South Park: The Stick of Truth Xbox 360 Review

After a mountain of delays, a near chance of the game being cancelled with the demise of THQ, The Stick of Truth is finally here. The question remains, should you accept this quest or should you move on to brighter things?

Playing South Park: The Stick of Truth, requires quite a bit of knowledge of the show to get every little inside joke, but it's not necessary. This is South Parks Arkham Asylum, it is the redemption of every terrible game that came from the franchise prior. It is amazingly in depth, incredibly funny, and sometimes even over the top disgusting. But you will have a smile on your face for the entire adventure. The graphics are on par with the show, it looks, feels, and sounds exactly like South Park should and that is awesome. It's amazing how relevant everything in the game is, and that you never become tired of the story ark or interacting with the residents of South Park, after over 10 hours of game time.

Every inch of South Park is open for you to explore, and it is a treasure trove of throwbacks to old episodes. Opening up closet's became an obsession because they were filled with treasures seen in old episodes. Every piece of loot also relates back to the show, the level of detail in the game is a testament to how much care went into making it a fantastic representation of South Park and it's lore.
The game plays like any traditional RPG, you gain levels by completing tasks and winning in battle, you can unlock fast travel stations, buy and sell your equipment, and the game even has a catagory in your inventory for junk to make selling it off easier. Side Quests are rewarding and interesting as the NPC's who give them to you. Gaining friends on Facebook offers up perks, the more friends, the more perks you will unlock, and you can find and buy upgrades for your armor and weapons. The game is extremely well rounded in this respect, the world is carefully crafted, and the rewards feel like carry a lot of weight in the battles ahead.

The combat is centered around a turn-based mechanics, you will for the most part always have a buddy, if you get the first hit prior to combat beginning you will get first hit, followed by your buddy, and then each of your enemies. You can use one potion or summons, then one melee, ranged, or ability attack per turn. Once you get used to the combat it becomes incredibly easy, if you apply the right perks, and weapon and equipment add-on's you pretty much become invincible. Which is a big problem the game faces, the combat becomes overly repetitive and like stated before you will seldom be challenged once you get some of the better abilities and add-ons. The game also features a ton of quick time events, which are absolutely horrible. I jammed down on my A button as fast as I could and failed over and over, only to have my brother do the same thing and succeed every time. sometimes when attempting to block even if you hit the correct button at the exact moment you are supposed to it's as if the game doesn't register that you did it. This also happened a lot when trying to pull off special attacks, it's annoying but could easily be patched. You are restricted to 4 classes all equipped with their own special abilites. The Fighter with the awesome Roshambo ability, the Mage whom I didn't play, The Thief who comes equipped with Backstab like most RPG's, and finally the Jew who later in the game and call in the Plagues of Egypt. Outside of abilities they really don't differ all that much, and you can wear any piece of armor, and use every weapon in the game regardless of class.

The story centers around you being the new kid in South Park, and as you make friends you are drawn into the usual over blown kids game gone awry. The writing, voice acting, and characters are all top notch. It really does feel like playing a 10+ hour episode of South Park, one would think that might become incredibly annoying but it never does, the humor is spot on and really drives you to want to know what happens next all the way up to the ridiculous final minutes of the game. Your character never speaks something Trey Parker says they did because he always hated having people in games talk for him, because they would always say things he would never say. Wether you are dealing with Al Gore, fighting Mongolians, or exploring the 8-bit landscapes of Canada the game is what every South Park fan has been waiting for. Add in all the awesome jabs at gaming itself and the game is a perfect storm.

After it all South Park: The Stick of Truth is a fantastic romp through the snowy mountain town so many of us love. It's relevant, irreverent, offensive, and awesome. Unfortunately once you complete the game there isn't a whole lot of a reason to go back to it, I did two runs once as a Fighter gaining most of the hilarious achievements, and a second as the Jew class which helped me mop up the game and give me 100% of achievements. I bought the game day 1 and finished it completely the following weekend. Hopefully there will be more DLC otherwise the time you get in South Park will be limited to at the most 4 runs, if you wanted to try out all the different classes, and at that point the combat will probably wear so thin on your nerves you probably won't even make it through all 4 runs. So with the repetitive combat, once it's over it's over gameplay, and annoying quick time events I give the game an 8.5 out of 10. I really hope there is DLC, because I would love to revisit the wonderful world of South Park, but it would have to be new material to get me to do it.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Xbox 360 Review

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is the latest installment in the ever popular Assassin's creed franchise, but does it add/improve anything to the series that is worth checking out. The last entry to the series Assassin's Creed III, centered around the Native American assassin Connor Kenway, the game received a mix of praise and dismay. One of the major things talked about was the addition of Naval Combat, while Assassin's Creed III's Naval system was simplistic at best, and on some missions (The Giant and The Storm) down right frustrating. I never truly felt attached to the Aquila, it was a nice vehicle added by Ubisoft to break up the core gameplay. But I otherwise felt that AC III had officially hit a stride in the series where things felt balanced and fast paced.

