Hi there!

After purchasing a Kodak ZX1 for myself a few weeks ago, I figured I’d try my hand at a Videogame playthrough/review thing for this site. I filmed myself playing a few games. I maed a gam3 w1th z0mb1es!!!1 is one of them!

So here’s my first try at the video blog:

I’m quite sorry the audio quality isn’t all too good. I will find ways to improve this in the future. This and also the editing.

In short. This game is a twin stick top down shooter much like Smash TV and all that. It’s only a dollar and you can find it on the Xbox 360′s Indie Games. You can find it by clicking through the link before the jump too!

This game is pretty much WYSIWYG if you watched my video. The difficulty spikes up here and there and it can’t really post your score on the leaderboards. It’s initial charm what with the music and all will wear out eventually. I still find it funny.

So here’s a mini review!

Developer:Jamezila
Publisher:Microsoft (through it’s Indie Games)
Date of Release:16/08/2009
Platform: Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Genre: Top down shooter
Players: 1-4

The Graphics:

The graphics are pretty basic. 2D animated sprites with a decent amount of gore. I think he spent a good amount of time working on those visual effects and that song.

The Game:

Fun and funny, a pretty good combo. Very Meta

The Sound:

The music makes the game. I love it. It may not have the same impact on you after 10 or so play throughs but it’s going to put a smile on your face as you try and survive.

The Bottom Line:

It’s stupid fun. No need to think too much into it!

Pros:

- It costs a dollar.
- It’s funny.

Cons:
- It may not make you laugh after a good amount of plays.

The Save Factor:
This game is easily worth twice it’s price! The title sells for 80 points ($1) on the Indie games. I’d give it $2.

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GTAIV removed all that IMO. It became way too serious, the gameplay was clunky and didn’t feel right(running around was a chore), and the physics which are somehow praised by everyone were laughable (realistic physics =/= getting shot 100 feet in the air after hitting a wall with a car). I felt that it kinda ruined everything that made GTA… well… GTA.

So my expectations for Chinatown Wars were very low, and I didn’t even feel like trying it out. But damn, I’m happy I did.

Read on for my impressions of the latest GTA game, and, at the moment of this posting, the highest-rated DS game.

Looks and sounds
The first thing you’ll see when you start playing is that the game re-uses the point of view from the original GTA games, a bird’s eye kinda view, from above the buildings. It’s a bit modified and i uses a sort off cel-shaded 3D graphic engine. The character models are super basic but since you always see them from far away it’s not too bad. The cars are okay too, nothing incredible. But overall the visual style works very well. It doesn’t look incredible, but it more than does the job.
The “cut-scenes” though look pretty cool. You see the characters from close-up in a comic-book style. There’s no animation or anything, but it does a good job at advancing the story and showing the characters to you.

The sounds are simplistic. The car and gunshots are standard fare.  There’s no voice acting, other than people screaming when you ram into them or get too close to them on the road, or a few other random voice clips. I also found none of the music to be very good. No, I don’t mind at all that all the music is MIDI, but none of t, in all the 5 radio stations, is very enjoyable. It does the job, but you won’t find yourself wanting a GTA:CW OST.

Story

You play as some guy from China who is going to work with his father, a member of the Triad in Liberty City, and you’re about to deliver a sacred sword to you uncle so that your family’s honor is kept and he can become the leader of the Triad. But during the deal your father is killed, the sword is taken and you are almost killed and left for dead in a sinking car in the river. The rest of the game you are pretty much trying to get revenge, while doing odd jobs for a few of the aspiring leaders of the Triad, to get some reputation in the Triad and to eventually help your uncle get the sword back and restore honor to your family.

Overall the story is quite enjoyable. Not overly good, but it carries the game well enough and it’s pretty interesting. The characters are pretty fun. The aspiring leaders all have good distinct personalities and are fun characters, and Huang Lee, who you’re controlling, is pretty damn funny (the kinda sarcastic bastard dude).

Gameplay
Basic gameplay
The basic gameplay is relatively simple. You run around, beat up people if you want to, steal vehicles, get chased by the police and do quests. The basic stuff is kinda fun to do, but the quests are really what carry the game.

The police is actually pretty fun here. Instead of the incredibly crappy "get out of their range" system from GTAIV, you have the option of staying away from the police (not spotted at all) for some time, or to smash police cars. Ramming into them hard enough or if they hit walls too hard, you get closer to have the police stopping to chase you. Depending on your wanted level, the police get more relentless. At level 1 they’re a bit useless and give up fast. At level 2 they try a lot hard to get you. At level 3 you’ll have loads of police on your ass and and helicopters will shoot at you. This goes on increasingly harder up to level 6 where tanks are after you (though I never passed level 3). And at any level, police just patrolling the street will also shoot at you.

