Ultima Black Mage's corner

Rant 33: The PlayStation Vita

2012-01-24T09:07:00.004+11:00

Ok. For those who don't understand my anger at Sony when it comes to the PS Vita really need to read my tweets more. See the PS Vita is essentially an expensive portable gaming console that is releasing with bugger all titles worth buying it for and on top of that it's screwing PSP owners like me among other things. I will talk about everything that pisses me off about the PS Vita and what I want to see from Sony when it fails to make up for their stupidity.

First off is the price. AU$350 for Wifi and AU$400 for 3G+WiFi? Piss Off! Didn't they learn from Nintendo's 3DS release? See I could have lived with AU$300 for the WiFi but even that's a little high priced for what it is. Seriously not everyone can afford to pull that much out of their arse and to top it off AU$80 a game? Are you mental? Charging more then AU$70 for a portable game is madness and won't sell units that easily. Again look at Nintendo, they realised that with the DS and they had to knock off AU$10 to make it more appealing. Also why'd you make a new storage system for the Vita? The Memory Stick Duos were fine and since you are trying to get people to download a SMALL fraction of the PSP games released, allow them to carry their saves over would have made them a lot happier and more willing to buy the Vita.

Next we have the piss poor launch line up. All that you're releasing is shit no one wants, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and PS3 re-releases. Not a good strategy. See a good console release has games worth buying on release to not make you feel like such a chooch for buying it, case in point Nintendo released the Wii with a free game and Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a good move on their part. If you released the Vita with a Ratchet and Clank game and a free game showing of the unique features of the console, it would sell relatively high for a newly launched system.

On to my biggest gripe... screwing the PSP fans over! Sony came up with a scheme to allow PSP games to be downloadble on the Vita through a redemption plan so people who bought the UMD games could play their games on it without paying extra... problem is that all the games that kept the PSP alive aren't on the list. See if you have a look at the list all the Square-Enix, Atlus, Capcom and a variety of other companies games aren't on the list and almost 99% of my games are not in the list. This has me absolutely pissed! I was looking forward to retiring my beloved PSP and jumping onto the Vita but Sony gave me a big mid finger and said "Pay up!". See this is why Nintendo does a better job then you when it comes to the video game industry. They allow reverse compatibility on their console so you upgrade to the new one, not throw your money in the toilet. See even though the 3DS didn't sell to well at first, early adopters could still play DS games on it and the Wii allowed Gamecube games to be played on it and even the Wii U allows for Wii games to be played on it. Didn't you learn anything? The PS3 would have sold better if you'd have allowed full reverse compatibility with PS One and PS2 games, I bought the 60GB model because of the reverse compatibility just to find out Final Fantasy VIII didn't work on it or the majority of my JRPGs and it pissed me off!

Allowing 3G but restricting the carrier is a dick move! Seriously why? It would have been a better business venture if you'd have allowed every carriers sim cards to work on it. If you were say building the units to not use a sim and work on a specific network I'd still be pissed but less pissed because I'd be more pissed at the carrier.

Forcing me to put up with touch screen and track pads for games really pisses me off! I hate touch screens! Sure on a phone it's a great idea since it's harder to make accident calls but it's shit for gaming! The whole reason gamers haven't embrace mobile gaming is because of the lack of button and the Xperia Play is a bridge that will make us care about it, but using touch screen controls for a gamers console it stupid! I hated Nintendo for it with the Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks! Having the option or minimising it's use is the best way to go.

Why did you abandon the XMB? I love the XMB! I love it on the TV, I love it on the PSP and I especially love it on the PS3! So why'd you make that ugly menu interface that looks like an episode of Spongebob? Sure it looks practical but come on! You could of at least allowed me to have the XMB option. Maybe you can update the Vita's software to have that option.

Look Sony, if you want me to buy one here's what I want to see before I buy one.
1) Release an external UMD drive or a PS Vita with a UMD drive so I can play my PSP games on it.
2) Drop the price of the PS Vita, the games and the memory units.
3) Release some JRPGS on it!
4) Get Mistwalker to make some games for it and try to get them to release a port of the Xbox 360 game Lost Odyssey on it. Love that game!
5) Release a HDMI and/or component cable for it so I can play on my big screen TV.

I just hope you guys read this and see your short comings. I like you Sony but I can only take so many kicks to the groin before I become absolutely livid.

2012, the Year of Fear!

2012-01-24T06:22:00.005+11:00

What's that? Year of Fear? Whatever could this twat mean? Well from my perspective it's a variety of things. I'd like to go into details about them regardless if you care since this is my blog and I do whatever I want... until Team America world police shuts down the internet in the name of the entertainment industry just because they can't handle their own shit and get with the fucking times! Well if you haven't already guessed it my first "Year of Fear" topic is the US bills SOPA and PIPA

Assuming anyone who may stumble upon me online is net savvy, SOPA and PIPA are bills the entertainment industry of the USA has had drafted to screw with the internet so they can turn it into nothing but online shopping websites, credit card/banks websites and your email. Why? Well since you asked because EVERYONE has participated in piracy at least once in their internet lives and they want more money! The thing is most people "pirate" for a variety of legit reasons,
1) Not available where they live eg. Australia didn't get 'The Flight of Dragons' released here on DVD.(Lucky me bought the US ONLY released DVD from eBay)
2)They don't want to buy an album for 1 song. iTunes has now made that easier to not need to pirate it but in a SHITTY QUALITY MP3! I want 325kb/second bit rate thank you!
3)Everyone can afford the internet but not everyone can't afford to buy all their favourite TV show, movies and video games.
4)The product is discontinued(personally I've had this problem A LOT!)

Now I don't promote piracy but I can understand why some people pirate and why most people unknowing pirate because they DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LAWS! Now if you want full information on SOPA and PIPA you can go read about them on Wikipedia. These bills have been shelved for now and will most likely go into a rewrite with even more legalese to confuse the masses but if we stay vigilant and actually learn to understand legalese, we won't lose the internet to greedy pricks who can't stand losing a nickel from 1 song being downloaded.

Next topic on my "Year of Fear" is about video games... mainly that more rubbish is coming out and selling well! In an age where the besting selling game is a realistic military murder simulator that has you shooting up non Americans(for those who don't understand, I'm talking about Call Of Duty) it's obvious a GEN-NES gamer like me is crying "The End Is Nigh!" and is also ready to throw money at Nintendo for the Wii U. You see I've been gaming since 1990 and I was brought up on gaming from the 8-bit era and have played every console to date and I know when shit is hitting the fan in the gaming world.

This year is that. Sequelitus(thank you Egoraptor for the word) plagued last years release schedule and this year looks worse. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good sequel(case in point anything Mario, Uncharted trilogy, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, etc.) but this year looks like it'll be a huge load of hit and miss with newish IPs second outings(Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite[Bioshock 2 doesn't count!], Darksiders II) and big franchises getting ready to stagnate in the water(any FPS sequel of this year... mainly staring at COD but also Halo 4). My point I'm trying to get to is that the majority of these mega franchises and soon to be mega franchises are the AIDS virus of the gaming industry and we need more new IPs and they need to be cheaper on release so a great new game like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West doesn't fail. See I actually am considering Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning but I think a limited editions for a new IP is STUPID and I don't want to pay full price for an unknown title that may suck and you get fuck all for trading it in(If you bought Too Human on release you understand where I'm going here). See I don't mined paying full price for a Zelda or Mario game because I know the suck to great ratios of those games(Call Of Duty fans do the same thing pretty much) but When it came to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West I waited for a price fall to AU$30(US$15) because it was a new IP, I didn't have the money at the time and I wasn't sure about it and I don't trust professional reviewers since they are mostly corrupt. Yes it's a great game but charging AU$110 for a game that has only a good developer behind it is stupid! A new IP is a risk and it should be treated as one. Developers and publishers need to understand that we are fans of the games, not the company! We don't care who made it for the most part, we care if the game is good.

Then there's the stupidity of both Nintendo and Sony releasing new consoles in the same year. This is idiocy it the highest degree. See by releasing both Wii U and the PS Vita in the same year, they are pocket gouging people and not everyone has the money for both. If you want to sell a new console you don't release it until you have a good line up of titles(this is where the 3DS failed at launch) and don't launch in the same year as a competitor(This is why the PS3 failed at launch) plus, and this is important... don't over price your console(Again this is where the PS3 failed at launch... and a few years after launch)! See I'm not buying a PlayStation Vita because there's nothing I want on it at the moment but next year they may have BUT I am buying a Wii U on launch since it will replace my Wii and most importantly will have some huge titles released during the first couple of months. Sony, if you read this I will buy a PS Vita under the following conditions,
1) You release an external UMD drive for the Vita or A UMD version of the Vita so I can play my PSP games since you don't support them in your PSP voucher thing.
2)Drop the price of it to the same as the 3DS.
3)Release a minimum of 4 JRPGs on it in Australia and/or the US
4)Release a HDMI and/or component cable for it to play on my TV
5)Get Mistwalker to make a JRPG for it since Hironobu Sakaguchi knows how to make a great JRPG. Hell even get them to release Lost Odyssey on it!

Then there's the SOPA and PIPA thing again... but the fact the ESA supports it. These guys represents the AAA games industry in government and also sponsor E3. I am not doing a E3 recap on my blog since these douche bags want these bills to pass and if they did my blog and 90% of the internet would be shutdown. I love gaming and because I love it I don't want to see independent developers screwed anymore then they have(I'm referring to megauploads being shut down and Megauploads is a CLOUD STORAGE website!) who need online sites to store and distribute their games without publishers screwing them over(I'm looking at you Atari and how you screwed Krome Studios over by not releasing Blade Kitten episode 2 and not paying them and the creator his royalties!).

To add to my "Year of Fear" just for the sake of it, the supposed Apocalypse! See people for generations have predicted and failed on what the apocalypse will be, whether it'll be biblical or metaphorical who gives a shit. See I personally have a series of predictions that I find both logical and unlikely I'd like to throw out,
Scenario 1 - SOPA and PIPA pass, the internet is dead, anarchy across the world leading to heavy police action, war breaks out.
Scenario 2 - Solar flares become strong enough to knock out wireless communication, mass panic, riots start because it will take a long time to fix, anarchy... you get the picture.
Scenario 3 - Economic collapse, the Global Financial Crisis has the big players (eg. USA and Europe) in extreme debt and start a war with their debtors, a new country becomes the new leading financial nation and they become a target of war, famine will ensue because no one can afford food or get paid to produce food.
Scenario 4 - World War 3 is started by a big nation who's paranoid of a little nation and it turns out the little nation makes up for it with big guns, unusual allies are formed and nuclear war breaks out, only a few country remain that aren't irradiated, nuclear winter ensues and a new ice age begins.

Sure the odds of these happening aren't very high but you never know and if the biblical apocalypse happens... HA HA HA HA! Yeah right! Don't get me wrong, anything is possible but anyone who thinks they'll be saved in a biblical apocalypse is an idiot! No one is sin free and sins aren't forgiven.

Well that's it for this blog post. 2012 is a new year of possibilities and by the look of it I'll have a little less games to review, but then again it may be a lot more. Who knows, maybe I'll be lucky enough to be hired as a corrupt video game reviewer for a big website like Gamespot. I hope the year turn out great and I have a niece who will be born any day now and who knows, maybe she'll bring the apocalypse... HA HA HA HA!

Review: Assassin's Creed Revelations

2011-12-27T03:50:00.003+11:00

Well I have been putting this off because of Skyrim and Christmas so now that I have some free time I can finally write this review. Unfortunately not much has changed from the last game so go read that review and then come back here.

So the story picks up right after the last game. Desmond is now trapped inside the Animus and has to finish what he started with Ezio so that he can find out where to go next before the partition he's trapped in collapses. As for Ezio, he's out to uncover more information about Altair and his search has lead him Constantinople to find the keys to Altair's library and while he's searching he's helping the local Assassin's guild.

The game plays exactly like the last 2 games but now they've added bombs and bomb crafting to the equation. They also added a tower defence game for when your notoriety level gets too high but it's easy to avoid having to do them since you can just keep your notoriety level down. Other then these the only new things are a hook blade for riding zip lines and the new city. Seriously there isn't much new.

As for the multiplayer I didn't bother playing it since I don't care for multiplayer and it just a mediocre tacked on feature. I know there are new modes but I don't really care.

Like I said you can just read my Assassin's Creed Brotherhood review to read what I didn't write here. I just can't be stuffed writing the same review twice. Is it a good game? Yes. Is it better then the last one? Ehh about the same. Assassin's Creed is still a great game series but it's starting to show it's stuck in a rut. Maybe if we get a 2 year break, it might become fresh again.

Score 4/5

Time for online multiplayer to become a DLC option

2011-12-13T02:30:00.003+11:00

You're probably thinking "Are you mad?" as well as "I buy the game for it's online multiplayer!" Well here's the thing, I don't like online multiplayer for the most part but I do recognise it's significance to the larger gaming community.

I bring this up this idea for 3 main reasons,
- I'm sick of single player games being diluted by the addition of multiplayer and single player campaigns being a second thought in games like Call of Duty(let's shoot people who aren't from the USA) and Battlefield(let's be like Call of Duty but more realistic)... and yes I hate those games!
- Every game with multiplayer has online achievements and stop you from getting all the achievements/trophies in a game
- Battlefield 3 released it's multiplayer on a separate disc for the Xbox 360!

Ok, when it comes to my idea I've actually thought about this for a while now. Now to let you know I actually do enjoy online multiplayer in Halo Reach but that's the only game I enjoy it in. Why do I hate online multiplayer for the most part? Well see I'm a Generation NES guy, my first gaming console was a NES and whenever I wanted to play a game with someone I'd either play with a sibling or go over a friends place and as a 26 year old adult I still do the same thing but I have to visit siblings now. I've played online multiplayer on a variety of games and I just don't like it, the only reason I still play Halo Reach's online multiplayer is because of Invasion and Firefight modes.

Now as for my idea, I purchase a lot of videogames per year and the hobby is expensive, especially if you live in Austalia where we pay double what the USA pays for the same game. Now considering that there are gamers like me who hate online multiplayer, we pay more then we should since we don't play half the game in the case of say... Call of Duty. I propose to lower the cost of games with online multiplayer and especially multiplayer focused games I believe we have come to a point where it should be a downloadable option instead of clogging up disc space and Battlefield 3 is proof of that.

My idea is to kill the online pass by making the key selling feature of modern games as a stand alone downloadble game essentially. In other words Call of Duty(the next enemy... maybe England or Australia?) would sell the single player on shelves and sell the online multiplayer as both an expansion dlc and a game on it's own for US$10-30 depending on the greed of the developer.

You're now probably thinking "You're an idiot! That's a stupid idea!" and you're wrong. Considering a lot of people will just play the single player for achievements or when the server is down it makes perfect sense in our modern gaming world. It will also make both sides of the fence happier since single player and local multiplayer gamers have what they want at a cheaper price and online multiplayer fans get what they want at an even cheaper price and we all win with the demise of the online pass. The only people who don't win are people who like both but unfortunately no war is won without casualties.

Now there are a lot of advantages to my idea, for both gamers and developers. Gamers will benefit from the fact that games can be cheaper and the achievements can be reduced to what you're playing and developers can make more money since downloadable multiplayer can't get traded in. These are just the immediate effects of this idea, there are also long term effects too but mainly for the developers.

The long term benefits that I can see are like I said mainly for the developers but remember that if they benefit, we may benefit too. The idea of online multiplayer DLC will allow developers to split their teams to work on single player and online multiplayer as separate entities instead of tripping all over each other to make street date. It will also give them a more steady revenue to work with since they will no longer need to bitch about the second hand market as much. We may actually see games coming more frequently too but whether that's good or bad is subjective. I'm sure there's more benefits for developers but that's all that comes to mind.

As for long term benefits for game, we can see our gaming community being better catered for with games more focused towards each gaming group. Reviewers admittedly will get twice the work but at least they can review the games on it's merits better. As mentioned it will mean cheaper games but it will also show developers what hey should focus on when developing a game for a specific audience since second hand sale will show them if the single player is rubbish in their games. There may be more benefits then this but again I can't think of anymore off the top of my head. Maybe if a game journalist decides to read and expand on this you'll get more.

Will developers take up my idea? Probably not right now but maybe in the near future. I believe that online multiplayer as a dlc expansion and stand alone game in one is a great idea and has more good then bad in it. If it does happen and we get screwed further then I will admit it was a bad idea.

Rant 32: Square-Enix wants to kill Final Fantasy again... and other stuff that pisses me off with Square-Enix

2011-11-30T04:52:00.004+11:00

As you can tell I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, I mean come on my name and avatar give it away. Well I've been getting pissed with Square-Enix a lot lately and I haven't done a rant in 11 months so yeah, I've finally been pushed into a rage big enough for another rant and again it's on Square-Enix!

If you have your ear to the ground or thumb on the pulse or whatever, you've seen a couple of aggravating news articles on Final Fantasy let's start with the one about a Final Fantasy X remake.

A while back Square announced they were going to give Final Fantasy X a XIII reskin job, sounds good right? Well thing is they plan on doing some "tweaks" to the game. In the world of gaming tweaks can be a vague statement but thanks to a recent article about a "Theoretical Final Fantasy VII remake"(more on that later) it means changing stuff they think they need to change. In other words they spit on the saying "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" and will do who knows what to it... then again I could be over thinking it. Now if they just fix glitches then hell yeah I'll be happy but if they screw with something like say... the battle system then I'll go old testament on them. Harsh but fair.

Now a short while ago Square decided to say the dumbest thing they could say, they want to make a Final Fantasy a year... not a game with Final Fantasy in the title per year but a main numbered Final Fantasy a year. This means one of 2 things, sequelitus aka FFXIII-3 then XIII-7 or the even more dreaded Final Fantasy XV,XVI,XVII a year apart. There are big problems with this if you haven't already worked it out. It could mean poorer quality games both visually and story wise. Admittedly they are already fumbling with story since the main man Hironobu Sakaguchi and a lot of his team left Square back in 2003 but at least they made an effort.

A yearly schedule for Final Fantasy will cause the series to suffer and we can blame Call Of Duty for it... you heard me! You see they think because a game in a franchise being released yearly would guarantee sales but what they don't realise is that Call Of Duty uses recycled visuals and is about as deep as a teaspoon and RPGs have to be as deep as a either a swimming pool like the Atelier Iris series or as deep as an ocean like Skyrim... unlike Final Fantasy XIII which was as deep as a kiddie pool. Admittedly the people who wrote the article also pointed out Assassin's Creed but the difference is that Assassin's Creed had it's story planned out from the first game and they have been adding to their vast pile and want to thin the pile down so they aren't bogged down with papers and you can see that Assassin's Creed Revelations looks a slight bit crappier then Assassin's Creed II.

Now on to the story that keeps coming back like herpes, the Final Fantasy VII remake teaser articles. This comes frequently in the gaming news and I'm sick of it. Yeah I get it Square-Enix, you're not making it until you're about to run out of money and have it sitting in a glass case for an emergency but SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT! We keep getting interview articles with no talent hack Yoshinori Kitase teasing us with Final Fantasy VII remake teases with comments that say they won't do it but he just won't shut up! Recently to add insult to injury the hack Kitase was talking about a "Theoretical remake of Final Fantasy VII" where he states that he would change and alter stuff in the game for reasons like "If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of 7, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it'd be like a repeat." and "It'd be an issue of repetition and not as much fun to make such a game. So I'd be really interested in rearranging games or reshaping games into something slightly different even though it's supposed to be the same game." In other words if they did do it, it wouldn't be Final Fantasy VII it would be Zombie Final Fantasy VII... but with no actual zombies... unless it's an enemy I can't remember.

Now here's the thing, most fans who want a Final Fantasy VII remake don't want a remake, they just use that word because they don't know the real word they want to say. We want a RESKINNED FINAL FANTASY VII and not a remake. I and most of us Final Fantasy VII fans want the pre rendered background but with HD textures and the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children models with the original VII's costumes and orchestral music for the game and that's it. If my calculations are correct Square could pump out a HD reskinned and orchestral soundtrack Final Fantasy VII in 14 months and it would sell like hotcakes! Especially if they added Advent Children to the PS3 version on the same disc. Seriously if they released a HD reskinned Final Fantasy VII with orchestral music instead of the synthesized music it had with Advent Children on the disc for the US$60 it will make over a million pre orders before release in the US alone and if you throw in the rest of the world it could be close to 10 million in pre orders alone. Just look at the downloadable version on PSN's sale and you got the base figures of how many would pre order it on announcement alone.

While I'm ranting another thing pisses me off about Square-Enix, why Final Fantasy XIII-2? You ended FFXIII perfectly and now you want to shoe horn in more garbage? Final Fantasy X-2 had something to work with at the end of Final Fantasy X and was planned from the beginning but FFXIII-2 is just a cash in title that is going to suck! You also said you were going to fix the problems XIII had, so you decide copying Shin Megami Tensei and Chrono Trigger was a good idea? Idiots! What was wrong was the fact we could only control 1 character in battle and the game strung us along with no turning back, exploration or actual side quests! Monster Hunting isn't a side quest! Just a waste of time! Now you're giving us time travel and monster partners? Are you guys that untalented now? Ripping off another successful franchise and butchering the best game you've ever made's main premise? Seriously hire people with ideas and talent or better yet give Final Fantasy back to it's creator to work on, hire Mistwalker to make it and publish it under your house. I'm sure Hironobu Sakaguchi would love to work on Final Fantasy again, but without you guys sticking your dicks in it.

Also another thing I feel like ranting about... where the fuck is Final Fantasy Versus XIII? You've been working on that game for 7 years! What's taking so damn long?! Here's a game that has a chance of western appeal since it runs Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep's battle system with all the core elements of Final Fantasy and you keep holding it back and feeding us crappy trailers? Finish the fucking game, release it on PS3 only and watch your fan base grow for Christ, Buddha, whatever's sake! FUCK!

And where the hell is Kingdom Hearts 3? Nobody but me cares about the off shoots of Kingdom Hearts because they don't care as much for the story as I do and they just want a Kingdom Hearts HD collection with Kingdom Hearts 1,2 and RE: Chain Of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 3... that's it... they're morons! I have all of the Kingdom Hearts games and as much as I love the off shoots people just want KH3. Just give the idiots what they want to shut them up for a while and then get back to me and my love for the story.

When the hell are you going to reskin Chrono Trigger with 3D graphics? Why haven't you reskinned Chrono Trigger with 3D graphics? This is what you do, use Cel shading because it's cheaper and makes Akira Toriyama's artwork look awesome, use the Dragon Quest games engine to build it and watch that sweet cash roll in on it and release it on every console and the PC for like US$40 easy cash cow to suckle off.

Just make Final Fantasy XI free to play! Seriously I quit it because I got sick of paying $20 a month and going nowhere! Here's how you do it idiots. Make it free to play and allow people to buy the artifact armour as an option instead of questing for it for like US$1 per piece of armour and also sell items to allow people to solo the game if they don't want to team up. While you're at it allow people to buy Gil for cheap or better yet return the original selling prices for items back. That's all you have to do to make me come back and bring people back to Final Fantasy XI. While I'm at it no more expansion packs sold digitally for PS2 and Xbox 360 and for God's sake release a PS3 version already! You're missing out on a potential goldmine with a PS3 release.

Give me a Final Fantasy IX Vivi figurine! I can't get it anywhere in Australia and he's my favourite Final Fantasy character other then Squall and put Vivi in the next Disidia Final Fantasy, while we're at it release the next Disidia Final Fantasy on PS3! Also Final Fantasy IX on 3DS with better texture... make it so... NOW!

Square-Enix, Why didn't you ever give Grandia III a PAL territory release?! I wanted that game so much and I never got to see it! I want that game! I own Grandia and Grandia II and when you never released Grandia III I got really pissed off and I still am! It's a bit hard to make sales in the western region if you're not releasing games in the west so stop bitching and start releasing! IDIOTS!

Shut off Final Fantasy XIV! It's a money pit! Just give all the Final Fantasy XIV players a free copy of Final Fantasy XI and pack it in. Seriously that game has too much that needs fixing and Frankensteining it over and over again is wasting time and money, just give up on it and admit that you made a shitty game. Look you made one good MMORPG and it still works up too a point, just restore what you ruined in that, make it free to play and never make a MMORPG again. You guys and MMO's just don't blend that well and you should just ride Final Fantasy XI until people don't want to play a free to play version of it anymore and don't you dare do a World Of Warcraft free to play until level 20 stunt! That's retarded and you want to redeem yourselves not cripple yourselves further.

Kill Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles off and make more Final Fantasy Tactics games! The FF:CC games are crap and just get crappier with each new version. Let it die and make more Final Fantasy Tactics games. They are fun and strategic games and if you make them for smartphones and sell them for less then $10 you'd see a profit and have a high demand for them in the portable market. Also keep the Final Fantasy Tactics series on portables since they are better portable games then console games. The Tactics series just works better in short burst of play instead of long plays on the home consoles.

Why did you ruin Parasite Eve with The 3rd Birthday? I liked Parasite Eve and then you ruin it with 3rd person shooting gameplay similar to Gears Of War, take away the Parasite Energy abilities and write a mediocre story? I love Parasite Eve 2 and wanted another game like that with modern visuals not what The 3rd Birthday gave me.

Stop killing what I love! I loved a lot of your games like people love puppies and what you did to Final Fantasy and Parasite Eve is like you taking my puppies and performing unnecessary surgery on them saying that you're making them better. There's an old saying that goes "If it isn't broken, don't fix it!" how about following it for a change? Also Last Remnant SUCKED! I got psyched for it and it turned out to be a crappy game on a crappy game engine(yeah I said it, the Unreal engine sucks!) and was too expensive for what it was. I'd trade Last Remnant in if it wasn't for the fact no one wants it.

I want a Star Ocean Complete Collection on PS3! Put the PSP version of 1 and 2 on the same disc with HD upscaling along with Star Ocean:Til The End Of Time in HD and Star Ocean The Last Hope and while you're at it you can throw in a timeline extra showing use how they connect to each other. Why haven't you done this anyway? Again another cash cow you've ignored for stupider endeavours. It's like you hate money or something? Or is it you don't know how to make money?

Wow this is a lot longer then I thought it'd be. Square-Enix just pisses me off so much and I'm sure I'm not the only Square-Enix fan who feels like this. Ever since the merger in 2003 of Squaresoft and Enix it's like they got dumber and less business savvy. To think if it wasn't for Final Fantasy in 1987 saving Squaresoft's arse they'd have never been, and now the same franchised that saved them may end up ruining them with the way they're running the ship. At least they haven't killed Dragon Quest... as far as I know. I only ever played the crappy Dragon Quest VIII and never bothered with the others and they had a chance of getting me into it with the Dragon Quest Anniversary Collection for Wii but it never got an English release or was released in Australia... morons! Yeah in short Square-Enix is run by morons who have a vault filled with cash making ideas, but forgot the combination.

Review: Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword

2011-11-29T04:20:00.004+11:00

I can honestly say I never expected to say these words but Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is no longer the best Legend Of Zelda game. I know it's hard to believe but somehow Skyward Sword managed to take the crown, even with it's motion control stuff ups. Yes I'm giving it a perfect score so those who only look for score can piss off because I can't stand people like you. Anyway I finished it on my birthday of all days so happy birthday to me and a review for you.

The story of Skyward Sword it a deep narrative that is the start of the Legend OF Zelda series and chronicles the origins of those bound by fate, the creation and purpose of the Master Sword and the Triforce. I would tell you the details of the story but just buy a Wii since most of you got rid of yours, play the game like you all should and enjoy it like those who never gave up on Nintendo.

The game plays like Twilight Princess but with more precise and finicky controls. Links sword will swing in one on 8 directions pre programed depending on where you hold the Wiimote and you can trust thanks to the Wii Motion Plus. All the tools Link earns are designed to use the motion controls and you'd be surprise how well the majority work. Links tools range from classics like the bombs, bow and slingshot an new ones that are useless for combat like the beetle, whip and a bug net. There are others but I'm going to try and keep it as spoiler free as possible.

The game has a heavy focus on it's motion controls and the Wii Motion Plus usually works but be warned that it can stuff up when using items and requires to be recentered frequently. It can be frustration sometimes but it doesn't always happen if you don't fidget too much and remember that the game doesn't use the sensor bar at all.

Combat in the game can be done in 2 ways, flail the remote and hope for the best or patiently wait to see how the enemy is holding their weapon and hit them in the open spot and a third method that takes some skill and is how I approached combat for the most part(other then flailing like crazy) is wait for the enemy to attack and shield block the attack to leave them open and flail like crazy!

The game also brings another companion to the Zelda table named Fi, the spirit or A.I. of the sword you wield. She essentially does everything Navi did but doesn't bug you every 3 seconds with garbage. She also has a robotic voice and personally that never grow on you. Along with Fi to help you a gossip stone in Skyloft is also there to help you with hints to get through sections of the game if you need help and if this is your first Legend Of Zelda, you'll most likely need the help of the gossip stone often to continue on if you get stuck.

