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Finally, a trailer of the Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete which shows a few new scenes that weren’t in the original CG animated movie from Gametrailers.com. I have been waiting for the Blu-ray version of FF 13: AC for so long and what makes this a must buy is the fact that the demo for Final Fantasy 13 will be bundled with it according to Wired.com.

Just three more months!! I will probably get the Japanese version from YesAsia or ebay just incase the North American version isn’t released around the same time though.

Its almost holiday season and I’m sure everyone’s looking for great games to play during that time. I have composed a list of top 10 games that I think its worth buying. Hope you guys will find the list helpful. They are not in any particular order.

Dead Space – This has to be one of the best single player horror X sci-fi game I’ve ever played in years if not in my life. With innovative holographic menu system that is “real time” which means enemies can still attack you because the game is not paused, you don’t see any HP or ammo being displayed on the screen, instead you will see them on your character’s armor and the weapons. With this menu system, you can basically This makes the game more enjoyable because there is now nothing distracting you from the monster limb chopping you will surely enjoy. Audio is also nicely composed which really further makes the atmosphere even scarier.

Buy Dead Space on ebay

Fallout 3 – Similar to Oblivion released years back, this time taking place in post-apolcalyptic Washington D.C. in the year 2277. You will fight your way through raiders, mutants and ghouls. Killing anyone on your path including innocent people and become an evil or gain as much positive karma as you can to become a saviour or in between good and evil. Your karma will have direct affect between you and anyone you interact with. Aside from being able to switch between first and third person, Fallout 3 also introduces Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System or VATS which helps you “auto aim” at certain body parts or the same part (with the chance of hitting displayed) in bullet time style. Using VATS will drain your AP or Action Points which can be regained in time or by using items.

Finally, the world you are in is huge, and provide you many areas both up on the hills all the way to the underground into abandoned subway stations and caves to explore .

Buy Fallout 3

Rock Band 2 / Guitar Hero World Tour – Two of the best musical / party / rock band game, play with up to three of your friends with mic, guitar and/or the drum. Some people prefer Rock Band while others say Guitar Hero World Tour is better. Well….guess it all depends on the person. I only have Guitar Hero and I’ve played Rock Band before at my friend’s house. I prefer the songs from Guitar Hero to be honest.

Buy Rock Band 2 on ebay
Buy Guitar Hero World Tour on ebay

 

Left 4 Dead – I would say this is yet one of the best games of this year. You can play with up to 3 other players, bots or human and fight your way through zombie infested maps. The best feature of this game is that zombies can randomly pop out at you when you are least expected and the level of difficult is auto adjusted based on your performance. You can also have the option to play on the “dead” side as well. This game is very fast paced and really gives you the “rush/desperate” feel. Unfortunately this game is only for XBox 360 and PC owners.

Buy Left 4 Dead on ebay

 

 

Call of Duty: World at War – If you are into first person shooter, you should have played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by now. If not then something is obviously wrong with you in my opinion. COD: WAW takes place back in World War 2, I personally prefer modern time so I didn’t get this game. But COD: WAW offers 4 player co-op game play, a deadly flame thrower and you can unlock an extremely fun and increasingly difficult zombie stage after beating the game. This is a must for first person and/or World War fans, getting COD 4 is another safe buy as well. I’ve been playing COD 4 for over a year and I’m still not bored of it, this should tell you how good the COD series really is.

Buy Call of Duty World at War on ebay

World of Warcraft: Lich King – One of the best MMORPG to date. I haven’t played WOW before and not planning to because I worry that I will get too addicted to it. I used to play and was hooked on Final Fantasy 11 for slightly less than 2 years in which it used up a lot of my time and so I had to call it a quit and said goodbye to my level 65 TaruTaru Dark knight…sigh. If you are a Warcraft fan, existing WOW player AND you have the time, I don’t see any reason why you should skip this expansion.

Buy World of Warcraft: Lich King on ebay

 

 

 

Gears of War 2 – One of the best sci-fi third person shooter, unfortunately only available for the Xbox 360. Wish it would be ported over to the PlayStation 3 but I highly doubt it. I think this game is just as good as Call of Duty.

Buy Gears of War 2 on ebay

 

 

 

 

 

Chrono Trigger – One of the best RPG classic orginally released for the Super Nintendo. This turn based RPG created by SquareEnix has a rich story plot as well as amazing graphics (at the time of original release) and audio. RPG fans cannot miss this one!

Buy Chrono Trigger on ebay

 

 

 

The Last Remnant – Many people will probably disagree on this one. Even after seeing the all the graphical issues like texture popping and laggy frame rate during battles. I still think this is a great game, again by Square Enix, and its a perfect Japanese RPG game to play until Final Fantasy 13 comes out. I particularly like the new battle system where you are not just fighting with your group but also have the ablity to give simple commands to your ally groups. As a result battles are much bigger and longer. Too bad its only for XBox 360, PlayStation 3 owners will have to wait and hopefully those graphical issues will be resolved by then.

