First Impressions: Condemned 2: Bloodshot
This was a game that my wife actually picked out. When buying the PS3, I only thought it’d be fair for her to get a game too. Since she’s into the more warped games, this was her choice. So, trying to save some money I decided to play through this game before I bought a new game.
Sony: Nintendo, Microsoft … you’re screwed!
Clicking on the link will take you to a blog article from Scott Steinberg, from Sony. He states the various reasons why the PS3 is going to rise above all the other consoles. Instead of just doing a general response, I will respond to all of his comments. His comments are quoted, my responses are unquoted.
Review: Heavenly Sword
Heavenly Sword was my debut game for the PlayStation 3. I had played the demo of it and liked what I played. It resembles God of War quite a bit. You were always swarmed with enemies to kill, you would do a quick roll to dodge incoming attacks, and there were button sequences. To say that it’s a God of War clone wouldn’t be very far from the truth. But, God of War was a great game to me, so will Heavenly Sword follow suit?
So, let’s start off with the story. The main character, Nariko (played by Anna Torv – who is the lead female in Fringe), is part of a clan who holds the Heavenly Sword – a sword that grants the wielder great power, but overtime consumes the persons life. When an evil king, King Bohan (played by Andy Serkis – who is mostly known as the guy who played Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy) goes after the Heavenly Sword, the clan realizes that they are no match for his army. Now, Nariko is believed to fulfill the clans prophecy for the sword so when realizing they’re in danger, the clan’s leader tells Nariko to weild the sword and to prevent King Bohan from getting his hands on it. The storyline will take you from the clan’s home, to King Bohan’s residence back to the clan’s home in a final epic battle. I won’t spoil it for anyone looking to get the game. And honestly, there really isn’t that much more to the story. You are given a little bit of a backlog on it, but the majority of the game revolves around Nariko and Kai (who’s basically a sniper) trying to protect the sword from King Bohan and his army of minions.
Demo Review: Bionic Commando Rearmed
Few of you may know that at first, I didn’t like the concept of hard drives in consoles. To me it meant that companies can release games with a “We’ll patch it later” mentality. However, I slowly shifted pro-hard drive. When GH3 announced downloadable songs I said that the Wii needed a hard drive and that as consoles moved to online integration, a hard drive was a necessity.
Had I known stuff like this would happen, I would have jumped ship sooner. (Not to the PS3 but to Pro-Hard Drive) What I downloaded about a week ago was Bionic Commando: Rearmed. What it is, is a strict upgrade of the original Bionic Commando that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System some 20 years ago.
Article: Should Sony, Nintendo be scared?
Article: Games are serious business for Apple
Summary: Apple has already produced more titles on the iPhone/iPod Touch (which I’ll refer to from here on out as the iTouch) than the Nintendo DS. Apple is climbing the ranks of mobile gaming and maybe Nintendo and Sony should be prepared for a new competitor in the ranks.
Enough.
This is a very stupid and inaccurate article. And I’m going to prove it by two points and point out some hypocrisy with my third point. If you stop reading right here, then go away with this: Apple’s iPhone/iTouch games are nowhere near the equivalent of the gaming on the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable.
Demo Review: Syphon Filter – Logan’s Shadow
Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow is the first PSP demo that I downloaded. I wanted to see a game that could show the power of the PSP and this did a good job of doing it. I can’t remember the storyline offhand so I can’t comment on that. But I did get to play the first level completely so at least I have something to base my review on.
The controls, starting off, are weird. The lack of the second analog stick makes aiming difficult. Movement is fine – because it’s done by the analog stick – but in order to aim you use your four buttons. This can be a pain because you can’t get the preciseness that you normally would off of a second analog controller. But honestly, I was able to get used to it relatively fast and if I bought the game, I’m sure I’d get the hang of it. It’s not going to influence my decision. But other than that, the controls aren’t that bad. You directional pad toggles all your different views (like Splinter Cell) and your shoulder buttons are your attacks.
