Over a decade ago, the fantastic, and sadly defunct, Black Isle Studios put out a little PC game called Fallout; a game that takes place in the post apocalyptic future, heavily influenced by the post-WWII paranoia of nuclear war that griped so many back in the 50's. The Fallout world is essentially a look at what life would have been like had technology never advanced following WWII, and if the entire world had been subject to The Great War; a nuclear war that rendered the entire world a wasteland.

Despite being developed and published by an entirely new studio, Fallout 3 doesn't diverge from the pre-existing setting, aside from being located in Washington D.C.. You're still a vault dweller, emerging from your Vault-Tec vault a certain amount of years following the war, and you've still got a vast wasteland to explore. Bethesda, who everyone will know as the developers of the The Elders Scrolls series, picked up the license off of the now (semi?) defunct Interplay. Although the setting and overall feel of the Fallout universe wasn't drastically changed when Bethesda got a hold of the license, the style and gameplay took a radical departure. Bethesda ditched the over-head camera, instead opting to go with the first-person/third-person camera from The Elders Scrolls, and the turn-based combat has been wiped away in favor of a couple FPS conventions.


Your typical Super Mutant following a headshot from a pistol. Yeah...pistol.

Although Fallout 3 does take place in first-person, it isn't a shooter by any means. It is possible to play the game successfully entirely in first-person, but as the game wasn't built as a straight shooter, with all attacks and chances to hit based on stats and invisible die-rolls, your accuracy with a gun isn't always as reliable as how well you aim. That's where VATS comes in. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System is essentially the turn-based part of Fallout 3, although entirely optional, I went through the game using it almost exclusively. In VATS, the game is paused, and you decide which part of an enemy you wish to fire at. Depending on several different factors, including distance, weapon type, and your skill with said weapon, you'll get a percentage to hit on various parts of an enemies body. Things like the torso and legs are usually fairly easy to hit, while more deadly shots, such as the headshot, are normally more difficult. Once you choose your targets and the amount of times you want to fire, your amount of actions are based on AP points, the game will go into a cinematic style scene where the outcome of your choice is played out, normally with the exploding of an enemies head, or the loss of a limb. The combat stays fun and engaging throughout the experience, especially once you start to build up perks, get different weapons, and increase your skill points.

The brutality in Fallout 3 is so over-the-top, that it becomes fairly comical, and it seems entirely on purpose. The entire game world is filled with gags and amusing, yet painfully morbid, humor. Various perks, special abilities you choose as you level up, even extended the gore further. Bloody Mess, a perk that gives you a damage boost, also causes the majority of enemies you face to explode into a fountain of blood and gore, with limbs flying every which way, despite the fact you may have only shot them in the leg with a hunting rifle.

This over-the-top, brutal, sadistically funny style is sprinkled throughout the world. And although seeing an enemies head careening fifty yards away after a punch to the face is great for awhile, it does tend to wear, as it happens nearly every time you kill something. There are portions of the world where the immense amount of gore and sadistic nature of the inhabitants prove creepy, though, and sometimes overly so. When the game gets serious, it tends to go a little too far, which, at times, breaks some of the charm.

One huge part of the Fallout games has always been about stumbling across quests, and then solving them in the most sadistic way possible. Thankfully, that still holds true for Fallout 3. By now, everyone is well aware of the extremely publicized decision you get to make early on in the game, in which you choose whether to destroy an entire town, or save it, but there are many many more ways to prove how much of a complete asshole you can be. Clear a town of fire ants and find a lone kid there? Parents dead, all alone? Not my problem, kid! That jerk who picked on you when you were little? His mom is in trouble? Just pick the best option; “fuck you!” blow his head off and watch as his mom gets killed by radroaches. The options for being a dick, or being noble, are numerous, and pop up in almost every single conversation.


V.A.T.S. is the easiest, and quickest, way to rain destruction on your foes. It also results in exploding knee caps 2/3 times.

