DCUO Beta Journal Follow Up

I deleted the beta for DC Universe Online a few days before Christmas. I didn't do this because the game is bad or anything. No, if you've read my first beta journal you'll understand that I quite enjoy this game and I plan on buying it eventually. I deleted it simply because it was taking up a massive 18 gigs of my hard drive space. I'm worried that when the actual game comes out next month that I won't have enough space on my 40 gig HDD to play the game. Not with all the other games I currently play or plan on playing. Here's hoping there isn't a mandatory install (though there probably will be) and that the game opts to stream mostly off the blu-ray disk.

Last time I wrote about this beta I talked about character creation and a few of the things I liked about the combat and mission structure. I was going to write a bit about the instanced PvP sessions but unfortunately I couldn't get connected to anything other than the main part of the beta. I don't know what the problem was.

The problem I mentioned last time about how small and unreadable text in menus and chat screens is has been addressed but the stability of the game as a whole could still use some work.

I know this update has been short but now that I'm playing other games and not this beta I just don't have as much to say about it. I'm not picking this game up next month either. My January title is going to be Dead Space 2 but after a while these DCUO Journals will continue with the full game.

Flight Control HD: If Tetris Had A Baby With Flight Simulator

Flight Control HD is like stepping into a jet-liner in the early 1960's. A cute, shapely stewardess ushers you into the cabin of the chrome-clad fuselage. Inside the air is fresh and cool, the seats are plush and capacious, Brubeck jazzes out lightly from the speakers above, and in the back a slick-haired suit shakes up icy cocktails. Finding your seat, you relax, sip your drink, and enjoy the ride.

Holidays and games part 2

Today we have a treat (or not depends on how you feel about the book) for all of our Jewish readers. Hershel and the Hanukkah goblins by Eric Kimmel and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman will always have a place in my heart. While I'm not Jewish, it was one of my earliest exposures to Hanukkah and it had goblins.

Braid, or "the ingenuous platformer wrapped in a strange and brooding relationship narrative"

Tis "the season"! While some of your friends here at NAC! will be dishing out festive holiday-themed writeups, I have more of my typical fare in store for you. I was lucky enough to have been gifted the Humble Indie Bundle 2 this year by Spooky's better half. Amongst the awesome independently developed games jammed into this pay-what-you-want-jam-pack, one title really stuck out to me: Braid.

Holidays and games part 1.

In 1984, just in time for the holiday season Rimbot Games released Silent Night Deadly Night on the Atari 2600. The game is based on the popular slasher flick released in the same year. In this retro classic you play as Denise, a girl who just wanted to have sex with her boyfriend Tommy on Christmas eve. But a noise has interrupted their fun time, thinking it was the cat she goes to investigate. Is that Santa Claus? Nope Denise, that's Billy a crazed killer and you've been naughty, RUN!

DCUO Beta Journal 12/17/2010

So, my original intent was to play some DC Universe Online and write multiple updates over the course of my time spent with the game. I ended up getting incredibly engrossed and spending more and more time playing my Hero to the point I forgot to even write an update. I'm now level 18. The level cap for the beta is currently level 20. I have played a lot of this game and there is still lots more to do. This article will be spent detailing character creation and my first impressions of the beta. I haven't played a villain yet so I can't get into that and I'll save it for another update.

The game opens with an awesome heroes versus villains cinematic that you may or may not have seen before. It's pretty epic. I've embedded it below. Take that into your eye sockets. Enjoy.

Again it happens?!

Yes, Virginia, there is inconsistency! I'll be pushing Evolution Of Gaming back again for a couple reasons. But before I explain why I would like to thank everyone on the site and the readers for riding with me on my schizophrenic article tour. I plan out all of these article and then other ideas pop up or something else comes up that I feel is relevant and want to mention.

Parasite Eve, are you going to become Square's next bitch?

Parasite Eve is a video game series that is based off of a book with the same title. The series is quirky and kind of unsettling. Parasite Eve 1 was mostly a Japanese RPG with an awesome battle system. It was a pseudo real time system that allowed you to dodge enemy attacks and then when you make actions, it pauses everything until you finish it. It truly was one of the best battle systems for a PS1 RPG. While Parasite Eve 2 decided to borrow the system from the Resident Evil games, and this angered many fans. However, doing this actually made the game a bit more scary, since the first one was definitely not very scary at all.

Treasure hunting has never been so easy!

You don't even have to sail across the seven seas but you still might have to fight THE KRAKEN! Steam, Valve's digital game store/game manager, is a bastion of great deals. Every week they have a mid-week sale and from Friday to Monday they always have an even better sale. For holidays they have salse that would put The Outrageous Audio Guy to shame. (Check that out two links in the same paragraph, have to keep you rabid monkeys entertained some how.) It's usually a different set of games on sale every day for X days during the gift giving season. Last year leading up to Christmas they would have a rotating door of games that were slashed in price, my girlfriend got me Borderlands for thirty three bucks last year. This was two months after it had come out and it was still at a fifty dollar price tag. Now I know I'm sounding like a shill talking Steam up and yeah maybe I am but this years sale is pretty interesting and has already caused some controversy.

Knightfell for it.

Tearing my hair out trying to learn to code NAC's future web framework hasn't left me with a lot of time to play the games I would like to play. Epic Mickey came out last month, so my Nintendo Wii is just begging to be played. I would love to finish up Blue Dragon on the 360, but my early unit is exhibiting some of the notorious defects from which Xbox 360 has made its name, so Shu and pals are going to have to wait.

I have resorted to picking through what I consider to be the proverbial leftovers of my gaming selection. When the Google webapp store was launched last week, I thought that I'd see what browser-based games their infrastructure was supporting. I knew that this meant I'd probably be wading through a sea of super uninteresting casual games, but I took the chance knowing that neither time nor finances were working in my favor. Namco's Knightfall: Death and Taxes caught my eye. It was quick to load, seemed to have decent production value for a webgame, and was apparently free!

This screen cap is more interesting than the actual cutscenes. Yeah, that bad.

I Never Knew Hunting Dinosaurs Can be So Much Fun!

Monster Hunter is a 3rd person action adventure title that focuses on, unsurprisingly, monster hunting. This game is very difficult to get into as it truly is a skill based console game. The requirement of knowing the larger monsters attack patterns, and the strengths/weaknesses of your weapon set, make the difficulty to new players astronomical. If you are just getting in to this game with one of the newer titles, be prepared to be frustrated since you are going to need to fight the same monster over and over again just to get better. Its just that kind of cycle this game has.

Dressed to Digress: Tux Gaming, "Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers"

Searching for sustainable gaming within the perilous digital wilderness that is Linux. Amidst open source, black pants studio's Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers is an encouraging beacon of hope.

Super Meat Boy Review: You Might Never Beat This Meat.

That middle column breaks... and you die.

