“Infamy” – The New Modern Warfare 2 Trailer

Here at Frayed Wire, one of our mutual anticipations is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, so when a new trailer comes out (and more importantly, I notice it on time), of course it has to get posted.

By Josh60502

Internet Gaming Spotlight: Shut Up Kanye

Two things in this post are outdated. The first is the fact that this is an Internet Gaming Spotlight post (seriously, how long has it been since we had one of those?), and the other is the subject of the game being featured – Kanye West’s rude interruption at the MTV Video Music Awards. However, throwing things at Kanye before the show starts and hearing him shout clips from that fateful night (“Beyonce had one of the best videos of ALL TIME!!”) when you hit him turns out to be a very satisfying game. I’ll admit, Shut Up Kanye is actually quite crudely made, but for the sheer concept alone, it’s hard for me not to want to recommend this semi-currently relevant game.

Rating: (Preteen) – Content Warnings: Malicious Humor, Mild Language

Play this game here!

By Josh60502

…Hi

Contrary to popular belief, I have not died. I have had chronic laziness combined with some tough classes. This post is merely saying that I have not died and I would like to offer my opinions on the current state of the video games industry (with side notes of course). Price drops are more “in” than Michael Jackson T-shirts. Every major home console has dropped their price recently. The most stunning and well timed was Sony’s. In addition to a new model, they made the PS3 affordable to a lot more people, including myself. I see myself in the near future purchasing a PS3 now. The 360 and Wii price drops seems like “me too” marketing, but necessary nonetheless. The Wii has a much higher crap to awesome rating than its two competitors combined, so it needed some sort of edge on Sony and Microsoft. Speaking of Microsoft, they seem to be inevitably tied to second place and they’ll continue to stay there unless Natal takes off, which I don’t think it will. Most people with a 360 viewed it as an FPS delivery system, not a way to play using your whole bodies. Well, that’s all I have to say, expect more posts in the future.

By JustMattPwn3r

“Metal Gear Solid 4″ PS3 Review

Never before have I been so completely gripped and astounded by a video game. This is quite simply the shining achievement in video game story telling and the number one argument for the “games as art” debate.

Anybody who knows or has played the Metal Gear Solid series knows that it has always been highly story driven. This trend continues in Guns of the Patriots as the game weaves an intricate and enticing story that (for lack of a better expression) sucks you in. You’ll find yourself playing the game wondering when the next cutscene will come and what will happen. The story follows Snake in areas around the world sneaking and shooting his way through a variety of environments from middle eastern deserts to European city streets. The plot feels like it picks up exactly where the first three games left off and the reason for the third game being a flashback is quite apparent. At the same time, though, the story doesn’t seem predictable or that they have already set everything up conveniently in the series’  past. It feels fresh and new which is astounding for a game in a series. Yes, the cutscenes are long; but they are so well done and free of talking green heads (the previous method of storytelling in the series) that you will look forward to them.

Illustrating the graphics and new shooting mechanism.

MGS4 trashes the old top-down aiming system that has been one of my biggest complaints throughout the series. The game is now played like many of the third person shooters out there although I personally think that it plays better than titles like Gears of War. You hold L1 to aim your gun and press R1 to fire. L2 manages your items and R2 manages your weapons, making it easy to equip a weapon or use an item on the fly. Snake controls like you’ve always wanted him to control. You can now move while crouching or hold the X button to go prone and crawl on the ground. The OctoCamo suit is a stroke of genius and makes for many strategic possibilities when entering a firefight. The areas are well balanced and varied, calling for a wide range of different tactics to be put into effect. You’ll play the game looking forward to the cutscenes and watch the cutscenes looking forward to getting back to the shooting and stealth mechanics of the game.

Snake looking somber in one of the beautiful cutscenes.

This may very well be the best looking video game I have ever seen. The characters are detailed, realistic, and believable. The atmosphere is perfectly created to draw you into the game. The game will install somewhere around 5 GB by its conclusion (a 10 min. starting install time and a 2-3 min. install time between acts). Unless you have the 20 GB model of the PS3 this should not be a problem, although even if you do it is worth deleting some demos or videos just to be able to play this masterpiece. While playing the game you will truly appreciate the installation as it runs at a flawless clip without a skip or a stutter through cutscenes or massive firefights; all while being one of the technologically best looking games out there. The art design is also top-notch, with deeply designed and varied environments throughout.

This is simply a game that must be experienced to be fully understood. The story will easily last you 20-25 hours plus the online play perfectly translates the gameplay of the single-player story for countless hours more. Go out and buy this game right now. You must. If you don’t have a PS3, now is the perfect time to buy one. Everybody who passes this up is missing out on a truly amazing entertainment experience.

Final Score: 10 out of 10

By LostAddict1993

“Zombie Apocalypse” Demo Impressions

Guns! Zombies! Violence! This is what video games are about!

