So I’ll be working on getting everything back properly and we’ll be back to writing posts normally again. And I have a few new types of articles in the work, different from just reviews and “what’s coming out next month” kinds of posts.
Keep watching!
Edit: Okay, maybe we’re not back, big problem with the links to posts not working
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After hanging it to the ceiling and hitting it from the underside, something came out! (okay, I didn’t really do that… yet)
I’ll say that it looks pretty badass. The paint isn’t perfect, like Peach’s lips aren’t colored at all. And the plastic is a bit on the cheap side. But overall it’s a very nice little statue.
Speaking of little, this is actually fairly small. It’s a good size but… I have a 4 inch tall mario figurine that I bought earlier this year, and it’s actually as slight bit taller than this one.
Anyways, this is a pretty fun Club Nintendo reward, and I’m currently looking as to where to display it in my room…
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In any case. Voilà ! This links to my gallery with the innards of the beast itself.
Like the other times, I will be too scared to pop it in the system and get banned. Although I have heard that there is nothing to fear about popping in legit copies directly from the Xbox ban hammer lord himself in a podcast.
]]>Now november is coming with a few big guns as well, but seemingly a less fun experience in general. Also, no noteworthy 360 exclusive releases. Let’s see what November has for us!
Read on for the list! And be sure to comment if I forgot anything.
MULTI-PLATFORM RELEASES
Rabbids Go Home (DS, Wii) 11/01
This will most likely suck. I hate those fucking Rabbids, and how they (partly) ruined the roster in the last TMNT game. I have no expectations for this and won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. But I know it’s gonna sell and that’s why it’s on this list.
Need for Speed: Nitro (DS, Wii) 11/02
After the really good Need for Speed Shift, they bring us another NFS game. It looks a lot more arcadey than Shift, so it goes back to older style NFS. Might be good, but I reserve judgment until i actually play it.
Lego Rock Band (DS, 360, PS3, Wii) 11/03
I want someone to honestly come at me and tell me this doesn’t sound like a super stupid idea. The setlist is really short and doesn’t have anything great either… and couldn’t they choose ANY other Queen song? Seriously? Not that “We are the champions” and “We will rock you” aren’t good but… there are so many other/better choices. Anyway… no hype for this at all.
Dragon Age: Origins (PC, 360, PS3) 11/03
I’ll be frank and say I’m not a huge Bioware fan(not that I think their games are bad, of course, I know they’re good, but just not my style), and I will not be getting this game. But I also know it’s going to be a really good RPG and fans of the genre/company should definitely check this out.
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron (DS, PSP) 11/03
The only Battlefront game I played is the second one on PSP, and I frankly got no enjoyment out of it. But there’s lots of fans of this particular SW game series, so it’s on the list. Expect the DS version to suck compared to the PSP version
Band Hero (PC, 360, PS3, Wii, DS) 11/10
I guess they’re making this to “counter” Lego Rock Band… They might as well call it “Pop Hero”, since the soundtrack is mostly comprised of crappy pop music. There’s ZERO great songs on this, maybe a few that will be okay… lame.
Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (PS3, 360) 11/10
Well, the graphics and animations look good, but otherwise it just looks like the Budokai Tenkaichi games. And half the roster is probably different versions of Goku anyways. I’ll rent that one.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PC, 360, PS3) 11/10
Do I really need to say anything about this? Oh, I do? okay then… Sequel to one of the most popular generic FPS games of the generation. And it’s just gonna be another generic FPS. A really good one, of course, but it won’t ACTUALLY be anything special. It will no doubt be great, but it won’t be any different from just about any FPS released in the last 5 years.
Left 4 Dead 2 (360, PC) 11/17
It’s Left 4 Dead. Again. New campaigns and such, should be as good as before.
Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (PC, 360, PS3, PSP, DS) 11/17
People are super hyped for this. I’m not. Meh.
Tony Hawk Ride (360, PS3) 11/17
I really want to see how well this works. But that’s about it for me. To me, the Tony Hawk series stopped being fun after 3.
Assassin’s Creed II (360, PS3) 11/19
It does look a bit better than the first, but again I’ll reserve judgment until I actually play it/if I’m convinced they corrected all the problems from the first.
Playstation 3 RELEASES
3D Dot Game Heroes (Japanese release) 11/05
This looks awesome. A tribute to old-school Zelda games with badass swords. Can’t wait for an American release.
Record of Agarest War 11/09
That’s the “Soul Breeding” game they talked about on Kotaku quite a few times. Not exactly sure what it’s like, but it’s getting a lot of suggestive art attached to it… Ill rent it since I have no idea what it’s about really.