Super Meat Boy isn't just a "tough as nails platformer" like its description says. No, in fact I'm certain that if this game were a living, breathing entity, it would murder you. It would beat you to death, drag you through the streets and then throw your body into the spinning blades of a saw mill. It would do this to you over and over again until there was nothing left and it would laugh maniacally as it committed this heinous crime in front of everyone. I'm not understating this. This game is brutally difficult and... I love it.

You may not have ever heard of Spooky Games but after this you'll wish you had.

For almost twenty years a small company has produced more than a handful of RPGs, action RPGs, shooters, action, online fantasy and even a couple dating sims. Spooky games had a humble beginning in a small office that could barely hold it's six original employees.

Fission Mailed Stache!

So for the past two weeks I have been focusing on gaming and school... Mostly gaming, which is a good thing right? So in other words, I have not had time to be able to provide articles and what-not due to thanksgiving and, like I said before, school... Its the week before finals, and instead of using every second I have studying for them I decide to explain what I have been up to for the past two weeks!

Since there was a Steam sale last week, I bought a few games for super cheap. I ended up buying Kane and Lynch 2, and Recettear: An item Shop's Tale with a few others but I really only cared about the latter. They were each 5 bucks, which was a good deal in my opinion and both of them are not bad at all.

Here are my thoughts:

One man, one cave, one seriously awesome story.

While shuffling through the gaming blogs, I came across several posts announcing the release of Studio Pixel’s Cave Story via Nintendo’s handheld content delivery service, DSiWare. While I now understand that Cave Story was initially released in its native Japan in 2004, I had actually never happened upon the game.

The title debuted for the PC as a free executable. Free. And since I didn’t even have a DSi, I figured that I’d just track down a copy to play on my computer.

Liquor in the front, poker in the inventory

It is the third week of November, and I'm sure that many of you are preparing to be joined at the table by loved ones to share some of the season's most precious, jubilant, and sometimes aggravating moments.

What was that? Oh. No, actually, I'd nearly forgotten about Thanksgiving. I'm talking about Steam's five-buck crossover collage, Poker Night At The Inventory. I'm almost certain that if you're reading this, the game most likely needs no introduction. Though for those unwitting dark age architecture enthusiasts whose search terms may have mislead you into our geeky abode, I'll make it quick. Poker Night is, as it sounds, a video poker game featuring internet and computer game pop culture legends Max (from Tell Tale Games' Sam and Max series), Tycho Brahe (of webcomic Penny-Arcade fame), Strong Bad (from Homestar Runner Flash cartoons) and Heavy Weapons Guy (from Valve's own Team Fortress 2).

Panic Room 3: Already?

What's that noise...?

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!

Now, Im gonna level with you people... I haven't really been playing a ton of video games lately. So instead of the usual fare of me writing moving poetry, I think I'll show you around the Not Another Castle castle.

Super Scribblenauts (Guest Review)

Hey,


So I picked up "Super Scribblenauts" for the DS last month I haven't played it all the way through but I am digging it so far.
The Scribblenauts games were developed by 5th cell media, the same group that gave us the game "Drawn to Life".
For those of you that don't know about the scribblenauts games, I'll just hit ya with a quick description.

NONE WILL BE LEFT TO MOURN YOU BUT GHOSTS

There was a time when I was working way too much. Between putting in upwards of 55 hours a week at my desk job and chipping away at my art projects, I had little to no time to play any games.

One dragging lunch break, however, a co-worker of mine pointed me to Loren Schmidt’s Star Guard, an independently developed Flash game that took Schmidt a long 16 months to complete. What resulted was a convincingly epic yet simplistic interactive space opera that gorged itself on several well-spent hours of my time.

Panic Room 2: Panic Harder

That annoying sound can only mean one thing- it's time for me to sit at this dingy keyboard and scrape together another BS article. Once I hit "publish" the magnetic locks that hold me in this sub-basement will open, and I can get back to doing handstands on my martini keg.

The evolution of gaming part 2: I am Heavy weapons guy, and this is my new weapon.

Don't miss out on Evolution of Gaming: Part 1

Team Fortress 2 had finally arrived and it only took seven years! Leading up to the release, gamers who had pre-ordered The Orange Box, a compilation of games including Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, were treated to beta play of the game. Sadly I had failed to find this out until the night of release so I had to wait until midnight to play! But the servers were so crazy I had to wait even longer! It was grueling, at first Steam, Valve's digital distribution program, would not accept my debit card information because so many people were overloading the servers. Finally at one thirty in the morning Steam accepted my card and my download promptly started.....at 50kb a second. It was downloading slower than good ol' Compuserve. It was torture, I filled my time watching my download percentages slowly raise, scouring the forums and salivating over the Meet the Class videos Valve released to promote the game.

Atlus! What HAVE you been up to?!

Atlus is a video game company that is based out of Tokyo Japan. They are a very well known for publishing, and creating some very creative games, specifically within the RPG genre. They have published many acclaimed RPGs, such as Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Odin Sphere, the Growlanser Series, Dual Hearts, Tactics Ogre and many more. Atlus has also developed the cult classic franchise Shin Megami Tensei. In other words, they have produced and published many excellent games, and none of them disappoint.

The Panic Room

Hi. You may not recognize me because I mostly work behind the scenes here at Not Another Castle, but my name is Shane and my job is Editor-at-Large. I come to you today because, for one reason or another, one or more of our regular contributors are unable to dazzle you with new content.

There's no business like show business, and the game industry is no exception.

As much as I hate to plug Spike TV, it turns out that the much rumored Guillermo Del Toro game will be announced during the upcoming Video Game Awards, as reported by the folks at Joystiq. So far, we know that the game is being developed with THQ, that it will embody a horror narrative (yet not fall into the survival horror genre), and that it is “Lovecraftian” in nature. With Del Toro having directed chilling and beautifully twisted films like Hellboy, The Orphanage, and Pan’s Labyrinth, developing a horror game seems like a perfect fit for him.

Condemned 2: A Post Halloween Review

Condemned 2: Bloodshot, a game by developer Monolith Productions, Inc, came out March 11th 2008. That's right. Two years ago. I overlooked the game and heard a lot of mixed takes on its story so I wasn't incredibly eager to play it. Here I am, two years later and I've finished the game. It's pretty good.

Welcome to a walk down memory lane.

First off I would like to wish everyone a late Happy Halloween! I was meaning for this post to be up last night but movies, carving pumpkins, sweets, Beavis and Butthead and The Walking Dead devoured my time. Second I would like to introduce a second series that I will be posting. I don't have a name for it yet, it's something I decided to do just a day or two ago. But I hope you all enjoy it. It'll be every other week, meaning The Evolution of Gaming will be on weeks this series isn't posted. So look for Part 2 of the TF2 evolution next week.