The game has 2 main worlds and is set up with a central hub town called Skyloft where you'll keep going back to with 3 locations to visit plus lots of little islands in the sky to visit. To get to these locations you have to fly on your bird called a loftwing. The islands you can fly to are useless to visit until later in the game so I suggest wait until some reason comes by to visit the little islands.

There are 7 dungeons in the game and a lot of retreading the 3 locations. Each dungeon is a bit smaller the previous Legend Of Zelda games but the areas that the dungeons are in make the trip to each bigger. Speaking of bigger the game feels really big but constrained at the same time because the sections of the world are separate to each other. The 6 main dungeons follow the old Zelda formula while the 7th is just a big puzzle. One thing that's good is the compasses have been removed because now the map shows you where the chest are and the compass function of keeping track of where you came from is there naturally.

Saving in the game is handled a little differently to other Zelda games and is similar to Majora's Mask since you use bird statues. You also use these statues to return to the sky or exit a dungeon when you need to leave for some reason. You'll also need to examine every statue if you want them marked on the map so you can land at that location from the sky for the main areas.

Like most Zelda games it has mini games and they all use motion controls... so they are annoying to play but some need to be done for heart pieces. Speaking of hearts there are less hearts to earn in the game now thanks to a new thing called the Adventurer's Pouch which stores items like medal to enhance stuff include your maximum hearts, your shield, bottles and extra bags for ammo.

The boss battles in the game are also some of the best in the series and usually require some skilled swordplay that forces you to stop flailing and start playing right. Like normal they have weak spots to hit to do damage and are satisfying to complete, especially against Ghirahim( the new character who looks like an albino emo. There is also a boss rush mini game for those who want to challenge themselves and earn a couple of essential items to help in the game but it gets unlocked late in the game.

Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword has the best story in the franchise and has such a beautiful music score and art style. Even with motion controls and having to continually recenter the damn thing it still 50 hours of fun and if that isn't enough they added a new mode called Hero mode that allows you to replay the game in a harder difficulty that requires serious skill to play and you get too keep all the treasures you found in your previous play so you can upgrade earlier.

Is this game good? No... it's EXCELLENT! It's fun, has beautiful music, looks great for a Wii game and has 50 hours of gameplay for the first playthrough. This is the best game on Wii and the best Legend Of Zelda game released to date. If it's the last game to be released on the Wii from Nintendo other then Kirby's Adventure, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower then at least it's going out on a high note. I recommend buying this game because it's the best game this year in my opinion and doesn't disappoint.

Score 5/5

Also it's the 25th Anniversary of the Legend Of Zelda so Happy 25th Anniversary Legend Of Zelda!

Review: Super Mario 3D Land

2011-11-21T23:26:00.004+11:00

Yes! Finally a game for the 3DS that actually uses the 3D well and was built with it in mind. A game worth owning the 3DS has come out for those who haven't already gotten one and it's a great game. TANOOKI IS BACK!

The story like most Mario games is Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and now Mario has to save her. This time around they added a tree with Tanooki leaves that also has all it's leaves blow away and Bowser and his minions are using them against you.

The game plays like every other Super Mario game, mainly like New Super Mario Bros but with a 3D world to run around in instead of 2D. You'll do the usual running, jumping and ground pounding you've done before but in a 3D environment.

Power ups will be your main weapon since Mario is back to the basic get hit and you lose the power up game we're so used too. The main power ups like the Super Mushroom, Power Star and Fire Flower return along with an old friend from 1990 know as the Tanooki Suit only this time it's a Tanooki Leaf. The game also has a new power up and it's the second time we get an enemy power up, the Boomerang Flower which gives Mario the power of a Boomerang Bro. If you die a bunch of time you'll also get access to an Invincible Tanooki Leaf as well as a Power Wing which will warp you to the flag pole at the end of the stage.

The game has 8 worlds each with 6 stages(7 in World 8) and each one has the same goal, get to the flag pole before time runs out. Even the Castle stages follow the same formula but you have to take down a boss before getting access to the flag pole. Within each stage there are 3 Star Coins to find and collect, these are used to unlock stages to progress and are also used in the Special world you unlock once you finish the game. Also in each world you'll either find a mushroom house which will have an item or a bonus cube which will get you a Star Coin if you finish it within the time limit.

The first run is fairly easy to finish for veterans and Golden Age gamers and will take about 4-6 hours depending on how efficient you get through the stages. Once you finish the game you'll gain access to the Special world which has more challenging stages to complete and you can also unlock Luigi to play as. The stages vary from the regular kinds, low time limit that require you to find clocks to boost the time and Dark Mario chase stages. These stages are designed for the highly skilled and some of these can be real tests of patients and can and will be REALLY FRUSTRATING! Picture this, Bowser castle stage with a low time limit and you have a Dark Mario chasing you with no check points... absolute frustration, especially when trying to get all the Star Coins in one run on the stage.

Believe it or not the 3D actually helps with playing the game. It helps determine jumps a little better and you notice how well it works more when you're lining up a jump from above while the camera is above you. I played the entire game in 3D but if you decide not to play it in 3D it will be tougher to play.

Man Mario game reviews are hard to pad out with waffling. Is the game good? Hell Yeah! The game is fun during the first round and the special worlds are really challenging. Plus the return of the Tanooki Mario! THE TANOOKI! Sure you could clear it in a day, that's what I did but I recommend doing maybe a world a day to extend it. It a game to enjoy, not rush through. What's the score? Duh Perfect Score! It's a Mario game and like all Super Mario games it's never a waste of money and will be fun guaranteed!

Score 5/5

Review: Halo: Combat Evovled Anniversary (sort of)

2011-11-16T05:56:00.004+11:00

Is 10 years really enough time for nostalgia to sell a game? 343 Industries thinks so. The big question is "is Halo in HD worth buying" Well that's the thing... it's really a matter of how devoted you are. This is going to be fun... and short.

Halo's story is a simple one. A space marine of the United Nations Space Corps(UNSC) name Master Chief has been woken up to stop the Covenant from taking over the Pillar of Autumn and taking the A.I Cortana. He escapes and now has to fight the Covenant in his search to find out what Halo is and what the Covenant want with it.

For those returning the game is EXACTLY like the one you played 10 years ago only with a HD coat of paint and uglier face models. For the very small amount of you who haven't played it before it's a first person shooter so you already know how to play it. The thing is that nothing has changed at all in the game... well they did add terminals with extra info into the story but they are there more for a couple of achievements instead of expanding the story and skulls like in the other Halo's.

While 343 Industries did do a remix of the original soundtrack of the game and reskined the game, they missed out the opportunity to fix Halo's problem or better yet remake the entire game using the REACH engine and make it play like Halo Reach instead of it's clunky original. Also the remixed music is crappier then the original and the HD reskining looks good for everything except the human characters faces and the lip syncing is worse then the original. Fortunately you can switch between the original game and reskined version by pressing the back button at any time and you can switch the music back to the original in the menu.

The multiplayer is Halo Reach's but with new maps and it comes with a download voucher to download the maps into Halo Reach. This will be the main reason to buy the game in my opinion for most people. Personally don't bother playing the multiplayer through this game and just load up Halo Reach instead.

So is Halo's HD re-release worth buying? I'd have to say it depends. If you never played a Halo game I say go buy Halo Reach and forget the others. If you never played Halo Combat Evolved but played the others then no unless you're desperate to find out how it began. If you already own the original version then don't bother unless HD makes everything better. If you love Halo Reach and want more maps, just wait for the anniversary DLC to come out. What I'm trying to say is that it's all up to you if you think buying a re-release of a mediocre but fun shooter is worth it. It's not a bad game but it's not the best choice when other, better games are available.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is just a lazy HD reskining of the Xbox classic that is selling itself on a 10th anniversary nostalgia trip. If it came bundled with Halo 2 as well then I'd give it a better score but they didn't. At least every PS3 HD remake is bundled with 2 or more games. I bought it originally because I thought I'd be fun to replay Halo and it still is but I feel ripped off for paying AU$60 for it.

Score 3/5

Review: Batman Arkham City

2011-11-08T08:35:00.006+11:00

Well you know what they say, better late then never. Every time I've tried and play this game I've had really hot days, my PS3 freezing due to overheating and both Sonic Generations and Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One come out and stop me from playing it and I can now FINALLY review it.

Before we start I'd better admit that I LOVE BATMAN! Always have and always will. Out of every super hero ever created he has the best villains, no super powers unless unlimited funds count, and he's very relatable. I also collect Batman theatrical and animated movies, comics and soon statues/figures.

The story confuses me on where in Batman continuity it fits exactly and why Scarecrow isn't in this game... I like Scarecrow. Anyway it's been nearly a year since the events in Arkham Asylum and since then Quincy Sharp (former Arkham Asylum warden) has become mayor and has turn North Gotham into a newer bigger asylum called Arkham City and Hugo Strange has been charged to run the place(Now if you want more into the events before the game buy the hardcover Arkham City trade paperback. Trust me it's worth it and helps frame what happens in the game). Batman/Bruce Wayne has suspicions about the place and is campaigning to shut the place down and gets thrown into Arkham City by Strange's Tyger soldiers. Now Batman must uncover what's going on and try to survive in a place where everyone wants him dead. Also Catwoman's there and is part of the story so buy it new like a good boy/girl or pay more then the new price in total to download her.

Gameplay hasn't changed much since the last game and if this is the first one you are playing, STOP NOW and buy Batman Arkham Asylum, finish it and come back to this game. The major changes are quick fire abilities for some of your gadgets, the ability to counter more then 1 enemy at once and some new combat skills. Unfortunately these extra abilities make choosing combat tactic overwhelming. Also stealth is always the best option but if you're like me you just love jumping into the fray and start throwing gadgets all over the place... and getting turned to brooding Swiss cheese.

The city is also bigger then Arkham Asylum but is cluttered unless you're on the rooftops. Navigating the city on rooftops is the best way to get around since the streets are small and you can see things better on the roof. You also get a new ability to dive while gliding and it's useful for keeping up in the air.

Batman also comes with some of his old gadgets from Arkham Asylum and we also get some new tools like ice grenades and a weapons jammer. Thanks to the ability to quick fire a far few of these weapons, you won't need to swap them to use in battle and if you're really good you can even use them normally this way. Most are unlocked through story progression but a couple are found in side missions.

Thanks to the fact that you're in a large sandbox, the games structure lets you faff about collecting Riddler trophies, solve riddles and complete side missions but be warned, you can miss some missions when concentrating on the story and you won't be able to complete some of them in the end game. The side missions usually involve detective work and combat or in the Riddler's side mission's case, solving a puzzle through"cheating".

Boss fights have also improved since Arkham Asylum. Boss fights are now more then just fighting waves of goons alone... now you fight goons and the villains. On top of that they are memorable and fun. As much as I want to tell you about them it's best I let you find out... assuming you haven't already finished it since this IS a late review.

As mentioned before you can play as Catwoman during the story mode. She plays similarly enough to Batman to not feel crippled in combat and while she navigates the city at a slower pace, she's actually a lot more fun to play then you'd expect. She fights faster then Batman and unfortunately gets her ass handed to her faster then Bats, so you'll need to use stealth more frequently and evade a lot. She also gets her own pink Riddler trophies to find and she has to pick up some of the green ones too.

On top of the main campaign, you can play challenge maps just like before and these are more challenging then before and with DLC you can play these as Batman, Catwoman, Robin(Tim Drake) and Nightwing. Unfortunately I am not that good at these but it gives you something to do after playing the game or to use as a training tool. Speaking of finishing the game you can start the game again in a New Game+ mode with everything you've unlock, tougher enemies and no counter indicators. Guess who keeps dying in this mode... this guy... oh right, you can see me pointing at myself.

Batman Arkham Asylum was a great game, Arkham City is an even greater game. It's a great experience playing as Batman and playing just like the character is in the comics and animated series. Arkham City improves on Arkham Asylum and gives us a better game then we expected. With tons to do and DLC to come, this game will last a long time. You can clear the story at your own pace too so it's worth every penny.

Score 5/5

Sonic Generations. What I liked, what I want and what I would have done

2011-11-04T05:30:00.006+11:00

Well the new Sonic game has come out and if you have read my review go do that now! It's on my blog here so go read it and come back. Ok, Sonic Generations has a lot going for it. I'm going to talk about the stuff I liked and also go into stuff I'd like to see added to the game and maybe criticise Crisis City more.

Sonic Generations has got some really good things done in the game. While in my review I ragged on the challenges being tedious but there are some good challenges. I personally liked the doppelganger, race to the finish and goal juggling challenges and I'm sure some of you will enjoy other challenges but being forced to complete 1 just to advance IS tedious! Unlocking them they way we unlock them is fine though. Challenges shouldn't get in the way of the main game but are great for when you finish the game.

I personally liked the rival and boss battles in the game but as I said in the review there aren't many. I honestly think that every friend of Sonic should have been a rival battle or have had a different battle for both Sonics. I would have loved to have had a modern Sonic battle with Metal Sonic or a classic Sonic fight with Shadow. I'd also would have loved each stage to have a boss battle from that stage from the classic stages and just a battle from the games in the other stages. As for the main boss fights it would have been nice to either have a new boss to fight like say a Time Eater spawn or stages of the Time Eater.

The level design in the game is really well done... except Crisis City! Hated that stage the first time and even classic Sonic couldn't make it fun! Anyway I enjoyed the redesigned stages and got a little angry admittedly when I played City Escape and everything was different... especially that crappy remix of the song. I commend Sonic Team for doing such a good job on the level designs and really hope they make more stages in DLC. I actually have a list of stages I'd like remade as DLC,

Scrap Brain Zone (Sonic The Hedgehog 1991)
Mystic Cave Zone (Sonic The Hedgehog 2)
Icecap Zone (Sonic The Hedgehog 3)
Flying Battery Zone (Sonic and Knuckles)
Lost World (Sonic Adventures)
Final Chase (Sonic Adventure 2)
Rail Canyon (Sonic Heroes)
Kingdom Valley (Sonic The Hedgehog 2006)
I'd also like a level editor too for $10

Another thing that was a missed opportunity was 2 player mode both online and offline. Seriously how did this not get thought about? Play through the stages with Shadow and Sonic in the 3D stages and Sonic and Metal Sonic for 2D stages. I enjoyed the 2 player mode in Sonic Adventures 2 and am surprised a 2 player mode was ignored for this.

Sonic Generations is a great game for Sonic fans and I think almost everything I mention could be added as DLC so lets hope SEGA decides to take my advice and maybe they can make a great game better.

Review: Sonic Generations

2011-11-03T08:51:00.005+11:00

Another year another Sonic game right? Well at least this time it looks like SEGA has finally started to care about both the fans and Sonic... a little. Has this 20th anniversary game proven Sonic should stay or is it another nail in the coffin that the blue blur keeps escaping. Keep reading to find out.

The basic story of the game goes as so. A beast called the Time Eater has torn through time and space, disrupted Sonic's party and has kidnapped all of Sonics annoying friends. Now Sonic and... Sonic have to team up and restore time to each piece of their history and save their friends from the Time Eater. The story isn't too interesting but it does kinda poke fun at Sonic's previous games and unfortunately classic Sonic doesn't talk. Couldn't they get Jaleel White?

The game has two distinct play styles to suit each Sonic. Fans of the Megadrive/Genesis era Sonic will be glad to know that Classic Sonic plays exactly as he does in good old Sonic 2 and for added nostalgia and precision I recommend using the D-pad for that more authentic feel. Classic Sonic also has a dedicated spin dash button so you can keep the flow going better and trust me, as a Sonic veteran from the glory days of Sonic it's useful. Modern Sonic on the other hand plays like the Sonic Unleashed(should of stayed leashed XD) Sonic and has every button mapped for a function. He also handles like a trolley with a flailing cow in the basket but if you've played the 3D Sonics then it's nothing new.

There are 9 stages, each with 2 acts 1 for each Sonic. Each of these stages are recreations of classic and modern Sonic stages and have various paths to the end of the stage and 5 special Red rings to collect to unlock music and artwork. Sounds simple and fun right? Well I hate to piddle on your salad but that's not the end of it. See after completing a stage with both Sonics you unlock challenges for each stage and you need to complete 1 per stage just to get a key to advance to boss and unlock the next era. Now these challenges vary from the simple race to the finish or beat a doppelganger and some that involve Sonics friends and many more. These are a bit tedious and you'll need to complete these to unlock more music and artwork and even skills. So much to unlock ugh....

The skills you can unlock are mainly stuff to either make the game play a little better to you're style or just give you an edge to help through the tougher stages... like that crappy Crisis City stage! What idiots wanted this stage in the game anyway? Ahem.. The skills also require a certain amount of points to equip and you have 100sp and the best ones require high amounts but to cater they've given you 5 skill setup slots to work with so you can make one for a specific Sonic or both or whatever.

Along with the normal stages there are rival battle and boss battles to complete to get to the end of the game. These battles unfortunately focus mainly on modern Sonic and resort to mainly "run until the enemy is open to attack and then attack X amount of times" and it seems both lazy and ripped out of the previous games. It's not a bad thing but there are so few and it would have been nice to have had a boss per stage instead of the way they did it.

The game will last you 8 hours on a normal playthrough but with all the challenges and unlockables, it can last double the time or even longer. The main advantage of doing these challenges is unlocking the music to use in any stage. With the large track list this game has you can play say Green Hill Zone(Sonic The Hedgehog 1991) with the music from Green Forest(Sonic Adventures 2 2001) or maybe Sonic Boom(Sonic CD 1993) while playing through Rooftop Run(Sonic Unleashed 2008) you get the idea. Unfortunately some of the music is remixed and some of them sound crappier then the originals.

The big question... is it a good game? Yes it actually is. It's nice to see another good Sonic game come out from the cesspool Sonic has been in for the last 10 years and it should keep you occupied until Sonic 4 episode 2 comes out. Playing as both Sonics can be fun but depending on which one you grew with will determine your preference and sometimes switching between them can be disorienting but I personally never had that problem. The game has a STRONG focus on modern Sonic so you have been warned. Regardless I highly recommend it for hardcore Sonic fans and especially those with families that have parents who grew with classic Sonic and kids who grew with modern Sonic. Too bad a Wii version wasn't made though. It's a great celebratory game of one of gaming's true mascots.

Score 4/5

Yeah decided to make the score colour blue in honor of Sonic and his 20th anniversary celebration.

HAPPY 20th ANNIVERSARY SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!

The FPS genre may be dying... YAY!

2011-10-28T03:56:00.006+11:00

WTF am I saying? Well let's look at all the high selling war FPS on the market right now, The single player campaigns are getting shorter while the multiplayer is heavily focused on 1:1 tea bagging and racism both on the games and gamers parts.

Let me get this straight, I don't completely hate the FPS genre. I love games like Halo, Duke Nukem, Fallout 3, Rage(don't own but love playing my friends PC version) Portal(technically a First Person Puzzle game) Half life, Bioshock, Resistance and Metroid Prime... notice a trend? I just personally hate the games that are most popular in the genre, the gun wank war FPS games.

As for the genre dying, well if you've played them you may have noticed that the campaigns barely last 5 hours in some and rarely break 8 hours. Also the stories in them are like grease proof paper that's been dipped in grease... barely there! On top of that these games are unintentionally racist, you heard me! Plus all the money goes into multiplayer and I know people who don't have Internet connections and/or don't care about online multiplayer and they feel ripped off when they buy these games. Now to go into more details about what I mentioned here.

The single player campaigns in these games can pretty much be summarised in a paragraph since their stories are like what... 2 pages long. I've played Battlefield Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare's 1 and 2, Medal Of Honor and all of their stories never stuck with me. The only thing I remember out of those games are realistic guns and that nuke scene from MW1... that's it!

The single player has become nothing more then a training tool for online multiplayer so noinks( it's from Blade Kitten and means No idea noob Kid.) can slightly stand a chance in an online murderfest. On top of that the single player campaign can be cleared in an afternoon. Seriously I used to own MW1 and I finished it the day I bought it before dinner that night and I refuse to play games on a difficulty higher then normal unless it's worth replaying and it wasn't, took it back and swapped it for Uncharted the next day.

As for racism in these war FPS you notice this more when you live in a multicultural country like Australia or are of the ethnicity being killed in the game. In every bloody war FPS you play as a white soldier(either a Yankee or Pommy/Limey[American or British]) and you are always shooting Germans, Russians, Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Middle Eastern or in the rare extent Negros( is that acceptable to use?) and yes I'm aware MW3 has other white people to use but here's the thing... there ALWAYS white!

Now I am a white man myself(whiter then most whites since I almost never go into sunlight since I'm a red head... also a minority) and it pisses me of that I can never play these games as anyone other then a white guy. Why you ask? Well I feel like a racist playing these games because I can't play as any one of those ethnicity's and I'm never teamed with them either. It also makes me wonder if the U.S Army even has ethnics in the army and that's sad. I'm sure the U.S army has all the mentioned ethnicity's in there army and it pisses me off that they are never represented in these games. I'm sure the racism in war games is mostly unintentional, but I can't help but feel these games also promote racism by only killing non Americans/British people and never playing as those ethnicity's in the main campaign. I get it Russia never waged war on the U.S, Vietnam wasn't a "true" victory, World War 2 sucked and was the only war you won, Koreans are a "threat" to you and 9/11 sucked but get the hell over it!

Now that I've really pissed the major majority of you who may be reading this it's time for my favourite punching bag in this... online multiplayer! Yes I HATE online multiplayer... except for some exceptions like Uncharted 2, Halo and the occasional MMORPG. Why you may ask? Well in short it's because of douche bags who take all the fun away in the game by cheap sniping and tea bagging you at every turn who call you a hacker for actually killing them and throwing racial and homophobic slurs around like confetti at a parade that's why! As well as crappy connections due to a lack of dedicated regional servers for Australia. I've played a ton of games online and I can't stand the players at all! The majority are arseholes! Halo is the only FPS I've played online where I've met people who weren't complete idiots and actually wanted to have fun playing.

Ok now to get to the topic at hand. The online mutiplayer of these games just aren't fun, mainly due to 2 things, realism and the players. Halo has you using outrageous weapons and aliens to skew the realism and focus on head stickies and hammer clubbing fun, while war shooter are just about killing each other in the cheapest and realistic way possible.

Then there's the DLC... I hate DLC, even in Halo! This is an aggravating thing because by the time all the DLC is released, you've bought the game twice and for what? 4 to 8 extra online murder coliseums? What's worse is that you'll get locked out from other players just because you didn't feel like wasting all that money on maps that aren't much different to the ones packaged in the game. Now if the DLC allowed you to play as an ape with a banana bazooka, then I'd be willing to part with 500M$ points. Also DLC is way to expensive! I mean AU$15 for a 2 map DLC? Piss Off!

Pretty much the FPS genre has started sucking it's own dick and has also become stagnant... more stagnant then JRPGs ever have, but more people notice JRPGs stagnating then FPSs. Soon the genre will have no single player and every game will be like MAG(played it, hated it, boring!) only slightly better. Enjoy the shallowness of the genre majority while I play the crap out of quality games like Legend Of Zelda, Mario, Blade Kitten, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, JRPGs and other games with more depth then a flattened teaspoon!

Review: Ratchet and Clank All 4 One

2011-10-25T23:11:00.003+11:00

I actually don't really want to review this because of the mood I'm in but it's best I review it while it's still fresh in my head. I was excited to see a new Ratchet and Clank when it was first announced but after slogging through this one I really want a new game but from the part of Insomniac Games that actually made the previous ones. Doesn't sound to good already doesn't it? Well if you're a fan... it's about to get worse.

The games story has Ratchet, Clank, President Captain Qwark and Dr. Nefarious getting kidnapped by a giant sphere like drone.After waking up in a facility and being helped to escape by a girl names Susie, they are forced to team up to survive on what's left of the planet Magnus and to stop the Ephemeris creature collector and Nevo's evil plot. The humor of the game is still in tacked but it's not like the previous games, this is more kid friendly.

They game plays like a castrated version of previous games... what does that mean you ask? Well let's start with the fact you can't control the camera at all! Instead the right stick selects your weapon. The targeting is automatic and it almost never targets what you want to hit. It's easy to get blindsided by an enemy because the camera can't be controlled and puzzles require not thought to solve. Also the game is designed to force multiplayer.

Those who know the series knows that the game is a platform/shooter. While this is true the auto targeting screws up the shooting for veterans ands to make matters worse weapons no longer upgrade through use, they instead require you to buy upgrades with bolts. This makes it not worth using certain weapons because most people will just focus on the most powerful or most ammo weapons. There is also a weapons overload ability that makes the damage higher when more then one player uses the same weapon on a target. This is a great addition but people will fight over which weapon to use and the A.I. always wants you to use what it wants... which is always the most powerful weapons. Fighting the A.I. over what weapon to use is more frustrating then people without headsets! Ammo is also no longer in boxes, instead there are ammo refill stations placed at specific locations.

Now while the plaforming isn't too much different, it now require you to team up with either an idiotic A.I. or other players(online or offline) to activate devices or cross larger gaps. While it doesn't sound bad it's actually frustrating when players are fighting each other over camera focus or the A.I. goes brain dead and you can't proceed. Also co-ordinating anything is frustrating both with players and with the A.I.

The enemies also have an extremely high amount of health and what's worse is that the bosses while fun to fight, have WAY to much health and make the fights long and boring somethings. They all have patterns that are way to easy to follow but it's because this game is after all for families and kids to play, not us Ratchet and Clank veterans.

Skill points return to the game and this is where the veterans will rejoice because they are still as fun and challenging to obtain unlike the golden bolts. Yes they even dumbed down finding the golden bolts by making most of them extremely easy to find... by putting them in plain sight! Completing Skill points will earn you cheat like in the past to have extra fun with the game and the golden bolt unlock costumes for the characters... but you need to find them for all the characters, not just the one.

Playing with people online and offline is essentially the same experience except lag issues and lack of headsets makes playing online frustrating sometimes... what am I saying sometimes, I mean all the time. Also because of having more then 2 players at one time the frame rate sufferers dearly for it. I mean it's bad enough it's got a lower frame rate to other Ratchet and Clank games but when you've got 4 players on screen and a ton of enemies onscreen the word "Clusterf*ck" doesn't do it justice and it's a low frame rate clusterf*ck that can freeze on you sometimes too.

Ratchet and Clank All 4 One is a game that tries to force multiplayer on you and is a watered down experience. This game was designed with kids and families in mind. If you're a veteran playing with your family you will be frustrated by both how it plays and how your family plays. If you play single player the A.I. is so brain dead that you'll want to play with people for slightly less frustration. All and all it's not a bad game, just not really meant for veteran fans to be challenged with. The story and all the stuff to obtain will keep you occupied for a long while if you're patient but if you pass on it I won't blame you. Also if you don't like playing with other people I would pass on this game, it punishes the loner!

Score 3/5

Nintendo Connection Tour 2011 Australia

2011-10-03T11:21:00.003+11:00

Ok so on Saturday I went to the Nintendo Connection Tour 2011 to give the new games coming out a go and lucky me, they allowed me to record footage of the games. So I'm going to talk about the games and provide videos as well.

I'll start with Super Mario 3D Land

Well I personally came to the Nintendo Connection Tour 2011 just to play this and Skyward Sword and I have to admit that playing this game in 3D actually helps with the platforming and it's because of the angle they chose for it. Controls are also simple, just 3 buttons and the touchscreen for items. See this game actually did what more games need to do, simplistic controls!

Next let's go with Kid Icarus: Uprising

Let me just say that this game is a pain to play and needs either another circle pad or something like the original DS had to attach to your thumb. I actually wasn't sold on the game from the footage but after playing it I definitely can't wait for it to come out. You can only aim with the touchscreen and the main face buttons don't do much either. The controls are the same for flight sections as well as when you're on the ground and they're a bit messy to use on the ground. Even with the flaws, I enjoyed playing it.

Mario Kart 7 is up next

Well what can I say about it... really I haven't got much to say. If you've played Mario Kart it's the same but now there are hang glider attachments and you can drive underwater. All you really need to now is that it's just as good as previous Mario Kart games. Do we need any more?

Now a BIG surprise for me. Kirby's Return To Dreamland

This game wasn't announced to be there but wow! I didn't expect me to fall in love with a Kirby game. Now I kinda feel like Moviebob did when he first realised what he missed. This game is essentially like The New Super Mario Bros. Wii but in Kirby's universe. 4 player co op fun with Meta Knight, Kirby, King Deedee Dee and a Waddle dee or any combination of them. Simple controls and fun gameplay make this a must on my list. How about you?

Now for the main event, Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I have 3 videos of this so first we have the flight. The way to play is difficult with how they mapped the controls but I'm sure with enough time it'll be nothing. The gameplay here is like a game of tag.

