If there’s one thing you’ll hear gamers complain about a lot, especially more retro-style gamers such as myself, is that the gaming industry in the last 5-6 years has been drowned by First-Person Shooters, and none of them are particularly good other than the online component (if that interests you at all). The only exception, to me at least, has been Borderlands, which is more like a “What if Diablo was an FPS?” kinda thing. And there’s Bioshock, but to me it was good more because of the awesome visuals than the actual gameplay.

Bulletstorm comes in as a game that, while it mimics the crappy grey-brown look of modern games, seems like it might be a lot more fun. But, as I always do, I was incredibly skeptical about this, since every FPS I sort of got excited for ended up being total shit, like Singularity. And, the title… Bulletstorm? Yeah, lots of thought went into THAT one (that was sarcasm, by the way). So I didn’t hype myself up too much, but I still kept a close eye on it.

So I played the Bulletstorm demo yesterday… Read on and see if it might be that one good FPS this generation!

What I didn’t like

Yeah, I’ll start with the negatives of the demo.

The graphics
It’s not a really pretty game. Why? Well, it’s brown. Like every other FPS out there. Sure, it’s actually a lot brighter, rather than being all dark and hard to see, but it’s still super brown. And the character design? Well, other than the female character following you around, all the characters have the same character model, with either different hairdoes or different skin colors (like those weird toxic green guys). Very lazy, though that’s just the demo, so we’ll see if any more cool stuff appears later on.

AI partners
I still have no idea why game developers insist on giving you useless AI partners. Here, from what I’ve seen for now (it is just a demo after all), they’re just annoying. They’ll frequently get in your way, preventing you from kicking an enemy, or sometimes they’ll kill an opponent before you get to do the skillshot you’re trying to do on it, preventing you from getting points. Just annoying.

What I liked

Scoring system
I love point systems. The system here is no exception, it’s actually all sorts of fun. Rather than just getting points for kills, you get points depending on HOW you kill the enemy. Headshots, certain shots in the ass, shooting the throat, using remote explosives to hit multiple enemies, or gagging them with said remote explosive, killing them after putting them on fire, using the environment to kill them, and the list goes on and on (in the demo alone I think I found about 20 or so skillshots, though there might be some I missed… and the full game promises over 100 skillshots)… There’s tons of different ways to get points, from kills to starting up traps to finishing levels faster than a target time. I love point systems, and the one here is incredibly fun. It’s a game that I see myself replaying levels all the time just to try and get better scores.

The actual gameplay
It’s actually incredibly good. You can shoot stuff, of course, but there’s way more to it. You have a kick and a slide kick that you can use to push enemies back. You have a “leash”, which sort of looks like an electric whip that you can use to launch enemies towards you, or into environmental traps. You can also use the Thumper, a limited ammo thing on the leash that lets you slam the ground, launch any nearby enemies in the air. Various combinations of shooting, kicking and using the leash leads to various different ways of killing dudes. Overall the game is really fast-paced, the kills are really fun to do and can even require some creativity to find certain skillshots.

The weapons
The weapons here are actually really fun. You have a standard assault rifle which is the basic normal gun. You have a pistol which is a bit shotgun-ish. And you have a “flail gun”, which shoots a rope with 2 weighted explosives attached to it, which can bind enemies, stunning them or making them fall down, and you can remote explode said explosives. The flail gun is awesome. All weapons can also be “charged” by pressing R2, which is like a secondary fire mode. The assault rifle shoots a huge blast that kills anything in a hit, the pistol (called the Screamer) shoots a firework which launches your enemies around and explodes them (various killshots possible with this), and the flail gun releases a bigger explosive, but the “rope” cuts enemies now instead of binding itself to them. Just awesome. I love it when FPS take the fun alternative to weapons and really go crazy with it, like Duke Nukem did so long ago, or Unreal Tournament. Can’t wait to see what other weapons they’ll have here in the full version. My only complaint here is that you can only carry 3 weapons.

Overall

I had a LOT of fun with this demo. The fact that I probably replayed it over 12 times (and I’ll certainly play it a bit more) is a testament to that. This is the first time this generation that an FPS really got to me. FPS are generally so formulaic that it’s pretty much 100% clear that the developers have no fun making the game, and, as such, they’re not fun to play. They just make games that they know will sell because people will buy it despite it being the same damn thing every time. In this case, it’s a complete opposite. They obviously had tons of fun making the game, making up skillshots and different ways to kill enemies, and finding funny names for some of them… They had fun making the game and, as such, I have fun playing it.

The gameplay is fun, fast-paced and surprisingly varied, and the scoring system keeps me coming back. This is something that no FPS amongst the millions of boring FPS that come out every year has yet managed to do. Bulletstorm is the first (other than Borderlands… but I mentioned that already, it’s more of a Diablo-like action-RPG than an FPS).

