All right, Guitar Hero II is coming to the 360. This is very cool, now there's no pressure to finally get that PS2 I still haven't bought. However, as you can see from the link, the proposed controller looks hideous. That cannot be the finalized product.
PS2
While I'm on the subject, let's see why I still have a craving for a PS2, despite not sating my hunger years ago. I'd like to say why I don't have one yet: because I'm cheap. I haven't been able to justify paying so much for one when the technology is so outdated and Sony are being so arrogant. I know I'll have to, eventually, but I've put it off for a long time, now.
I already have a PS2 game I really want to play: Atari's Transformers.
Then there's a bunch of games I think I need in my game library: Metal Gear Solid three, R-Type Final, Gradius V, Dragon Quest VIII, God Of War, the Devil May Cry series and the platform also has the best versions of the Dancing Stage series. There are a whole lot more, but these are among the titles I'm most looking forward to.
Tenchu
I went to the trouble of getting myself a Japanese Xbox Live account in order to download the demo of Tenchu Senran, published at Tokyo Game Show this week. I'm sorely disappointed. It looks like a mediocre Xbox game, albeit with a good draw distance and a solid framerate. The animation is shoddy, the controls are clunky and it's still constructed from the same blocks of scenery that made up the game way back in the original Tenchu on the Playstation.
I really liked the first and second installment of Tenchu on the PS, but I did expect the series to mature and evolve by now. If the only change is draw distance, I just can't get excited. I'll stay posted for reviews, though, because this is a game I really want to like. And the trailer (pop-up warning!) was so exciting!
However, the DS ("Dark Secret", heh) version is interesting, if only because it doesn't use the same age-old presentation of the series. Instead, it takes the old Metal Gear Solid top-down viewpoint, which might fit the series very well.
Showing posts with label ninja. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ninja. Show all posts
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Battlefield Chaos
Kung Fu Chaos
I finally came across Kung Fu Chaos by Just Add Monsters (these days known as Ninja Theory). It was the first title on my Xbox want list back in 2003, actually, so it's about high time, too. Regardless of my high expectations, they were easily surpassed. The game is delicious.
You may not know KFC, since it came and went with little fanfare, despite generally positive reviews. It's a humorous beat 'em up where you face from one to a gang of opponents at a time, usually in scrolling environments. The game is set in the set of a cheap 70s kung fu flick. There is no plot; you act out fighting scenes, with the director yelling all the time. There is a bunch of minigames, too.
It's amazing how much top-notch presentation can add to the whole. From the moment the game boots up, you're feeling like you're watching a kung fu show. The interface is grainy and scratchy like cheap film, and you really can't help but smile when Kung Fu Fighting begins pouring out of the speakers.
Based on two sessions with the game, KFC is pure feel-good. Even when you're losing, it's funny, and there's an abundance of neat stuff, like the minigame where you have to throw a difficult princess at the other contestants to make them fall of the poles you're all standing on. So far the stages haven't repeated themselves at all. The basic gameplay is more varied than the old-school scrolling beat 'em ups this game is based on.
I don't even like the character design, but the game still holds a huge appeal. Catching falling stuntmen is great fun, there's no way around it!
Battlefield 2
Battlefield has always sounded like a lot of fun, and with the 360 and Live, I'm finally able to take a bite. I've now played around five hours of it on Live and a couple of hours of the singe player campaign.
It's a great game with a couple of really nagging things, more on which below. It's a shame there are only two online game modes - Conquest and Capture The Flag - but BF really seems to be built on Conquest, anyway.
The game looks good - I've been impressed by most of the maps. The physics don't feel right, which is a shame. Seeing a helicopter blown out of the sky is neat, but when the pieces tumble on the battlefield, making little sound and ricocheting all over the place with no weight to them really takes the edge off the experience. "Oh right, we're playing a game here." I also can't understand why tanks can't overrun small trees and fences. Surely it can't be that hard to implement?
For a Live-game, it' crucial that there are players on the servers. I haven't played in a game with fewer than 17 participants, with most up in the 20-24 category. There have been zero issues with lag. The game has been downscaled from the PC version, but the scale feels just right, at least with mostly full servers.
