Indigo Prophecy, a Revolution Gone Bad.

In the video game industry, games follow under many categories, like action, fighting,

racing, ect. Most games are centered around the idea that gameplay dictates how great it is, but many games also focus on the idea of story telling. The game will send the player along a few hour long story, with the idea that their choses will affect the gameplay, and eventually the ending. This gives what is known as immersion to the game, it allows the players to set up a moral right and wrong system, and lets the events around you almost feel real. Indigo Prophecy was one of the first games to do this in ‘modern time’ which simple means the era of more technologically advanced games.

The game is set in New York in the year 2009, so when it came out it was modern. It starts out with you character Lucas Kane, standing over a freshly killed body in the restroom of a local diner. Within 30 seconds you must dispose of the body, hide your knife, and wash up as to not attract attention. This game has to be the most thoughtful one I have ever played, you need to be able to think logically about your choices. For instance, throwing the knife out the window seems okay at first, but actually a homeless man is sitting outside ready to turn you in for a free meal. Leaving the restaurant without leaving a tip will arouse suspicion from the waitress as she will remember you as “The one who didn’t tip”. So what seems like a romantic trip to the diner bathroom turns out in a bloodbath, now what? Well you go home, take a nap and forget it, right?

Well you think everything is fine until you awake the next morning with a cop knocking on your door, only because your took a cab home. The thought of all this is that every choice matters, every action, or lack of, will either aid or help you in your ultimate goal to find out why you killed the man.

The perspective of the character changes to one of the four main characters in this movie game, quite frequently. You play between Lucas, two cops, and Lucas’ brother. They fall a tad under main character just because they player seems to develop more with Lucas first, rather than anyone else who appear later on in the game. However the player also develops a bond with the other characters as well, as you build some common relatable ground with them.

Overall the first half of the game has some of the best plot I have seen, video game, movie, or book. It has enough twists to keep you involved, but not so much that you need a flowchart to remember who is who. The game is focused around telling the story, so you won’t shoot any aliens in the face with a shotgun, or get into a high speed chase down into Queens. Although they take this to an extreme, so the only way it’s classified as a game is with the sense of death. You have to maintain a sense of calmness, by doing actions that help you out mentally. Drinking milk, brushing your teeth, things that seem everyday and routine, actually keep you sane. If your sanity bar gets to low, your character sinks into a deep depression and has a mental breakdown, which is an instant game over.

Now this maintain sanity can lead to rash actions, for example I had just arrived back at my apartment, my sanity bar was low, so I reached under the counter to grab a drink, not knowing it was alcoholic. Unknowingly I drank a large glass of Vodka, stumbled to my bed, but just before I went to sleep, I made sure to take some anti depressants. Mixing pills and alcohol

Lucas over dosed on the bed, and it was a presumed suicide. So, it gets tricky trying to remember all the little details in the game.

Earlier I mentioned the first half of this game had the best story telling I had ever seen, and it’s true, but the second half is awful. It was so bad it had a phenomenon named after it. It got Indigo Prophecy syndrome. That is where halfway through a game, the story takes a hard U turn into a brick wall. The story until this point has been immersive, and intriguing, but it seemed like the writers had gotten bored of writing, and just started making up things to se if anyone would notice. I am not going to spoil anything, but at the end of the game you end up in a no rules mid air fist fight with a monster made of pure energy. It gets so far out in left field, no one could have predicted the ending.

I feel that with a little more time the game could have been a cherished relic. Something that was great, but instead we are left with what feels like a half baked pie, with a lightly gold crust. When you take your first few bites you think this could be the best thing in the world, as if nothing could stop you from enjoying it. Even after a few bites in, the taste is the same, a tad to similar but still amazing, but when you get near the middle of the pie, you find that it is underdone. It’s really cold, the berries are still frozen, but you’ve already eaten more than half of the pie, so you are forced stomach the rest of it. The worst part of it is that the pie looked so good, and tasted so great at one time. So all in all, it’s a great game, I would buy it, in fact I did, but I was really disappointed at the end result. At times this game was really difficult, I tried to look up ways to cheat through it with no luck. If you love movies, you will love this, and if you own an xbox you should really pick this title up.

