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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Well, this is a moment I was quite hyped for. Finally getting the play the demo for Vanquish. One part of me is very excited for this game, and then there’s the part of me that says “calm down, it’s probably just another bland TPS”. SURE, it’s being made by Platinum games, who made the incredibly badass Bayonetta, but, on the other hand, it’s a TPS with a cover system, which has pretty much never been really enjoyable to me (too slow, too easy, rarely actually any fun to play).

Me getting excited about a TPS is all sorts of weird. Almost as weird as me getting excited about an FPS. In both cases, I usually end up being disappointed (most recent example: Singularity… Please don’t suck Bulletstorm, PLEASE), and this is why I’m being VERY skeptical about Vanquish.

So does this game follow the blandness of most TPS, or is it actually good?

Read on and see!

What I liked

Well, let’s start with the big one first: The game is actually really damn good. That was a big surprise to me.

The actual gameplay is well done. Rather than the average “take cover and kill stuff when it shows up” gameplay of modern TPS, here you rocket around the battlefield, the pace of the gameplay is just awesomely fast. While you CAN take cover to fight, it’s not the best method, and it’s very slow. Just boosting everywhere killing anything that gets in your way is not only more efficient, but it’s a whole lot more fun. There’s a lot of different ways to handle each situation as well, which makes the experience as a whole really interesting. And there’s a fun little upgrade system for your weapons too, and the HUD is really well-done (showing tons of useful info). And there’s a scoring system! Very few modern games have that unless they’re shmups, and I love getting points. The grenades are good too since you can actually throw them a reasonable distance. Oh, and I like that you can carry 3 weapons and 2 types of grenades… Still not as good as carrying all of the weapons at once like in older FPS, but it’s better than just carrying 2. Very few complaints in regards to the basic gameplay.

I love boosting around the battlefield. It’s smooth, easy to do, and it’s not unlimited so you have to gauge your use of the thing. And every other power uses your boost meter too, which really requires you to do some fast decision-making.

The bullet-time here is actually really good. I thought it would just be a lame gimmick that just doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the gameplay, but in this case it’s fun to use and incredibly useful. You get the slow-down when you’re close to die which enables you to react better to surrounding attacks (but that depletes your boost meter so it’s not really that cheap). You can also slow down time during dodges, and during boosts as well, which has tons of great uses.

I like the visual style too. It’s not incredible, but it looks really well done. It’s not just brown and gray, there’s a good array of colors here (though there’s a lot of white…. but I’ll take that over boring/overdone grey-brown ruins any day). The animation is top-notch as well, everything is fluid and fun to look at, and nicely detailed too.

OH, and something that I’m pretty happy about here: while you have unlimited continues, you are actually penalized for dying. I love that. Most modern games hold your hand so much that dying is rarely a bad thing (and sometimes it’s a good thing). Here, you are scored for your performance through a level, and you lose a bunch of points if you die.

When I first saw the controls, I thought it was way too spread out and would be tough to use. After playing around for a few minutes, I barely had any trouble with the controls. A few hiccups here and there due to awkward things (like slowing down time while boosting, it’s kinda tough to do properly). A bit of practice and any veteran gamer should have little trouble playing this.

What I didn’t like

It has QTEs. QTEs suck. Though here you don’t need to do them to kill the boss (and hopefully none of the bosses will require QTEs to kill), so it’s not as bad as in some games. And you didn’t even have to activate the QTE against the boss at all, so you might not even see it at all. But still, using QTEs is weak gameplay design and shouldn’t be here, especially when the gameplay is as solid as it seems to be here.

I don’t like that melee attacks completely use up your boost meter. It’s just annoying. And the attacks themselves are pretty pointless despite being one hit kills on standard enemies, shooting is usually a better option (since it doesn’t fully deplete your boost meter).

There’s regenerating health. I understand why it’s there… I mean, enemies are relentless and you die really fast… But why not make the enemy a bit less relentless, and/or give you a life bar and give a few health packs from random enemies or hidden on the battlefield? That would be just as good, if not better. With the regenerating health, you can basically survive anything without trouble, which kills the challenge. A health bar would force you to try harder to survive. I don’t mind the system too much, I just think a health bar would be so much better.

The weapons kinda suck. Basically just the standard FPS/TPS selection. Assault rifle, sniper, slightly slower but stronger machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, etc. And the tutorial DOES show off the “Disc Launcher”, which seems awesome… I just hope the retail version has more original weapons like that.

And I don’t really like the music. Not “video game-y” enough.

