About Michael Cheng

The journey of a little girl and her teddy bear.. sorta.
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Resident Evil Revelations 2: The Struggle was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $4.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

The Struggle is a side story that bridges the gap between the end of Claire’s campaign and the end of Barry’s campaign and features Moira Burton and a character who was introduced in Episode 3 . As such, for continuity purposes, this episode should not be played until after finishing the main game.

The goal of the extra episodes seems to be to provide an alternative gameplay experience to the original campaign, and The Struggle does not shy away from that. About two minutes into playing The Struggle, I was already dubbing it “Moira Gear Solid 3,” as it contains small animal hunting for rations as well as stealth sections. After a hunting segment, multiple battles take place that function remarkably similar to Revelations 2‘s Raid mode only with the frailty of using a campaign character.

Is this extra episode worth playing?

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Metamorphosis was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Many elements that contributed to the excitement of the first three episodes are missing and players may be left with a strange sense of both satisfaction and disappointment.

Claire’s campaign starts off after the climactic boss fight of Episode 3: Judgment in the middle of the tower nearing the top. Little did I know, the boss fight was the coup de grâce to Claire’s adventures. Claire’s campaign is very short with the top time on Xbox One clocked in at 6 minutes 44 seconds as of time of writing. The one major scene is incredibly anti-climactic with no player interaction at all. It feels like the player went on a great big adventure with Claire for nothing. With brief puzzles thrown in, less than double digit enemy count and players playing most of the episode with a countdown timer, there isn’t much positive about this segment other than at least its short to replay. I can understand not putting in two major bosses in one episode or starting an episode with a major boss fight but one can wonder if the episodes could have been segmented better.

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Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 was developed and published by Halfbrick Studios. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $14.99. A copy was provided by Halfbrick Studios for review purposes.

Who knew fruit could be so fun? Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 is the follow-up to the popular Fruit Ninja Kinect on Xbox 360. As an avid Xbox 360 Kinect user experienced with games such as The Gunstringer and Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, I was used to the usage and limitations on the last-gen device. Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 was my first Xbox One Kinect-only game (Blue Estate being my first Xbox One Kinect-optional game), so I was eager to experience it.

The gameplay is very simple. Slice, dice, chop and cut up fruit to gain high scores. Along the way, different obstacles will attempt to impede your path to success. With the power of Kinect, players will feel like they are in the moment on screen and look good in the process. But can such a simple concept carry a second game in this franchise?

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OlliOlli was developed by Roll7 and published by Curve Digital on Xbox One. It was released on March 6, 2015 for $8.49 for Xbox Live Gold members and will be $9.99 once the release sale ends. A copy was provided by Curve Digital for review purposes.

OlliOlli is an endless runner skateboarding game that prides itself on using buzz words like “rad” and “sick.” It’s not a mixed bag of tricks, though. With no story and no multiplayer except for limited leaderboard options, there is only one thing to do: perform gnarly stunts and survive levels.

As a forewarning, the graphics are very underwhelming and are border on what might be considered the bare minimum to get by. So much so that when OlliOlli was demonstrated in front of a live audience, multiple people were quick to judge it as a “bad game,” in PG terms, for its graphics alone. Graphics shouldn’t define a game in a negative fashion, though: it’s entirely possible to have a beautiful-looking game and still be unpleasant to play. The inverse is also true; a game can be very basic and still be incredibly fun. Besides, graphics often don’t age well. How will a person look at current modern graphics in 10-20 years from now? Likely not as favorably as they do today. With that out-of-the-way, let’s get started on the features.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Judgment was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 10, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode 3: Judgment takes players on a ride that includes more action, more action puzzles, more explosions and more ways to die. Players may notice that one or more of this episode’s sections feel like a tribute to the older games in the series.

