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I’ve been eyeing on this game for a long time, the English version is finally available. Holy Invasion Of Privacy Badman is a JRPG style strategy game with 2D sprites. The heavily pixelated characters certainly bring back a lot of old school memories.

The “main” objective of the game is pretty simple, all you have to do is defeat the hero or heroes in every stage that venture into your dungeon. That sounds pretty simple right? But things are as straight forward as we progress to more difficult levels. This game really puts heavy emphasis on “food chain”. Basically the monsters you create needs something called nutrients in order to grow stronger and stay alive (as their health diminshes as time goes by). Another way of growing stronger and staying alive is to devour weaker monsters. This is where the game gets a bit more complex to manage because you cannot just create a huge army and think you can beat the levels, you also have to manage your nutrients and monsters.

Some monsters are better suit for physical attacks, while on the other hand some are for magical attacks. So obviously when you are up against heroes that have strong physical resistence, you will want to create monsters that are strong in magic attacks. I am still trying to get a hang of this “monster-nutrient” managment. You can also create “runes” out of undug blocks which you can summon demos upon. They are relatively more powerful, the more spirit type monster (more below) they consume the more powerful they get. They also give defense bonus to all other monsters as long as they are within the dungeon.

So that’s your objective(s), how do you fail the level? If your overlord gets captured by the heroes and successfully and literally, in a funny way, dragged out of the dungeon then its game over. But you don’t have to give up right away when the heroes found your overlord because you can still kill the heroes as long as they are still in the dungeon. Another obvious tip/hint to prevent your overlord from being dragged away is to position your overlord as deep down the dungeon as possible, again pretty common sense.

You are given a number of digs that you can do to build your dungeon, you can only dig blocks that are adjacent to blocks that have already been dug. There are also blocks that have greenish things in them, those are the nutrients. You can dig up these blocks and get your most basic slime monster will absorb and release nutrients as they navigate through the dungeon. So which brings yet another point, you really have to plan ahead and dig paths that can maximize the number of times these slimes visit each of these blocks with nutrients in them. As these blocks absorb back more nutrients, they will allow you to dig up stronger monsters. These slimies will also turn into flowers and when they blossom, they will pop out more slimies, a good way to mulitiply!

Slimes are for nutrients, there is also mana in this game and the corresponding monster type is the spirit. They pretty much act the same except its for storing/releasing mana. You get to dig these “spirit” blocks after wizard class heroes have cast spells inside your dungeon and these spells get absorbed back into the earth, or the undug blocks.

After finishing each level, you have the option to invest your “dig power” to upgrade your monsters and/or you can choose to keep them and carry them over to your next level. There are also treasure chests lying inside undug blocks as well and so far I’ve got a few skeletons to help out.

In terms of graphics, I can’t stop loving its 2D style graphics. Nothing fancy but suits this type of games. Music is pretty good as well, again nothing fancy but good enough. If you are into managing dungons, into JRPG (or just RPG) and you like to be evil for once, then I highly recommend Holy Invasion Of Privacy Badman to you!

8.5/10

X-Men Origins: Wolverine reminds me of Heavenly Sword, a lot, particularly the sound of Wolverine’s clawns make when you slash your enemies into pieces. The demo was actually enjoyable, but still not worth my money to be honest. Maybe its because I’m not a hardcore fan of Wolverine, but one thing for sure is this game has not been polished enough, again in my opinion.

As I mentioned the style is similar to Heavenly Sword, or any other hack and slash games out there. You can chain your normal attacks with your heavy attacks. The fights are fast and bloody, a plus for me. There are also features that I haven’t seen in other games before, or I just don’t play enough games anymore these days. One is the Lunge attack, which you get early on in the demo and which you get to lock on to a target (make sure there is no object in between you and the unfortunate, and then jump onto the target and kill him. I never got bored of using Lunge when I played the demo but I found it a bit too powerful. The second feature that I like is the way the environment can give you different ways of finishing off your enemies. Like you can throw someone into a large stake that you will find on the walls or floors. These features really give the game more varieties, in terms of killing.