The main play style is a lot like Twilight Princess but finicky. See while they say it's 1-1 motion controls... it isn't. There are both attack delays and worst of all the way you swing the sword is determined by where on screen Link his holding it. Let me put it this way, if he has his sword on the left and you swing left... he'll swing to the right. Also with all the new ways to control items and the interface... it's nightmarish! Let me put it this way... The demo was intimidating to me who has been gaming for 21 years! This game's demo was good but all I wanted was a tutorial.

Also here's a fight with that guy with the long fringe. I can't wait to fight him in the game!

Well I can't wait for these games to come out and I'm sure you'll love these games too... assuming you actually like games that use colours that aren't only brown, orange and grey. Nintendo really knows how to make high quality first party games... and make my wallet devoid of cash.

Review: Xenoblade Chronicles

2011-09-28T04:18:00.003+10:00

Well before I review this let me just sit back and revel in the fact that for once a game came out in Australia and not the USA. Just give me a minute... ahh! Ok enough of that. Believe it or not Xenoblade Chronicles actually is a good step forward in the realm of JRPGs, keep reading to find out more.

The story of Xenoblade Chronicles is deep and interesting. It starts with 2 giant titans called the Bionis and the Mechonis having a big fight and kill each other and there corpses become 2 land masses. Then we go into the main story itself. The Mechon(a machine race) has been attacking Homs(Humans with a different name) colonies for years and after the battle at Sword Valley a whole year has passes since Mechon have appeared on Bionis. Then They attack once again and attack Colony 9 and a new breed of mechon arrives that have a face and can't be killed by the mechon slaying blade the Monado. Now Shulk and his friends have to seek revenge for the death of Fiora(Shulk's would be girlfriend) and the Homs killed by the mechon, while unlocking the true power of the Monado.

I admit summarising the story is hard with this game since it's so deep but on to gameplay. The game being a JRPG means turn-based combat right? Well yes it does have it but in the same way as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XII. You see it uses an auto attack combat system that you can use skills in, the difference is that the skills have a cooldown effect and don't rely on mana points(MP). This is the reason why you keep seeing the tag Action RPG for the game, but it's a TURN-BASED JRPG.

The combat is simple, since the monster roam the field instead of you being bogged down with random encounters you just target an enemy and spam skills that do damage... well that's one option. The skills you can use in battle is limited to 8 per character so choosing skills that are well rounded is a good way to go. Strategy for battle has the usual style of RPGs where each enemy has things it's weak against but this game also included an actual strategy set up for physical attackers. In this game you can make enemies fall to the ground by toppling them, making them unable to attack while grounded. There is also a chain attack that can be activated once the chain attack gauge is filled to bombard the enemy with attacks with bonuses for using the same coloured skills. Skills are broken up into different categories like ether based(magic) and physical and each colour represents the type of effect they have eg. yellow are buffs, blue is healing and red is heavy attack focused. While in combat you will also have a button come up on screen to push, pressing the button at the right time will allow you to boost the abilities of your party through tension. This also makes them harder for enemies to kill.

Navigating the world is pretty much filled with running around but a consolation to it is if you find a landmark you can warp to them using the map screen which will cut down travel time while questing and you'll be doing a lot of that. Also you will need to run around a lot to reveal the entire map, but be warned that some monster can target you if you are lower level then them. An Icon above their heads will help you know which ones to avoid.

A draw back in this game is it's sidequest. Why you may ask? Well unfortunately while borrowing the MMO combat system it also took their sidequest too. In every town and every cluster of people, sidequests are there and they are all fetch quest, monster killing, rare monster hunting and item farming quests, 52 hours in and I've suffered from quest exhaustion! There are 100's of sidequest and the only advantages of doing them is for rare items and exp. This game has borrowed so much from MMO's it's essentially a Single Player Offline Japanese Role Playing Game or SPOJRPG.

To also force hours of gameplay an affinity system has been added to the game. What does this mean? Well as you complete quest the people of the town start to like you and whoever is in your party at the time will also grow more affectionate to you for helping people. Building up positive affinity with teammates opens up new dialogue scenes that give you more insight to the characters. You can also boost affinity by being successful with the tension boosting in battle.

Now the big question, is it a good game? Yes, in fact it's great. The game breaths new life into the JRPG genre with it's combat system, along with a story that doesn't fall into JRPG stereotypes and guaranteed over 100 hours of gameplay thanks to sidequests. I've had a great time playing it because of the great music and story but the quest overload can be a problem. If you own a Wii the I say go and buy it especially if you've never played a JRPG before.

Score 4/5

People aren't finishing video games? DUH!

2011-08-25T02:59:00.005+10:00

I don't know about you but this is such a dumb and obvious thing. I read a couple of articles on some gaming sites that were talking about a study that said most people don't finish games. My answer is DUH! Of course most people don't finish games! Why? because too many games get released at the same time period among other reasons. Let me explain.

You see most video games publishers have certain periods where they release a ton of games within a week of each other, mainly during the pre and post holiday period. Look at this year alone, there's at least 8 must have games released in November alone and what are the odd people are going to finish them all before the next big must owns come out in January?. I am also guilty of not finishing games myself. My JRPG collection is mostly unfinished because new games come along and draw me away from them and they just sit there waiting for me to have the time to play them once again.

Then there's the fact that most modern gamers have a life outside of video games. These people just don't have as much free time to play as a guy like me who does nothing but play video games and my best mate is one of those kinds of people. He works 12 hours a day, 5 days a week and only has the weekends to himself and you know what he does? Sleeps most of it and spends time with friends and family. He has 34 games on PS3 and has only finished 7 of them... since he bought the PS3 on release!

Plus 2 out of every 10 gamers rent games and they usually don't re-rent them after that weekend they rented it for because they don't have the money or one of the previous 2 factors. Also don't forget the people who make the most of game retailers 7 days to return policy where you buy it and can bring it back within 7 days for a full refund or store credit(EB Games loves only giving you credit instead of cash).

When it comes to my game collection personally the only games I haven't finished are some JRPGs, some NES games, Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space 2. I'd say about 92% of my game collection has been finished so it's not too big a ratio for me but I'm sure we all have a pile of shame we're still working on during each video games drought. We'd probably be done now with our piles of shame if developers would stop repackaging games every year with a bigger number(*cough* MW3 *cough* Battlefield 3 *cough* sports games period *cough!*) or at least give their franchise a break for 2 or 3 years(looking at you Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed)!

Not enough REAL women in video games.

2011-07-31T06:10:00.004+10:00

Allo allo allo, what's this all about then? Why is I talking about this then? Ok serious time now. I was thinking about all the games both in my video game collection and what's coming and and came to a realisation, there are too many men in video games (Also all these men are mainly grizzled 30 something year old men) and not enough women and on top of it there aren't many women in games who are actual women. What do I mean? Well since you asked.

First let me link you to a video that helps me with my case to start with. Have you ever heard of a show call Extra Credits on The Escapist before? They did a video on the subject I'm talking about... kinda. Here's the link http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2868-True-Female-Characters

Well that video does cover the majority but I'd feel really lazy if I didn't explain why I'm bringing this up. Well let me start with the visual depiction of women, mainly clothing. Sure I could bag out the giant breast and impossible to attain figures they have but that just goes without saying. You see the current looks most women have in games are highly sexualised. Now my gripe about this is the fact that most gamers are apparently between 25 and 30, which means men and women. The current designs of women are appealing to 2 main groups, teens and the sexually deprived.

The outfits of women in video games are very strangely designed. Look at a game in a fantasy setting, the female characters are usually running around in something that could best be described as a leather bikini. How about fighting games, especially Dead Or Alive? The "women" in the game are wearing outfits that flash cleavage and upskirt shots. Basically they are designed to "look" appealing but to a person like me who's a 25 year old male they are silly. Why you may ask? Well I've grown up and even though I'm single, I just find real women more visually appealing and REAL. Thing is I don't want these styles of video game women to go, just become less frequent.

Then there's the personality. MovieBob in in his video "I Heart Bayonetta" kinda nailed the basic types of "Ice Queens" and "Girls". You hardly ever see women characterised in a way that makes them feel like an actual women. I honest have trouble thinking of women in games that actually manage to be close to a real women. Most women in games are usually either soft and mousy or well... stereotypical butch lesbians (No offense to actual lesbians is implied). I'd give examples of the types but it's easier to ask you to tell me which women in gaming don't fall in these areas that aren't silent. I'd really like to see more female characters who could actually pass as a real woman in personality.

Now then there's a story to suit a female character. The only games I've seen women in are action and fighting games to show of their physique and jiggle physics. Now this isn't so much a problem as the fact that the stories in them are usually focused on giving them a slim reason for them to be there. I'd like to see games with women that tackle real issues women go through that would actually take the call to action outside of employment and the "we need girls in this game" idea. I like the ideas the Extra Credits crew came up with to be honest.

Pretty much in short I'd like less of the usual women in gaming and more non sexualised, naturally endowed women with a realistic female personality. I'd also like to see those types of women in games that suit those women and women in general. I'd like to invite you to leave comments of examples of the REAL types of women in video games. I know of a couple but I'd like to see how many there are.

"The Cloud" scares me...

2011-07-22T00:51:00.003+10:00

Call me crazy, call me an idiot, call me paranoid, call me whatever the heck you want. The Cloud scares the living crap out of me. No not "The Cloud" the feature, "The Cloud" the evil beast.

See I'm for "The Cloud" as a feature, you know like the PSN storage for saves. This use of "The Cloud" is great. Seriously I think the theory of an option for backup stored on the web is the best idea for PC's and online enabled consoles.

The part of "The Cloud" that scares me is the future that's coming for it. See if you've even seen that Google Chrome OS computer that is a cloud computing system you may have a vague idea why I'm scared. See what you may not know is that "The Cloud" can and will be the future of computing and here's what's going to happen. The PC will eventually be nothing but iPads and everyone's version as well as netbooks "Cloud Books" if you prefer that have no storage for anything except the glorified web browser OS but that's not the bad part, let me get to that.

You see if "The Cloud" evolves the way I predict, you know hard drives and flash drives? GONE! No physical back ups of data, which also means that if the server dies, your data dies. Not scared? Well if you have no back up and they have no back up you wasted money, lost important data and chances are there will be no compensation.

Then there's the fact that everything will be subscription run. Your OS, subscription. Your editing program, subscription. Your drawing program(eg Corel), subscription. You get the drift right? Essentially no credit or debit card or no money, no Cloud PC and since you paid for the unit itself that's unfair right? Yeah, see paying for a monthly subscription for a game is one thing but paying just to turn on a PC is just wrong but it WILL happen and considering your bill are emailed to you and will probably only be able to be paid online you can't use electricity, gas, water, food, etc. Also it will become way more expensive in under this model they will choose.

You know the videos, the music and and games you enjoy on PC? Well you know how we have region locking at the moment with DVDs, Blurays and video games? Yeah they'll be worse because VPNs will no longer be an option and people like me will be screwed. Sure piracy and hacking will die but you'll miss out one games you want to play, the music will be restricted to whatever crap is chosen to be released and you can't watch say, True Blood unless you live in the US. Speaking of games, no more mods for games.

What about privacy? Think of that? Well if "The Cloud" come privacy is no more because everything will be public. See the thing is security will actually suffer greatly due to full internet integration. Thing well get harder to block and viruses will roam more free then ever.

Then there's the internet connection. See until the internet runs like water at a steady flow for all instead of laggy like it is today, we'll never be able to make the most of "The Cloud" in the future form it will take. Think about playing say Fallout 5 via "The Cloud and the net drops before a 2 hour run could be saved or even worse... in the middle of saving and corrupts you save.

Also what about the OS of Cloud PC's? You see since it will be just a web browser with apps, you can't use say Firefox(my personal favourite browser) to browse the web and then there's the fact that certain apps won't work on Mac Cloud OS that work on Windows Cloud OS or Google Chrome and so on. Sure we have that already but we can't patch it to work.

This is just a sample of what can happen and what I fear most. I'm sure there a boat load of possibilities that are positive but I'm not seeing them. "The Cloud" should just be a feature or an option, not the only thing. There's a high chance what I predict is coming but hey, if I'm wrong then I'll except the ridicule. The big question is when will it come? I guess between 10 and 15 years personally.

Review: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

2011-07-18T23:18:00.004+10:00

Oh my god... I am so damn exhausted with Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 right now... by which I mean I've put in 76 hours into this game and I need sleep! Yeah I actually am a person who enjoys the Warriors series of games but does putting 76 hours into this game mean it's good? Well either check the score(for those with no time or patience) or read on to find out.

Ok the story for this game is annoying! I mean it's annoying to the point I started skipping text without reading it. Why? Because it's so damn bland. The story has all the characters in the game stuck on a world that's a spliced mix of their universes(well the Universal Century series at least[if you don't know what that is then I suggest looking it up]) and they are fighting one another to find a way home while unbeknownst to them the true reason for there gathering is hidden from them by a mysterious mobile suit. Then there's the replaying the TV series stories in condensed versions. So chances are you'll end up skipping the text portions of the story just to get back to the action.

The game plays just like every other Warriors game(except Fist of The North Star, that is slow and a little different) so it wont be too hard to jump in, plus when you start you are forced into a tutorial so even newcomers aren't left in the dark. Control are mapped to the entire controller with no button unmapped. The usual Warriors combat is used here and if you've played as many as I have you'll notice that the fighting styles each mobile suit has is the same as a previously seen character from either Dynasty Warriors or Samurai Warriors with some tweaks to remind you that it is a Gundam game, which means shooting and different charge attacks. Interestingly you'd be surprised to here that over 100 enemies appear onscreen at one time. Also the giant mobile suits return... well some of them.

The game is mission based like all Warriors games and this game has a ton of them. The missions are all the same this time with no real variation so they can get really boring, really fast... or at least for most. To try and mix it up they added strategic points to take over instead of just territories... ok it's still taking territories but now they actually do something other then spawn enemies. The strategic points are basically bases(which your teammates and enemies spawn from), catapults(launches you to a designated part of the field), repair warehouses(restores the battle gauge, will elaborate later)... and the list goes on. I just can't be bothered adding them all but they can effect the tide of battle to a minut degree. Look every mission is just "Kill boss, don't die!".

The game's mission may not have any variations but the path to get there is a little different to the other games in the Warriors series. The game forces you to deplete a 'Battle Gauge' to actually make the boss appear and to do so requires you to kill ace pilots and take fields until it's empty. The battle gauge is a strange thing though, it actually allows ace pilots to respawn after being destroyed until it's depleted... even you can respawn if the gauge isn't empty, but it depletes a lot of the gauge when you do respawn.

There's about 120 mobile suits and characters... or at least that's what the box says and most of them are Gundams this time around. Here's the catch though, you have to unlock characters to get the good mobile suits and find plans to make better versions of them that can be upgraded a certain amount of times and for everyone to use them you need to use them 5 times with the original owners. Then there's the 3 special mobile suits that require unlocking through specific missions... ugh! Yes it's tedious... it really is. Unlocking characters is also a pain since you need to complete missions to unlock the opportunity to become friends and then build a friendship with them by fighting alone side them and then complete a mission to max out the friendship... ugh!

The game has multiplayer up to 4 players online and you can play the majority of mission in local 2 player, but back to online multiplayer.It's co operative multiplayer... *the sounds computers around the world going back a page or closing web browser windows* so no competitive matches or pressure. There are 15 online missions and they are the same as offline missions but with up to 4 players and with lag in most matches.

Look, I'm sure you've already made your decision just by the title of the game itself but my opinion, it's not worth buying unless your a fan of Gundam and or a fan of the Warriors series. Be warned it can get boring unless you're dedicated. It's not that bad of a game... but not that good either. Seriously unless a fan of either franchise, you are wasting money. I personally like the game but I like these games and there are a fair few people who like Warriors games. But yeah even this was taxing on me. 2/5 is my score but that's not for fans, just for everyone else. If you are a fan then just go buy it if you like Gundams.

Score 2/5

My thoughts on how the next gen consoles should be done.

2011-07-08T00:59:00.004+10:00

Man it's been a while since I did a non review post. This time I'm going to talk about what I'd like to see and would do with the next console iterations. I think I'll start with Microsoft.

Ok first off don't release a new console until 2014 the earliest, why? Because you got some serious work to do.

-First of either use a 1GB graphics card or use 2 graphics cards.

-Use a multi core processor, preferable quad or sextuple and have at least 4 GB ram but I'd say go with 8GB.

-HD is a no brainer. Here's the part that will help you in terms of fighting piracy, use proprietary HD DVDs for the games and use 16GB discs. Keep the reverse compatibility for all Xbox 360 games and even have the ability to transfer the save data and DLC from 360 to the new console.

-Give it a minimum HDD of 120GB but go with 250GB, that's a nice size, heck why not just do a HDD that's exactly the same as the 360 and be able to just plug your 360 HDD in and download an update for the new interface and what not.

-Now for the reason you should wait, allow cloud save data for XBL Gold subscribers and even allow an option for XBLA games to be played via the cloud. We all know the cloud is inevitable but it need to be experimented with and implemented in small abouts like in my examples.

-Use all the accessories from the 360 so you don't need to redesign or make peoples lives more miserable and bundle it with 2 controllers and a Kinect.

-Keep the disc draw drive design. I like having the draw and it's your advantage against both the Wii U, Wii and PS3. I bet I'm not the only one who agrees.

-I can't stress this enough and it will reduce piracy as well. MAKE IT REGION FREE! All region locking does it piss people of and gives them an excuse to pirate a game if it isn't released in there region. This is why console modding is popular in Australia and Europe.

-Make the XBL marketplace region free. This is a great idea, trust me!

-Sell actual disc games via XBL Marketplace that get mailed to the customer and give bonus MS Points to people who preorder via my idea of the XBL Retail Marketplace.

-Be able to buy stuff via PayPal! Seriously this should actually be done now!

-Put in a proper Windows Live messenger that uses Kinect! This will make a lot of people happy! Also proper Facebook and Twitter integration you can update while playing games. Again this will make a lot of people happy!

As for Sony with your inevitable PlayStation 4 again wait until 2014 to release it at the earliest and most of what I recommend for Microsoft should be taken but I'll repeat it anyway.

- Multi core processor, 4 core minimum, 6 core preference

- 1GB graphics card or 2 graphics cards

- 4GB ram minimum, 8GB recommended

- Reverse compatibility for all PlayStation 1,2 and 3 games... and I mean all not some!

- Minimum HDD 120GB, 250GB preferred

- Keep the Blurays as they are but offer developers the 50GB, especially JRPG developers like Square-Enix, Mistwalker, NIS, IF, Compile Heart, Gust, etc

- Keep the region free, I love that about you guys and it's was your ace in the hole with this console generation and make the PlayStation Store region free too. I hate how the US gets games I want and can't get like Parasite Eve for example!

- Offer cloud storage for PSN users but have unlimited cloud saves for PSN plus subscribers

- Use all the PlayStation 3's accessories and bundle the console with a controller and a full PS Move kit, you know PS wand/remote, camera and navigation controller.

- Remove the PSN Pass! I know you're scared of second hand sales but here's what you, Nintendo and Microsoft can do to battle it... DON'T SUPPLY SHOPS THAT SELL SECOND HAND GAMES RELEASED WITHIN 12 MONTHS OF IT'S RELEASE! Seriously if they don't have new games to sell, they will think twice about screwing you over with second hand games. Still allow them to sell used games but not games release within a 12 month period for example if they sell Resistance 3 used before a year has passed, stop sending them stock for 60 days the first offence 90 days for the second and never again for a third offence. It's time you fought back against there pockets!

- Allow people to buy retail games that get mailed to the customer via the PS Store.

- Allow people to pay for stuff via PayPal! This should have been done by now!

- Proper Facebook and Twitter integration that can be updated while playing games.

- CROSS GAME CHAT! THIS IS A MUST!

So yeah... will the companies take my advice... probably not but if they do the next generation of console my actually be a great one... maybe...

Review: Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D

2011-06-26T10:48:00.005+10:00

Ok let me save you time here if you don't like reading reviews that are long because this one may be pretty long. Perfect score, must buy, wait until more 3DS games worth owning to come out to buy a 3DS if you don't own one. Ok? Ok now lets do this. *cracks fingers*

Let me get personal to start with. I played Ocarina Of Time for the first time when it came out in 1998 and I was 13. A time in my life where this game helped me emotionally at a time where I needed it most. The touching story and hidden message of the game really effected me in a way that's indescribable. If you play/played the game around the ages of 10-18 you may get the same kind of effect. The game was almost too perfectly released when you consider how old generation NES were. The funny thing is 13 years later, the game is still as good as ever and somehow they improved on perfection.

If you haven't played Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time first off you have my deepest condolences. Second, Why haven't you? It's on Wii Virtual Console and it was re-released on Gamecube with Windwaker and at one point you could buy a Gamecube with a Zelda Collection which has the 2 NES and 2 N64 games on one disc. Anyway now is your chance on 3DS.

The story of Ocarina Of Time is about a boy who has been chosen by destiny to save the land of Hyrule from Ganondorf/Ganon and he even has to travel through time to do so. I would give out more detail but you need to experience it for yourself.

The game is a 3D action adventure dungeon crawler. You know the routine by now right? If you played a game like Dragon Age or Darksiders then you get the idea... mainly because they are trying to copy this game sure Dragon Age is a more personalised experience but it's a dungeon crawler regardless. The controls and gameplay are simple and the game does a fantastic job teaching you how to play it. Speaking of teaching they added tutorial videos you can watch via a Sheikah Stone which are located right outside Link's house in Kokiri Village and in the Temple of Time. The videos are designed to help people who are stuck in a dungeon. These are well done but even when I was 13 and this being my first Zelda game, I never had a problem solving the puzzles.

The game has 3 dungeons as a child and 5 as an adult and a few mini dungeons. The level designs of the dungeons are designed so well that the seem to fit the architecture of the outer structure of the dungeons. The world is also large and beautifully designed from the Kokiri Forest all the way to Lake Hylia. Basically it looks good, especially with the graphical upgrade they did.

Speaking of the graphics they really did a great job on the visual upgrade. The new textures make everything look more vivid and the characters more alive. One strange thing about the graphics is that without the 3D it looks a little smudged. I'm serious here, the 3D seems to also be an unintentional HD switch(does the 3DS even do HD?) and makes everything sharper. The 3D surprisingly doesn't feel out of place and actually helps make the world feel more real and you feel more immersed... as long as you don't lose the sweet spot.

Some of the new features brought to this version other then 3D are motion controls for the camera and aiming with some of the weapons. I must warn you that you can lose the sweet spot really easy with the motion controls and on top of that they will interfere with using the thumb pad for aiming so I recommend turning it off if you prefer aiming with the thumb pad.

As mention before the Sheikah stones give tutorial videos for newcomers needing help. There's also the Boss challenge mode where you can re-fight bosses with limited health and items. I don't really like this mode because it's not very challenging for me.

They also brought Master's Quest back but I honestly don't remember it being mirrored. This mode is great for veterans, especially those who know the original game back to front and don't need a playguide to complete the game *stands proudly knowing where every heart piece and gold skulltula is*. Unfortunately you need to finish the normal game to unlock Master's Quest but is that really a bad thing?

I also have to mention because this is an important improvement, the Iron and Hover Boots are now used like every other item! Yes you and equip them like in Windwaker and Twilight Princess! Trust me this is a great improvement because it reduces the frustration of the Water Temple.

As I said the game gets a perfect score. The original game was one of the best, if not the best game ever made and then they improved on it. Whether you're a newcomer or a returning veteran, the game will not disappoint. It really is the reason to own a 3DS. I enjoyed every minute playing the game and I'm sure everyone else will too. I also played the whole game in 3D and even though I played for a 7 hour play session, my eyes were still fine

Score 5/5

Review: inFamous 2

2011-06-18T00:45:00.003+10:00

inFamous is one of those games that is a sequel with very small amounts of change made on it's original. I found the small changes interesting but it didn't really change it very much, to the point of not really being noticeable. Also it took me 5 days to finish the game... 5 DAYS! I never take longer then 3 unless it's a JRPG or an Assassin's Creed game. The question is, is it a good game? Read on to find out in my review of inFamous 2(heh heh, that rhymes.)

The story follows on straight after the events of inFamous so if you are returning like me then you already know what happened but they brief you on the last games events. Cole Mc Grath has travelled to New Marais in the hopes of increasing his powers so he can defeat the beast who has come to destroy everything in it's path, especially since the beast drained his powers. Once there he finds out that a former member of the First Sons named Bertrand has taken over the town and a slue of swamp monsters are terrorising the inhabitants of New Marais. Now he has to choose to save or terrorise the people in his quest to defeat the beast.

The game is a mixed element game. It's a sandbox game that has a fair bit in common with Assassin's Creed and is kind of a 3rd person shooter hybrid as well. It's hard to give it a proper definition but it's a genre on it's own. The gameplay is exactly the same as the first inFamous with some extra moves but it doesn't make much difference. The melee combat has been improved with a combo ability that also has finishers when the gauge is filled but still no lock-on for the melee which makes the camera an adversary as well. You can now customise your abilities you have equipped in the to change the style of super powers to suit yourself(I went full lightning with ice rockets for mine).

The game like all sandbox games is mission based with plenty of side missions to do and also has collectibles to consume hours of your time if your either a completist or a trophy hunter. Like in the first inFamous you have to find blast shards to increase your max power gauge and they are a pain in the butt to hunt down without a map or a system of searching like I use. Also some Karma opportunities show up that also contain Blast Shards and can throw you off the hunt. These Karma missions are usually kill people missions and bomb disposal.

The game has a morality system. This effects some of the super powers you obtain during the game as well as the colour, Red is evil and Blue is good... go figure. Building Karma is pretty easy, especially evil Karma. Some of the missions in the game also effect Karma and the story so choose wisely.

There are dozens of side missions to complete in the game and some are Karma based and can get locked out after choosing one of them. I highly recommend playing 2 times for each set of Karma missions and then play a more personal experience, especially if you want the trophies. After completing these mission you will take over territory in New Marais and doing so reduces and sometimes removes the enemies from spawning in the area taken.

The enemies in the games are a bit different from the first one. If you remember it was just soldiers and trash robots, in inFamous 2 you get soldiers, ice conduit soldiers, humanoid swamp monsters and boss monsters that become regular enemies for some strange reason. What's worse is that these boss monsters have really cheap attacks and really like to corner you.

The game also has User Generated Content. It's confusing to use... seriously and no tutorial either. You can make a variety of mission types and if you can work out how to use the tools to there fullest you can make some interesting creations. I made 1 mission called Intel Confiscation so you can see... I suck at it. I'm not really good at making stuff outside of my unpublished and difficult levels in LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2... they also look like crap aesthetically.

So is inFamous 2 a good game... Yes, especially if you liked the first game. Not much has been changed but that can be a good thing. Sure it doesn't innovate any more then the first one but it's still a fun game with plenty of faffing about. Also if you're like me then you can play it more then once. I played the original 6 times with different choices but twice with full morality, probably do it again with this one too. inFamous 2 lives up to the quality of the first one and won't disappoint. I give it a 4/5. Looking forward to a possible 3rd game.

Review: Duke Nukem Forever

2011-06-11T21:16:00.003+10:00

Wow, has it really been 15 years since the game was in development? OF COURSE IT'S BEEN! But the big questions are has Duke Nukem Forever reached expectations and has he aged well. In short No he didn't meet expectations for some but did for me and No he hasn't aged well because he hasn't changed and I like that. I mention that he hasn't reached expectations or aged well because the audience who knew Duke in the 90's have matured and may not like him anymore and the way the new game plays may upset old fans. Well I'm reviewing it now so I hope you haven't ran away yet.

The story of Duke Nukem Forever is what you'd expect. The Cycloids are taking away the women and Duke is out to get revenge. I know seems simple but hey it's Duke Nukem! He's back to take arse and kick names... I mean kick arse and take names. The setup this time is the Cycloids have shown up on Earth and seem to not be causing trouble until they go after Duke for revenge and take his twin hotties away from him. The president blames him for starting the fight and Duke wants revenge for kidnapping his babes.

Gameplay is like most FPS games and I highly recommend changing the settings to Duty(I think that's what it's called) so it has the same setup as Call Of Duty and it's the easiest way to play it, trust me! The game borrows from other popular shooters but it mainly borrows from Halo, Call Of Duty and believe it or not Half Life... really borrows from Half Life in the sense it tells you nothing and you got to work out everything yourself for the most part and it's puzzles. They even make a couple of references to Half Life.

As you know this is a FPS but the game has power ups in it... remember what those are? Throughout the game you'll find beer and steroids along with holo Dukes to use in the game. Beer make you take less damage(and makes you tougher apparently), steroids make you only do super powered melee attacks and the Holo Dukes create a hologram of Duke to take aggro (yes even an Army Of Two reference). There are no grenades in the game but you do get pipe bombs which remote detonate and trap mines which explode when the laser line is crossed.

The weapons are all the basics you'd expect but over the top for the most part. You have the basic handgun and shotgun but the machine gun has 3 barrels and is called "The Ripper", an RPG which looks nothing like what most of you are used too, The Devastator which is a machine gun that shoots rockets, a rail gun which is your sniper rifle... on steroids and some alien weapons which... suck, as well as a shrink gun and a freeze gun which both of them are fun to use but pale against the shotgun.

