The Guildmasters

Well after many many hours of play and completing RE5 at least 3 times (amateur,normal,veteran) plus completing mercenaries (ow that was/is addictive) I believe I can honestly write the review that this game so rightly deserves.

If you followed my play by post on this game it did sound initially that I was disappointed. At first I was because I was trying to compare it to RE4 and I was missing a couple of things that i’d grown to like a lot in that game, it was wrong of me however to expect those things in RE5.
After playing through the game the first time I was absolutely hooked, I wanted more, I wanted to unlock everything, and so I got completely carried away and have almost unlocked everything in the game, but I still want more, i’d even go as far as to say RE5 is more addictive than RE4 and I really loved that one.

As in RE4 the controls were similar and took a bit of getting used to, nothing too bad and only because i’d played so many other games since RE4. Once you get the hang of the controls it’s just fun all the way.

The story is extemely good and it really gives you that ” I can’t stop now, I need to know what happens next” feeling, constantly.

Your introduced to boss fights in many new original ways, some of which you really don’t expect. It was nice to see some of the old enemies from RE4 though not too many to make you think it was just a re-shuffle, there were plenty of new enemies too.

El Gigante was back but only appears once, he’s more pumped and extremely annoying, especially on veteran mode, it’s a fixed scene, when I say fixed I mean you can’t choose your weapon or run around, you have to use the gatling gun on the back of a truck so it’s really down to how good you’ve managed to aim.

Most of the enemies are called “majini’s” and there are a few variations of enemies seen in RE4 only stronger and harder to defeat, you have the executioner majini which is a lot like the blind hooded claw handed thing’s in RE4 that I can’t think of what they were called right now (sorry) then you have the chainsaw majini, pretty difficult first time around but good fun and gatling gun majini.

As well as these familiar type enemies there is a whole host of new ones, my pet hate in this game are the dogs, you nearly always see them in groups of 3 or 4 which is why I always end up getting a piece of my face ripped off even when i’ve promised myself i’m going to take them all down this time.
There are also alligators which will kill you in one bite, no second chance with these things, one bite is a kill and that is whatever level your playing so watch out for those, there isn’t many but you will encounter these if your after all treasures.

Wesker is a great addition to this game, he’s a great boss, annoying but likeable too, frustrating at times but a great character to play with in the mercs.

I would say i’ve played this game for well over 100hrs and could very easily play for another 100
I bought and downloaded the add-on this morning which is slayers and versus, all online and can’t wait to try it out, this may not sound too important but for me to buy an add-on you can bet the game was more than excellent, and it was, really.
Any fan of resident evil needs to own this game, you won’t regret it. I give it a 10 out of 10 simply because I can’t give it 11, it’s that good.
Anyone wanting to check my trophy stats i’m online under the name Knightofthe9 on my PS3 so if you feel like a rumble in RE5 versus give me a shout.

Just to finish there is much more to this game than I could really put here and I don’t want to give too much away for those that haven’t played it yet, you have many treasures to find, and plenty of other stuff too, if your like me and want all the trophies your going to spend a lot of time on this game, and your going to enjoy yourself tremendously, the fun and excitement is all there and you can play with a partner or go it alone, your choice, I tried both and they were both great. The mercs is excellent and you have lots to go for.

I could go on all day but I think you get the picture, go try it and i’ll see you in versus.

Tony

I’m not really writing a review on this game as my son is going to write that. I would like to say though this game was very disappointing, normal mode the game was completed within 10hrs and after seeing some good reviews on it that made it even more disappointing.
My son pointed out a few things, essentially that the voice didn’t sound like wolverine, yes he’s a big fan and he was disappointed too, you can play through a second time with the upgrades you’ve earned and overall it was a very playable game, my personal opinion was it felt like an extended demo version.
Die hard X-Men fans will buy it for their collection but otherwise I would recommend renting this one only.

Tony

I’ve personally been a member of Gamefly for three months now, if your one of the latest console owners like myself you know how expensive the latest games are and you can’t always rely on reviews before buying a game as i’ve found out from personal experience.

It makes sense to rent games first before you buy, for many reasons, you can build a collection of games that are really good and not games that you’ve regretted buying, or you haven’t forked out $60 on a game that turned out to be a load of rubbish then tried to trade it in at the gamestore for next to nothing, so why gamefly?

Gamefly has all the latest games for the latest systems, they also have plenty of the older games if that’s what you want, you get the games in the mail fairly quickly, you can rent 1, 2 ,3 or 4 at a time and prices start at around 8 and a half bucks for 1 game at a time, I personally rent 3 at a time for the ps2 and ps3, this works well for me as I have 4 boys too so there is always at least two up to date games in the house whereas I certainly couldn’t afford to buy a new game each week.