Demo Review: Patapon
While looking at the PlayStation store on my computer for demos to download to my PSP, I came upon Patapon. A game that looked pretty weird but pretty genuine, so I decided to grab it. It was only about 100MB so the size wasn’t terrible. (My memory stick is only 1GB, so anything over 100MB is considered a pretty big download)
As the story goes, you are a God. And the Patapons serve you. You communicate with them by drum beats which when you hit it in the correct order while keeping with the tempo, they respond. In the demo, I only got “move forward” “attack” and “defend.” Unfortunately, it gets pretty tiring after awhile. There really are no other controls other than hitting the same buttons over and over again when you want to either attack or move forward. The attacks are automatic and the movement is done after hitting the four-button-combo. You could probably play with one hand if you really wanted to. This may not be as repetitive later on since I only played for about an hour but after the fourth level I found myself ready for something different. Another thing to mention is that if you do a sequence in tempo without skipping a beat or note after awhile your patapons go into hyper mode, which make them more powerful and stay that was for a long time as long as you keep up with the notes and tempo.
I now own a PlayStation 3
Well, it’s done. I am the owner of a PlayStation 3. While I continued to tell my wife about the neat features of the PlayStation 3, she took it as me continually nagging her to get one so when we were in Wal-Mart we just went through and got one. I would have loved to say it was a smooth purchase, but that wasn’t the case and that’s because despite the research I’ve done into he console, there was still something big that I wasn’t aware about: they are phasing out PlayStation 2 emulation.
Relax on the Wii criticism
So the Wii has been quite the sensation. After three years of it being out, the demand is still terribly high for it. It’s pretty common for me to go to a store and see a PS3 and X-Box but now Wii. It also took a different approach – It’s a game meant for casual gamers. And instead of going for visuals, they went with motion control. This has fallen under much criticism from hardcore gamers saying that Nintendo has “kicked their fans in the balls” so to speak. I guess just because they took a different tactic with this next round of consoles the gamers felt like they were told by Nintendo, “Piss off.”
Enough.
The Nintendo Wii took a different approach for a variety of reasons. Mind you, this is all in my opinion but I like to think that my opinions are legitimate. First is the quality of graphics. Let’s face it, pretty soon we’re going to hit the visual ceiling. We’ll soon get to a point where the human eye won’t be able to tell the difference anymore. I think that because this may happen in the next generation or two – Nintendo decided to think what they could improve on next … that being getting people more into the game physically.
Jobs: iPhone is the best handheld
At its seasonal hardware unveiling today Apple showed off expected new models for its agenda-setting music hardware the iPod – but it was games, not audio, which CEO Steve Jobs pushed to the forefront.
Jobs revealed that 100m applications have been downloaded from the AppStore, the area of iTunes which distributes software. There are 3,000 apps on the story – 600 of which are games titles, many of them free.
But “some of [the games] are getting pretty fantastic. There is something here for everyone”.
To prove it, he called Apple’s senior VP of product marketing to demonstrate three new iPod Touch/iPhone games, the Gameloft’s Real Soccer 2009 and the recently released Spore Origins and upcoming Need for Speed Undercover by EA.
The former ad the latter showed off almost cutting edge use of the touchscreen interface of the iPhone. Gameloft has programmed an on-screen d-pad into its game and has included gesture controls, while EA has transposed traditional racing game controls to the interface for its car racer.
Jobs summed up, claiming that Apple’s iPod Touch is no longer great for just music and video, but now games too.
“Now you can make a pretty good argument that it is the best portable device for playing games on – and a whole new class of games,” he said.
Jobs said that in a wider sense Apple had the best hardware line-up it has ever offered, which included also announced smaller iPod Nanos and higher capacity iPod Classics.
He also revealed details on the might of Apple’s place in the market as a digital distributor. iTunes was described as the “largest online content store in the world”, offering also 8.5m songs and 30,000 TV episodes for download. And there are 65m user accounts with registered credit cards on the service. All of this has “enabled us to slowly climb up to become the number one music distibutor in any format in the US,” ahead of traditional retailers like WalMart and Best Buy, said Jobs.