You can also upgrade Wolverine by collecting orbs and gaining experience by killing your enemies. I’m a big fan of level grinding so experience is another +1 for the game.

Now you will probably want to ask “Then why won’t you buy this game since you sound like you enjoyed this game?”. Well for one thing this type of game does not really offer me too much replay value, once I finish the game, it will be collecting dust, but this can be easily solved by selling it back to game stores. But I’m too cheap for that even so I might go rent it for a weekend. Second thing I don’t like is related to the “has not been polished” that I have mentioned before. The graphics look nice until you notice your character, Wolverine, is sometimes “floating” above the floor instead of walking on the floor. Floating is noticable when you are going uphill. That alone just turned me off, it might minor for you but for some reason its a big deal for me and its not acceptable.

So overall I think this game is worth it if you can ignore little issues here and there, I’m sure there are more issues like “floating” in the full game. The fact that you can interact with the environment and make use of it for killing your enemies is really a big bonus, making the game much more fun. So that’s my take for this game, get the demo if you have an xbox and/or a PS3 and see for yourself!

I played the demo for Lost Planet and at that time I didn’t like it at all. At first, I had doubts when I saw trailers for the sequel. Honestly after watching the trailers, I might just grab myself a copy of the first one, since its more than one year old and should be cheap, so even if I ended up not liking the game it would only be a small lost to me.

The reason why I’ve changed my impression for this game is the fact that there are actually huge monsters/insects to fight against (I know about the mechs already) which really reminds me of Monster Hunter and that game was a blast to play as well, specially with 3 other people. After watching one of the “epic” boss battles for Lost Planet 2 (I almost typed out LittleBigPlanet haha) I was impressed and surprised. I seriously didn’t know there were huge monsters/insects to fight against even in the first Lost Planet and I thought it was a new addition to Lost Planet 2. I was wrong, very wrong. So I quickly looked up Lost Planet: Extreme Condition’s review on Gametrailers and it rated the game 7.9 overall, though failing the story side.

I checked on eBay and the game is roughly $20 USD after shipping, one of the cheapest I’ve found. Looks like I will give this one a try. Lost Planet 2, unfortunately will only be available for Xbox 360 and release date is still unknown.

Normally when you play any RPG games, it will take more than 10 hours assuming you do some level grinding as well as some side missions. Yuusha 30, a JRPG that will be released in May in Japanese is basically a JRPG that will last only 30 seconds before you have to head back to any village to heal up, purchase items etc. You might think, what the hell? I don’t blame you but after watching this trailer, I just fell in love with it right away.

I mean I have never seen such crazy level grinding before, leveling up multiple times within 30 seconds is insanely fast! I guess I should call it speed leveling instead of level grinding. And that’s exactly why I’m so drawn to this game, CRAZY FAST style game play. Also the classic heavy old-school pixelated graphics brings a lot of memories back.

I’m getting the Japanese version when it comes out since the game is so simple, in a good way, there is no need to wait for the North American version. Its simple enough for me to play and navigate through different menus.

Boy, I can’t wait to do some speed level grinding!

Also check out this hilarious Japanese commercial, its the real life version of the game, it ran over 30 seconds, oh times up! I can’t get enough of all these crazy and hilarious Japanese commercials!

Finally I got my hands on a copy of this game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is the newest Final Fantasy game released for the Sony PlayStation Portable or PSP. I have the Japanese version and the North American version will arrive sometime mid year in 2009. Honestly I thought this game wouldn’t suit me but I was wrong, very wrong!

Story and game play
After a quite long but very enjoyable opening cinematic of the good and evil, you will pretty much get the idea of what’s going on. Cosmo, the goddess of harmony (the good) and Chaos, the god of discord (the evil) have both summoned a few of the past Final Fantasy characters to fight for his/her side. Honestly I didn’t know any of those characters prior to Final Fantasy 6 until I played this game. I was in grade 6 when Final Fantasy 6 (3 in America) came out, so can’t blame me.