There are some vehicle sections but they don't have weapons on them and take a while to complete. As mentioned above there are some puzzles to solve but they will seem familiar if you've ever played a Half Life game.

Your health bar(Yes a health bar! Remember what they are?) can regenerate like in every other FPS and it's actually called your Ego. You can increase your max Ego by finding interactive items throughout the game and defeating the bosses... some with hilarious results. Also bosses can only be defeated using explosives or turrets... you have been warned!

The game is also fairly long, taking me over 15 hours to complete over 2 days... yeah it's the length of 2 Call Of Duties! One of the real hooks of the game is Duke's one liners... they are PRICELESS! I couldn't help but laugh my arse off throughout playing this game, his comments to picking up a turd are just hilarious! Duke makes various references to other games and there are a couple of Easter eggs in the game you have to find that also have one liners attached to them.

The game has online multiplayer matches which are the same as every other shooter but with a Duke Nukem twist and unfortunately Christopher Sabat's voice for the announcer... am I the only one sick of his and Steven Blum' voices? I didn't get much of a lag when I played but since only the PAL region has it as of me typing this so if Halo is anything to go on it's going to be bad when the rest of the world gets it.

Duke Nukem Forever is a hard game to recommend because I feel the audience who'd get the most fun out of the game aren't in the age bracket to play the game. Seriously even though I had fun with the game I fell that 13 to 18 year olds would enjoy it more then the adults it's suppose to be targeted at. Is Duke Nukem Forever a good game? Yes. Is it a great game? Hard to say to be honest. Let me make it simpler. If you are a fan of Duke Nukem you have a 60% chance of liking it, depending on how you grew up and if you're easily blinded by nostalgia. If you're under 20 and above 12 you'll love it!(I don't encourage under 20's to buy or play the game without parental permission) I loved the game myself but I have to give it a 4/5. It's nice to finally see Duke again after so many years. I was 12 when I played Duke Nukem 3D on the PlayStation and he hasn't changed a bit.

Score 4/5

E3 2011 Nintendo Press Conference

2011-06-08T03:31:00.004+10:00

I have extremely mixed feelings about Nintendo's press conference. While I'm over the moon with the 3DS games for the most part, the Wii U line up screams the "Hardcore" focus to an embarrassing degree. Extremely disappointed at the Wii U controller design as well. Here's my responses to the announcements.

- Legend Of Zelda's for all consoles! Link's Awakening on eShop available today for 3DS, Ocarina Of Time on 3DS, 4 Swords on DSI Ware and Skyward Sword around Christmas. Exclusive gold Wiimote to be released as well. Also for those who register their OOT on Club Nintendo you can get OOT soundtrack.

- Mario Kart 3DS... finally getting a release. Ok. Customising seems cool.

- Starfox 64 3DS. Cool. Uses it's motion controls as expected. September release.

- Super Mario 3D. Awesome! Seriously awesome! TANOOKI MARIO! MUST BUY!

- Kid Icarus. Cool. Does seem pretty good too. Playing AR cards that fight.

- Luigi's Mansion 2. Cool I guess.

- Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D, Mario & Sonic At the Olympics: London 2012, Ace Combat 3D, Cave Story 3D, Tetris, Resident Evil Revelations, Driver Renegade, Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions,
Tekken 3D, Metal Gear Snake Eater 3D announced. Impressive list.

- New firmware update will have an enhanced web browser. Also the 3DS getting it's own Virtual Console.

- Pokedex 3D encourages Street Passing to finish it. Ok...

- The new console is called Wii U. New controller looks like half a 3DS. The controller is the screen if you want! It's a touch screen you can use a stylus on and it's a motion controller. Will use Wii accessories. The controller has a camera. It can be used for lots of uses. The controller can work with the games using it's touch screen and it can also be played with on it's own. The Wii U controller seems like the PS Vita in essence.

- New Smash Bros that works with Both Wii U and 3DS and work together in some way. Cool.

- Lego City Stories for Wii U and 3DS. Not big on Lego games.

- Darksiders 2 for Wii U. Cool but buying PS3 version.

- Dirt for Wii U. meh..

- Aliens: Colonial Marines for Wii U. Meh again.

- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Online for Wii U... meh...

- Metro Last Light for Wii U... more meh

- Tekken for Wii U. Awesomeness.

- Ninja Gaiden 3 for Wii U. Ok that's cool.

Wii U is a name I can get behind but it's controller is to big and ugly looking! Seriously the controller looks like it's roughly 10 inches in size. Way to big for most of the casual demo graphic and the positioning of the buttons and analog nubs is badly chosen, also analog nubs? Why? What happened to analog sticks? I know the odds of them change it is about the same as proving Gods exists scientifically but it's... so... horribly designed! UGLY! Also the line up the showed that's coming to it are probably not going to give a crap if it's on a Nintendo console so why the focus on them? Well next E3 will iron out some details and clear up some of the fog around Wii U so I won't be angry at the console... just it's UGLY controller.

E3 2011 Sony Press Conference

2011-06-07T12:07:00.003+10:00

Ok this one definitely had me all over the place. Seriously lots of stuff announced some good, some bad... like the NGPs official name being PlayStation Vita... Vita? Man that's a sucky name! anyway her's my play by play.

- They apologised and told us about the PSN's available content. Ok obvious start.

- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Looks really good... as expected. It's also 3D

- Resistance 3. Looks so much better then the last 2. I'll probably just borrow it of my mate when he gets it. Also thought I heard Crispin Freeman's voice in it.

- PSP God Of Wars are coming in HD and 3D as well as Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus... awesome!

- A PlayStation branded TV that has 3D and it's 24 inches with 2 person split 3D. Comes with 3D glasses, 6m HDMI and Resistance 3. Kinda cool I suppose.

- NBA 2K12. Now uses PS Move and I still don't care.

- Medieval Moves: Dead Mans Quest. An interesting use of the PS Move but don't care.

- InFamous 2. I am curious why they showed it since it comes out this week.

- LittleBigPlanet 2 to get an update for PS Move to make Move focused stages.

- Starhawk. So not caring about it. A space shooter... again with these things.

- OH MY GOD SLY RACCOON 4 Thieves In Time! I think I peed a little! AWESOME! SO DAMN AWESOME! So happy!

- Dust 514. Another damn shooter. E3 seems to just be casual games and shooters. Bloody hell. Uses Move.

- Bioshock Infinite. How much longer do I have to wait for this? Such a torturous wait! It uses PS Move. That's kinda cool. Will include the first Bioshock on the same disc. Cool.

- A Bioshock universe game for NGP. Interesting...

- Saint Row 3 will use Move and a Star Trek game as well. Meh.

- SSX. Yeah again? Exclusive PS3 stage.

- Need For Speed: The Run will be on PS3 with exclusive cars.

- Battlefield 3 will get Battlefield 1943 on the same disc for PS3.

- PlayStation Suite info again. Selling PS experiences on smart phones. Meh.

- NGP is officially PlayStation Vita. Man what a sucky name. I'm still calling it NGP! I don't care! 3G confirmed for it. They are using AT&T in the US for it... sucked in! Sorry about that. It's uses chat rooms for talking online with friends. Near is another part of it's online stuff.

- Uncharted: Golden Abyss for PS Vita(blech!). Looks good visually. Touch screen melee attacks... dumb, movement for platforming and traversing, dumb. Still uses normal controls so that's a plus.

- Ruin. It works between PS3 and PS Vita(blech!). Looks like Diablo. Action combat looks like you'd expect. Meh.

- ModNation Racers for PS Vita(blech!). It's not a port apparently. Has a touch focus for the editor and uses both the back and front touch controls. Meh, I had fun with the PS3 version and don't think I'll bother with another.

- Wipeout 2043 to be released with PS Vita(hate that name soooo much!)

- LittleBigPlanet for PS Vita(NGP). Touch controls... meh. I like LittleBig Planet but I'm not sold on touch controls.

- Streetfighter X Tekken. There's going to be a NGP version of it. Cole McGrath to be playable in the game on PS3 and PS Vita.

- PS Vita same price as 3DS for Wifi and the 3G is US$50 more expensive. Will release holiday season. I'll wait to be honest.

Still hate the name of the NGP but hey, Sly Raccoon 4! Best game reveal of E3 until tomorrow. I am so hoping Nintendo tomorrow announces Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword for new console. We'll see if Nintendo will out do it's competitors tomorrow. Can't wait!

E3 2011 Ubisoft Press Conference

2011-06-07T08:47:00.002+10:00

Ok this press conference wasn't as boring as the EA one but not much made me look forward to the next 12 months. Anyway here's my responses to the announcements.

- Rayman Origins. Seems like fun. Also has local co op like a lot more games should.

- Driver San Francisco. I wasn't a fan and still not sold on it. Also confused on what's going on.

- Far Cry 3. Not my type of game but visually stunning in it's demo.

- Brothers In Arms: Furious 4. Another war shooter...ugh...

- A Tin Tin game based on the movie... yeah...

- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Still not giving a crap. Guess it's either because I'm a golden age gamer or the fact that I'm Australian.

- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon online. More fricking Tom Clancy games? I think I'm the only one sick of these... and warfare games against humans.

- Trackmania 2 Canyon. Never played it before but guess what? Still won't. It's a part of the mania planet series.

- Another Rabbids game. Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking for Kinect. I hate those things!

- Just Dance 3. How many dance games are there now? Seriously so many dancing games are spawning now.

- Rocksmith. A guitar game that teaches how to play guitar. Interested since I own a guitar and am learning to play. I can plug in and use my Les Paul on it too? I may buy it.

- YourShape Fitness Evolved 2012. Another fitness game... Yes I know I'm fat but I'm not going to buy a game to lose weight.

- Assassin's Creed Revelations. The bell of the ball. Ezio's final chapter. A new chapter of awesome. I am so buying it.

Well it looks like me wanting to turf away Guitar Hero is a good idea after all. Also new Assassin's Creed Revelations gameplay looks more of the same but it's more of what I like.

E3 2011 EA Press Conference

2011-06-07T06:31:00.003+10:00

Man I was so bored watching the EA Press Conference. Seriously I'm sure everyone else what screaming ZOMGs all over the place but not me. Here's my responses to each announcement.

- Mass Effect 3 release at March 6 2012. It's a Galactic War. I'm not a fan of Mass Effect myself but it still looks good.

- Need For Speed: The Run. Uses Autolog and implements it in the games story. You get to play outside of the car. I really don't care myself.

- Star Wars: The Old Republic. The MMO to topple World Of Warcraft? I'm not sure. Not gonna play it either.

- SSX has a new game. Don't care myself at all. Hate sports games. It has 3 modes Race it, Trick it and Survive it.

- Fifa 12. So... bored now... EA Sports football club social network kinds thing... falling asleep...

- Madden NFL 12. Jesus Christ another roster update that should have been DLC. Greedy, just greedy. Really getting sleepy... YAWN!

- The Sims Social. A Facebook Sims game? It was bound to happen. Can I kill Sims is all I want to know.

- Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. Another bloody fantasy RPG. I miss JRPGs being on top more and more with each new Western RPG.

- Overstrike. I am so sold on this game.

- Battlefield 3... Modern Warfare 3... what's the difference? Really? They look and play the same. Don't like FPS games where I kill people very much if at all.

All that was interesting was Overstrike from Insomniac. Sure Mass Effect 3 looks good but it's not my type of game.

E3 2011 Microsoft Press Conference

2011-06-07T04:20:00.004+10:00

Ok just watched it via Gamespot since G4TV's website blocked me access since I'm for Australia. Here's my impressions on the event written as I saw them.

- Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3... whoopty do! More of the same. Once again they get the DLC first.

- Tomb Raider - Quick time events... and it seems to be like Uncharted on first appearance with Resident Evil style quick time events. Looks good so far. No combat though in the demo.

- EA making Kinect supported games.

- Mass Effect 3 to support Kinect with voice recognition for dialog options as well as battle commands.

- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier... again whoopty do! Kinect support with motion and voice controls. Intrigued but don't care personally. All future Tom Clancy game will use Kinect controls.

- More fluid Xbox Kinect voice command usage for normal navigation and YouTube will be on XBL. Bing is also on XBL for finding content which is actually a good idea. XBL TV, don't care I use mine for games.

- UFC on XBL... so?

- Gears Of War 3... yeah... more of the same.

- New Crytek game exclusive to Xbox 360. It uses Kinect. It's called Ryse.

- HALO Anniversary! Holy Crap! With 7 classic maps for online multiplayer. See you there!

- Forza 4 looks visually good but I'm not big on racers.

- Fable The Journey. Whoopty do! Uses Kinect controls. Don't care.

- Holy Crap! Minecraft on Xbox 360. It also uses Kinect controls.

- Kinect Disneyland Adventures... ehh... My nephew would love it.

- Kinect Star Wars... I don't care but looks interesting. It's a on rails action game. I'm not fond of the Star Wars license outside of the original trilogy of movies.

- Sesame Street: Once upon a monster for Kinnect... made by Double Fine... confused... really confused. Casual and kids focused game to the extreme.

- Kinect Fun Labs. You get to try new innovations with the Kinect. Kinect Me allows the Kinect to make avatars look more like yourself. Finger tracking with Kinect allows you to draw with it in a 3D space. Googly Eyes finally allows you to scan objects. Kinect Labs is available now.

- Kinect Sports Season 2... still don't care but that's me. Uses new and better full body gestures and voice commands.

- Dance Central 2. All the music from the first one can be imported and it has over 100 songs and a new and improved "Break it down" mode. Still the only Kinect game I'm interested in.

- Halo 4! Start of a new Xbox 360 Halo trilogy!

Well that's my thoughts as the event unfolded. As you can see it's Kinect all the way and a couple of games the fanboys will care heaps about. Personally Halo and Minecraft are the ones I care most about, maybe Tomb Raider once I see gameplay with combat.

Crazy thought, Video Game ISP from the console companies!

2011-06-02T23:36:00.004+10:00

Ok before I get chewed out by people for this radically crazy idea I'd like people to remember I'm not crazy... I've been tested. This is an idea I came up with a while ago while getting chewed out for lagging an online game because I'm Australian and the ping rate between Australia and America is pathetic.

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft. Here's my proposed idea. Create your own exclusive internet connection that is worldwide and subscription based. Make it a lag free connection that even if you are on 1 side of the world and your playing with people on the other side of the world. Keep your current services you have but make it a separate but interconnected service so people choose their preferred service and price it reasonably. My full idea will be detailed properly below using Microsoft as my main target because they seem like the ones who could benefit the most with the least costs. Sony, Nintendo you can use the model I make too but it's easier for me to explain using Microsoft.

Ok my idea is either a 4G modem that has a proprietary connection or coding that only allows Xbox consoles to connect to it(preference) or a proper telecommunication service. Configure it so there is no lag between anyone on any game if they connect with other people using the same service. The device or connection can only work with the Xbox and nothing else and is dedicated to the Xbox Live service.

When it comes to the online play my lag free idea is that the service is configured so that only those who have the service can get the lag free play regardless of game they play and have an update to all the online games that has a search option specifically for people on the lag free service. Also allow you to still play with normal internet service users. Reason for this idea is because of people who use there internet while playing game who lag out matches with extreme bandwidth strangulation.

Now here's the part that gets a little annoying for the company but hear me out. Charge a subscription fee that is a little higher then normal Xbox Live for it and using the Australian cost as the example AU$89.95 for a year(current XBL cost here is AU$79.95 per year) , don't meter people and encourage people to jump on the service with discounts on the XBL content eg. 1200MS content for 1000MS. My idea for the service name is Xbox Live Premium. Sell the modem for AU$149.95 or installation for a dedicated telecom service at whatever a phone connection costs.

So what do you think? How many people like the idea of lag free console company run ISP specifically for online video game services? I give this idea to the console companies now to consider and iron out by the time the new console come out and all I ask is a discounted version of the services in exchange for the idea at like 40% or something. I'm not a very greedy person but am compassionate about my gaming. Also sorry Sony and Nintendo for using Microsoft as my model for it, as I said it's easier to use them for it but still consider the idea.

What makes a good MMORPG

2011-05-23T12:16:00.006+10:00

Ok I've been thinking about this for a while now and also I just finally quit Final Fantasy XI, so I've come up with stuff that makes a good MMORPG. I COULD just point at World Of Warcraft and say pretty much that but that's not completely true either. It has the majority of them but it is missing some things.

1) Community - This is first on my list because it's the most important. When I played Ragnarok Online(most of you probably haven't) on a private server I had nothing but fun because of all the friends I made... until they migrated to other MMORPGs and then I got bored. A thriving community reminds us that there are people to play with and plenty of good times to be had, any WOW player can agree to that because of the fact that a good community and friends makes grinding less tedious. This is where Final Fantasy XI choked because it's community was small and worst of all the language barrier made life miserable when playing with people who can't speak your language and even it's translator option was pathetic.

2) Economy - Another high important thing for MMORPGs that Final Fantasy screwed up on release and screwed up with an update back in 08/09. WOW has you earn gold reasonably easily which keeps it's economy strong and no one is broke for the most part. A good drop rate of crap and even gold rewards for killing monsters is a good way to keep money flowing. Final Fantasy and Ragnarok screwed up here making your income revolve around what you picked up and in Final Fantasy XI's case it dropped the price you could sell stuff for while keeping the cost of items to buy the same. Auction House's works wonders in MMORPGs but the problem with them is that a lot of people are asking too much for items that would be easier to quest for instead of grind for cash.

3) Leveling - Again Final Fantasy XI trips up here... maybe this should have been "lets point out Final Fantasy XI's mistakes". Final Fantasy XI Forced you to party up to gain levels by making monsters stop earning you exp at certain levels in areas and making it impossible to solo in areas where you could earn exp. Level 30 was the max level you could get on your own with grinding before the enemies became too strong to solo. This is where WOW shines it's brightest. In WOW you earned exp from quest which are abundant, monsters always give at least 1 exp and you can solo to the max level. If you wanted to level up in Final Fantasy XI you had to party and pray that they wanted you in the party because some jobs classes are in high demand for a party and others weren't. Sure they added a level sync ability so even the high level players can party with weaklings to level up in low level areas but it still made life miserable.

4) Quest - Every MMORPG has quests, but how many are completable without help? DCUO shines here since every quest can be done solo. Yes some quest should have a party or guild focus, but ragging on Final Fantasy XI 90% of the quests require a helping hand and all the best equipment and items was obtained like this. Also the reward from quests need to be better suited to the difficulty instead of a garbage item from a 6 member party quest(again targeting Final Fantasy XI).

5) Abilities - Again I'm taking another chunk out of Final Fantasy XI here because the way the managed abilities was dumber then remaking pong. In Final Fantasy XI you had to quest and buy abilities for all of your classes, which mean 1000's of hours of grind and questing to be able to get them. In other words you could be a max level classes with almost no abilities. Imagine a LV 60 Red Mage with it's highest spell being LV 36. No one wants to party since you have no useful magic and on top of that you have no Gil to buy any new ones at the Auction House. This is where almost EVERY OTHER MMORPG OTHER THEN FINAL FANTASY XI gets it right. See in all the other MMORPGs you usually get skill points which you use for your abilities so you can learn what you want and create the builds you want.

6) Multi classing and changeable classes - The ONLY thing Final Fantasy XI got right! Some of you have made characters in other MMORPGs and have always wanted to keep them and change their class so you don't have to manage characters. Final Fantasy XI gave you a character and gave you about 20 job classes(most you have to quest for) and each class had it's own level. This was a great idea(except the job questing) and being able to set a sub job class to have abilities and stats from another class added on made life so good. Red Mages with Ninja sub class were common in Final Fantasy XI for cash grinding and White Mage/Black Mage combos were popular in parties because of extra MP and improved spell versatility. All other MMORPGs never to this which is a shame since WOW could be greatly improved with multi class and class changing, heck I'd play it again if it were the case.

7) Combat - They all do it right. I can't come up with anything that needs improving there.

8) Universal Translator - I can't stress this anymore, every MMORPG needs a proper translator inbuilt into the game so whatever you type comes out in the language you speak. No keyword crap, no semi translate crap, just a full proper translator where you type it, they read it in their language. NO MMORPG DOES THIS AT ALL! It should especially be done if you pay a subscription fee.

I think that covers it for the most part. MMORPGs have plenty of room for improvement and adaptability but sometimes they don't want to or in the case of Final Fantasy XI be made well and they destroy it over the years. I think WOW is the closest to the perfect MMORPG but there are things it's missing. Will we ever see the perfect MMORPG? Probably never. All I can say is have fun with what you find and if they change something for the worst, force them to change it back.

Blade Kitten, The game you didn't play

2011-05-11T05:33:00.004+10:00

Ok this is going to be one of THOSE kind of blog posts, you know the ones where a person bangs on about a game nobody bothered to play and the author rags on people for not buying it. Ok I hope it doesn't turn out like that but I thought I'd give a warning to be on the safe side.

Let me tell you about Blade Kitten. It original started off as a game idea from Australia based Krome Studios' Steve Stamatiadis who also created Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and worked on the PSP, Wii and PS2 Star Wars forced unleashed games. Because of those projects getting in the way he decided to make it into a online comic series. The comics can be purchased by the way so if you are interested in Blade Kitten after reading this go to the official site at http://bladekitten.com/.

The comic series has a small amount of fame and is an independent comic series. The story is also based after the game. The comics are also ongoing so it's still telling it's story. The game on the other hand isn't a full game. Why you may ask? Well it's an episodic game that's in 2 parts and Atari has only released 1 of the episodes. Atari hasn't released episode 2 because not many people bought episode 1.

The game itself is a cel shaded 2.5D action platformer inspired by classic Castlevania games. The game focuses on exploration over combat. The controls are simple enough for kids to play and the story is enjoyable but you can tell that there is suppose to be more to it when you finish it. The games short for it's price tag but it's length will depend on what you do. If you rush through the stages it can be don't in a little over an hour but if you focus on finding all the treasure chest and skiffs it can take about 4 or more hours depending on the player. Admittedly the replay value is limited to just grinding for Hex and finding what you missed so you can unlock costumes, buy all the weapons and max out Kit Ballard's health and stamina. Episode 2 has improvements but we may never see it because it's release will be determined by sales.

The game is fun in my opinion but if you've read the reviews of the big boy reviewers they all pretty much said it's meh except Eurogamer who liked it. I have a review here on my blog so you can read it if you want my full opinion and a little more info on the game. What was the biggest complaint of the top of my head was the fact that enemies were too easy to kill. Now this didn't bug me but they are easy to kill. Again I remind you that the game is inspired by classic Castlevania games where the enemies where killed with a strike or 2 from your whip. The story is also complained about but I remind you it's only half a game.

I'm not asking people to buy the game, I'm asking you download the trial and then decide if you want to buy it. Even give the comics a read, they're pretty good. I admit I'm a bit bias towards Blade Kitten and patriotic towards it too since it's Australian made but it's worth a try. Unfortunately you can't download the PS3 version for obvious reasons but it's the same quality on all of them and it's probably dropped in price too. Also don't let that T rating in America fool you, this game is appropriate for kids and they will most likely enjoy the colorful visuals and cartoon like appearance.

If you do enjoy the game tell Atari you like it and want the second episode DLC to be released via email or Twitter. If enough people ask for it we may be able to pressure them to release it. I've been hounding them since November whenever I can and I can't do it alone.

What Nintendo can do with their new console.

2011-04-27T17:40:00.004+10:00

Ok as you know Nintendo has announced a new console to be released in 2012 and they've told us... nothing... leaving many to speculate. I would love to play the speculate game as well but instead I'm going to talk about what Nintendo can do to make their new console really good and innovative.

Well let's start with the obvious. They need to make it HD and possibly 3D. They also need to put in a 320GB HDD minimum if they have install data or 120GB for just save data. They need to keep Wii reverse compatibility for Wii games and controllers. They need to make it so you can transfer your data from Wii to whatever they name the new console. They need to make it with an ethernet port for wired internet. They need disc storage over 10GB for the games for their potential HD optical discs. They also need to make their online friend system and multiplayer better for those who actually care about playing online. I think that covers the obvious but now let's go to the less obvious.

Nintendo like to make games for all so they should consider allowing games like Angry Bird, Plants Vs Zombies and other small games like that be released on it with exclusive controls that use either the Wiimotes or their new motion controller. This is because these smaller games are very popular today and will encourage people to make the move to consoles for these games.

They should also drop the currency point system and use real world money so people don't have left over points they can't use for an extremely long period of time. I have Wii points I can't use because Nintendo hardly updates the PAL Wii Shop. Seriously we don't even have Contra!

Another thing they should do which some people may not agree with is that it should have Gamecube reverse compatibility. 3 reasons, 1) It will most likely use optical discs like the Gamecube 2) Gamecube games are about 1.2GB per discs and will take up a lot of space on a HDD 3) Some of us still have a large collection of Gamecube games we still play on the Wii. Also they need to have the home menu work while playing a Gamecube game and use whatever new controller or the Classic controller to play them.

This one is the most important in my opinion. They should allow the 3DS to be used as a controller for some of the games. Seriously this is something they should have done when they first connected the Gameboy Advance to the Gamecube. This is an important thing because being able to combine the 2 for some games will make the games more interactive and is the true innovative path the company should follow this time around, handheld and home console connectivity. Can you imaging a HD Zelda game that uses the 3DS as a controller freeing up the screen from clutter with all the stuff on the 3DS like the inventory and mini map, using the 3DS gyroscope for interscreen aiming of the bow, scanning enemies on screen by moving the 3DS over the enemy, puzzles that can be solved using the 3DS, using the 3DS to find secret holes and treasure chests and the list can keep going depending on the imagination. Also Nintendo, you're welcome for the idea for a new Zelda.

Rechargeable controllers or battery pack should also be considered by Nintendo since they are cheaper then batteries and Nintendo will get some serious appreciation for it's customers for doing this.

A new controller design for playing games without motion controls should be made and designed like the classic controller but wireless and move the left thumbstick up to the same level as the buttons.

They need to make the Mii's as your profile image and use it as the means of adding friends to your friends list through the Nintendo online service. This way your Mii plaza has your Mii and the Mii's of all your friends and if they aren't online they can sleep on screen and have a different Mii plaza for each Mii profile on the new Nintendo consoles.

I suppose they can make an achievement system but here's my twist to it. Link the achievement system to peoples Nintendo Club accounts so instead of earning achievements for bragging rights, you're doing them for Nintendo Club stars! This way you can actually gain achievements for exclusive Nintendo Club swag! This is a great idea and they aren't for nothing like the Trophies of PlayStation 3 or the achievements of the Xbox 360. Again Nintendo you're welcome.

Also make the console REGION FREE! Seriously region locking encourages piracy and if all the content is region free for both digital and disc games then no one will want to pirate except the undesirables. This will also make it easier to find pirated software too.

I think that covers everything I can think of. How much of the things Nintendo uses is questionable but I'm sure anyone reading this will agree with everything or most of what I've come up with. Regardless I'm sure Nintendo will make a great console that targets everyone instead of some. We'll see at E3.

Review : The 3rd Birthday

2011-04-17T15:31:00.003+10:00

God I am pissed off at this game for 3 reasons, the name of the game, the lack of special powers in the game and the ending! The 3rd birthday is the 3rd Parasite Eve game but under a different name that closes the door on the franchise. That's part of the reason the ending pissed me off. Anyway let's get to my review before I turn this review into a rant.

It's been a long time since we saw a Parasite Eve game and now we finally get it. The story follows Aya Brea over 10 years since the NMC incident in the second game and starts with the "Twisted" destroying New York City and creating towers called Babels. Fast forward a couple of years to Aya having amnesia and working for a government agency called the CTI(Counter Twisted Unit) and using her new ability called "Overdive" to travel back in time like in Quantum Leap into people of that time period to fight the Twisted and change the future. Throughout the game Aya also has flashback to her past of a wedding with people she can't remember and is slowly regaining her memories.

The gameplay is a huge change from the last ones. If you remember the first game it was shooting in a little area with monsters triggered by random encounters(if you're from the PAL region you may not know this since it was never released to us and we had to import to get it.) and in the second it played like Resident Evil with magic abilities. The 3rd Birthday on the other hand has you playing like most 3rd person shooters of today but you can't aim manually, you have to use the lock-on to actually hit your targets. The default controls are the best to go with since it's the least irritating but regardless of controls the camera is controlled with the D-pad and swapping weapons uses a button and the D-pad. You can also dodge attacks but depending on the weapon depends on how well you do it.

Aya's has also gained 2 new abilities since the previous games, The Overdive which the plot revolves around and the Liberation ability. Overdive allows Aya to leap between people in each mission and to a heavy damage attack to enemies while an orange triangle appears on screen. The Liberation ability is essentially a limit break ability that makes Aya untouchable by enemy attacks and inflict heavy damage to enemies with twin pistols and Overdive into enemies for massive damage.