It seems as if when Steve Jobs isn’t telling people that giving an autograph would be rude, telling people that his health is no ones business, or forcing people to buy new products to support the new iTunes feature he’s telling people that the iPhone is the best portable gaming system – better than the Nintendo DS and better than the Sony PSP.
Why I’m going with Sony.
If you asked me a about six months ago, I would have spit on the PlayStation 3. I’ll admit it and I’m also going to admit that I’m wrong. What I haven’t been fond of is Sony continuously bashing its competitor, the Nintendo Wii, when Nintendo’s system has – and continues to – destroy Sony in sales. Continuous reports show that Nintendo Wii is still dominating, with X-Box 360 in second place and the PlayStation 3 in last place. I’m not a fan of competitive bashing in commercials and reports. I absolutely loathe those Mac commercials because they portray PC users as nerds who use a inferior system while Mac’s are for cool people. It drives me crazy because overall I think XP/Vista is superior to OSX. But I digress. For the most part, I just didn’t like Sony and their antics.
But, I have changed my ways. Now I’m actually going to be buying a PlayStation 3 within the next two months. It’s not necessarily because the games look really good with a high definition television or because Sony is known for its more mature games. The reason I’m getting it is because I think in the long run, it will get a much bigger use out of it than I originally thought.
Review: CastleVania, Dracula X Chronicles
So here it is, the reason that I bought a Playstation Portable – the rarest of CastleVania games finally released to the United States.
It actually took me awhile before I got it. Like I said before, my son is being treated with a very rare disease, so I bought this game to tide me over while I’m holding him and he’s sleeping or we’re just hanging out in the hospital room while he’s sleeping.
Before I go on with the review, I will state that I’m a huge CastleVania fan. In my eyes, they can do no wrong. So don’t be shocked when I give this game a 5/5, because I will. However, that’s not to say it’s a 100% masterpiece, but in my opinion it’s pretty close. Read on, dear reader, and be subjected to extreme, extreme fanboyism.
There isn’t much about this game that I don’t enjoy. The graphics, music, playstyle – it’s all there plus three additional games. I personally tire of the MetroidVania games that are out now. It seems that the Producer, Iga, really is stuck on that formula. and while I’ll still buy all the games, it’s nice to go back to the way it was. A linear sidescroller where you go from point A to point B-1 or B-2. No real exploration, just ass kicking your way to Dracula.
First Impressions: Monster Hunter Freedom
A friend of mine had mentioned the Monster Hunter series quite a bit. So as I wrapped up CastleVania, I went to GameStop to get another game so that my PSP didn’t collect dust. Unfortunately, the two games I was aiming for were either gone or too expensive. (Gotta’ maintain a budget for my future PS3 buy) What did catch my eye was Monster Hunter Freedom for $20. I didn’t read reviews, but thought – what the hell – and bought it.
First impressions aren’t that great.
First, I noticed a decent loading time between starting and ending a quest. It’s kind of a hinderance, but what can you expect from a little machine loading a PS2 game? The second is the lack of storyline. So far the story is that you’re a monster hunter. That’s it. I’m hoping that a story will develop later on as I’m going through the tutorial portion. A lot of things are overwhemling at first. You have a lot of stuff you can do, but they just send you out on a hunt in order to learn how to do it. I’m okay with that. Something that’s confusing to me, at least, is that there is no structure to it. I can combine items, fish and search for things. But as I continue to do it, I don’t get any form of skill point or experience if I successfully pull it off. Maybe I’m too used to the WoW experience.
Behind “Invader Gamer”
And it all starts here, Invader Gamer. Before I actually start posting game-related content, I should probably give a back story on all this. I’m a 26-year old male currently living in North Carolina. My son has been diagnosed with a rare metabolic disorder that can only be treated at two places in the country. During this tough time, I have taken a renewed interest in video games. I have since bought a PSP (mainly because it had a CastleVania game on it) and have found myself wanting to game more.