Judging from what I’ve played, this might really be the FPS I’ve been looking for this generation. The one FPS to actually be really good. Sure, Bioshock was good, but it lacked… something… Maybe it was just that I really liked the visuals and not really the gameplay (which was very average), I don’t know. Borderlands is great, but barely counts as a pure FPS. And Portal was more of a puzzler. Bulletstorm might have the lamest title for an FPS ever, but it’s definitely not as generic and boring as the title makes it sound, and it has some of the most original gameplay in the genre since Portal.

I am definitely hyped for this. Not sure if I’ll get it at launch, but there is no doubt that I will be getting it. It seems too fun to pass up.

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Well that’s a game I was not hyped for. Which is sad since I love the Castlevania franchise. I mean, I even beat Simon’s Quest. Other than a few crappy games in the series, such as… most of the 3D games (I haven’t played the ones on PS2… though I haven’t heard much good about them) and Encore of the Night, Castlevania has been one of the most solid series in the history of gaming, with incredible super-challenging side-scrolling platformers on the NES, SNES, Genesis and Turbo CD, to more exploration-based platformers on the Playstation and portable systems.

When I saw that this one was rebooting the franchise, and going for a more God of War style of combat, I couldn’t help but be very skeptical about it. The gameplay videos I’ve seen, as well as various previews/impressions have done nothing to convince me that this was not much more than a God of War game with Castlevania elements tacked-on to it.

Well, the European PSN just got a demo of the game, and I had to check it out, see if it would prove me right about what I thought the game might be like, or if it would actually prove to be awesome.

Usually, for demo impressions, I usually name what I liked about the demo and what I didn’t, but here’s I’ll go for a more standard style.

So, read on!

Combat
Well, like any other action game, if the fighting sucks, the game sucks. Ehis is the part that worried me the most, because it looked like God of War. After playing, I can say that my assumption was… sort of wrong. It’s definitely inspired by God of War, with the chain-like weapon circling your character nonstop. But it works differently. Rather than “light attack/heavy attack”, you get “Direct Attack” which aims for one enemy, and “Area Attack” which hits everything in an area in front of you, and a bit behind as well. There’s no lock-on mechanic which can make things a bit complicated, but for the most part it’s not really needed. There’s various combos to do, and more to be learned, which is potentially cool.

That Area Attack thing was what I thought would be the equivalent of the shitty “hold L1 and mash square to kill everything without effort” thing in the God of War 3 demo.  Thankfully, that’s wrong. Mashing the Area Attack button just makes you get hit. It does minimal damage and it doesn’t always make enemies flinch, so you really have to balance out when to use which attacks, and also when to dodge.

Speaking of dodging, it sort of sucks here. It’s not as bad as in God of War, where you have to use the right analog stick to dodge which is just really clumsy and unintuitive, but it’s rather weird. Here, you have to hold the L2 button, and press in a direction with the left analog stick. It’s kind of annoying not pressing a button to dodge (it worked so damn well with DMC and Bayonetta, why not copy them for dodging controls?), but I guess I could get used to it.

But the most annoying part here? Since the right analog stick isn’t used to dodge you expect it to be used to control the camera, right? Nope, there’s actually no camera control at all. That would be fine, if the camera wasn’t terrible. But here enemies come at you from directions you just can’t possibly see them coming and you get cheap hits from that, and all that because you have no camera control, or at least a good angle to view all of the action from.

Just a quick note on sub-weapons: they’re here, but I could only try one of them in the demo, and it kicked way too much ass…. the dagger dealt big damage to the big enemies, and one-hit-killed everything else. There’s limited ammo (5 daggers in the demo, though I’m guessing that can be increased), and the ammo is random drops from enemies, so you can’t overuse the things.

There’s 3 difficulty levels in the demo. I tried the “normal” difficutly and the one that’s supposed to be harder… and both difficulties were a cakewalk. There’s barely any difference between difficulties in the demo, the only differences I could find were getting slightly more damage from enemy attacks and lower sub-weapon drops. The monsters take as many hits. It was really easy, but it’s the first part of the game so maybe it’s always easy no matter the difficulty setting? We’ll see.

Just a quick note, the second part of the demo features a horse-riding sequence, and that sucked. You really just need to button-mash against the enemies’ mounts and they can’t do anything against you. It sucks and I hope there’s no more of that in the final game.

QTEs
QTEs are bad, and those are no exception. This game has 3 types of QTEs. You have “optional” QTEs, which require grabbing monsters. This is sightly better than the average QTEs, since you can press any button, as long as you time it properly (according to a special icon that works similarly to Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents). But it’s still annoying and pointless. There’s “random/mandatory” QTEs, which work like the optional ones, but only happen when the game decides it wants you to do them. Then, there’s the “mandatory” QTEs, and they’re the ones that really suck. Those are the ones that should frankly just be cutscenes. And those generally suck more since they require pressing/mashing specific buttons and they add nothing to the gameplay, just wasting your time.