With that all out of the way, welcome to my new series. I will be discussing games I grew up playing and have fond memories of.

Clock... Tower...? Oh God...

Clock tower is a 15 year old Super Nintendo Game that is perfect for playing around Halloween. It was never released in America, but you can find some fan made translations for it. It is made by Human who also has made a creepy NES game known as Monster party, and also other games for SNES, NES, Playstation... the list goes on.

The very eerie title screen for Clock Tower

First Impressions: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I like it.

Smartphones: coveted, compact and capable...

.. so give me a game that I give half a shit about!

Smartphones are becoming ever more prominent in the cell phone market. With hot sellers like the iOS and Android platforms providing third party developers with accessible markets, gamers are growing more curious as to how the smartphone development paradigm will effect mobile gaming.

Its been Vanquished

Vanquish is a new release from the acclaimed game designer Shinji Mikami; who is known for creating the Resident Evil series. He has also worked on Clover Studios titles such as God Hand, and Viewtiful Joe. Vanquish is a third person cover shooter, which is easily described as a bullet hell game. It can be quite difficult at times, it is extremely stylish, and overall its a perfectly polished 3rd person shooter with standard mechanics that are typical of the genre.

Return to Vvardenfell: Morrowind in Retrospect

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, my favorite of the Besthesda developed franchise, is a game I go back to a lot. I know most people move forward with the times and a lot of fans have moved on to inhabit the land of Cyrodil but I can't bring myself to do the same. Now, don't get me wrong. I've played both games. I finished everything there was to do in the vanilla Oblivion and enjoyed quite a bit of it. I just found the experience a little too streamlined for my liking. There are a number of reasons I choose to stay in Vvardenfell: The graphics, the sound, the quests, the structure. Everything in Morrowind is interesting. I've grown to love and hate political factions and races. I find myself stealing books from the lairs of necromancers and reading them. The wealth of lore is immense. In short: It's just a better game.

The evolution of gaming part 1: Oooooooh run, run, I'm coming for you!

Twelve years ago I was introduced to, what I considered at the time, the best first person shooter ever. I had no idea what a behemoth the game would become nine years later.

When something is too good to be true, it's "Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light"

Fantastic artwork. This mini poster actually comes packaged with

the game, sans Japanese title. (image sourced from www.gamersmint.com )

OVERVIEW

The good: Effective aesthetics, above average flavor text, interesting take on turn based combat, fun and easy character class system

The not so good: Extra bad event design

--------------------------------------------------------------

There are some games you just want to love so badly. Square-Enix / Matrix Software’s Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light is one such game. Directed by Square/soft veteran Takashi Tokita, with concept artwork rendered by Akihiko Yoshida of Ogre Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics fame, Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light is marketed as a JRPG heart throb for those who grew up during the 8-bit/16-bit gaming transition.

First Impressions Volume 1 part 2; Stache Style

The other two games I have been playing are Vagrant Story and Persona 4. Both are excellent RPGs and are cult classics, since neither one of them are very well known. I recently picked Vagrant Story up in Salem Oregon for 50 bucks and it definitely is a good purchase.


Vagrant Story Impressions:

Since i finally have played some more of Vagrant story, i can finally give my impressions on the game. Vagrant story is a cult game made by the same game designer as Final Fantasy Tactics, which is an another amazing game. Vagrant story on the other hand, is also very good but some aspects about the game is very frustrating. The battle system consists of chaining attacks, which is pretty neat but hard to get used to at first considering it is a RPG... This makes the game a rhythm based game, since you can to hit circle square or triangle whenever an exclamation point appears, and you cannot use the same move two times in a row. This makes it so i cannot play the game longer than an hour or two, because i become very frustrated and i start losing the "rhythm"...

Therefore, the game is really quite challenging... You have to make weapons with multiple elements just so you can deal a lot of damage to some enemies, otherwise have fun beating down an enemy with 200 hp while you are only dealing 5 each hit... On top of chaining, there is a status bar called risk, and as it raises so does the damage you take, the harder it is for you to hit enemies, but the healing you receive is drastically increased. Its best to keep this down as low as you can, but its hard than hell to do so sometimes especially during boss battles.

The story so far is awesome, which is to be expected since Final Fantasy Tactic's story was very good. Vagrant Story has very similar dialogue to FFT which keeps with the universe; what is funny though is that the two games were not tied together til' Final Fantasy 12, which i find kind of peculiar...

So far Vagrant Story is a good game when you play it for short bursts at a time, it definitely is not a game that you can sit down and play it for hours unless you want to drive yourself nuts and punch yourself in unneeded locations over and over again...

Persona 4 Impressions:

Persona 4 is the sequel to the hit persona series; the latest installments are known for their deep stories and weird genre combination in the RPG genre. Dating simulator mechanics and a turn based RPG rolled in to one? Well, some how it works amazingly well and it makes Persona 3 and Persona 4 really addicting. The dating sim mechanics are used to benefit the player by making him able to create more powerful personae, and receive support in battle.


The game takes place in the small Japanese town of Inaba; the name-less Protagonist was sent here to live with his uncle due to his parents going to America for a few months. When he arrived though, a peculiar chain of murders occur and during this time he hears about a rumor that when you turn the TV on during a rainy night at midnight, your soul mate appears on the screen. The night he does this, he sticks his arm out towards the TV, and to his surprise he was able to stick his arm through the screen.


He then tells his colleagues and decide to explore this other world... After a while they find out that someone is throwing people in each month, and if they are left in there for too long they end up dying. They make a vow to save the people who are thrown in, and some of the people end up joining the party. The game is dungeon based and each one is unique to the character that the player is saving. Each one has a specific theme based off of the character's own secrets and or inner problems.


The game play is your typical turn based RPG, but all of your abilities come from persona. Each one has their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and there's a total of about 200 personae but i'm not confident about that. They fixed what made the 3rd Persona a bit irritating, allowing you to be able to control your party members now but surprisingly the game is still hard as hell. What I like about this series in its current state, is when you are annoyed or tired of going through dungeons you can simply go through your daily high school life and hang out with people. It varies the game play drastically and its quite enjoyable.


Persona 4 is an awesome title and I would have beaten it when i first got it if it wasn't for a corrupted save file... Anyhow, this game [series] is worthy to play, and dedicate time to for the fact that the story, game play, and weird genre is a fantastic combo for a modern turn based RPG. If you have yet to pick it up, do so soon, because i ensure you this game will be hard to find just like any other Shin Megami Tensei game.

First Impressions: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is developer Ninja Theory's third game (the first two being Kung Fu Chaos and Heavenly Sword) and in my opinion it could very well be their best. Keep in mind that I've only played the demo and all my impressions are based solely on the content contained therein.