A problem that does strike the game, and rather quickly, is that it's actually fairly brief, especially considering the length of time it took to polish off Oblivion. The main quest is extremely short, clocking in at about 6 hours, depending on how quickly you find your objectives. It also ends rather abruptly, suddenly coming to a close long before you ever thought it would. Even more baffling is the decision to not allow you to continue messing around in the world following the last quest. Once it's done, it's done and the only way to go back is by loading a previous save file. There are numerous side-quests and even smaller mini-quests to complete to pad out the time, but unless you find them right away, you may find yourself finishing off the game before you see the majority of them. What's there is extremely satisfying, though, and many quests are a pleasure to undertake, specifically when it comes time to make some choices and completely screw with people.

Oblivion really had navigation down and, at times, almost seemed to have it down a little too much, as you'd be hand held from objective to objective. Navigation got some tweaks for Fallout 3, and while it holds your hand a lot less, it can be a problem at times, specifically when you get to the downtown area. Here, the various buildings are almost completely destroyed, and often times you'll find yourself having to travel through the vast, dreary, ghoul infested, and utterly repetitive underground train tunnels. While these range from extremely brief to overly long, they're all pretty much the same, and more often than not, you'll get lost, or come out somewhere you had no intention of going, often far away from your objective. It doesn't help that the navigation system on your Pip-Boy, what is essentially the menu screen, gets thoroughly confused about where you need to go to come out in the right section of the city. As most areas are completely blocked off, and only accessible via the tunnels, you'll need to go a very specific way to get there, and your Pip-Boy will almost always lead you in a confusing circle, or else to a dead end.

The “dungeons” in Fallout 3 follow the same basic design as the dungeons in Oblivion. That being that there are a few different kinds, and they all look exactly the same. In Oblivion, you would have caves, mines, ruins, Daedric gates or castles. In Fallout you've got caves, Vault-Tec vaults, train tunnels, office buildings and factory buildings. Each one feels like it was pieced together from the same construction set, and you'll notice many of the same trappings, enemies and scenery in each. Some are home to rather elaborate stories, while others are simply there for the sake of being there. There are many more unique “dungeons” than there were in Oblivion, but the majority are still minor variations of each other, spread throughout the world.


You'll slaughter at least a couple thousand of these before the game is over. You'll start to leave buildings as soon as you hear one. Annoying.

The fact that so much remains the same between Oblivion and Fallout 3 is a bit disappointing. While Oblivion was extremely impressive when it was released, things have since changed, and that engine is, unfortunately, beginning to show some age. Not only in terms of certain gameplay eccentricities, but in terms of the physical world itself. The impressive physics engine is less impressive this time around, with items flying off of shelves or desk with a mere nudge, or bodies flying insane lengths after being killed. The character models still look grotesque, and even the “attractive” characters would be welcome in a circus freak show. That being said, the environments are gorgeous, and the first time you step out of Vault 101 is extremely impressive, especially the draw-distance, which seems to go on forever. The wasteland...despite being a wasteland, is full of small details, and although objects in the outdoor environments are sparse, what's there still looks fantastic.

One omission made from Oblivion to Fallout comes in the form of the armor. While armor in Oblivion had taken a couple minor hits from Morrowind, (under clothes and over clothes, separate boots, gauntlets and pauldrons) the armor in Fallout 3 is nothing short of disappointing. The only equip-able pieces come in the form of general body armor and helmets. Being able to mix and match different pieces of armor was always a lot of fun in the Elders Scrolls games, and the fact that it's been dumbed down to this degree is disappointing.

In a couple ways, Fallout 3 does feel like a slightly dumbed-down version of Oblivion, except with guns and dismemberment. I'm not sure if this was something done intentionally, perhaps to make a stab at pulling in some of that ever present casual market, but it seems odd that they'd make that attempt, while simultaneously featuring some pretty hardcore stat-based combat mechanics. That being said, Fallout 3 is definitely one of those “sum of it's parts” games, where no single area of the game is spectacular, but as a package, it comes together extremely well, delivering a very satisfying experience. The combat is highly engaging, the world is sadistically amusing, and the quests are always entertaining. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.

I'd like to start out this review as simply as I possibly can. Buy this fucking game. After you've bought it and found out just how terrific it is, tell other people to buy it, spread the word, because that's the only way this series is going to be able to keep going. If it doesn't keep going, I'll find out who you are, come to your house, and fucking gut you like Professor Pester guts a Polollybear on a bad day. Trouble in Paradise is, in most ways, the same as the original Viva Piñata. You're given a patchy, almost infinitesimally small, spot of land to call your own, and with that land, you'll begin to attract the various species of Piñata that inhabit the colorful Piñata Island. As you attract different species, their presence will attract further Piñata, which will allow you to level up, thus allowing you to see more different species of Piñata, as well as give you a larger array of plants, vegetables and fruit trees to grow, which, in turn, attract even more Piñata.

