Fantastic Plastic

MLB The Show 09 PS3 Review

  6 out of 10

How important is hitting a baseball, driving in RBI's, and striking out batters? Well, with MLB 09 The Show you won't have too worry about any of those things, cause you will not be able to do them. This game is friggin' impossible.

Playing a game against the computer on any level (rookie, veteran, all star etc) are all impossible. Good luck trying to win a game. I started a season against the computer on veteran and I have lost 13 straight games (most of them have been blow outs) and have no wins at all! Flash back to my record on the Show 08, where on veteran level, I have 67 wins and 10 losses.

The A.I. get all the breaks. For example, there is a ''bad luck'' factor working against you in this game when you play against the computer. My idiotic catcher will throw the ball away or let a pitch get by him 3 or 4 times in a game and the A.I. will totally take advantage of that. Come on, I know this happens in baseball, but 4 times in one game?

The A.I. will not swing or chase at any pitches outside the zone, and it will manage to hit everything you throw when you put the ball in the zone. Even if you try to keep the ball down and away, the A.I. will find a way.... If you're lucky to have a base runner in scoring position with nobody out, the computer will shut you down. Most of the hits you will struggle to get will be singles. Meanwhile, the computer is able to hit through the cycle, have multiple home runs by non power hitters, and get doubles and triples with ease. It also has an uncanny ability to get freaky ''bloop'' singles just out of your players reach over and over again. None of those hits ever come easy for you. This game is so one sided in the computer's favor.

Don't even bother trying to follow the ''guess pitch'' feature. It's 100% misleading and completely useless. You can guess the pitch is going to be a fastball (and be right) and the computer shows you that the location of the fastball is going to be low and out of the zone and tells you not to chase it. Then you get the pitch and it ends up being a curve ball or slider in the middle of the plate! It's almost like to computer lies to you.

They really made this game way too hard to enjoy playing. The hitting is so damn frustrating. It really isn't fun to play when you know you don't have a hope in hell to make comeback or win. Most of the games that I played, my team was always down by a few runs in the first or second inning. Sure, you can play online and win a game against a human player which is fun, but the whole point of baseball is to play 162 game season and follow your stats. Baseball has always been a comeback game, even teams in the majors who are down 6 runs can come back and win, but with The Show 09 the only thing to comeback to is losing! I can't imagine playing 162 games of this game.....it's way too frustrating and unfair.

Don't get me wrong, The Show 09 is a beautiful looking baseball game with added features, but that doesn't make it better than The Show 08. The most important part of any game before graphics, sound, A.I. is game play, and The Show 09 fails in that category. Yes, the game is totally the most realistic baseball game ever as Sony has been advertising, but that's not exactly a good thing. This game is simply too hard and too unfair to continue wasting my time playing.

Playing against the computer on The Show 09, feels a lot like a high school baseball team with cracked bats playing against a juiced up 1929 Yankees with corked bats. Not exactly fair is it? I was going to sell off my copy of The Show 08, but now I think I'll keep it. It lacks the polish that 09 has, but it was a baseball game that was fair, but most of all it was fun to play.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe PS3 Review (2008)

7.9 out of 10


The Good:

Great online play:
Very addictive and hard to put down once you get started. Expect to have sore thumbs while playing online.

DC Characters work well and look great:
A great addition to the MK series. All the characters are evenly balanced and are fun to play. I actually like playing the DC characters better than the MK characters. Some cool moves and fun combos to use.

Easy to perform Fatalities or Hero Brutalities:

Although I'm a big Mortal Kombat fan, the one thing that kind of lurked me in the past was I found the fatalities were hard to perform. This game does way with that. It's really easy to make your character do one, and that's a good thing.

Great storyline for single player mode:
Explains why Jax and other human characters in the game can go toe to toe with Superman. Great cut scenes and wonderful voice acting.

''Battle worn'' characters:
I don't know if this is a new feature to the series, cause I missed the last few MK games but the ''battle worn'' look to the characters is a great addition to MK vs DC. The characters really look like they have been in a fight! They have cuts, black eyes, wounds and costume damage. Look for many other fighting games to copy this realistic look.

The Bad:

Some of the Graphics:
 The game looks a bit like a last gen game. Although the characters look great, the backgrounds look a bit dull and very unfinished compared to the characters. Everything on the PS3 version seems to have a grainy look to it. The game graphics have a cut-out and paste feel. Also all of the women characters models look like they have been beaten with the ugly stick! D.O.A this game ain't!!!!

Not enough characters:
It seems the big selling point to this game was a focus on the DC characters. My question is... Where the hell is Robin?
 DC Comics has tons of great heroes and villains to choose from like Aqua-man, Two Face, Bizarro, Super Girl etc. and Midway could only pick 11 DC characters? Midway really should have had way more choices for characters. 10 DC characters (plus 1 unlock-able character) is not enough.... Sure, Batman vs. Superman is a cool match up, but Batman beating the snot out of Robin would of been better. Also  there are MK favorites missing, Nighthawk, Johnny Cage etc. They really should of been unlock-able characters.

Not enough One player content:
The story mode isn't long enough. You will burn through it in a few hours. After that there's really not much to do... except play on line. You can play Arcade Mode or Practice mode as a single player but why would you?