I like the way the armies speak their pre-recorded reports in their own languages. It's no roleplaying, but it does add to the overall feel a lot to hear Chinese in your headphones. On the whole, though, the audio becomes tiring due to the constant bass-overloaded explosions and shots. The music fits the bill rather well and gives some structure to the cacophony.
There is one thing I'm really irritated about. Electronic Arts has completely neglected us poor people with old-school, standard-definition TVs. BF2 uses tiny type and interface elements. which are nigh-invisible on my 32" SDTV. Thankfully there's an option to switch the interface colors to colorblind-friendly choices, which makes the essential data a little better visible.
Related to this is the fact that you can't adjust the game's brightness, contrast or gamma. This is a shame because I need to crank my TV's options quite a bit to make the game playable - it's very dark.
Also, I can't use my whole 4:3 ratio TV screen. The game forces itself to a wide-screen format, which does bug me.
Iä! Iä!
Along with Kung Fu Chaos, I also bought another secondhand game - Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth. I'm a fan of Lovecraft and especially the pen and paper roleplaying game on which this videogame is based - at least I think so, based on the game's logo.
Also, Konami is bringing a Marvel trading card game to the DS. This is the kind of shit I've been waiting for on the DS. Which begs the question of where's Pokémon, though?
Oh and speaking of Cthulhu, the Mythos collectable card game, based on the Cthulhu Mythos, is good fun. I haven't checked out the newer Cthulhu CCG, though.
I finally came across Kung Fu Chaos by Just Add Monsters (these days known as Ninja Theory). It was the first title on my Xbox want list back in 2003, actually, so it's about high time, too. Regardless of my high expectations, they were easily surpassed. The game is delicious.
You may not know KFC, since it came and went with little fanfare, despite generally positive reviews. It's a humorous beat 'em up where you face from one to a gang of opponents at a time, usually in scrolling environments. The game is set in the set of a cheap 70s kung fu flick. There is no plot; you act out fighting scenes, with the director yelling all the time. There is a bunch of minigames, too.
It's amazing how much top-notch presentation can add to the whole. From the moment the game boots up, you're feeling like you're watching a kung fu show. The interface is grainy and scratchy like cheap film, and you really can't help but smile when Kung Fu Fighting begins pouring out of the speakers.
Based on two sessions with the game, KFC is pure feel-good. Even when you're losing, it's funny, and there's an abundance of neat stuff, like the minigame where you have to throw a difficult princess at the other contestants to make them fall of the poles you're all standing on. So far the stages haven't repeated themselves at all. The basic gameplay is more varied than the old-school scrolling beat 'em ups this game is based on.
I don't even like the character design, but the game still holds a huge appeal. Catching falling stuntmen is great fun, there's no way around it!
Battlefield 2
Battlefield has always sounded like a lot of fun, and with the 360 and Live, I'm finally able to take a bite. I've now played around five hours of it on Live and a couple of hours of the singe player campaign.
It's a great game with a couple of really nagging things, more on which below. It's a shame there are only two online game modes - Conquest and Capture The Flag - but BF really seems to be built on Conquest, anyway.
The game looks good - I've been impressed by most of the maps. The physics don't feel right, which is a shame. Seeing a helicopter blown out of the sky is neat, but when the pieces tumble on the battlefield, making little sound and ricocheting all over the place with no weight to them really takes the edge off the experience. "Oh right, we're playing a game here." I also can't understand why tanks can't overrun small trees and fences. Surely it can't be that hard to implement?
For a Live-game, it' crucial that there are players on the servers. I haven't played in a game with fewer than 17 participants, with most up in the 20-24 category. There have been zero issues with lag. The game has been downscaled from the PC version, but the scale feels just right, at least with mostly full servers.
I like the way the armies speak their pre-recorded reports in their own languages. It's no roleplaying, but it does add to the overall feel a lot to hear Chinese in your headphones. On the whole, though, the audio becomes tiring due to the constant bass-overloaded explosions and shots. The music fits the bill rather well and gives some structure to the cacophony.