Overall

After playing the demo, I’m quite excited to play the retail version. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that either. TPS are generally pretty boring games, with their “just stay in cover and you’ll never die” gameplay with barely any action going on (and, when they try to steer away from the cover gameplay, they usually fail heavily or make things needlessly hard because the game engine isn’t built for that). This, on the other hand, plays almost like an action game rather than a TPS, which is awesome.

The gameplay is fast, the visuals are great and complement the gameplay nicely, there’s barely ever any “lag” because there’s too much going on on-screen, and it’s just a total blast to play. And I like that the cover system is kinda secondary compared to the rest of the gameplay. Yeah, I do have a few minor problems with what I saw in the demo as you can see above, but they’re nowhere near game-breaking. The good MORE than outweighs the lame here.

So yeah… I’m not cancelling my pre-order on this one. Good job Platinum Games, you have done something I thought to be impossible: making a TPS I could actually enjoy. The world must be ending soon… (yeah, technically inFamous was also a TPS that I enjoyed, but that felt more like an action-adventure game to me…)

(Note: my fastest time through the demo was 7 minutes 16 seconds… getting pretty close to that 6 minutes 12 seconds the developers did)

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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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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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I played both demos a few times to get a good grasp of them, so let’s go with the impressions.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Wanted is a Third Person Shooter with a cover system. It’s also based on a kinda meh movie. What does it have going for it? Bullet curving. That’s really the only element of the game that I heard people really be excited about. Anyways, after playing through the tutorials and the demo itself a few times, I cam to the conclusion that the game… is not bad… but really nothing special, there’s better on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in that aspect.

So game mechanics… well there’s a cover system that’s a bit annoying to use, with blind firing really not working well, but overall the system is good. There’s also 1-hit-kill moves… And they’re stupidly easy to do. Just get close to an enemy and press the Circle button. And the enemy AI is so stupid, you can easily do that without them realizing it. When you kill enemies icons light up (up to 2) and those give you one of 2 “powers”. You can use 1 of the icons to shoot a curved bullet. That’s done with R1, you hold it to adjust your angle until the bullet hits the enemy and not something else, and the game tells you if you’ll hit by making the line and target white instead of red. Sometimes you’ll get a slow motion to see the bullet hitting the enemy. The other “power” is bullet time. When going from one spot of cover to another, instead of pressing X you can press Triangle, and that initiates bullet time, giving you ample time to aim for enemies. This uses 2 icons.

Bullet curving is annoying, because you go out of cover to do it, and despite the tutorial making you think it’s really accurate, in the game itself, if the target is even thinking of moving, you probably won’t hit it. And when you shoot the camera goes haywire since you’re using the right stick to aim.

Overall the game seems average. Bullet curving is basically a lame replacement for grenades to hit people who are behind cover. The 1-hit-kills are kinda lame, the bullet time is sorta useless, the AI is quite stupid(come out of the other side of a pillar and they’ll never know you came out). And the graphics are pretty bad by today’s overly high standards. Definitely doesn’t live up to the hype, and I won’t be buying it. You can do much better than Wanted if you want a good Third Person Shooter, that’s for sure (Uncharted(and its upcoming sequel) on the PS3, the Gears of War games on the 360).

Watchmen: The End is Nigh

With the Watchmen movie coming today, a game tie-in is a must. I’m not incredibly familiar with the world of Watchmen, but the demo gave me a good idea of what the world there was like. So the game is set-up in an Arcade Beat ‘em up style, ALA Double Dragon/River City Ransom.

The controls are simple, with a few attacks and combos you learn on the way by finding tokens. Light attacks, strong attacks, throws, counters, all basic stuff. You can combine your attacks how you want, or use basic combos that you learn from tokens by pressing the buttons in the right timing. There are, sadly, some QTEs in the game, but they are relatively well done. They’re not intrusive in any way, there’s totally optional, and they can only be done when the enemy is close to dying anyways. The one annoying thing is opening doors and using switches… If you’re playing as Nite Owl, there’s one gate you open by button mashing, and, of course, that’s a horrible thing. And some switches you have to wait for your partner to activate his so that both switches are activated together and then something happens.

Otherwise, the game is pretty much just going from encounter to encounter, with minor puzzles on the way. It doesn’t over-complicated itself and it doesn’t really NEED to. The demo let’s you play as Rorschach or Nite Owl, but both characters are pretty similar. Nite Owl moves a bit faster, and I have no idea what Rage does so I can’t say if Rorschach is really different or anything other than the slight difference in walking speed, and maybe a bit stronger (?).

