Greg Noe's reviews and writings
Mafia II
When someone talks about the mob, the first thing that pops into our head is probably a great gangster movie. Be it The Godfather Part II, Scarface, or Goodfellas, there are a lot of excellent mob films to land on. 2K Games would like to change that though with Mafia II, the sequel to the 2002 hit, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven.Can you even name a decent mob game? Sure, there have been Godfather games, a bargain bin full of Yakuza titles, or even the Grand Theft Auto series, but there has not been a standout mob game since the original Mafia. A game that flew way off my radar, but must have landed on someone’s as it received a lot of critical acclaim.
So here we are eight years later with Mafia II. Yes, the game has essentially been in development that entire time as it was originally slated to release on the original Xbox and PlayStation 2 (remember those?). Fans of the original are going to be expecting a lot of improvement over nearly a decade of development, and those who are unfamiliar with the series are going to be asking what sets Mafia II apart from the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV.
Mafia II was released on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows. The First Hour’s Xbox 360 copy was provided by 2K Games.
Split/Second
I’ve been a fan of the Burnout series for years, ever since I rented Burnout 3: Takedown for the PS2, it has been my favorite racing series. Friends know that I am not a fan of realistic racers such as Gran Turismo or Forza, but would much prefer a round of destructive racing. As the Burnout series evolved with traffic checking in Burnout Revenge and an open world system in Burnout Paradise, I began to miss the classic vehicular elimination.
Enter Split/Second, an arcade racer from Black Rock Studios released earlier this year by Disney for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows. This was just the game I was looking for: lots of destruction in fast cars on skinny streets. Split/Second has an additional twist though, and that is the primary way to take out your opponents is to trigger some kind of set piece explosion.
It’s not easy to explain, but just imagine you’re on a Disney World ride that’s on rails and you can tell the animatronic pirates ahead of you to cut the head off your rival. Now replace the Disney World ride with an abandoned airstrip and Johnny Depp with... well, an airport terminal blowing up in a million pieces.
This is Split/Second, and this is its first hour. Also check out Ian's full review of the game.
Nintendo Finds Religion
Nintendo and censorship used to go together like peanut butter and jelly. There are dozens of examples of changes between Japanese and North American versions of Nintendo console games, along with a handful of tales of U.S. and European developers being forced to alter their game in some way to receive the all-important Nintendo Seal of Quality. The hammer has let up over the past few years though, and I didn't really realize this until I started playing Dragon Quest IX.Dragon Quest IX, while developed by the good folks at Level 5, was published by Nintendo outside of Japan. It's an enormous game with buckets of text, and since I'm about 80% of the way through the game, I can honestly say Nintendo did a stellar job translating it for English speakers. There are puns galore and not a single character, item, or town name is wasted potential. Of course, I was greatly impressed by the fan translation of Mother 3 which was done by a single guy, so maybe my standards are low.
Gears of War 2
There's a bit of a parallel with the games I've been playing lately. Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Gears of War 2 are both sequels to games released this generation, and at first glance, appear to be essentially re-releases of the first game with a new shine. Where the parallels end though is that while Super Mario Galaxy 2 has a ton of new features, Gears of War 2... does not.I'm honestly surprised, a bit blown away actually, by how little Epic Games bothered to improve on the original Gears of War game. Gears of War 2 supposedly added five weapons, but only one really stands out. There might also be some new enemies, but as they're all so butt ugly and A.I.-dumb it doesn't really matter. There are a bunch of new locations, but everything is still all brown and gray with some city levels and underground levels.
Gears of War 2 is really just Gears of War 1.1.
Super Mario Galaxy 2
It has been a while since we've seen two core Mario series games on one Nintendo system in a while, you need to go back to the Super Nintendo with the two Super Mario Worlds for the last example, and it is highly arguable whether Yoshi's Island can be considered a core Mario game for that matter. Surprisingly, Nintendo announced Super Mario Galaxy 2 last year and the game was released this May to much herald and acclaim. Glancing at Metacritic, the top two games for the Wii are our two Galaxies, an incredible triumph for Nintendo.I actually beat Super Mario Galaxy 2 well over a month ago, but I decided, much like I did with the first Super Mario Galaxy, to wait until I had collected all 120 stars before writing a review. Actually, make that 240, no... 242 stars! Galaxy 2 more than doubles the collectible star count over the original while keeping the game both interesting and challenging. But is the game too much like the Super Mario Galaxy, or does it set itself apart enough to transcend the typical sequel failings we've been witness of lately?