  

The heroes:

-Warrior of Light – Final Fantasy
- Firion – Final Fantasy II
- Onion Knight – Final Fantasy III
- Cecil Harvey – Final Fantasy IV
- Bartz Klauser – Final Fantasy V
- Terra Branford – Final Fantasy VI
- Cloud Strife Final – Fantasy VII
- Squall Leonhart – Final Fantasy VIII
- Zidane Tribal – Final Fantasy IX
- Tidus – Final Fantasy X
- Shantotto – Final Fantasy XI (Ahh our beloved and adorable tarutaru!)

  

The Villains:

- Garland – Final Fantasy
- Emperor – Final Fantasy II
- Cloud of Darkness – Final Fantasy III
- Golbez – Final Fantasy IV
- Exdeath – Final Fantasy V
- Kefka Palazzo – Final Fantasy VI
- Sephiroth – Final Fantasy VII
- Ultimecia – Final Fantasy VIII
- Kuja – Final Fantasy IX
- Jecht – Final Fantasy X
- Gabranth – Final Fantasy XII

Initially you have to go through the Prologue which acts like a series of tutorials for the game. I really like this game because it is a combination of board game, action and RPG all in one! The Prologue will teach you how to navigate through the board, obtain items from treasure chests, fight monsters etc. At first you might feel overwhelmed, at least I did, with all the features and options. But since the menus are so elegantly designed it was easy to get used to and which button is for what option. Unlike the Macross Ace Frontier that I reviewed about two weeks ago. This is what I expect from Square Enix from all its games and so far I have not been disappointed.

  

There are two main modes – the story mode and 1 on 1. The story mode will let you pick which character you want to play the story with. The 1 on 1 to me is just a way to level grind your characters.

As you fight through battles and completing stages, you will gain experience points as well as items and gils (money) which can be used to booster your character’s stats and purchase new weapons/items from the shop.

There are quite a lot of things to cover in terms of the actual game play because its separated between the board game part as well as the actual battles. I will try and cover as much as I can.

The board game part pretty much determines how many battles you will be fighting, on the board there will be treasure chests, healing item, monsters (for you to fight and gain experience and items) as well as a statue that you have to destroy in order to finish a particular stage (note you don’t necessary have to kill all enemies to finish the stage, destroying the statue is enough, at least this is what I’ve seen so far. During each stage, you will be given points called Destiny Points, its basically just points for you to navigate throughout the stage, if you manage to complete the stage without going to the negative, you earn more points after completing the stage, sometimes I find that you have to get to the negative in order to get to everything (or maybe I just suck). You can refill your DP by completing the DP Chance like defeating your enemy within 10 seconds or trigger your EX attack (the special move which I will talk about later) within 10 seconds (not all enemies have DP Chance so you have to plan the way you move throughout the board.

  

On the board, you don’t just move around though, you also have skills that you can use such as healing 30% of your HP or cast negative effects onto your enemy that is adjacent to where you are. Finally you can also press R to go into search mode and check on each enemy’s level as well as the the DP Chance ahead of time. I don’t find it that useful though.

That should cover the basics of the board game part now onto the actual battle!

Battles are very fast paced, the square and circle buttons are for attack, R is defend, L is toggling targeting on/off (sometimes you want to go somewhere else and not looking at your enemy all the time), triangle allows you to walk on walls or jump from one place to another (pretty handy when you fight in a stage where there is hardly anywhere for you to walk on, you will have to jump around) and cross is jump. EX attack or special move is triggered when the EX gauge is full and by pressing R+square. If you have esper equipped, you can call it out by pressing R+circle, again when the EX gauge is full. You will slowly fill up your EX gauge when you attack, being attacked or by obtaining the EX fill up item that appears randomly during battle.