One thing that annoyed me in the demo was the lack of targeting. I was surrounded by multiple enemies multiple times, and each time, hitting the guy I wanted to wasn’t incredibly easy, as the targeting changed at total random, making it hard to concentrate on the enemies you want to.

There’s 1 feature in the demo that I couldn’t try since I didn’t learn it. Either Rage or Charge, I have no idea what those do since the L2 button didn’t do anything for either Rorschach or Nite Owl in the demo (so it’s probably something you learn later on).

Overall it doesn’t look like a bad game if you like Beat ‘em ups, but I think the 20$ pricetag is a bit steep, and that alone made me wait for a price drop or promotion on the game, or something. The graphics are fine for a downloadable game, the cinematics look awesome with a weird art style and non-moving lips when characters talk, the gameplay is simple but solid enough.

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Read on for my impressions.
 
Graphics
The graphics aren’t too bad. The zombies look kinda scary, some more than others, the environments are really well done. The playable characters though don’t look THAT great. There’s some nice details and such, but overall they don’t look real. I think the graphics really fit well though, and overall it’s a really good looking game.
Other than that there’s a few graphical glitches. Most notably right down the first stairway, I could see a zombie’s head pass through a wall from the next room, or you can pass through your teammates’ bodies and see them transparently and such which just looks weird.

Weird stuff like that happens

Sound
This is spot on. All the sound effects, the voices, the zombie screams everything fits in great. I was totally freaked out he first time I went in the subway and heard the Witch there. Not much more to say here.

Gameplay 
Really like this. This is definitely not your normal zombie game. Instead of the weak and slow zombies from normal zombie games, the ones here are fast and strong, and there’s a lot of them at a time.
The game plays like a normal FPS, using the HL2 engine, so right there it’s a pretty different take on the usual zombie game.  The game is really fast-paced, but at the same time it retains the usual “is there something around the corner” feel zombie games usually have. 

So you start off on top of a building, and you must get in the streets to  get to the subway to eventually get to a safe spot. You get a few weapons on the way: Shotguns, Machine Guns, Molotov Cocktails, pipe bombs and Pistols with infinite ammo (you have to reload, but you still have infinite ammo) which gets really badass once you get a second pistol. So basically you’re going from room to room, or just different sections of the map to get to the next and you kill zombies on the way.

There’s the normal zombie who runs fast and gang up on you, but there’s also a handful of boss enemies. Hunters are super agile and stick to surfaces and kill by jumping on you and slashing at you until a teammate helps you out. Smokers strangle you with their really long tongues, and release gaz when they die, reducing visibility and such. Boomer are fat… They vomit on your and explode when you kill them (putting vomit on you if you’re close to them). Their vomit attracts hordes of normal zombies, so be careful.
There’s 2 also super bosses: Tanks, who are just really big and strong. And Witches, who “injure”(if you don’t get helped fast you die) you in one hit. Those will attack you if you startle them (AKA flash your light at them, shoot near them, or shoot them), and they have really creepy voices when you’re near them.
So there’s a nice variety of enemies and the bosses really make things interesting.

If I had to fault something there, it’s the AI controlled teammates. They constantly get in the way and are kinda useless unless there’s a horde attacking.

Overall the gameplay is really good, much better than I expected, I was really surprised. Fast-paced, requires a bit of strategy, and overall just really fun to play.

Overall
I was actually surprised. I wasn’t expecting this kind of fast-paced action from a zombie game. This is more about teamwork to get to the end and just blowing the crap out of everything in your way than it is about conserving ammo and such like other zombie games (I mean, you have dual-pistols with infinite ammo).

It’s a really fun game, better than I expected. Great gameplay, nice atmosphere, it’s just really well done.  I didn’t play the online yet, but i’ll be sure to give it a whirl sometime soon.

I don’t think I’ll be buying this game until it gets a price drop, but there’s no doubt in my ming that it’s a really good game. If you like FPS or zombie games, at least give it a try, you could really end up liking this.

Screenshots
Took a couple.

2 of your useless teammates

 

Disgusting, just got vomited on >_>

 

This zombie is about to get pwndÂ

 

Why not shoot my teammates? It's not like they're useful anyways

 

Currently dying after stupidly attacking the witch. At least I could still shoot in that state.

 

Those tanks are big, but they're nothing a shotgun can't take care of.

