Review!: The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dragonborn

System:  PC (also available on Xbox 360 and (GET THIS!) Playstation 3)
How far did you get:  I finished the main story and did a handful of side missions

Considering the high praise this DLC pack received upon it's release on the Xbox 360, I had pretty high hopes for this thing.  After playing the mediocre Dawnguard and the mostly dumb Hearthfire, I shouldn't have, and now that's I've played Dragonborn I wish I hadn't got my hopes up. 

This DLC starts off a bit different than the others.  You get attacked by some cultists when you go to a town in Skyrim, and one of them has an assassination order in his pocket.  You take a boat from Windhelm to Solstheim, an island that belong to Morrowind.  Then you go on your quest to find out who tried to kill you. 

The island seems pretty big at first.  The town you land in gives you plenty to do at the start, but once you start traveling the land, you begin to realize it's actually quite small.  The terrain isn't anything you haven't already seen, either.  Riversides, swampy areas, and snowy mountains are exactly the sorts of areas you've dealt with already in Skyrim.  Indoors areas are almost entirely caves.  However, things do get somewhat interesting when you open the Black Books.  It takes you to some wacky poison vine land where everything is hazy and nothing makes sense.  While these areas were very interesting to look at, the gameplay felt a bit stunted in these areas.  There weren't many enemies there, and the ones that were there were repeated throughout every trip. 

Dragonborn has a way of tricking you into thinking it's going to be better than it is.  I kept hearing about the Skaal in the first town.  When I finally met them, they were basically a nicer, coat wearing version of the Forsworn.  None of the quests there were entertaining at all.  In fact, the only part of Dragonborn I really enjoyed was running around with a wizard with a bad attitude.  The main game had many more characters that were far more interesting. 

The perks are something I can't fully talk about.  You do get a new kind of stone to make armor out of, but my smithing wasn't leveled up enough to use it.  You do get a shout that lets you control and ride dragons, but don't get excited.  They go where ever they want and you can't fully control them.  There were some nice weapons to pick up on my journey through Solstheim, but nothing that blew my mind. 

I'd say there is definitely 20 dollars worth of content here, but that doesn't mean the content is good.  When I get downloadable content, I generally like to see something a little different added to the main game, and Dragonborn does not offer that.  In fact, I'd say Dawnguard offered a more unique experience than Dragonborn did.  If you're a Skyrim fanatic, you're probably not going to pass on this, but prepare to be disappointed.

Rating:  58/100

Review! Uncharted: Golden Abyss

System:  Playstation Vita
How far did you get:  Completed the game once

So let's tackle a Playstation Vita launch title.  Generally during a console or handheld system's cycle, the developers tend to learn the ins and outs of the system and by the end of said cycle, they are making very good looking games.  If that ends up being the case for the Playstation Vita, Uncharted: Golden Abyss is evidence that the Vita is going to produce some very high quality visuals in the future.

This game is gorgeous.  I couldn't believe I was playing it on a handheld system.  It looks easily as good as Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on Playstation 3.  Even the mouth animations during dialog scenes were done well.  The only falter I could find regarding the way this game looks was that the explosions didn't always look that great, and the scenes requiring you to use your touch screen occasionally messed up some of the animations.  Still, if you want to see how far handheld gaming has come, this is the game play.

Speaking of touch screen functions, they were really cool in some parts, and a bit of a pain in others.  Generally, if you had to use it during action sequences, it was pretty obnoxious.  The Playstation Vita isn't exactly a small system, so having to move your fingers across the screen often forced me to hold the system with one hand, and in the middle of an action sequence, that is not optimal.  However, there were also sections of the game where you would find symbols that needed a rubbing, and a piece of paper would show up on your screen.  You would then use your finger to create the rubbing.  There were also parts where you solve puzzles with the touch screen, or clean off dirty artifacts.  These sections were all neat additions that couldn't have been done on any other system, and I appreciated the effort.