Leveling
As you gain experience by killing monsters, you can buy new attack combos… that’s really all I know. I don’t know if there’s some sort of skill trees or something, but it gives a good amount of character advancement. I don’t know how deep it gets, but I really hope it does. It seemed to feature a lot of different new attacks to gain, even with sub-weapons.

Presentation
Really nice. Not much to say about this other than it looks really damn good. The graphics are nice. The monster design is classic. There’s sadly a lot of brown and grey, but thankfully colors managed to sneak in making it nice to look at. And the characters look good.

Oh, and the voice acting… well, not much is heard in the demo, but even the random villagers sounded believable and seemed like they’ve had some work put into giving them good voices… that’s just awesome.

My one complaint is the music… why does music in modern game never sound like game music anymore? Instead it sounds like movie soundtracks…. and I really don’t get it. Game music should sound like game music. I guess that even classic franchises like Castlevania (which are known for having great music) aren’t safe from having movie music instead of video game music.

Cutscenes
Not much to say about them, but there is one thing I really need to mention. There is something that a lot of modern games just don’t do when it comes to cutscenes. A lot of games just seem to never let you pause during cutscenes, which is really stupid. Most games with cutscenes will also not let you skip them, which sucks because, a lot of the time, cutscenes are just boring to watch. Well, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow gets THAT right. Not only can you pause cutscenes, but you can even skip them. Awesome.

Why is it a reboot?
Just a minor complaint, nothing to do with the demo but… why is this a reboot? Seriously, I don’t get it. It features a Belmont, and other classic Castlevania characters like Carmilla, so why can’t it be part of the Castlevania timeline? Why does every developer think that rebooting franchises that don’t need rebooting is a good idea *coughcapcomcough*? There has to be some place in the timeline where this could have fit in the series’ canon. What, did they run out of things to talk about in the current timeline? A timeline which, by the way, goes in completely weird directions all the time? Reboots should just be used if a series has been sucking recently, not when a series is still being awesome like Castlevania.

Overall
Well, I’m… sort of surprised. My expectations were stupidly low, the little that the demo lets you play is actually sort of interesting. The fighting is slightly better than I expected. It’s not as much of a button-masher as God of War, which is a good thing. But the dodging sucks, and so does the camera. The sub-weapons could be interesting if handled properly. The game seems really easy though, hopefully the full game pits you against really strong enemies.

One big problem here is that nothing in the demo seemed to have a Castlevania feel to it at all, and even the whip is actually just a long chain. They could have called the game anything else and it still would have worked. It’s not really Castlevania, but it might be an okay game anyways.

Maybe not great, and definitely not good enough to make me want to buy it, but I’m looking forward to renting it when it comes out (which is more than I could say before playing the demo). Now I’m at least willing to give it an honest chance. The demo doesn’t really make the game seem deep at all, partly because it shows basically nothing from the actual game (doesn’t show if there’s exploration, or how platforming works, or how deep the leveling can go, and various other things like the light/shadow system), so I really want to see just how deep it really is beyond the demo.

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Heavy Rain looked awesome the first few times we saw it displayed at shows and event.  It’s been a long road for a game that’s days away from release now.

I must say I wasn’t really looking forward to it.  It looked intriguing, but was too low a priority to even take time to try the full game, with everything that’s coming out in 2010.  Mostly because it looked more like an interactive movie and not much of a game, and it was filled with QTEs, one of gaming’s deadly sins.

After playing the demo, I must say that my original impressions from previews were almost completely off.  While what looked  awesome graphically on display, looked more on par with the average PS3 game.  Though it’s probably due to the console’s current limitations.  The rain effects must be taxing a lot of resources.  Then came the actual game, playing with a controller in my hands, it was closer to a game than a bunch of interactive cutscenes, which was definitely a good point for me.

Disclaimer: I do know about Indigo Prophecy and Farenheit, but I never played those, so I’m a first timer with these developers.

Perfect Ambiance for a Serial Killer Thriller

The first thing that grabbed my attention through the demo was the whole ambiance to the game.  It’s dark, but not discolored generic FPS #423 gray and brown.  The rain gives the gritty and depressing atmosphere the themes warrants.   You find out soon enough you’re on the trails of a serial killer leaving origamis shaped in a bird on their victims as a signature and you’re set on what should be the mood for the whole game, something written with a mature audience in mind that loves mysteries fiction.

Like a Point and Click Adventure, Without the Point and Clicking…

If there’s a genre that needs more titles, it’s definitely the P&C adventures.  Most of the ones I’ve played have tended more to the comedic themes, as in Sam & Max and Monkey Island.  Here, we’re in the same genre (minus the funnies and adding a murder plot), but not completely. You can move your character around freely, something I must admit surprised me, since I really thought the game had a more “automatic” flow.   I must say though that the way you walk around, while it looks mostly realistic, it’s also not controlled too well and makes it look kind of weird from time to time.  The option to run would be nice on some points too, but then that would look silly and kill part of the mood when the character has no incentive to do so. You also depend a lot on finding clues around and talking to other characters.  Though in this game you’ll find the narrative taking much more place then in most adventure games.  The dialogue is really well-written too.