The Twisted you fight throughout the game are really annoying too. Some of them aren't much of a hassle but there are a few with enormous amounts of health that just can't seem to die without a super powered weapon or Overdiving the damn thing consistently. There are also feats in the game that can be completed to unlock stuff and can be a pain to pull off because of the overpowered Twisted.

The game is also not very long either. I'd say roughly 8 hours depending on how you play. There is replayability to the game too for people who want to super power Aya or get every outfit and weapon in the game. This is always nice to have in games but the big question is after playing the game will you actually want to replay it, especially since the 6 episodes go by so quickly.

The 3rd Birthday isn't a bad game, just not what a Parasite Eve fan was expecting. The game plays well and the story is good until you get to the ending where a twist smacks you in the face like a metal deadbolt door. I overall enjoyed playing through the game and will be shocked if they could pull a 4th game in the series out of there behinds. I give it a 4/5. Well worth buying if you're a fan of the previous Parasite Eve games and if you're a newcomer then I'm glad to tell you the previous games don't interfere with the plot like Resident Evil games do to themselves.

Also you get a voucher for Aya's outfit on Lightning in Dissidia 012 Duodecim Final Fantasy so that's pretty cool.

Review : Dissidia 012(Duodecim) Final Fantasy

2011-03-29T08:23:00.007+11:00

Ok before I jump on the review of this game I'll give you a short review of Dissidia 012(Duodecim) Final Fantasy: Prologus. It's a pay for demo with a 10 minute story that is irrelevant and an arcade mode. It's only worth it for the sake of having Aerith as a support character in the proper game and unlockable items to transfer to the proper game. Don't bother downloading it unless you're a super fan.

Ok now that that's out of the way onto the proper review. Oh an one other thing, I picked up Dead Space 2 but I'm not sure if I should review it since I review new games withing a fortnight of it's release. Tell me if you want a review on it. Ok now for the review.

Well let me start with saying if anyone tells you this isn't a rehash, they are wrong... for the most part. The games story... new story I should say is centred around the 6 new main characters Laguna, Yuna, Kain, Vaan, Tifa and Lightning and their travels to stop the Manikins and fight the forces of Chaos. They also added the original story from the first Dissidia so you can see where the rehash comes in now. The story has been called bad fan fiction and preaching friendship way too much... unfortunately they are right, this mind you is from a Final Fantasy fanboy. The story mode has you traveling on an overworld map to go through gates that take you to the battle boards you may remember from the last one.

Gameplay is exactly the same as the last one with a couple of new features. It's a fighting game that plays like an action game and can be played like a RPG but is really crappy in that mode. The combat plays the same as the last one with some new additions. The new additions to the games combat are the assist character ability where you can call another character to attack your opponent and EX revenge where you can use the EX gauge when attacked to slow down time to barrage the opponent with attacks. Also the camera still doesn't play fair in closed spaces.

The game modes in this game are pretty much the same as the last one. Duel Colosseum has been replaced with Labyrinth mode which is the same only you don't keep what you collect in there. Story mode as mentioned above has a new story and all the story from the last one. Arcade mode and Quick match aka 1 on 1 are back and a new party battle mode where you choose a team of characters to fight another team in tournament or round robin style.

A new creation mode has been added so fan fiction writers can make a small quest with story to amuse themselves and share with others. This mode isn't very interesting in my opinion but I'm sure some people can get some fun out of it. Also it's a long and grueling process to make anything there.

Wireless battles are pretty much the same as the last one as well and still no online fighting. You can now play against 10 people but honestly, where are you going to find 9 other people with a copy of the game to play against outside of a convention like Comic Con or Supanova? You can still save peoples friend card to battle ghost so at least you can practice against it for your next bout with them.

One other thing, You can transfer your data from the original Dissidia Final Fantasy to this one but all it does is transfer compatible unlocked content and all the levels you obtained carry over. I recommend doing so if you don't want to spend forever unlocking content. Trust me it'll save hours of work and give you more time to try the new characters.

Pretty much Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy is a rehash covered in new content designed to distract you from this fact. What little is new isn't as big of a wow as we'd want and even though the new characters are great to use, a whole new game for them is a bad idea. Dispite all my complaints the game actually is good. Combats solid, story mode gives you plenty to do and just like the last one you can spend over 100 hours in the game and not really notice you did. Some might say that more of the same is a bad thing but not in this games case. Dissidia 012 is the Super Street Fighter IV of Final Fantasy. I'm still having fun with it at the moment. I give it a 4/5 because it's a good, fun game regardless of how much was recycled.

Score 4/5

Casual gamers are not destroying gaming, they're helping gaming!

2011-03-19T08:34:00.006+11:00

I am so sick off the "Hardcore Gamers" complaining about Facebook games and motion control games and every game in the "Casual Games" genre. Well as a Golden Age Gamer I thought I'd shed some light on the subject while staring at my display case filled with retro consoles and reminisce on some of the things I'm bringing up.

Let me take you on a trip back through time to the time of the PlayStation. Golden Age Gamers like me hated the new gamers it was bring into gaming and all the new genres being brought in, but we were content since we were still getting the games we loved. Fast forward to the dawn of what some of the Golden Age Gamers called the "SIN BOX" aka Xbox where gaming started on it's dark path toward creating most of you today, the "Hardcore Gamers" and the dawn of realism in games. We were outraged by the arrival of the jocks and average people coming into the nerd mecca that was gaming. Gaming was losing it's touch and more games targeting the new "Hardcore" audience were flooding the market and games about anything were disappearing for more realistic "Hardcore" games, and we were pissed at first but as time progressed we learned to live with them for one reason and one reason alone... the games targeted at us became even greater then we thought they could be.

Yes thanks to you "Hardcore Gamers" games targeted at "Golden Age Gamers" became fantastic and kept getting better. Let's look at Final Fantasy for a minute and also SHUT UP I know you hate it for do decent reason. Final Fantasy's visuals have gotten so much better thanks to your money buying games increasing the amount of money coming into the industry. Thanks to YOUR MONEY Final Fantasy XIII looks as magnificent as it does(even though everything else in the game is sub par but that's another post to write). You've obviously seen the first party Nintendo games quality haven't you? That again is YOUR MONEY making the games look as good and fun as they are.

My point is YOUR MONEY helped the games industry and helped make our games great. Now see what us "Golden Age Gamers" have done? Sure we still complain about the "Hardcore's" being the main focus of game companies today but when we get our games we remember what you guys did for us. Now you guys are the ones whinging about the "Casual Gamers" ruining gaming like we did when you first came into gaming. Their money will do to your games what your money did to our games. Also they are spending more money then us on their games thanks to micro transaction so more money for the industry is coming from them now, *psst* don't tell them!

Also I only found out about Golden Age Gamers a short while ago and I'm shocked I never knew about it. So the groups are Golden Age, Hardcore and Casual if you like the segregation.

Bad stuff that has happened and other stuff

2011-03-15T05:46:00.002+11:00

Ok I'm sure people watch the news and have seen what happened in Japan. That was a very sh*tty what happened. To survive an earthquake just to get wiped out by a tsunami. I can believe how bad it was, now they have power plants ready to do damage and refineries are going up in flames... f*ck me it's terrible. I swear if anyone from Queensland's' flood and cyclone affected areas scream "what about me?" I'll tell them to pull their head in. If you donate to charities and have some money left after the Queensland's sh*t storm send some money to Japan if you can.

Ok what's next to talk about *shuffles papers* ah yes, Mortal Kombat denied a rating under the current classification system in Australia. Well this piddled on my chip. All hope isn't lost because I'm sure we'll see it soon enough in Australia but I'm worried about my import site I import though not selling it to Australia. Now how am I suppose to get it? Now considering the decision I have to agree with it. Have you seen the game in action? There is NO WAY they can release it under our rating system. I can see a lot of people trying to import it but I have an idea Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment can do, try again in July after the SCAG meeting and if they agree on an R18+ rating then try again and release it in August with all current DLC available at the time with it for free as a download code. Don't butcher it for an MA15+ PLEASE don't butcher it!

March Mayhem Developer's Showdown 2011 has started on The Escapist so if your a member go support your favourite developers and vote for your favourites. You may win a laptop PC. Just vote if you support developers pretty much. I did and hope they appreciate me doing so.

I own a guitar now so now I'm a hipster douche... nah just kidding, though I do own a guitar now. It's nice to relax while playing an instrument, I highly recommend getting an instrument and even if you're not learning anything more then your favourite songs on your instrument of choice it's still fun and relaxing. Guitar Hero and Rock Band don't count as playing instruments for fun.

Blade Kitten still isn't getting the respect it deserves, if you even care and Atari hasn't released the 2nd episode and it's finished so why the heck not?

Umm... what else? Hmm... oh yeah 3DS isn't worth buying on release so save your pennies and get it when Zelda and Kid Icarus get released. If on the other hand you don't own a DS and want say Pokemon Black or White, then go buy it since then it's worth it but remember it's region locked. As for the NGP, I'm sold on it but I fear the price and how long it will take for worth while games to be released on it.

I think that's about it. The only other thing to talk about is The Game Overthinker is almost at it's 50th episode so go and reacquaint yourself with the previous episodes and I'll hopefully be reviewing a game by then end of the month. Until they see you later... ahem type to you later.

Nintendo 3DS Hands On Impressions

2011-03-09T03:27:00.005+11:00

If you follow my Twitter I mentioned I tried out the 3DS at GAME and I'm going to tell you what I think and what I learned from the Nintendo reps who were there. Let me tell you the about the stuff I found out before I tell you about the experience I had with the device.

Well I grilled the Nintendo Reps about everything I thought was important and here's what I learned.
-The 3D can effect the frame rate on some games like Super Street Fighter IV and drain the battery within 3-5 hours and if turned off it will last 5-8 hours.
-You can lock it to 2D in the parental control settings for children if you are afraid of eye damage or for yourself if you don't want to screw with the dial.
-The Spot Pass feature requires your 3DS to be in standby mode.
-It comes with a 2GB SD card and can support the 32GB ones as well.
-It will have a proper charger cable so you don't have to dock it to charge.
-You can buy an extra battery and replace it if you're into carrying an extra one for long trips.
-Yes it is region locked to the region you buy it in so the regions are Japan, USA and PAL territories and you will not be able to play any NTSC DS games on it either if you own any.
-They aren't sure if 3D glasses can work on it since it uses a different 3D to the movies and TVs so if you can find 3D glasses that work with it it's new to them.
-They have no idea if there will be any compatibility with the Wii at this stage.

Now on to the actual experience I had with it. Well... I'm not sold on 3D still outside of the theatre. Don't get me wrong it was impressive to see it without the need for glasses... for about a second before pressing a button. The 3D only has a small sweet spot to actually see the 3D but it's so easy to lose it that I wish I had the glasses for it instead(which lead me to ask them about it). The 3DS felt a lot like the DS lite in my hands and the 3 buttons under the touch screen are similar to the iPhone button in the sense that if you don't press it in the centre, you will break it easily. The depth slider really is sensitive for choosing the depth but seems a little pointless in my opinion because it should have just been a switch.

The demos I got to try out were an AR card game, Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D, Super Street Fighter IV and Nintendogs + Cats. The AR card game really shows off how all the tech works and to my surprise it was a great example of the 3D being worth a look. Zelda on the other hand with the 3D didn't wow me at all except with the FPV for the sling shot and view mode and even then it was just seeing the depth between the object on screen. Super Street Fighter IV was lack luster to me because of the slow frame rate in 3D and it's new view to show the 3D is unimpressive and disorienting when you're used to the normal view. Nintendogs + Cats is pretty much the same game as the DS versions with cats and better graphics, the 3D on it is ok but it isn't as good as we've been told.

Pretty much I came in not expecting much and came out no more impressed then expected. The 3DS aka middle finger to Sony's 3D isn't as great as Nintendo would like us to think and I think that most people will be impressed by the 3D but Sony doesn't have to worry about it's 3D making theirs look like crap. The "sweet spot" 3D will be a big issue to people who fidget a lot like me when playing a game and the short battery life in 3D will force many gamers to hang by their charger cable. I'm going to say that if you're buying it for the 3D gaming, then you're not very smart. I'm sure it will be as popular as the DS when it drops in price but on release it will only really sell to hardcore Nintendo fans, tech enthusiast and maybe some casual gamers. I'm not going to buy it on release because the launch line up isn't that good. If you really want one I suggest wait until Summer/Winter depending on which hemisphere you're in to buy it since that's when a game worth owning it for should be available.

Review : Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

2011-02-17T23:46:00.004+11:00

Well it's been like 11 years or something since the last one got released and the wait is over. Will this game meet the expectations of a fan like me? Who bloody knows right? Well let's get this review done and find out. Here's the review of Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.

Let's start with the story... ... ... yeah... there are ending for each character... Oh and Something to do with Galactus and Wesker and Doc Doom wanting to using his power. Ok I admit it! There isn't really a story outside of what I could deceiver from the comic it came with on preorder. I never saw any cinematic for it either. It's a fighting game so story isn't really too important but the big question is how do you get a story out of this crossover without offending people?

As mentioned before it's a fighting game, how does it play? Well if you've ever played a MVC game before then you already have a basic idea and if you've played Tatsunoko Vs Capcom(or read my review which is still on my blog site) it's a lot like that plus a knock up button and a new move called X factor that allows you to cancel out an action or just use it to power yourself up in a hairy situation... if the other play even let's you... jerks! YOU HEARD ME! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Ahem... anyway this game has a ridiculously high reliance on air combos and as such makes it no fun on harder difficulties then normal or when you jump online. Sure people are skilled at doing it naturally in MVC2 but Capcom in their infinite wisdom thought it was a great idea to make it a big focus in this one and has made playing online the worst online fighting game experience I've ever had! The simplified controls are also a hassle for beefier players like me who are used to dedicated kick and punch buttons but it can be overcome very quickly and the new "Simple" control setting allows even noinks(n00bs for then people who didn't even give Blade Kitten a chance... jerks!) and children a chance at taking on a moderate player... and cry as soon as an online jerk defeats them without giving them a chance to look at the screen.

There are both online and offline modes. Offline modes has the basic arcade mode where you fight the CPU and eventually the extremely hard to defeat Galactus. Ok off-topic for a second here. Why do fighting games always, ALWAYS have a bull crap final boss with bull crap attacks? This isn't fair for the average gamer and they always have unblockable and full screen attacks. This needs to stop. I'll take Bison over every other bull crap boss! At least you can block his attacks! There is the basic versus mode with another person(which is now one of the least used options in fighting games, thank you online gaming!), Training mode to attempt getting better at the game(and still be beaten by online jerks!) and a Mission mode which let's you try out the big combos of the game... actually completing all of them is a whole other question. Online we have Ranked Matches(filled with jerks!) Player Matches(also filled with jerks!) and lobbies which allow groups of up to 8 players join in and have 2 people play while the rest twiddle their thumbs and watch player licences bounce around of a few minutes(These don't always get filled with jerks but they can pretty easily. Seriously Beginners means beginners not jerks get easy wins room) and that gets boring.

The game is great though. The online has almost no lags for the most part and the fact that most of the characters are new is a great thing. The only complaints I have are the high reliance on air combos, online jerks and people always using the same characters even though there are 36 characters to choose from. I'll let you in on a secret about me. I always use the random characters square in every fighting game online, why you ask? 3 reasons, 1. I like to play every character regardless of how bad I suck with them 2. I like to actually see variety on screen when I play a fighter and finally 3. Because I play games for FUN! Anyone remember what that was like? You know before online gaming and extreme competitive jerks outside of an arcade?

Look it's a great game. 5/5. It has some annoyances but this is player related not game related and you'll have fun if you're a fan who actually wants to have fun and even you mum can learn to play the game thanks to the "Simple" setting. I recommend getting it and getting your friends to get it and go visit them at there place on theirs or your day of to play and take turns. Screw the online jerks and play like the old days, Grampa signing off(I'm 25)!

Score 5/5

Types of Gamers

2011-02-12T13:18:00.006+11:00

Ok this is inspired but an episode of "The Game Overthinker"(google it, watch the series) and let me just say that MovieBob is definitely an intelligent and entertaining guy on all of his shows(He also does "Escape to the movies" and "The Big Picture" on The Escapist) and people should go check out his stuff.

Let's look at the types of gamers we know and then I'll get to the main point of this blog post. Let's start with the "Casual Gamers"

What is a "Casual Gamer"? Well as far as people seem to be concerned, it's a person who plays small, pointless games that have no depth, storyline, small amount of mapped buttons and is played by women mainly. Ok I admit even I'm not really completely sure what constitutes a "Casual Gamer" 100% but this seems to be the basics that gets reiterated online. These gamers usually play games like Bejewelled, Tetris, Farmvile, Brain Training, The Sims and the list goes on. It seems if you play games that actually help improve mental activity, your a "Casual Gamer". Well I hate to admit this to the "Hardcore Gamers" but I play these games every once in a while... except Farmville.

Now as for the "Hardcore Gamers", what is a "Hardcore Gamer"? In a nut shell you can just say people who own Xbox 360's but that's incorrect as wells as being accurate. "Hardcore Gamers" are people who play video games that are usually violent and contain adult content and play online frequently with other people in competitive matches. These gamers are mainly newer generation or reformed jocks who have only been playing games since the late 90's. The games they usually play are Call Of Duty, Halo, Mass Effect, Gears Of War, Killzone and the list goes on for eternity. I don't really play these types of games very often and pretty much don't like them very much either.

Then there's the "Fanboys" who only own one companies consoles or just one console of each generation or like a specific genre of games. These people only play the games on the console of choice and usually own the majority of the exclusive titles on it or own every console just to be able to play a specific genre of games. "Fanboy" has also become an insulting term for a person who's passionate about their choice or defend their choice.

Now here's the question? what about those gamers who enjoy games like Ratchet and Clank, Super Mario bros, Final Fantasy and all the other games not synonymous with the "Hardcore" or "Casual gamer? Well there isn't one. And what about the gamer who owns every console and plays any type of game? There isn't one.

Does this mean they need titles? Yes and no. Yes to make those who need labels happy and no because the labels are pointless. If they must get names how about for those who like games that don't fit in the current types of gamers "Enjoyment Gamers" who put the enjoyment of the game over things like blood and guts or puzzles and problem solving and for those who own everything and play any type of games "Devoted Gamers"(Which I pretty much am) who love games so much it doesn't matter what console a game is on and which audience it's meant for, it's about playing games and having fun. These are only suggestion for labels but I'd rather not bother with labels. Hell even the label gamer isn't really needed either. Also speaking of the label "Gamer" you should watch the "Gamer" episode of Extra Creditz on The Escapist, trust me all the episode are good but this is an eye opener.

The world is full of people who enjoy video games so why do we need more prejudice as well? Seriously between racism, religious intolerance and social classes do we need the same thing among people who play video games? Sure I like the term "Gamer" but now that there are more people who play games now in comparison to when it was first introduce it's become a pointless term for the most part. I'm still going to use it though.

I don't see the labels in video games ending anytime soon but there are really only 2 types of gamers. Those who play games a lot like me and those who play for short periods of times... in other words casually play games. Look at it this way, if you play less then 4 hours a day your a casual gamer. If you play more then that you are an obsessive gamer like me. These are not labels, just truths about the habit.

I'm sure this will probably bait trolls but hey, trolls are one of the worst things in the world and are great to defeat in video games in fantasy settings.

All Australians should shop at Gametraders

2011-02-03T16:39:00.005+11:00

Ok I am not a big advocate for tell people what to buy and, ha ha ha I'm just kidding. I'm a reviewer and I am suppose to tell you what to buy. Ok this is for anyone in Australia reading my blog (and if you do spread the word) and respect my opinions. We have a few major game retailers and the main specialty store we have to shop at are Game(owned by the UK) and EB Games(USA owned) but there is another one we need to shop at from now on. It's called Gametraders. Gametraders is Australian owned and run. It has games from every console ever released in Australia and even sells games that may never be seen on the shelves of Game or EB Games like Argest and Hyperdimension Neptunia(future release) and a whole bunch or rare games come through there all the time. Gametraders is a true video game store for gamers. Sure I do support going to Game and EB Games for those exclusive editions but for those games that have no exclusive items, you should shop at Gametraders.

Gametraders has tons of games from yester year, anime, new video games, gaming figures, the occasional import game and other game related stuff. There are a fair few stores in Australia and if you have the money maybe you can buy a franchise for your area. I plan to if I ever get the money for it. Go check out your closest one. Even Yahtzee has shopped at Gametraders. No they are no paying me to promote them, I just really like them and hate EB Games, Game I'm indifferent to.

Someone put out a break on me!

2011-01-26T21:17:00.005+11:00

Oh crap! Uh, uh, uh, how did this happen? This can't right? Who would do such a thing? I am currently on the run from Breakers and am updating from a secret location so they can't find me.

Can anyone tell me who did this? I haven't done anything wrong! Just a short while ago a rookie Breaker came into my house and attacked me I was able to escape the noink... heh heh Noink! But there are better Breakers out there. I thought I'd check the Breaker's Guild website to find out more and found this wanted poster in the high priority breaks section.

I, I, I didn't do any of those things! Ok maybe the lollies thing but I'm innocent! Someone is out to get me! There must be someone out there who sees me as a threat, maybe a fellow reviewer? A game developer who hated one of my reviews? A relative? or even... no it couldn't be... could it? No, I don't think it's possible...

I don't know who put this break out on me but I want to make it clear, I am innocent! I haven't done anything wrong and... was that a knock I just heard? Look I've got to get out of here before they... is that a skiff I hear? No... not... HER? Oh no! Look if I can get out of this, I'll keep updating here, if not it was good while it lasted. Pray for me.

*This is a work of fiction for a contest.

Review : LittleBigPlanet 2

2011-01-25T15:42:00.006+11:00

Man I can't believe they made a second one of these, also I can't believe the dimwits at Gamestop/EB Games are accepting the first one as trade in, suckers! I can tell you right now that I loved the first one and guess what? Loved the second one too! Ok on to the review!

The story of this one has an evil being destroying and taking over Craftworld called the Negativatron and it's up to your little sack person to help Larry Da Vinci and the Alliance stop the evil Negativatron before it's too late. Along the way you'll run into all sorts of strange things from characters, to stuff you ride and enemies. All the way being tutored on how to do it.

Yes the game is extremely kid friendly from the controls to the general difficulty of the game but don't let that deter you. Gameplay is exactly like the first one but you can now get 3 new tools in stages. There's a grappling hook which lets you swing off stuff and pull some things to you, a pair of gloves called a grabinator that lets you lift objects and the creatinator which shoot out whatever is configured to shoot from it, even stuff that shoots. On top of the basic 2.5D side scrolling stages there are various stages that take on forms similar to old games and once the community gets active who knows what. You can also bring your stuff from LBP into the game and feel like a chooch for downloading all the expansion packs from the first game since most of the stuff has come back.

Like the first LBP the creation tools are vast and now there are a host of new tools. I HIGHLY recommend going over the tutorials to understand how all the new stuff works, it's overwhelming trying to work it out yourself. The one tool a whole lot of people are going to use is the controllinator which lets you make an item you ride in and and can do whatever you program it to do. Bouncing pads have also been added and this could also add to the communities creativity and programmable sackbots which can do pretty much what sackboy can do. The stages you can make with all the tools is almost limitless. But if your not very creative or just can't use the tools too well you can play one of over 3 million levels created in the original and many more to come as time goes by, just wait a while and there will be thousands of games made using the level editor.

I should mention you can use the PlayStation Move controller for it but I honestly don't have a clue how it plays since I don't personally own a set(But if Sony wants to give me a free set I wouldn't complain, hint, hint) and you can play online with 4 other people but be prepared for some problems like the eternal loading screen or just plain lags. You can also make a level with up to 4 people online as well but I honestly don't know how people would be able to do it and why they would.

If you loved LittleBigPlanet then this is pretty much the same with a bag of awesome mixed in and still has room to grow and flourish. Sure the story mode is short and spends most of it's time teaching you how stuff works but that's the point, it's teaching you the basics to help you make and play on future stages. The game is definitely a must buy for all regardless of age. The only limits to the game are your own personal preferences and creativity. If you've never played a previous LBP game you will not feel left out. I give it a perfect score because the game is so near perfection itself. When LittleBigPlanet 3 gets made, maybe it will hit perfection itself, especially with the help of a healthy and creative online community.

Score 5/5

Rant 31: Hell have no fury like a fanboy scorned! Region Locking = Piracy, Hacking and Modding.

2011-01-20T05:16:00.006+11:00

GOD I AM PISSED! When I get angry at the game industry I usually get angry at JRPG publishers in the PAL region or about release date changes or Square-Enix but now Nintendo? That's weird of me considering I am the guy who tells people Nintendo is great! Nintendo will never let us down! Nintendo aren't evil! Well I guess now I have to retract that statement.

Talk to me before 2000 and all what I said above would be 100% true, but after then? Well in 2000 I was introduced to my first JRPG, Final Fantasy VIII. Why does this matter? Well I also live in Australia, the land that gaming neglects for intellectual gaming experienced that aren't on the DS. Sure this seems kinda full of holes but let me continue. After I played my first JRPG I gain a whole new love for video games that has been slowly becoming scorn for the industry as time progressed.

For those who don't know Australia only sees about 50-60% of all games released in the world and the JRPG genre is the most neglected. The thing is that it's not the market, it 3 major factors
1) Our games are determined by what the UK and Europe gets
2) There isn't enough information on the genre for people to know about it properly in Australia
3) Everyone thinks Final Fantasy and Square-Enix when they hear the term JRPG

Why does this have me angry at Nintendo? Well the Nintendo 3DS is region locked! I've had to import games in the past for the GBA, DS, PSP and PS3 and with the region locking on 3DS I can't buy an Australian 3DS and import JRPGs for it. Why should you care? Well I don't expect you to care unless you're in the PAL territory. We in the PAL territory have been screwed on game releases. Check a list of games released and compare the regions released. Guaranteed you'll see that Japan and the US get a lot more games released, count all the JRPGs alone and it's a small ratio. I bet you Americans can name 10 JRPGs on any console without really trying but here in Australia, we're lucky to have 10 on a console period from the PS One to today and anything before it is almost none existent. You know what was our first Final Fantasy? FFVII! Our first JRPG? You'd have to search Wikipedia for that information.

The region locking of the 3DS not just restricts PAL territories from JRPG but restricts a lot of games period. Just you wait, you'll see tons of games getting released in the US and Japan that isn't coming to PAL territories. Believe it or not a fair few Australian gamers are angry with the US because of getting game that we don't and while that is Petty, it's because they don't know who to blame, nobody really does unfortunately. Now on top of Australia missing out on games and not being able to get them outside of piracy, modding or importing everything including consoles the US citizens who actually know Japanese will now be missing out on games thanks to the region locking because guess what people? The Japanese games won't work on the US 3DS! All you giant mecha fans are probably now screaming at the top of your lungs.

Now the reason why this has me pissed at Nintendo is because of the fact that the PAL region hardly gets JRPGs and Nintendo JRPGs especially. Oh sure we got Chrono Trigger(DS), Final Fantasy(GBA, DS, PS1/2/3), Kingdom Hearts(GBA, PS2,PSP,DS), Dragon Quest whatever the heck I don't care about(DS,PS2) and Golden Sun(GBA,DS) plus a few others nobody really knew about but what about the stuff we missed out on? I mean the Wii only got 2 JRPG releases out of how many? Did we get Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadows? Did the SNES get any JRPGs?

Also Nintendo are big complainers about piracy. You want to know why piracy exists? It's because of region locking, over pricing and thieves. You want to know why people chip console in Australia? It's so they can import! It's not because they want to pirate games, not because games are too expensive(which they are at AU$99.95-119.95 for a PS3 or 360 game) it's so we can play any game from any region! Let's look at Blu-ray and DVD players in Australia, you know which ones always sell? Region free players! In Australia we are NOT pirates! We just want a fair go with everything! You know why Australia loves the PS3? Because the console is region free for games! We like our portable consoles for the same reason!

I'll finish this up with a statement I'm famous for,
It sucks to be PAL!

I don't condone modding or hacking but can understand why some people do it, assuming it's for region unlocking. I don't do it either.

Review : Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded

2011-01-18T07:26:00.006+11:00

Ok let me get this out of the way before the review starts. If you don't already know I am a huge fan of Kingdom Hearts, to the point where I even own a Keyblade. Ok Now that you know, lets get started! Here's my first review of 2011, Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded.

It's only been 5 months since Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep was released and having a new one so shortly after the last one strikes one chord... Cash-in! But is it really a cash-in? Remember that this is a remake of a mobile phone game too.

The story of Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded starts with Jiminy Cricket looking through the journals of the previous journey and find a mysterious message in the first journal(Kingdom Hearts 1's journal) that says, "Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it." So Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Chip and Dale decide to see what's going on with a computer that turn the book into a datascape and find it's corrupted. So they create a digital copy of Sora out of the data in the journal and thus our journey begins on a similar path to the original game only a little different.