God of War Collection 11/17
I hate God of War. Button-mashing and QTE fest of suck. It started many annoying gameplay elements that games just can’t stop using anymore. Mashing buttons to open doors, adding stupid QTE segments in boss battles when they don’t need them, and just overall not being very good. But the series is incredibly popular anyways, and this is a noteworthy release for sure(being the first PS2 titles enhanced for the PS3), so it’s on the list.
Nintendo Wii RELEASES
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex 11/10
COD4 with tacked-on wii controls. Yay?
New Super Mario Bros. Wii 11/15
This looks really fun. The platforming itself looks interesting, and new power-ups might be fun, but playing with 4 people at the same time looks like it might be REALLY cool. And even people who suck at games can enjoy this with the Super Guide feature which can help them through the tougher levels. It just sucks that there’s 2 Toads, there’s no way Nintendo couldn’t think of something else for a fourth character.
Nintendo DS RELEASES
Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans 11/10
And RPG based on DBZ. Probably won’t be anything great.
Phantasy Star Zero 11/10
I actually haven’t checked anything about this. An interesting release nonetheless.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized 11/10
I dunno. I have no expectations for this.
Spectral Force Genesis 11/10
Might be an interesting RPG…
Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes 11/17
I had this on the list last month but it ended up getting delayed. So it’s back here.
Sony PSP RELEASES
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier 11/03
AIt’s Jak and Daxter. I’m not very familiar with the series, but it shouldn’t be too bad.
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Tag Force 4 11/10
Hopefully this one doesn’t have crappy motorcycle segments… But it’s based on 5D’s, so it probably will.
Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble 11/10
A beat ‘em up. There’s a little hype surrounding the game.
Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines 11/17
To tie in with Assassin’s Creed 2… this one seems based on the first game though.
LittleBigPlanet 11/17
It’s LBP, on PSP… Should be pretty good.
I love the powerglove. It's SO bad
Not as comfortable as I thought it would be
Finally got it. From jjgames. It cost $15, plus $2 for Super Glove Ball and $9 for shipping.A lot less than getting it on Ebay.
Initial impressions? It’s kinda tight and moving my fingers isn’t incredibly easy. Though otherwise it feels fine. I have yet to set it up though, so that’s all I can say for now.
]]>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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If you know me, you know I’m a relatively big fan of games NIS America bring over to America. There are some exceptions, of course, and I’m more partial towards games developped by NIS itself.
This game caught my interest for a number of reasons:
1. Published by NISA
2. Etna
3. Various Darkstalker characters
4. Interesting-looking gameplay
5. Costumes for all the female characters
6. SCHOOLGIRLS!
Read on and see if the game is actually good like I was expecting, or if it actually deserves the stupidly low 3.5/10 rating from IGN.
Looks and sounds
The game uses 2D sprites. Standard Definition 2D sprites. I wouldn’t mind too much, but I was expecting a bit more from the game graphically. The sprites are okay, but they have a big lack of detail. To make the game look weirder, there’s some enemies that are 3D models. Relatively low-quality 3D models. Mostly for big enemies that take multiple squares. The animations during battle are quite good though, well detailed and cool-looking attacks. The animations otherwise (in the world map and in dungeons) are pretty bad though. Graphically, the game is sub-par PS2 level when it comes to 2D. I don’t mind, but I would’ve loved to see all those characters in high-definition 2D instead of sub-par PS2 level…
Oh, but the bigger sprites used during conversations and in the status screens look fine. Oh, and did I mention that changing a character’s costume won’t affect their battle sprite? That sucks ass, I’d love if I could have an army of schoolgirls pwning the enemies, but I can’t. Blu-Ray discs should have more than enough space for a few thousand extra battle sprites(counting each separate frame of animation, of course) for each female characters, there’s no excuse.
Sound-wise, the game is all over the place. Really. The music ranges from really fun to crappy. The battle music is fine, some character themes are a bit weird, and some music just sucks. The sound design is pathetic. In cutscenes, when characters are walking, the sound of footsteps is always the same, no matter if there’s 2 characters or 10 walking at the same time(the only exception is when there’s 1 character walking), and there’s no synchronisation at all. Other sounds during cutscenes are also badly synchronized. The voice acting is pretty good though… When there is voice acting. Cutscenes range randomly from having voice acting to not having voice acting. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the scene is important or not. An important story scene might not have voices while a totally optional and random Hot Spring scene (involving prinny trying to get a glimpse of all the naked girls) will have voices.
The sound design in the game, in general, is pretty bad. And with Blu-Ray, there’s no excuse not to have voices on every scene.