Other than the touch screen action sequences, the gameplay is as good as any Uncharted game has been.  If Tomb Raider with better gunplay sounds like a good thing to you, you'll enjoy this game.  The acrobatics are as fun and nice to look at as ever too.  If you've played other Uncharted games, the weaponry will all seem familiar, as well.  Most of the time, you'll be running around with a standard assault rifle and a pistol, and when you're in a position where an RPG or a sniper rifle would be useful, there's usually one sitting around nearby.

The story is great, too.  It's not Uncharted 2 or 3 great, but it's still an impressive outing for a handheld.  The voice acting is all top notch, which is to be expected for this series.  A couple old friends appear in this outing, as well, though this game is billed as a prequel.  You'll come to like the new characters, but Chase, the female lead, isn't quite as good as Elena from the other games.

If you own a Vita, Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a must have.  If you have a Playstation Plus membership, the game is free and you really have no excuse not to own the game.  It's well worth the hour or two to download it.

Rating:  88/100

Review! Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

System:  Playstation 3 (exclusively)
How far did you get:  Completed the game, finished all errands and bounty hunts that I am aware of, including post game

This console generation hasn't exactly been kind to those of us that are fans of the Japanese Role Playing Game (jrpg) genre.  Not only have very few jrpgs even been produced, but the ones we have gotten have been sub-par to downright bad.  If it weren't for a slew of pretty good jrpgs on the handheld systems, we'd be some pretty unhappy gamers right now.

Due to this, reviewing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is challenging for me.  It very well may be the one and only good jrpg on this generation of consoles, so I'm a bit worried I'm going to oversell it, or I might just think it's better than it actually is.  I've seen many reviewers take the hard route and come to conclusion that maybe Ni No Kuni is not quite as good as the fun time they are having indicates.  I'm not taking that route.  Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is one of the best games I've played in years.

Let's start with how the game looks.  Ni No Kuni is easily in my top five best looking console games of the PS3/Xbox 360 console generation.  The game itself is developed by Level 5, a company known for it's incredible looking cel shaded graphics (see: Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy).  In addition to this, the animated sequences are done by the popular animation studio Studio Ghibli, responsible for animated films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.  Stuido Ghibili's animation is as beautiful as ever, and Level 5 does a fantastic job of making the in game graphics live up to their standard.  The world presented here is much more colorful and vibrant than most games released these days.  The character models are all well done too, though I do question what they were thinking with Drippy.  As the most lovable character in the game, he is a bit plain looking.

Ni No Kuni doesn't have the most in depth or complicated story, but it isn't a bad one.  In fact, I was relieved to play a jrpg where I didn't have to rack my brain trying to figure out what is going on.  It's a simple tale of a boy who is drug into a fantasy world in an attempt to save his mother.  You'll find yourself moving yourself through lots of jrpg tropes, such as a forest level, a fire level, a water level, etc.  Not exactly the most creative choices, but it does give you a shot of nostalgia for the old days of jrpgs.  You'll also find that the game is quite long.  I thought I had finished it twice before I actually did.  You can probably run through the story in about 40 hours, though it took me 63 to do the story and side quests.  A platinum trophy would likely run you 80-100 hours.

The few issues I have with the game come in the gameplay, particularly regarding the battle system.  The battle system plays like a cross between Pokemon, a Tales of game, and a little Final Fantasy XIII thrown in as well.  You'll do a lot of your fighting by capturing the creatures you fight, called familiars, and using them to fight for you.  Annoyingly, capturing a familiar isn't like capturing a Pokemon.  The familiars will fall over with hearts over their heads at complete random, and you can serenade them into joining you.  The randomness of it makes it so you don't really get to choose what you're capturing unless you fight in that area over and over until happens, and that sucked.  The familiars all come with particular strengths and weaknesses, and you can equip them with weapons, armors, and skills.  All of this seems to work pretty well.  What didn't work too well was when I was about 3/4s through the game, my main character learned a lot of really powerful magic and I rarely used my familiars with him anymore.  It made it feel like all the work I had put into leveling my familiars was all for nothing.  Another frustrating aspect of the battle system was it's connection to Final Fantasy XIII.  The battles continue moving while you're trying to shuffle through menus, and it was pretty aggravating most of time.   Several times during the game, I needed to defend but could not shuffle through the menu fast enough to do so.  There were a few buttons on my controller that could have been used to instantly defend, but this was not taken advantage of.  You do have an "all out defend" button, but that doesn't work on the character you are controlling.  I know this seems like a lot of complaints, but it's really not horrible.  With the exception of scrolling through menus in active battles, nothing else about it is broken and it's still fun most of the time. 

