We be back again! This week we have a full house and some passerby’s. Disorganized as always, but still here to talk about Army of Two: The 40th Day, Borderlands, Star Ocean 4, and Lunar Silver Star Harmony. We also mention/discuss our favorite villian in games. As always, you can watch us live every Monday, Friday, and Saturday nights right here: www.justin.tv/frusratedfury

Divided into 3 parts:

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Watch live video from Rage Quit Radio on Justin.tv

Watch live video from Rage Quit Radio on Justin.tv

Two of RJG Staff members chose to fight the everlasting battle between Alien vs. Predator. Which side did they choose, and how did the fight turn out, find out more after the break.

Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Sci-Fi Firs-Person Action
# of players: 1 player offline,2-18 online
Price: $59.99
Consoles: PS3, 360, and PC

B4’s Opinion:

I’m not too knowledgeable of the Aliens vs. Predator franchise, and have not played too many of the video games based on it. I’ve seen the one okay movie(AVP), and the one terrible movie (requiem), and played the arcade game, but that’s about it. What I felt like this series was missing was a storyline that actually brought you in,and made you care about what was going on. I’m sad to report that AVP has not faired much better in this regard whatsoever. That, tied in with the glitchy controls, bland level design, and lack of polish in the MP modes makes AVP an afterthought in my opinion.

I’m not saying that the concept here isn’t intriguing at all, it’s just not very well thought out. The idea of splitting the story into three different sections (Alien, Predator, and Marine) is a nice concept if, and only if it actually keeps the storyline consistent amongst all three campaigns. All you need to know is that the Marine Campaign requires you to escape from the fight between Alien and Predator, the Alien campaign requires you to destroy the predator, and vice versa for the Predator campaign, that’s about it. Argue it with me all you want, but it was the best way I could put it all together for you.

The variety as to what you can do with each of the three different characters did make the gameplay unique to a certain extent, but each one faulters in one area or another, making the experience more tedious than fun most of the time. It was fun to be able to jump from the top of buildings, and do stealth kills as the predator, but the melee attacks were awful, and wouldn’t respond half of the time, especially when you were fighting the aliens. This was also a major problem when you were playing as the Alien.

The Aliens had an excellent sense of speed to them, but the mechanic of climbing up walls could often leave you feeling disoriented. The Marine Campaign did have solid first-person shooter controls, and was very helpful in telling you where to go next because of the straight-up hud system that it had, but the flashlight would only illuminate a short distance in front of you, and the gameplay itself was just lacking any sense of excitement, until the end at least, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The overall design wasn’t bad, but it was bland and repetitive. I would have like to have seen a campaign that spanned across three different, but what I got instead was the same levels from a different characters point of view. The character models of the different creatures looked really good up-close, and the voice acting was decent, but very cheesy. The music was tense, dark, and moody, and really played into the idea of making you feel scared. I won’t go into too much detail about the multiplayer modes, but I will say that they are very fun to play, but using your xp just to unlock skins instead of actual character upgrades did piss me off a little bit.

To sum it all up, AVP was a somewhat fun and unique game that to a certain extent captures the style of the franchise. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in some fun first-person action and creative ideas. (C+)

- Matt H.

X3R0’s Opinion:

If you’re looking for a game that does a decent job combining all the aspects of the Alien vs. Predator series, then this game is something to look at. If you’re looking for a new game to play, then this game isn’t for you. Yes, the 2010 release of Aliens vs. Predator is, in my opinion, the best in the series, but it falls short at becoming a game that everybody will rant and rave about. Aliens vs. Predator is filled with issues, beginning with occasional glitches, poor combat mechanics, and an overall simplistic storyline, but it does have some qualities that makes this game stand out.

The overall story of AvP encompasses all three arcs into a cliché story. As I mentioned before, the story is short and simple, either run to safety, escape, or hunt…that’s it! There seemed to be potential of this game having a very good solid storyline if there was more time spent with it. It was exciting to see the story split up amongst the different characters, but the shortness of the overall story took away from getting connected with the characters.

