Uh oh, looks like I might have to fork out some extra pennies for the multi-cd Final Fantasy XIII Original Sound Track. As usual, the ones who got their hands on some copies have jacked up the price for the Limited edition on ebay for USD $100ish PLUS shipping.
I searched a bit and found Amazon Japan has it for pre-order for roughly USD $50ish + shipping or the regular version for roughly USD $40ish. If it’s only 10 dollars difference, I would certainly get the Limited Edition for sure. Provided I could get my hands on a copy.
I thought the intro was ok, I mean the graphics are certainly amazing but I was expecting something similiar to the previously shown trailers. Its missing the drama from the rest (its too calm and quiet for my taste, for an intro that is).
Anyway, March 9th 2010 people. Less than 3 months and counting! Or figure out a way to get the Japanese version, but then you won’t know what’s going on with the story.
I didn’t have time to check what was new on PSN on the usual Thursday. But when I logged in on Saturday I found two demo games that brought tears to my eyes. One was the violent, funny and bloody as hell Fairytale Fights and the other was another one of the most hyped up action game Bayonetta. The second demo really surprised me as I didn’t expect one in the first place (it is coming out in early January of 2010).
If you have not heard of Bayonetta, something is wrong with you or you are not into games in the action genre. First thing you will notice is the similarity of Bayonetta and the Devil May Cry series since they are both directed by Hideki Kamiya, who also directed Viewtiful Joe, another action game. After playing the demo I personally think Bayonetta beats Devil May Cry in every way.
First of all, you are not only wielding one gun, you are wielding 2 in both hands and 2 more as part of Bayonetta’s sexy heels (though you can customize your weapons to your liking). The 4 enchanted guns are called Scarborough Fair, . How cool is having guns as part of the heels? Each weapon has its own attacks and because there are so many different weapons to choose from, you won’t be seeing the same moves over and over again as often as in Devil May Cry or any other button mashing action games, Heavenly Sword is one.
Big Bosses! I’m a sucker for big and epic looking bosses. There were two of such bosses in the demo, they were relatively easy to handle. You get to finish them off by summoning “Beasts from Hell”, from her hair and skin-tight suit (where the Partial Nudity in the rating comes from), in bloody ways. Speaking of finishing moves, you can also activate “Torture Attacks” if you have collected enough magic orbs (forgot the proper term). Getting hit will erase some of the magic orbs though so you have to be careful not to get hit.
Overall the game is VERY fast paced, the demo lasted roughly 15 minutes. I actually played again after finishing it the first time. It was that good!
Graphics are gorgeous, specially the environment. I occasionally paused, used the right analog stick to just look around and appreciate the sceneries. With such a fast paced game, I did not notice any framerate issue at all.
Music (produced by piano) is also another strong asset for Bayonetta, simply elegant.
I could go on and on with this game but I will leave the rest for you guys to discover. If my girlfriend, who isn’t that into games, actually likes the game as much as I do. Then it is safe to say we have a winner here. Bayonetta isn’t just a looker, but a real deal. With stylish game play, beautiful graphics and backed by elegant music in the background. Bayonetta is a first day must buy, at least for me. If you haven’t played the demo, please do so, chances are you won’t be disappointed!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated game this year has been out for more than a week. If I was to summarize the game in two words, I would say its “almost perfect”. Definitely a game worth the full $64.99CAD (+tax) first day purchase with absolutely zero regret.
The first one, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has a pretty sweet single player story line with a lot of drama. The sequel’s story line is even more, how should I put it, “messed up” and packed with even more drama. Words cannot possibly describe how good I think it is, you have to buy it and see it for yourself. Its not just the story that got “super-sized” but the characters are also noticably more detailed, at least to me, while the environments look relatively similar to Call of Duty 4.
This time around, you won’t be blowing up your enemies from above using the AC-130 Gunship but you get to be the gunner of an armored humvee, life boat as well as snowmobile chases.
You can expect to finish the single player story in about 7 hours, but that is ok since this game is made for multiplayer.
There are also new and more weapons to choose from (same ones sound different now as well! M4A1 for example). This time even the rocket launcher and stinger missle launcher are available in multiplayer which were only available in the first game’s single player missions. I also love the fact that you have 3 times more ammo (correction: the reason why I got full ammo was due to the Scavenger perk) for your guns and you can carry a secondary, but not necessary limited to just a hand gun, such as shotguns, grenade launcher or even a rocket launcher. Though you only get to carry one or two shots from the launchers and no way to reload unless you get the Resupply crate from kill streak perk or the Scavenger perk, which in my opinion, very useful in staying fully equipped all the time.
Another great addition to Modern Warfare 2 is the game allows you to customize your own kill streak bonuses, from 3 kill streak UAV all the way to a whooping 25 kill streak for the almighty tactical nuke (sorry I’m not THAT good). I would search youtube if you want to see what it looks like, I’ve done the search for you.
I really like the random care package by getting a mere 4 kill streak, you can pretty much get anything from this, not sure if you can get the tactical nuke from it though! (Funny incident: I killed myself by accident from the crate by crouching right on top of the drop point)
In one of the kill streak bonuses, you get to be the actual gunner of the attack helicopter. While its fun raining bullets down on your enemies from the sky, I think this one, which you can get from an 11 kill streak, a bit over powered. If you get that and the other team is too dumb to shoot it down then you basically are garanteed 10 to 15+ kills just from this.