Story
The game takes place in a world composed of souls, or something like that. Souls are sucked into this world, making the world sustain. Someday, some people(from various different worlds) are sucked into the soul-sucking world without their souls getting absorbed. They learn about what the world is, and decide to release souls who haven’t been absorbed yet, and find a way back to their own world. On the way they find other people who got sucked in this world, and enemies, who ALSO got sucked in this world, who were ordered(by some “unknown” being named The Empyreal One) to kill the good guys. You have the find the truth of the world, and get out of there,
That’s basically it. The interesting part is that there’s multiple endings. You get one ending for clearing very specific conditions and basically finding everything in the game (Truth End), and another ending if you miss certain things(Bad Ending), and another ending if you get the things that prevent the bad ending but miss other things that are required for the good ending. Since the conditions are very specific(like keeping some enemies alive in certain story-battles), there’s tons of things to do to be able to get the truth ending, and if you want it you’ll most likely play through the game multiple times and check online for the conditions.
Overall the story is okay.It’s a bit standard, which is weird considering the potential the story has, and it’s not OVERLY good, but it’s still interesting enough.
But the character interactions are not too great most of the time. The conversations are lame, or borderline embarrassing at times. There’s exceptions, of course, but they’re rare. I was definitely expecting more from this, with so many characters from different games. And all the characters other than York and Miko lost their memories, so some characters who should no each other just vaguely remember their names, making for some awkward conversations sometimes.
The characters come from games like Disgaea (sadly there’s just Etna and Prinnies), Darkstalkers, Ar Tonelico, Mana Khemia 2 (coming relatively soon over here), Spectral Souls series (which I’m not very familiar with, other than the lame PSP SRPG which sucks) and there’s a few original characters (York, Miko, the 3 bad guys, Troy and a few others).
Gameplay
So finally the gameplay. Well, it’s a turn-based RPG with a twist. First things first:
Navigation
There are 2 types of areas you can navigate in. First, the world map. Basically, it’s a big empty map(there’s multiple “layers” of the world, and each layer has different areas you can go to). Yes, empty. There’s a few things you can do here. Moving around, which raises the “encounter” meter and battles start when it’s red long enough. There’s Sealed Stone Tablets that prevent you from moving on until you pass certain conditions. Pressing Square makes you search. Searching can find 3 things: Events, souls and save points. Events are where the story advances, or random non-sensical things happen, for some extra comedy/randomness. Souls go towards an invisible variable that determines which costumes get unlocked, go towards the “release ratio” for certain Sealed Stone Tablets, and they give items. Those are needed for various things as well. Save Points, contrarily to what the name says, are not used to save your game(you can actually save anywhere, other than in dungeons). This is where you can shop, do alchemy, check the database for titles and costumes, use a wider area search function and revive unconscious allies.
Searching is a HUGE factor in the game, as you’ll be doing it a lot. Some events you’ll find increase your Search Level, enabling you to find things you couldn’t before. And you know what that means? It means you have to go through all the previous maps to find new souls and events. That is until the final Sealed Stone Tablet tells you there’s only 1 soul left for the release ration in that area of the world, then you can at least skip that one map until you get Search Level 10. This does get a bit tedious, but it can enable you to get in more fights, find more item, and unlock costumes, which is a good thing.
The other type of area is dungeons. They’re handled in a side-scrolling matter. You can jump and double-jump… and that’s about it. You get battles in dungeons the same way you get them on the world map, though it does offer some different enemies. Each dungeon has a bunch of rooms, and exploring them fully is needed to find new items. Just get to the end and that’s it. There’s no challenge really, since there’s no actual obstacles in the platforming.
Battle
Battles are really interesting here. There are 2 sides: the enemy side and the guys you control. Each side is comprised of a 3 by 4 grid, with 1 character per square. Your team is made up of 4 characters from your fairly large roster of characters. Each turn is made up of 2 phases: the Enemy Phase and the Player Phase. In the enemy phase, you opponents attack, and there’s nothing you can do. The player phase is the fun part.
You can choose which character will be attacking with L1 and R1. You choose the target with the D-pad. Each character can have up to 4 attacks assigned to the different face buttons. You set the attacks in the equipment menu, where you have a number of slots for attacks. Each attack has a range, so the placement of your characters on the grid is important. Each attack takes up AP. AP is a set stat on the character, which can be boosted with active skills and certain equipments.  The starting AP is the character’s base AP stat. Their maximum AP is twice their base, and each turn they recover the same number of AP as their base amount. Each attack also has an area of effect. While multiple attacks just hit one target, some attacks target part of  line, some target a whole line, whether it be vertical or horizontal and some attacks hit a set area.