The game plays like Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep so if you've played that then everything will fit like a glove until you come across a few different gameplay types. During a couple of worlds you'll play a rail shooter style section, a side scroller section and my favourite(obviously) turn-based combat for the Olympus Coliseum. Now these section can be annoying, especially the rail shooter stages since they are hard to aim and control. The skills are also similarly done as in KH:BBS but there are a few different ones but the combining system returns for creating new skills but for a unique twist to the game, combining skills will also level them up improving the power of the skill.

The leveling system unfortunate follows a similar path to KH: 358/2 Days with panels making a return but instead of all the hassle of arranging them with enhancers and stuff, you just put them in a spot on the Stat Matrix and follow the paths to also gain access to abilities like Scan and Block and link 2 CPUs together to double the effect of the panels between them. In the Stat Matrix you can also access "Cheats" which are used for altering things like drop rates of items, difficulty, CP earn and HP. These can be both beneficial and detrimental but if you want to earn the trophies in the game, then you'll need to use them... and yes like KH: BBS you can earn trophies but unlike KH: BBS you need to collect 20 for the secret ending.

The game has you traveling through 7 worlds, six from Kingdom Hearts and Castle Oblivion from KH: Chain Of Memories. You will feel like you're treading old ground while playing the game but... it doesn't really wear off. Seriously we've travelled these worlds before and most of you will be sick of them. This doesn't hinder the fun too much but you may be as sick of the Wonderland theme as I am and mute it.

Essentially there is nothing really new here except it's story which isn't too bad but it doesn't feel important until you get to the end of the game. The last part sets up for the next game and it also links the event's of the previous games making everyone important up to a point, even KH: 358/2 days.

Is this game worth a buy? Yes and no. Yes if you're a die-hard Kingdom Hearts fans who needs to know the entire mythos. It's gameplay is familiar and it's story is... ok but compared to the others it's a little less thought out. If you are just in it for what's important in the series then you can skip it if you want and keep clamoring for Kingdom Hearts 3. I enjoyed playing it for the most part but I hate to say this but this game is definitely a hasty cash-in to keep people occupied until Kingdom Hearts 3D.It's also only about 25 hours if you'rer just going through story so it's mobile phone roots show. I give it a 3/5. While this is a good game, the story just doesn't have the same impact as every other entry in the series.

Score 3/5

What is the JRPG genre? A basic guide for the uninformed.

2011-01-09T17:57:00.004+11:00

Ok this is more of a soap box rant driven by Hyperdimension Neptunia not given an Australian release date but it also sparked an inspiration, write an informative guide on the JRPG genre so those who only reference it to Square-Enix and Final Fantasy or don't know about it can finally learn what the genre really is and all the different styles of gameplay in each.

First I'll start with the basic info that most should know and then I'll go in depth a little later. A JRPG is a video game genre made in Japan where you take the role of a predetermine character or characters in a heavily story driven experience. The JRPG genre is also known for it's similarity to the tabletop board game "Dungeons and Dragons" in terms of it's RPG influence through character development(leveling up), basic structure of narrative flow and occasionally combat.

Now to get into the in depth part. Like I said a lot of people think Final Fantasy and Square-Enix when they hear JRPG and stereo type it on that alone. This isn't true though. There have been various things done to the JRPG combat system over they years and the classic Dungeons and Dragons style was used when the genre started due to data limitations on the Famicom/NES cartridges. Sure there are a fair few JRPGs that use the classic turn based combat but that is due to what is easier to develop and appeasing fans but there are a lot of examples of JRPGs that have various tweaks to the system or are different.

I'll start with examples of the turn based combat being tweek and then go into the ones that are different. Some examples of variations/tweaks to the norm are Fire Emblem where the combat is strategic turn based where the teams take turns to fight and Valkyria Chronicles takes that up a notch by having stuff happen while moving your characters and using the environment to you advantage a lot better then other games in this sub genre. Shadow Hearts also tweaks the turn based combat system by using a thing called the judgement ring which has you performing a quick time event essentially to perform attacks and skills. The Judgement ring has multiple segments that you have to hit in order to perform the command and it has to sections in each segment, a orange section which will make the command work and a red section with is small and will improve the effectiveness of the command. You need to hit all the segments to get the command to work. Baten Kaitos tweaks the system with cards for your commands with varying values to shake up combat. Resonance Of Fate which made some serious changes to the system like using a special gauge to perform a running attack that you can attack as many times as you like until the time gauge runs out and giving you 2 different types of attacks depending on the weapon used and a variety of weapon types to use. Eternal Sonata is a hybrid turn based combat game that incorporates action combat during the turn of each character. There are tons more but these are just some great examples of variations of the turn based combat system.

Now on to the different type of combat system, the action combat system. There are a whole bunch of these that have come out in years and most of you can probably name more of these then turn based combat JRPGs. Kingdom Hearts is one a lot of people will know straight away but there are others. Star Ocean and the 'Tales of' series are 2 other examples of action JRPGs that have a cult following. The combat in these games is relatively the same but the thing is that some of the people who worked on Star Ocean worked on Tales of Phantasia. The combat systems of 'Tales of' games are arena based and you uses skills by pressing the skills button and a direction and Star Oceans combat system started the same but changed to using 2 different attack button and the skills with 1 button but a different one depending on distance with Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time and in Star Ocean: The Last Hope the skills with 2 different buttons. Secret of Mana had an action combat system that was similar to the Legend Of Zelda series. Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadows uses a touch screen interface for using spells in a action combat setting and works well on the DS. Key of Heaven aka Kingdom of Paradise had an action combat system that was heavily customisable.

Now the final part the stories. Some of you have it in your head that all JRPGs follow the same cliche story of angsty teens saving the world from evil but that's not true of all JRPGs. None of the 'Tales Of' series is like that and none of the Atelier series is either. I could name a boat load of them that don't have angsty teen saving the world but I've already got 2 walls of text and don't really want another. Believe it or not it's easier to name the ones that do contain the angsty teens saving the world. Also in JRPGs there is this thing called character development where the characters overcome their flaws for the greater good but this isn't always emo angst like in Final Fantasy VII and XIII.

Some people will argue that JRPGs aren't RPGs at all and they are half right. The role playing experience of true role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or Fallout isn't their but it's mechanics of leveling up, magic and large worlds are there. You can also argue that all video games are RPGs because your always taking on the role of a character but that's a whole other thing altogether.

Well this is as much as I'll give you since I could spend forever and a day talking about it but I have to stop at some point. Don't label the genre on Final Fantasy alone and give some JRPGs a go. I recommend Resonance Of Fate, Tales Of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Eternal Sonata, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Persona 4 as must play JRPGs that you should be able to buy still but there are tons of classics if your willing to hunt them down. The JRPG genre isn't as bad as you think, I hate FPS and shooters period but there are some that have stood out that I'm glad I tried. If I'm willing to play some games in the genre I hate, then you should at least give half these recommended games a go.

Also JRPGs are more about the story so if you like a strong story then JRPGs are great for that.

Hello people. It's been a while.

2011-01-08T18:22:00.005+11:00

Hello people. It's been a while huh? Well don't worry I'm not gone, just waiting for some new games to be released. You can look forward to reviews of Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded and LittleBigPlanet 2 this month and blog posts on my exploits in DC Universe online. Why am I not reviewing DC Universe Online? Well it's because MMOs are hard to review, especially since they keep expanding and in the case of the online Final Fantasy's just get worse with time.They'll be a fair few reviews coming from me throughout this year but don't expect a Gears Of War 3 or Dead Space 2 review or many FPS reviews this year because I'm not really into those games and the big boy reviewers will give you the review you want for those games anyway. I am also not reviewing any Kinect games or Move games because I don't own them and I also can't use a Kinect in my room because it's too small.

I'll have a new gaming platform to concentrate on, the Nintendo 3DS. Is anyone else as excited about this as I am? I'm not jumping on the 3D bandwagon but it's a portable Gamecube! It's funny how Nintendo's portable consoles are always a portable version of their last console. The Gameboy's were portable NES's, the Gameboy Advance was a portable SNES, the DS is a portable N64 and the 3DS is a portable GCN with 3D. Unfortunately they still haven't given much information on what games will be at launch and when the games are being released but I'm still as excited as a child at Christmas morning about the 3DS regardless.

In terms of games being released this year I'm not sure exactly which ones I'll buy but it looks like I may also be importing some games like Hyperdimension Neptunia and possibly many more since JRPGs are becoming less frequently released these days in Australia. If everything goes to plan you'll see reviews of Mortal Kombat, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, The 3rd Birthday, Infamous 2, Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D, Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy, The Last Story, Final Fantasy IV Complete, Artorelico Qoga(possible import) and Hyperdimensional Neptunia(possible import) we'll have to wait and see.

Well I'll have a review of Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded first this year assuming the release doesn't change and remember I'll also be posting my reviews on N4G so keep an eye out there for them and if I'm lucky I may get my dream of reviewing games for a proper website and get paid in games. Only time will tell. Hopefully 2011 will be a better gaming year then 2010 and hopefully a GOTY Edition Fallout New Vegas will come out as well.

Also go buy Blade Kitten! It's a really good game with some flaws but a second part of the game is being made with improvements and Atari is holding off on publishing it because of how badly episode 1 of Blade Kitten sales were. Sure it's a high priced downloadable game on Steam, PS Store and XBLA but it's a fun game. Also if your Australian buy it to support you country!

Is digital distribution the future of gaming?

2010-12-16T02:24:00.006+11:00

Ok as a gamer I've been around the gaming block. I've seen games evolve graphically and seen them change storage devices. As a gamer for 4/5 of my life I've played on almost every gaming console and played a large variety of games. Digital distribution is a new method for selling games that has been getting a spotlight shone on it by gamers for various reasons and some gamers ask if this will be the only way to get games? I'm here to give you some reassurance but remember I may be wrong as well, only time will tell.

The short version is yes digital distribution is the future of gaming BUT for the PC space. Why? Well let's face it, those who game on PC are a small market and it saves a boat load of money. Also think about this, we use PCs to download various media and it's convenient. Services like Steam are a fantastic distribution channel for games on PC and is a near perfect system that anyone who's used it haven't really got much to complain about. Cloud gaming is also one of the great feature Steam has and this is great for people with multiple PCs and allows the PC gamer to play almost anywhere. Could a home console use this method... HELL NO!

Digital distribution for consoles is a relatively new thing that has been embraced by all gamers but here's the truth about it. If Microsoft for example released a digital distribution console, would you buy it? I bet the majority of you said no and you want to know why? We buy consoles to avoid the PC space and have a solitary gaming unit separate to our PC. Look at the fact that we buy different consoles to play each companies games, how many of you have seen the games for these consoles on PC? A lot of them are aren't they? Also don't forget this thing called an emulator, with a PC any good programmer can reproduce the emulation program used by the console and people will just stick with the PC then. Microsoft can afford to go full digital because of PCs but what about Sony and Nintendo? They can't! The main reason we like having a console(or at least the main reason I like having a console) is because we like diversity and variety. If everything is digital both PlayStation and Nintendo will die in the gaming industry due to piracy and more importantly people will prefer the all in one unit.

What does the future of digital distribution and consoles hold? To be honest I think what we already have but better. I can see to be honest retail games selling extremely well like they are now and digital distributed games being games of yester year and from every region of the world with indie games having they're own separate section in the online stores. The way I'd improve the service would have the online stores having 3 sections. A classic games section with classic games from the companies previous console with games never seen in the regions before eg. Grandia 3 for PS2 available to PAL region or Final Fantasy III (NES) available to USA, an add on section that has all the expansion packs and extra content for games, and a Indie section for all the games like Blade Kitten and Limbo to populate and be separated from the rest to get their own spotlight. Will the console companies adopt what I think would work? Probably not but maybe if we all ask for it, it will happen.

I like digital distribution on consoles but I don't like the idea of downloading Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 2 on my Xbox 360 when I can buy it instore and save HDD space for indie games like Blade Kitten and DLC like Halo Reach's Noble Map Pack. Most of us prefer the physical medium for games and always will but for PC, the physical medium is pretty much dead and it's not a problem since services like Steam are well designed and actually helps the PC gaming space. I haven't used Steam myself but from all my PC gamer friends opinion it's a god sent and they agree, if console lose a physical medium the south(PC gaming) shall rise again and the consoles will die. Their words, not mine!

What do you think? Is digital distribution the future of gaming? Or is it the end of console gaming? Would you give up console gaming and go to PC gaming if the home consoles go digital only? And would you like a cleaner online store with 3 proper sections to search to separate the classic games, indie games and add on's?

Review : Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

2010-12-13T22:46:00.003+11:00

In 2001 a relatively unknown JRPG was released called Golden Sun. A sequel which was technically the second half came out in 2003. It became a cult hit and was way better then most JRPGs that had come out in the same decade. Now at the end of 2010, a new sun has risen and it's blinding light is awesome! Ok over dramatic but hey, I'm trying to set the scene. It's been 7 LONG years since the last game and we finally get a new Golden Sun game. Here's my review of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and to save time for those who skim reviews it's a great JRPG and you don't really need to play the previous games, but it helps.

The story of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is based 30 years after the previous games after the Golden Sun event that returned alchemy to the world.Since the Golden Sun was released the world has dramatically changed. Both the land and some of the people and strange vortexes have appeared that are absorbing elemental psynergy from the surroundings and people who come near them. The children of the Warriors of Vale are sent into the world originally to find a Mountain Roc feather to fix a flying device called a Soarwing but end up being entangled in a strange groups evil plan. Unfortunately I am having problems condensing the story to a basic form so this is the best I can do without spoiling anything. Sorry if you wanted more.

It's a JRPG so most of you have already worked out it's turn-based combat. People returning from the previous Golden Suns need not worry since nothing has really change outside of some of the locations and characters so if you remember how everything works then you'll be able to get back into the groove in no time. For those new to the series the characters get powers called Psynergy, which is essentially magic but you use some of the psynergy to solve puzzles throughout the game and the combat psynergy has different elements. Throughout the game you'll find these creatures called Djinn, who power up the characters and can change the class and psynergy the characters are using depending on what element the Djinn is and which element adept they are equip to. Don't worry it's not as confusing as it may sound, you'll get used to it and learn to exploit it to suit yourself in no time. You can summon Djinn in battle to use there special effects and if you've used enough of them you can use a summon that will drain the power of the summoned Djinns required for it and summon a large summon monster to battle to do heavy damage to the enemy, depending on how many were required and elemental weakness.

To be honest there really isn't anything new in the game so if you are expecting to see something new outside of Djinn and psynergy then you'll be disappointed. There are a boat load of Djinns to collect in the game and like in the previous game there are summon tablets to look for throughout the world and there is a lot of stuff you can permanently miss which you won't find out until you miss it or if your using a play guide. There isn't many sidequests in the game and they don't last long either. They usually are just for Djinn so they are beneficial. Like in the other games forgeable items can be found and you can forge some really good stuff but here's some fair warning. Save before handing over any forgeable material because if you don't like what you get, you can soft reset the game and do it again and again until you get what you want and if you want Excalibur for example you will need to do this method continually until you get it.

Is Golden Sun: Dark Dawn worth your money. Short answer, YES. Long answer, it has a great story worthy of it's predecessors and even though not much has change it proves that if it ain't broke, don't fix it! It will last you 30 hours if you rush and forever if you look for everything and try to max your levels. For a JRPG it's not very difficult and easily approachable so anyone can play it but you will feel a little confused if you haven't played the previous games, but lucky for newcomers there a 5 books to find in the game with a basic recap of the last games story, although I highly recommend playing the previous ones. I give it a 4/5, it's a good game that is easy to play and the story is great. You won't regret buying it unless you hate JRPGs and if you do, why are you reading this?

Review : Donkey Kong Country Returns

2010-12-10T20:50:00.004+11:00

Ok I have had 2 problems playing this game. One is the weather in Australia is extremely hot and two, the game is more frustrating to play when your sweating to death. A new Donkey Kong game hasn't come out since Donkey Kong 64 and a new Donkey Kong Country since '96. How well does this one do? Keep reading to find out. Here's my review of Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Donkey Kong Country Returns has Donkey Kong chasing after his bananas again, but this time they have been stolen by Tiki's instead of Kremlins and this had me wondering, "Why the hell aren't the Kremlins doing this? Where's K. Rool?" and strangely "Why are there squirrels in the jungle?". As per usual with 2D Nintendo platformers, story doesn't really need much depth because it's just a framing device for the game not the focus.

As mentioned it's a 2D platformer so it's got a simple control scheme that anyone can learn and unfortunately they shoehorned motion controls because Nintendo isn't happy unless they make gamers like me frustrated but it isn't that frustrating unless it's hot. The game is set up like the original Donkey Kong Country from the music all the way to the difficulty. The level design is fantastic and even though they brought back the aggravating mine cart stages and made an even more irritating barrel rocket stages, the game is a satisfying romp. What's new to this entry into the Donkey Kong Country series is that you can blow pinwheels and certain plants to find secret items and blow out burning enemies. You can also as mentioned earlier ride a barrel rocket, which drives me crazy because the control scheme for it is just one button that has no pressure sensitivity and is hard to guess how much time you need to hold it to boost upwards.

As for collectible items the game has the KONG letters again but this time instead of getting an extra life, you collect them in every stage in a world to unlock a super difficult temple stage. Beating all of these stages unlocks mirror stages for even more of a challenge. Banana coins are also collected in the game to buy items like extra lives and power up items and keys to unlock a locked stage at Kranky's shack. On top of those jigsaw pieces have been added but believe it or not they aren't as important as you may think. They are used to unlock images, dioramas and music in the galleries and are only there for those who are enthusiastic about that stuff.

Bonus stages and Rambi also make a return in this game but the bonus stages are just for jigsaw pieces and extra bananas. Rambi has been overhauled to pretty much be a cheaters item since he can destroy spikes and spike balls. He can also destroy certain walls to find secrets and open some easier paths. Speaking of cheating the super guide make a return from the New Super Mario Bros. Wii and to be honest makes me feel insulted when it chimes but I understand why its there. The super guide is design for the under skilled players so they can actually advance through the game.

Now the game is tough and the boss fights are tough too but it's a good difficulty curve. It's not until world 5 that the game starts kicking you down. The bosses like the old platformers of yester year all have patterns to learn but some of the patterns of the later bosses are harder to learn then you'd expect so you'l need a lot of extra lives to get through it.

The games also introduces 2 player simultaneous Co Op play, which can be fun with a similarly skilled player but absolutely frustrating with a 3 year old or under skilled player. During Co Op play both players share the lives and if 1 person dies they use a life and they can hog all of them if the are really bad. Here's an example, I played Co Op with my 3 year old nephew and we had 35 lives for the world 2-1 and we got game over because he used them all up even before we got 3/4 of the way through the stage. What I'm trying to say with Co Op is play with people of a similar skill level or be extremely patient.

Donkey Kong Country Returns has a retro feel to it that old school platformer fans will love and even the difficulty level will return them to the old SNES days. The game can be fun but some stages and Co Op can hinder enjoyment for some. If you are a nostalgic gamer like me it's a must buy. Even though it's a tough game, younger audiences can still enjoy it... even the Co Op. It's a 4/5 from me because it's retro fun from Retro Studios and gives you a difficulty level that you haven't seen since the old days. It's definitely a Christmas stocking stuffer for sure for any age.

Score 4/5

Ultima Black Mage's Christmas recommendations.

2010-12-09T18:58:00.004+11:00

It's Christmas soon and there are still people who haven't quite finished their shopping and I'm here to help. Here's a list of games for each age group that will help you Christmas purchasing habits.

Under 15: PS3: Unfortunately when it comes to quality games for the PS3 there wasn't too many but my picks are Modnation Racers for retail and Blade Kitten on the PS Store.
Xbox 360: Again hard to recommend for but Kinect if you have the space for it or a Naruto/Dragonball Z game for retail or Again Blade Kitten on the XBLA or Sonic The Hedgehog 4
PSP: Kingdom Hearts... enough said and Modnation Racers
DS: Super Scibblenauts, Professor Layten and the lost future or a JRPG.
Wii: A lot to mention but the big standouts would be Donkey Kong Country Returns, Epic Mickey, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario Allstars 20th Anniversary edition.

15 and up: PS3 and360 : The console this year has had a more adult focus but the major ones I recommend are Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Vanquish, Bayonetta, God Of War III(PS3), Bioshock 2, Halo Reach(360), Super Streetfighter IV, Dead Rising 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Call Of Duty: Black Ops and on the download market Deathspank, Blade Kitten, Sonic The Hedgehog 4, Limbo(360) and Hydrophobia.
DS: Do they even make teen/adult games for it?
PSP: Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker
Wii: Metroid: Other M, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Golden Eye 007, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Epic Mickey, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario Allstars 20th Anniversary edition.

There is a lot more but these are what I played and what I know people will like regardless of my opinion. I was originally going to go consoles only but ages made more sense to me this year.

Review : Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood

2010-11-29T00:20:00.004+11:00

Happy Birthday to me... yeah right! After spending god knows how many hours playing the story mode and dabbling in with the multiplayer a bit I'm now ready to finally get this review done. Here's my review of Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood.

The story of Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood continues straight after Assassin's Creed II and I mean it actually starts right after the ending of Assassin's Creed II. You return to the role of Desmond Miles, the bartender who was kidnapped and forced to relive his ancestors memories to help the Templar company Abstergo find the piece of Eden, who then gets rescued by Lucy who is a member of the assassin's guild and is now training in the memories of Ezio and trying to find out where the pieces of Eden are through Ezio's memories. Now Ezio's story in this game has him thinking he's battles are over with the Borgia until Cesare Borgia and the Borgia soldiers invade his home and kill his uncle Mario to obtain the Apple of Eden. Now Ezio has travelled to Rome to finish what he started and recover the Apple of Eden. Wow! That's a lot of story summery!

Anyone returning from Assassin's Creed II knows how the game plays because nothings changed really, but the game provides tutorials and story recaps for newcomers. Like in previous entries in the series, the game has you assassinating targets, fighting soldiers, tailing marks and free running all over the city. Combat is still as flawed as ever but now they've added a kill streak system where you can insta-kill other enemies after killing an enemy with a counter attack by holing the analog stick in the direction of another enemy and pressing the attack button. The free running is still as fun and flawed as ever but easy to get used to.

There are TONS of missions to do and completing the game can take a really long time for perfectionists like me but if not it will still take a long while.The missions are pretty much assassinate a target and a couple of different ones and a couple of platforming ones too. The economy system also makes a return and you use the money you earn in the game to upgrade the city's stores and buy landmarks to increase the amount of money you earn from the banks so you can upgrade more stores, landmarks, buy equipment and if you feel like it dye your clothes. Also added to the game is the assassin's guild. The assassin's guild allows you to recruit citizens who are being attacked by soldiers into your guild after rescuing them. The assassin's you recruit can be called into combat and sent on missions across Europe to level them up and earn money and items. The funny thing about the guild is that even though it's a useful feature, it ultimately doesn't really have much of an effect on the story.

On top of the main story mode there's a multiplayer mode which trust me, you'll only really play it for the achievements/trophies or just to try to give it a go. The multiplayer has a few modes but there isn't much difference between them. Wanted mode has you hunting down targets while evading you pursuers, Alliance is pretty much the same but in 3 teams of 2 and Manhunt which has 2 teams taking turns hunting and evading. The multiplayer plays similarly to the story mode but more simplified. 1 thing that is annoying is that if the connection is weak you'll see yourself killed even though the enemy wasn't near you very frequently. I personally don't like the multiplayer but I'm sure some people will like it.

Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood has a solid single player that will keep you playing for a long time that's held together by a great story and good gameplay. The multiplayer on the other hand is meh in my opinion but I'm sure there's a niche group that will enjoy it. I give it a 4/5, it's single player is awesome and it has so much to do and even with the mediocre multiplayer it's still a great game.

Score 4/5

Review : Vanquish

2010-11-19T19:10:00.004+11:00

Well who would have thought Platinum Studios would make a good game? Anyone who played the other games made from Platinum that's who! Seriously Vanquish is a really good game and here's my review to back it up.

The story of Vanquish is another one of those ones that makes Russia the bad guy and America the hero... well that's what you'd think at first. A Russian group called Russian Star destroys San Francisco with a microwave laser. Sam Gideon of DARPA has been sent to the space colony Providence in the Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS) to rescue Professor Candide and help the marines stop the Russian Star's leader Victor Zaitsev from destroying New York.
The game is a 3rd person, cover-based shooter so you pretty much have a basic idea of how it plays. You'll spend the majority shooting robots from cover which sounds bland at first but what you can do and what you can fight make it more fun then you'd think. The games unique selling point is the boosting mechanic that is pretty cool because you can use it to zip around the stage and do a super powered melee attack and the game uses bullet time but it uses the same gauge as the boost. The combat can be pretty awesome thanks to the boosting and bullet time but one thing that's pretty cool to go with the bullet time is the fact that when your on low health it will auto activate if the gauge has energy in it to help you to find cover or even kills some enemies. The game has a few weapons and each gives you a different melee attack, some basic like the assault rifle and shotgun but some unique ones like the LFE Gun which launches a blastwave of energy in a circular shape and the Lock On launcher which can target multiple targets and you can upgrade you weapons in battle by picking up upgrades from enemies or picking up a duplicate weapon with full ammo. The game can be hectic at times and some of the stuff that can happen while playing are just awesome, whether your using bullet time to shoot missiles, fighting giant robots or trying to cross a collapsing bridge in one of the acts and the quick time events just look awesome. It's a fast paced game that has a lot happening most of the time and if fun, seriously fun. The game does last only 8 hours but that's about average today so that's not much of a draw back and on top of that there are challenges you can complete once you finish the game for those who are into that stuff. The game just manages to get everything done well with everything in the game. I'm not doing the game justice with my description.

Vanquish is just an awesome game to play because of how much happens on screen and the story isn't too bad but those voices the male lead characters have are just horrible. It's a fun game full of action and makes you feel like a super powered badass. I give it a 4/5 because it's a fun game and has an ok story that leaves an opening for a sequel. If you like Madworld and or Bayonetta you really should buy this.

Score 4/5

Why you should buy Metroid Other M and why it didn't do that well.

2010-11-16T21:56:00.006+11:00

Ok a lot of people have had some choice things to say about this game, even me. Metroid Other M is both a good and bad game. What makes the game good is a whole bunch of things. I'll list them to make life easier instead of waffling on about them but what's good is,

1) It's gameplay is a 3D platformer with simple controls that work better then you'd think, but they could have been better with a controller over the Wiimote or they could of at least allowed nunchuk support.

2)Ninja Gaiden + Metrold = EPIC WIN! It plays like a old Metroid game but Samus's new ability to dodge and perform finishers makes the battles fun and exciting.

3) It looks really good... for a Wii game. I hate using that term but it can't really be helped since the Wii is a Super Gamecube and doesn't have the graphics power of the PS3 or Xbox 360.

4) Retro fun mixed with modern fun.

Now there are some bad things in the game but they aren't really deal breakers but it's gotten the gaming community up in arms and I figured recommend the game now since people have finished their complains but here's a list of what's bad.

1) Story and characterization of Samus. They made her seem very weak and the story would have been better if it was set up as a prequel to Metroid. A lot of people hated the characterization of Samus and to be honest I don't like it much only because of the previous games not actually supporting this characterization they chose.

2) All the upgrade are on you BUT you can't use them until told too. This isn't that bad but it's annoying that you can see all this stuff around you that you should be able to access but you can't until a certain story point.

3) Exploration is limited. Unfortunately you can't explore much during the story and areas get locked off after you leave them and you can't go to them again until you finish the game and play the extra scenario for the true ending.

I originally gave the game a 3/5 and I stand by it still today. I am mainly recommending it because the game is good and if more people buy it then the next Metroid will be the same style but hopefully back to the original formula. Do we really need another Metroid Prime style Metroid game yet? I say the next FPS Metroid should be held back until the HD Nintendo Console comes out.

As for the game not selling to well it's mainly due to the female fan base as well as people who've played the original not liking the characterization of Samus... That's it.

Rant 30: Why the FPS genre is killing console gaming creativity.

2010-11-14T10:53:00.005+11:00

Ok this will be extremely touchy to the modern "Hardcore" gamer. Now I'm not a big fan of the FPS genre but there are a few stand out titles that are exempt from this rant, these games are the Bioshock series, Duke Nukem and Fallout 3. Sure I "could" have added Halo and Resistance to the mix but the truth is they are part of the problem as well. The FPS genre is unfortunately the most stagnant genre at the moment because of the fact that you can't improve on shooting a target. As an art form gaming needs to grow and unfortunately the FPS genre is crippling it because of the fact that the major majority are the same and this is a HUGE problem. Let's look at the facts.

