Considering the last time I played Soul Calibur was years ago on my GameCube I was more than ready to get back into the tale of souls and swords eternally told, but would SC5 live up to my expectations or would it tarnish all my fond memories of its predecessors?

Soul Calibur 5 is the story of… Hmmm, let me first admit that prior to playing the game I was very hostile towards other reviews harping on the story mode for this game. I mean, it’s a fighting game, who cares about a story mode you play once then forget in favor of multiplayer right?! Well, I stand corrected: SC5′s story mode forces you to play with the least interesting characters in the game, then it’s character development consists of making said characters impossible to like, while informing you of how awesome they are. SPOILER: you start off as a serial killer, murdering the innocent because someone told him they were monsters, then not caring when he finds out the truth. He’s the good guy, and things only get worse.  The story is told mostly in black and white sketches and bad voice acting of badly written dialogue telling a terrible tale. A couple of in-engine scenes are thrown in to make sure you’re awake, and as beautiful as they look, you will not care.

Sorry, I had to get that out. I promise things get better for this review.

Arcade mode is more of a time trial mode: Half a dozen fights, ranked by the time taken to complete, and added to online leader boards. You have the voice of different paths to take, changing the locales you fight in, and the enemies you face, and having the chance to unlock some secrets.

The games graphics are not mind blowing, but beautiful nonetheless. Characters designs are very varied, detailed and definitely an upgrade from the previous game.  All the favorites are back, along with a few new faces, and even a mode where you can create your own character, but more on that in a bit.

Stages are impressive to begin with: cage matches with walls that fall outwards when a fighter is slammed against it, expanding the playing field, and allowing for ring-out opportunities; A lush rain forest, churches, castles and some stages that change between rounds.

One of my favorite features is the returning creation mode. I never got a chance to play around with this mode in SC4, so I was pretty excited to finally get my hands on it. In this mode you create a fighter based on the fighting style of a character in the roster, and you tweak their appearance. Playing in the other modes will unlock new items giving you more options for crafting your character which can sometimes result in very impressive duelists, hilarious joke characters or, once you’re more familiar with the options, clones of characters from other franchises. My Doctor Doom will haunt your nightmares.

The game play in SC5 is a bit faster than in previous games; maintaining the same pace and emphasis on strategy, while allowing for more impressive looking battles thanks to the combos now possible. Also the addition of super moves gives a player a chance to make a comeback, making fights a bit more interesting.  The game is still quite easy for new players to get into and have fun, but it also accommodates the hardcore fighters with more ways to improve their skills.

Luckily for this game story mode is not really any fighting game’s forte; that’s really decided by the game’s multiplayer, and SC5 has the makings of a contender. Fights are fast paced and fun whether you’re a noob or a pro. Online matches are extremely smooth and, for the most part, pretty much lag free. It’s also a nice treat to see what other players around the world have come up with in their character creators.

Soul Calibur 5 is a great addition to the current wave of fighting games. It’s an impressive game, with a nice set of features and extremely enjoyable multiplayer experience, ruined only by its awful story mode. Just buckle down, beat story mode to unlock the secret characters, and try your best to forget what you do within; then carry on to online mode and enjoy the game the way it was intended.

Developed by Supergiant Games, Bastion is a top down action game with some RPG elements, and a very nostalgic feel to it. Impressive art style and a dynamic narrator are what mainly make this game become an unique experience.

Bastion is the story of “The Kid”, a nameless youth trying to find his way in a world broken after the Calamity hit. Walking Through a path that is created as he takes each step, finding new weapons and fighting new monsters, and a few friends, along the way, the kid pushes onward looking for reasons as to why the calamity happened and how to fix it all. The kid reaches the titular Bastion, a floatig town which is supposed to be humanity’s last refuge in case of just such a catastrophe, and finds that only one other person made it there.