So when you launch an attack, the attack hits, and then you have a timer. During that timer, you can change characters and launch more attacks. These add up to a combo hit count(and each attack has a number of hits it can do). When you hit an enemy, of course his HP comes down but there’s 3 other meters that you can affect: Burst, Break and Down. Different attacks and combos affect different meters. The Break meter basically increases the number of hits(and slightly different animations) that will come from a Branch Combo attack (more about that later), and when it’s down each character attacking at the moment or in a branch combo get a nice AP boost. The Burst and Down bars break the guard of the opponent, increasing the number of damage your attacks do(and from what I understand a given enemy type will only be guard broken from one of those 2 bars). As for the HP, after it gets to 0, the enemy stays alive until you let the timer go down (or if you press left on the left analog stick to end the combo), so you can continue attacking it, and there’s still more HP to remove. Hitting the enemy enough will Overkill it. Overkilling basically gives more chances for item drops and sometimes some rare item drops too.
Branch combos are what you’ll be using to bring that combo hit meter up. Basically, during an attack, if specific attacks follow each other, you’ll get a Branch Combo attack going on. Those usually have special animations, and can involve multiple characters. Some branch combos can be done with only 1 character as well.
EX attacks, which you can access by pressing R2, require not only large amounts of AP, but also the EX bar. The EX bar raises when you get hit, and when you hit. When it’s high enough you can unleash the highly damaging (or healing) EX skills. You get more of those as you level up as well.
When enemies die or you stop your attack, you can end your turn, use items, move your characters around the grid and switch your characters with characters that are out of the battle. All of those (other than ending your turn), use a set amount of AP as well. A valid strategy is to skip your first turn to get tons of AP on your second turn to deliver tons of damage.
Overall, the battle system is very fun to use. It has a little of a learning curve, but by the time you reach the second save point it should be no trouble to use at all. Trying to set up your team to do optimal damage and number of  hits is really fun(number of damage and hits are needed to open up certain titles, which equals more items, money and points). The only annoying thing is that running away ALWAYS works.
Leveling and other powering up methods(and other stuff)
Winning a battle gives you 5 things. Experience points, gold, TP, EP and Party Points. Experience adds up to each character, and when they reach a certain number they level up. Â Characters that were not in the active party get less experience points than those that are, so they still level up, but at a slower rate than active party members. Gold is used for 2 things: Synthesis and buying stuff. TP is used in the Save Points to search a large surrounding area, and you can exchange them for items at the database. EP is used for item upgrades, and party points are just like Use Points (which I’ll explain later) but that the whole party can use.
In the Save Point, there’s tons of stuff to do. The Alchemy shop is probably the most important, since you can synthesize, upgrade and enhance items. Each item starts at level 1. If you have the right amount of EP, you can distribute it to the item to raise its level, up to a maximum of 5. Items, after upgrade, can be processed to become different items. Those items are usually materials or active skills(which I’ll explain later). Â Synthesis is fairly simple. Find recipes, either in souls, dungeons, or in the 2 shops in the Save Point. Those recipes are then added to the Synthesis menu, and if you have the right materials(which are listed when you highlight the item) you can make them. When you make an item, other than a few exceptions, the item is added to the shop. Also, synthesis will fail, producing a different item than expected. Sometimes it can be good, sometimes it can be bad, it’s random. Finally, each item has a “grade” stat. In the alchemy shop, you can take enemy drops and embed them within your weapons. Each item has a different stat boost, and each item has a different grade requirement. You can put as many things as you want in the items, as long as you have Grade left.
The other thing you can do to power up in the Save Point is use the database, where you can get titles and costumes. Titles have a set of requirements, and give money, PP, TP and items. The requirements range from doing high hit combos, high damage, killing a number of enemies, killing a specific number of specific enemies, finding certain items, finding souls, doing synthesis, and various other stuff, which can be pretty fun to do. Costumes are the interesting part. By getting side-events that have to do with certain characters, you unlock costumes for them in the database. When they’re unlocked, you can see the required conditions to actually get them, and when you get them, you can equip them. For the male characters, it’s really just a stat change. For female characters, it not only changes stats, but also the appearance in the status menus and conversation sprites. The stat changes can be either positive or negative, or sometimes both. Costumes are basically classes. And sometimes they’re just there for the LAWLZ, like Etna’s school swimsuit uniform, which reduced her HP to 1 when I first equipped it (though now she’s a bit higher). The costumes are really a fun element… now if only the battle sprites changed, and the costume change animation was not as lame and cheesy…
As you level up, you get normal stat boosts, but you also get Use Points. Those points are used to add stat points to any stat you want. Each stat has a different requirement of Use Points to be boosted, and that requirement rises as you level the stat up. And different types of characters have different requirements for each stat. For example, mages take less Use Points to boost their intelligence.  In addition to Use Points, you can use Party Points in the same way, by pressing Triangle on the Status option in the menu. This way you can really personalize the stats of every character like you want them. To add another layer to the personalization, there’s active skills. Those can give stat changes, slight behavior changes, or protection to certain types of attacks. Active skills are equipped directly to armor and accessories, which have a different number of slots each.