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Well the PSN update today had some pretty epic stuff. Well, mostly just the Mirror’s Edge demo, and the EndWar demo which I had no idea they were releasing. There’s also a WWE Smackdown VS Raw demo and an Alone in the Dark demo, but I don’t care about those.

So here i’ll be giving my first impressions on both those demos. And a little bonus after that

Mirror’s Edge

So like lots of people I was pretty hyped up for this. And strangely it doesn’t disappoint.
The demo starts you off with a tutorial (which you can skip) which shows all the basics: Jumping, rolling, jumping, sliding, jumping, wall running, wall jumping, using ziplines and a couple other things you’ll be doing in the game. The tutorial ends with some combat training (disarming, punch, jumpkick).

So the gameplay. Well the controls are great.  There’s lots of automatic stuff in there, but really it works well. Jumping is pretty accurate once you get used to the timing, and all the other stuff (sliding, rolling, wall running, etc.) is really easy to do when you get the timing(except for wall jumps, I suck with those). The platforming is really slick and really just as smooth as it seemed in gameplay videos they’ve been showing. I just didn’t find a real use for the Slow-Motion button (if anyone knows, leave a comment!).

The combat… well I didn’t do much of it, but disarming is really the most useful thing. When there’s multiple enemies there’s really no reason to be punching and kicking, since one of the enemies will be shooting at you while you’re trying to hit the other. Disarming knocks out an enemy in one hit, and it leaves you equipped with a gun, which you might as well just leave there and disarm the other people shooting at you.

Finally the presentation. Well the game starts off with an anime scene which isn’t too bad, and at the end it goes from the anime style and goes to the actual 3D, and it… pretty much looks exactly the same. The graphics are pretty cool. The environments look really cool and stylish, though everything seems to look the same(at least outside) and after a while it might get repetitive. Faith and the other girl are pretty well modeled(see above screenshot)… didn’t really checked the people shooting at me… since they were shooting at me all.. but at a quick glance they looked well done. The loading screens are pretty good too, you get to see a small stylish video where Faith kicks a guy’s(or 2 of them) ass. It plays in a loop but it’s pretty cool to watch.

The only thing I didn’t get to try is the time trial, since I didn’t pre-order the game and get the time trial code. So from what I’ve played, in the 4(or was it 5?) times I completed the demo, I was well entertained. You get pretty original gameplay compared to usual FPS games. The platforming is great and quite exciting, the graphic style is good, and really it’s just fun. I wasn’t sure until I actually played it, but I say this game is a buy.

Tom Clancy’s EndWar

This one I wasn’t exactly hyped for.  But the concept of controlling an army with your voice still got me quite interested in at least trying out the game, and having a demo is the best way to do that really, so I was pleased to see it released today.

So let’s go right in the heat of the game: How’s the voice recognition?
Well, when you start the game, you get a “tutorial” and  the game adjusts to your voice. To speak you have to press R2 and issue a command(if you have lots of commands to give you’ll be pressing R2 a lot). Basically you say stuff until the game recognizes it properly, and that… doesn’t really work. Okay, I’m being unfair already. Actually it works pretty well, but a LOT of the time the game won’t “hear” the same thing you’re saying.  For example, during the setup, I said “Unit One Secure Alpha” and the game heard “Unit Bravo”. Okay? In the setup it’s okay, when you speak nothing happens other than making you talk again. In the game itself, when the game “misses” a command, it’s still gonna issue the misheard command, which can lead you to sending units to attack units they’re weak to, or making them move to place you don’t want them to.

The gameplay itself is decent. You deploy armies (as the game goes on you can deploy more), you send your units to attack enemies, certain units are weak against others in a rock-paper-scissors kinda way (Gunship>Tanks>Transports>Gunship), and there’s a couple other units, and battles basically involve you having to destroy all of the opponent’s units. There might be other objectives later on in the game, but I can’t really say. The one problem with the game is the camera. Your camera follows one of your “units”(which is 4 vehicles or a bunch of soldiers basically)(you choose which unit by issuing the “Unit # camera” command), and you are constrained to a certain range around them, so you can’t look very far from them. To be fair, it’s not a bad idea, you shouldn’t see that much further than your own units, but I still feel it’s a bit annoying not to be able to move “freely”, or at least less restrained. Finally, deploying units is better done with the controller than your voice. Choose a free slot, press up, choose your unit, and voila, soon enough you’ll have some of them near your starting base.

