Infamous stars another generic, gravel throated bodybuilder with a buzz cut. But actually that is really the only part of the game i don’t like. The good parts include amazing graphics, smart AI, and satisfying combat. The city you play in is sandbox style (meaning you can roam anywhere, not just the specific missions. There is also a “karma” system similar to fallout 3; you can be good or evil. And, also like fallout 3, almost anyone who plays the game will be evil, mainly because evil means red lightning.

The graphics in the game really take advantage of  the PS3′s amazing processor. Everything looks incredibly realistic, from Cole’s head stubble to the individual nails in the train tracks.

The story looks pretty good from what i can tell from the demo, but not that convincing. For instance, Cole’s home city gets bombed, it makes some electric explosion, and instead of Cole being vaporised, he gets superpowers. I know that is basically how every classic superhero/villain got their powers, but for being a game from 2009, the devolpers really should have thought that  through more.

The combat is nothing short of brilliant. The controls are very intuative, and the moves are inventive and varired. There is the basic lighting bolt strike, and the slightly more advanced shock grenade and shockwave.

So, Infamous basically looks like a really really great game, for only playing the demo. But then again the same can be said for mirrors edge, and that sucked. Overall 9/10 for the demo.

In GTA4 you play Nico Bellic, a badass Russian who came straight from the motherland to make a new life in New York – sorry – Liberty City. The first few hours of the game are all tutorials, escort missions, and going out on dates, yes dates. In GTA4 you go on virtual dates with virtual girlfriends. I guess Rockstar figured it was their job to teach their target audience how to get a girl. And for the next few hours of the game you continue to do completely mundane tasks: driving people places in a taxi, watching TV, buying clothes etc. I began to wonder where the fun parts where that you heard your friends talking about, like running over grandmas with a eighteen wheeler and switching between forward and reverse over your unsightly victim’s mangled body. So I took the only logical route, ditch the story mode and use all the cheats to get all the fun guns like the RPG, which would normally take around 20 hours of story mode game play to achieve.

So, in short, GTA4 is exactly what I said it was before: a merciless homicide simulator. But if you are looking for a game with an intriguing storyline, interesting characters, and actually some freaking action, look elsewhere.

Overall: 7/10

The graphics in this game are nothing short of stunning, but that is to be expected by most PS3 games. The city you skate in is San Vanelona, a hybrid of San Francisco, Barcelona, and Vancouver, along with a ton of completely new terrain created by the developers. San Vanelona is broken u into four parts, the Suburbs that has a ton of backyard pools and hidden parks, The Res, which is an all downhill, ledge filled cross work of streets that funnels you into the midline of the two other sections: Downtown and Old Town. Downtown has the best handrails and massive stair sets, but each object is usually guarded by San Vanelona’s police force, who’s sole aim in life is to violently shove skaters off of their boards and steal $50. Old Town is all plazas and long manual pads perfect for those tre flip to nose manuals.

The other great thing about Skate is that it is still and excellent game even if you don’t skateboard. It is so realistic that it might get you into skateboarding, but even if you don’t and never will skateboard in real life, you will love this game anyway.

One of the only problems in this game is that the two player sucks. There is no split screen free roam like there was in Tony Hawk’s games, so this means I have to take turns playing one player with my brother, because the Spot Battle and S.K.A.T.E. Modes are just mediocre (S.K.A.T.E. is like H.O.R.S.E. except on a skateboard).

All in all, skate is a really well put together game, with hours and hours of fun stuffed into a single Blu-Ray disc. Defiantly worth buying; over all score is 8.5/10 only because two player sucks.

5) Old Mario
What would a top ten list be without everyone’s favorite plumber in suspenders? I say old Mario, because Nintendo started making horrible Mario games ever since Super Mario Sunshine. Since then, the Mario horse has died but Nintendo still continues to beat it to get every last drop of what at one point was “fun”. So in this list I put the Mario from the original Super Mario Bros.

4) Gordon Freeman
Gordon Freeman is not really a character, because he never actually talks in any of the half-life games. No one really knows what he is like, but that is all part of the mystery that makes him interesting. For all we know, he could be a blubbering idiot who is two busy wiping the drool off of his chin to respond to Alex’s quippy remarks. But somehow that wouldn’t match with the storyline, seeing as he did work at a prestigious science center prior to become the crowbar wielding homicidal we all know and love.

3) Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale is one of the more recent characters to be introduced to video gaming. He is the sole survivor of an army consisting of 125,000 that went to war against the alien/mutant chimera. Hale is also one of the more interesting characters: he starts off completely human but as you progress through the game he becomes more and more alien like as he is slowly catching the chimera virus. This makes game play much more fun because at each cinematic I found myself looking for each new nuance of alien in his rugged features.

2) Captain Price
Playing the officer of the protagonist, Soap McTavish form Call of Duty 4, Captain Price wields not only extremely powerful guns but one of the most bitchin’ mustaches ever to grace the world of video gaming. As I played through story mode on my computer, I found myself captivated by the light mist effects shining off of his orange whiskers in the glow of a Middle Eastern moonlight. Defiantly the highlight of the entire campaign mode.

1) Clank
The curiously oblivious Clank plays the robot side kick of Ratchet, the small furry human thing who is the main character of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. Seemingly impervious to gunfire as well as sarcasm, Clank rides comfortably on Ratchets back, backpack style, the whole game, sometimes popping out to use his arms as helicopter propellers to slow down Ratchets fall from various drops. In all of the five or so games that the Ratchet franchise has released, Clank remains to be the sole source of laughs with his dry humor and occasional sex jokes.

Resistance Two has three different game modes, each to suit your personal FPS playing style. The first is Campaign mode, where you fight against computer players with other computer players. The second is Cooperative mode, where you fight computer players, but assisted with seven other people online. The last is Competitive mode, where you fight other people online, assisted by other people online.

Campaign mode is exciting from the beginning: the first enemy you see in the game is a ten story tall behemoth of an alien machine. Of course, you end up taking down this machine in a wonderful display of fireworks and intestines, but that’s a little later in gameplay. The rest of campaign is fighting mutants with your other AI buddies, in different terrains such as a beautifully panoramic view of San Francisco in flames, a swampy, forresty area that boasts beautiful mist effects, and an eerily deserted suburbia with giant mutant egg sacs bubbling from the walls and ceiling, fresh for the exploding. Overall, the campaign mode can be a little repetitive (go here, shoot them, rescue this) but the different landscapes, weapons and surprise bosses and swarms will keep you intrigued.

Cooperative mode is a class based, random objective map-based style of gameplay. There are three classes: Spec Ops, who deal large amounts of damage from a distance in a short amount of time, Soldiers, who have huge guns that seemingly never have to reload and have nearly infinite health, and Medics, who drain health from enemies and re-distribute it among their group members. It seems that the folks at Insomniac (developers of Resistance) realized that in every other game, the medic is always the bitch class who gets no experience and sits around, while everyone else boasts their muscles and gets all the kick ass guns. Resistance takes pity on the poor medics this time, making them the bitch class where one shot from the medic gun not only brings group members from dead to chipper, but also gives more experience then my Spec Ops ass would get the entire game.
But more on the skeleton of Co-op: each map has randomized objectives, ie: sprint here, kill this horde, shut down this turret, rescue this team, shut down this generator, kill this giant boss, etc. The beauty of this is that each time you play a map, it is a completely different experience. One time you play the Bryce Canyon map, you start off by fending off an ambush of Grims, and another time, by shutting down their main generator. It leaves you feeling satisfied each time, because each time is a new challenge.
The leveling up system is unique to each class; each class unlocks a new weapon, berserk, armor, or weapon upgrade every two levels. The only bad thing I could say about the entire system of Co-op is that the upgrades are every two levels, but overall, it is really really fun.

Competitive mode is like most FPS shooter online modes, online people battling online people. There are different game modes, like free for all, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, but the real fun lays the mode called skirmish. Skirmish has two teams, red and blue. But each team has six squads of five people that battle other enemy squads for control points, nodes, and killing primary targets. Each objective pushes each squad to corners of the map, and then slowly funnels everyone in to a giant 60 person tornado of death, usually focused around one point. There is a similar leveling system to Co-op, except you get new stuff every level instead of two. Also, you start off with every gun from level one, so you don’t get what I call P90 syndrome, where the noobs get dominated by the higher level players with all the amazingly good guns.

So overall, I would say the Resistance Two is a great game, definitely worth buying. I give it a 9/10.

So throughout the upcoming posts of the best and worst video games to grace the PS3, you will know who the real winners are. I will review the painstakingly terrible and beutifully crafted games alike. Soon you will have the confidence to walk into gamestop and pick out your new favorite game with ease.

So, without further ado, I present to you PS3 Game Reviews