There aren’t very many original ideas in Zombie Apocalypse, but that doesn’t stop this new XBLA game from being fun. Zombies, guns, and bloody violence abound in this culmination of popular video game trends. Imagine if you combined Smash TV with Left 4 Dead, and you’ll have a basic understanding of Zombie Apocalypse.

I’m not sure if there’s a story in this game, but if there is, I’m sure it’s something like “four survivors have banded together and must fight off waves of zombies together”… who cares about the rest? The one thing that doesn’t make sense to me though, is why the random people you can save during a level can be taken up into a helicopter and carried away while you for some reason can’t… apparently not too much thought was put into a storyline.

Up to four people can fight relentless hoards of zombies together (I’m assuming over Xbox Live, as well as locally), and that’s really all you need to know. Controls are standard twin-stick affair – one stick controls the player’s movement, and another controls the direction of their weapon. Pushing down the right trigger pulls out a chainsaw for some close combat, and the left trigger does the same thing; only that time the chainsaw is used for “execution” moves. Other weapons are slowly introduced over the course of the demo, with probably more being added to your arsenal over the course of the entire game. The weapons in the demo include the standard machine gun with infinite ammo, a shotgun, a flamethrower, and a minigun. A teddy bear that attracts zombies and explodes after a few seconds can also be used. The teddy reminds me quite a bit of the pipe bomb in Left 4 Dead and the monkey bomb in the most recent map pack of Call of Duty: World at War, but it’s still an interesting and useful item.

Oh dang…

The graphics are nice (about Shadow Complex quality), but in my demo playthrough I found that sometimes the zombies were a bit hard to spot due to their drab gray color blending in with the background of the level. I imagine that I would be able to get used to that and learn to spot the zombies quicker if I bought the full game.

But will I buy the full game? Probably not considering that it’s ten dollars. The four-player co-op seems cool, but I wasn’t able to test that out when I played the demo today. Even if it turned out as good as I think it would, I’m still not quite sold on Zombie Apocalypse. I’m a fan of fast-paced twin-stick shooter games, but Zombie Apocalypse doesn’t have any original qualities that stand out to me besides the detailed environments and impressive graphics (for a downloadable game, of course). If a Smash TV/Left 4 Dead mash-up sounds cool to you, I’d at least give the trial a shot, but I think the decision as to whether this is worth a ten dollar purchase is up to you. In my opinion, it gets a pass despite cool tried-and-true gameplay mechanics that some might still be into.

By Josh60502

Introduction

Hey, I’m Nate. I’ve been officially added as a new FrayedWire writer. Just a little introduction: I have the entire holy trinity (PS3/360/Wii) plus a PSP, DS, and gaming computer. I plan to roll out some of my past reviews for other sites this weekend but I take requests. So send me an email at lostaddict1993@gmail.com if you need anything. It’s great to join up and thanks, guys, for having me.

By LostAddict1993

“Dr. Nano” iPhone Game Review

The main menu for Dr. Nano. Here we see the titular character’s creepy eight year old face for the first (and only) time.

A little while ago, Mission Critical Studios provided Frayed Wire with a download code for their iPhone game, Dr. Nano. The game is about an eight year old kid, somehow certified as a doctor, who is shrunken down and injected into the veins of various patients in order to solve their internal problems. Think of Fantastic Voyage, and you’ll have the general concept of the game.

While nearly all of the main missions require you to zap harmful bodily objects with the gun on your microscopic ship, what exactly you’re shooting is what makes the missions differ from each other. Each level requires you to destroy things like plaque, parasitic worms, viruses, and/or other dangerous internal things. The earliest of the 21 levels task you with ridding the patient of only one type of these toxins, but as the game progresses, the missions can only be completed once several types of them are eradicated. All the while an oxygen level is ticking down, forcing the player to hurry through the level in order to avoid a game over by suffocation. Bumping into the walls of the levels or objects littered about the veins detracts from the oxygen level as well, adding another layer of challenge to the gameplay. To my surprise however, is the fact that Dr. Nano is actually quite forgiving on the normal difficulty level. If you run out of oxygen, a “reserve tank” kicks in, bringing the meter back to 100%. Only on expert mode does the oxygen pose a real threat, as no reserve tank saves you when you run out of air and you begin the level at only 40%.

Every once in a while a bonus stage appears, and the player controls not the ship as usual, but Dr. Nano himself. Dr. Nano, the eight year old doctor (I still can’t get over that), swims freely in the bonus rounds, and his goal is to fly into objects that speed him up and send him careening through the patient’s veins. Unlike the normal levels where destroying harmful substances is key, the bonus rounds end when the player reaches the finish (in the style of an old-school arcade game like Pole Position).