I'm happy to say Assassin's Creed IV takes this formula and vastly improves it. I will start with the story and work my way around to the finer details. The story centers around the down-on-his-luck type of pirate named Edward Kenway, which would make him the Grandfather of Connor the protagonist from AC III. The beginning of the game starts with the ship Edward is on being attacked by an unknown assassin. When the ship crash lands on a island Edward chases the assassin down and finds himself in the middle of an ancient war between the order of Assassin's and the Templars. The story is well constructed and all the NPC's you will come across in your adventures around the Caribbean feel engaging and interesting. You get the sense that all around you there is mystery and another plot twist is just around the corner. The narrative also manages to tie up the Kenway lineage in a nice fashion.

The combat is mainly unchanged from the third installment, you can still approach combat in various ways, adding in the option to take a ranged non-lethal approach with the blowgun, even giving you berserk darts that will cause you target to attack everything around them giving you an option to sneak past undetected. Counters still work in the same way and feel easy to pull off even when taking on multiple opponents. You can purchase more powerful swords, and up to 4 guns to have on you at one time, allowing you to take out 4 enemies at one time. The 4 gun scheme seemed a little weird at first but as the game progressed it became cannon in crowd control, I felt utterly bad ass taking out 4 people at one time and then launching straight into cutting down the next 9-10 guys in a counter heavy frenzy. Hopefully Ubisoft will keep this scheme around because it works incredibly well.

The Naval portion of the game has been drastically improved upon from the third game. Where-as in III I felt detached from my ship and merely completed Naval Contracts and the like to gain money, supplies for crafting, or because I wanted a 100% synch. AC IV breathes a life into the Naval portions that feels addicting, I loved sailing around and wreaking havoc on everything around me. The Jackdaw (Edward's ship) can be upgraded with a host of enhancements that will make the ship more durable and more of a force on the seas. You can board ships you attack allowing you to choose between simply sinking the ship and as a result repairing yours, or you can gain more crew members and adding a new ship to your fleet. The ship boarding is a thing of beauty, there is so much chaos happening in such a small space that it really instills a sense of awe when your crew is swing in and cutting down everything in sight. You can also take on Legendary ships, which are better not attempted until you have gained enough upgrades to make the Jackdaw a formidable foe.

Once you have gained some ships you can then send them on small missions which take place in a turn-based mechanic that you will seldom ever fail at. This is probably one of my biggest gripes about the game, this mechanic really feels useless in the grand scheme of things. You can control it using an Android or IOS device and it functions pretty well on those, but I seldom found myself using it outside of when I needed it to open up something else in the game. Also Ubisoft used the cheap mechanic of by making waterways safe, they become quickly overrun again sometimes literally 2 minutes after you secured it, which in-turn forces you to keep plugging away at a never ending, and boring mechanic that pulls you out of the main game.

The exploration in the game is probably the most vast in the game's history, there is so much to do and see that you really can get lost in it. You can explore all the various islands of the Caribbean,  and once you gain the upgrade for your ship you can use the diving bell to explore beautifully detailed and engaging underwater segments. You can also engage in spearing sharks and whales, which feels cool the first couple times you do it, but quickly becomes an expendable throw in. There are the usual extra areas to explore such as smuggler's dens, forts, and plantations that you can clear for more supplies. I really never tired of exploring and doing the optional missions. The world AC IV takes place in, is honestly one of the best in franchise.

Being as I don't have a PS4 or Xbox One, and my preferred platform is the Xbox 360, the version I played was the 360 version. Even with that being said, the graphics are absolutely stunning. From the look of the rain, to the gorgeous underwater segments, the game looks beautiful even running on last gen hardware. The game does experience the occasional frame-rate drop, or the occasional rendering issue the game runs well.  I didn't experience nearly as many issues play AC IV as I did with AC III. I definitely didn't fall through the world or anything, like many did with III. If you have a PC capable of rendering high resolution graphics for today's games or you own a Next-Gen console you may want to pick it up on one of those, but if you are restricted to last gen, you will still get pretty much the same experience here.

The game continues add multiplayer to the mix, giving you all the same mechanics found in AC III. The multiplayer plays exactly as it has in previous titles, so, if you didn't like it before, then you still won't like it now. Players still run around aimlessly with little to no care for stealth or mission objectives. I have never really been in to AC multiplayer, and this game didn't change my mind any. I played it for achievements and pretty much nothing else. Speaking of achievements, there are nice and varied, not terribly difficult, but adding enough challenge to the package to keep you playing. They added a social aspect, allowing you to share locations of White Whales or Treasure Chests, but I found that unless you have many friends playing through Uplay you will not find very many of these. I really wish they would have made this portion a little more accessible, I had one friend who was actively playing when I was, and I have yet to come across a "Social Chest", nor did his Uplay feed ever reflect when he found anything or when I did. Uplay is a nice extra feature, but in trying to make it more tied to the game they just made it annoying.

All in Black Flag exemplifies what is good about Assassin's Creed, and proves why it is still one of the deepest games out today. Hopefully they can continue the trend with Assassin's Creed: Unity and it's last-gen counterpart Comet. So, if I had to give it a grade out of 10 it would be a 9, docking it for the lack of inventiveness with multiplayer, a function that I really wish they would do away with. The useless and annoying integration of Uplay and Kenway's Fleet also take away points, but all in all the game is an excellent package and should be picked up if you love the games, are new to them, or if you fell of the franchises bandwagon and are looking to get back into it.