Dishonored (Video game review)

Dishonored

So I am as big of a bethesda fanboy as they come, so this review might come as biased, but who cares because there is nothing wrong about biased bethesda reviews, except if the come from the company because thats just lame. Dishonored is a stealth like game produced (not made) by Bethesda, where you play as Corvo Attano, the once beloved bodyguard of the empress and rumored to have tapped dat' ass at one time. You are framed for killing her and kidnapping her daughter whom you fought so hard to protect.  Atleast this is how you start the game. As you are flung into this steam-punk world you will soon find an amazing array of wonderful ingenious technology, that is until you exit the prolog. After you are framed you are sent to the jail, and one day before you are supposed to be executed you happen to slip out into the sewers.

Without going into details, because of spoilers, you get chosen by this man named the Outsider to have super powers which, in reality are quite a small array. You can get blink which is short range teleporting, which I will bitch about later, possession, and something which resembles the force from star wars. Now these are all bought with runes found ingame which are almost always found inside of safes, which most people are so daft that they will write the combination in the back of a closent, or will leave a note with the words *MOST IMPORTANT DATE* and that always turns out to be the combination. Now apparently all the guards for the all mighty replacement fuhrer, were drug out of the ADD camp for weight lifters. This seems to be the problem with stealth games, you either have the ultra buff meatheads who are easily distracted will a rolling nickel, or the over zealous freaks who will ring the alarms running for the hills, at the slightest piece of dust falling out of place. So the sneaky gameplay can easily be avoided by heading to the highest point on the map, and just look for the hidden vents or small pathways along the roofs.

Let's talk about the actual fighting: it's OK. Not bad, but not great. The main weapon will either be your sword for assassinations, or your crossbow for quick assassinations. If you ever get into a jam there is always the pistol, which is a great choice when nine guards have you cornered and you just ran out of bolts for the crossbow. The bad thing is, it is of corse LOUD, and every guard within a 100 yard radius will hear you and come galloping to the rescue, which means they all need to use the same door, which is an effective way to clear out the map within five minutes. The bad thing about going rambo in this game is that every level carries over it's consequences to the next, so for example, you shoot the Pope one mission the next your up to your ass in angry Catholics with hand grenades. So your best attempt is to go nonlethal which becomes a pain in the ass for the first few levels, but soon you realize that it is the best choice. *protip always buy sleeping darts*

This is a big thing that pisses me off, first you use a sleeping dart on an unexpecting guard and he is out within 5 seconds  but you put that same guard with about five other of his buddies, and alert him, and suddenly it's about 10 seconds longer to make him pass out. It's like he's showing off for all of his friends to see how long they can stay up, you think with the increased adrenaline you would pass out faster but no.

Another great gem that pisses me off, is Blink (told you I'de get to it). This has to be the most idiotic spell in the game, you click to teleport to a wall and half the time you end up face deep in the wall instead of on top of the wall like you intended. The other half of the time using blink will be spent trying to get the arrows to approve that you will be going up, and not just wanting to slide down. Another stupid function is when you have to make a really hard jump, but it seems like in all reality you will make it, so you use blink to do so, and half the time you over shoot it midway, or end up in a pool of baddies who want to stab at your ankles until you bleed to death.

The story is good, I felt I was more of a Big Daddy from Bioshock rather than a trained assassin, but this was a good thing, I felt like I actually grew with the character. He pulls the Gordon Freeman oath of silence, which makes you feel more attached to him for doing so, like you can actually play as yourself versus Ezio Auditore del Florencia. There was even one time where I had to go to a party with big fancy people, and assassinate this head lady, though I felt unfimilar, I found myself thinking "If this were me I would sign my name in a guest book, who cares if they might find out who I am, I can just kill everyone!" and there was a guest book right next to me. Dialoge options are abit narrow, as most of the time when a guard smarts off to me I want to tell him that he is a daft minded man child in a video game, there is no option for that.

All in all it's not a bad game, in fact I like it, maybe enough to let it meet my parents, but as long as Fallout 3 doesn't hear about it.

Final thoughts

Combat Mechanics were good
Story was well written
Game was a tad to easy
Unreal super powers, and special weapons
Unless you like reading all the books in the game there are a TON of plot holes
Emily (the queen's daughter) seems to attached to you, if you kill one person, she automatically assumes the frame of mind that everyone must die.
Little replay ability

I'm giving Dishonored a 9.0/10

Game Review: Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is GTA Hong Kong with a new story. You play an undercover police officer named Wei Shien or something along those lines, who gets in the Triad with his best prison buddy named jackie. The game has a very well made plot, a few over the top minigames and worst of all glitches.