The demo opens on the interior of a slave ship. The ship is appropriately dirty with rust coating most objects. Tints of jade adorn the holding cells in the room along with other pieces of equipment. Pipes line the walls and a single walkway is placed in the center of the room. Light shines in from a hole in the roof and makes the metallic rust green surfaces seem almost organic. Even the way the pipes in the back are placed make them look more like roots or vines.

 Monkey is locked in a holding cell and he's throwing a bit of a fit. Upon looking out through a small window he sees a woman successfully escape her own cell and proceed to a nearby console. She does something that triggers a number of small explosions throughout the ship and then runs off. Monkey's cell is blown off the wall and he's able to climb out. It's here the player takes control of Monkey and begins chasing after the woman.

Monkey, who's physicality is brought to the game with expert precision by mo-cap vet Andy Serkis, moves like his name would imply. That is to say: fast and agile. The character even looks a bit ape-like. He has a muscular build but isn't enormous like the oh-so-common space marines we've grown accustomed to and wears red leather pants with a sash that hangs mostly behind him (like a monkey tail). His hair is spiked up to a point. He's an interesting character and one that I want to see more of.

Moving Monkey through the environment is a cinch. His agility allows for perfect execution of parkour like moves as he jumps across small gaps and climbs, Prince of Persia style, on pipes and ledges. Most of which are highlighted with a faint red shimmer. All of this is done by guiding Monkey with the thumbstick and pressing the X button at the appropriate time.

After navigating through a few of the ships rooms, Monkey drops off the walkway and is nearly flung to his death as the back end of the slave ship (where he just came from) rips completely off and leaves him precariously hanging off of a girder. He climbs up the girder and moves through the destroyed segment of the ship and on to the next where he's forced to take cover as a combat mech enters and fires a machine gun in his direction, killing two other occupants of the slave ship in the process.

He climbs up yet another pipe and moves across the upper section of the room where he sneaks up on one of the ship personnel, demanding he tell him where his "stuff" is. The man tells Monkey he can't tell him. This angers Monkey, who then punches the control console behind him. The ship worker tells him where to go but apparently meant it when he said he couldn't tell him because almost as soon as he finishes a voice over the ship intercom states that he is to be terminated. His helmet starts glowing red and he starts screaming in pain but drops to the ground, dead, soon after.

After sliding down a pipe to a lower deck and acquiring his gear (a set of red gauntlets and an extend-able staff ) Monkey is ready to take on the combat mech. He rushes straight towards it, automatically deflecting the bullets speeding towards him with an energy shield and then destroys the mech with a series of heavy blows from his staff. He leaves the room and enters another, only to find tons of inactive combat mechs hanging from the ceiling. After remarking that he hopes they don't activate, several of them do. This is where the demo's combat tutorial kicks in.

Combat in Enslaved is simple. Square button for light and Triangle for heavy attacks. Pressing Square and X at the same time will result in a wide sweeping blow that does no damage but knocks opponents back while holding Square and releasing it breaks an enemy's guard and leaves them open for attack. As for defensive moves: Monkey can dodge attacks when you press X and a move the thumbstick in a direction or you can block with R2.

Monkey leaves this room of the ship (which at this point I realized was very much a "sky train") and finds himself locked out of the next section by the red haired woman from earlier. He climbs up the outside of the ship and jumps across segments of broken up wings. After moving across more of these platforming sections the ship flies by and loses a bit of wing to the Statue of Liberty's Torch. Monkey runs up one of the wings and rips a door off it's hinges and sends it flying into one of the nearby engines. This damage is enough to cause the whole ship to start flying sideways and Monkey is once again left hanging.

A sense of urgency is at this point forced on the player because the ship is very quickly flying towards a dilapidated Empire State Building and the wing Monkey is hanging off of will most likely take the full force of the buildings impact. Add to that urgency the fact that Monkey is trying to get to one of the last few escape pods on the ship (a fact I failed to mention earlier for whatever reason) and you've got one hell of a messy escape.

After making it off the wing and back up to a safer part of the ship, Monkey gets to the last escape pod only to find it already occupied by the red head he'd been chasing previously. He clutches on to the hull of the pod and pleads with her not to hit the eject button. Of course she does it anyway and the two of them are launched away from the doomed slave ship and off into the jungles of post-apocalyptic New York.

Monkey awakens with a headache and is told by Trip (the red headed woman) that it's being caused by the slave helmet she's reprogrammed and placed on his head. He threatens to kill her if she doesn't take it and she warns him that if she dies the helmet will kill him (much like the guard on the slave ship). Monkey is now Trip's slave and must help her get back to her home, where ever that might be, if he wishes to have the slave helmet removed.

Like many games, Enslaved is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. However, unlike those other games, the wasteland you explore in Enslaved is anything but a brown, lifeless mess. Much like in the History Channel's "Life After People" the world has taken on a lush, vegetation filled state and it's a real treat to look at something like this after playing so many games where the color palette is dull and lifeless. It's beautiful to be sure.
The characters, from what little I got of them in the demo, were enjoyable and I want to know more about them. The combat is fun and the platforming is very fast and fluid.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is coming out on Xbox 360 and PS3 October 5th of this year. Look for my full review sometime after that.

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Ten Minutes of Bioshock: Infinite

First Impressions: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

I sat down at my laptop on a day where the internet seemed to be dead. Nothing better to do I opened Steam and started browsing around the store's demo area. I read the information on this game and was intrigued so I downloaded it and played it. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is a JRPG with a twist. Instead of being the hero like in most JRPGs, you play the oft visited owner of the titular item shop. It's your job to run the shop. This doesn't just consist of you standing behind a counter and buying and selling items to anyone who might drop in either.

Running your shop consists of several core activities: buying items to sell in the shop, organizing items in a way that's appealing to your customers, and haggling with your customers. Haggling with your customers is actually quite addictive. They bring the item they want to buy to the counter and ask you how much it costs. Every item has a base price you can sell it for but you won't gain any profit if you leave it at that. You're going to want to bump the percentage cost up a little bit at a time. Customers will actually get mad and leave your store if you're not careful with your prices though. Organizing items is important to the quality of sales as well. You place items you want to spotlight closer to the front window so that customers can see them more easily. Not sure how your shop looks to others? Ask Tear. She can give you a helpful breakdown on if your shop is: Light, Dark, Gaudy or Plain.

On top of these base activities you can do dungeon runs as adventurers you hire out of either the pub, church or local Adventurer's guild. These dungeon runs facilitate even more item gathering so that you can expand your store. Combat is simple enough and follows conventional action rpg fair. One button for your main attack, another for your SP attack. After amassing a number of items you can take them to the Merchant's Guild and fuse them together for better, higher valued items to sell in your shop.

Now, you may be wondering why you're running this quaint little item shop. Recette Lemongrass has been approached by the fairy debt collector, Tear, and told that her father (who has run off on some wild adventure) has left her in debt. She's forced by Tear into running the shop. That's seriously all there is to the story. If you were expecting some epic tale you should look elsewhere. It isn't here.