Once EX attack is triggered, a sequence of buttons will be displayed to you, you will have to get them correctly to get the maximum number of hits out of it and in the end, you will hit the button that will be displayed to you for the final blow as well. I haven’t mastered this attack yet though.

  

Upon leveling up, your character will not only gain stats, but he/she will also gain more skills that you can map to your keys. Pressing left and circle can have a different attack than pressing right/top/down and circle! So the combination is endless, well not literally but you get my idea. That goes for the square button attack as well. You can also pick a different EX attack from the EX Mode menu. This should give you at least some ideas of what this game has to offer. I’m PRETTY sure there are more features that I have not covered, like this mini game like option that requires PP that I’m still trying to figure out what its for, all I know is that I used up 30PP to do something related to “treasure hunting in a cave”. Sorry I can’t read too much Japanese.

There is also a multiplayer mode but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it out.

  

Graphics and audio
The graphics are pretty impressive, and I’m not just talking about the CG intro but game play graphics as well. Character facial animations are one of the best I’ve seen on a PSP, you can really see detailed facial animations from each character. The way their eyes blink to how their mouths/lips move as they talk is so smooth its like watching an anime. This is pretty much the best feature I like about Dissidia: Final Fantasy in terms of graphics.

Also worth a mention is the special/lighting effects of the game, be it whether you are moving on the board, scrolling through menus or battling enemies as well as the destructable objects and when you or your enemy gets pushed into a wall, the wall will break too. All these really enhance the game making it more realistic.

Square Enix has been known for having some of the best music composed in the gaming industry if not the best. And Dissidia: Final Fantasy is no exception but then again the game basically uses music from all the Final Fantasy series.

Final verdict
If you are a Final Fantasy fan, I don’t see why you would want to miss this, of course unless you don’t have a PSP then I can’t blame you. But if you are a fan and own a PSP, I suggest you pick up the Japanese version if you can’t wait for the North American version on ebay or yesasia. The fact that this game has features from board games, action/fighting games and traditional RPG games should be more than enough to satisfy a wide range of gamers that are into different game genres. Finally, this game has so much features to offer that I think its worth more than what I’ve paid for, you don’t see a lot of games like that too often!

9.0/10

Oh man, I still remember when Parasite Eve first came out in 1998. Developed by Squaresoft (not yet Square Enix) for the Sony PlayStation. It was one of the best survival horror role-playing game. One of the best game features was the sheer amount of customization for your weapons. And of course our main protagonist Aya Brea herself! The sequel was released a year after (also for the Sony PlayStation), which I personally think was not as good as the first. Soon we will finally see the third release of the PE series, but this time its called The 3rd Birthday and available for the Sony PlayStation Portable instead.

Aya Brea is prettier than ever, still young because of her mutation, sickness whatever you call it. Another must buy for the PSP and let’s see if Aya is still pwning or not!

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.

 

  

Previous Gundam related games like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable, Gundam Battle Royale and Gundam Battle Tactics were all great games, specially Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable that had, at the time, the latest mobile suits from the Gundam Seed series. Now, Gundam vs Gundam, the newest Gundam game has released for the PlayStation Portable in Japan (no date for North American release yet). Is this one worth buying at all? Read on…..

For those that haven’t played the games or even heard of Gundams before, they are basically transformers but only look 100x better. The games mentioned above basically put you in one of the mobile suits, not necessary Gundams because there are different robots in the series. You will be controlling and fighting against one of the other sides, usually two sides each with different mobile suits and mobile armor (these are not necessary robots but can be fighter planes etc). Its really a third person shooter, just replace human/monsters with robots.

  

If I remember correctly, this game was originally from the arcade and it was ported over to the PlayStation 2, then to the PSP. Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable was a great game that offered hours of play time and great replay value because you can upgrade many of your mobile suits’ stats such as how fast the weapon can fire, more ammo, more fire power as well as more health, jump higher and more booster power etc. This is pretty much level grinding though, which I think was necessary in order to pass some of the harder levels.