The leveling offers lots of ways to personalize your characters and really make the kind of team you want. There’s various different ways to boost your equipment and characters, and it’s fun to boost your team and make what works best for you.
OVERALL
Cross Edge has solid gameplay. The battle system is very fun. Sure, it gets a while to get used to, but after about 10 battles you’ll know exactly what to do. There’s a wide range of characters and attacks, so you can build your team like you want. Being limited to only 4 characters in your active party does make for some early decision making, but you can always grind your way to strong characters if you really want to. The leveling methods and various ways to boost your characters and equipment let you with lots of ways to make your characters like you want them.
The navigation is a bit weird and AWFULLY repetitive. Having to go through all the maps again when you search level increases (though some maps are only up to certain levels for that, so after level 5 some maps are okay until you reach level 10), and the world maps are nothing spectacular or incredibly fun. But it still works pretty well.
The gameplay is enough to make up for everything that sucks or are sub-par about this game. It’s fun and addictive, and in the end that’s all that matters.
Why did the game get bad scores?
Because, TECHNICALLY, the game is horrible. Nevermind the low-grade graphics(well, I do like 2D sprites, but most people don’t, so….) and the bad sound design, the whole of the game is a technical mess. Despite the game using low-res 2D sprites and low-res 2D in general, the game can’t run on the PS3 properly without lagging and slowing down constantly. On the world map, you’ll notice framerate drops all the time, especially when you’re using search. During battles sometimes the animation will stop completely for a few frames. Â Sometimes the game will just slow down and not register your button presses. This is standard definition 2D game on a POWERHOUSE of a console, and it’s constantly slowing down. The game even slows down in menus. Oh, and while I’m at it, add BAD TRANSLATION to the mix. For the most part the translation seems fine(with a few hiccups here and there), but for some reason they managed to translate “Witch” as “Walorck”. So if you see a title that requires killing 15 warlocks, you actually need to kill 15 witches. Confusing AND stupid.
The other big problem is the loading times. There’s a 4.4GB optional install. You’d expect the loading times for a game like this to take no more than a second for map changes or room changes in dungeons. But the loading times for those can go up to 7-10 seconds long, and that’s WITH the install(can’t imagine how long the loading times are without it). It can’t be that demanding a game for a PS3, so why does it have so much trouble loading things? It’s probably that the code is badly optimized and it has trouble loading it.
Reviewers didn’t look past the technical difficulties, low-grade graphics and amateur-ish sound design. Because of that, it’s obvious that the scores for the game are far from stellar. Oh, and the fact that for some reason the reviewers had trouble with the gameplay as a whole, despite it not being very complicated. That lowered the score too. So basically they didn’t look at the gameplay, they just looked at the technical problems, and deemed the game to be BAD. But it’s not.
Also, I see a lot of people saying the menus are too hard to navigate… I think those people are morons, the menus are incredibly simple and self-explanatory, not much harder to go through than the average Final Fantasy menu.
So yes, the game is screwed up, it had so much potential but is ruined by badly optimized graphics, sounds and coding. The PS3 should logically have no trouble with the game, and there’s so much they could’ve done but didn’t (like costume changing the battle sprites for each character). And that’s why it got low scores. Because of lazy coding and graphics, and really not doing much good technically. Reviewers saw that(and seemingly lots of “normal” gamers), and didn’t look much further than that.
Overall
This is a really fun game. If you can look past the huge number of technical difficulties and bad sound design and low-level graphics, you have a fun and deep RPG with a variety of fun systems and a LOT to do.
NISA fans will find something to love here for sure, RPG gamers should like to see what it’s all about(with a rental at first), but I can’t suggest the game to anyone else really. Modern gamers are too stuck up to give a chance to a game with technical difficulties like this, really.
It deserves a much higher score than what IGN gave, that’s for sure. The gameplay alone is deep and quite interesting, warranting a high score by itself. My guess is that IGN, or any other big name reviewers, didn’t give it a chance and didn’t look further than the technical suckiness.
Yes, it should be on the PS2 (where the technical issues would probably not even be there), but it’s still a respectable game. Considering the lack of RPGs on the PS3, some people might want to at least check it out.
(this is officially my longest review, if not my longest post on the blog… 3600 words is WAY too long >_<)
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I recently reviewed the Xbox 360 Onechanbara game, Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. It was a fun little game, with simple but fun gameplay. I only rented the Wii version, but got enough gameplay from it to see that it’s a lot worse than the 360 version.
This will just be a short post. So read on!
Looks and sounds
The graphics are obviously a step down from the Xbox 360 version. But not THAT much of a step down, since the 360 version was mostly a very low grade 360 game graphic-wise. The textures are a lot worse, the models have a lower poly-count. Graphic glitches are a dime a dozen though. And there’s a bit lack of detail everywhere. But the graphics are still okay by wii standards. The sounds are pretty much the same, though some things sound a lot worse, like the chainsaws.