Buy The Last Remnant on ebay

 

I’m sure there are many other games that you think are worth buying, feel free to add to my list in the comments.

 

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So I saw some trailers from Gametrailers.com regarding the upcoming Square-Enix RPG game The Last Remnant. I was impressed by the new battle system and graphics (you can expect high quality from Square), I’ve even visited its flashy website and checked out the new battle system. And boy I’m pretty much sold after finding out more from the site. With this game, you are not limited to only fighting with just your team but you can give orders to a group called union for support. The distance between your team, your union and the enemies also matter as well. There is also a Morale system that will allow you to hit harder and take less damage if you have high morale. Although some frame rate issue were spotted in one of the recent battle trailers. I don’t think this will be a show stopper, nor it should be in my opinion.

Luckily for the Xbox 360 owners, this game will be released in less than 2 weeks and unfortunately for the PlayStation 3 owners, we have to wait until they have decided to release it for us. At first I had no idea this game would only be releasing for Xbox 360 and so I was quite excited to get my hands on this when its released. Then I found out its only for Xbox 360 for the November 20th launch. I’m pretty upset as this could pretty well be the next best RPG for the next / current gen consoles before Final Fantasy 13 decides to make itself available for God knows when next year. I thought this game would be the perfect RPG to get our attnetion away from FF 13 until its released.

Again I envy you Xbox 360 users..hmmm Gears of War 2….

Here is the trailer that shows some FPS issues: (Source: Gametrailers)

  

Today I had a chance to spend some time on Garnet Chronicle, an anime style RPG game but unfortunately its the Japanese version and as far as I know there is no release date for the English version.

Story and controls

  

Since its in Japanese, I vaguely know what is going on, so far! Your hero character is a knight student from a Knight academy. Your first quest is to bring a recommendation letter from the principle of the academy to the commander somewhere near the village. All of a sudden the entire battalion is being attacked by an evil looking character and his werewolf like companion, to no surprise, the entire battalion is wiped out and of course our main hero survives but barely and saves by a sexy female elf thief/treasure hunter. From then on, she joins you in the quest for the “Stone of the Evil Mind” (sorry that’s a direct translation from Japanese to English). Then once inside the “Tower of Lost” you meet up with another character, this time he’s a wizard class and he joins you afterwords. That’s how far I am in the game.

  

The controls are typical walk with your analog stick, R will bring up the map but so far there is no map when venturing inside dungeons, circle is confirm while cross is cancel, typical Japanese style, the American version might have these two buttons reversed. Unfortunately there’s no run button so walking around might feel slow at times. You can also save the game anytime and thankfully the menus are in English as well as the Japanese explanation, only the menus though.

Game play and graphics
Game play is pretty much the same old turn based RPG similar to Final Fantasy (up to Final Fantasy X-2 since the battle system has changed starting FF11). You and your enemies will take turns to attack/defend/cast magic on each other. Which is fine except it feels really slow and rather boring, it would make a huge difference if the attack was smoother and faster such that attacks are executed as soon as the one before finished its move. But as you gather more people on your team, the fight gets more interesting and faster so its not too bad after all. Level grinding is also part of the game but not necessary. It is surprisingly fast to level up though, at least for the first 20 or so levels which can really speed up the grinding. As you finish each battle you are rewarded with money, experience, random items and skill points. Skill points can be spent on each character’s skill tree to unlock more powerful attack and support skills. Skill points are shared among all your characters unfortunately! And last but not least money you earned from each battle obviously will be for buying weapons, armors and support items. There are also cards and stones that can enhance your weapons such as turning your sword to have ice element and upgrade your special abilities. Treasure chests are scattered all over the map, inside buildings, out in the woods or anywhere in the villages. Some are less obvious as I have found one hidden one so far.

  

One interesting feature that I have never seen before, at least in an RPG, is the “sneak” feature. When you approach your enemies from behind without being spotted, you can deal damage to them before the battle starts. Same applies to the enemies, if they spotted you, they would run to you and if your back is facing them then you will get attacked first. You will know when your enemies have spotted you when an exclamation mark appears on top of their heads. This feature is independent of who attacks first when the battle begins, so that means there’s a chance you can attack twice before an enemies can attack you, same applies to the enemies. If you can utilize this feature you can really gain an upper hand when fighting and makes battles a lot easier.