The graphics in this game are an amazing hand drawn style that make he scenery appear like a beautiful watercolor and remind us of the old 16 bit games of yore. The main character, along with the enemies and other NPCs are very well detailed and carefully animated. The stages are lovingly crafted, with faded landscapes deep in the background that are almost forgotten as sections of the stage float up from the vast emptiness creating the ground you walk on. The newly formed hovering islands contain innumerable objects and debris to interact with, and to rummage through for weapons or plot advancing collectibles.

The gameplay in Bastion is very flexible, especially for an action game. The kid can wield a wide variety of weapons allowing the player to decide if he prefers close or ranged combat, or a mixture of both. The RPG elements further allow the player to build an even more customized character. These elements consist of a tonic system that allows the Kid to get certain perks, and the ability to use money to boost certain abilities on your chosen weapons. With this setup you can develop for example a Kid who’s tonics give him more damage resisting armor and longer range on his shotgun; or a character that does more damage with said shotgun and recovers health with every attack he blocks.

Another gameplay element that is kind of different in this game is the ability to activate different deities in the shrine, which don’t strengthen your character, but instead grant upgrades to the enemies. Enhancing baddies extra health, speed, strength and over a docen other perks, the player can activate any number of deities at once to fluctuate the level of difficulty in the game. The trade-off from activating more deities is a higher amount of cash and experience received, but activating all deities is not recommended except for higher level players, or for those who can deal with the frustration of constant deaths.

This is a graphically beautiful game with fast-paced, engaging gameplay, yet some how the strongest part of the game is the story. Well, rather than just the story, it’s the way in which this story is delivered to us: a calm, wise, friendly voice describes our every move emphasizing special actions taken, or imparting advise on what the player should do next. The narrator also tells us what befell the land and it’s inhabitants as we walk through it, and it’s done with such passion, sadness and at times even humor, that we find ourselves eager to do and see more just so we can hear what he will say next.  How much he actually has to say is quite impressive, and from beginning to end you will never feel alone.

Bright colors and a cartoony style are a sharp contrast to the heavier tones of the game’s sad story. The narrator compliments and enhances the game, balancing all of the games elements, and moving the story forward. My only complaint for Bastion might have been The game’s length, which is almost too short. But multiple endings, increased challenge through the use of deities, and a “new game plus” feature increase Bastion’s replay value immensely. I cannot recommend this game enough.

So, we here at Everyday Gamers decided we would come together and give you and idea of what each of us feel are the five best games we each played this year.

Eric Bouchard:

5. Tie: Scribblenauts/Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure (DS) – Yes, I know starting out with a tie seems like a bit of a cop out, but I cannot help it. In what seemed overall like a down year for the DS, Scribblenauts and Henry Hatsworth were 2 absolutely can’t miss games. Scibblenauts adds a whole new twist to puzzle solving with no set way to beat each level, while Hatsworth combines platforming with puzzle gameplay in a way that is just astounding. The games stand out as the best on the handheld, and I dare anyone to play either one and not enjoy them.

4. Torchlight (PC) – In a world of big releases, it is rare to see an indie game catch on the way Torchlight has. Made by many of the creators of Diablo, Torchlight manages to be both a deep dungeon crawler and yet an accessible game for those not used to that type. You can pop in and play for just a bit or get lost for hours, something most games cannot balance. Excellent gameplay, an inventive inventory system with the ability to have you pet sell you items and 3 truly unique classes to play set Torchlight apart from other Diablo clones, and that’s not counting the mods people are already making available for the game. Heck, it deserves to be on the list if for nothing else than it has gotten me back into PC gaming.

3. Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360, PC) – When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at E3, there were many people, including some 0n this site, who thought it was too soon after Left 4 Dead. Many were afraid the game would just be Left 4 Dead 1.5, but it did not take long for that to be proven wrong. The sequel has surpassed its predecessor in every way, from tighter controls to longer, more involved campaigns. Add to that plenty of new weapons including melee based, new special infected, the uncommon common and more multiplayer modes, and Left 4 Dead 2 ends up feeling like much much more of a complete game than the original. This version is worth the $60.oo price point.

