The Expendables 2 Videogame Hands On

Just a few days before it debuts in the USA the film “The Expendables 2” starring Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li and Jason Statham along with most of the action heroes of the 90’s as Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and the legendary Chuck Norris, as part of the marketing we have this action game called simply The Expendables 2 Videogame.

The game is available on the PSN and Xbox Live from July 31 and will cost $14.99

First of all I want to tell you that being a game based on a movie there have very low expectations, since most of these titles are of poor quality due to the short development time and with haste to be ready earlier or at least by the pair of the film and to prove that the statistics do not fail, The Expendables 2 is no exception, as it is far from being a quality game.

We begin by selecting the game mode that can be online/offline for up to 4 simultaneous players which gives an extra and there are not many titles that allow us to play with three of our friends on the same console, each with a different character and talking about characters I would point out something that surprised and disappointed me at the same time, the characters to choose from, which are Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Yin Yang (Jet Li) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews). The first thing I said was where is Lee Christmas (Jason Statham)?? As one of the main characters I think is a big mistake  to leave him out of the game for whatever reason, but ok I can survive with the others, except with Ceaser or so I thought, but just starting the game and realize that all characters have 2 different weapons which gives a unique style to each one, Ceaser carries a grenade launcher, which in my opinion, is the best weapon of the 4.

Speaking a little more of the game style , which is action-shooter viewed from above, like Dead Nation or the latest game from The Ghostbusters, where you move your character with the left stick as point and shoot with the right stick, but this is where another of the flaws of the game as in the various games of the genre it has a “laser sight” which helps us know what we are aiming at, here unless we are using the snipergun, most of the time we will be shooting enemies without being certain of where we are aiming at, making it more difficult to hit our goals and more when you try to shoot one of the barrels or the snipers who are on top of the towers, we can make melee attacks, somersaults to avoid the shooting, throwing grenades and even covering up which is rare for the style of play but can save us on more than one occasion.

A highlight is the special move for each character which can be run collecting emblems of The Expendables and will let us attack an enemy while the camera zooms in to show us how our character in turn, shoots him point-blank, which to be honest is very satisfying.

During the game there are some times that we will be shooting from a helicopter, a technique used in games of old school but still working to get us out of the main style and give some variety to the game.

Turning to the graphics, the game is far from satisfactory, because to be a game from the current generation it looks like from the first Xbox or PS3, some texture looks really bad and what about the thousands of soldiers that we face which are all exactly alike.

Regarding the audio seemed decent, just with the extra to have the real voices of the actors giving a touch of personality to each one.

To conclude I would like to comment that The Expendables 2 Videogame is available for PS3, Xbox 360 or PC and just as  the film I think is nothing spectacular but it accomplishes the goal to entertain for a while, it’s up to you to decide if 3-4 hours of game are worth to buy it, as being very repetitive I do not think you spend more time.

OFFICIAL TRAILER

Dragon’s Dogma PS3 Hands On

Today I had the opportunity to give a serious look at Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom’s new game for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, which was released on May 22, 2012.

And so it all began
The story is about a young man named Arisen who was fighting a dragon, it rips his heart, literally, this kills the hero but inexplicably remains alive, now known as the “enlightened” you must go in search of the dragon to fulfill your mission and get your heart back, you will have to go through several obstacles and sometimes against the good or evil as your mission goes beyond the interests of others in order to achieve your final task, save yourself and save the world.

Who am I?

As usual in most games of the genre, your character has no defined face, giving us the freedom to create one at will in order to feel identified with it, we can change sex if we want to be a women, could be tall, short, strong, weak, effeminate male and other mixtures that can be done due to the variety that gives us the creation mode, not forgetting to decide the “job” or “class” that can vary between “fighter” “strider” or “mage”.
In addition to creating the main character we’ll have the opportunity to create our “pawns”, also selecting the class and genre, in Dragon’s Dogma you have the opportunity to be accompanied by several AI-controlled characters but with the ability to give simple commands like “help” that makes any of the NPC who have joined cast a healing spell or use a healing item on us, “here” to make your fellow get to your position and “attack” that send them against our nearest enemy.

Taking the best from various genres
You could say that is an Action / RPG open world, something like Skyrim but with a little of Monster Hunter-like action, this can be seen from the first moment we take control of our character and see that the camera it’s  in 3rd person just like in the hack and slash games, we also have the ability to jump and in terms of combat, using a button to weak attacks and another button for the stronger attacks, which gives great variety and flexibility to make combos, not to mention the powers that we have access by holding L1 or R1 combined with the attack buttons, one thing that struck me is that we can pin your enemies and leave them at the mercy of the attacks of our partners or have them hold while we finish them off.

Day or night
During the game time is changing, so if we leave a town in the day to perform some task is likely to go through the sunset and it’s dark, this will make the enemies stronger as well as we need to be equipped with a flashlight if you do not want to be surprised by different creatures in the dark.
Beautiful scenario
One of the strengths of Dragon’s Dogma is the graphics, which were performed using the engine MT Framework owned by CAPCOM but adapted for an open world, resulting in landscapes that look great in our HD displays and also runs smoothly when played on consoles giving a very respectable frame rate despite everything that’s happening at the same time.

Epic enemies
We can’t forget to mention the boss battles which look great, with dragons flying through the air, besides the giant trolls have a battle with a Chimera in a cave and another with a Griffon in the open. The detail that I liked during fights with the bosses is that we can hold the button get a hold of these creatures in order to achieve damage in specific areas or just for make attacks with greater force.

Conclusions

After all Dragon’s Dogma manages to be a good game that may be able to attract those who already squeezed the most of Skyrim or are looking for an experience lighter and more accessible, as well as curious is the fact that along with this game will come bundled a code to download the demo of Resident Evil 6 which for many will be reason enough to buy it, I think it’s worth giving it a try despite several details with the camera that hopefully are corrected in the final game.

OFFICIAL TRAILER