The ads don’t do this company justice as they tell you nothing, once you’ve been a member for 3 months you automatically get $5 game credits towards your next purchase or membership fee, you can also pay a “keep” price to keep a good game that you have and they are usually cheaper than the game stores, plus they will send you the case and booklet at no extra cost, also if you are still a member after a year you not only get the $5 every 3 months but you also get an extra 10% off purchases.

Lastly you can also trade your old games in at gamefly, and usually for much more than the game stores will give you up to $20 or more trade-in i’ve seen on the site which is excellent.  If you want to trade a game in you have to have been a member for 3 months, click on the trade-in button at the site, print out their pre-paid mailing label and send off your game, it’s that simple.

This definitely pays for itself in the long run, plus you don’t  have to waste gas travelling to the store finding they don’t have what you want, they even have games listed to put in your game Q before their release date.

My recommendation if your going to use gamefly is the 2 at a time plan for $22.95 per month, this might sound expensive but when you think two games per month at $60 each is very expensive and you don’t always know for sure your going to like them, during the course of a month you could easily get to play 10 new games or more and if you buy one or two a month anyway it pays for itself, it really does.

I’ve seen resident evil 5 just this week still being advertised at certain places for $40, I paid $24.99 for Resident Evil 5 from Gamefly and it’s a great addition to my ps3 collection, you can quit your membership anytime so you really have nothing to lose by trying them out.

I give gamefly 10 out of 10 as I don’t have a bad thing to say about them, I emailed them and they even phoned me instead of answering the email, how’s that for customer service.

Tony

I played this game for more than 6 months, I completed it at least 4 times, got every mercenary quest done, absolutely contagious this game was for me.

The storyline was very cool in the usual resident evil way, the merchant  guy was probably my favourite character, it was amazing when he first appeared, I couldn’t stop laughing he was just so cool. “what a ya buying?” ” what a ya selling?” reminded me of a pirate dude.

In fact when I came across a guy in Oblivion called Shady Sam he reminded me so much of the merchant  in resident evil 4 I went back and played it again for a couple of weeks.

There are so many different forms of enemies in this game and the boss fights are really enjoyable, a vast range of weapons and quick pace set this game up for me as one of the all time greats of the resident evil series.

I’m writing the review now as i’ve just ordered the new Resident Evil 5 for my ps3 and i’m hoping it’s going to live up to the same standards as number 4, the only preview i’ve seen on RE5 was a quick glimpse of Whesker so hopefully 5 will be better than 4, looking forward to it.

It can get difficult at times to upgrade your weapons so you do need to find all the gems which fit into the various treasures so the items are worth more, fitting items into items typically increases their value many more times than if you sold the item seperately.

Once i’d played through about 3 times was when I then opted to try the mercenaries, that is hard, your either going to enjoy it or get really frustrated with it and probably destroy your tv, it’s great fun, if you haven’t played Resident Evil 4 you should, definitely.

Overall rating i’m giving another 10 out of 10, I know it seems like i’m being generous with the ratings but i’m not, it mostly takes a top notch game to keep my interest now, I know what it takes to make a really good RPG so most of the games i’ll write reviews on will almost certainly be a 9 or 10.  I don’t really see the point in writing a bad review on a bad game, I just simply won’t recommend a bad game so if i’m not going to recommend something why write about it, makes sense to me.

Tony

Wow, one of the best games i’ve ever played, this game is awesome, i’ve just finished all that I can, meaning the basic game not the one with all the extras, it’s the only thing that stopped me buying it, i’ll wait until I can get the version with all the extra quests.

I did finally manage to get all the trophies for this game and as soon as I get the chance i’ll sync it with the playstation server for all to see.

Ok review time, there isn’t much else they could have done with this game which would have made it better, it really was that good.  The main quest again could be completed fairly quickly but with the amount of side quests and some very hard to find quest items and bobbleheads it made for many many more extra hours of game play.

There seemed to be traces of so many other good games in this one, in some cases it was very much like Morrowind and Oblivion with guns yet it was nothing like those two games, when one of my boys first saw Fawkes he said “cool, a better version of Nemesis” I thought that wasn’t a bad description really, Fawkes was pretty cool.

I have to admit there were two bobbleheads  I would never have found on my own, one in particular I ended up having to look for the location online, even after finding it I knew I would have never found it on my own, a place called Rocopolis  ( or similar ).