2. Dragon Age Origins (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) – This game was in the running for Game of the Year when I was first started playing. Bioware set out yo make Dragon Age Origins to be the spiritual successor to Balder’s Gate, and the company has achieved that. A deep storyline, excellent character interaction and a rich combat system make this an RPG to make hardcore RPG fans proud. In the end, however, that is part of why it did not make number 1 on my list, as the one the made it there was much more accessible and has the best Co-op I think I have ever played.

1. Game of the Year: Borderlands (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) - There is something magical about this game. Gearbox has managed to do the best job so far of combining an FPS with an RPG, and the cell-shaded look to Borderlands just helps add to the joy you get while playing it. Though the single player campaign is strong, you are really doing this game and yourself a disservice if you do not play it Co-op, and as such the 360 version may be the best because of Live. Random weapons, 4 unique character classes that can be leveled up in many different ways, enemies who level up based on the number of people playing and a wry humor that just permeates the game make Borderlands the clear choice for GOTY.

Honorable Mentions: Uncharted 2 (PS3), Street Fighter IV (PC, PS3, Xbox 360), Batman Arkham Asylum (PC, PS3, Xbox 360), Assassin’s Creed II (PS3, Xbox 360)

Patrick Adams

5. InFamous (PS3) – I was a little skeptical about the game until the demo released, once I got my hands on it I instantly knew it would be a day-one purchase. I’m not one to pay attention to the story in a game but InFamous made it hard not to with it’s sweet comic book art-style. The platforming elements in InFamous were very refined and overall the game is one of the best on the PS3.

4. Shadow Complex (XBLA) – Shadow Complex was so good that I almost added it to my top 10 favorite games of all time list. Yes it pays homage to Metroid but for someone like me who has never played Metroid it was still an amazing game. The game was very polished and overall just plain fun. Once I completed the game I only wanted to play more. I hope we’ll see a sequel sometime in the near future.

3. Uncharted 2 (PS3) – Everyone knew U2 looked beautiful and the hype for it was pretty high. Naughty Dog delivered and the game lived up to the expectations. Like the first one, U2 is like an adventure movie that you play and that’s awesome. With a thin line between the cutscenes and the actual gameplay U2 is right next to Killzone 2 as the best looking game to grace the PS3.

2. Red Faction: Guerrilla (Xbox 360) – I think the main reason RFG is #2 on my list is because it really caught me by surprise. I had heard nothing about the game until I played the demo and that demo was enough to make me go out and buy RFG on day-one. RFG is about destroying everything and destroying everything is as fun as a game can get.

1. Game of the Year:  Borderlands (Xbox 360) – I went out on a limb and bought this game purely because of reading good things about it on Twitter and here it is my #1 one pick, my game of the year. The funny thing about my experience with Borderlands was that I played the entire game by myself. It was exactly what I needed, a blend of the action in an FPS and the addiction of collecting loot and leveling up in an RPG. Borderlands also has an art-style that hits the spot for me. With the announcement of plans to make it a franchise I am excited to see more of Borderlands in the future.

Honorable Mentions: Killzone 2 (PS3), GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS), Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360), and N.O.V.A. (iPhone).

Yuoma

Borderlands is a first person shooter with heavy RPG elements (or an RPG seen from a first person perspective?), with a strong Diablo-esque emphasis on grinding and loot collection. Stack on top of all this that all enemies, equipment and weapons are randomly generated and you have a game that will keep you addicted, while still managing to pack in a few surprises even after having played it for over 100 hours.