There is one thing I'm really irritated about. Electronic Arts has completely neglected us poor people with old-school, standard-definition TVs. BF2 uses tiny type and interface elements. which are nigh-invisible on my 32" SDTV. Thankfully there's an option to switch the interface colors to colorblind-friendly choices, which makes the essential data a little better visible.
Related to this is the fact that you can't adjust the game's brightness, contrast or gamma. This is a shame because I need to crank my TV's options quite a bit to make the game playable - it's very dark.
Also, I can't use my whole 4:3 ratio TV screen. The game forces itself to a wide-screen format, which does bug me.
Iä! Iä!
Along with Kung Fu Chaos, I also bought another secondhand game - Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth. I'm a fan of Lovecraft and especially the pen and paper roleplaying game on which this videogame is based - at least I think so, based on the game's logo.
Also, Konami is bringing a Marvel trading card game to the DS. This is the kind of shit I've been waiting for on the DS. Which begs the question of where's Pokémon, though?
Oh and speaking of Cthulhu, the Mythos collectable card game, based on the Cthulhu Mythos, is good fun. I haven't checked out the newer Cthulhu CCG, though.
Friday, September 08, 2006
New languages to be humiliated in
I finally hooked up my original Xbox to Live. This wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, since I had to use the Gamertag recovery function to get set up and I found zero instructions on how to do things from 360 to Xbox and not the other way around. (In the end it was all logical, I just felt like groping in the dark.) We'll see if I have to move the Gamertag back to the 360 once I'm done. If so, well, that sucks. However, I discovered something so good on the Live-enabled Xbox that I just might be willing to suffer the pain of the gamertag recovery again.
(Edit: no additional hassles once the ethernet cable flew back to the 360. Go Microsoft.)
The reason being that playing Dead Or Alive Ultimate online was even sweeter than I'd imagined. Playing in the "winner stays on" mode and watching the others fight it out before my turn was really damn near the best online experience I've ever had. It felt just like the arcade! I didn't win a single match (rounds, though), but I've never had so much fun getting my ass handed to me (I'm at C- rank currently.)
I got to play several Japanese guys. It felt really weird to hear realtime Japanese in-game. I don't have the slightest idea of what they were saying, but you know, the language of buttkicking is universal. I was rather surprised to discover that the only time we had trouble with lag (I was hosting) was when playing with Americans. There was some lag, yes, but I didn't find it a problem.
Dead Or Alive 4 on the 360 is a no-brainer for me, now. Of course, it plays a lot differently than Ultimate, but I never was any good at Ultimate. I've played DOA3 lots, but it can be argued that it has a broken system due to far too easy countering. From my DOA3 experience, my favorite character by far is Hitomi.
There aren't too many things as pure as playing real humans one-on-one in a beat 'em up.
(Edit: no additional hassles once the ethernet cable flew back to the 360. Go Microsoft.)
The reason being that playing Dead Or Alive Ultimate online was even sweeter than I'd imagined. Playing in the "winner stays on" mode and watching the others fight it out before my turn was really damn near the best online experience I've ever had. It felt just like the arcade! I didn't win a single match (rounds, though), but I've never had so much fun getting my ass handed to me (I'm at C- rank currently.)
I got to play several Japanese guys. It felt really weird to hear realtime Japanese in-game. I don't have the slightest idea of what they were saying, but you know, the language of buttkicking is universal. I was rather surprised to discover that the only time we had trouble with lag (I was hosting) was when playing with Americans. There was some lag, yes, but I didn't find it a problem.
Dead Or Alive 4 on the 360 is a no-brainer for me, now. Of course, it plays a lot differently than Ultimate, but I never was any good at Ultimate. I've played DOA3 lots, but it can be argued that it has a broken system due to far too easy countering. From my DOA3 experience, my favorite character by far is Hitomi.
There aren't too many things as pure as playing real humans one-on-one in a beat 'em up.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Lots of stuff
Regarding difficulty
I've been playing more Perfect Dark Zero and Oblivion. Both have proved to be challenging. PDZ's (default) Secret Agent difficulty has me retrying levels a lot, which I don't mind, but the stealth sections are beginning to grate. I like the multiplayer DarkOps, in which you play several rounds of a given gametype and get money to buy equipment with between rounds. Infection and Onslaught are my favorites. I'm wondering whether the map pack would be worth its price on the Marketplace.