In some part of the demo, you also have to look around for clues like your typical P&C.  More on that down a few paragraphs.

Unlike P&C adventures though more then anything is the way you do things like opening doors, starting up a car, picking up something in your pockets, etc.  You don’t have a menu with all your inventories or a set of actions you can perform to pick from.  You’re actively using actions the game wants you to do to keep the flow of the story going, instead of trying every possibilities until you get what you need.  Just a bit less thinking, but it’s worth it since it’s a lot less tedious and keeps you thinking about what really matters, which is what and who you should approach in the game.

Wait.. what should I ask you?

When you have a discussion with an important character, you’ll have to choose what you want to say to them, feature popular in Western RPGs.  Instead of prefabricated lines to choose from, you’ll usually have different keywords floating around you with a button next to them, and pressing that said button will you have talk about that topic.  I think this makes the execution much better then having the whole sentence written to you before you have to choose.  This way this keeps the dialog at an interesting pace, instead of having to stop to read your choices after each dialog branch.

A game for everyone

Given the more cinematic approach in Heavy Rain, you’re going to attract a more casual crowd, especially the high hype given to the game since it was first announced and the developers behind the game knows this very well.  The difficulty setup changes the controls depending of how well you know your PS3 controller.  So if you don’t want to bother too much with the QTE’s and just watch the game unfold itself, you have the option to have the simplest choice of inputs in the more fast-paced part of the game.

How about the two scenarios in the demo?

The demo let’s you see part of two of the game’s multiple characters’ stories.  Here’s my thoughts on the two scenarios.

The Sleuth Questioning the Hoe

The first part of the demo has you walking in an apartment building as a middle-aged detective looking for the mother (also a whore) of a one of the victims of the origami killer.  This is set up first to show you how to control your character, and then how to interact with your environment.  I really liked how I could walk around and look/interact with the environment while I was asking questions to the victim’s mother.

Then there’s  a battle with another guy, and while this looked kind of cool and goes on differently depending on your ability to keep up with the timed inputs, it’s really annoying that it is afterall nothing more than QTEs.  But kudos for the many alternate outcomes you can get, this at least makes you feel at least a bit in control of what’s happening.

Hi, My Name is Mulder…

The next part has you play as Mulder from the X-Files.  Ok, not really, but he reminded me a lot of him.  You’re actually a young FBI agent on one of the murder scenes looking for clues.  While there’s some dialog going on here too, this part seems to show-off more the clue-searching part of the game.  As you really have to walk around the murder’s area for clues by using your high-tech I don’t know what shaped like black sunglasses.  That’s right, your character is so cool that he gets to wear sunglasses at night in heavy rain (referring to actual heavy rain, not the game’s title).  They actually have something like night-vision and a scanner that picks up on ADN left around.

I got caught up for a bit trying to find every single clue until you’re asked if you want to leave by the cop-detective that you had to talk to a bit before that.  I kindly refused and actually went back and look for more clues.  Seems like I had them all already though, so I made my way out expecting to see a bit more of the game, but the demo ended there.

So my verdict is?

I honestly was going to completely pass on this game before I tried the demo.  But now I know I at least think it’s worth a rental for about anyone that is at least a bit intrigued by the concept of a game that’s closer to a movie than any other games ever really was.

The interaction with the environment and the random button input for those didn’t really bother me, it added a bit of immersion to the game.  For the battle instances though, while I can see myself getting used to it, is a bit less my thing.  Though I feel QTEs are more at their place in a game such as this one instead of an action game like God of War or Bayonetta. And like someone else said, it’s better than just “Press X to not die”.

So I’ll be renting this and would certainly buy it if it wasn’t for all the other games coming out this Spring.

Also, we’re going to start seeing some impressions of the whole game tomorrow, as the embargo will be lifted to the press that had access to a review copy.

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The first game just won our award for one of the best PSP games of the year. And now a demo just came out for its sequel.

So I gave it a try… and it seems like it’s gonna be a lot better than the first!

Read and see what I liked about it! (just a short post)

What stays the same?
The basic gameplay doesn’t change. You build a dungeon by destroying blocks. Destroying blocks with nutrients in them create creatures. You get different creatures depending on the amount of nutrients in the block you break. Using slimes, the basic super-weak creature, you can move nutrients around in the dungeon. Other creatures eat lower level creatures. So in the end you have to maintain a working ecosystem while making sure to have powerful monsters to defend the Overlord from heroes coming to kidnap him. The basic gameplay works as well as before.