The FPS genre is generally summed up in a quote used in Neon Genesis Evangelion, "Position target in the centre and pull the switch. Position target in the centre and pull the switch." Now shooting targets isn't boring to the modern "hardcore" gamer but let's face it, we've killed the same stuff over and over! What do you kill in most shooters? Nazi's, Vietnamese, Russians and recently Terrorist. Now games like Halo and Resistance managed to crack the FPS mould with having you fight alien and mutant but to be honest Duke Nukem and Doom did it first but most people experienced Halo and Resistance first. I did play the modern shooters in the past but I didn't like them like everyone else does. Some FPS games help the genre but that's because they are PC successors like Bioshock and Borderlands also shook up the genre with a RPG element added to the experience, unfortunately it was MMORPG elements. Fallout 3 managed to show you a truly great example of the evolution of the FPS genre but Bethesda didn't perform enough QA testing before and after the release and Fallout:New Vegas is even worse!

On top of the fact that they are samey the next big problem is REALISM! Realism is unfortunately a double edged sword for gaming. Realism changes the game from a game to a simulator. This is also a part of the argument against games like GTA and others. Realism itself isn't a bad thing for games but in the first person perspective, which is a more immersive experience it becomes even more of a simulation. This is why some people can be very violent over Xbox Live when playing games like Call Of Duty. Realism in the third person perspective isn't as bad in theory but it still has a problem of how realistic the backdrop is. This is where a game like Halo almost redeems itself because while it uses realistic looking backdrops, it has you fighting aliens instead of humans. Sure you may find that a weak argument but it far removes it from simulator and it doesn't use real weapons either.

Another reason it's killing console gaming creativity is the fact that it's the only genre guaranteed to sell these days. Unfortunately this is the truest of the facts because a lot of games on the shelves are FPS and the sales of Call Of Duty, Halo and Medal Of Honour back this up. Game developers are using the FPS genre as the main focus because other genre sell as well as they used to. This can be blamed on the Xbox believe it or not because the original Xbox was designed to bring the PC experience to the consoles and while it did bring more games to the table for the console gamer, it pushed the original dominating games into the shadows. The FPS genre stunts creativity because you can't really create new things to shoot since they've pretty much done everything over the years and you can't really come up with something new if the idea barrel is empty. It just extremely limiting and unfortunately when you DO think outside the box it's a gamble, Bioshock is a gamble that just worked so damn well. It took a big risk by mimicking the PC's greatest shooters like Deus Ex and System Shock and using narrative as the driving force of the game instead of choosing the enemy and telling you to kill it.

Pretty much in terms of the mechanics of shooting in games we've perfected shooting and with the Unreal engine most of the work is done for people. It's hard to make the shooting better without engaging all the senses. I'm just paraphrasing The Game Overthinker's "Worse Person" Video on Screw Attack's website in this section but it's true because unfortunately all that can be done to actually improve on the shooting can't be done with the current technology.

I don't hate the FPS genre, just the majority of games in the genre. Until a new genre becomes popular or the modern "Hardcore" gamers grow up or find something else to do it's going to keep circling the drain and dragging the game industry down with it. I hate to say it but gaming was better when realism was the last thing in developers minds and games like Super Mario, Final Fantasy and Megaman were the dominating forces of gaming. Gaming will be considered an art form in the future but the FPS genre is stifling this from happening with realistic shooters. I would like to see more games like Bioshock and less military simulators like Call Of Duty.

Review : Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist Of Arland

2010-11-03T10:25:00.002+11:00

Another JRPG has managed to slide through the borders and you'll probably never play it since it probably won't be on any game shelves or some other stupid reason or you're just not a fan of the JRPG genre. I honestly hate how in Australia these games are preorder only at every game retailer. Ok I'm running off topic, anyway what was I doing? Oh yeah, the game! Well here's my review of Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist Of Arland. Oh and I know this review will probably be ignored but at least I tried.

Atelier Rorona's story is about Rorona, a pupil of an alchemist named Astrid who runs and alchemy workshop in the town of Arland. Their workshop is now on notice and Rorona now has to fulfill the assignments given to them over the next 3 years to keep the workshop with the help of a colorful cast of characters and her developing skills as an alchemist or the shop will be closed. I'd go into more details about the story but I don't like to spoil stories or waste too much time waffling on about it. The game is a traditional JRPG so it's turn based combat. Unfortunately the game uses HP for skills so the game forces the old "bludgeon until dead" strategy until you level up. On top of that the game uses the synthesis system from every Atelier game made. If you've from the PAL region you may have played Atelier Iris, well probably not but if you have then you already know how it works. For those who haven't it's simply combining multiple items to make a new item from using a recipe, but in this game depending on the quality and traits the item can have different properties and quality of the item. The synthesis is the core part of the game because the assignment require you to bring items that are requested for it with a deadline and most need you to synthesize them. You can also do requests from friends and townspeople to build up your rep and friendship levels. The requests from towns people usually are item request but you will eventually start getting monster hunts and you are given money for completing them and if you fulfill the special requirements you can spin a wheel to earn more cash or tickets, which can be cashed in for special items and these all have deadlines too. That doesn't sound hard does it? But wait! Here's the catch, traveling to the gathering areas takes up days and returning to town uses days and synthesizing uses days... almost everything uses up days including resting. Yes the days system is an annoyance but you do get used to it and you will quick learn the art of time management just to avoid a game over screen.

Is it a good game? Depends really. If you cringe when you see anime graphics or JRPGs then avoid it like the black plague. If on the other and your not deterred by those then you may want to hold of on buying this because it literally comes under the heading of "Hardcore JRPG Fans Only" and even for that group of people, it isn't exactly on the top of the buy list. I personally like the game, it has a great story with colourful characters with strange and entertaining personalities. I also am a little bias to the turn based battle system of JRPGs so I do like the game by default. I give it a 3/5. It's a good game that has multiple endings and even though it has a constricting time limit system, it's still worth putting the time into it if you are of the "Hardcore JRPG Fan" group like me.

Score 3/5

Rant 29 : Motion Control Revolution

2010-10-24T19:36:00.006+11:00

Ok this rant is triggered by all the info that keeps rolling in on the Kinect. I am an overweight person and from what I can gather Kinect isn't fat friendly. Now considering that some if not the majority of the "Hardcore" gamers are overweight then that's a large audience that gets screwed by the new tech. It also doesn't like baggy clothes either, again most people prefer baggy clothes over 20 years old and young people wear skinny clothes. This isn't a major issue but still really stupid. Then there's the room you need to play in. You will need minimum 8ft of space between the TV and you and extra for multiple players and you'll need an approximately 22ft room for optimum setup. Also every game on Kinect's release are either Wii clones or just rubbish. To be honest I have hope for Kinect but it's not going in my accessories collection because I'm to fat for the damn thing and I'm not losing weight just to play with that. Seriously Kinect has a bright future and is ahead of it's time, but it's too finicky over who can play with it and how you can play with it.
Then there's PlayStation Move. It's a Wiimote that needs a camera instead of an inferred sensor. Now this is a good device from what I've seen so far but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through to play 1 game with the damn thing. You need to stand in front of the thing and sync the thing and then pray it responds properly after that's done. Then the fat thing could possibly rear it's ugly head and then guess who's screwed once again, this guy! Now the PS Move is a step sideways in terms of technology because we already have the Wii and a HD Wii will probably roll out in a few years so who really cares? Well I do actually care about the PS Move but there isn't anything worth buying on it outside of Resident Evil 5 and Heavy Rain... that's it. Well if Dead Space 2 supports it and maybe every 3rd person shooter to come out then it'll have a good selection of games... maybe. Sony seemed to just jump in head first without thinking when it can to Move and sure, I can see it being a big success but it need games that aren't Wii clones and needs games build for the tech properly. Hell give Insomniac a crack at making a Ratchet and Clank that uses it like a Zelda/Resident Evil 4 crossover control scheme and that will sell the damn thing pretty well. In fact I'll suggest that to them.

Motion controls are a new path for gaming but nothing beats the classic controller and sure, the Wii did it right and fun but the new tech can dint there market share a bit IF they do it right. At least Nintendo isn't anti fat so they'll always be on top and there controls are not as finicky and have always had everyone in mind when making there hardware. This does sound like Nintendo pandering but hey, they did it right.

My review will also be found of N4G from now on... hopefully

2010-10-24T01:47:00.003+11:00

I was referred to N4G by a person on the Blade Kitten forum to post reviews there to help get my name out there. Well I joined the site and will be posting my reviews there and my blog. The reviews will be the same but the scores will be different due to the setup on N4G. I'm hoping that someone will notice me and maybe pay for my games to review. Those are my hopes at least. Anyway thought I'd let people know what's new.

Offensive picture to JRPG fans

2010-10-22T19:39:00.003+11:00

Have you ever seen this picture? Now I'm all for a good joke every once in a while but this got my goat. The picture is a flow chart on what the creator is claiming every JRPG follows. Now this is offensive because it accuses every JRPG of being the same and actually tells you not to buy the next one and use it for the same experience. I've played a fair few JRPGs over the last 11 years and only a couple follow this. I know it's petty to complain about this but I find it offensive. What do you think of it?

Review : Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light

2010-10-22T02:12:00.004+11:00

Ugh... another spin-off... again... why? Well that would normally be me when it comes to spin-offs since the first DS Final Fantasy. Believe it or not this Final Fantasy looks like a repellent but if you put the time in, it shows it's true colours. To be honest I came into this game as a sceptic but it's actually made me have a little more faith in the franchise. Well here's my review of Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light it a cutesy looking game. Everything about it seems to be a repellent to fans of the main numbered franchise(that's all but X-2 and XII Revenant Wings) but it grows on you. The story is about 4 unlikely heroes from the town of Horne. Brandt has just become a man and went to pay his respects to the king only to be given a quest to save his daughter from a witch. Along his quest he meets Jusqua who is on the same quest, Yunita who is the princesses bodyguard and caretaker and Aire, the princess of Horne. After Rescuing the princess and defeating the witch who kidnapped her the town of Horne becomes cursed and the 4 of them are now on a quest to save Horne and get dragged into saving the world from the upcoming threat... you know like every Final Fantasy. Also during the first 15-20 hours of the story you're going to have the characters split up and re-unite over and over again.
The game uses the traditional JRPG game type of turn-based combat with an interesting method of doing it. The game uses an AP system where instead of MP from previous games each ability uses a set amount of AP, even the basic attack command and it can be restored in battle with ether's and using the boost command. You only get 5 AP but it makes combat strategies more strategic. The game also brings back the Job Class system, with it each job is a crown for the characters to equip and a lot the basic jobs from previous games make a return. You can power up the crowns using jewels you find in battle. These jewels can also be sold, especially since enemies don't drop Gil at all. Spells are also handled differently too. The spells are in books that you give each character and equip them like the abilities. Unfortunately the game only has 1 save slot and each character only holds 15 items each and none are stackable which makes life difficult in the game but adds to the strategy, plus you can't select an attack target which makes life miserable in battle especially when back row enemies can do heavy damage or an enemy on the right is powerful and you're stuck attacking the left enemy. When you die in the game you will be transported back to the last town you visited or saved at lose half the amount of jewels of one type of jewels you earned. This is both a good thing and a bad thing because the game usually takes away the jewels you either have the least of or worse the rarest but on the plus side all of your levels and items you collected will be retained so it's not all bad.

Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes Of Light is a great addition to the Final Fantasy stable. Even though it has a whole bunch of things that make it unappealing to the average FF fan, the game has a good story and likable characters with a well designed battle system. It is a little slow in getting there but it's well worth the time of any JRPG fan and gives hope to fans waiting for the next numbered Final Fantasy. I give it a 4/5 because it's has a good story and has a lot to offer.

Score 4/5

Review : Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

2010-10-14T16:51:00.004+11:00

This is hard to review because the reviewer in me and the retro gamer in me are at odds. I finished it in 2 hours without any Chaos Emeralds and it did impress me. Well I'll get into more info through the review so let's get to it. Here's my review of Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1: copy and paste...

Sonic 4's story... phfff yeah right! This is a retro style game! Story is meant for games that aren't Sonic. Hear that Sega, Sonic needs no story in the 2D games! *cough Sonic Rush Adventure sucks!*cough*. Anyway the controls are the same as the old ones and no need for learning new controls... I think they call those types of controls "pick up and play". What's new to Sonic 4? Nothing really, sure you can us a homing attack now but Sonic's been doing that for 11 years. All the badniks are reskined from different Sonic games of yore and even Eggman's boss battles are copy, pasted from previous games too... yeah... even the stages feel like they copy and pasted them together from the old games to create hybrid stages with a coat of paint to hide which games sections were cut and glued together. Yes I know this is sounding negative but I'm still not done yet. While everything seems like it was Frankensteined together to appease fans, it's a good game. Yes it's a good game! Sonic admittedly feels slower then his Megadrive/Genesis version but you can blame modern tech for that. The game feels like an old Sonic game and after Act 3 of Splash Zone any gripes you have about the game will be pushed into the back of your mind while you play, but they'll smack you in the face when your done. The game has 4 zone with 4 acts each and the final stage so 17 in total and you can collect the 7 emeralds to become Super Sonic in any stage. I'm hoping in episode 2 they add another 17 zones so it will be a huge Sonic game but we'll have to wait and see.

As I said it's a good game. It's fun and tickles that part of your brain that triggers nostalgia the right way but if you feel like you've played this before, then you'll be like me and ignore it while you're playing. I give it a 4/5 because it cost's more then it's worth and it's a copy and paste job for the most part. Paying AU$20 or 1200 MS points is way too much for it, it really should have been a maximum of AU$15 or 800 MS points. I say buy it if you're a fan like me, but consider waiting if you're not willing to pay that much for it.

Score 4/5

Review : Blue Dragon:Awakened Shadow (Import)

2010-10-11T12:07:00.004+11:00

Well here's a game that Australia got stiffed on because of some stupid reason. I imported it so I could get it when it was suppose to be released in Australia and now I'm ready to review it. It's the third game in the Blue Dragon series and has nothing to do with the god awful anime and manga series, which still confuses me on why it wasn't done by Akira Toriyama, but I'm getting off topic. Here's the review for a game Australia may never see, Blue Dragon:Awakened Shadow. People who hate JRPGs should just go read one of my other reviews.

The story of Blue Dragon:Awakened Shadow is based after the events of Blue Dragon and Blue Dragon Plus and starts with some Ancients waking up and releasing "it" and all of a sudden everyone loses their shadows and then You awakening from cryogenic sleep. You leave the lab and head to Neo Jibral and find out everybody has lost their shadows and you are the only one with a shadow. Now You are helping the characters from the previous Blue Dragon games to find out why they lost their shadows while trying to recover your memories.
The game is an Action RPG with a very simple control scheme that uses either touch and button controls, depending on preference. Combat is simple and it still retains the JRPG tradition of strategy to ensure victory, especially since leveling is more strenuous because of the Action RPG nature of the game. The game uses the shadow system of the previous games but you choose who has what shadow and can have up to 3 people in your party. Each shadow has it's own abilities and is the main thing you level. The game is quest based with a very small amount of side quests and the game is very short for the most part. There are 12 characters in the game to have in your party including Akira Toriyama's auteur character Torippo and even a Poo Snake and some of these characters are obtained through side quests. What lengthens the game is grinding, item creation and online multiplayer. Item creation is a simple system and on top of creating items, you can also power up your weapons and armor. What good about this system is that it doesn't matter what you power up because all the weapons and armor have the same stats, depending on rank and you can level up the ranks of items with certain items so you can just choose what you think looks good and just level it up to max. I unfortunately can't play it online since I don't have a Nintendo usb wifi connection so I can't hook up with people online so I can't say anything about the online multiplayer, just read a big boy review from one of the pros. 1 problem about the multiplayer is that some of the stuff in the single player requires items from multiplayer and this cripples it a bit for loners like me.

Is this game worth buying? Depends really. If you like Blue Dragon then yes, if not it won't exactly appeal to you and you will find better JRPGs on the DS. I personally like the game but it's not for everyone. Blue Dragon fans will like the game for the most part but those who aren't may or may not enjoy it. I honestly recommend if it's possible to rent the game and then make you decision. I regretfully give it a 3/5 because I'm a non bias reviewer and I like the game enough for a 4/5 but like I said, I'm non bias. If your a fan of Blue Dragon it's better then Blue Dragon Plus and you don't need to play it to enjoy the game but it helps.

Score 3/5

Review : Comic Jumper

2010-10-08T06:09:00.005+11:00

Well once again the digital distribution service known as Xbox Live has gained a new game to it's stable that is worth coughing up money for. Comic Jumper is a game that doesn't take itself seriously and is funny from start to finish. Here's my review of Comic Jumper.

Comic Jumper is a side scrolling shooter, think Gunstar Heroes and it also has a couple of beat 'em up sequences during the game but it's mainly a shooter. Here's the story, Captain Smiley is a comic book hero of a sub par comic book series that gets cancelled. Now Captain Smiley has been bought out by Twisted Pixel (the guys who made the game) and has to guest star in other comic series just to earn money to jump start his series once again.
The game unfortunately has controller layout problems for a person like me and the game has melee sections and no melee button for the entire game. It's not a problem for most people but it hinder me a bit through the entire game. This game has 11 stages and only took 4 hours for me to finish. Now as mentioned the game has a huge amount of humor varying from game references to comic book and movie references and even period references. You'll be laughing throughout the entire game and it never gets boring. The stages in the game are not very long and are based on Conan, Shojo manga and even 60's crime fighting comics with various reference to each genre. While playing each stage you go through 3 to 4 different sections, they are shooter, bullet hell shooter, melee and rail shooter. The boss fights are frustrating, but interesting and are satisfying to defeat.

Well... Comic Jumper is a large file size game that takes forever to download and has frustrating controls and is criminally short considering it's almost a 2GB game, but even with these problems this is a good game. Paying 1200MS points is way too much for it in my opinion but it's still not a bad game for the price, just short and way too big of a file size for what little content you get. I give the game a 4/5 because it's funny and fun if you can handle the controls.

Score 4/5

Rant 28: Digitally distributed games and used games.

2010-10-07T22:23:00.003+11:00

Yes folks, it's that time again! Just when you thought I ran out of stuff to rant about I swoop in with a new one. What's gone out of it's way to burn my toast today? What's got my panties... I mean nickers in a twist? Well today it's 2 things... well really just 1 but the 2 things are linked to it. So sit back, relax, maybe make some coffee or popcorn and get ready to read another of my rants. Chances are no body's reading things on my blog for the most part. I feel so lonely... nah just kidding!

First I'll explain my reasoning for my rant. The reason I'm ranting about these things is because or the fact that a lot of good games are only available to download via XBLA and PSN and as a consumer I feel like digital distribution is robbery of the consumers money. I'll go into details about that later. Also Used games while convenient for some gamers are a who are on a budget have a lot of bad stuff tagged to it that needs to be addressed from someone who actually cares about gaming and isn't just a game player. Now on with the bile!

1) Digital Distribution.
Digital Distribution is really pissing me off these days because of the fact that all the highly recommended and sometimes even the best game are hovering around in the download space. Now sure there are advantages to this way of buying games but does the average consumer really know the truth... NO! Digital Distribution is a convenient method of getting games but here's the thing... YOU DON'T HAVE THE GAME! Sure it's on your HDD but think about this... what happens if your console dies? Sure you can remove that HDD and put it into another console but what happens? XBL needs to be signed in at all times so you can play the damn thing and as for the PS3? I'm not sure but I bet they have some garbage waiting to happen... oh wait... remember the snafu where you couldn't do anything with the damn thing? On top of that there's the problem of how many times you can download the product before you need to repurchase it. PS3 has a register to 5 consoles thing as well as Steam and if you run through 5 you've got to repurchase it, no questions asked! It's it fair? HELL NO! This is why I want various things done to make things better for all. First I'd like the game companies to sell their games via their websites on discs as well as via digital distribution so WE get a choice on how we want to own it. Also I'd like the option to got to PlayStation or Xbox's websites to buy compilation disc that are made to order with the content you want on it. Sell the content as the same price and charge like a $AU5 Disc fee and offer free postage for more then one disc. As for letting people choose their content, simply set up a click and drag system and a disc capacity limit thing so people can set it up like burning a data disc. This way we can install the content on our consoles and have the disc just in case of a snafu. Now I know the game companies may not like this idea but think about it, if you sell your games via your websites, Game Stop/EB Games and other game retailers can't resell it because it won't be in their system! As for the compilation discs the same thing applies and if your worried about people using the discs on other peoples console then I can't help you there and besides most gamers aren't going to bother with that for the most part. I sympathize with game companies and want what's best for them and gamers and being a TRUE gamer I believe I am qualified to give the best helpful opinion possible... ok that's an over-exaggeration but you kinda get my point... I hope.

2) Used Games
Now here's a big issue I have when going to any video game retailer (except GAME) I go to buy a "new" game and it's never in it's shrink wrap. Why? some bull crap reason they NEVER explain, then on top of that they sell used games at near new prices! That really pisses me off!!! I honestly have been wondering if they sell you used games in the "new" boxes. I know it's speculation but why do they need to remove the game from the shrink wrap in the first place? Is it for display boxes? NO! They always print display boxes for pre order so they can do it for every game and leave them in the shrink wrap... look I'm getting off topic so let be just say, never shop for a new game at a store that doesn't sell shrink wrapped games! As for used games I hate the prices of them to start with. It's a second hand game! That means CHEAP! But it never is! Now game companies hate the used game market because they aren't seeing a cent. I sympathize with them but I bet they would complain half as much if the games were cheap for one and if they actually got a small profit from them. Now here's how second hand games work, they are only slightly cheaper then buying new and all the profit goes to the retailer and this is bad, why? Well the publishers and makers of the games don't get any money out of it. Why is this bad? Because a used copy can see many owners and all the money spent on buying that game over and over again goes to the retailers and if the publishers don't make a profit, they go out of business or make crappy sequels to spite gamers... you know the games I'm talking about. For this reason alone DLC was created to fight the second hand market and get some money back from the consumers. You know that Project $10 thing EA is doing? It's our fault as cheapskates that's brought about this. If we didn't buy so much used games they wouldn't be doing this... ok they still would have but it'd be cheaper. I honestly wish every retailer would drop their prices for used games so they are like 40% of the price of a new game and give 20% of what they make back to the publisher but I think it'll rain Coke(the drink, not the drug) long before then. What's even worse is you trade in games to save a few bucks, which isn't a bad thing but what EVERY retailer does IS a bad thing. You trade in a copy of Halo Reach and only get like AU$40 for it, and the next day the store sells it for AU$109.95 and new it's AU$119.95. That is unfair to the consumers and the game company because you lost money through the trade in and the game companies lose money on the resale and stores like Game Stop/EB Games make a boat load of cash! Logic dictates that it's not fair. We lose, the game companies lose and video game retailer win twice at the same time! This is why digital distribution is favoured by game companies! They don't need to worry about used games there and they get more profits out of it but we lose in the end because we don't really own what we buy digitally. See how it's now one and the same?

Here's a couple of videos to watch that will back up my argument and one more just to go with my anger at the "new" games.
!Warning the Foamy videos contain explicit language!
The Escapist Extra Credits: Project Ten Dollars
Foamy: New Used rant
Foamy: Game Trade-Ins

I'm a passionate gamer and just want what's best for the consumer and the game companies. Sure most of you don't care now but someday you will care and remember this blog post on that day. Gamers are people too and we need to be treated better and our first step is to stop buying used games. So you have to wait for a price drop, big deal! It's better to buy new and get better games in the future instead of buying used and getting generic and bland games in the future from the game companies you used to love. Think before you buy people for your sake as well as gaming's sake.

Review : Dead Rising 2

2010-09-29T14:38:00.005+10:00

Well I've been putting this off because of playing this and Blade Kitten but now I am ready to review this game. This review may be short but we'll see what happens. Regardless here's my review of Dead Rising 2... heh heh that rhymes.

Dead Rising 2 does improve on the first game but has some problems to it as well. I'll go over these a little later but let's go through the normal routine first. Dead Rising 2's story continues after Case:0 with Chuck Greene now in Fortune City entered in a zombie killing contest to earn money to buy his daughter Katey Zombrex, a drug that holds off the effects of zombification. After the event a zombie outbreak is now set lose on Fortune City and Chuck is blamed for the outbreak. Now Chuck has 72 hours to prove his innocence and find Zombrex to keep his daughter alive.
The game plays very similar to the original and like Case:0 features a weapons combo system with 50 different weapons that can be made. The controls are reasonably intuitive but there is a slight delay and it's almost unnoticeable. The game features a leveling up system like the first and like the first with each level you learn new abilities and you can get combo cards too while leveling. Almost anything can be used as a weapon in the game varying from toy mallets to chainsaws and you can combine certain items to create a variety of weapons like the Paddlesaw or my personal favourite the Lazersword. While running around you can also change Chucks look by wearing the clothes and other items scattered across Fortune City's various stores. The game is structured in a mission based system like the first but there is 1 set of missions you can't ignore which is giving Katey Zombrex. The game has different endings and missions as well as heaps of side missions which consist of saving survivors and taking down psychopaths which you can find while running around as well. The game also has a multiplayer mini game called Terror is Reality and you compete with other players in Zombie killing events for cash which gets added to your file and a Co Op mode where 2 players team up to play the story mode. The Co Op is where the game shines because the game is more fun with others and it's also very helpful to when completing missions, killing psychopaths and saving survivors. Unfortunately the game lacks an infinite mode and sometimes when playing online if the host saves you get booted. On top of the Chucks moves he learns are crappier then Frank West's and hit detection can be frustrating and zombies attack a split second after your attack animation and it happens a lot of the time when fighting the zombie horde. Other then those problems the game is great and lots of fun, especially with friends.

Dead Rising 2 if an overall fun game but being dragged by the nose for every little thing keeps getting in the way of the fun. The game is more fun with a friend online and the mini game Terror is Reality is only worth playing for the achievements/trophies. Zombie killing never gets old and trying out every combo weapons in a fun experience. The game deserves it's 5/5 rating I'm giving it even with it's little problems. You'll have lots of fun killing zombies and with it's multiple endings you'll replay the game to unlock them all.

Score 5/5

Review : Blade Kitten episode 1

2010-09-25T12:57:00.008+10:00

I've been waiting a long time to play this... well it felt like a long time but I've only been into Blade Kitten since early this year. This is Krome's second IP and has spent a lot of time in development. I'll try to be as non bias as possible but I make no promises because I am a big fan of Blade Kitten and this game fortified it. Here's my review of Blade Kitten episode 1.

Blade Kitten episode 1 takes place a couple of years prior to the comics created by Space Captain Steve aka Steve Stamatiadis who works at Krome. Kit Ballard is a breaker(mercenary) who has traveled to Hollow Wish(a synthetic shell type planetoid) to take a bounty hunting mission on Terra-li a Squamatan who is apparently causing trouble. After registering herself for the mission a woman named Justice shows up, steals Kit's Breaker key and gets Kit into a world of trouble. I'll stop talking about the plot there because it'll just spoil it.
The game has a simple control scheme with lots of tricks you can do. Kit can climb most surfaces, double jump and do a ground slam to name a few of the techniques in her arsenal. You can get the control scheme and find out the techniques in the How To Play option in the start menu. The game is a 2D (or 2.5D if your fussy about the details) action platformer that takes a little bit from many classic games but Castlevania will be the one you think of first but I'd go with the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Castlevania mixed in for good measure. Regardless the game focus on exploration, collecting money, precision during exploration and combat. Combat will feel easy during the early stages of the game but as you progress the numbers game will catch up with you and it won't be as easy as earlier. One thing I have to mention is that Kit does suffer a classic games problem where she won't stop the second you let go of the left thumb stick, whether this will bother you depends on the individual but I had to mention this because some of you may consider this as "floaty" controls and being a long time gamer it didn't bother me in the least. Exploration in the game yields the biggest reward but to obtain everything it will require skill, determination and experimentation to get to the secret areas and they are easy to miss... trust me I know! During the game you'll also meet Skiffy the Skiff, he's used to overcome some of the obstacles in your path and collect some out of reach Hex. Hex is used for buying health and stamina boosts, new free blades and costumes. The game consist of 13 level and each level can be cleared pretty quickly if your not exploring but can take a very long time when exploring each stage for treasure chests, Skiffs and Datapaks.

Blade Kitten episode 1 has a story worthy of it's comic counterpart with tasteful humour, and colourful characters. The game is fun and challenging but won't intimidate people until they start exploring, appropriate of all ages in my opinion and at AU$19.95/1200 MS points is worth every penny. The game can be finished in a short time but completing it will take hours depending on skill. Like the games of yore the length will be determined by the skill of the player and will keep you occupied for a long time thanks to the creative tricks required to obtain some of the items. I give it a 5/5 because even though it's pricey for a downloadable game it got plenty of content to keep you playing for a while and episode 2 will hopefully be coming out very soon so don't delete the game or your save file! This game isn't for everyone but it's a great game that deserve at least a try and since you need to download a trial for it on PS3 before buying the unlock data you can try before you buy and I think the Xbox 360 will have a demo for it as well. If you like old school style games like Shank, Limbo and Shadow Complex then Blade Kitten should satisfy you, if not then try before you buy.