I'm very torn on the art direction in this game. On the one hand there are these awesome sprites and backgrounds. On the other there are these really brightly drawn, cutesy, anime characters during the actual dialog segments. I hate them. I almost wish they'd have just used the sprites for the whole thing. That's just me though. If you look at the screenshots and decide you're not bothered by the art direction more power to you. Just not my cup of tea.

Despite not caring for the art, I've enjoyed what I've played of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale thus-far and might even buy it in the near future. There's something satisfying about getting 50% higher than the normal price of an item. Adventurers are suckers.

First Impressions: Okami

Lately I have been jumping from game to game but I have come to the realization that one game company has caught my attention very often... That company is Clover Studios/Platinum Games. They have made some of the most entertaining games I have played in a long while and they keep my attention longer than many others.

Platinum games have developed Mad World (Wii), Bayonetta(PS3/Xbox 360), Infinite Space(DS) and their upcoming game Vanquish(PS3, Xbox 360). I have played all of these games and the demo of Vanquish except Infinite Space, which I have yet to pick up since I keep on forgetting about it. Each game is unique in their own way, and over the top which contributes to how enjoyable they are.

Mad World is very violent, gory and is a very over the top 3rd person beat em' up. The setting is in a  Gladiator esque TV show and while you are playing it there are shout casters commenting on what you are doing in game. Its really quite funny, in a dark sort of way... Oh and I forgot, the entire game is in black, white, and red. It gives it an unique and stylized look for a Wii game.

Bayonetta on the other hand, is a third person action adventure game with EVEN MORE over the top violence. You play as a Witch that has forgotten her past and is on a rampage against the heavens... I haven't watched the cut scenes in awhile, but its extremely ridiculous but I love it... This game is very easy to pick up and put down every once and awhile, and I tend to play it when I'm tired of RPGs.

Vanquish is a cover based shooter much like Gears of War, but 10x better because its much more fast paced, and enjoyable all around. You can do many more things in a 10 minute window than Gears of War, due to how ridiculous the action is. You can slide across the ground, shoot people while you are sliding (it goes in to slow-mo while you are doing this), get in to cover shoot some enemies, slide out, do a melee attack that launches you in the air, and WHILE in the air you can shoot people before you fall to the ground... It's satisfying...

Now, their previous company name was Clover Studios. They produced fine games even then, consisting of God Hand ( PS2), Okami (PS2), and the Viewtiful Joe Series which were all good in their own way. Although, Okami is the one game i am going to focus o. 

Okami is a third person adventure game that is very reminiscent of the 3-d Zelda games. The protagonist is the Japanese god Amaterasu whose avatar in this game is a white wolf. She is summoned by a forest spirit due to the release of the terrible Orochi, whom Amaterasu defeated 100 years ago with a famed Swordsman named Nagi. The only problem is that the wolf is not whole, and does not have all of her powers... So along the story you slowly receive more and more powers that help you get through the game.

Game Play:

The game is very similar to the 3-d Zelda games, you go through dungeons, receive new brush techniques (tools) and utilize them to get through the dungeon and defeat the enemies. Using brush techniques slows the game play down a bit since you have to hold R1, then paint which ability you want to use, release and see the action. You do not need to use these abilities mid-battle but they make them go by much more quickly, unless you just want to sit there and bash the square button the entire time.


The puzzles are actually well implemented, and are quite simple but easy to over think them per se. There seems to be multiple ways to solve it after looking over the environment, like in one situation is seemed that you could control wind and topple this giant kettle over to melt ice to get through, but instead you receive a new ability to control fire and melt it to continue onwards.

Amaterasu has many weapons at her disposal, being able to wield rosary beads, giant swords, and a disk that floats over her back. You are able to use each one as a main, or sub weapon and have different purposes when they are wielded either way.

Graphics:

The games graphics are gorgeous, they use cel shading effects but they look brushed rather than the normal cel shading. The entire game is done in this style and make it much more unique and over all, much more breath taking. This game is 4 years old and it still has really good graphics, it even looks good on a HD TV; its quite astonishing...

The backdrops, the foliage, the character models, everything is done in this paint style and is always a joy to look at. More recent video games should be like this, rather than being dark, boring, and very drab per se. The graphics of this game actually inspired Street Fighter 4, which is obvious and quite impressive.

Conclusion:

The game so far is excellent, and worth seeking out. The game is creative, and gives the Zelda game play style a breath of fresh air, as it is different enough to make it feel new again with a few switch ups in game mechanics. Plus, it does not have that annoying fairy... Rather it has a more comical and loving fairy; Issun.  

picture references

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2010/01/01/platinum-games-perplexing-countdown/
http://videolamer.com/unlocking-okami
http://www.trustedreviews.com/video-games/review/2007/02/07/Okami/p1

Punching goblins until they explode: "Dungeon Fighter Online" impressions

OVERVIEW:

The good: Nostalgic sprite-based graphics, easy controls, no-nonsense character progression, good for short gaming sessions, gamepad support [!], FREE TO PLAY

The not so good: Cluttered user interface, must pay for avatar customization, limited eye candy

_____________________________________________________________________

To sort of piggyback on Weiss's MMO tirade, I thought I'd shine some line on one of the few multiplayer RPG that I have enjoyed.

Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) is an online multiplayer beat 'em up sidescroller from the good folks in South Korea who brought you Maple Story, Nexon Games. I have to say that I am both impressed and pleased with the way they approach online gaming, and it all begins with their business model: let people play for free, no strings attached; if they want to make their avatar look unique, or speed up their progress, they can pay incrementally for bonus content.

This is awesome. For one, you can play this game as long as you like without paying money for it, and decide whether or not shelling out your cold hard earned cash is worth your while. You don't need any of the bonus items to progress in the game. Two of my buds and I have been partying up three different player classes and punching goblins until they explode to our hearts' content, and neither of us have dropped a dime.

So, here we go. Character creation. Your character begins in a network of towns, each of

which having a cast of NPCs with/from whom you can trade or buy equipment, obtain skills or acquire quests. As a player, you are given several choices in terms of character class:

• Slayer - heavy damage, "buster" sword wielding, spiky-headed guy.
• Mage - tiny, magical, wand-waving, spell-casting girl
• Priest - high defense, party-buffing, decent-damage doing muscle man
• Male or Female Gunner - suave, ranged attacking gunslinger
• Fighter - quick attacking, grappling, fireball-shooting, female martial artist

Now, what may put most first time players off from this is how everyone of your class pretty much looks identical. At low level your character avatar is virtually unchangeable because, as I mentioned earlier, customizing your avatar costs Avatar Tokens, which in turn cost NX Points, which ultimately cost realpeople money.