The game also features a few mini-games. The most prominent is the car theft mini-game, which is done when you steal a parked car most of the time, and you must hotwire the car to get it to start(using the touch screen). Those are time based, and there’s a few of them. The tougher one(mostly because of the time limit) requires to get the same code on the car as the hacking machine and if you screw up you can’t take the car and have to start again. Of course the time it takes to hotwire cars is a bit too long when in a police chase, so it’s almost never an option in those cases. It’s just a lot easier to take a police car or a random car being driven on the streets.

Combat is pretty simplistic. You can lock on to a target (though if there’s many targets around it becomes an issue as to which target the game will choose). You have a basic one-two punch+kick attack, but you can pick up various weapons: grenades/molotovs (require use of the touch-screen, works pretty well), guns, swords, chainsaws, rocket launchers… There’s lots of variety. My big problem is the aiming. Even if you lock on, the weapon actually hitting the target is a bit random (or so it seems). But overall it works well enough.

The vehicle driving is pretty good. What’s nice is that every car controls a bit differently. Different top speed/acceleration, some different handling (some handling is rough, other can be overly slippery). There’s a lot of variety. And if you find a car you really like you can keep it in your garage and reuse it when you reload the game.

Side quests
There’s quite a lot of side-quests. The biggest one is drug-dealing. You occasionally get emails from people either selling drugs for ridiculously low prices, or  buying them for ridiculously high prices. You get a lot of those emails in-between missions, and it’s pretty interesting to try and make as much money as possible. You can also stash drugs in your apartment for future selling. The people buying/selling the drugs are all dealers, and when you check their stock you’ll see stats as to if you’ll actually be able to make good profit selling his stock if you decide to buy it. Overall the whole drug-dealing part is well done.

Other side-quests are randomly found on the streets. Some random mini-stories which are usually pretty funny. They can range from killing a bunch of prostitutes(hey, they’re the ones shooting at you), giving people a thrill by driving like crazy, following some people, driving people to other places in the city. There’s a lot of variety and you can do things you wouldn’t usually do in the main game which is pretty interesting.

There’s also some other side-quests to find, of course, like destroying cameras in the city to make drug dealers lower your price and a bunch of other random stuff.

OVERALL, the gameplay is great. There’s a ton of variety, the quests are fun, there’s some mini-games and the basic gameplay is plenty entertaining.

Overall
This is a very good game. For me, it’s a lot more fun than GTAIV. It goes back to the roots of the GTA franchise, the story is fun and wacky, there’s TONS of side quests and such, the drug-dealing mini-game, while not incredible, is a nice addition (and it can become quite addictive) and the main quests are pretty interesting and varied.
Solid gameplay, fun story, fun characters, this deserves most of the praise it’s getting and a great addition ot any DS owner’s collection.

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Made by Vicious Cycle, published by D3 (is it just me or am I playing a lot of D3 games lately?) this kinda came out of nowhere. What confused me was that it was called “the return of Matt Hazard” and I wasn’t familiar with the character. Well that’s just because there never WAS a Matt Hazard game before. The game was built up a bit. A site showing all his “previous games” and a bunch of previews and some advertisement.

So I decided to check it out. Not because the gameplay seemed overly interesting or anything, but the concept was potentially fun.

Read on! (kinda short)

Looks and sounds
The graphics are… early 360 stage. From what I understand, it wasn’t in their intention to make a game with great graphics. The environments look okay, but there’s a lot of variety. The character models are good. Not overly detailed, and for enemies there’s not a lot of different models for each type of enemy. The animations are simple but effective.  Overall the graphics are very basic, but it fits the style the game tries to have.

The sounds are basic, nothing special here. The music is okay, nothing really memorable. The voice acting is pretty good. Matt sounds like a badass, and the other voices, for the most part, fit the characters well. There’s a few weird voices here and there, and the number of recorded lines for enemies and for Matt (during gameplay) is limited.

Story/Context (minor spoilers)
Matt is an old-school video game character. He lived a glorious life from the 8-bit era to now. His big game was Matt Hazard 3D. It eventually went down a bit when he started directing his own games, including the kid-friendly shooter “Soakem” (pronounced strangely like Socom). His career hit a low for a while, but the company making Matt Hazard games made him return in a new game, a next-gen shooter. Things almost go to a halt in the first level, where there’s supposed to be a plot twist, where Matt dies and is replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe “Sting Sniper”. But someone stops this from happening and Matt has to go through the game so that he doesn’t die, but people are trying to stop him by hacking the game and placing a ton of enemies to kill him.

The one trying to kill him is the new CEO of the company. Why? Because, although he’s a master of gaming and he finished every game ever, he never managed to finish a Matt Hazard game. And the only way to get rid of him is killing him inside a game.

It’s a rather wacky story, the few characters are fun, and what really makes the game great is all the references to the last 20-some years of gaming. You’ve got Socom, Mario, the Master Shield, Master Chef and a load of other random references. The humor is pretty nice. Don’t expect anything serious, of course. But it’s still very entertaining.