Story

Borderlands takes place in the colony planet of Pandora. A planet colonized and quickly abandoned by the government, and corporations once they saw how little there was in it to profit from, and how difficult it would be to survive in it for prolonged stretches of time. The only people left behind were the treasure hunters, some early settlers, unlucky employees and hordes of criminals who now prey on the civilians left behind. Most of the people who stayed behind did so because of their belief in a legendary vault of untold, and immeasurable treasures. The story in this game is easily the weakest part of the game, and at times it seems like a throw-away part of a whole which seems so well thought out, which is sad, because the characters can be so darn funny and interesting at times. At one point in the story you find out someone has died, and this is never followed through any further, almost as if they wanted to move you, but didn’t care enough to give this branch in the plot any closure.

Gameplay

Borderlands starts off as most FPSs do. You are give a gun, you are given a guide, and you are given some some easy mooks to kill. Where things start diverging from other FPSs is when you kill someone, or complete a mission and are given a set amount of experience, which in turn increases your level, making you stronger, tougher, and giving you more health. You also start getting skill points which you can use to develop your chosen character into the perfect killing machine, healing or looting machine.

There are four character classes to choose from:

*A soldier who can either heal his teammates or summon a turret to assist with the butt-kickery.

*A siren whose power allows her to explode in an elemental flash, become invisible for a few seconds, while she runs to or from danger, and then explodes again to knock out whoever is standing around her.

*The berserker who is an explosives specialist, or an unstoppable punching juggernaut.

*And the hunter, who can either be a deadeye sniper or a gunslinger with buffs whenever he uses handguns and revolvers, with a pet hawk who attacks and slows down enemies. He also drops extra loot for the whole party.

As awesome as single player for this game is, things just get better every time another player joins the game: enemies become tougher, which makes the little puppies you were fighting against in single player become fire, acid, or thunder-breathing monsters which will take a whole team, and a lot of bullets to take down. Treasure also goes up a few levels in awesome with more people in your party, taking your machinegun and replacing it’s bullets with rockets. You are doing yourself a disservice if you never play this game with other people.

The game also features player duels and arenas in which to fight your friends. Ignore these, as they are highly irrelevant. A properly built hunter can kill anyone within half a second of the start of the fight by summoning his hawk. A siren can kill everyone else. None of this is pertinent to your level, or to how awesome your weapons are. The game is made for killing monsters, and PVP battles are really unbalanced.

Weapons

As stated before, weapons in this game are randomly generated, which means that if you are really, very lucky you can find a super rare weapon, which will make your character into a spider killing god. There are different weapon-types in the game, including pistols, sniper rifles, shotguns, machineguns, and even some alien weapons. Every time you open a chest, or kill a baddie you have a chance of finding, say a sniper, or a sniper that does double damage, or a sniper that shoots fire bullets, or acid bullets… Or a sniper which shoots clusters of bullets, like a shotgun, or if you’re really lucky, all of the above. Also it can refill ammo automatically so you never run out. The possibilities here are endless, and all the examples described above are weapons I actually have. And they are all on my crappy character… (my good character has a revolver whose bullets rotate between all the elements in the game, and shoots as fast as an assault riffle).

Weapons are the reason most people who play this game will continue to play it well after their characters have all reached their level cap.

Graphics

Borderlands is powered by the unreal engine 3, so it obviously looks amazing. It has a beautiful cell-shaded style which gives it a bit of a comic-book feel, and gives the characters a lot of personality, and helps a lot with the humor behind them all. The game manages impressive draw distances, which is very helpful for us snipers out there. In fact, the only time I noticed any slowdown and frame skipping was when playing with a full party of level 50 characters we all spread out throughout a huge map and each fought innumerable hordes of spiders, and used ridiculous fast, powerful, acid shooting, explosion spamming weapons, but it soon passed, as those spider did not live for long.