Each Piñata species, now numbered at over 100, has a specific set of requirements that need to be met for various events to take place. For instance, you won't get a Moozipan (A cow who's name sounds like marzipan.) to appear until you have a certain amount of your garden covered in long grass, a certain amount of a specific flower growing in you garden, and have a milk churn kicking around in there somewhere. Some Piñatas have much easier appearance requirements, like being a certain gardener level, or having a specific Piñata as resident, but there are some you may never see until someone tells you about them.


Piñata are black and white until they become a resident.

Once a Piñata has revealed itself to you, you then have to meet certain requirements for it to visit, and then meet more requirements for it to become a resident, so getting most species isn't a total cakewalk, and you'll have to work on it if you really want that Fizzlybear.

Your sole reason for getting these Piñata to reside in your garden isn't just so they can hang out and sleep all day, though. You'll also have to romance your Piñata. This is good not only for getting the Romancer and Master Romancer awards that net you a high amount of XP, but it even goes towards making still more Piñata become resident. On top of that, you now have the ability to create twin Piñata, depending on how well you play the Romance mini-game for each species, which has been altered this time around, where as before you would simply need to reach the end of a maze to successfully breed your Piñata, this time around you need to collect the prerequisite amount of hearts before reaching your mate.

As in the previous game, you still have the ability to create a Wildcard Piñata, (A species of Piñata with a unique trait, such as a Sparrowmint with horns, or a Jameleon with a three-pronged tail.) but this time around your chances aren't 1 in 10,000 or whatever ridiculous stat it previously was, now your chances of getting a Wildcard is entirely up to your ability in the Romance mini-game. These changes to the various aspects of romancing Piñatas are certainly welcome additions, and make the component much more interesting than it was previously.

The romancing aspect wasn't the only portion of the game to get a face-lift, however. Piñata Central challenges have also had a complete overhaul. In the original Viva Piñata, you would randomly get a call from Piñata Central asking for single, or multiple Piñata of a specific species. This time around, there a very specific challenges mapped out for you to accomplish, and the majority are much more elaborate than ever before. You'll usually need to not only send them a specific Piñata, but a specific variant of that Piñata, sometimes wearing a specific set of accessories, and they may even need to know a trick or two. Once their Candiosity meter if full, (A meter measuring the amount of candy a Piñata is filled with, that replaces the mood meter.) done by either feeding the Piñata certain foods it likes, or simply feeding it a joy candy, you send him packing via the always present Piñata Central crate on the boundary of your garden.

On top of these rather large improvements to two fairly important aspects of the game, there are also any number of small tweaks and changes that make the game easier to play, while also polishing a couple of small problems that cropped up in the original. For example, you now have the ability to buy seeds and fertilizer without the need to enter Costalot's store. Simply pull up your normal menu, and select your seed bag for a quick and easy way to get the things you need without the hassle of loading screens.

Another change made is slightly iffy, but something that certainly adds a bit more challenge. In the original Viva Piñata, the Ruffians and Professor Pester were nothing but slight nuisances, sometimes wandering into your garden to fill in a pond or, vary rarely, break a valuable Piñata. This was easily solved by purchasing a Captain's Cutlass and placing it in your garden, warding off all Ruffian's and Pester alike. As this item was easily obtained before the Ruffian's or Pester could make much of an impact, their threat was significantly lessened. In Trouble in Paradise, however, the Ruffian's make their appearance much earlier, without the ward item in sight, and to make things more troublesome, it no longer has any effect on Pester.


Pester is a complete fucking douche!

While this change isn't so problematic in itself, the fact that you can be busy tending to something in your garden when Pester shows up, unannounced, decides to break something of value, and be none the wiser, can be slightly annoying. Some kind of indication that he crept in would be welcome. He becomes significantly less bothersome as you gain more and more money, because his attempts to break the Captain's Cutlass and allow his Ruffian's in is solved by simply buying another one, and you can also afford to pay him off whenever he shows up, if you see him, of course.