Gameplay

The game plays like just about any other Third-Person Shooter that came out this generation and it doesn’t try to be original gameplay-wise. You get a cover system which works… okay. From there you can go from one cover point to another, or move to an adjacent cover point.The rest is normal shooting. You also have a melee attack, where 3 hits =a kill. There’s not much more in the basics. Oh, well, other than the ability to destroy some cover points. Shooting them a bit “de-rez’s” them, erasing them from the game. Some enemies aim strictly for the cover point you’re at, so you have to always look out for that or your cover will literaly be blown and you’ll be vulnerable until you get to another cover point.

You get a bunch of upgrades. You can infuse fire and ice to your weapons(fire does damage over time, Ice freezes your enemies and kills them if you shoot them enough), you can get the “Maximum Hazard” which doubles your attack and gives you a one-hit kill melee attack. And the last upgrade is the Master Shield, which makes you immune to enemy attacks for a while.

One thing that is nice in this game is the enemy and weapon variety. You get pistols, dual pistols, sub machine guns, dual sub machine guns, AK-47s, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser guns, plasma cannons, and, most importantly, WATER GUNS! There’s a bunch of different weapons to use, but sadly your mostly use them the same way: headshots. There are some weapons that are strong against certain enemies. For example, water guns are good against the guys from “Soakem”, and laser weapons are good against Space Marines(both of those enemy types are strong against other weapons). As for enemy variety… Construction workers, businessman, yakuza, chefs, Soakem dudes, space marines, russians, cowboys, zombies (of course), robot girls that you have to kick (or punch) their asses to kill, beta testers, graphic designers, programmers and the most awesome of all: 2D guys straight from “Wolfenstein 3D”. There’s a ton of different kinds of enemies to pwn. All the clichés are there.

The game is pretty hard. Enemies randomly spawning (they ARE getting hacked into the game after all), you not having that much health (auto-regenerating) and the AI ranging from incredibly stupid to pretty intelligent. Certain enemies can also kill you really fast. When you learn where enemies are spawning from and such it becomes easier. And bosses(there are only a few) can be pretty tough until you figure out their patterns.

The one annoying part of the game: Quick Time Events! Why is it that gaming companies insist on using a long out-dated, awful gameplay mechanic? Some bosses are beaten by doing QTEs and they’re incredibly easy and useless. If Matt Hazard had whined about it, it could’ve been funny, but it’s just stupid and overused.

There’s also a load of glitches, both graphical and in the gameplay. I think some of those are intended though. I can’t say for sure. Some are okay, but sometimes it’s just bad. Sometimes enemies just… freeze out of nowhere, sometimes they get stuck in animation loops, stuff like that. Sometimes it’s annoying.

Overall
It’s a fun game. If it was priced lower it could be worth buying, but it can be finished in a rental, and isn’t worth much more. But it’s still something that you should check out. The humor and references to the last 20 years of gaming make it really funny, the wacky story is enjoyable.
With modified gameplay and more content it would almost be an instant classic. But, as it is, it’s a rental. There was a lot of potential there, and they really didn’t capitalize on it. I see what they were trying to do, and I loved playing through it, but it just lacks something to make it a truly unique experience. But rent it anyways.

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On Thursday, PS3 users got the chance to give a try to the new Chronicles of Riddick game, around a week after 360 users. So I, of course, checked it out, since the previews make it seem mildly interesting.

Sadly, it wasn’t exactly as good as it seemed. Read on! (yes, this will be a short post).

I am completely unfamiliar about Chronicles of Riddick as a whole, so I went completely blindfolded at this one.

Graphics
They’re… okay… The environments are boring, the characters look okay, the animations are fine… except when Riddick is talking with that guy when you activate a terminal of some sort(in the fisrt room), the graphics just… randomly stutter and jerk around… The rest is fine. Nothing spectacular though.

Gameplay
Well, it’s an FPS. It doesn’t really try to do anything different with the genre. It does encourage stealth though.

So the basics are what you’d expect. Shooting, melee attacks, crouching(called “Stealth”, here), jumping… all normal FPS stuff. Using stealth makes you crouch and somehow harder to find as well. Here, instead of a cover system, you have a “Leaning” system, which makes you, of course, lean to whichever side you want. You can use that to actually use whatever you want as cover by crouching, and using the Lean button to get out from whichever side you want of the cover. Kinda. It actually works pretty well.

Stealth… well, its a bit weird. Run and gunning is fine(but it’s more likely that you’ll get damaged). But if you want to be less likely to get damaged, stealth is the way to go. To do so, it first requires crouching, but most of the time that’ll be useless. Proper stealth requires to shoot out lights to make it harder for enemies to see you. I think it’s kinda under-productive… I mean, if I don’t want to be seen, I’d also try not being heard either, and shooting out lights with an assault rifle isn’t exactly the best idea (at least not in a real life situation). But, considering the AI, at least in the demo, is kinda moronic, it always works, and if you don’t screw up they’ll all die and you won’t have taken any damage. It’s a bit stupid, but it’s okay. I found that enemies don’t climb ladders either… weird. If they see you using their flashlight, they’ll start shooting, but untl then you’re safe.