What’s new? (in the demo)
There’s some additions to the gameplay. The most noticeable is extra things on display. There’s some extra bits of info on the screen, both when zoomed in and zoomed out. For example, you have a better view of where the Overlord and the Heroes are in the dungeon since they’re circled when you’re zoomed out, and you always see a meter at the bottom giving a rough estimation of the division between the number of creatures you have.

The biggest gameplay addition is evolution. Depending on how your monsters die in your dungeon, the remaining monsters of that species might evolve to fit the current situation. If they get eaten a lot, they become a smaller stronger form. If a lot of them die because they don’t have enough food, they’ll evolve into giant form which doesn’t require as much food to survive. If they mostly die because Heroes kill them, they stay in basic form. As in the first game, you can upgrade your creatures, and upgraded creatures get their own evolutions as well. The Almanac will definitely take a lot more time to fill up this time.

I’ve seen that Fungus can grow in the dungeon too. It acts as food for most creatures, nutrients for slimes to transport around, and if you kill if nutrients spread all around it. There’s probably more than one version of that.

Another addition is the fact that the game isn’t confined to one dungeon anymore (well, 2 if you count the second difficulty level). Instead, you have to conquer multiple continents, each which seem to include 1 dungeon for you to defend the Overlord in. There’s also a new mode, which is not available in the demo. Overall it kinda loses that “arcade-style” gameplay from the first, but it gains a more coherent story as a result.

Overall
The sequel seems like it will have a lot more depth than the first game. In addition to the few changes I mentionned here, there are things like water which wasn’t seen in the demo, and maybe some more stuff. Needless to say that this sequel adds a lot to the original’s concept. This is definitely one to look out for.

On another note, buying the UMD nets you the first game as a bonus. The UMD is $30, and the PSN release is $20.

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TMNT:TITRS was one of my anticipated games this summer, yet I never checked out the 360 version, Katamari always intrigued me because of its popularity, Star Wars… well, it’s Star Wars…. and Half-Minute Hero has an interesting concept.

So, which of those fail, and which of those should we buy? Read my impressions for each of them and see! (I’ll make this short)

TMNT: Turtles in time Re-Shelled
Turtles in Time on the SNES is one of the best beat ‘em ups out there. The arcade version is still quite fun to play. So when I saw a remake was coming, I was pretty excited. And then it came out, and reviews started bashing it and all. So I looked at videos and reviews and it frankly didn’t look as fun as the SNES or arcade versions.

So today I downloaded the demo. My impressions? Let’s just say I’ll keep playing it on my MAME arcade cabinet. The gameplay is okay, but the attacks just don’t look like they’re doing much and everything feels really floaty. The upgraded graphics kinda feel like they gave up on them halfway through, they lack polish IMO, and overall the package isn’t as fun to play as before. There’s minor changes to the overall gameplay(because of the slightly changed perspective and the fact that it’s 3D now), but nothing big.

So… I won’t be wasting my money on this. But if you’ve never experienced the arcade original, or the SNES version(if so, WTF have you been doing all these years?), it’s worth checking out, for sure(it IS only 10$ instead of the relatively high prices for the SNES version). Otherwise, I’d say that you should pass on it.

Katamari Forever
This… I don’t really know what to say about this. To be totally frank, I never understood the appeal of this series. I always found the gameplay to be incredibly boring and the controls were on the lame side when I tried it on the PS2.

So I went at this not expecting much. And, well, I was right. The Katamari series has never done it for me, and this entry just confirms this. The first part of the demo is incredibly lame. You have to roll your ball in water and then roll it through the desert to make plants grow, but your water depletes so you must contantly get back to the water hole at the beginning. After 5 minutes you’re graded by how much of the desert you restored. This part was just lame with the constant back-tracking, though it did help me get used to the not too great controls(enough so that I actually don’t mind them at all anymore).

The second part is normal Katamari stuff, just rolling the ball in a room, picking stuff up to make it bigger, enabling you to make an even bigger ball by picking up bigger stuff. After a few minutes time stops and you’re graded on your ball.

Overall, I just don’t get it. The controls aren’t fun, the concept isn’t fun, making big balls isn’t fun… I did kinda like the graphic style, and the music was the usual wacky Katamari style if that’s your thing. But overall it was very unenjoyable. If you liked previous Katamari games though, you’ll have little reason NOT to pick this up. It’s just like the older titles.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
This is a horrible game….

Okay, I guess I should develop this more.
You have 2 mission types to choose from: Jedi missions, and Clone missions. They are both played in a really weird point of view(third-person, but far away and in a strange angle) which is incredibly unintuitive. You walk around a linear path and kill stuff, no matter if you chose Jedi or Clone. Clones have guns and special weapons, while Jedis have lightsabers and force power.

Clones can throw grenades and shoot, and that’s about it. Combat is uninteresting at best, with no challenge whatsoever. You can crouch and hide behind crates while still shooting, but that’s about how deep it goes. Oh, and there’s really lame puzzles.