So, in actuality, you can be that relatively unique-looking, goblin-punching hotshot - but you need to pay for it, and you can only begin doing so once you hit level 30. I don't have an issue with this. The game is free, I am having fun. I look forward to having the option of customizing my avatar, but I'm not sweating the level prerequisite either, because it keeps people in the game by presenting them with a foreseeable goal. Otherwise, the game would be sparsely populated as many players would spend all their milk money on funny haircuts and provocative outfits, and quit the game before they get to some of the really fun dungeons.

Gameplay mechanics are intuitive and familiar, especially if you grew up with titles like Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game, etc. You have two axes of movement (left-right, up-down), a jump key, an attack key, and a dedicated special attack key. In addition to this, you also have your hot keys to which you can

attach up to six skills and six items for rapid access.

One of my favorite aspects of the gameplay, however, are the button commands attached to your active skills. Per 2D fighter tradition, a combination of directional keys and action keys will execute skills in addition to being able to use them via hotkey. For example, I play the game's Fighter character class, and holding forward and pressing the skill key near an enemy will activate my suplex skill; or, tapping down, forward and the skill key will launch a fireball similar to Ryu's hadouken technique in the Street Fighter series. This makes combat one of the most versatile that I've encountered, and the reason that this is one of my favorite features in the game is because it lends itself so well to using a gamepad.

While the game is playable as it is, it's my personal opinion that it really shines once you employ the use of a gamepad. I personally use a wired XBox 360 controller coupled with the incredible (and free!) key mapper software, Xpadder. There is something completely satisfying about the freedom of using a gamepad to dash around dungeons and pummel monsters to a pulp. Growing up as an avid 2D console era gamer, the accessibility of a gamepad's buttons makes playing DFO a breeze.

The sprite-based graphics are acceptable. There are fewer frames in the animation cycles than in most modern 2D games; however, this is completely understandable as the avatar options discussed earlier are already robust, and each require their own unique animation cycles. You can't fault the developers at Nexon for knowing the limitations of their game design model, their users' systems, and the internet connections between the two.

In-game audio is great. The music is definitely modeled after 16-bit era games, and each character type has their own wide array of vocalizations and sound effects. The NPCs each have unique voice acting as well, with a number of goofy one-liners per NPC.

The user interface gets a little cluttered, as you have your fixed statuses and hot key displays on the lower third of the screen, a dedicated area for in-game messages, while the upper portion of the screen is dedicated to displaying party member statuses, enemy statuses, and map information. I will even go as far as saying it can detract from the overall aesthetics of the game, especially if you accidentally rest your mouse over an item, causing its information pop-up to expand during combat. I think part of the problem lies within the English localization and copy writing: Japanese, Korean and Chinese text inherently take up less space, as they are either pictographic or syllabic in nature. In short, these languages convey more information with fewer characters. If the English localization took more time to trim the fat in some of the copy, we may have seen some improvements in the interface design.

Overall, the game is quick and simple. You don't feel the need for an intriguing story because it seems like it would almost get in the way of the fast paced gameplay. The satisfaction of progressing your character is instantaneous enough to incentivize regular and short bursts of gameplay, and the rate at which you obtain weapons and skills gives the player enough momentum to keep playing on a long-term basis.

I would say that my set-up for playing DFO is ideal; however, it does require several third party applications (namely Xpadder and Ventrilo). If gamepad functionality was better integrated (but in PC gaming, it never really is) and voice chat were available out of the box, it would most certainly diminish the game's existing shortcomings. At the same time, however, the player needs to remember that the game is free.

At the rate I've been playing, I fully expect to hit end-game events with my current character, and then cycle through the other available classes. Do you and a couple of buddies got some free time? Check out Dungeon Fighter Online. If you're disappointed, your game's on me.

Back off, man. I’m a scientist. Not an MMO Fan.

I don’t think I’m a fan of MMO’s. I’ve been playing a Champion in the recently gone free Lord of the Rings online and I just hit level 15. I’ve been doing the same thing over and over since I started the game and I can’t see it becoming fun anytime soon. There are moments where I think I could be having fun. Every time I complete a quest and I get a new piece of gear or a weapon to equip myself with I find a sense of a accomplishment. I rather enjoy the instance based story quests as well… but for the most part I’m having the same problem I have with every other MMO that I’ve played. It’s boring.

I want to travel around and explore Middle Earth. I don’t want to kill 5 pigs so you can make some dumb shirt that I’m going to throw out or sell 20 minutes after I get it. What’s the point? I don’t want to have to travel for 10 minutes to kill someone only to be killed myself and have to make the same trek back. What’s the reward for this you say? A new pair of boots? Boots that are of lesser value than the ones I’m already wearing? Go to hell Mr. Dwarf. I don’t need no stinkin’ boots.

You know what I like about a lot of RPGs? The ability to immerse myself in that game’s world and fully enjoy it. You know what I can’t do in an MMO? What I like doing in other RPGs. If I’m fighting a group of Orcs to save a damsel in distress I don’t want to look over and see a group of Hobbits talking about the last time they ate at Taco Bell. It’s ridiculous. It’s this kind of crap that makes me realize why I like playing offline RPGs that have a bit of MMO feel to them. I love the Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind more so than Oblivion for a number of reasons. I love Dragon Age as well. Hell, I’d take the . / (Dot Hack) games over most real MMOs any day.

Maybe I’m doing it wrong though. I tend to try and play MMOs as a solo affair. Maybe I’d have more fun if I had a Fellowship to quest with like so many other people. Herein lies the problem with that: I am not a people person. I don’t want to stand about for however long it takes to say I’m looking for a fellowship, have people arrive to join said fellowship, travel to the quest, do the quest, not get the loot I wanted and then have everyone leave the fellowship with me standing on the side of the road needing to do the damn quest again. I need friends. I need people who actually want to play the game and stay in a fellowship with me for an extended period of time to do these tediously boring ass quests.

Or I could wait for Guild Wars 2 to come out and see if I hate that as well.

Enjoy your boring ass games MMO fan. I have a class IV roaming vapor to tether and slam into this trap.

Weekly update; Stache Style

Lately i have been playing Bayonetta since i have been quite tired of RPGs. I forgot how god damn fun and sexy Bayonetta is, i have been hooked. I have played it for about 3 hours and i am already half way through the game. Then again, it is a second play through so i have a lot of the stuff already so it may make the game a bit easier, so that may be why i am flying through it.

Anyways, if you don't have Bayonetta, you should definitely get it since it is worth a play through or two.Plus, my laptop has been busted so i cant enjoy my daily league of Legends and other competitive gaming, so it won't distract me from my console gaming.

Some news for the blog, me and some friends may start a video game podcast named Game Chub; our old blog name. We'll have tons of cool stuff on it.... possibly, i have never done a pod cast so it may fail quite hard...