Besides the story being short, the overall combat system wasn’t the greatest. The Marine combat is by far the closest to a straightforward shooter while the others are based on stealth and melee, and the melee isn’t anything to right home about. As the Predator you’re able to jump around from tree top to roof top utilizing the Predator equipment found in the movies. You first start off with just the basic, wrist blades on each hand and a laser. As you progress through the Predator missions, you begin to pick up more weapons that make the game more enjoyable, but you’ll still be utilizing the wrist blades more for attacks, which was a burden majority of the time. The burden comes from encountering some glitches and unresponsiveness while I was battling the Aliens and it felt like you were playing a bad boxing game…punch, block, punch-punch, block, rinse and repeat.

As you played the Aliens, you have the opportunity to move about practically anywhere you want to via the walls, ceilings, or floor. Your enemies stand out a lot more than the other two characters as the alien recognizes living beings based off of pheromones. The alien utilizes no weapons other than melee, but the speed and openness makes up for that. Between the speed and the open exploration, you’ll end up disorientated quite a bit.

The biggest complaint I have about the game is the sense of direction. If you don’t pay close attention to what is going on, you will end up not knowing where you have to go and spend countless minutes figuring it out. The Marine’s radar had an arrow showing you which way to go, the downside to that is, it floats all over the place. It seemed too sensitive to location. The Predator uses a beacon design, only showing you the end location, so it is up to you to figure out how to get there. Playing the alien has the worst direction help I have ever seen in a game. I simply doesn’t have anything.

It may seem that this game was a complete failure, but there are quite a few things that make this game unique. The way the story is separated and kind-of interweaved into the other story arcs is very interesting. As you play the different characters you’ll see subtle events that either happened or hasn’t happened yet in other story arcs. The graphics of the Predator and Alien looked sharp! There were a few times between the sounds and the visual effects, I thought I might have been watching a Predator or an Alien film. There were many sound effects that seemed they were taken from the films, i.e. radars blips, sounds of the Aliens and Predators, the gush of air when the Predator takes his face mask off, and the transition between the sight modes.

The multiplayer is probably the most exciting part of the game! With its seven different modes, you’ll have no reason to say there’s nothing there for you. Game variants range from Death Matches to Domination, with dash of a “Horde” and “Zombie” modes. The only complaint that I see about the multiplayer is the lack of encouragement to keep on playing. The experience you gain won’t benefit your online characters, except in looks. That’s right, the only thing I noticed that my experience got me was more character skins.

Although AvP gives a decent video game nod to the franchise, it needs more substance than how many ways can you kill an enemy. The game is very creative giving you the three sides of a basic story, but it lacks at drawing you in, leaving you with no emotional connection to the characters. The multiplayer experience is fun, but with no perks, other than character skins, you’ll soon be shelving this title for one of the many other games coming out this spring. (B-)

- Mike K.

We’re back after a two week break…and we’re back on JustinTV…yes we know we said we were done with JTV, but Ustream just didn’t have the viewers that we needed. Anyway, here’s what we talk about this week: Heavy Rain, Army of Two: The 40th Day, Star Ocean: The Last Hope and many more. Plus, we have an in depth disscussion/rant on fanboyism and defending a console for no good reason. It’s actually a nice watch. As always, you can watch us live every Monday, Friday, and Saturday nights right here: www.justin.tv/frustratedfury

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Topics: Aliens VS Predator, Fret Nice, Crap of Defense, Puzzlegeddon, & P.B Winterbottom

Intro music performed by “Incubus” off their album “Make yourself”
Outro music performed by “Bilithic” off their album “empire”

Direct link [right-click, save as]

Not only has Fret Nice developer Pieces Interactive prove they can put together an inventive and fun platforming title, they’ve also proved they aren’t afraid of trying something different. Busting out the ol’ plastic guitar to play a platforming game sounds like a lot more fun than it really is, but that doesn’t mean the game falls short of being “purchase-worthy”.