Jedi battles are just as lame, except you have to get close to enemies and button mash. You can also stun them with the force. And you can just on certain enemies, where you can either destroy them, or control them for a little while. This sucks…

Overall, this is a bad game, and I can’t believe it’s coming as a full-priced disc-based game. It’s barely high-enough quality to be a free downloadable game.

Heck… for the lolz… The Save Factor for this game is: 0$ (not even worth thinking about).

Half-Minute Hero
Well, the only PSP demo this week, and… I don’t even know what to think of it. The concept is crazy. Each stage is an RPG, that you have 30 seconds to finish. This includes leveling, finding treasures in dungeons and the confrontation with the final boss. Crazy.

So, how does it play? Well, you have an overworld map, and walking through it gets you random encounters, which play out automatically depending on the monster you’re fighting, and your level and equipment. These battles give you experience and money, which are used to level up and buy stuff. On the map, there’s towns, dungeons, traps, battles and the final castle. Of course, 30 seconds isn’t really long. The first stage you can play in the demo takes around 25 seconds to complete(maybe a bit less… though you know when you can beat the boss when the screen tells you “You>Evil”…. I think), but the second takes a bit over a minute. That’s where the Time Goddess comes in. In the towns (which are side-scrolling and small, filled with NPCs and stores that only sell 1 item), there are Time Goddess statues. Those statues, at a cost, let you reset the timer to 30 seconds. Each time you use them the cost increases, preventing you from abusing them. One good thing is that time stops when you’re in towns, so you don’t need to rush when you’re in there.

The first mission is simple. Level up a bit, buy the weapon in town, heal up, and pwn the boss. It’s easy and takes around 25 seconds to complete. The second level has 2 towns, a castle where you can recruit soldiers to help you, a quest in the first town which requires talking to an NPC in the second town, a dungeon with treasure and equipment, multiple types of equipment to buy, items to find (there’s an herb on your boat, which you can use to heal when you want without wasting money in a town) and special equipment to get to beat the final boss. This one took me 1 minute 20 seconds to beat the first time, and a bit less the following tries.

Overall… I think I had fun with this. Depending on how long the stages are in the final game, and how many stages there are, this could really be a fun release. I’m definitely getting that. It’s the only demo this week that I really feel is worth buying when the final versions come out. People who like doing speed runs will dig this for sure.

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WET, which is available on the European store, and Mini Ninjas, which is available just about everywhere.

So I played them both a few times, so here are my impressions!

Read on!

Mini Ninjas
Well, I didn’t have much expectations for this one. The trailer was interesting enough, but I wasn’t sure what the gameplay would really be like just from that.
So after playing it… I’m not impressed. The controls look complicated when they detail them when you start the demo, but when you actually play it’s quite simple. You have 2 attack buttons: normal attack and Power attack. Didn’t really understand what the power attack did, but when used on the ground it seems to stun anyone it hits. There were instructions in the game, but i skipped the ones for the power attack >_>. You can jump and run as well. Using the R buttons, you can choose and use items/jutsus. Other than that, you crouch with L2(you can hide in grass) and you can switch characters with L1. Oh, and you have to do stupid things like shaking your controller to open doors (though you can thankfully deactivate that). I don’t understand that at all. Why should I mash buttons to open doors/chest/whatever? Just let me press 1 button to open it, it’s a lot better than way.

So the gameplay… Well, you run around, saving animals and killing magically conjured samurai(who are actually animals which were transformed… wonder where I saw THAT before… *cough*). The fighting is pretty bad. I found that random button-mashing was the most effective thing you could do in fights. Also, there’s ranged enemies, so the other element of combat is to find where the ranged enemies are attacking you from and killing them first, because they’ll be the ones doing the damage against you. Heck, you can clear a big group of melee enemies with a single use of the fireball jutsu if all the enemies are close enough(and, if the demo is to be believed, they usually are), so they’re not really dangerous.The game also features a level up system. You get experience by killing enemies and saving animals from bamboo prisons. Leveling up raises some stats, though I don’t know which one since the only level up I got gave me more attack power. Also, you have 3 characters to use in the game, and you get… I think 3 more(I’m not re-opening the demo to check that >_>). Each character has its own characteristics. The big guy hits big enemies harder, and opens doors easier. Hiro, the main character, is the only one to use Jutsu, and that girl that you have on your team… I have no idea.

There’s also an exploration element. Basically there’s hidden items everywhere and, if you’re inclined to do so, you can try to find them. Yay?

Overall… it was very boring. The combat is button mashing, the exploration element was very boring to me, and overall gameplay wasn’t very interesting. I did like the humor at some parts, but otherwise this wasn’t very enjoyable at all. The game just feels like a… mid-quality downloadable game, definitely not something worth the full price.