Games currently on the back burner

Persona 4
Persona 3 portable
Final Fantasy 8
Chrono Trigger
Vagrant Story
and many other games sadly...

Well, enjoy gaming everyone! - Stache

Four years too late: first impressions of "Blue Dragon"

OVERVIEW:

The good: Excellent character and monster design by Akira Toriyama, beautiful musical score by Nobuo Uematsu, involving turn based battle system, great overworld / field gameplay, excellent shopping interface[!]

The not so good: Sub-par character animations, lack of character voiceovers in battle, mediocre writing in the English localization.

There was a long silence between Hironobu Sakaguchi's resignation from Square and the release of Blue Dragon on Xbox 360. At the time, I couldn't afford one, let alone the original Xbox console, so I waited.

Four years later, here I am. I finally convinced myself to pick up a used 360 (two, actually; the first red ringed on me within 5 months of owning it, and was replaced on warranty with my current white clunker). Before purchasing Blue Dragon, I played through Mistwalker, Inc.'s more serious RPG follow up, Lost Odyssey, and decided that I liked it enough to backtrack to the former despite its mixed reviews.

The first thing that grabs your attention in this title is Dragonball and Dr. Slump creator Akira Toriyama's distinct art style. His character designs are charming as always, and the 360 is more than capable of rendering the silken textures inherent of adapting a cartoon aesthetic. Once starting a new game, the title screen is actually a playable scene on a desert outcropping,

sparsely decorated with bare flora, a shallow pond, rickety fences and a windmill. You are able to walk around and get a feel for the movement controls, as well as explore some of the eye candy: real time shadows, rippling water textures, live rim lighting. All nice, even by today's graphical standards. The second treat was the music. Nobuo Uematsu delivers a wonderful, lulling piano composition in this scene, reminiscent of the piano arrangement of Final Fantasy VII's "Overworld" theme. Juxtaposed with the Toriyama's familiar art style, this little gaming excerpt just gushed nostalgia.

However, this short presentation of the game's aesthetics was just enough time to hit me with two annoying qualities. The first thing I noticed was the awkward character animations. While running, the protagonist (who we later learn is named "Shu") sporadically bobs and shimmies with each step, and the walking cycles look like a weird highspeed tiptoe out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. However, this is easy to overlook as the stylized character designs warrant a generous suspension of the player's disbelief.

I was just getting used to Shu's peculiar gait when my exploring was interrupted by an out of place, impish computer voice. It was quick, high pitched, and made sure to declare that there was "Nothing!" to be found in the places where I curiously tapped the "Confirm" button for hidden items. As a matter of fact, the voice would chime in to announce every on-screen alert that popped up on the map. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to find that you can disable this feature once you have access to the game "Settings" from the player menu.

Once past the title screen, the story begins as the well-worn yet classic coming of age tale of hopeful youngsters who are determined to prevail in a hostile fantasy world. The three starting characters are archetypical, fun and quirky, and their voiceacting is a treat if you decided on the original Japanese voiceovers. My reception of the character development so far are what I would expect while enjoying typical anime fare: you develop a soft spot for the heroes and their loved

ones, and you would really hate the main antagonist, Nene, if he weren't so sinisterly cool (he has a somewhat bumbling robot butler, and a miniature pet dragon that echoes his one-liners like a parrot. Aside from being a sadistic evil genius, what's not to love?).

In terms of game play, the overworld areas are expansive, especially compared to other modern JRPGs. You have 360 degrees of camera rotation, and can freely explore the environments Shu and his gang journey through. No condescending, linear paths ala Final Fantasy XIII. Like Nintendo-era Squaresoft games, any object on the map has the potential to hide items, gold, or even experience points. I was surprised to find that nearly anything I approached -- be it rock, tree or poo (we'll talk about that another time) -- was a treasure candidate.

Like some JRPGs, (including Chrono Trigger, to which this game bears some superficial similarities) the enemies appear on the map, so trudging through annoying random encounters isn't necessary. In fact, in addition to avoiding enemies, the way you engage an enemy on the map can change conditions in the battle itself. Initiating combat by dashing into an enemy, rather than casually bumping into them, will increase your chances of acting first; initiating combat with a single enemy from behind will trigger a "back attack" in your party's favor; and initiating

combat with multiple enemy avatars on the map allows you to clean up the area more efficiently, and cause certain groups of enemies to interact in a special "Monster's Fight."

The combat is turn based. I like turn based battle systems. They're low maintenance. But it's easy to design a turn based battle system that turns the player into a "Confirm button" jockey while he or she grinds through easy enemies. Blue Dragon avoids this by employing a few nice touches to keep the player involved, including some attacks that require the player to time button presses to increase efficacy. Some of these attacks have a charge meter, which indicates a sweet spot for (I assume) dealing more damage, and shows where the attack or spell will take place in relation to other combatants' turns. There is a "finishing" animation for each character who deals the final blow to an enemy, which is a nice touch, although I wish there was character voice acting during combat. I think Mistwalker noted the impact of this feature later, as they decided to add some excellent finisher quips and battle cries when they developed Lost Odyssey.

Character management is also very familiar for those who played early JRPGs. There is a class system attached to the character's "Shadow" -- an avatar which essentially fights and performs magic attacks in their stead -- and as you accumulate skill points (SP) in that class, you are able to unlock new skills that can be placed in the Shadow's skill slots. As I said, the Shadows fight for your character, so there are no weapons to be equipped. Diversity of battle techniques and spells are achieved by the skills you choose for your Shadow. There are, however, four slots for accessories that affect your characters' various attributes.

[Edit] I would be doing this game a disservice not to mention the shopping interface. I know, it seems to be a minor detail, but the way you navigate the in-game stores is great. Like an internet shopping cart, you are able to simply adjust the quantity of items you wish to buy and purchase everything all at once. I really can't stand shopping interfaces that only allow you to purchase one type of item at a time, or god forbid, one item at a time period! Blue Dragon's intuitive and commonsensical shopping interface makes buying items less of a chore.

So far, the game has been fairly solid. It is rather lighthearted in its narrative thus far, so the fun is really in exploring the map, obtaining new skills, and enjoying the relatively involving battle mechanics. The plot hasn't let on to epic details, however, and while this is okay at this point in the game, I feel that the player's attention would be more sustainable if Microsoft's North American localization spent more time with the copywriting. Blue Dragon's ingame English dialog (excluding storyline cutscenes) is very bland so far. I have been introduced to a very visually appealing cast of side characters, yet the English writers didn't seem to invest much of their efforts into creating a distinct voice for these characters. As a comparison, the writing inDragonQuest IX for the Nintendo DS brought to life an already colorful cast with dialog. The dialog is so rich in character voice that when recounting my gaming experience with a friend, I literally remembered the game as having voice acting (it doesn't).

