First Impressions: Monaco:What's yours is mine

First Thoughts on....

Monaco:What's yours is mine

 First off, I wanted to make it known this isn't a full review, just my initial impressions after about an hour with the game.
Monaco came out on Steam a few days ago, and it had a really catchy trailer, so I just haaaad to pick it up. I love heist stories, and thought that there was potential for a good game here. But my initial thoughts are.... Mixed.

The single player is DIFFICULT. This is compounded by the fact that there is no way to permanently incapacitate guards, or turn off lasers, or really clear things out in general. No matter how hard you may try, there's no way to reliably complete a floor unless you manage to get EVERY guard at the same time, a herculean task, to be sure. And I figure that when a shot from a shotgun turns someone into a SKELETON they're pretty much dead. But no, when another guard finds their skeleton (Which they invariably will, a shotgun blast is LOUD) they'll make a sound that sounds like they're hucking their organs into the other guy, and he comes back to life. Disgusting, to be sure. And incredibly annoying.

I'll come back with more impressions and an actual review soon. Until then, this is Nev with IIWYM, saying seeya soon.

Retro Reviews: Sonic Adventure 2

IIWYM presents...
A retro review of...
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle

Ahh, Nostaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalgia. It buoys up many a man's past childhood memories. And it is often deeeead wrong. People tend to look at their pasts, especially their childhoods, with a degree of what the germans like to call "Sunday eyes" or rose-colored glasses. Everything's romanticized to a large degree, especially with the amount of time. This game came out ten years ago, I was a small child who was just breaking in a shiny new gamecube. I logged many an hour into this game, and it shows. I still remembered the placement of most of the collectables and knew exactly what to do to grind out money. Ahh.

             Regardless, onto the game itself. Sonic Adventure 2 was released on the dreamcast originally, actually, but got a rerelease onto the Gamecube a few years later with a few more features. And most recently, it was ported onto Steam, where gamers curious to see what the fuss is about can get it. The premise is simple as many things were in games at the time: Doctor Eggman has released a doppelganger of Sonic (Who else) and sonic is put in prison for the actions of this doppelganger, and sets out to get to the bottom of things.Things escalate from there, and end up with
*Spoiler: To see the spoiler, highlight it with your cursor*
A giant floating space colony shaped like the face, and a plot to use it to blow up the United States, presumably, and cuts the moon in half!
*End spoiler*

The game plays out like a classic platformer style, much like the marios of the era, but with much more of a focus on speed. When it gets it right, the game feels great, and the sense of speed is better than you can get in some modern games even. But problems are starting to arise here that continued into the later games of the series, like the disasterous Sonic '06. But there were a number of reasons that game was bad. This one is good.

In fact, its very good. It ate up an entire weekend of my time, and I loved it. However, the graphics are really showing their age, being well over a decade old now. The game still has a high degree of replayability even to this day. So I say, give the game another shot if you've got some spare change laying around. The core game is STILL about seeing how fast you can run though an impressively designed level, and the soundtrack. That glorious soundtrack is still intact. As soon as I heard City Escape playing again, I was right there, ten years old, sitting in front of that TV with my shiny gamecube. For the nostalgia alone, I'd say pick this up on steam. You'll need to fiddle with the keyboard controls if you lack a gamepad, and in my version there was some occasional significant game lag, but nothing that really detracted from the overall experience.

Sonic Adventure 2 recieves a...
BUY IT CHEAP

It's still good, and I definitely recommend a buy if you've got a weekend free and feel like some nostalgia.

This has been Nev with IIWYM reviews, signing off. Look forward to the Mass Effect Retrospective, featuring a guest contributor!

IIWYM: Terraria

Hey everybody, this is Nev with IIWYM, here to give my thoughts on Terraria. I've not been posting for a while, but I'm going to be coming back soon with more reviews!
On the note of the Darksiders II review I've been talking about and was the first thing I was GOING to review... That's been indefinitely delayed. I haven't played it in some time... And I don't WANT to play it again to refresh my memory. That should be a tenative review for now.

Anyways, I wanted to put some words out there about Terraira if you haven't heard about it already. Terraria is a complex game, the closest would be Minecraft on a 2d plane, but that doesn't really do it justice. Your "Goal", if it can be called that, is to defeat the Wall of Flesh in the underworld and release the spirits of light and darkness. They tell you this nowhere in the game, and unless you check the wiki, you might never learn. But fortunately for you, I HAVE checked the wiki, so I can tell you that even though I haven't been through everything there is to go through, Terraria still has a TON of replay value and entertainment.

It even has multiplayer! It's horrible multiplayer that uses a server system from the 1990's, and I thought I was finally done digging through IP addresses. I thought we'd finally moved on from that nightmare. I was wrong...

Anyways, Terraria has alot to do. You start with a zero starting point and slowly build up a town, hire NPC's, gather money, dig massive caverns, hunt for underground treasure, explore the jungles... There's TONS of value here.

It would really take me multiple pages to talk more about it, so let me give you my comparison to the other obvious world shaping game: Minecraft. I have to say, I think this game is better. The world feels more complete, the NPC's have valuable functions, the look is a bit nicer rather than Minecraft's and the sprites feel better, and the "Gamefeel" is great. It's very easy to lose yourself in it and the progression is much better designed. You advance through material tiers and areas much more fluidly than Minecraft, which has some, while more realistic, not as fun material tears. Plus, Terraria is much more heavily FANTASY, with mythical materials, eyes of cthulu, and so on and so forth.

I suppose this is timely, precluding the release of Terraria on consoles with a ton of updates that the creator assures us will NOT ever appear on PC versions, which really makes him come across as a real $%#&, considering Terraria was promised support and updates over time to keep it fresh. It got ONE update, and console people are going to get a new final boss, new material tiers, new monsters, and other tweaks that PC gamers who have been playing for years will NEVER SEE, by all accounts.

Anyways, I've ranted long enough. Terraria is currently a steal, as I don't think it's been any more than ten dollars for a game I've clocked 117 hours into. If you haven't bought it already, do so.
Terraria gets a BUY ANY PRICE.

Meanwhile, coming up on my schedule for IIWYM is a Mass Effect retrospective, a double review, and a few thoughts on why you should give games a chance even if a trusted reviewer hates them through a game that really made me the person I am today. I owe alot to this game that for the time shall remain secret.

With that, this is Nev for IIWYM reviews, signing off.