“You’re my mind slave now!”

Now there is one single-player campaign that you can choose to leave open for people to join on either your side or the enemies side, or close it so no one can join.  Closed or open you can forget about the pause button, that is a thing of the passed apparently which striked me as being rather odd even during a closed single-player session.  Right from the menu it is as simple as that with two modes available ‘Host Portal’ or ‘Hack Portal’.  Host Portal which you control the main characters and you can have up to five other people join on your side as well as the enemy side.  Hack Portal is where you hack into another persons game and join either then or the enemy depending on how balanced the current player situation is, for example you will become the enemy if you enter a room where it is only the Host player playing.  You can even custom search for a game but with few options to choose from.  A full room of players makes it almost like a team death-match but in reality it is the enemy trying to prevent the good guys advance in the story which can be rather annoying if you have not beaten the game yet.

You can even MindJack machines.

With the ability to have co-op in the game you would think they would make it easier to invite a friend to just play alongside you as you play the story killing AI, but it’s not that simple.  Feel Plus feels that as long as your friends are in the game it is co-op I suppose, so your friend might or might not be fighting along side of you when they hack into your game.  You can however setup Private Slots, change the clothing of the main characters and of course turn the ‘Hacker Limit'(open or closed game) on and off, but annoyingly makes you leave the game session to do so.  Searching for a custom match when using the ‘Hack Portal’ lets you choose the general level of the persons game you’re hacking into as well as the ‘Area’ and ‘Mode’ (Story or Scene Selection).

You will level up in the game by doing thing like killing people and you gain more XP for killing enemies different ways, with close combat kills giving you the most experience.  You also gain XP from making an enemy your ‘Mind Slave’ as you will level from 1 to 50 if I am not mistaken.  As you level up you will gain new plug-ins to use, which are basically like perks.  There are two types of plug-ins which are ‘Rules’ and ‘Arts’, while there are only five Rules to unlock, their are twenty Arts you unlock as you progress through rank.  For example Rules can be ‘Glide Time’ making the difficulty level easier and ‘Arbitrary Time’ which shuffles the Blue and Red teams at the end of each battle.  You may choose Arts such as ‘Stone Body which increases physical strength by 10% or ‘Effortless Profit’ which gives you XP automatically while you are in ‘Wander Mode’ (choosing a mind to hack) during game.  One Rule can be chosen while two Arts may be equipped and you don’t forget about this as it can make a big difference in gameplay even if you are playing by yourself.

Gotcha bitch!

The gameplay is actually one good thing about the game that I did not expect, as there is a cover system which you can blind-fire from and tapping the sprint button (A/X) lets you dodge away quickly as well as letting you grab cover in unique ways.  The game quite frankly reminds me of a combination of Gears of War and Resident Evil, just no zombies and you can walk and aim simultaneously.  You can grab a damaged enemy and use them as a meat shield until they either die or you kick them away and shoot which was weird that an execution button while holding an enemy.  Oddly each chapter starts you off with a pistol and a pistol only, not that it’s hard to acquire another weapon, which there is not much to choose from.  The biggest disappointment in this game were the boss battles as some of them left me feeling fucking retarded afterwords when in actuality you never really fight the bosses as they are there just for show kind of.  Don’t even bother shooting them or attacking them as all that needs to be done is fight off the re-spawning soldiers you have been fighting throughout the whole game and then the boss usually just spontaneously combusts for some unknown reason.

MindJack is not a bad game it just has a few flaws and is far from what you would expect from a third-person shooter these days.  The gameplay mechanics are all there if you don’t mind taking a few bullets while clearly behind cover.  It is kind of fun but the main problem is the story of the game, if there is one there, I would appreciate it if someone could e-mail me it cause I had no idea what was going on.  The thing is I have played games where the story is not the main center point of the game and they were great games but MindJack lacks a little more than story.  Other than that the actual concept of the game is very cool in my opinion and I even got a chance to interview the developer of the game, with his handy Japanese translator as I was really looking forward to playing this game.  All the co-op is online though so don’t bring your buddies over expecting for some split-screen action which is not a horrible thing.  It is a fun game but I feel it just fell short of a few too many things and should have been in collaboration with a person/team more experienced with third-person shooters.  You might have a blast playing this game with five other friends going up against each other, while mind hacking and on the other hand you might not.  With the games intriguing sci-fi concept I believe it could be made into a much better sequel provided things were changed.  Bottom line though is that MindJack is not worth $59.99 in this competitive market.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

A Hack ‘N Slash game is all about in the game-play. Mash some buttons, watch a crazy string of attacks and send enemies flying. It’s what we play these games for and N3-II isn’t lacking at all. It’s extremely simple to get the hang of too: The X and Y Buttons are your main attack buttons, with X being Light Attack and Y being Heavy Attack. The B Button is your character-specific Ability. A Button is Jump. Right Trigger is used to roll in any direction using the Left Stick, and Left Trigger blocks attacks. Left Stick is used to move your character and Right Stick rotates the camera. You can even click the Right Stick to zoom the camera in or out. Left Bumper allows you to use an Active Skill and Right Bumper doesn’t do anything, so you don’t need to worry about that one. lol Pressing the Back Button zooms the map in to give a detailed display of your current location.

IT’S SO BRIGHT!

Active Skills (cast with the Left Bumper + either A, B, X or Y) are special attacks every character can do. They can be either melee or magic attacks, and once you find one, you can equip it to a slot (these are related to the button which triggers it) and you can use it in a mission as many times as you want  as long as you let it recharge between uses. You can equip up to four, and there are even some Skills that can be combined with others for devastating combos. Along with the four Active Skills you can have, you can equip four Passive Skills. These boost stats like total health or damage done, or can shorten the duration of status ailments. There are even some that allow you to use Active Skills faster.

