Persona 4 Golden Review

Persona 4 Golden

Read More

Assassin's Creed III Liberation Review

Assassin's Creed III Liberation is a game for the Playstation Vita system that oozes potential, but falls short in practice. Once again, a 3rd Party developer has had an opportunity to launch a ground breaking portable game on the Vita, and instead chose to release a sub par product that not only makes their franchise look bad, but also makes the Playstation Vita look bad as well. If you don't believe me, then please allow me to elighten you.

There are several things that Liberation does with the story that are unique and intriguing to the seasoned Assassin's Creed fan, but once again the potential is better than what is done with the potential. The whole premise of the game is that you (Yes, You) have bought an Abstergo gaming system and will be playing through the memories of one of your assassin ancestors. Obviously, since this gaming system is from Abstergo, the story is manipulated for a more Templar friendly outlook by removing bits and pieces of memories that make the Assassin Brotherhood look good. These bits of lost memory can be accessed by locating and assassinating "Citizen E" who is a line of code placed into your gaming system by a hacker of some sort. All this sounds like it would be amazing, right? Wrong. Whenever you find Citizen E, who appears semi randomly in the open world, you are shown the missing part of the memory, but you are never shown any context from before or after the missing memory. You are simply thrust into the middle of a conversation with nothing to remind you of what was being talked about beforehand. Not to mention the fact that Citizen E could show you any number of Missing Memories you've already passed, not necessarily the most recent one or going in any particular order. All of this aside, the story is still very weak and pieced together over events that take place years and years apart. The dialogue is terrible, and one main character can't seem to make it through a sentence without saying "Er" or "Um."

Don't Even Get Me Started On This Crappy Gimmick Which Has You
Pointing Your Vita At A Light Source, Twisting, and Then Turning

The gameplay can be disappointing at times as well. If you are looking to slaughter countless foes in the classic AC style on the go, then you are set. However, the combat feels clunky and overly sensitive. Fights with smarter enemies must be won with brute force because the game never tells you the proper way to engage and counter these enemies. I usually had to resort to cheap shots with my whip or pistol to dispatch these foes. I've always gotten the most fun out of the AC games when I encounter a large group of enemies and dispatch every single one of them with well placed and calculated blows and counter attacks. Liberation forced me to use lesser tactics due to the laggy and precise controls. Liberation robbed me of my favorite thing about Assassin's Creed games. On the other hand, the climbing mechanics work just fine, but their glory is stolen by frequent frame rate drops. Other than that, the parkour action is exactly what you would expect from any Assassin's Creed game out there (Misplaced jumps and all).

I'm usually really good at this game, but the slow response time of the tilt
controls made this puzzle much more difficult than it should have been.

Assassin's Creed III Liberation brings some new gaming functionality to the franchise that is extremely "hit or miss" (mostly miss). Whenever you receive a letter, you are required to tear the top off by touching the top left corner of the front and back of the Vita and sliding your hand to the top right corner. This is a nice little gimmick that is fun for the first couple of times you have to do it. Another, less fun, activity has you pointing your Vita at a light source to show the hidden message in a piece of paper, then turning your vita to reveal more of the secret, then using the touch screen to twist a magnifying glass to see the full picture. Only problem is, they never tell you what to do past "Point your Vita at a light source." In addition to this, there are a number of other gimmicks that use the Vita's functionality that only appear once in the entire game. So you spend your time figuring out a clunky new mechanic only to realize that you will never use it again.

Glitchy As Ever!

Another new game mechanic is the ability to change your "Persona" by changing clothes. You can dress your character as an Assassin, a Slave, or a Lady. Each one accumulates notoriety separately, and has it's notoriety reduced separately as well. Also, each one has it's own advantages and disadvantages for battles and assassinations. I thought this was great whenever the game first introduced me to the concept, but, once again, the implementation was way off. There were several missions in the beginning of the game that forced you to play as the Lady persona for an extended period of time, and it required you to go from one end of the map to the other and back again. This is extremely frustrating because the Lady persona is very slow, can't climb, and is the least capable persona in battle. What would have been a great use of the Personas would have been for you to be tasked with an assassination, and then given the choice of which persona you wanted to dispatch your foe with. Just sayin'.