Speaking of damage, I kinda like what they did here. Instead of just… completely healing by waiting a few seconds(REALISM!!!!… not), you actually have a life bar. But it works differently. Kinda Metroid style, you have “boxes” of health.  But you ALSO have regenerating health. How that works is that when you lose one of those “boxes”, it disappears for good, until you find something to regain it, and when you regenerate health you don’t get more than the number of “boxes” you have available. Kind of a middle point for both people who don’t like regenerating health and those who like it.

The enemy AI is all over the place. If you’re stealthing “properly” they suck, they sometimes just randomly suck, and sometimes they randomly pwn you. Twice I took out a group of drones by just standing there, shooting in their general direction and they all killed themselves by getting in the way of my bullets (when they had a ton of other angles they could’ve shot me from). It’s random really.

And melee combat… I don’t like it really. It doesn’t work very well. Unless you get the enemy by surprise(getting an instant-kill from behind), it’s kinda tough to kill your enemy. If you’re not blocking they are, and it just gets hard to hit anyone. When you get a gun it’s just a much better choice.

Verdict
After playing through the demo a few times, I can say it’s a rental for me. It’s nothing special, nor does it TRY to be, but it’s fairly fun. I think it might be worth buying after a price drop or two. If you’re a big Riddick fan it might be a good buy, moreso because of the inclusion of a revamped version of Escape from Butcher Bay. Otherwise rent it or something before buying.

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Ah, Metal Slug. Represents all that is good about 2D platforming Action gameplay. When I saw that it was coming out on the DS, I thought it was a strange choice to put the game on a handheld without an arcade release, or any other release for that matter. When I finally played it (the japanese version, a few months ago), I saw it was pretty fun.

But after more play and giving it a bit more thought when it came out here, does it really hold up to previous games in the series? Read on!

Graphics
There’s something wrong here. I think they took the sprites from the previous game and just resized them for the DS screen. It doesn’t look really good. I mean, I know the DS doesn’t have the biggest screen resolution or anything, but I also know it can pump out good quality 2D graphics. They could have remade the sprites or something for the DS, just to have proper quality here.
Still, despite the sprites occasionally looking like ass, the game retains the same style it always had. The animations are as good as always, the bosses look really cool. Really, it looks almost as nice as previous incarnations, but the resized sprites just look weird.

Gameplay
It’s Metal Slug. Run around, shoot stuff, get new weapons, use your knife when you’re close to certain enemies, throw grenades, and die a lot. Nothing has changed from the older games really.

There are 6 characters you can choose from. Each has different caracteristics that give them the advantage in certain situations, or that you might just prefer using.  Fio always starts with a heavy machine gun(+more ammo and damage with weapons), Ralf takes 2 hits, Eri has more grenades and can throw it in multiple directions, Clark can throw enemies but gets less ammo for weapons, Marco is basic but with more damage with his handgun and Tarma is better with vehicules. This can add lots of variety in gameplay.

Here you die in one hit, and it’s not easy to avoid certain attacks. When you lose all your lives(and you will… a lot), you can select a different character if you want. So if you die in a situation where you might need someone else, you can change.

Like in previous games, you get a few vehicules to drive. Each vehicule can take multiple hits, to it’s good for protection (just get out when it tells you), and they have special weapons too. This as always been a staple for the Metal Slug series and they didn’t screw it up.

The mission mode is where you’ll be wasting most of your time. You can either start from the first mission, or from any other mission you’ve reached if you want less difficulty going through the whole game. There’s various difficulties. If you’re really hardcore, hard will provide huge challenge. Easy is laughably simple. You do way more damage, have a heavy machine gun as your standard weapon, and it’s just a lot easier to deal with. Normal is hard enough.

As for DS features… Well, there’s not much. In normal gameplay, you have a map on the bottom screen, and you can move through it. Really useless. Also interesting to note that there’s NO MULTIPLAYER. This really sucks. Metal Slug, a game that’s 10 times more fun with multiplayer, doesn’t have multiplayer in its DS incarnation. The DS is capable for multiplayer, why not have that feature?

Other than the normal mode, you also  have a sort of challenge mode, which you unlock more of each time you get to a new stage in mission mode. Challenges vary from saving a number of hostages to not dying, to surviving for certain amounts of time, and each time you die or finish a challenge, you get graded. If somehow the main game isn’t challenging enough for you, the challenge mode should be.

Overall
There’s really not much to say here. It’s Metal Slug. There’s guns, explosions, it’s challenging. If you like previous games in the series, you’ll like this one. The only big problem is the lack of multiplayer. If that’s an important element for you, you might want to skip it or wait for a price drop.
Maybe not the best of the series, but it holds up well.

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Chrono Trigger. Regarded as one of the best, if not the best, RPG on the SNES, some people calling it the best RPG ever. And not without reason, as this is truly a masterpiece. It’s no surprise that the DS remake was long awaited to fans of the series.