Game play
Gundam vs Gundam is really just the arcade version ported over to the PSP. At first I thought there was a story mode just like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable. I should have figured that out from the name of the game, stupid me. The controls are basically the same or really similar to the other games though – jump, boost, shoot, melee, shoot 2, special shot, special melee and special. The three specials are hard to execute because you have to hold triangle, plus either the shoot or melee. The special move is slightly easier and its executed by pressing triangle, square and cross (might as well press your right thumb onto all four buttons)
I have yet to even execute any of them. How did I even figure out how to execute these hard to do moves? They are actually mentioned in one of the game options. I will update once I figure out how to execute them. I have never had such frustration over special moves from previous Gundam games.

[Update: I have finally managed to execute the special attack (only when your special gauge is full) by pressing.....L and R together twice]

  

Aside from the standards, now you can assign orders to your computer teammate, commands like attack, dodge and surprise attack. You can also call in support where an additional mobile suit for a second and throw in a few more shots at your current target, as usual, the calls for support can be recharged with time just like recharging your gun’s ammo. I find the support useful because, if I remember correctly it was able to take the hits for me as well as acting as a decoy for a short time.

Enough with the controls, the game has three game modes – “normal” mode (I call it the normal mode, was going to say story mode but its not a story) where you fight through 8 stages with the last stage as boss stage, quick play and multiplayer that supports 2 on 2 battles. I think the 2 on 2 is the selling point here, just like the arcade version, the fun is from shooting and slashing other human piloted mobile suits. Once you have selected a mobile suit from the list with 20+ of them and more can be unlocked by completing the “normal” mode. They range from the oldest 0079 series all the way to the newest ones from the Gundam 00 series. The objective of any of these game mode is the same, you and your enemies both have a life bar, you will lose if your side’s life bar reaches 0. When you and/or your teammate dies (same goes for enemies), the amount of life your team loses is based on the mobile suit you picked. The stronger the mobile suit, the higher points its worth, which means when it blows up, your team loses a bigger amount of life. So that means its not always better to pick the strongest from the list. I picked my favorite Freedom Gundam and its worth 3000GP, I lost one of the games once by dying only twice!

  

In “normal” mode, you will fight in random locations and you will have a random computer mobile suit to fight along side with you. There are a total of 8 stages with the last one being the boss stage. The boss is huge, relative to your mobile suit and it took me 2 tries to beat it, I was one hit away from losing the game for the second time! I guess I just need to practice more with the controls, a training mode would be a perfect game mode for this game.

Quick play is no brainer, you pick your mobile suit and pick up to 3 other computer to fight with or against you. You can modify options like how long the match lasts for, how fast your special gauge fills up or different stages/music.

Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to try out the multiplayer.

  

So as you can see, there isn’t any level grinding here. Although you can still unlock more mobile suits, intro movies, endings and images for the multimedia galleries.

Graphics and audio
Graphics are again, PSP quality, the mobile suits are nicely detailed, environments are plain but the game is so fast paced you won’t have time to appreciate or pay attention to, not that there is anything to appreciate here. Music is actually real sound tracks from the Gundam series, so based on which Gundam series’ stage you are fighting in, you will be listening to that series’ soundtrack. The soundtracks bring back a lot of memories by the way.

Final verdict
Overall I think this game is OK. I still prefer Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. Portable because it has a story mode and level grinding although you can still unlock more mobile suits, maybe its just me. For those that are looking for fast paced arcade style game play, Gundam vs Gundam should suit your needs. Skills really matter in this game since there’s no level grinding where you can easily overpower your enemies by powering up your mobile suits and weapons. If you have lots of Gundam loving friends with PSP, I suggest convincing them to get a copy so up to 4 of you and your friends can fight each other anytime without going to the arcade.

7.0/10