Story
Well… It’s a sequel to the Xbox 360 game. But it’s kinda hard to tell, since there’s barely any cutscenes or anything, other than a few when a character meets another character, and there’s barely any work done on those. The rest of the story is told through slowly scrolling blocks of text that aren’t really interesting to read. You can make the text scroll faster, but it’s never really intesresting and the story never really seems to be moving… Kinda lame on that side.
Gameplay
There’s one big problem with this game: Wii Controls. They’re badly done. Swinging the Wiimote slashes your sword (or fists if you’re using Saki’s Beat style), swinging the nunchuk kicks (or does Saki’s grabs in Beat style). That could’ve been fine… Almost. The Wiimote is incredibly unresponsive, and won’t do anything if you swing it horizontally, unless you start a weird horizontal combo that I never figured out how to do. Holding certain buttons on the Wiimote while swinging do extra things: holding 1 will let you do a special or an extasy attack by swinging the Wiimore or nunchuk (respectively), and holding B and swinging the Wiimote cleans your sword or fists from blood. There’s the most annoying part: doing different attacks. That just doesn’t really work. There’s thrust attack with Saki and Aya where you have to do a slight pause then thrust the Wiimote on the fourth attack, but it almost never works, and most of the time you’ll end up doing something else completely.
But you know what’s annoying? Despite the controls not working really well, the game is EASIER. There’s almost always fewer zombies on screen, and but random Wiimote wagglnig almost guarantees that most of your attacks will be Cool combination attacks. Those are done when you swing right when the first attack hits (just like in the 360 version), and it was hard but rewarding to do in the 360 version. In the Wii version, more than half your attacks will be Cool combination attacks, and that’s just with random Wiimote waggling. It sucks when games encourage random Wiimote waggling.
But there’s ONE think the Wii version does better: in-game tutorials! Yeah. From time to time the game stops and gives you a window explaining some of the gameplay mechanics. The 360 version didn’t do that, and consequently you had to figure all that by yourself. Well, the 360 version DID gives those tips, but only one at a time when you died (giving you a tip that has to do with how you died).
OH, also Saki has a style change this time, being able to fight with her fists. That’s cooler than the “no different fighting styles” from the 360 game.
Overall
It’s budget priced, and the price is lower than the Xbox 360 game. But it’s a lot less worth it than the Xbox 360 version. The tacked on Wii Controls are lame and unresponsive, and could’ve been handled a lot better. The graphics are worse but not too bad. The story is a lot harder to understand with the big lack of cutscenes and conversations (you CAN read the text that passes by on every chapter, but that’s a bit annoying). This game is big proof that Wii Controls can really suck if not done properly. If you want a similar game, check out Soul Calibur Legends, it at least controls are better.
Yeah, that’s it. Not very a very long review, but it doesn’t need to be longer.
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Damn, how long did I wait for this movie? It was around my second year of college, so at least 3 years ago, probably close to 4 years by now. Needless to say, I was constantly doubting this movie would actually come out beyond random screenings at places far from here. But at total random I check out the video store’s release list and lo and behold, I see My Name Is Bruce. So it’s actually coming out? Really?
As excited as I was, I had to wait a bit to watch it, because I wanted to see it with friends. But finally, no more than 20 minutes ago, I watched it.
Was it worth the wait? Read on! (don’t worry, really short review, with a few screenshots at the end)
Story
A kid (who is a MAJOR Bruce Campbell fan) goes in a graveyard with his friends, and releases a powerful Chinese demon (A god of war and bean curd), who vows to kill everyone who is related by blood to the kid. This takes place in southern USA, so of course that means EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE (a village called Gold Lick) is blood related.
On his side, Bruce is feeling down, being depressed that he doesn’t feel the magic of making movies anymore and his personal life is sucking ass. Yeah, it’s really Bruce, not a character.
This all changes though, when the people of Gold Lick kidnap him and tell him a demon is attacking them, and that he’d be the one to save them all. Because of something his agent said the day before, he believes this is all a stunt and just “plays along” for a while, thinking everyone there is an actor, but he eventually realizes the truth.
The story is entertaining. It has that B movie quality to it, and it leads to a bunch of fun situations.
The rest of the stuff
The special effects are good. Gotta love B movie special effects. They always seem a lot more real than CG. Sometimes they look cheap, but that’s just because they’re supposed to. Not the best effects in Bruce’s history, but some good stuff nonetheless.
The comedy is awesome. Bruce is a badass bad-mouthing dude who loves referencing his old movies, and the rest of the characters, though (mostly) not that funny themselves, help Bruce’s comedy a lot. May it be random references to his old movies or just random little jokes and recurring jokes, the comedy here is really entertaining.