Overall I did kinda enjoy the demo. Controlling with your voice is a great idea and if only it recognized your commands a bit better it could truly be awesome, let’s hope the retail version does a bit better on that aspect. The game itself has lots of potential and is pretty fun to play. And the voice commands aren’t mandatory, so if the game doesn’t listen to you properly, you can always just press R2 and choose the commands you want to do instead of pressing R2 and talking. This game is not a buy for me, at least not right now, I’ll wait for a lower price, but Tom Clancy fans or people wanting a fun console RTS might want to give it a try.

BONUS FIRST IMPRESSIONS! 
“Prinny: Is it OK if I’m the Protagonist?” demo on the PSP

A little bonus here. I heard this demo was on the japanese PSN and I just HAD to get it. Don’t know when it came out on the japanese PSN, but it must have been recently since I instantly found it in the japanese store.
Other than having the most awesome title ever, it’s based on the most badass peg-legged penguin things ever from Disgaea: Prinnies! You play as a Prinny with a red scarf in a platforming game. Being a big Disgaea fan, I can’t tell you how excited I was when I saw a prinny would star in his own game. Awesome.

It’s a pretty simple game. Controls are just as you’d expect from a platformer: X jumps (pressing down and jump while in the air does a ground bound), Square slashes your knives (if you’re in the air you shoot badass shockwaves and anyone who touches your blades get hurt), Circle makes the Prinny dance and makes him glow (if you’re moving while the Prinny is glowing you dash) and finally Triangle makes you carry/throw stuff (in the demo it’s bombs that you can OHKO enemies).

The gameplay is pretty damn good. It’s a normal platformer, but the gameplay is really smooth, attacking works like a charm whether it be on the ground or in the air. The jumping is really stiff though, but it reminds me of Ghosts n’ Goblins, just a bit smoother and you can hang from a platform if you miss it so you don’t need to be 100% accurate to do your jumps. The game can also be kinda challenging. The demo gives you only one stage, but 2 modes: One where you can take 4 hits(it can be attacks or just the enemy touching you) before you die and explode, and one where you get one hit and you’re done(and thrust me you’ll be exploding a lot). The demo gives you infinite lives though, so at least that’s not too bad, though I hope the final game isn’t that lenient. You also have a time limit but it resets when you die, even if you got a checkpoint.

That's pretty badass

The presentation is normal Nippon Ichi fare: high quality 2D sprites, nice music similar to their previous games, and enemies from previous games(not just disgaea) make an appearance.

Overall, from the demo, it’s really fun to play. Simple platforming goodness, a good challenge, nice graphics and just plain fun. NIS fans need to get this, it’s a must, and otherwise just check the demo (make a japanese account if you need to, you can find tutorials somewhere). It’s just 12 MB, so if you suck like I do and you only have a 32MB memory stick in your PSP you can STILL play it. Awesome.

 

That’s it for today, more badass stuff coming on Save Point in not too long.

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First things first: Graphics. I’ll go with that one with a screenshot. (This is with Models on High and Textures on Maximum, in 1440X900 resolution)

Character models are really good, textures are nice (though they could be a bit better), lots of nice details and the animations are great. Overall, this game looks really nice.

The gameplay itself feels like… just about any average FPS mixed with Gears of War/Uncharted. Normally you’ll be running around in first person  shooting stuff as you go on. Then you’ll come across rooms where you can hide behind walls/pillars with a cover system similar to Uncharted. Where enemies will shoot at you while also taking cover. Enemies here tend to flank you a lot though, so you always have to be on guard, which is nice.

FPS!

Using the cover system

The controls are nice and simple. You use WADS to move, E to cover, R to reload, G to throw grenades, Shoot with Left-Click, Zoom with Right-Click, Space to jump, C to crouch, F to replace your secondary gun with one on the floor and Shift while moving to sprint.  The controls are not really different than any other PC FPS and it’s really user friendly.
Also, if you hold the button the grenade activates in your hand and you can throw it whenever you see fit… although it would be better not to let it explode in your hand(it hurts).

Overall

This looks like it could be a really fun game. The gameplay is well done and smooth, the graphics are really nice, and overall it just look like fun to play. Sure, I’m only saying this after about 15 minutes of play (4 playthroughs of the demo), but after all that I feel I can at least have a good opinion on it. Am I anticipating it now? Well, yes, more than before, for sure. The gameplay is solid and it looks like a good game for Bond fans. This is definitely something to look forward to, and it’s coming out on basically everything current except PSP (DS, Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox360 and PC).

MOAR SCREENSHOTS  
Took a couple more. 

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