Outside of battle, the gameplay was much better.  It has it's own version of fetch quests, but generally they're tied to their own fun little story.  Thanks to the game having such a lovable cast a characters, doing these quests was a lot more fun.  It also gives you the ability to take emotions and character traits from a non playable character that has more than they need, and give that emotion to another person that is in short supply of it.  This was a really simple mechanic and could have been fleshed out a bit better, but it was still fun to do.  The bounty hunts are a lot of fun and a good challenge, as well.   

Ni No Kuni is the best jrpg of this console generation without question.  If you like jrpgs and own and Playstation 3, you must purchase this game.  Don't let the childlike appearance of it turn you away.  The game can get dark and it's much too good for you to pass up for such a silly reason, tidy?

Rating:  90/100

Review! LittleBigPlanet Vita

System:  Playstation Vita
How far did you get:  Completed single player campaign, played around with multiplayer and creation tools

If you've never played a LittleBigPlanet game and you own a Playstation Vita, this is the only one you'll ever need to get.

After playing LittleBigPlanet and it's sequel on the Playstation 3 and the PSP game and noticing there was very little difference between the games, I didn't really have high hopes for LittleBigPlanet Vita.  I mean, what could they do differently at this point, and why would they risk alienating fans of the series?  What Media Molecule decided to do was take full advantage of the Vita's capabilities, and it turned out great for it.

Rather than give you the option of using the touch screen or tilt functions or just using the regular buttons like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, LittleBigPlanet requires you to use the Vita's special abilities.  Not just in mini games, either.  The single player campaign has many sections that require you to use the front and back touch screen and the tilt function, and it's fun every time you do it.  It's the first Vita game I've played that makes players really use the system and it's one of the best Vita games I've played for that reason.

It's a visual stunner, too.  If you can tell a difference between LittleBigPlanet Vita and it's Playstation 3 counterparts, you have better eyes than I do.  Just be sure to keep a cloth nearby, because you will be getting fingerprints on your screen quite a bit.  It controls pretty well on the handheld, too.  The jumping is still a bit floaty, but once you get used to it, it becomes part of the appeal. 

The main story has never been a seller for the LittleBigPlanet games, but the story here is good enough to properly introduce you to a rather zany cast of characters.  This isn't really anything different for LittleBigPlanet, though.  The amazing narrator from the previous games returns with his snarky humor and pleasant voice.  The only bad thing there is that once you finish the tutorial levels, you never hear from him again.

There were a couple of things that disappointed me about Sackboy's Vita outing, however.  If there was any licensed music in this one, I didn't notice it.  There were a few tracks that might have been, but they weren't nearly as good as the first two LittleBigPlanet games.  When playing the first two games, I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard music from likes of Battles, Squarepusher, and Lorn.  I was sad that I didn't get to experience that here.

I won't complain that there are far fewer levels in the Vita installment, as that is to be expected with the small Vita fanbase, but I will complain about the quality of what is there.  I was never too good at level creation myself, but I knew it and chose not to make levels.  LittleBigPlanet Vita is bogged down with incredibly simple and boring user made levels.  I don't know if it has anything to do with the creation set they're working with or if uncreative people are making levels, but either way I was disappointed.  

Regardless, LittleBigPlanet Vita is easily the most feature filled LittleBigPlanet to date when it comes to gameplay, so if you have a Vita and have ever been interested in the series, I'd recommend trying it out.

Rating:  82/100