Something that often plagues sequels to games involving cleverly named creatures is that the new batch never quite live up to what came before it. Trouble in Paradise is no such game. The new Piñata are terrific, and their names are equally as great as the Piñata from the original. None of them stick out, and all are welcome additions. Piñata like the Limeoceros and Sarsgorilla fit in so well, you'd think they were in the same game as a Horstachio, which is exactly how it should be. One thing that is a little odd are the increased amount of bird-type Piñata. There was already a rather large amount in the original, but they've added no less than 5 more to TIP, which does seem slightly off.

Another new addition comes in the form of the two new regions, the Dessert Desert and the Piñarctic. The idea of these new regions is fairly simple; you travel to them, via a signpost on the outskirts of your garden, and encounter exotic Piñata that can't be obtained anywhere else. The way in which you capture these Piñata is simple. You purchase and lay a crate trap, then bait it and wait for a Piñata to wander into its maw. Once the Piñata is caught, you take the crate and head back to your garden. After you've unpacked the crate, the Piñata will be in “visitor” status, and you must complete certain requirements in order for it to become a resident, just like a normal Piñata.


The two new regions are home to some of the coolest new Piñata.

These regions are neat, but overly simple, and in the long run, slightly pointless. Once you've acquired the handful of Piñata that inhabit the region, there's no reason to go back.

One problem that continues to weigh things down is the “full garden” message you'll receive every so often. As in the first game, once your garden begins to get too full, you'll have to start getting rid of stuff in order to continue doing whatever you're doing. It was understandable in the first game, and they've certainly improved it in TIP, but its existence is still an annoyance.

There will be a point in the game where it gets much worse than previous, though, and that's when you have certain Piñata blocked from visiting your garden. When this happens, there will be some circumstance that won't allow a specific species to get to your garden, there are simple solutions, but most of them can take awhile. The problems lies with the fact that while the Piñata are stuck in the environment surrounding your garden, they're actually taking up garden space. This is a huge problem at certain points, and severely limits what you can do until you finally get those Piñata released. It's bad enough to have visiting Piñata and NPC's taking up garden space, but having these completely hidden, out of the way Piñata taking up ridiculous amounts of space is poor design.


Your garden will get full in no time at all.

However, no complaint will ever hamper the fun you'll have with this game. The addicting nature of it is enough to drive anyone to a couple sleepless nights, at the very least. The additions of things like easier to obtain Wildcards, fleshed-out Piñata Central challenges, and even weird additions like the trick system and Piñata games go a long way to further increasing the re-playability of a game that already had a ton to begin with.

Further extending said re-playability is the new co-op and online support. At anytime, you can have a friend hop into your garden and start puttering around with you. Online, you can cultivate your garden with up to 3 other people, working towards the same goal, or else just messing around. As host of the garden, you're able to set limits to what people can do, or else let them run wild and do whatever they please. It's a lot of fun to all be working at something in hopes of enticing some specific Piñata into the garden, or else performing a group beating on a sour with 4 shovels all at once. More impressive is the fact that there's absolutely no slow down or stuttering of any kind. The game runs as well online as it does off.

If there's one game you desperately need to support, it's Trouble in Paradise. I don't care how old you are, what kind of friends you have, or you sexual orientation. You need to own this game. The new Piñata additions are fantastic, the tweaks and polish made to the core design make the game even more enjoyable to play, and the overhauls on certain side aspects of the game will keep you playing for a long time. Co-op and Online play are terrific additions, and work extremely well. You'd not only be doing the industry a disservice to not buy this game, you'd be doing yourself one. With a $40 price-tag, you'd have to be insane not to pick this up.

Where to begin? The first thing to get out of the way is that this review will contain spoilers. It's nearly impossible to review a game like MGS4 in the way your average game is reviewed and still have it be totally relevant. In most cases, you'll be able to skirt around important plot points and gameplay surprises with some decent writing, and people will still be able to get a feel for the game. Where MGS4 is concerned, the plot points and the gameplay go hand in hand. I would call this more of a discussion about MGS4, rather than a strict breakdown of it's plot and gameplay intricacies.