For a look at the game's opening, check out Nate's first hour review of Super Mario Galaxy 2 published right after release.
Day Six Recap
Well, this is pretty much the most boring thing we post here at the First Hour, but we all mark time in various ways and this is how we do it. We have just completed day six at the First Hour, meaning we completed another 24 first hour reviews putting our total at 144 hours. Definitely an awesome number and an incredible amount of gaming.
Anyways, here's the rundown of day six, a great list of games to be sure, and a number of them the writers here went on to finish up. That's a sign of a great first hour!
Gears of War 2
I was pretty impressed by the original Gears of War, it was totally cliche in every way but the gameplay was fun and it was decently challenging on the higher difficulties, plus it had online cooperative play. When Gears of War 2 first came out in late 2008, I played the first few levels of it with my brother-in-law, I would have first houred it right then and there if I had been playing alone, but it’s no fun for the other guy to take notes while playing (see Zombies Ate My Neighbors for a real life example of that).
But the opportunity has come again for me to formally play it, I don’t remember much so hopefully it will be a fresh experience all over again. For those unfamiliar, the Gears of War series is a third person, cover based shooter starring a bunch of football linebackers with giant guns and chainsaws. It’s bloody and nasty, but can be downright fun and a little frightening at times.
So here we go, the first hour of Gears of War 2, let’s see if it stacks up to the first hour of the original.
The Saboteur
I
don’t think I’ve ever played a game and honestly felt sad that the
developer was no longer around, but that’s exactly what happened after I
beat Pandemic Studios’ swan song, The Saboteur. I had an honestly great
time with a flawed game, which is the opposite experience I’ve had with
similar games in the genre. The Saboteur is pretty much the quintessential First Hour game: I played the first hour of the game a few months back, loved it, but had to send it back to my brother-in-law. A few months later I had the opportunity to borrow it again and jumped at the chance. When I said I wanted to keep playing, I really did.
Without much further ado, The Saboteur was released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows, and while the game seems to hint at future sequels, with the studio closing it is doubtful those will ever appear. But you never know, I’m assuming EA owns the license to the game and characters so they might trudge up good old Sean Devlin again someday.
My full review is on the Xbox 360 version.
Nintendo Power #257 - Returning to Nintendo Power after Five Years
So there's absolutely nothing nostalgic about discussing the latest issue of Nintendo Power, but since I haven't subscribed to the magazine in over five years, I thought I would talk about how much has changed. Apparently, a lot has, or I just changed. Either way, a year subscription just $5 on Amazon a few weeks ago, so I figured for less than 50 cents an issue I would be a fool not to sign up. My last issue of Nintendo Power before this was from May 2005, issue 191. The Nintendo DS was on that volume's cover as the second big round of games was rolling in including Nintendogs and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.But this article is about the August 2010 issue featuring Dragon Quest IX on the cover. Being a Nintendo published game this isn't much of a shock, but there were both pleasant and unpleasant surprises on just about every page. I'll cover a few I consider noteworthy.
I will probably never do such a new magazine ever again as I much prefer to reminisce about old school stuff, but this should be fun either way.
Overrated Game I Played this Generation - Spore
This is a new series of articles I originally planned to cram all in one, but it's much easier to complain one at a time, unleashing my disgust for one popular game all at once. I will admit this is intended to be a bit flamebaitish, but I hope it brings in some comments!Spore is back in the news after the completely uninspired named Darkspore was announced as some sort of multiplayer action title. I really don't know anything about the new game, but it did remind me how much I loathed my original Spore experience.
I could go on again about how Spore was one of my most anticipated games ever and how much it let me down, but I'd rather talk about what appears to be my disconnect from the rest of the video game review industry. The game has a Metacritic score of 8.4 aggregated from 75 reviews while I gave Spore a 5 out of 10. Two reviewers gave it a perfect score (including my personal much-hated G4TV) and there were only five sites that gave it a score under 70 (including Destructoid which I seem to line up with more often than not). Spore was an uber-hyped, blockbuster game published by Electronic Arts and devised by the mastermind of Will Wright; were reviewers afraid to trash the game or did they honestly like it? And if they liked it... what happened to me?