The worst glitch i ever encountered was the one where I was driving at top speed on a mini bike and went through the bottom of the map and fell into water durring a mission where I needed to tailgate someone for the forty millionth time. The game does add a cool feature to counter balance this called Action Jacking, where you can jump out of your car to high jack a fellow motorists car while your driving.

Speaking of the driving it is pretty solid, controls are okay, wide variety of cars that all drive near the same, except the vans go a max of 40 and every other vehicle goes 4000. It gets pretty annoying when you go to highjack a slightly faster car only to find out that in fact your now a proud owner of a soccer mom minivan and 5 screaming kids. Oh, and did I mention you drive on the left side of the road in Hong Kong? Pretty good tip to know, took me about 5 minutes to figure out why so many people were blaring their horns at me. You would think Hong Kong would have more traffic than this, other than a few cars here and there, but the traffic doesn't become much of a problem except in the missions.

The missions are pretty fun, but sometimes you realize that the missions start to feel the same, and get old really quick. Drive here, shoot that, drive back, avoid cops all rinse and repeat stuff, but the game really has a good way of shuffling the deck of missions around so you don't notice as much, but eventually you start to realize that whenever you go to draw your four cards that the game gets rigged, and you never end up with a full house but nothing but a jack, and 3 joker cards. Okay really odd comparison aside, the missions get stale, but the plot makes up for it, I really don't like to go into the plot when reviewing because of spoilers, just trust me, it's a damn good plot.

The Soundtrack is a good way to diversify your musical portfolio. It's really a damn good soundtrack, and normally these GTA style games have a really good soundrack so this follows the code. Although the game has one of the worst minigames I have ever played, and it is the F*CKING KARAOKE! I love the songs, but I hate the minigame that you are forced to play twice!

This game has a very odd way  of splitting up XP given to you, there are three major XPs. Triad which is gained by killing people, and beating up old ladies. Cop xp is gained by not destroying public property, not destroying people's faces, and not being a big smelly meany, which is kind of a bitch to do, in simple missions like Drive to Point X, I will lose most of my XP on the way there because there is a traffic jam, and I REALLY need to go, and the sidewalk is pretty clear of cars. Did I say you get XP for cops? Well no, actually you get the max amount at the beginning of the mission, and at the end whatever you haven't pissed away by running over pedestrians is yours :D.  The third major XP is Face xp, now this is kinda cool, its just random xp with already made out skill tree that gives you a TON of great perks. The odd thing about it is some clothing requires you to have a higher face level, how the F*ck do I have to low of a face to pull off some shitty knockoff shades from the chinese lady in the back ally.

So all in all it's a good game, repetitive, good soundtrack, shitty minigames,  so I would rate Napping Puppies: 8.8/10 I would rent it, but I would NOT buy.

Game Review: Deadrising 2

DEADRISING 2

Deadrising 2 is the sequel to Deadrising, it was one of the first games released on the xbox 360. The premise of the game is you are Chuck Greene, a father, a zombie killer, and a badass, well a badass with a heart of gold. This game takes place in a mall-pavilion kind of place with several malls from all around the world in a super mall thing I don't know. Chuck Greene has a daughter who has been bitten, but there is a super drug out there called Zombrex, it keeps people alive for 24 hours once they've been bitten. This is how the story starts, with Chuck in a game show where he slays crowds and crowds of zombies on a motorcycle with chainsaws ductaped to the front of it.

Now if you've played the last Deadrising, you will be familiar with the PP system and what not, but in this game, Chuck gets extra XP or PP, by combining a few household items into a deadly inferno of death :D. So This can be amusing for an hour or so, once you find out that placing some diamonds inside a flashlight gives you a lightsaber, you throw all realism out the window, and all other use of most weapons. Sure you can find an array of items and combine most of them into wacky super over the top excitement amazing weapons, but most of them are really useless, and the weapons become tedious to lug around. The weapons will all eventually break, but there are things to make the game easier like comics, and copious amounts of orange juice. So you'll probably be asking why this all matters.

Well, it's all about making the game easier, the higher level you are, the easier the bosses become, and trust me you'll need ALL the help you can get. The bosses are ordinary people that have went insane in some aspect, and most of the time killing them is optional, but fairly easy if you know what to do.