The next thing I'll need to get out of the way is that I'm “new” to the Metal Gear series. When the first in the Solid series rolled around on the PS1, I never got the chance to do more than watch a friend play it for a few minutes at a time. When MGS2 hit, I didn't understand the excitement, but went ahead and picked it up anyways. After the end cut-scene following the Tanker chapter, I felt utterly bewildered, and anyone who's picked up a series at it's mid-point knows that confusing story elements often lead to boredom, and eventually abandonment. This is doubly so for the MGS series, as so much of the experience is in the story itself. Needless to say, I felt MGS2 was a write-off, and never touched the series again.

Recently, Konami released the Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection; a set of the first three Solid games, clearly aimed at people exactly like me. As my interest in the happenings of MGS4 continued, I felt it was necessary to take the plunge and play through all three previous games. What started as a friend betting me I'd never finish the original MGS, ended in what can be easily be called one of the longest and most mind-numbing marathons I had ever put myself through, as I not only played through all of MGS, but at two o' clock in the morning, I popped in MGS2 and played it to near completion. Exhausted, I finally succumbed to sleep around nine in the morning. When I awoke five hours later, I continued on to beat MGS2, then quickly followed it with MGS3. In three days I had finished the entire Metal Gear Solid saga, in two more I had gone on to finish the original MSX Metal Gear games as well. I went in a skeptic and detractor, and came out a serious fan of the series.

Which leads us to Metal Gear Solid 4, Hideo Kojima's magnum opus, a game that carries so much weight, not only in terms of fan expectations and ammunition for Sony zealots the world over, but in the continued success of the Playstation brand overall. In this way, I can picture Kojima in the classic Atlus pose, the burden of the Earth replaced by an 80gig Gunmetal Grey PS3. One shrug, and the expectations of fans and critics alike could be crushed.

MGS4, once again, pushes the boundaries of cinematic story-telling in videogames, as if that line comes as a surprise to anyone who's followed this industry at all for the past ten years. The sheer length and volume of cinematic cutscenes in the game could pad out several feature-length films, although, with exceptions, they probably wouldn't make for the most interesting ones. We're once again treated to what can sometimes seem like hours of endless exposition, and while less prevalent than in previous games, you'll still have to sit through the old Powerpoint-esque cutscenes used to explain more complicated matters in a visual way.


Snake is old now, but he's still a complete bad ass.

Kojima continues to run as many themes through these games as seems possible, and while some come off entirely heavy-handed, (We get it, PMC's. We know.) some are a little more subtle, and much more emotionally effective. In particular, the entire theme of age and becoming obsolescent can, at times, be extremely powerful. Snake is constantly struggling to be useful in a world where he's becoming less so. You can see the frustration and resentment in him as he watches and learns how the newest nanomachines give soldiers the abilities that used to come from living a life of war, without them ever having experienced it. Metal Gear REX, at one point the most dangerous weapon on earth, is found a rusted husk in the basement of Shadow Moses, completely forgotten, superannuated. Snake, once the most dangerous soldier on earth, is forced to man it, eventually taking on the newer generations of weaponry in the Gekko's and Metal Gear RAY.

It seems entirely possible that Old Snake is nothing but a metaphor for Kojima himself, as he continues to get older and moves on, allowing younger talent to continue creating Metal Gear games. The idea of passing on ones knowledge to a younger generation and allowing them to continue on is spoken of quite often in MGS4, and accurately mirrors Kojima's stance on the MGS series. Even old people have a purpose, as Snake so often shows as he's thrown through the ringer that is MGS4.

The afore mentioned sequence involving Metal Gear REX is one of many terrific moments MGS4 will be known for in years to come. While previous Metal Gear Solid games had certain sections that needed to be played a little differently, MGS4 throws several exhilarating action sequences out across the entire span of the game. In a clear throw-back to the Shagohod motorcycle chase with Big Boss and Eva in Snake Eater, MGS4 puts you, once again, on a motorcycle with Eva (Big Mama) a sequence that blurs, and sometimes erases, the line between gameplay and cinematics. Another line blurring sequence, and what could be the most memorable sequence in the game, is the final fight with Liquid Ocelot on top of Outer Haven. As the two old men throw down in what is easily one of the most dramatic and brutal fist fights in videogame history, you're treated to what amounts to pure fan service, as the old school MGS1 health bars fill-up on screen, and each subsequent health bar is pulled chronologically from each game in the series, complete with the most memorable theme from each. As the fight wears on, the difference between your actions and the actions in the cinematics become one and the same, culminating in a couple of what will surely become legendary Metal Gear series moments.