The Combo challenge:
Way too hard... I was only to unlock one of the eight combo challenges for Superman. Unlocking them really has no pay off, unless you collect PS3 trophies.

Online is not for Newbies:
 Don't get me wrong, online is the real reason to buy this game, but expect to have your ass handed to you many, many, many times by Sub-Zero, Scorpion or the Flash. Experienced online players use these characters moves (in a cheap way) and you really don't have a chance against them if you are a new player. Experience players look for Newbies, just like Lions look for weak Antelope... My only advice is to practice and swat down and block a lot if you are playing against the Flash, Sub Zero etc. Wonder Woman and Batman have very good ground moves and are good to use against the Flash, Sub Zero or Scorpion if you can get in close.

Toned down Fatalities:
  The Teen rating really hurts the traditional MK style fatalities. Adding the DC characters is a good thing for a fighting game, but at the same time it really is a kick in the nuts to the Mortal Kombat we all know and love. I know DC would never allow Superman to kill anyone... but MK side of this game doesn't feel or play the same without the gore and blood.

Overall MK vs. DC Universe is super as a solid fighting game, but is a ''watered down'' version of Mortal Kombat that most fans of the series may be disappointed with this offering.

Spider-man: Web of Shadows PS3 Review (2008)

 

  5 out of 10

 

Playing Spider-man: Web of Shadows was about as enjoyable as reading a comic book from the 1990's... Ugh! This is one of the most frustrating Spider-Man games ever... (No, I have not played Spider-man 3)

The Good:

 1. Spider-man in this game looks good.
Looks more like the Spidey from the comic book (done in an 1970's John Romita style)

 2. The graphics in the city.
 The city and backgrounds have look decent ''last gen'' sort of look. Not quite next generation graphics, but a good job with details on buildings and other objects around the city.

3. Web swinging is fun.
  The web slinging is done quite well in this game. Spidey is now able to climb up his web line and turning while swinging is very fluid. Also there are nice character animations while web swinging.

 4. The ability to change costumes.
  You can change from the classic red and blue costume to the black ''Secret Wars'' costume. Kind of neat idea for the game, but the wearing each costume doesn't make too much of a difference.

  5. The opening credits.
  Are presented in a really interesting way that I haven't seen in a video game before. The game credits appear on billboards in Times Square as the camera follows Spider-man as he swings by leading you around to each credit.

The Bad:

Where do I begin?

1. Spider-man cannot die if he falls off any buildings.
You can climb up the Empire State building jump off and land on the pavement below, on your feet without even taking any damage. WTF???

2. This game has the worst voice acting in the history of Spider-man video games.
 Spider-man sounds like a teenage version of the nerdy professor guy from the Simpsons. Really, really annoying.....
 The other characters in the game sound terrible as well, Luke Cage sounds like he is talking with a turd in his mouth. It's incredibly painful to have to listen to these annoying characters in this game, especially when the voice acting was done so much better in past Spider-man and Marvel games. Venom has the best sounding voice in this game out of all the characters, but that isn't saying much!

3. The wall crawling mechanics are so awful in this game.
 Nothing is very fluid and the controls feel so jerky. The camera feels all over the place. Wall crawling feels very clumsy and awkward. I honestly don't know what happened here.... the Spider-man 1 & 2 movie games or even Spider-man (for the Dreamcast & N64) had way better wall crawling mechanics! Here's the kicker.... The same company made those games, and then made this one. Go figure.

4.The combat just sucks in this game.
 It's punch, punch, kick, kick, web ball, web ball over and over again. The. A.I. is so dumb in this game, it's just endless gang-banger or robots on goblin gliders, shooting at you, shooting at the cops, shooting at each other, over and over again. There are upgrades you can buy for special moves, but upgrading your moves doesn't add any fun when the combat mechanics suck. There are combat air attacks which are new to the game play for a Spider-man game, but they get very repetitive quickly.

 5.Bad character graphics.
 Although, Spider-man (the character) graphically looks good. The rest of the characters look very blocky and just look very WRONG!!!!
  Venom for example, has a weird ''egg shaped'' head, Luke Cage looks like he walked out of an N64's asshole, and Mary Jane looks like a red headed troll that would make Peter Parker grab a shovel, web swing down to the local graveyard and dig up what's left of Gwen Stacy!  The women characters in this game (Mary Jane and the Black Cat) look like they belong in a casting call line up for ''Rock of Love''. Just terrible character graphics in this game. The thing that kills me is, all the character graphics look like an early Xbox or PS2 game, and this is an 2008 release for the PS3 and Xbox 360!!!!

 6.Not enough content in the game.
  You can explore the city and web sling around but it gets old really fast. Soon, you realize although the city looks great, it really is void of life and doesn't feel like a living breathing New York. You can collect ''spider icons'' spread round the city to upgrade your powers, but they are way too easy to find and you are able to pick them up with little to no effort. The missions in the game are so repetitive and so easy, and it becomes a drag even to even bother to choose to go on one.

  Overall, this game fails. Although it grew on me a little cause of the web swinging, it really is such an half ass effort on so many levels. It feels like this game had some good ideas to add to a Spider-man game, but overall it just feels poorly developed.  It's sad when my most favorite part of a Spider-man game is the opening game credits. Nuff' said!