After 13 years (the original SNES version was released in 1995), does it still hold its own? And what about the extra content? Let’s check that out!

Story
Some people say RPGs are all about the story, and Chrono Trigger doesn’t disappoint. Basically, it’s just the cliche story of a bunch of kids out to save the world. But it’s a lot more than that in reality.
The story starts out with a kid, Crono McSilent-Protagonist, going to the Millenium Fair. In the fair, he bumps in a girl named Marle and starts hanging out with her(drinking, playing games, dancing, fighting giant cat robots… you know, normal fair stuff).  After a while, Lucca, a friend of Chrono’s, opens up her booth, displaying a badass teleporting machine. When Marle tries it out, instead of teleporting, she disappears through a weird portal. Crono, being silent and badass, goes to find her, and ends up in 400 years in the past. After saving Marle and going through various events, Crono and the gang find themselves in the future (2300 AD) and see that, in 1999 AD, the world was destroyed by an entity named Lavos and left humanity(or at least what is left of it) in despair. So being heroic and stuff they decide to stop the big bad monster named Lavos.

Afterwards Crono and various other characters from different time periods team up to go up against what some consider one of the better vilains in RPG history. There are multiple ways to end the game, with 13 endings in total (including 1 new ending), depending on when(story-wise) and how you decide to defeat Lavos.
Truly an epic story that spans the ages. There might be plot holes here and there, considering the story largely deals with Time Travel, but overall it’s really well done. 

Graphics
Well I’ll start by saying that the graphics have not changed since the SNES version. They look just as good. Featuring art by Akira Toriyama (Hey, is that Goku with red hair?), this game has some of the better graphics on the SNES to me. the sprites look great, the characters are very well animated, the bosses and monsters look great. It’s hard to find an RPG on the SNES that has such detailed and vibrant graphics. From the joyful world of 1000 AD to the grim ruins of 2300 AD, everything looks awesome and the atmosphere is really great. There’s not much bad I can say about this really.

Sound
The music is great. Nothing more to say. But I will. Each and every piece of music is great. The sad music, the happy music, the music at the fair, everything just fits. After playing I always find myself with one of the pieces of music stuck in my head the rest of the day. The soundtrack here is just magnificent.

Gameplay 
RPGs can have amazing stories and such, but without a fun battle system, no matter how badass the story is, the game itself will FAIL. Gladly tough, Chrono Trigger delivers fun gameplay so that the game stays interesting.

First, there are no random battles, which should make some people happy. You see the enemies on the screen before having to fight them. Some fights you can’t evade, but there are some you can just pass besides the enemy and not go through it.

The battle system itself is quite intuitive. You get no weird transitions before a battle. Your characters just move in position on the map itself and the enemies position themselves as well. from the the battles starts. This goes seamlessly from the map navigating to the battle and works really well. 
The fights themselves are fairly basic. You either attack, use techniques or use items. When your character is ready, you can either attack now or wait. If multiple characters are ready, you can decide which of them attacks or not so you can easily formulate battle plans. What’s interesting here is that some enemies have special effects when you use certain attacks on them, so just tapping A won’t lead you anywhere most of the time. In addition to normal attacks and techniques, you have attacks that combine the skills of multiple characters for more powerful attacks/healing. These are learned as characters learn 2 or 3 “combinable” techniques. To execute those, all characters who will use it must be “ready”. The animations for attacks are a bit simplistic, but it works.

As for the rest of the game, it’s really basic. Item management, buying/finding new equip to make your characters more powerful. After battles you earn experience and technique points. EXP levels up your characters (including your characters in reserve) and TP makes your active characters learn skills.

Overall the game plays really good. They nailed the battle system and everything else works awesome. 

New Stuff
DS controls
If you want to, everything can be controlled on the touch-screen. Quick access to different menu items, moving, choosing things in battle. Everything can be done with the touch screen. I find moving and fighting doesn’t really work well with the touch screen, but the menu shortcuts are nice, and battle information display on the second screen is really nice.

Dungeons: Lost Sanctum and Dimensional Vortex
There are 2 new dungeons in the game. The Lost Sanctum appears once the Black Omen comes out, and the Dimensional Vortex opens up when you complete the game.
The Lost Sanctum appears in 2 eras: 65 billion BC and 600 AD. Basically, it’s a bunch of fetch quests that give some good equipment. But it’s really tedious. you have to switch from the 65 billion BC and  the 600 AD Lost Sanctum for many of the quests, some require you to go through long and tedious maps to get stuff, and going back through them multiple times in the same quest. Overall it might end up being worth it, but it’s still really annoying.

The Dimensional Vortex is a series of 3 dungeons. Here you find some more new equipment, and after finishing all 3 dungeons you get to fight a new boss, which leads to a new ending! Yay, new stuff! It seems to give a bit of a link between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross from what I’ve read, but I didn’t play Cross so I wouldn’t know.