Normally Dr. Nano must take out these objects with his ship’s lasers, but in this rare exception of a level, you run straight into them to destroy them.

The concept is cool (albeit not entirely original), and when everything clicks, Dr. Nano can be a decent, relaxing game. Unfortunately most of the time something gets in the way of the fun; usually the controls. The majority of the game is controlled with the accelerometer of the iPhone or iTouch, with the touch screen necessary only to shoot objects that appear in the circulatory system you’re traveling through, or to adjust a slide bar on the side of the screen that controls the speed of Dr. Nano or his ship. The touch controls work fine, but the accelerometer control is far too sensitive. Every time I turn on the game, I have to adjust the calibration multiple times to get things to work serviceably, and even then the game is still awkward to play. Mission Critical Studios should look to accelerometer control in games like Doom Resurrection for inspiration when creating games in the future, or when updating this one.

The controls are the first problem players are likely to encounter in Dr. Nano, but eventually the redundancy of the level design becomes apparent as well. Each level may require the players to zap a different number or a different type of substance, but the setting is the exact same in each of the 21 levels (with the exception of the last level). The red walls of the vein represent the boundaries of the level, and while they twist and turn a bit over the course of a stage, the fact of the matter is that you’ll see those same vein walls in nearly every level of the game. Some variety in the environments could greatly benefit the game, but as of right now, the setting gets boring after a while.

This the “heart mission”, the final and most varied level in the entire game.

Dr. Nano has full 3D environments and models, but they aren’t near the quality of other 3D iPhone games such as Hero of Sparta or the previously mentioned Doom Resurrection. Of course, Mission Critical Studios is a fairly small time developer, so the quality and detail of the graphics can be forgiven. Dr. Nano’s character model however, is too odd to go without mentioning. During the levels you control him outside of the ship, you see his body swimming through the blood stream, but it’s tough to imagine it as the body of an eight year old, or even a regular person for that matter. The head is enormous and the swimming animations are robotic. That, combined with Dr. Nano’s overall blocky shape, makes for a rather off-putting character model.

There isn’t much music in the game, but what there is isn’t bad. The tracks provoke a sense of wonder and calm discovery, which helps turn the game into a relaxing experience (even if that doesn’t quite fit the fact that Dr. Nano is racing against the clock to save a patient’s life). It’s disappointing that so few songs can be heard in the game, and that the ones that are there (three if I’m correct; one for the main menu, one for the main levels, and one for the bonus rounds) are so short. They loop well, but it doesn’t take too long before you figure out that you’re hearing the same thing over and over again. It’s possible to play songs loaded onto your iPod in the background, but without a way to turn off the in-game sound, such a feature is wasted.

The game is longer than I expected it to be. With 21 levels, Dr. Nano will probably take several sessions for the average player to beat. Each level is unlocked to play through on its own once you complete it in the main quest, and devoted players can try to beat their high score on either of the two difficulty modes. However, I don’t plan on playing Dr. Nano very much now that I’ve beaten it. I’m truly thankful that Mission Critical Studios provided Frayed Wire with a download code for the game, but the unfortunate truth is that while Dr. Nano has some decent concepts, the frustrating controls, redundant level design, and mediocre animations prevent me from recommending it. The price was recently lowered to $0.99, which is much better than the original asking price of $2.99 (and infinitely superior to the supposed “normal” price of $10), so I can see how some people might be able to justify a purchase on a whim. With updates promised in the future, perhaps Dr. Nano will one day become a contender amongst the many excellent 99 cent games on the App Store, but for now, this is a game most people will want to avoid.

Pros: Decent (although obviously borrowed) concept, lengthy, can provide a relaxing casual experience when everything works right

Cons: Frustrating accelerometer controls, in-game sound can not be turned off, robotic animations, redundant level design, small amount of music, annoying voice clips

Final Score: 5.4 out of 10

This review was written based off of version 1.0.4.

By Josh60502

Sub-Par Scribblenauts Header

I thought the Metroid Prime Trilogy header was getting a little outdated, so last night I decided to switch headers. Seriously, I loved that Metroid header, but sometimes you just have to move on. Scribblenauts, the DS game that won numerous E3 awards and caught my own personal interest, came out recently, so that seemed like the perfect choice. Unfortunately, not many good croppable images of it exist, so the best I could do in the limited time I spent making the header didn’t end up being very great.

If anyone has any good Scribblenauts pictures I could make a header out of, send them my way. Also appreciated would be ideas for Frayed Wire headers. If you’ve got any, leave a comment.

By Josh60502

Reader Poll: Which Game is the Most Exciting?

Finally, a new poll! This one has been created by one of Frayed Wire’s two newest writers – DeadDemon (the other is Biggs1742). Check it out on the site’s sidebar.

Poll by DeadDemon, post by Josh60502

Super Mario Bros Frustration

By DeadDemon