The story line is not all that strung together, and sometimes choosing between saving a person, or killing a main boss can be tedious, especially since all the events are on timers, and the time still counts when you are in the mission, one time I was stuck on this very easy helicopter boss, but I had to rush there from my last save so it only gave me about 10 sec to actually fight it before he flys away. This pissed me right the fuck off, how the hell am I supposed to do a fight that lasts 5 minutes in 30 sec? This made time management of vital importance.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS:

• Fun
• Repetitive
• Lack of strong story line
• I would rent it

MY RATING:  7.8/10

First Review: Chronicle

Chronicle

**** = Contains Spoilers

At first I was really stunned by the movie, the trailers were elusive enough to make me curious  and action filled enough to catch my Amurican instinct of violence! It was a good plot, it really was! People in their late 20's play as seniors in high school who find a mysterious rock that somehow gives them all super powers! Golly gee wilikers Batman!

So the main trio, a kid, his older cousin, and the black fellow to even it out, are all three given these super telekinetic powers where they can lift objects with their minds. The movie starts out with the nerdy kid, no friends, abusive dad, sick mom. Throughout the movie the plot unfolds into an even thicker nerdy kid, no friends, abusive dad, sicker mom, and older cousin has a love intrest. The kid, grabs a video camera to practically catch his dad wailing on him. Don't really know why the kid just never called 911 to get the dad in prison, but the dad gets drunk every day, and got hurt doing some boring job that was mentioned once in the movie and never again. So lazy drunk dad is beating on his kid, and the kid gets the camera, and takes it with him everywhere. This reveals that shockingly the kid is picked on everywhere he goes, and the camera doesn't help but to get the kid's ass kicked more.

Cousin gets black friend for diversity reasons, and the kid for the camera to go down into a dark hole in the ground. Now, I am no scientist, but I am pretty sure perfectly round caves do not form in the middle of wheat fields in no where. They find a stone, gives them all powers blah blah blah.

From the beginning you can tell that nerdy kid is far stronger mentally than the other two, and surpases them in power, because let's face it when the other two are off socializing and having friends, nerd is getting powerful >:D. Okay no seriously the kid soon finds himself among new friends and starts doing all these cool things with his powers. This part of the movie kind of hits home with anyone who has ever flet abandoned. Now after about an hour of this happy fun time fooling around shenanigans with the kids I got bored, really really fucking bored. This is when the main focal point of the entire movie shifts.


****
So the gang are driving down the road, some asshole is behind him blaring on the horn, he probably was going to see his son who had cancer and really needed to get there, but we never find out because nerdy kid swipes his car off into a lake! Well, the black friend, who is honor roll, never in trouble, pinnacle of all that is right in the world, dives right in to save the redneck who is now sinking to his doom. Of corse the guy is alright, at least that is what we are lead to believe because the entire movie just calls 911, and leaves and doesn't mention him or his possibly cancer ridden son.

So now the nerd kid becomes probably evil kid, and the rest of the movie is the kid getting stronger, like the first half of the movie. I will leave a ton of the story out because I did actually enjoy it, but the whole movie ends with more holes than a swiss cheese factory, and it left me annoyed that I did not know the end, but un caring about a sequel.
****

MY FINAL THOUGHTS

• Bad special effects, obvious hang wire flight.
• Odd camera angles, didn't need to be the main focus of the story.
• Good story, bad acting, lame ending

The only thing I learned from this movie is when I get super powers with my friends, I need to kill them to ensure my dominance over you puny mortals.

MY RATING

6.7/10

What this blog is about

Thus unto him a remote was given, and the brain was.... F%$! it, I'm here to rate things based on the Berto Scale (A scale I use exclusively, 1 being the lowest 10 being the highest)  and tell you what to buy. What makes me different from the billions of other people trying to make it on the web/new/telly rating things? Not a whole lot, except: 

1. The Doctor lies
2. I shall not, under any circumstances be bought out into saying something that is not my own belief. 
1. *Note I will sometimes refuse to do a review if I find it to be a waste of time*
1. Upon request I will release reviews that I found to be a waste of time
3. I will be brutal, I will look for flaws, I will look for mistakes
4. I shall not whore out for money, I won't do a review if someone pays me to.
5. I'm better than the rest.

Now I guess a little introduction might be in order, I am MrFidelmios, I play games, I watch movies, and I have a youtube channel. Done.  I am not trying to be an ass, but it takes alot to please me, I am just honest.  I am not sure if I want to vlog this or blog the reviews (And on a side note, blog does not appear on my spellcheck, but vlog does.. dafuq). Now, I think once this blog get's going, i'll go ahead and post a poll of what the people want to have me do, vlogs vs blogs. 

Text for now because of the time saving, vlogs might be treats...

-This is Fidel signing off.