Score 5/5

Review : Dead Rising 2 Case:0

2010-09-22T09:24:00.003+10:00

I would have downloaded and reviewed it earlier but I was waiting for the week of release and I was also waiting on Blade Kitten. It's a prequel to the upcoming Dead Rising 2. It's a cheap game to download and exclusive to the Xbox 360 and your level transfers to Dead Rising 2. Here's a review of Dead Rising 2 Case:0.

The story of Dead Rising 2 Case:0 is as I said earlier is based before Dead Rising 2 and is about Chuck and Katey getting stranded in the zombie infested town of Still Creek and Chuck has got to find some zombie suppressant called Zombex and build a bike to escape the town before the military arrives... depending on how you play through the game. The game plays like the original and is easy to play for the most part. The game features a new weapons combining system that allows you to mix certain items together to create a new weapon that earns you more PP(experience). For the most part if you've played Dead Rising you already know the basic formula and if not, play that first! You'll spend most of your time either killing zombies or hunting down survivors and bike parts. Weapons in the game, even the combined weapons have durability and will break but there are plenty to find ranging from guns to swords and even spray paint. Ok this is a short review but it's a short game that runs on a short time limit and will be easy to get through but with multiple endings and the achievements, you'll most likely keep playing long after your first playthrough.

Dead Rising 2 Case:0 is a short but fun game that will keep you occupied until Dead Rising 2 get's released Thursday and for only 400 MS points, it's worth more then you pay for it. I enjoyed it a lot myself and I had fun killing the zombies with lawn darts. I give it a 5/5 because it's short and awesome. I recommend anyone buying Dead Rising 2 on Xbox 360 should buy this game and you can transfer you Level 5 Chuck to Dead Rising 2 for an edge at the start of the game.

Score 5/5

Review : Halo Reach

2010-09-15T18:34:00.004+10:00

Halo Reach is considered the most anticipated game of 2010 and it's now been released. I didn't sleep so I could pick it up first thing in the morning yesterday and I stayed up late playing the multiplayer and I'm playing right now as I type this. Halo Reach is the best Halo made and it'll be tough to top it and I know by now every man, his dog, his dogs fleas and the bacteria living on those fleas is playing it now but I'm still reviewing it. Here's my review of Halo Reach.

If you've played any other Halo game, it's more of the same... mostly. The story of the game revolves around a losing battle for the planet Reach and you and the rest of Nobel Team have to try and stop the Covenant from taking Reach. If you didn't already know Reach fell then you haven't been paying attention to the franchise very well. During the story mode there are a couple of flight missions and I really like the space one the best. The game features new controls, new weapons, new vehicles, the ability to customize almost every bit of your Spartan and all new multiplayer modes. The campaign can be cleared in 8 hours and as usual multiplayer is the main focus. If you've played the beta then you already know what's added but for those who don't they've added a new mode call Invasion which is Spartans Vs Elites in Slayer or a new take on capture the flag. There is also a new mode called Headhunter which you get skulls from people who died and drop them off at a specific spot and a new capture the flag where there are lots of flags and whoever gets the most wins. All the modes from Halo 3 return so anyone who's played that knows these modes well. Forge makes a return with even more in it to work with and 16 players can work on a map. It's hard to do a big review on this game.

Maybe I'm just lazy when it comes to FPS reviews since they're all the same for the most part. Halo Reach is the best shooter other then Call Of Duty and at least this is fun more then competitive. I give it a 5/5 because it's fun, works well and will keep you playing it for a long time. Also this is a pointless review since everyone likes Halo period!

Score 5/5

Review : Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

2010-09-14T03:01:00.004+10:00

Best Kingdom Hearts game EVER! 5/5 Ok I'm done.... Nah I'm going to review this properly unlike Good Game on ABC who reviewed the game after playing as 1 character. I just finished the Final Episode in the game and now I'm ready to review this game which is the best game I've played this year and reminds me Square-Enix still has an IP they haven't killed. Well since you read the first sentence it's up to you if you want to keep reading but here's my review of KH: BBS.

The story of KH: BBS is a prequel based 10 years prior to Kingdom Hearts and is split into 3 main parts and a final episode which can be unlocked. The story focuses around 3 friends Aqua, Terra and Ventus who are training to become Keyblade masters. After the exam for Terra and Aqua the 3 friends set out on a journey with different things driving them and their stories intertwine with one another and are happening at the same time. I'm not going to go into details because this game is too good to spoil, SO DON'T ASK!!! Each characters story can be finished in about 10 hours and there is plenty in the game to make you extend your play time.
The game is an action RPG and the controls are perfectly designed for the game style and the PSP. Unlike the other version the controls are now designed with a designated attack, guard and jump buttons and all special attacks and magic are part of a menu that are scrolled through with the D-Pad and activated with the triangle. Camera controls are still a pain like the other games but we're all used to that by now and if your new to it, it will be a big pain at first and you need to press both buttons for lock on unless you change the controls. Unlike the other version spells and skill are bought or obtained through various tasks and treasure chests. The skills can also be fused like Crisis Core:Final Fantasy VII and you can add items to the fusion between skills to learn abilities that can increase stats and other various abilities to help in combat. The game also features a new D-Link system where you can use other characters abilities and it helps vary combat so you don't get bored... if you can get bored from combat and Shotlock commands that are a pain to execute but deal lots of damage and make bosses so much easier. The game like the main console versions uses the same style of map as Super Mario Bros. 3 which makes life easier then the first games Gummi Ship shooting mini game between stages.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep improves on the previous games while still dragging around the bad camera of it's predecessors. It's fun, has a great set of stories and is a reason to dust of your PSP and since it's a prequel, newcomers can jump into this and have almost no problems getting into it. I give it a 5/5 because it does everything right and like every other Kingdom Hearts game, it's one of the best experiences you could ever have in your gaming life and missing out on the KH series is one regrettable decision. Also every Kingdom Hearts game is good for kids so by you kids these games! DO IT! I think anyone who owns a PSPGO and wants this game are going to be furious, but I'm sure it will be available soon enough.... but you should have just got the normal PSP.

Score 5/5

Review : Shank

2010-09-08T01:59:00.003+10:00

I would have loved to have gotten this review done earlier, but unfortunately I don't live with another gamer to play local multiplayer and my roommate doesn't like to help with anything let alone play a game for a few hours. Well better late then never, here's my late review of Shank.

Shank is a game that has a Quintin Tarintino/Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse style to it. The story has 2 parts. The main story is the single player campaign and you play as Shank seeking revenge against his former boss for kidnapping his girlfriend and trying to kill him. The 2 player co op campaign is a prequel to the single player where you play as Shank and Falcone following Cesar's orders.
The game is a violent 2D side scrolling action platformer. The controls are well placed and work well with both the combat and the platforming. The game has a variety of heavy weapons and guns to collect as you play through the single player and can be easily swapped for a different one with the press of the D pad. Combat is similar to most side scroller beat 'em ups and the combos that can be chain are pretty easily to do and blending the quick weapon, heavy weapon and gun fire in various ways make it hard to get bored with combat. You can also grapple enemies and pounce on them with the press of a button and these are essential for making combat easier along with the guard and dodge abilities. The bosses in the game are pretty tough but have easy patterns to learn... but are still tough to beat. 2 player co op has special moves the 2 players can do together and it's fun to juggle enemies and do the special co op grapples. There are also a variety of costumes to unlock through various tasks.

The game is short for both the co op and single player campaign but it's awesome fun and violent. It's a bit pricey at $AU20 or 1200 Microsoft but it's a good game and will keep you occupied until the next big release comes out. I give it a 4/5 because it's fun and has a good story for a short game, but after you finish it you may not want to play it again anytime soon so be prepared to only play it rarely.

Score 4/5

Review : Metroid: Other M

2010-09-02T23:39:00.005+10:00

Well this game has already had mixed reviews from the major websites and this is a game that has a lot of good and bad in it. I got the game on the day of release and finished it in 13 hours. The game has also caused me to get frustrated with a couple of things but here's my review of Metroid: Other M

Let me start by saying that this is a heavy story game. The story is based after Super Metroid and even starts with a cutscene with the final blow being dealt to Mother Brain at the end of Super Metroid. The story sees Samus Aran going to a place called Bottle Ship which was sending out a distress signal code named "Baby's Cry" and Samus is reunited with some of her old Galactic Federation military buddies and here's where it starts to get frustrating... Adam her old commander tells Samus she can't use any of her power ups without permission from him. Along the journey you find out that a conspiracy is being hidden on the Bottle Ship and flashbacks galore but I won't give any of it away so if you want to find out, buy it or go read another review.
Controls are the next piece of frustration in the game because this game is a 3D platform shooter with locked camera angles and the controls are very 2D. The controls are simple admittedly but to switch to first person you have to point the Wiimote at the screen and hold it sideways for 3rd person. Why they didn't go with the nunchuk still baffles me because it would have made life so much easier and suits the game but Team Ninja chose to make it simple and aggravating, but at least it has auto aim... which is finicky and frustrating sometimes.
Once you get used to the controls the game plays very similar to the old Metroid games with a heavy Ninja Gaiden influence. Sometimes I think while making the game they forgot they were making a Metroid game because of all the lethal blows you can perform on downed enemies and cutscenes. Some of the new features to the game are the lethal blows as mentioned above and linear progression, you can also dodge with a press of a direction just before an attack hits you, other then that it's very similar with a 3D plain to roam. You also don't get health and ammo out of enemies anymore, instead you use the new concentration ability to restore ammo and some of your health. This is one of the other things that's frustrating because while fighting it's hard to restore your health when you can be attacked and even though you can dodge, you'll have to start the charge again! Exploration in the game is also strangled by the linear progression and you'll have to finish the game just to look for all the leftover upgrades.

Metroid: Other M is a good game but it has some seriously frustrating problems that may deter some people but the extreme Metroid fans may be able to forgive these problems, unless you're female, then the story will frustrate you if you're a fan of Metroid and insult you. Also I honestly hated some of the story but for the most part it's good. The game will possibly be more enjoyable if you're new to Metroid but that's a grey area. I give the game a 3/5 because while it is a good game, all of it's problems can ruin the experience sometimes. I'd recommend renting it if your unsure but it's worth playing at least.

Score 3/5

If you read my blog you must see Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World!!!

2010-08-23T13:05:00.004+10:00

Like my post title says, if you read my blog you must see Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World! This is a movie drenched in video game references as well as being a comedy with interesting characters and it never gets boring. The movie is based on a comic book for crying out loud and most real gamers are comic book nerds so why isn't anyone going to see this movie? Why is it most movie goers are wasting their money on 'Eat, Pray, Love' and 'The Expendables' and other garbage movies when this is staring them right in the face? I mean Scott Pilgrim has fight scenes that are cool, people burst into coins when defeated and there is a psychic vegan, succubus cheerleaders, a lesbian ninja and a hell of a lot more!

I saw this movie when it first came out and I found out it's not doing well in the box office. Why? Take it from someone who played the game first then saw the movie and is now reading the comics, WATCH THIS MOVIE!!! It will not be a waste of money and if you think it was after the movie then no big, it's a must see movie and you would have seen it. I am so buying the Blu Ray of this movie on release and forcing everyone I know when I get it to watch it. If I can't convince you then go to Moviebob's review of the movie and he'll convince you of it too. Also after seeing the movie go get the comics too, they are worth every penny you spend on them and while your at it get the game too! I know I gave the game a 3/5 when I reviewed it but I'm a non bias reviewer when I review games and the game will be more enjoyable after you see the movie and read the comics.

Just see the damn movie... now... GO!

Review : Scott Pilgrim Vs The World: The Game

2010-08-12T05:50:00.007+10:00

This is going to be a short review because the games is short and it's easy to describe. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is a game based on a movie based on a comic book series but the game is more based on the comics then the movie. This is a very short game and I finished it in less then 4 hours and after downloading it.

The story of the game revolves around the comics story and isn't really explain in detail but it's pretty much Scott Pilgrim wants to go out with the new girl in town Ramona and to date her he needs to defeat her 7 evil ex boyfriends. The game is a 2D 8-Bit arcade beat 'em up. If you've played Streets Of Rage, Golden Axe, Battletoads or the more recent Castle Crashers then you already know how to play the game. The game has a very simple control scheme and can be played with up to 4 players but the game has no online multiplayer, which seems very strange but I can see why at the same time. In the game you can level up by defeating enemies and buying items at the store with the money you get by defeating enemies. The max level is only 16 and with each level you learn a new ability. The items you can buy at the shops are for health recovery and stat boosting. There are 7 levels in totals for 7 ex's. Enemy varieties are very low and there are plenty of weapons in the game to use against them.

That's essentially it. It's a short fun game and even though it's AU$15.95 for the game, it's not really a rip off. It'll take a few hours to finish it the first play through and there isn't really much need to finish more then once unless you want all the trophies and to max out all the characters. This is a game targeted at fans of retro games and fans of Scott Pilgrim. If your a fan you already downloaded it and if your not then you may want to save your money. I give it a 3/5 because there are plenty of better games and if your not a fan of the source material it's not going to be as enjoyable. Honestly if I were a bias reviewer like most I'd give it a higher rating but that's on it's retro style without ever reading the source material.

Score 3/5

Rant 27 : Multiplayer focused games

2010-08-03T15:20:00.004+10:00

Before you think I hate online multiplayer I don't hate it at all. I just hate how it's the focus of a lot of games these days. This wasn't too much of an issue until I read the review of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. Now Castlevania games are usually awesome. I liked them all except for Curse of Darkness (that's a game I can't bother going into details why I hate it) and seeing the new ones style first got me interested until I saw the timer and read the review. Why did this piss me off you ask? Because it's designed for online multiplayer and the solo experience is designed to force you to play online anyway since there is no story or leveling up. On top of this game let's look at Halo.
Since Halo 2 the games story mode is essentially just a training simulator for online multiplayer and the story took a back seat to the fragfest that is the online multiplayer. Now I have to admire games like Transformers: War For Cybertron and Resistance which try to squeeze a good story and multiplayer together and manage to make a reasonable game. Now admittedly the story is very short in these games but they managed a good story with good multiplayer unlike most game which have a bland story which is as I mentioned before are just training for the multiplayer.
Tacked on multiplayer is something that is also a pet peeve of mine as well because I don't like crappy multiplayer where it was added at the last minute to try and make the game more generic to fit in. I prefer a great story with good gameplay and the multiplayer with just as much effort put into it and being just as good and fun as the story mode, Transformers: War For Cybertron is close to that style of game I want but the problem with that is the story mode was too short.

Back in the days before the Xbox, games had all their focus on the single player experience and sometimes allowing a second player to join in in either a competitive way or a co operative way. I liked those days like when you called friends over to play 4 player Golden Eye or rotational Street Fighter II or playing Super Mario Bros. or Mario Party with your siblings or just playing Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on your own. Now online multiplayer is fun most of the time and playing with 4 friends at home online with 6 others in Halo 3 is awesome but playing with friends while they are on they're consoles online just doesn't feel right in my opinion. I prefer the local multiplayer over online multiplayer but that's me. Split screen forever!

Multiplayer can be fun but remember that people do like to play by themselves every once in a while and the best games are usually single player games. I know online gaming is now and the future but I still prefer single player based games and games that use local mutliplayer over online multiplayer... except racers! Racers just plain suck with multiplayer other then kart racers.

I haven't played a games in 6 days... I've got to play something!

2010-08-02T21:48:00.003+10:00

I usually play a game everyday or at least every second day. I decided to just watch my newly purchased Transformers G1 TV series and Chrono Crusade DVDs non stop and it took 6 days to watch all 98 episodes of Transformers G1, the Transformers G1 movie and all 24 episodes of Chrono Crusade. Now that is a heck load hours to waste watching all of them back to back. Now as for a game to play I haven't really thought of which one to play but Megaman Zero Collection seems like a good idea. The only problem is that I have to cook dinner and that will take a while. Well I better go start dinner soon and I'll find something to play.

Rant 26 : Final Fantasy XI and Square-Enix

2010-07-30T21:59:00.006+10:00

Why am I ranting about this game? A variety of reasons that have been building up inside for a while but I've held back because it's Final Fantasy but since Square-Enix has been kicking me and every other fan in the teeth while asking for our money I've finally decided to lash out on the first Final Fantasy that pissed me off.

I'll start with the updates. The updates in Final Fantasy XI take forever! My last 360 version update took 2 hours 56 minutes! That is too long for an update, especially since they want people to play the game and some people can only spare a few hours in a day and to have them wasted seeing the game update screen and having to log off after it's done.
Next is the lack of Gil you can earn. How can you earn enough Gil for everything you need when nothing sells for a high enough price at the NPCs and hardly any of the items you can find are worth any money at the auction house. What's worse is the fact that every time any items are worth enough money to be worth hunting for in large amounts, they end up changing it's value to make it worthless! It really pisses me off because nobody wants to party with someone with crap equipment and hardly any spells and you need money for both.
The lack of people wanting to help is another thing that pisses me off. 90% of the items you need requires you to party up with other players and if you can't get a party, your left in the lurch. Also if you do get a party they only want you to help them in there current objective and never want to help in yours, even when you've finished helping them. This is more people being d*cks then Square-Enix's fault but they should have allowed the 90% of items obtainable on your own instead of relying on the unreliable.
Next is the inability to solo level higher then Level 30. Now this pisses me off because it's the money thing again! I hate that because you need to get up to certain levels to train in other areas and even with the Level Sync ability nobody wants to team up with someone who is literally under skilled.

All of my complaints and the others I haven't mentioned revolve around 3 main things. Money is too hard to get and if you buy money you get banned, All the good items require help to get and nobody seems to be helpful and Square-Enix seems to keep stopping people from actually having fun with the stuff your suppose to like leveling and maxing you characters in every asset. Why has Square-Enix done this? When I started 2 years ago, for months I was having loads of fun and then the first update got released and made the main source of my income worthless which stopped me from buying the equipment and the spells I need to earned larger amounts of money and better spells and items. Square-Enix has been destroying they're once great MMORPG and it's probably to make Final Fantasy XIV better by comparison. Square-Enix needs a good debt to teach them a lesson for screwing with it's fans! I used to respect and love Square-Enix but they kept doing this stuff to everything they do. If Square-Enix goes out of business I know I won't miss the company but I will miss the IPs they make. If we're lucky we'll see them hit hard times and have to actually stop making all these stupid mistakes and make games good again and repair all the problems they made to Final Fantasy XI. Even I'm going to stop buying new stuff from them that isn't Kingdom Hearts. This is mainly because Disney is there to stop them screwing it up!

I hope Square-Enix does get it's act together because they will go bankrupt if they aren't too careful. Until then they are on a fast train to liquidation.

Guess what my current favourite online shooter is?

2010-07-27T10:41:00.004+10:00

Well I've played a lot of online shooters over the years. Halo will always sit at the top mainly because there is always someone to play and it's more fun then competitive to me. Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was cool, but just plain sucked for me since everyone who plays it seems to have telescopic vision and only use sniper rifles and claymores with martyrdom as their main ability. Gears Of War was only fun with it's horde mode which was easy to do if you knew how to use the shields properly, but all the other modes were no fun. Resident Evil 5 just plain sucked online, plain and simple! Borderlands is just co op fun. Resistance was meh online. Uncharted 2 was fun in every mode when lag didn't screw me over. Metal Gear Online was fun but got boring really fast because everything was just too slow. Lost Planet was meh but pretty well done considering. Finally we get to Transformers: War for Cybertron, this is my favourite online shooter at the moment for a number of reason.
1) Transformers!
2) Escalation can be fun even though most people don't have headsets.
3) Multiplayer has a number of variations to keep it interesting for a while... until you go back to Escalation or Team Deathmatch.
4) A reasonable amount of skills in each class to mix up the action online... assuming you can level up high enough in each class to access them.
5) Nobody is over skilled like in Halo and Call Of Duty! This is the main reason why I like the game. I hate being new to a game and for every person like me who dabbles in online shooters there's 100 over skilled players who take the fun out of the game and scream into the headsets " I pwned you N00B!" among other quotes that revolve around homophobia, racism and childish derogatory insults.
6) It's fun to play with fans of the series and game instead of competitive jackasses who don't want to have real fun.
7) IT'S FUN!

Why did I choose this as my favorite shooter over all of them? Because games are suppose to be fun and this one is fun and I'd like to see more people play the PS3 version and would love to play against the people at High Moon Studios via the PS3 because I'd love to talk to them about the game and what they love about Transformers. If you want to play me online in the game you know my gamertag for PSN and I play Escalation more then Team Deathmatch but you can send me a message to play another mode. See you online... maybe.

The reason retro reviews haven't been posted in a while

2010-07-26T11:38:00.004+10:00

You may be wondering why I haven't done a retro review in a while, I haven't done any because I've been busy playing other games and it's hard to choose 1 out of my huge back catalog. Also I need to replay the older games to help me remember what goes on in the game and some of my old consoles don't have working controllers. I'm hoping to save up some money and buy some replacements through Hyperkin and maybe even the RetroN 3 if it's computable with PAL games so I don't have too many consoles hooked up at the same time. We'll see what happens and I hope I can get back to doing them soon but maybe not every Monday like I have been because I'll burn through too many games that way. Also If you haven't started yet you should start preordering all the new games you want coming out in September and October because there is a lot of them coming out then.

An open letter to Square-Enix

2010-07-22T06:53:00.008+10:00

Dear Square-Enix,

Hi, my name is Ultima Black Mage and If it wasn't obvious by the name I use, I am a big fan of Final Fantasy, your once perfect franchise that over the last 6 years have been treating poorly. Why am I saying your treating it poorly you ask? Well ever since the release of Final Fantasy XII the franchise has been going down hill and even Final Fantasy X-2 shown some of the signs as well.

Let's start with the mission system of Final Fantasy X-2. I don't know who was responsible for that idea but even though the story was the last good story of the series, the missions kinda got in the was of the actual flow of the story. This is a minor complaint about the series because it still was a great game.
Final Fantasy XII has the major problems starting with it's MMORPG style of play. I like Final Fantasy XI even though I don't play it very often and the combat worked in that but in XII is was annoying and having AI partners that even with a good configuration still managed to screw me over made pushing forward in the game an annoying and frustrating task. The story is an even bigger gripe I have with Final Fantasy XII. I loved the stories of Final Fantasy up until XII. The characters were flat and unlikable and I tried my hardest to enjoy it but it just was never going to happen. The fact that the main character wasn't really a main character was annoying and the super political story that seemed like it should have been a documentary or a series of new reports irked be because it interfered with the characters who I just couldn't see evolve much during the game and kept making it hard to want to keep playing to the end. Now admittedly I do like the open world to roam like in Final Fantasy X but wider. That was a good improvement on the series and I'll go into details on how to improve it for Final Fantasy XV at the end of this but I still have complaints to go with.
Final Fantasy XIII did make some improvements that the last game screwed up with admittedly but I still have complaints. Combat was pretty good in this game but unfortunately you dropped the ball again by only allowing the use of 1 character again and hoping the AI would help. Now the AI was helpful but I throughout the game so far have been wishing I could control the so they can fight more strategically in battle and here's the biggest complain, why is it game over when the leader dies? why can't the AI partners revive me? That was a stupid idea and if you did it to make the game more challenging then congratulations you made the game more challenging for me to keep playing. I also hate the classes in the game and the removal of MP. The classes or whatever in the game were annoying and even though it added new strategy to the game, it became more of a nuisance especially since the skills were learned at different times with each character on the crystarium. I like having MP in the other Final Fantasy's because it actually gave a sense of a mental limit to how much magic a person could spare before exhausting themselves, but since you can cast and chain spells willy nilly in the game it loses all sense of being a real spell caster. The so called good bit of Final Fantasy XIII isn't as good as people keep saying because the only thing that's good about it is the fact that it's close to how the world map system should be. I hated the lack of real side quests in the game. Monster Hunting is boring except in an MMORPG and it just felt like an unnecessary grind and normal battles are already a grind. Now admittedly the story was better then XII but it still wasn't as good as the others. Also I like the way the summons were set out with a time limit but again the AI wasn't what I was hoping for.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was a good step forward in the series but the mission based system like in X-2 was counter productive. The combat, story and general feel of the game were good but held back by missions and no real big world fell the other Final Fantasy's had. Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII also has serious problems like the others but it's just the fact that it's a 3rd person shooter with bad controls. I think you should have waited until you acquire Eidos before making it.
If you noticed I didn't target the spin offs like Tactics, Crystal Chronicles and Legends. This is because those are not part of the original number series and are still managing to be good... other then Crystal Bearers.

Now on to Final Fantasy XV. I'm not sure if you have started work on this but I have a boatload of ideas that will be helpful to you for every Final Fantasy to come.

1)Graphics: I would love to see more 3D Final Fantasy's but a 2D Final Fantasy XV with graphics like an anime with anime cut scene would save time and money for you guys and you don't need my help if you go with that path.

2) Combat: You have 2 choices, real time action or turn based.
If you choose turn based keep the old formula from the old Final Fantasy's which are the original all the way to X. It's worked for so long why screw with it.
If you choose action combat then make it like Kingdom Hearts! The battle system in it seemed like it was meant for the next evolution to Final Fantasy! I don't know any fans of Final Fantasy who didn't like the Kingdom Hearts combat style and every one of them I've talked to agree that if Final Fantasy was to leave it's turn based roots, this is the way to go.

3) Magic and Summons: This is simple for magic, keep it the way it was in the good Final Fantasy's and don't screw with them. Summoning on the other hand is a different story. If you choose to make XV turn based then here's my idea. Have every character have a summon spirit and be able to summon it to replace the character on the field, but only that character. Also allow the other characters to still fight like normal until the summon as left. Now as for the summon I though about X and XIII summons and have come up with a good idea for them in battle. Allow the summons to earn exp and perform 1 command every 10 levels until it reaches LV50 and has 6 commands. This will allow the summons to be fun and strategic at the same time. Once every command is used or dies it can't be used again in that battle and if you haven't used all the command and decided to call it back you can re summon it later in the battle if it's still going. Pretty much Final Fantasy X's Aeons with a limited number of commands before it's called back unless told to.
If you go with the action combat from Kingdom Hearts have it replace your teamates and fight like the Eidolons from Final Fantasy XIII. In an action RPG that summons system is perfect! Just remove the Gestalt mode!

4) Bring back the levels system!

5) Every character can learn every ability: This should be done in 1 of 2 ways. 1] learn skills through equipment like in Final Fantasy IX except weapons which should be unique to each character or 2] Bring in the job system and have the characters have a normal state where all the abilities can be equip... well some of them equal to something amount of skill points or something. It should just be limited so you don't have characters with too many commands to select from.

6) No random encounters to shut up the whiners: I honestly like random encounters, but a lot of western players complain about it. Final Fantasy XIII did this right so just keep it like that for turn based combat and for action combat just have them on the world map like other action RPGs.

7) The world map: Final Fantasy XIII once you get to Gran Pulse was huge and immense looking. Now make a world map that's like that then it will be awesome! Now navigating this world by foot would take a while but with no random encounters if will go faster and shut up the western audience that whinges about it. Also have a car like Final Fantasy VIII to avoid combat and travel faster around the world map but with unlimited fuel and bring back the airship!

8) Story: This is a problem because I'd love to have the dream team back together to make a Chrono Trigger quality story but just get whoever you can from them and maybe get the guys who writes the mangas that you publish to help write an epic story worthy of the older Final Fantasy's.

9) Length and side quests: This is also crucial to the game. make it's story on a rush through 60 hours and put in side quests for rare items, super boss monsters, extra character development side plots, hidden areas with super monsters worth huge amounts of exp.

Well that's about it because anything else is the American Square-Enix's responsibility because I hate a lot of the voice actors out there because I've heard them in everything like Bleach, Naruto and Dragonball Z. If you follow my ideas to make Final Fantasy XV I'm sure it will be a smash hit and if it's not then there's no hope a fans ever going to know how to fix it and bring it's popularity back. If Final Fantasy XV fails regardless of how you make it, maybe you should just let Final Fantasy end and follow a new path and remember you still have Dragon Quest to fall back on before trouble really hits. I do hope you can revitalise the game series and make it as good as it used to be because I loved Final Fantasy's 1-10 and I don't want to see the series die before I do.

Thanks for taking the time out to read a letter from a true fan of the series and I hope I helped inspire your company to make they right changes to help sell Final Fantasy XV. All hopes for the future,

Ultima Black Mage.

P.S. If you do decide to follow my ideas please don't forget to credit me and let me play test the game during development. I don't care about being paid for it, I'd just like to know I helped if it's a success and if it fails just stick to making the games whatever way you want.

I'm now prepared for the new gaming year.

2010-07-20T21:21:00.003+10:00

Ok after reviewing the last 3 games I feel confident now that I'll be able to survive the new gaming year. September has a whole bunch of releases and I felt overwhelmed by the idea of reviewing 5 or 6 games but now I feel like I'll be able to do it. I hope people are actually reading my reviews and appreciate my passion to play and review these games.