The sound was also sub par in Liberation. Nothing draws you out of the experience like jumping from a great height into a stream just to hear a weak splash seconds too late (sometimes you never hear a sound at all). The same thing happens a lot during battles, sword clashes are either too late or non-existent. The music is also repetitive and uninspired.

I know that I haven't had a lot of nice things to say about this game. It is just so frustrating to see a game from a Top Notch developer with a Top Notch franchise make a game with bad writing, bad sound effects, and poor frame rates. If you are considering buying Assassin's Creed III Liberation hoping for a good story or a story to supplement your console Assassin's Creed experience, then don't bother with this title. There is nothing here that you are missing about the Assassin's Creed universe, and there is only one very weak tie-in to Assassin's Creed III's main character, Connor. I compare this game to Uncharted: Golden Abyss and can't for the life of me understand why it couldn't be at least on par with Uncharted's quality. There is a lot of playability here, 9 Sequences and a ton of side missions, but for anyone to want to spend that much time with a game, the game has got to be fun to play. For all of this, and more, I rate Assassin's Creed III Liberation $25 out of $40. Sorry Ubisoft, better luck next time.


$25/$40


Written by Dexter Jaekel
Editor-in-Chief of TechFixation

Read More

Sound Shapes Review

Sound Shapes is an absolute delight. Created by the folks over at Queasy Games, the highly anticipated Sound Shapes is an addictive side scrolling musical platformer. It was released last week on PSN store for the PlayStation Vita and the PlayStation 3.  Even though there are some issues that are hard to overlook, this game is one of the best reasons to own a PlayStation Vita.

Like any other platformer, Sound Shapes tasks you with getting from point A to point B. The difference in this title is that instead of battling enemies on your voyage, you collect music notes. Each note you obtain gets added to the background music of the game, thus creating a complex and wonderful tune. Enemies and other level decorations add their notes to the song as well.

A game based on music must have a grade ‘A’ soundtrack. Thankfully, Sound Shapes knocks it out of the park. Because not only is there one amazing soundtrack, there are 5, each created by a different musician. Songs range from Deadmau5’s upbeat electronic music to I am Robot and Proud’s peaceful melodies. Every one of the songs are a pleasure to play through, and some of the tracks may even leave you speechless.

    The game features 3 different game modes. Campaign mode, where you play through different albums, each with their own distinct graphics. After you complete the 5 album long campaign, you unlock the other 2 game modes. Beat School, were you try to match a section of a song by placing notes on the screen. And finally, there’s Death Mode. Death mode requires you to retrieve a certain amount of notes without dying, under a very strict time limit. This mode can become very, very infuriating, so beating all of the levels will take some time and patience.

Sound Shapes is also available on PS3, and when you buy one version, you get the other for free. There is almost no difference between the versions, other than the menu layout. Sound Shapes allows you to sync your save from your Vita to PS3 and vice versa. The game has the same trophies across both versions, but they aren’t connected. So, when you earn a trophy on Vita, you don’t receive it on the PS3 until you sync the save. So, trophy lovers like myself will be ecstatic to find that you will get double the trophies for this game, including a double platinum.

The game comes packed with a level editor, enabling you to make your own songs and share them with the world. I have played a lot of games with a level editor, from Little Big Planet to inFAMOUS 2, and I can easily say the editor is the best I have ever used. It is very simple to put together levels and songs, and not to mention a ton of fun. The community has already done some fantastic stuff with the level editor and the game has only been out in the wild for a week. You can expect to see a lot of unique levels for some time to come.

 
 Alas, the game isn’t perfect. For a good 4 days after the game was released, the servers were down. No one could access user created levels nor sync their saves. While the issues have been fixed for the time being, it was a little ridiculous not being able to play online for most of the first week. Furthermore, I received more than a couple “Scripting errors” where the game just crashed on me. These issues shouldn’t be enough to halt your purchase, but they are prevalent nonetheless.

Sound Shapes is a fantastic adventure. It is great to see Sony pushing these unique titles to the PlayStation store, and I hope to see more titles like this in the future. With the level creator, the 3 different game modes and all of the community levels at your disposal, this game will keep you busy for a long time to come. Go pick it up, it’s well worth it.

$15/$15

Mitchell Morgan

@Mdawg2438

Read More