So here’s my quick summary of this fantasy game, if you liked Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, you will certainly like this one, well, most likely. I mean I’m sure you want to know the rest of the story too, and the ending leaves room for Modern Warfare 3, which I cannot wait.
Hmmm maybe it will be released some time 2011 November?
So I finally gave in, purchased and downloaded Fat Princess off PSN because I’ve been eyeing on this game since it was released. I was excited now that I finally got the game but was it worth it? I have mixed reactions about this game. Definitely not as good as I expected though!
So immediately after downloading and installing Fat Princess, which is basically an action strategy game where there are two sides (red and blue). You can customize your character with different looks and more are unlocked as you progress in the game. The objectives are capturing the princess (capture the flag), death match. There is also a soccer x death match for online as well, this mode is pretty straight forward based on the name. You have 5 classes to choose from – warrior, ranger, healer, dark magician who can drain enemy health and the worker. The workers are necessary, in order to gather wood and minerals to upgrade the different classes’ buildings in order to unlock their upgraded classes. They also responsible for building castle doors and catapults which can launch a group of people to the enemy castle.
I wanted to get a hang of the game first being playing online so I jumped into the single player game and played its rather short storyline which consists of 7 chapters. It was enjoyable most of the time, specially the death matches. There was one chapter that I thought was frustrating, at least playing with the AIs, the ones which you have to rescue your princess.
I guess for now AIs are still dumb and cannot act/play like humans. Most of the time I was alone inside enemy castle trying to rescue the princess even though you are allowed to have up to 3 AIs to help you on your side. And most of the time I got killed right on the spot because either the enemy AIs just swamped me or they cake-fed the princess so much I was basically not moving at all, and then swamped by the enemies!
In terms of graphics, its not Killzone 2 graphics obviously, it is pleasing to the eyes, cartoonish with vibrant colors. I think the blood and gory part is one of the major plus for this game. Whenever there is a battle you know there will be blood and body parts every where which is insanely fun to watch as you chop your way to your enemies!
Without going into every single detail of the game, I’m sure this game is worth the $16 (+tax) I paid. I think its a pretty good casual game where you want to jump in when you have 30 minutes to spare. Its not perfectly for sure and hopefully we will see some expansions/add-ons in the near future, free download would be nice!
I was really impressed, again, by yet another game – Dragon Age: Origins. I thought this might be the game for me while I eagerly wait for Final Fantasy 13′s release. But sadly after watching this trailer, which I’m guessing its played on a console, lead me down.
Its not because its got bad graphics or anything. Its the way you fight your battles, which leads to how enjoyable the game play is. I was really, I mean really, annoyed by the fact that you have to pause the game, we are talking about in the middle of battles, in order to assign orders to your party members without getting hit, unless you can micro-manage in real time then that’s a no issue for you. I don’t see how I can enjoy this game when I have to pause every few seconds. I am only speaking for myself because obviously based on some of the comments, some people do not seem to be bothered by this pause-effect. This might not be exactly the same but think of it this way, do you like to watch a movie that pauses every 10 seconds? All of a sudden in the middle of a great battle, the movie pauses, no music, animation just freezes. Will you enjoy that?
So to me this game is really meant to be played on a PC, then again my PC isn’t probably powerful enough to handle this so that means a no-go for me unfortunately. Guess I have to get Modern Warfare 2, which is a completely different game genre while I wait for Final Fantasy 13 to come out.
I was so so so close to getting Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Mainly because I wanted something other than Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for a change. Also, the trailers so far were quite promising as well and it did look realistic, compare to the COD series.
I’m glad I always troll around Gametrailers.com and read their take on this game before I slap myself for wasting $70 bucks on this disappointing game. You can see the negative points of this game clearly outweights the goods. For one, why does the console multiplayer only support 4 on 4? What were the developers thinking?
If you are looking for a shoot them up, this isn’t for you. Do give it a shot (I’m sure you can refund it) if and only if you are into realistic war-simulator. Sadly I guess the sequel did not live up to the original Operation Flashpoint and it just won’t even stand close to the soon-to-be-released Modern Warfare 2.
I haven’t played a single bad game for a while, well probably because I’m either too busy that I don’t have time to play or I am too busy with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare still (Yeah after two years, still going strong!). So yesterday was Thursday, and we all know PSN gets updated with fresh new video trailers, demos and other downloadables. So I downloaded the demo for The Punisher: No Mercy because I thought the trailer that I saw was…”ok” ?
How wrong was I?
This multiplayer-only demo gives you the option to play as Punisher or Jigsaw, the rest are locked. You are also given one assault rifle. That is fine since its a demo. Then it took me 2 tries to succesfully connect AND join a game, first time I joined the game got dropped, for whatever reason. It also has a counter similiar to Call of Duty or any other online shooter. There is also a status beside each player’s name to show whether they are ready or not which I find completely pointless because the game won’t start or will start regardless of everyone’s status.
The controls, in my opinion, are slow and sluggish. It might have something to the fact that I’m used to the feel of Call of Duty? Basically in the demo, all you do is free for all death match and shoot anything that moves. Eventually after a few kills, I got bored of the game already but I still managed to end the match after getting 25 kills (the game finishes whenever someone gets that number of kills). I still don’t know why I lasted the whole match. Weird.
In the graphics department, well for a lack of a better word, MEH! That is all I can say about The Punisher: No Mercy. This game just feels too yester-year. I don’t even think diehard Punisher fans will appreciate this game, let alone the non fans.
Then again, this is what demos are for. Try it out yourself! I certainly didn’t like it.