WET
Well, I went at this with little to no expectations. I saw a few gameplay videos last year, before the game lost its publisher the first time, before Bethesda picked it up.

Well, first things first: I love the graphical style. Looks like an old movie. I love it. The character models are a bit low quality(though Rubi is higher quality than the rest), but the style is great. The second part of the demo has a nice part where the graphic style completely changes. All in solid colors, characters and object are black, the “background” is red red and blood is white. That part looks awesome. And the little we hear of the soundtrack is actually pretty fun. It’s an original soundtrack made for the game, and it fits the visual style quite well.

So the gameplay. Well, it’s relatively simplistic. The game doesn’t even use all the buttons, which is commendable since these days it feels like developers are forced to use every button despite rarely actually NEEDING it. X jumps (a bit weird to get used to, since Rubi jumps forward all the time), Square uses the sword, circle makes you slide on the floor, R1 shoots your guns (you can just hold the button for better shooting) and L1 makes you wall-run (either vertically or horizontally). The d-pad makes you switch guns (the demo gives you access to a few more than the standard pistol). You can use some of those in combination for different moves. Using L1 near an enemy when you’re sliding towards him makes you do a Human Wall-Run, for example. Oh, and Triangle is used for various context-sensitive things(opening doors, using ziplines, drinking alcohol).

The combat is pretty simple. Actually, your sword kills pretty much everything in one hit or two. Slash your sword, kill stuff, move on. The interesting part here is the gunplay. When you, jump, slide, or wall-run, you can shoot enemies. As soon as you press R1 in these cases, the game goes in a slow-motion thing, where you can aim at your enemies easier. Added to that is an auto-aim feature for you second pistol. So you can aim and shoot at one enemy with one gun, while the other gun will automatically aim for other enemies, or if there’s only one enemy, pme gun will automatically aim for him and you aim on your own for the other. The combat is simple, but it’s actually satisfying, and button-mashing will get you killed.

The game isn’t perfect though. After the fun first part where you’re chasing after some guy and the BADASS part after where Rubi goes berserk, you get what could be an AWESOME chase scene in an action movie. Here Rubi chases after… some car I guess, on a highway. Her method of transportation? Her hands and feet. She starts on a truck, then jumps from car to car, shooting and cutting baddies as she goes forward, doing death-defying stunts. The scene is truly awesome. But the gameplay… Well, it plays like an on-rail shooter, and your aim is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. You shoot enemies as they come out of their cars to shoot you(killing them is pretty important, because the longer they live, the closer you get from dying). And then… QTEs. Why? QTEs suck, I’d rather just look at this awesome scene instead of the whole stupid “Press X to not die” parts.
While I’m in the subject of QTEs, I guess I’ll also whine that opening doors by mashing buttons is still the stupidest idea ever.

Another thing I find is that some things lack transition. For example, to heal up, you drink liquor. Those scenes are cool. Rubi takes a sip of whatever the drink is, throws the bottle in the air and shoots it. But there’s no… transition after it, it goes straight back to gameplay and she’s instantly back in her neutral animations instead of moving back from the “bottle-shooting” animation. A bit weird.

Overall though, the demo was quite enjoyable. The gameplay is pretty fun, and the style of the game is just really cool. *Insert perverted “Wet” joke here*. Not sure if it’s gonna be worth the launch price of 60$ (70$ here in Canada), but it definitely looks like a fun game. Check out the demo if you have a European account, it’s worth it.

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Originally developed by pretty much unknown developer Ride On, Nippon Ichi America brings us Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida, which was renamed “Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What did I do to deserve this?”. The fun 8-bit-looking graphics and the random title reminiscent of oldschool Batman reeled me in, and the possibly fun gameplay and concept (being the bad guy trying to kill heroes) made me quite interested.

This is Ride On’s third game. The first was a Darius port on GBA, and the other was a Beat ‘em Up featuring maids with guns(from the Simple 2000 series). Their track record is short and not very inspiring, but Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida definitely looks interesting.

So with an english demo out (there was a demo before on the japanese PSN), we can see if it’s actually any good.

Read on!

What is in the demo?
There’s not that much content, of course. You get basic tutorials on how to play the game, an almanac that you can fill with all the creatures in the game(you don’t have access to all of them) and a story mode with 3 levels.

This gives a pretty good view as to how the final game will be like, without revealing too much. Considering the rather simplistic gameplay, it might be better not to show everything the game has to offer.

How does it play?
So here’s how the game works. You play as the God of Destruction (a pickaxe). You have a big cave with a bunch of squares. At first, most of the squares have dirt and nutrients. By pressing Square you remove the dirt at the square you’re on. If that space had nutrients on it (green stuff, sometimes white…), it summons a monsters. The first monsters you’ll summon are slimes. So slimes produce more nutrients, sometimes they upgrade spaces so they can produce different monsters like lizardmen and bugs. Each monster works differently. They all evolve in some way, reproduce in some way. For example, slimes become plants, then flowers, then they split into more slimes. The bugs (named Omnom, or the upgraded version, Omnomnom), eat slimes and grow wings. Lizardmen lay eggs in caves to get more population.