The one disappointing thing is that the enemies in the dungeons are pretty much just palette swaps. 

New Equipment
Not satisfied with  Crono’s 220 attack and 70% critical rate with the Rainbow weapon? Fear not, now he has access to a weapon with 240 attack and 90% critical rate.
All the characters have 2 new weapons (except for Frog >_>, and Ayla of course, whom I THINK has 1 new fist upgrade, but’m not 100% sure), and there’s a bunch of new accessories. Some are character specific, other are for everyone. If you somehow feel your characters weren’t overpowered enough before, there might be some way to make them even better now.

Anime scenes
This comes from the PS1 version of the game. Some scenes are shown in anime. Overall they are nicely animated, using a style similar to Akira Toriyama’s other work (AKA Dragon Ball). But I can’t help but feel that it’s useless to have those. They show the scene in anime form, and they show it AGAIN with the in-game animation. Why show both? Just one is fine.

Arena
This is a little feature that I actually didn’t play around with much. Here you train a monster and make it fight other monsters to make you win items and equipment for your characters. Fights are automatic, all you can do is send them items so they’ll use techs. Otherwise you can send them to train, choosing 1 monster-item and a time period for them to train in. Not incredibly deep from what I’ve seen, but I might be wrong. Fun little mode I guess, gets you some new equipment.

Overall
There’s really no question that Chrono Trigger is a great game, one of the best RPGs around. If you liked it on the SNES and want to revisit it, the new boss and ending might make it worth it. If you haven’t experienced this already, WTF are you waiting for? Go get it now, dammit! Let’s face it, the game is damn fun. Fans will love replaying it, and newcomers will most likely love it.
This is a great game, and still stands the test of time. Good graphics, great gameplay, amazing story, nothing short of a masterpiece.

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Super Stardust Portable is the little brother to the smash-hit PSN title, Super Stardust HD, and is currently sitting on the European PSN Store for £6.30. With a lot to live up to, will this game manage to match its big brother? Or is the PSP too limited a piece of hardware for the game to meet its potential or for it to even be worth the asking price? Read on to find out for yourself.

Graphics ;;

For a lot of people one of the most impressive things about Super Stardust HD was the sheer number of enemies that would flood the screen at any time, trying to crush your little ship out of existence. For those worrying that Super Stardust Portable cannot keep up with its big brother, stop worrying now. There are just as many enemies flinging themselves at your ship, just as many asteroids floating aimlessly and just as many explosions. All with no sign at all of relenting. It can get pretty hectic at times and the game promotes the use of bright colours on your targets to not only help differentiate them but to also make it easier to keep tabs on everything that is going on – of which there is an awful lot, believe me. Boss designs are interesting and the generic enemies look great on the small screen. A great achievement is that this game has no framerate issues at all. All in all, a very beautifully and energetic game.

Gameplay ;;

Super Stardust Portable a multidirectional 2D shooter, the goal being to destroy all asteroids and enemies that are on the screen to get as high a score as possible. There are five planets, each split into five “Phases”. After you’ve destroyed a set number of enemies or asteroids, a small ship will appear. Destroying the ship ends the Phase. The fifth Phase of each world is a boss fight, requiring you to attack the weak points of the large ships for massive damage. The game is also split into a variety of Modes, namely Arcade, Planet Mode, Endless, Survival, Bomber, Impact. Arcade, Planet and Impact are available from the very beginning, with Endless, Survival and Bomber presumably unlocked for completing the initial three Modes (I’ll update on this piece of information when I actually do that). Each Mode is exactly the same as those found in Super Stardust HD. Impact Mode is an alternative to the Bomber Mode, where you are given a fixed amount of Bombs and need to rack up as high a score as possible by Boosting through enemies. Blue rings across the stage propell a Boosting ship even further, which makes for an interesting diversion from the main game.

Movement is controlled completely by the analogue slider, allowing for extremely precise dodging, and shooting is controlled by the face buttons – as the direction of fire isn’t limited to the direction the ship is facing, it’s possible to shoot in any direction at any time. Boosting is managed by a press of the left shoulder button and also destroys almost everything you come into contact with while boosting, giving the ship a way out when surrounded as well as a a nice alternative to quick points. Boosts recharge pretty quickly and are just as integral to high scores as the weapons you have access to. Bombs are managed by a press of the right shoulder button and clear the screen of almost everything on it – perfect for when you’re surrounded or when there is a lot of enemies on the screen for some quick points. Bombs are limited in number, but you can acquire up to two per Phase, yet they are invaluable. Carefully timed usage of them can mean the difference between life and death. 

In addition to these you have access to three weapons, each with unlimited ammo – called the Rock Crusher (Green), Ice Splitter (Blue) and Gold Melter (Red) respectively – that are each especially effective against certain enemies and specific asteroids (while that’s the case you’ll most likely find yourself sticking to a certain weapon, regardless of enemy weaknesses, thanks to the placement of the weapon cycle being on the D-Pad). Each weapon has its own specific way of attack, from the latching motions of the Gold Melter to the four laser spread of the Rock Crusher, and they can all be upgraded by collecting certain floating tokens left behind after destroying the Green Cores of asteroids. It’s also possible to increase the power of the weapons to 200% for a short period of time, where destroying asteroids and enemies becomes a breeze.

