I really don’t know what to make of this. I’m not a first person shooter guy for the most part so I guess my opinions on this genre are tainted from the start, and it’s hard to discern exactly what drew me to this experience. The graphics? The story? The Sci-Fi Elements? The Tropics? The Physics? [Read more...]
The Legend of Zelda in Three and a Half Hours
January 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Having some spare time can be a good thing now and then. And despite the usual amount of chores that need to be accomplished on a daily basis in life, something inside my inner sanctum compelled me to dive into the original “Legend of Zelda” head first. [Read more...]
Metroid in the Real World
January 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A decade has passed since the last time Metroid crossed my fingers. My fingers cramped and bled, just like they should. Being played on my new, custom monstrosity of a gaming device (which is fabulous) it was hard not to get caught up in the beauty of this primordial masterpiece.
Hands On: Ninja Gaiden 3
March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Yesterday brought the release of Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden 3, an event that for this podcaster that was an anticipated day. I set aside Street Fighter X Tekken and Mass Effect 3 for a night to break out what I had hopes for being the next great iteration of one of my favorite modern-day franchises. Knowing that Team Ninja and Koei were intentionally changing the direction of the series, I tried to walk into the experience with the most open mind that I possibly could, and what I was met with were a series of confusing design decisions. [Read more...]
3 Hours with Hunted: The Demon’s Forge
June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
As a general rule of thumb, most weeks I spend time in email threads with a group of people discussing video games. In response to questions about my impressions of Bethesda’s newly published title, developed by inXile, I had written the following content. It seems silly not to open that up to the public, so hit the jump to see a slightly edited version of my impressions from roughly 3 hours of time spent with Hunted: The Demon’s Forge: [Read more...]
4 Immediately Apparent Improvements to Rock Band 3 for the Average Player
October 27, 2010 By 1 Comment
Rock Band 3 hit shelves in North America yesterday, and for months leading up to now, the vast majority of talk surrounding it has been in the revolutionary improvements Harmonix has made to the pro-level instrumentation and game modes. Realistically speaking, these are only going to appeal to a small portion of the fist-pumping audience that plays these games. A large number of music genre gamers are people content to play the medium difficulty of any given instrument and may be wondering just what the big deal is about Rock Band 3. Well to partially answer that question, here’s 4 incredible improvements made to the Rock Band platform that are immediately apparent after a mere 2 hours of offline play that don’t require yet another battery-sucking plastic peripheral: [Read more...]
Assassin’s Creed BrotherHood: Beta Impressions
October 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Assassins Creed Brotherhood is Ubisoft’s newest entry in the Assassins Creed series, but it is not a sequel. The game carries on the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze (best name ever) and retains the renaissance Italy setting of Assassins Creed 2. However, the intriguing part about this installment is that it will include a multi-player component and, as promised, the PS3 has a beta. On September 7th the beta was made available to PS Plus users as a hefty 3 GB download.
Hands On with Persona 3 Portable (Combat Edition)
July 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Persona 3 was an interesting release back in 2007, coming as it did almost two years after the 360 (one year for PS3 and Wii). It could easily have been one of many forgotten gems, buried in the sand to be discovered only by the adventurous RPG archeologists among us. Luckily, P3 is a fantastic game with a unique flavor of its own. It not only survived its initial North American release but got a follow-up “expansion” a year later. Riding on that success, it has now been ported to the PSP as of the 15th of July.
While the game is not for everyone, after 25 hours of playtime I’ve come up with a quick recipe that may tell you if you’re a candidate for its enjoyment. You take the dungeon crawling and adventure aspect of Shining in the Darkness (or the dungeon crawling bits of Etrian Odyssey, if you don’t remember Shining) and you add a tiny dash of Pokemon catch-em-all madness and teenagers shooting themselves in the head while sprinkling in large dose of Japanese eccentricity. When you’re done stuffing that into the disc you tie it all up with a mysterious plot involving the end of the world you’ve got the beginnings of Persona 3. For the sake of brevity I’m only going to concern myself with the combat and exploration elements of the game, but be advised that there’s a whole lot more to this package. Sound good? Let’s continue.
45 Minutes of Resonance of Fate
April 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Box Art - Ps3
I started Resonance of Fate last night, a PS3/360, steam-punk, gun-based JRPG published by Sega, and got 45 minutes in. That is to say, I saw the opening [extremely confusing and vague] cut scene, walked around a town some, and played through the SIXTEEN battle tutorials one of which I had to look up online how to do because it didn’t explain it well enough.
First impressions? Well, if you like complexity, you’re going to love this game. Just based on all the stuff you can do in a battle, you’re likely to love the mechanics. For as complex and “real time” as the battles are, one great shining point is that the controls are not complex at all. I’m going to outline the battle stuff here, partially because nothing I’ve seen online has but mostly because I think that writing it all out may help me wrap my head around all of it:
Simple mechanics
3 characters in battle, you get them from the get go (no idea if they change or swap or whatever). There’s HP, no MP, and a “reverse” ATB gauge that works similar to Valkyria Chronicles in that regard. Once you start a character’s turn, you run, do actions, etc. and that winds down their stamina gauge. When all characters have [Read more...]
10 Days In: Bayonetta & Darksiders
January 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment
On January 5th, North America saw the release of their first two action titles of 2010 of arguably what might be a saturation of genre for the start of the year. Well, that’s at least what the debate has been thus far. If you’ve been frustrated over which action title you should dedicate yourself to, you might as well stop because Bayonetta and Darksiders aren’t even in the same club. [Read more...]
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