Claire’s campaign starts off with Claire finding a message left by a character from Episode 2 to go to a factory nearby. Through a series of wild events, players are taken through a few factories, the sewers and eventually into the interior of the island tower before climaxing at the game’s first major non-optional boss fight. Judgment contains more action puzzles than the first two episodes combined, and on the first playthrough, players can easily die if they don’t think on their feet. It’s nice to finally see a real boss fight this time around. A word of warning to streamers using the Twitch app on Xbox One, though: although you can stream the actual boss fight itself, the scene after that is blocked and will show the Twitch pause screen until you reach the result screen. Very disappointing.

Barry’s campaign continues on from the encounter at the end of Contemplation. After the cut-scene plays out, the player starts off in a drained version of the sewers in Claire’s campaign before heading to a deserted mining facility. This segment tries something different: sending the player on an extended fetch quest involving carrying a cube from one location; dropping it on a conveyor belt to be transferred; and repeating a few times before it eventually reaches its destination. Some players may not like the duration of this fetch quest, myself included. It was tolerable the first time and a major annoyance on every subsequent playthrough.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Contemplation was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released March 3, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Fun fact: one of my favorite characters in the Resident Evil series is Jim Chapman from Resident Evil Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak File 2. His classic line was “my life is s—.” So hearing Resident Evil Revelations 2: Contemplation‘s Pedro Fernandez spout out, “my life is awesome” in a similarly whiny tone to Jim’s made me crack a smile.

Contemplation has Claire arriving at a seemingly deserted fishing village surrounded by fellow TerraSave members that were abducted and dropped on an unknown island. Once you’re allowed to leave the bar, you can step outside and wander around the fairly open village. This area is reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, and the events that occur during Claire’s campaign continue to follow that game’s vibe. Players will encounter one or more boss fights, which can be challenging on higher difficulties if you’re unprepared from a lack of ammo, a lack of health items or even having the wrong type of ammo. All in all, Claire’s section is a high-octane action sequence with many segments that instill a false lull of safety.

Barry’s campaign follows in the footsteps of Claire’s campaign as he attempts to visit Moira’s last known position. While the tougher monsters exist in Barry’s second episode campaign, the section as a whole is fairly uneventful. There is only one major event in Barry’s segment that might not even happen depending on the actions taken in Claire’s section. Barry’s episode two campaign was very disappointing; however, it’s where most of the major story reveals occur, preventing it from being a complete waste of time.

The story is making good strides forward and has the potential to be captivating — despite being made up of nothing but convenient plot twists and reveals — and the major villain is an interesting throwback to a previous Resident Evil title that very vaguely mentions this character.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Penal Colony was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released February 24, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

As a fan of classic puzzle-style Resident Evil games and someone who has played 270 hours into Resident Evil Revelations 1‘s Raid mode, I had high hopes for Resident Evil Revelations 2 and expected its gameplay to be similar to its predecessor. The kind of high expectations that would fall short.

Admittedly, Episode one is a good game. In fact, it’s the kind of good that fans of Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 would enjoy. The environments feel wide open and danger is ever-present in the form of enemies waiting to ambush around the next corner. Suspense is limited as there is usually enough ammo to handle any situation, and there are mandatory fight segments that require the player to fight back. You will, however, dread of running out of ammo on harder difficulty settings when waves of enemies arrive to cause harm.

Claire’s campaign starts the episode with intrigue. Who did it? Why? Where are we? You’re left to wander around a desolate, rundown detention center while encountering strange humanoid characters that are really happy to bite into you. Barry’s campaign comes in with the intent of having you pick up the pieces from the events of Claire’s campaign. Barry and Natalia venture through the same detention center that Claire and Moira found themselves in before progressing through dark forest areas and eventually making it to the radio tower that Claire and Moira used at the end of their segment. The titular revelation I encountered at the end of all this was, somehow, both expected and unexpected.

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“So much suffering… You don’t even know what to be afraid of yet.”
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Joining the fray of games being released in March is LA Cops, a ’70s-based top-down shooters featuring six playable cops with mustaches and aviator glasses cleaning up the mean streets of LA. Players take control of two different cops at the same time and handle the duties of law enforcement in 13 different levels of gameplay with up to five different upgradable unique weapons.

Let the bad guys know that LA Cops are on the case on March 13.

Take a look at the groovy trailer below.

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