Sound ;;

There isn’t much to say about the audio. Just like its big brother, each world has its own theme and bosses get their own music too. While not particularly catchy, they do fit nicely with the planet you’re on and aren’t intrusive nor do they take your attention away from the frantic screen filling antics. Each weapon is accompanied by a different sound, as expected, and the menu has a decent looping soundtrack.

Overall ;;

Graphics – 8 – Pretty impressive for a PSP game, no slowdown or framerate issues at all and the art direction is top notch.
Gameplay – 9 – Immersive, addictive and utterly hectic, this is one of the best original PSN Titles available on any region’s Store.
Audio – 7 – Not memorable, but matches the game well. The sound effects of the weapons are satisfying, and the boss themes are pretty good.
Overall – 8.5 – A great game for a great price. If you love shooters or Super Stardust HD, this is a must-buy. Otherwise, it might not be for you.

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After playing the demo for Quantum of Solace, I set my expectations at a pretty high level. I mean, it was fun to play, the controls and such seemed to work well.

But did it actually live up to my expectations? Not really. 

Read on, dood.
 
Story

Not gonna spoil anything… Actually I didn’t even spoil myself anything. I played through a fair part of the game and for now it seems pretty interesting. Of course, the reason that I decided not to complete the game was because I plan on watching the movie and don’t want to already know every little plot twist.
Just wanted to make a passing mention here that this is not ONLY a Quantum of Solace game. The plot starts a while after Casino Royale, and after just a few missions… surprise surprise, you get a flashback scene… that lasts a really long time, with pretty much the complete story of Casino Royale. *CASINO ROYALE SPOILERS HERE* You get to go through everything in CR, from the “parkour” part with James chasing the bomb maker to killing Dimitrios to taking Jonathan Bliss’ place in the poker game (though you don’t play that) to saving Vesper from Le Chiffre and finally seeing Vesper die. It’s a pretty long segment, going through all the important scenes from CR.
After that it’s back to Quantum of Solace, trying to find Mr Greene and such. Overall I think it works well, but with the game being called Quantum of Solace, you’d think that it wouldn’t cover the story from Casino Royale as well (leaving it as just a flashback or something). From what I’ve seen the story looks really good, but I can’t really say much since I’m trying to keep some surprise for the actual movie.

The one disappointing thing here is the story segments. See the following screenshot:

That's what they look like... yikes.

Yeah. Kinda lame, just various graphics and character faces and maps appearing, with people talking in the background. There are some actual FMVs, but these kind of scenes outnumber them, with one at the beginning and end of each “chapter”.

Graphics
Just look at the screenshot. 

Fire!Â

As you can see, this looks fantastic. That’s not at the highest setting, I lowered some of the settings because I was getting a bit of lag at some parts, especially where there’s water pouring or, in this screenshot, fire everywhere.

The character models are really well done (Daniel Craig looks almost spot on), the animations are fluid and almost lifelike, and most of the time the environments are gorgeous and there’s a good attention to detail. There are a few iffy spots. In the crumbling building where you go to save Vesper, the water flooding the building looks and moves kinda unnaturally, but that’s one of the few problems i’ve seen. That And Bond shooting through certain obstacles.

Overall the game looks awesome, though you might need a pretty good computer to run it at high settings.

Gameplay
Go to a room, shoot enemies, go to another room, shoot more enemies, go to… oh wait, more enemies are popping up, shoot them… ok now go to the next room, shoot a couple more waves of enemies… a few more…. okay now you reached the end of the level. Do the same thing again in different environments.
I don’t normally fault games for being repetitive, but damn this is repetitive. Okay let’s break this down a bit.

Gunfights (because that’s more than 80% of the game)
Basically the whole game revolves around gunfights. These all involve using the cover system. Because you’re suicidal if you try going with the normal FPS view. Sure, you can get a few kills, but in the end if you’re not hiding, you’ll die.
The cover system is pretty much like in Gears of War. Find some barricade or walls to hide behind. You can either aim in a general direction to hope hitting enemies, or slightly get out of cover to get a good aim. When you’re in cover, enemies will never hit you unless they’re next to you or in a really good angle. Which is strange, since for you it’s really easy to hit enemies that are taking cover.
You can also lob grenades at enemies. They don’t actually hurt them much unless they’re right on them, but what they do help with is making enemies come out of cover, so they become easier targets for you, being stunned for a few seconds.
The basic strategy is finding explosives and other destructible items to blow up or stun enemies, shoot those, and watch the fireworks/kill stunned enemies. When all of those are gone you’re on your own to kill the rest. This is pretty fun but again it gets repetitive.