Graphics are nothing fancy but well drawn anime style. Everything is 2D based but don’t let that get you because even though the characters are simple 2D sprites, their expressions and body gestures can be seen clearly depend on the situations. There are also nice flashy special effects when your characters use their speical abilities.
One thing I don’t like is the fact that, all enemies look the same on the map, so you don’t know what kind of enemies you will face until the battle screen comes up. I don’t see why the developers cannot make the enemies show up on the map as well. But then again, what if there are more than one type of enemies, which one would they show? Maybe that’s the reason why.

  

Sound

Your typical anime music, your characters and enemies will say something before they attack which makes battle less dull. Sometimes your characters will even voice over during conversations. I can imagine the English translation will be bad and takes away the Japanese “atmosphere” just like any other games that went through the Jap to English translation. In general the music is great most of the time, but sometimes they can get a bit too repetitive and get annoying afterwords.

Final Verdict
Overall I think this game is worth a try, this type of game is nothing new but the game is still enjoyable. I had problems turning off my PSP until it went out of batteries while playing it. That should give you an idea of how addictive and enjoyable this game is, specially for level grinders like myself. Hopefully the American version will be released soon so you English speaking people can enjoy this game as much as I am now. And for those that can read Chinese, Japanese or don’t care about the story, you should be able to get a copy from ebay or YESASIA.

8/10

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I was going to wait til Friday (day off) to get a copy of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice from EB Games, I couldn’t wait and got it yesterday I have been waiting for an RPG game for my PlayStation 3 since I got it last November. Until Final Fantasy 13 comes out, which is hopefully end of this year, I would need some RPG to satisfy my RPG hunger til then. And what can suit me better than a Japanese anime style, level grinding RPG game? None except this game. Obviously I have not finished the game, and most likely I won’t in the foreseeable future. Here are my thoughts so far.

As mentioned, this is a RPG game and turn-based with 2D sprites with 3 camera modes (bird’s-eye view, zoomed in view and really zoomed in view). First thing I noticed about this game is the graphics, which is pretty outdated in my opinion. They remind me of an online RPG gamed called Ragnarok Online, which has been out since 2001 and still remains popular even after it started charging monthly fees instead of being free like in the beta period. This shows that a game can still be a considered a good game even without fancy graphics, a game with fancy graphics but with no game play value is still a bad game, well most of the time. Disgaea 3 is exactly the case, even though its graphics are outdated. Its game play more than made up for the short coming.

The game starts you off with your main character, a netherworld student from Maritsu Evil Academy called Mao, a son of the overlord in the Netherworld. You actually play on the evil side for once as oppose to other games where most of the time you are on the “good” side fighting off evil. Here’s the fun part, in the netherworld school, an honor student is a person who skips class and not doing homework as much as possible, whereas a delinquent is a person who acts the exact opposite. And as you can guess, Mao is an honor student. The story is ok, its more suited for teens since most of the conversations are pretty childish, which is ok because the characters are after all, kids. There are also humor here and there as well and some are pretty funny. There is also an option to skip any story telling and conversation between characters by pressing triangle button which is a huge plus since I don’t find the majority of the story interesting, at least not yet. You can also change the voice over from English back to Japanese, which is yet another big plus since it just feels different having English voice over.

  

Game play of this game is what made me want to buy this game right away as oppose to wait for a couple of months and let the price drop. The play value as well as replay value is amazing. For those of you that are into leveling up your characters, you can level them to level 1000 and each stage can be played repeatedly or you can just play through the game by clearing each level once. Since it is a turn-based game, you get to move and attack/use item and end the turn, then your enemies will do the same. A very noticable difference, or I should say improvement over any other turn-based games is that the enemies move all at once as oppose to one at a time which can be annoying. The game pace is fast even under normal speed setting. Your characters can counter attacks and enemies can do the same randomly, so you can see counter-counter-counter attacks for example. Characters, again enemies as well, can combine attacks and form combos and which also happen randomly. There are also monsters in the game and they can “magichange” which pretty much means morph into weapons and allow human/demon characters to wield them, another fun feature. I’m pretty sure there are other fun features as I play more, but as you can see, this game is packed with so many features. Oh and by the way, I look forward to my first million point damage!

Control is pretty standard and straight forward like any other similar games. You can rotate the map 360 degrees so you don’t miss anything and 3 different views mentioned above.

While I like this game a lot, there is one thing that really bothers me, the music. While the music is very upbeat, it gets boring and down to annoying if you remain in the same area or in the same battle for too long.

That’s all I got to tell you guys for now, I’m sure I have missed something but there are just too much to talk about and I need more time to digest. So if you are an anime fan and are into level grinding, you should really check this game out.

You might save some money by buying on ebay link. I saw some good deals there, even the limited addition version. I would buy games off ebay if there were more Canadian sellers, sending from the US is not worth it and is often more expensive than buying in local stores.

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