The deaths are sadly a bit cheap. Mostly beheadings that all look the same (or at least are handled similarily). The best death though is Ted Raimi’s (when he’s playing that painter guy), really funny. A few other funny deaths, but nothing REALLY great.
Overall
Overall, well it was worth the long wait. The comedy was great, the effects were okay, the story was entertaining enough, and it features Bruce Campbell’s chin, who did a pretty good job here.
If you’re a Bruce Campbell fan, this is a MUST WATCH. Otherwise, well the comedy might be good enough for just about anybody, though non-fans might just not understand a lot of it.
Pictures
Yeah, I’ll insert a few screenshots.
The God of War and Bean Curd in all his foggy glory!
Bruce gets pwnd by a quarter and a baseball bat
"Don't you speak engrrrish?!?!?!?!?!" What a useless character that was...
Bruce getting some MILF ass
Bruce and his band of Southern minions, about to fight the demon!
Didn't he learn to use a shotgun in the Evil Dead movies? Don't let a girl teach you man!
Let’s start with a bit of history. Oneechanbara was a game in the “Simple 2000″ series in Japan, made by D3 publisher. It was a relatively simple game (as the title suggests). The full name was “Simple 2000: The Oneechanbara”. Â Simple 2000 was just a bunch of cheaply made games for the most part and most weren’t really good and didn’t become popular. But The Onechanbara one of the few titles in the series, if any, to spawn an actual sequel. Heck, it was so popular it even got a movie (which I reviewed), and it was surprisingly good. Like a good B movie, a bit campy but ultimately a fun watch, and one of the very few good video-game based movies.
That of course made me interested in the actual games, and as luck would have it 2 were announced in America: this one, and Bikini Zombie Slayers on the Wii. So I knew I had to at least pick up one of them (and i’ll rent the other later). And, like the movie, this was surprisingly fun.
So let’s go! Read on!
Looks and sounds
The graphics are okay. Pretty much like a really early 360 title. The textures are kinda meh, the enemies look average, and the girls are well done. There’s a few problems though. I saw people whining about the resolution. I didn’t have many problems with that, but what I DO see, a lot, is screen tearing. There’s tons of it. All the time. May it be during cutscenes or during gameplay, if there’s some movement on the screen, there’s gonna be screen tearing. Heck, I even get some when just running around with no zombies in the vicinity. And there’s some graphical glitches, like Saki’s mini-skirt disappearing to show her panties at total random, which was kinda weird…
The sound is average. I actually don’t remember any of the music in the game just by thinking about it, but while playing you know it does the job okay. Â The voice acting is all in Japanese with subtitles, and for the most part the voice actors do a good job, though sometimes they seem to lack emotion. The sounds of the zombies are well done, either showing what weapon they have and such giving you proper sound cues to know when to evade gun fire and such.
Overall, the game looks and sounds fine though not as NEXT-GEN (current-gen would be the proper term, but whatever 
) as other titles on the 360, keep in mind this is a budget title.
Story
After… Whatever happened in the 2 first games, Saki and Aya are teamed up and taking a break from zombie-killing. But that break doesn’t last too long, as zombies are attacking the city. So it’s up to them to get to the bottom of this zombie attack. It just so happens that some organization is after Aya and Saki’s Baneful Blood, which has… something to do with zombies, and they want to kidnap Saki (and actually manage to do so in the beginning of the game). Saki is saved by Anna, a gun-using policewoman in a skimpy outfit (surprising isn’t it?).
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The rest of the story pretty much revolves around finding out about the organization behind the zombie attacks (since they have control over that) . Not a super-interesting story, but it’s not bad either.
Gameplay
This works like a basic Beat ‘em up. Go through a stage, come across enemies, go further in the stage, beat more enemies, and eventually fight a boss. The game’s basics are… really basic. But it still has quite a bit of depth. There’s various enemy types that require different strategies to fight, or different moves for faster kills, or different strategies by using different characters.
The basic controls are simple. You have a jump button, an attack button, a kick/alternate attack button and a third alternate attack/move button. You can lock on which gives you some evasion moves. You have a style change move which changes the weapons a bit ( Aya gets 2 swords instead of 1, Anna exchanges here badass dual-pistols for a shotgun and a machine gun and Saki gets NOTHING), a button to change character (most missions you get to choose 2 characters for the mission) and a button to clean your bloody sword or reload your ammo. Â And the “Back” button brings you to the item menu so you can use items to heal yourself and get temporary stat boosts and such (the instruction manual doesn’t tell you that). You have various attacks, depending on your Skill level and what button combinations you use.Â
The camera is a bit bad, it moves way too slowly, but it does the job most of the time, though it gets really jittery when you lock-on to an enemy.