So what’s the goal of the game? Well, you have to dig the cave, with a limited amount of Dig Power, build an ecosystem in hope that it sustains itself and, when heros attack, that you monsters can protect the Overlord, Badman. When the hero attacks (either when you “go out the door” or the invisible time limit ends and the hero comes in by himself), you place Badman where you want in the cave, which SHOULD be a kind of labyrinth by now. So the hero comes in, and fights with any creature he finds on the way to the Overlord. He doesn’t always take the fastest path to the Overlord though, sometimes taking wrong turns in the labyrinth. If he reaches the Overlord, he ties him up and brings him out of the cave, and you have to hope your monsters will kill the hero before then. Also, some levels have multiple heros attacking you. Some with magic powers and healing magic.

When the hero dies, you go to the next level. Before that, you’re graded on your performance. The better you performed, the more Dig Power you get for the next level. If you have a lot of dig power left, you get more on the next level, and you can also upgrade your creatures with the leftover dig power you have, changing normal slimes to American Slimes, and Omnoms to Omnomnoms. Each creature needs a certain amount of levels to upgrade, and each level costs 100 Dig Power.

Hype Meter
Not incredibly high, but reasonably high anyways. Considering the REALLY simple gameplay (all you do is dig, really), it’s surprisingly fun to play and trying to maintain a self-sustaining ecosystem where your monsters will both multiply and grow, but also where one creature won’t completely overun the weaker ones, is really fun and surprisingly challenging. This is definitely a fun little game and is well worth checking out.

The humor is not too bad from what I’ve seen, but it’s normal NISA stuff which references to games, net culture and pop culture (the game’s title references Batman, obviously).

Definitely something I’ll pick up. Expect it to come out in July 2009.

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Well, the idea of Rock Band without instruments pretty much put this off of my radar completely. The demo coming surprised me, so I took a gander.

Can a dumbed-down version without instruments still be any good? Well, you might be surprised by the answer!

Read on!

What is in the demo?
You have 2 things. A tutorial, to get the basics of the game. And you have quickplay, which let’s you play one of 3 songs.  There’s Miss Murder by AFI, The Middle by Jimmy Eat World and Everlong by Foo Fighters. Each of those can be played at any difficulty. Oh, and each of those songs you only get to play about 50% of them.

There’s obviously not a whole lot of content, but it IS a demo… But why couldn’t they include full songs instead of just half songs? It’s the first time I play a rhythm game demo that does this. But still, it’s good enough to give you a good feel of what the final game will be like.

How is it?
Well, I was actually surprised. The lack of instruments to play is a downer at first, but the gameplay is actually pretty solid. Here’s how it works.
Each instrument only has four notes: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. You press Left for Red, Up for Yellow, Triangle for Green and Circle for Blue (vocals also work with button presses). You play all the instruments. Kinda. You start on an instrument, then you when you complete a “phrase”(a series of notes), or a solo, the instrument plays itself for a while. So when you’re done with a phrase, you can press L or R to go to another instrument that needs playing. If you screw up a phrase the instrument makes you do the next phrase until you can get it, and you can switch anytime to another instrument. If you screw up too much with an instrument, it fails and you slowly start losing the whole song. There’s white notes, which give you overdrive power when you get a series of them, and pressing X or Down brings you in overdrive (on all the instruments). It boosts your multiplier and revives all failed instruments.

It definitely takes some practice, and it gets a lot harder on higher difficulties. And it’s actually pretty fun to play.

Hype meter
The hype meter is not very high on this end. The game is definitely better than I was expecting, that’s for sure, and when I see it at a low price I will go and pick it up.

The problem is that the song list is a bit disappointing. Not because it’s bad, it actually has quite a few good/great songs, but it mostly features songs from Rock Band 1 and 2. Here it is:

* AFI – “Miss Murder”
* All-American Rejects – “Move Along”
* Audioslave – “Gasoline”
* Black Tide – “Show Me the Way”
* Freezepop – “Less Talk More Rokk”
* Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”
* The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
* Lacuna Coil – “Our Truth”
* Lamb of God – “Laid to Rest”
* Modest Mouse – “Float On”
* Queens of the Stone Age – “3′s and 7′s”
* System of a Down – “Chop Suey!”
* Tenacious D – “Rock Your Socks”

* Boston – “More Than a Feeling”
* Jackson 5 – “ABC” .
* Jethro Tull – “Aqualung”
* Kansas – “Carry on Wayward Son
* Rush – “The Trees”

* The Who – “Pinball Wizard”

There’s also some confirmed DLC, and probably more on the way.

Overall, this should be a pretty fun game, but the unoriginal song list is a bit disheartening.

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