Publisher: Tecmo
Developer: Pieces Interactive
Genre: Musical platforming
Platform: XBLA – PSN

Unlike your favorite Italian plumber platforming games, Fret Nice doesn’t rely on head-stomping as its primary attack maneuver. Instead you’re instructed to play riffs on your guitar in accordance with specific enemy attributes; a simple premise that is fairly intuitive and quite an interesting mechanic. When using a standard game-pad, Fret Nice is reminiscent of the Patapon or Loco Roco games; and controls just as well as it should be expected to. On the other hand when using a guitar peripheral the control scheme throws all intuitiveness out the window, and leaves you with confusing – and often broken – controls.

Looking past Fret Nice’s controller woes won’t be hard for anyone looking to jump into a bright, colorful, and competent platforming game which looks and feels like nothing you’ve ever seen this side of next-gen. Each of FN’s levels, and bonus stages, are well crafted and full of surprises down to the great boss encounters. The only thing holding back consumers from jumping into the world of Fret Nice is its aesthetics. While I’m a fan of the art design Pieces Interactive have chosen to roll with here, its bright, acid-trip appearance will most definitely scare off anyone who can’t open up to another’s approach. Those same people will be missing out on an enjoyable experience.

Not everything is grey and brown. Not everything is something before it. Fret Nice is a step forward in the right direction of music-based platforming games. And as disappointed as I was to see the idea of controlling my in-game avatar via plastic-axe fall short, it opened my eyes to how much fun Fret Nice is on the merits of its mechanics alone.  [A-]

-Jeffrey deMelo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (41.8MB)

We here at Evolved Gaming had the pleasure of participating in a conference call with some of the developers working on MLB 2K10. MLB 2K10 is set to release on 3/2/10. Take a listen and look at the screens below to help make up your mind if this is the baseball title for you to pickup this year!
On the call were: Read the rest of this entry »

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Again we here at Evolved Gaming have had the pleasure of being invited to a developer conference call next Thursday, 2/25 from 2PM – 3PM PT.
This time for the upcoming 10th Anniversary of 2K’s MLB 2K10. 2K took a huge leap forward with MLB games in 2008 with the addition of using the joystick’s to control most actions. While it was a step forward it needed a little work to perfect. MLB 2K9 was actually a step back in these controls as they never seemed to work correctly. Now cover athlete Evan Longoria takes a big risk putting his name and image on the next installment of MLB 2K. Will it be the MLB game that we all want? Only time will tell.
If you have a question that you would like to have answered by the developer’s of MLB 2K10 leave it in the comments below or email us here at MLB2K10@evolvedgaming.net and we will get it answered during the call. Like with the Bioshock 2 Developer Call EG will also do our best to stream the live conference call on our Ustream channel here. Please join us for a real time discussion of the upcoming MLB 2K10 next Thursday, 2/25 from 2PM – 3PM PT.

It’s time to start anew we leave JustinTV and join Ustream. With those changes, comes no others…yep. We stay the same, giving you what we’ve been playing. Games that include, Star Ocean 4, Assassin’s Creed 2, Dante’s Inferno, and many more. You can now watch us live every Monday, Friday, and Saturday on Ustream right here: www.ustream.tv/channel/rage-quit-radio

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It has been a few weeks since the guys have gotten together to talk games. And it just so happens that community member, Pimp/Dark Method 10K, has come to take the whole WiR episode over. He had guns. Lots of em!

Topics include:

- Stoked: Big Air Edition
- Bittos+
- Drawn to life: The next chapter
- NBA 2K10
- Blood Bowl
- Army of Two: The 40th Day
- Mass Effect 2

Intro & Outro music selection performed by “A Wilhelm Scream” off their album “Ruiner”.

Direct download [right click, save as]

Developer: Cyanide Studios

Publisher: South Peak

Genre: Sports, Football

Rating: Teen

Price: $49.99