Problems with gunfights
Now, the gunfights aren’t BAD, but they could use some improvement. For one there are way too many enemies. Some parts are pretty tame, but as it goes on the number of enemies goes up and at times you spend like 15 minutes on a single gunfight. That’s way too long.
Second, I always seem to have trouble with the cover system. Either it doesn’t get in cover or it doesn’t get out of cover when I want to, there are really some times when not being able to get in or out of cover got me killed. And that’s really not something you want happening in a long gunfight.
Third, you die too fast, or at inconsistent rates… Most of the time 3 to 4 bullets kill you, but sometimes it goes up to 10 (not counting the auto-regenerating health here), and sometimes just 1 is enough. I know this is trying to be realistic, but when someone you can possibly see kills you in 2 shots, it really sucks. Basically, you have the exact same health meter as normal enemies.
Which leads me to the fourth problem. With the battles being long and Bond dying too fast, it leads to a problem. You get tired of playing really fast. If you don’t know where the enemies are coming from and where to take cover, you’ll die multiple times in a gunfight. You need to know where the enemies are coming from, or you’ll get surprised by some enemy popping up at unexpected locations. Sure, there’s checkpoints everywhere between fights, but it’s still pretty annoying.

Stealth (which all lead to gunfights in the end)
Added to gunfights are parts where the game tells you to try and be stealthy to avoid gunfights. This mainly involves crouching, properly using the cover system and using a silencer on your weapon. But most of the time you’ll get to a part where enemies seemingly have bionic eyes and ears, being able to see/hear you no matter what you do. So in the end reinforcements will come in and you’ll have to fight waves of enemies once again. There are also parts with cameras, that if they see you, reinforcements are coming right away. Those parts were fun, trying to find a good path to get to the camera’s switch box to disable it. Really though, I would have preferred for the stealth to work a bit better.

Overall the gunfights and stuff aren’t BAD, but they could have been a bit better. The cover system needs serious tweaking, and some of the other issues I mentioned should’ve been addressed. I mean, did NO ONE in the development team think “Hey, aren’t these gunfights a bit long”? They’re fun, but after a while they get tedious.

“Boss fights” (which suck)

QTEs are shit

QTEs REALLY need to die. As of now I can’t think of one game that used them properly, and yet developers insist on using them.  Now, you have cinematic “boss fights” here that are completely controlled by QTE. Okay, that’s bad right there, but add to that the fact that (on PC, I don’t know about the console versions) they are really hard to do because the system is just badly done, and that the QTEs don’t even affect the animation that’s playing. You’re fighting that guy with a big knife, and he slashes at you. Naturally you get a QTE. So if you get it, you evade the knife attack, of course, and if you miss it… WTF, you still evade it? That’s right, it’s basically just a video playing while you have to click on certain spots at certain times, and if you miss too much you have to rewatch the scene from the start until you get it right.

Now I wouldn’t be whining as much if they actually worked properly. But they don’t. You don’t see your cursor until the QTE pops up, so even if you know where it’s coming from, you can’t prepare to get it there. It’s like if you had a QTE in a console game, your controller would disappear and you’d have to find it before pressing the button. Add to that the fact that the accuracy is stupidly weird, and you’ve got a recipe for frustration. My icon is in the middle of the thing when i’m clicking, why is it not working dammit?

Those QTEs also appear in normal gameplay, a few times are mandatory even, since you don’t have a normal melee attack(WTF?). Instead you have a takedown attack, and when you do it close to an enemy you have a QTE to essentially do a 1-hit kill. But it suffers from the same problems as the “boss fight” QTEs, so they suck. Not only that, but if you miss you won’t be facing the enemy anymore and most likely you’ll die.

Other Stuff
Other than gunfights and the worst QTEs ever, you have a few other things to do. Mainly hacking computers, patching into cameras, unlocking doors and finding cellphones.

The doors are hilarious. If all doors had a lame lock system like this in real life we’d all be screwed. Basically it’s a mini-game where you have to press the correspondent direction when a green arrow appears on the screen. Really simplistic and not really fun, but as it goes on they get harder, so at least that’s not too bad.

The hacking and patching in cameras is simple, just stand in front of them and hold F long enough without getting shot, though that will never happen unless you’re stupid. Patching into the cameras will give you an idea of where enemies are and where to go next, but that’s not incredibly useful. Hacking will usually unlock doors or just make you complete your objective. Yay.

The final element is cellphones. They’re lying around the level, giving you hints on what to do, or where traps are set and stuff. It could be useful, but the levels are so damn linear, it’s really not needed. And who the hell goes around putting cellphones everywhere?

Overall
So is the game good? Well… Yes. Really good. But it’s majorly flawed in various areas. QTEs are ass, the gunfights need some tweaking, the cover system is buggy at times, but overall it’s pretty fun to play if you can get over the fact that it’s frustrating and stupidly repetitive.

Best Bond game since Goldeneye? Easily.
Better than Goldeneye? FUCK no. Never in a million years.

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