Borderlands is easily one of my favorite games this year, and one of the games I’ve dumped the most hours into (considering it takes about 40-50 hours {more or less depending on skill} to complete all missions in the games, and even at that point your character will only be around level 36). Each character gives the player a different play style, and a different perspective on the game, and how to tackle each mission all over again. But you will continue playing this game with friends looking for the next, strongest weapon you could ever imagine. There is so much more that could be said about the unlimited possibilities for the weapons available to you in this game, but I really must stop; I just finished downloading the newest downloadable content for this game, and it’s zombies…ZOMBIES!!!

Hosts In: Eric Bouchard, Chris Maeurer, and Yuoma.

EDG Podcast Episode #26

Hosts In: Eric Bouchard and Yuoma

EDG Podcast Episode #23

The Main character in Prototype is Alex Mercer, a man with little to no memories of his past, and with a virus cursing through his veins which gives him his super powers, and has the entire United States army chasing after him. As Alex you have to use your powers to infiltrate bases, steal memories, fight soldiers and clear the city of the ever increasing number of infected. The story is told well, and the memory stealing power/feature helps you get as much out of the story as you want to: i.e. you can breeze through the main quest, doing only the missions that will get you to the conclusion fastest, or you can roam every corner of the island looking for people involved with the development and release of the virus. The story is really dark and about as cheerful as a zombie movie with a female lead character.

A sandbox game, Prototype gives you a massive version of Manhattan island to explore and enjoy, which is a good thing because you will be spending a lot of time in it, both following the main story and finding all the hidden collectibles spread throughout. Also, although it’s not a perfect recreation of Manhattan, the designers did a great job of capturing the spirit of some of New York City’s more famous landmarks. I mean, it was cool to fight the army in Times Square, and to climb the Empire State Building to reach a glowing orb, or maybe even hi-jack a helicopter as it flies over Central Park; but my breath was taken away when i was running at full speed through the streets, and had to stop and take a closer look at the spot on Bryant park where i would take my lunch breaks.

The gameplay is really where prototype shines, though at times it seems like a fancier version of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which is not necessarily a bad thing considering how fantastic that game was. The controls are easy to pick up, and the various powers keep things interesting for a while. These powers range from razor-sharp claws, to a long tentacle, to an armored behemoth who gains massive amounts of defense at the cost of your usually ninja-like movement. I personally loved the way the character’s movements were animated: Parkour flipping through traffic and over buildings is great, but nothing beats being in the thick of battle, getting hit by a rocket, scrabbling on all four before running at full speed and using a devastator attack to kill everything within a two block radius. Oh, and did i mention this game is violent? well, it is. Violent and bloody. some of the ways you have of disposing of enemies would make the creators of Mortal Kombat write some concerned letters to their respective senators.

The one area where this game disappointed me was in the graphic department. Don’t get me wrong, running and fighting and blowing things up looks great; but as soon as you stop running and look at anything up-close it looks so ugly and last-gen that it will make you cringe. I mean, it is understandable that at the speed at which you run through crowds and destroy thousands of cars it would be too taxing to render tons of beautiful people, trucks or buildings; but the sheer ugliness of these characters, and the amount of repetition of the same faces in the crowd (i think there’s maybe 20 different civilian sprites in the game) as you’re passing by thousands of them, makes the graphic design feel lazy and does not show the care that was taken into almost every other aspect of the game.

All in all Prototype is a great playing, at times ugly looking game that will make you feel like you really have super powers. An exciting roller-coaster ride, although if you’ve played their last Hulk game it will feel like it’s a ride you’ve already taken.

Hosts In: Patrick Adams, Eric Bouchard, David Lange, and Thomas Pine.

Music By: Manuel Marino

EDG Podcast Episode #21

Hosts In: Patrick Adams, Yuoma, Eric Bouchard, and Thomas Pine
Music By: Manuel Marino

EDG Podcast Episode 18

Hosts In: Patrick Adams, Eric Bouchard, Thomas Pine, and Yuoma.
Music By: Manuel Marino

EDG Podcast Episode #15

Hosts In: Eric Bouchard, Thomas Pine, and Yuoma.

EDG Podcast Episode #13