving said jeeps, jumped onto the hood of my car, triggered the explosives, blew up the jeeps, and opened my parachute to sail away just before the jeep I was surfing on crashed into the side of a building. That is Just Cause 2 in a nutshell. This game puts new meaning to the phrase 'fuckin around'.

You play Rico...ummm...was it Rodriguez? I think it was Riviera. Hold on; let me see. Where the fuck did I put that instruction manual? Alright, here it is. Rodriguez, there we go. Anyway, R-Rod is sent to the extremely fake island of Panau, to cause as much chaos as possible to overthrow a bla bla bla. I stopped paying attention after chaos. I cared little about the story and even less about the characters. Everyone in this game have horrendous accents, even worse than the Saboteur. In fact, even the American accent is bad, and it's voiced by a fuckin American. Is it really so hard to find Asian people to do the accents for you (I forgot to mention that the island was in Asia)? It's not like you needed real talent - as proven by who you hired in the first place - so I think any ol' group of Asian people would do. They don't even sound like they're trying to be Asian; it sounds like they're trying to make fun of Asians. On this island, you're treated to jungles, forests, deserts, snowy mountains, plateaus, and cities all in one locale, and the cool thing is it's all arranged so that it makes sense to have all these different...geographical......shit. At the right height, you can actually see the whole island. There's no fog or anything to hide the island in order to save processing on rendering draw distances or any of that technical bullshit. No; you see everything, which is amazing seeing as how good the graphics are and how fuckin huge the island is. Seriously, with the fastest plane I could find, it took me a little under 5 minutes to get from one side of the island to the other. That is ridiculous. 


It's a sandbox game, so I think we all know how these games work. I travel to a spot, start the mission (usually involves shooting), finish said mission, then go back to fuckin around until you're ready to start a new mission. The difference is that where most games encourage fuckin around, it's almost a requirement in this game. Almost everything destructive you do adds to your chaos, which acts like currency to unlock new missions. Sometimes I'd have no missions unlocked, so I went and blew up a few military bases for the hell of it. Sure enough, the chaos brought about new missions. Another outstanding feature is the grappling hook. It's used as you would think: Batman your ass all over the place. You can also tether 2 items together. Unless you're pulling someone off a sniper tower or mounted gun, the hook is pretty useless in a fight. Now, I said useless, but I didn't say boring. For example, while getting shot at by one lonely pathetic soldier, a helicopter appeared to take me out. So I hooked the soldier, tethered him to the helicopter, and ran away as the copter gave chase with his buddy hanging on. Helpful no, but fuckin funny. One time, I tethered a guy to a propane cylinder (at least I think it's propane; it's shaped like a helium tank), shot the cylinder, and he rocketed all over the place before blowing up. To round out this list of unique features is the insane stunts you can pull off. In the beginning, I mention I was car surfing while being pursued. That's just a little bit of a taste of what you can do in this game. Any vehicle in the game can pretty much be rode on top of and steered somewhat (except helicopters and planes). Combine that with a parachute and a grappling hook, and you are ready to have some fun my friends. Is it realistic? Hell no, but who cares? I can only imagine how that meeting with the game designers went........

Head Designer: Alright guys, I like the way this game is coming out
Designer #1: Well, we still don't have a bonafide hit here.
Designer #2: We have to separate ourselves from the other GTA clones 
Head Designer: Does anybody have any ideas on how to do that?
Designer #3: Hey, what can we do to make the game more realistic?
Head Designer: I have an idea.
Designer #3: What?
Head Designer: You're fired.

The point this game treat realism like NJ Governor Chris Christie treats the public school system (Sad but True.....by Metallica). They are 2 complaints I have with this game. Until you upgrade your weapons, it takes a million billion bullets to put someone down, unless you get a headshot of course, but the weapons aint that fuckin accurate. And with a game that emphasizes chaos, shouldn't I have assess to heavy ordinances a little earlier in the game? This game also doesn't have mutliplayer, but seeing as how massive the game is, adding that might actually break the fuckin disc. 


If you like fuckin around, then this is your game. It's been tailored made for people like you. Admittedly, the storyline take a long time to finish than you would expect, but when you think about it, you won't care about the story, and if you're not finish with it, it gives you something to do, something that this game is almost never short on.


Rating: Fuckin Around Awesome

NOTE: Anybody knows where I can get Power Stone 2 for Dreamcast on the cheap? Seriously, I'm not spending more than 20 bucks on the bitch, so these online prices I found can suck my dick.

Splinter Cell Conviction

Yes, I am no fan of stealth, but that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on it. One of the main reason why I never liked stealth is because I was never any good at it. I get caught so easily, and because I'm a run and gun type of person, I tend to try to shoot it out which never works (except Metal Gear Solid 3 for some reason). Knowing that people like me suck, Splinter Cell tries to appeal to us by making the game as easy as possible without losing that sense of accomplishment, so if you're a regular jack-off who might be interested in stealth, then this is the game for you. If you're like me and don't like stealth at all, then this game can go fuck itself with the skull of Sam's dead daughter. If you are a stealth master, then this game (unless played online with other stealth masters) might turn you off because it's patronizingly easy.

