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