I'm only maybe two hours into Blue Dragon, but I have a feeling it will turn out to be a rewarding game experience as the main characters have more time to develop. Meanwhile, I will hope that the game dialog mysteriously improves in the same fashion, as it would be a welcome addition to the enjoyable game mechanics.

More to come?

PAX, a paradise i wish that existed every day...

I woke up at 5am on Friday, to head to Seattle and head to mystical place called PAX... The journey was supposed to feel long from all the excitement me and my comrades had, but to be honest, it was the quickest trip to Seattle i ever had. I think it was because we were discussing strategies and counters for League of Legends, since we were planning on going in to the Tournament there... Long story short though, we didn't end up in the tournament because we didn't sign up for it day one, cause we heard you had to sign up the morning of the tournament.. But NOPE it was the first day, so that was disappointing...

Anyways, on to PAX. When Robbie and I walked in to the Exhibition Hall, i seriously was baffled about everything i saw... It was literally a dream come true... I have never seen so many video game memorabilia, and cosplayers at one place before... Man, i loved it there, i loved it all three days and i wish i could stay there much longer than 3 days.

While i walked around the halls, Robbie and I were looking for a Riot Games booth because we assumed they had one, but you know what caught my eye AND excitement at the same time? BRINK, the one game i have been waiting for all year... SO i had to wait in line for it. During that long, long, long wait; i saw riot employees walking around! I pointed them out to Robbie. He decided to run after them and ask them where their booth is, but they actually did not have one, but they gave him a singed skin anyhow.

We waited in line for 2 and a half hours for Brink, we met 2 other guys who were cool, and talked to them the entire time. What was awesome, is that i talked to one of the developers for a few minutes and asked him about customizable configuration files and he confirmed it, and the other one even told me it will be the most open one out of all of their games, which is quite ridiculous because their other two games, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, and Quake wars were really customizable. The second time i played it on Sunday, the developer was talking to a person behind me while i was playing the game that he wanted to speed the game up a bit, because he thought the game was a little on the slow side, and i got really excited because that was the only fault of the game, was that it was only a little too slow.

Brink impressions:

Brink is a First Person Shooter made by Splash Damage, a developer well known for making team, and objective based FPS games. I am excited about this game because they have made my favorite FPS shooters, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, and Enemy Territory Quake wars. I loved these games because they were solely skill and team based, which are my favorite type of Competitive games.

Wolfenstein and Quake wars game design were very similar, and were not necessarily really creative, but Brink on the other hand, is a completely different story. Brink is a parkour esque objective and team based FPS. My god, it is really well put together too... i was really surprised. The only problem was that they had it set up with controllers, and the controls are really confusing for a console... It was using an Xbox 360 controller but since i don't know the buttons for it so i will use PS3 buttons to explain it.

R2 is used to shoot, R1 is for grenades, L2 is for iron sights, L1 is for Sprinting and the SMART system. Triangle is to switch weapons, O is to crouch AND to slide, X is to jump AND vault, Square is to Reload AND for Class Abilities. R3 is for melee, and L3 is to use class abilities on self. the D pad is to choose what kind of grenades you want and to choose your mission, which i never used since it seemed like a waste of time. You could lean around corners, and it was a two button combo but i forgot what it was...

On to the game play now... The game looks amazing for being an alpha build. You could customize your character during this short play through, and you really could customize your character quite a bit, and the security looked just plain bad ass.

The actual game played out really well, it was a little on the slow side but it was tolerable enough because the spread was not too insane when you didn't use iron sights. It was the same type of gameplay i was used to... and i was actually playing pretty well for playing it the first time.

The game has 4 classes, and each one of them are used for objectives. There is soldier who plants bombs, and i think they even give out ammo. The bombs are used for objectives throughout maps. Second there is engineer they can set up sentries, mines, repair objectives. They are needed for defense, and primary objectives. Mines go back to the style they had in Wolfenstein; mines are invisible and can only be spotted by a Covert Ops. Third is medic, they are one of the most important classes in the game for the fact that they can keep the team alive and allow them to push. They can revive, heal and even self revive... They are used for hostage objectives, which were not present in the demo. Lastly there is covert ops, they can disguise themselves as the enemy, hack objectives and sentries.

The one aspect i was really nervous about was the SMART system, from the videos and the description that gave of it, it seemed like it would automatically do everything for you and there would be very little skill involved, but that was quite the opposite and it made me really happy. The SMART system allows you to vault over objects, climb up boxes and ledges, and in my own opinion, a streamlined version of "Trick jumping". It's really neat, and has tons of potential. I am excited to see more maps and see how the SMART system is used for alternate paths.

The one mechanic that really worries me is that medics can self resurrect... This will cause much trouble to newer players because they will not be accustomed to gib players. However there is a cooldown on it, but it is a mere 2 or 3 minutes and it resets on respawn, and if one is careful enough they could be on the front lines at all times. It may be possible that if two medics team up they could cause quite a bit of havoc. 

While i was playing the game, i mostly played medic because that was the one class i played the most on the other 2 games. The SMART system is awesome, and while running you can choose to slide to cover or to simply dodge bullets. Meleeing in this game knocks enemies down, instead of insta killing (which would be dumb if it did) and makes them easy targets. While playing, this other player and i were having a melee fight and it was really disorienting, since we both kept on falling down and shooting at each other.

Overall, i am totally stoked for this game... It definitely is the FPS i have been waiting for, for a long time. Its definitely a first day buy for me...

After i played this game, i took time to play many other games, which were Vanquish, Yakuza 4, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Final Fantasy 4 heroes of Light, Killzone 3, and Infamous 2.

4 Heroes of Light Impressions:

I only got to play this game for 5 minutes or so, but it used a weird system that makes sense... I guess. Each move requires a special orange orb thing, and you gain one each turn if you use the Boost action. You need these orbs to be able to cast spells and use abilities and even attack. I dunno how it will be, but i think its mainly done for multiplayer, which makes sense then. It prevents players from spamming powerful spells over and over again.

I really liked the stylized graphics, it adds a nice touch to the game. I really do not have much to say about this game, since i only played it for about 5 minutes...

Infamous 2 Impressions:

I loved the first Infamous, it was probably one of the only open world games that is ACTUALLY entertaining all throughout. The Infamous 2 demo was really short, but it gave the player a good idea of how the game will be.

During close combat in Infamous 2, it slows down and changes camera angles, and it makes the game that much more immersive. The new Melee weapon is awesome, and it makes battles really fast paced and exciting. The demo only allowed you to kill some monsters, chase a limo, and fight a helicopter. But at the end of the demo, it showed off a new move that was an electric tornado. It was really neat, but at that point of the demo it was really bugged. You could only use that move...

This game is really slick, and i am really excited for this one as well. Hell, i'm really excited for most of the games i played...

I'll post my impressions on the other games in the next few days, i'm kind of tired of writing right now...