The RPG elements of the game come in the form of a level up system. You can level up three things. Your characters level, which when increased gives you more health. Your characters weapon, which makes that particular weapon stronger, and all 8 Skills, the four Active and four Passive you can equip. You need Soul Points to level up anything and to get them, all you have to do is kill an enemy. Red orbs will appear and automatically fly towards you, giving you Soul Points. The harder the enemy is to kill, the more Soul Points you get. The platforming and puzzle elements come through in each level. Just like most Hack ‘N Slash games, characters share levels throughout the story. Certain areas in each level are inaccessible to certain characters the first time through. To get to them, you need to play as a different character and solve a simple puzzle like hitting a switch or destroying a wall, which will then allow the other character to access that area. It’s a simple way to give each level a sense of replay value.

N3-II has only 5 playable characters, compared to the first game’s 7.

The one thing I can say the gameplay lacks is character variety. The actual characters themselves are different enough, but each uses two weapons, and there’s only 5 characters, compared to the first game’s 7. Not much of a difference, but enough to leave you wanting more. The combination of simple game-play with the RPG and platforming/puzzle elements thrown in make this a unique take on Hack ‘N Slash games and fans of the genre will certainly enjoy this. But, despite how easy it is to pick the game up and play, it’s HARD in the later levels. Like, frustratingly so at times. You may find yourself angry enough to throw your controller if you aren’t patient enough and rush head first into some fights unprepared. As hard as the game can become, if you work at it and try different approaches, you’ll get through it. The story follows the same basics as the first one. There’s an Orb of Light, and an Orb of Darkness, with Elves protecting the Light and Goblins protecting the Dark. What’s different in the sequel is how the Orbs are used in the story. Rather than trying to stop the enemy from getting the Orb of Darkness and summoning the Lord of The Night, you’re trying to stop him from obtaining the Orb of Light and preventing himself from being sent back to his realm.

The main focus of the story centers around Galen as he tries to repel the Lord of The Night’s forces. Along the way he meets up with the 4 other playable characters, and while Galen’s story covers the main piece, to get the full story, you need to play through each character’s story. They all take place at the same time, but each gives a different perspective on the events and a nice look into the reason each character is fighting. The over-lapping stories give you both a different look on each level as well as details to the events outside of Galen’s story, which serves a great way to bring the whole thing together. But again, the lack of characters leaves more to be desired. One or two more characters could have easily expanded the story an extra few hours.

UNLIMITED POWAH!!1 /Palpatine

N3-II has definite improvements to graphics over the first one. There’s more detail in things like armor and weapons, as well as the level designs and textures. The enemies are simple cut and paste units of varying type, but while one foot solider looks just like the other, there’s enough detail there to make them not boring to look at as you cut them down. And there’s a nice effect of blood splatter on your screen when you do particularly extreme damage to a group of enemies. The effects on attacks are well done too. Melee and magic attacks are enjoyable to see over and over again. The level environments aren’t particularly diverse, but each one does have its own unique look to it, so it’s not bad to see them more than once. And due to the sheer scale of some of the levels, and the fact that no two characters play the same level the same way makes some of them seem like an entirely new level with a different character. And while the basic enemies may look the same, there are unique bosses each character fights throughout their own story and the designs on these more than make up for the cut and paste enemy designs.

The sounds fit nicely. A sword hitting metal sounds just like a sword hitting metal would. A shot from a crossbow sounds just like one. Lightning sounds like lightning, and an explosions sounds like an explosion. And the voice acting, something this genre isn’t praised for, is probably the biggest improvement N3-II has over N3. There’s actual tone and emotion behind the voices, and it’s made even better by the character animations during cut-scenes. The music has it’s highs and lows. The highs being when you can hear it while you go from one area to the next, it’s pretty good. The lows being when you’re in the middle of a large fight and doing nothing but hitting enemies and using Skills, those sound effects can overshadow the music.

Elf – Check. Pirate Outfit – Check. Magic Attacks – Check. Oh Japan, never change…

The improvements to the graphics and sounds of N3-II are certainly noticeable, and while the environments and enemies may not be entirely unique, the handful of bosses and character design on the major characters make up for that, as well as the nice effects for attacks. As a general rule, Hack ‘N Slash games are heavy on the action, light on the story, and this leads many of them to be somewhat short on the initial play-through, but the game-play is what brings us back for more. The same applies with N3-II, though to a lesser extent. A complete play-through for all 5 characters could run you anywhere from 15-25 hours, since some levels are so huge that they can take up to an hour or longer on your first run through them. Subsequent runs through these levels though are much faster, but it’s those sometimes hour long levels that add time to the game. And not in a bad way either since the game-play is certainly enjoyable. And since certain areas can only be accessed by a character AFTER playing as a different one, it pays to go back to each level at least once after playing with every character. There’s also a nice online co-op mode that can add to the overall time spent playing the game, and it offers good replay value since you can always try to bet your previous score and hit the top of the leaderboards.

You just know that one of them will not be walking away.

While there’s not much to do besides hacking and slashing, there’s enough to keep you busy for a few days and longer if you decide to play online. As mentioned, this game improves on practically everything the first one offered. It’s got solid gameplay, online co-op, overlapping stories and ONE MILLION ENEMY TROOPS. I’m sorry, I just had to get that in here somewhere. While the game doesn’t actually have that many enemies to cut down, it is on a very large scale for the genre. If you’re a fan of the first game, or just the genre itself, N3-II: Ninety-Nine Nights is a must play. And even if you aren’t a fan, how can mindlessly cutting up enemies be boring?

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.