The epic nature and closure of the last playable portion of the game is dragged down somewhat by what follows. The last scene atop Outer Haven and the last lines of dialogue from Ocelot will no doubt leave you scratching your head for a good solid hour, at the end of which, you still won't have a clue what just happened. The wedding sequence that follows is much more fulfilling, and the final shot fired by Solid Snake, the shot made to protect the world from the mutated FOXDIE in his blood stream, felt extremely powerful. It gave the feeling that Snake, with his ultimate sacrifice, made the happy scene prior to his death possible. It was a tragic end to what amounted to a tragic life, and it was an utterly fitting conclusion. Unfortunately, someone at Kojima made the decision that this wasn't a good note to end on. What we get following a short credit roll may be some of the most angering and blatant loose end tying I've ever seen. I won't say anything specific about this scene, as it really needs to be seen to be understood, but needless to say, the unsatisfactory revelations made about various other characters during the game (particularly Vamp) seem like works of genius compared to the final scene of the game, and sadly, the entire MGS series.


This graveyard is where the Metal Gear Solid series comes to a close...in the worst way possible.

The gameplay of MGS4 mirrors the story pretty accurately in that while some portions are highly entertaining and rewarding, others can come of slightly clunky and less satisfying, and still others come off absolutely brutally. In particular, Act 3 of the game has you on a tailing mission, following a spy back to his base of operations. I don't think anything has ever stuck out so poorly in a game of this magnitude. Aside from the fact that many portions of it are broken or don't make sense, (the guy you're tailing will wait for you to dispose of guards, but will still freak out and run away if he sees you) it drags on far too long, gets extremely tedious, and just feels entirely unnecessary in every way.

More entertaining are the areas of the game where you're just left to do what MGS is all about - Sneaking. With the OctoCamo, you'll be able to blend into any environment, and easily fool enemies, as long as they don't get too close. If you do get caught, and you will, the game allows you to run-and-gun much more easily than any other entry into the series, and even features a few sections where that is your sole intent. Clearly taking a hint from Western developed third-person-shooters, MGS4 employs the now all too common over-the-shoulder view for it's shooting mechanics. You still have a first-person camera, but the guns takes up far too much of the screen, making the option all but worthless. It certainly works, and often better than most games where shooting is the only mechanic, but with the conversion to more Western friendly set of controls, the game does loose some of it's eccentric charm.


More third-person, over-the-shoulder shooting! Fantastic!

The most impressive thing about the enhancement of the MGS control scheme are the various additions made to the sneaking and CQC. You have now have more control of Snake's ability to avoid combat than ever before. While initially confusing, and with no help from the game itself (read the manual) the various options you have for avoiding detection and silently eliminating threats are not only more varied, but much more satisfying than they previously were. Abilities such as being able to play dead, roll across the ground, disarm opponents, and even go in for a consciousness stealing crotch grab. Helped along by the fact that being spotted doesn't necessarily mean instant alarm, (if you're quick enough to silence the seer) the ability to avoid detection has taken a significant upswing for the better.

And really, that's what MGS4 is. It's just better than previous games in the series. The cinematic quality continues to be unmatched in the industry, (didn't take long for GTAIV to lose that bullet point) and with the enhanced and less finicky controls, the game plays better than it ever has. While certain areas leave problems that still need fixing, (and what game doesn't?) Metal Gear Solid 4 is an extremely worthy addition to one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed series in videogame history.

MGS4 continues the tradition of the series, but breaks that tradition in ways that only serve to make the game better. Clunky, complicated controls get the boot in favor of a more streamlined experience, and added abilities add to the depth of the gameplay. The story is as good as it ever was, but the epic scale and varied environments lets Kojima run wild with more inventive plot points than ever before. Fans will no doubt be happy, and the simpler gameplay will allow newcomers to feel comfortable, but the highly self-referential and complicated plot line will leave them in the dust.