This game takes place after the events in Double Agent, which leads to the first problem. The gameplay is built for newcomers at heart, but you have to play the last game to fully understand what the fuck is going on. Sam leaves the people he worked for and goes into hiding, his daughter's dead, yet that was part of a conspiracy. Sam's friend is dead, and I think he used to run the agency, which is run now by some dick who wants to take over the United States simply because this is a Tom Clancy game and someone is always trying to take over the U.S. for no real fuckin reason except they can. It's basically a lot of information to digest, and since you can only cover so much in one game, this leaves a lot of fuckin plot holes to those who haven't play the game before, and no, I haven't played the game before. And why is it that everyone wants to fuck with the U.S.? I like to play a modern game where the U.S. just fuckin chills in the background while the rest of the world duke it out. America doesn't have to be the center of every fuckin thing that happens. Do they think gamers won't like it unless they're fighting under the American flag? I would love to play a modern real world game where the U.S. isn't mentioned once bit. Some might say I'm being un-American, and they can fuck off. This is the most pro-American statement in gaming because I'm tired of my country being fucked with (especially by republicans).


I, for one, don't fully like the controls because they depend too much on the A button. In order to get Sam to do stuff that don't involve killing, you press A. Not only that, but you also have to be looking at what you need Sam to do in order for A to work. For example, to climb a wall, you have to look up and press A. Sounds simply, but when you're in a hurry, it's real easy to fuck it up. If you look too high up, you won't see the command to jump. Same thing if you look to low, and that pisses me off when I'm trying to hop a fence before the enemy sees me. Another example: to open a door you press A, and to peek under the door you press A. Confused? You have to look roughly waist high at the door in order to open it and look down at the floor to peek under it. Sounds like it's setup in a way you can't really fuck it up....until you fuck it up. There have been many times where I have accidentally opened the door to a room full of mercs who couldn't wait to show me a demonstration of their new-found love of killing dumb mother fuckas who open doors when they meant to peek under it because the controls are dick! The one thing I do like though is to take cover behind a wall or something, you hold down a button instead of pressing a button and being stuck like Velcro. The developers must not think likely of people like me because the AI is dumber than fuck with less brain cells than nuggets. These fucknuggets like to shout out exactly what their plans are like I can't fuckin hear them. Thanks guys; for a minute I thought I'd have to brain to figure out how to kill you. Shit, there are even times where I didn't really have to do shit. I'd just chuck a grenade in one direction, wait till they all run in that direction, and then run in the opposite direction. When the game calls for stealth, it's easy to crack some necks and keep it moving, but unbeknown to me were there moments where you don't really use stealth. The game provides you with little cover and tells you to go, and this happens ahellava lot during the last part of the game. So now it's a action game? Funny; I thought Sam's wasn't built to take a million billion bullets. Lets try shooting it out.............nope; doesn't work. Apparently, this is where you really need to use the mark and execute move, and it just occurred to me that I never explained that. When you kill an enemy with a sneak attack (B button), you earn a mark and execute which allows you to mark all the enemies you can and press Y to watch Sam kill them all. It felt so unless early in the game that I didn't even bother with it. It only after I've gotten my ass handed to me on several occasions by a large group of soldier with very limited cover at my disposal that moments like this were made for the mark and execute. I guess Ubisoft thought you would be a fuckin expert by now that you should be able to figure that shit out. Well excuse me mister game designer for wanting to use stealth to get through a situation, which is something this game is suppose to promote. In case you're wondering how to use mark and execute on the fucked up parts I mentioned, you mark everyone you can (guns have limits to how many people you can mark), you sneak attack one person which will probably alert the rest, and you use your now earned execute skill to clear the room. Only in hindsight can someone think of that shit. The leg of the game gives in way too much to action, which means trying to be stealthy may be the dumbest thing you can do. By the way, the mark and executes don't add up. If you sneak attack 2 guys, you can still only use it once, and once you use it, you have to sneak attack someone else. Well that's fuckin rewarding. Now you see why I didn't even bother with it to begin with. And don't even bother using stealth against other Splinter Cells because they know where you are using their own sonar goggles. I'm not saying you can't, but at this point, why would you want to.

Splinter Cell just doesn't appeal to me, which me the number 1 stealth game for me is still Batman (just kid; I have no favorite). I normally find stealth games a little hard for me, and when they make them easy, it's way too easy. Maybe I'm just too hard to please. I like to go on record to say that I don't hate stealth; I just like it better when it's an option rather than a requirement like Uncharted 2. Conviction doesn't strike any chords in people jaded about stealth, but maybe it wasn't meant to. If you're not on board by now, why bother, right?

Rating: Meh

NOTE: Months later and I'm still trying to beat Dragon Age. That bitch is hard even on casual difficulty. And the bosses....bull fuckin shit. They go waaaaay beyond cheap.