The quests in this game aren’t boring either, there always seems to be something new wherever you go, dialogue can play an important part but it’s not a have to, you can be very good and get rewarded for your goodness or you can be downright evil, or of course you can be a bit of both, it works on a good, neutral or bad karma rating.

I think the thing that is really going to draw the playtime out for you is if your like me and decide to go for every trophy in the game, I would say hunting all the trophies gave me an extra 20 hours of playtime at least,  I really enjoyed going away from the main quest to explore, the fact that you could get certain beings to hang around with you was cool, I used my extra buddies to carry an awesome amount of stuff when I would have had to go back to my house if i’d have been alone, and a dog too, how cool was that? Get your own dog who can hunt down meds or ammo for you, my next dog I get i’m going to call him “Dogmeat”.

Overall rating i’m giving 10 out  of 10, it was so enjoyable to play this game, I can’t wait to pick up the game of the year edition with the extra quests.

Tony

With Oblivion there are two ways to write this review, your either going to compare it to Morrowind or write it as a  totally seperate game, on it’s own.

To compare it to Morrowind could be disappointing and also unfair to both games so i’m just going to write this review as if I had never played another game, just Oblivion.

After being freed from my cell one of the first things that really grabbed my attention was the first encounter I had with an enemy, it was a rat, that’s not so unusual but the graphics and reality of how that rat behaved were unbelievable, so lifelike.

When you eventually work your wait out in to the actual world of Oblivion it’s astounding, the scenery, the grass, the trees, yes this sounds like i’m making a big deal out of something which should appear ordinary, but it’s not ordinary, this is the first game which actually had grass that moved in the wind, trees that dropped autumn leaves, like something more out of a movie than a game.

Without trying to make this review an epic, as I could write about it all day and still not get it all down, you have to play this game even if it’s just to experience what can now be  achieved with these new gaming systems.  For graphics and the way they work I have to give 10 out of 10, the trouble is I think the play has suffered a little probably because of the graphics, you can complete the main quest fairly quickly but again as with a few others the side quests are far and wide and are many which can give you a lot of hours of play time, this is certainly another game I will keep hold of as I will undoubtedly play it over and over again.

If your looking for a follow on to Morrowind you could be disappointed so treat it like a completely unassociated game and you’ll be fine, it’s definitely worth the money especially now as it’s a lot cheaper, I mean even Oblivion must be a couple of years old now.

My overall score for Oblivion would be around 8 out of 10 but that’s simply because I was expecting a Morrowind like game with added extra’s and in fact they took things away which I really liked in Morrowind, I know I said I wouldn’t compare the two games but it’s really hard for me not to when I spent more than two years playing Morrowind so even though I was amazed by the graphics, personally I would have preferred slightly less focus on graphics if it meant sacrificing what could have been a 10 out of 10 game,  I mean lets  face it, it was great to see moving grass and falling leaves but it’s not essential in a game, grass is grass and plays no relevance in the story so why spend so much extra time and resources making it sway in the wind, my guess is this was an experiment to show what really could be achieved with the latest technology and I can’t blame the makers for that, it’s nice to see, I just think ultimately something was taken away from the gameplay itself, still a great game to play though, go get it if you haven’t yet.

Tony

Hi all,

I know this review has been a long time coming but with a game like morrowind it’s going to take time to write a decent review, I know the game is a good few years old now but i’ve actually been playing it off and on for over two years and I never get bored with it.

First of all i’d like to say playing this the first time around was like the same feeling I had when I played my first Final Fantasy game back on the ps1, it was something unique, something I had never experienced before in terms of playing console  games.

It was so open ended, you could go anywhere, do anything, stay to the main quest or just play for days just completing side quests for the various guilds, it was and still is an amazing game, even after two years I still can’t honestly say i’ve completed every side quest.

I did complete the main quest about 3 times, each time with a different character and different attributes and have attempted to complete all side quests but never did get them all. This game was so involving it made me go and buy the walkthrough, a huge book with detailed information on every quest as I really wanted to be able to complete everything, I will eventually get everything done in morrowind and it will definitely go down in my history books as a classic, I don’t think I will ever let this game go, if you haven’t played it yet I really can’t think of a reason why, forget how quickly people say you can complete this game because they are talking about the main quest only, there is literally thousands of hours of game play with morrowind, it’s not something you could get bored with.

My overall rating for morrowind is 10 out of 10, you can’t really expect any more from a game, especially if your an RPG fan, this game is for everyone and you get to have a lot of fun with it, steal houses, decorate them with your spoils,  take on the quests of the televanni or one of the other houses and get your own fortress, an excellent all rounder, it will be a long time before this type of game becomes outdated.

Tony