Each character has a bunch of normal attacks and 2 special attacks. There’s a ” counter stance” attack that does massive damage in a small area in front of you, but it takes away from your lifebar. As you build up your combo, a yellow bar fills up near your character’s portrait, and as it gets higher you can use an ecstasy attack. Saki and Aya get a spinning attack(as seen in the movie!). Aya’s does more damage, but Saki’s does a shockwave which attacks far away enemies and Anna just mows away all that’s in front of her with her guns and during those attacks you’re invincible.
Aya and Saki also have 2 special mechanics. First is the bloody sword. As you kill zombies, your sword gets more bloody and loses its sharpness, sometimes getting stuck in zombies, so you have to keep your sword clean to prevent getting trouble with things like this. Anna doesn’t have that, but she has to reload her guns from time to time. The other mechanic is the Bloodlust system. As you kill zombies, Aya and Saki get covered in blood, and if there’s too much, they get in Rampage mode. This speeds you up and makes your attacks a lot more powerful, but you lose health as you stay in that state. The only ways to get out of that is to either use a goddess statue head or find a goddess statues on the map to purify yourself. Anna doesn’t have that mechanic, or something to replace it, because she doesn’t have Baneful Blood(sorry, no blood-covered policewoman for you).
Enemies are mostly zombies, may it be animals or humans or mud with hearts (yeah, weird), and they’re a bit different from usual zombies. Not Left 4 Dead fast, but still they can be fast(when they want to) and they can also use weapons. At first they can have chainsaws and such, or they can be burning. Later they can have handguns and shotguns. Enemies get dismembered when you slash or shoot at them, and that changes how they act. Zombies with guns, for example, can’t aim properly anymore if you cut their head off. When you cut their torsos, only their legs are left(why their legs instead of their upper body? I don’t know) and they can kick you, but they’re easy targets. There’s various other enemies. Zombie crows, zombie dogs, huge zombies, mud zombies that you can rip their heart out of for a fast kill and a few others. Bosses are a bit tougher. They take a lot more abuse and have more complicated attacks. But they have patterns and relatively cheap AI that are easy to fool. Also, against certain bosses, if you evade certain attacks with the perfect timing, you get some bullet-time and if you attack during that time you do massive damage to the boss.
Other stuff
In addition to the normal mode, there’s a survival mode and a freeplay mode where you can go through any stage with any character, but the most “interesting” is the Dress-up mode. This starts you up with the characters in their underwear and you can dress them up to make your own custom costumes. To get those costumes though is a really tough task, as you have to do various “quests” in the game, which aren’t all that easy. But after getting some and making costumes, you can use those costumes in any more in the game.
Also, there’s a leveling feature in the game. Enemies gives orbs when they die, and those give experience. As you level up you get 3 points per level which you can put in 1 of 4 stats: Skill (gives more attacks as it gets to certain levels), Vitality (defense/health), Power and Reach (for Anna it’s Gun, which makes her guns stronger, so power isn’t one of the really important stats for her). So you can pretty much customize each character like you want them to be. Cool stuff.
There’s a few other elements I could speak of like bracelets, but sadly I suck too much to get more than 2 consecutive “Cool” attacks (which somehow require pressing X while your sword is in an enemy… or something like that… I’m not too sure, but it requires consecutive “Cool” attacks on  Blood Mist monsters.
Overall
The game is fun. It’s like an old-school beat ‘em up, but with a bit more depth. If you like old-school beat ‘em ups, this could be right up your alley. Otherwise, it’s really violent with blood everywhere and, if it’s selling, it’s mostly because of the premise of bikini/schoolgirl outfit-clad japanese girls killing zombies with katanas, but look beyond that and you actually have a good game. Simplistic, yes. Repetitive, yes. But bad? No fucking way. Not the best game ever, but it’s unreasonable to expect that. It’s budget-priced, so it’s not like you’re losing THAT much trying it out. And the face of the store clerk(and other people in the store) will most likely be pretty funny when you bring that up to the counter.
What could make the game better? MAIDS. You get a bikini and cowboy hat-wearing girl, a schoolgirl and a policewoman, but no maids? Sucks. Maybe you unlock maid outfits as you finish quests, I didn’t get everything yet so I don’t know. Also, the instruction booklet is horrible, one of the worst I’ve ever seen, it says nothing about the game and you have to rely on IGN’s well-written guide instead (though they don’t say much about the controls, but you’ll figure that out easily).
*EDIT*
Good timing I say, DLC was just released for this. 6 outfits(2 for Aya, Saki and Anna… 1 for Aya is free and 1 for Saki is free, the rest are 200 points) and 3 new characters to play as (Reiko from the older games(she’s free), Misery and Himiko (those 2 are 500 points)) and there’s a pack with all the content for 1600 points (20$… kinda a lot if you ask me…).