I've got the collector's edition of PDZ. The bonus disc is utterly useless, but the tin can is sweet indeed.
In Oblivion, as I have levelled my character (I'm at level11 12 13), trolls have cropped up everywhere and they're so much tougher than the wolves and the like I've had to deal with so far. Will o' wisps are also a pain - empty magicka on low-damage spells, run away to recharge, repeat around ten times... Of course you get better at casting spells while at it, but still.
I do like the way the new threats make you think and evolve. Last morning I had to retrieve some items from a burial complex. The faded wraiths patrolling the place are far too hard for me, so I took off my boots and sneaked through the grave barefoot (it's easier to sneak without shoes) and upon discovery, legging it. It was fun, and I improved my sneak skill by quite a few points.
Nevertheless, Oblivion is still very good. Only the conversation system has proved to be utterly pointless - once you figure it out, it's no more engaging than hammering away on the A button.
There's quite a bit of things to do in the game. I only realized today that you can apply poison to your weapons!
Speaking of hard games, I tried my trusty old Ninja Gaiden on the 360. It works just fine, but the Hurricane Packs proved way too hard for me; I can't even reach the first boss! I guess I have to complete the basic game again (fourth time) to pick up my skills for the new challenge.
Next gen rising
So far the biggest next-gen vibes I've got are coming from the recent demo of Dead Rising. It's simply... fun. I like everything we've been hearing about the game, the first reviews are very positive, it looks good, it plays great, it's an absolute laugh. Its looks aren't really anything you could not achieve on an Xbox, but there are hundreds (hundreds!) of zombies on-screen, all moving smoothly. Bodies and blood splatters don't disappear anywhere - indeed, your clothes get stained rather convincingly as you plow through the horde. I've played the demo quite a few times, looking for new weapons (bowling balls, gold clubs, cash registers...) and comedy opportunities (cream cakes). You can even spit at the undead. I really didn't expect a basically very simple "zombie game" to be this good.
Capcom looks like it's got its next-gen development in capable hands. In addition to Dead Rising, their Lost Planet is very promising. I trust that more stuff is on the way.
Random observations
As a geek pursuit, I like checking out what Google searches people are coming to my site from. Yesterday one guy was looking for whatever the King Tut mask is for in Animal Crossing Wild World. Nothing much, really, but it looks awesome!
I'm also getting back into tabletop gaming after a dry summer. Miniatures, too, especially Heavy Gear (check these out... I'm salivating here), but also Warhammer 40'000.
So they chose a director for the Halo movie. Interesting! That short movie he's done is quite something else. I'm getting more and more positive about the whole endeavour. The new comic book seems like it'd be worth the (little) money they're asking for it.
[Edit: so cool! In addition to the rather neat short movie above, the Halo director has also done this excellent Transformers-alike Citroën film, which would be first of the three car commercials I can recall from the top of my head.]
I got a new portable music player yesterday. The 512 MB Philips I had was not only lacking in storage capacity, it's bugged, unreliable and cumbersome to use. My wife's Creative Zen player seems like the right stuff, so I got a Creative Zen Nano Plus (white, 1 GB). I would've liked a black one instead, but what's with charging +5€ just for the color? I haven't used it much yet, but initial impressions are good.
Update: since someone's been Googling stuff on faded wraiths in Oblivion, I finally found something that works: an ehchanted sword which does fire damage (15 pts) on strike. Unfortunately, it runs out of charges pretty quickly, but you can follow up with damage-dealing spells to conserve charges. I cleared a ghost ship I've been trying some dozen times with this. These swords started dropping from looted enemies at around level 14. If only I had the strength to carry several!
Also, after some more use of the Zen Nano Plus, I can say it rocks. It's very well-designed and the battery life is impressive, compared to the pitiful one of my previous Philips machine.
I've been playing more Perfect Dark Zero and Oblivion. Both have proved to be challenging. PDZ's (default) Secret Agent difficulty has me retrying levels a lot, which I don't mind, but the stealth sections are beginning to grate. I like the multiplayer DarkOps, in which you play several rounds of a given gametype and get money to buy equipment with between rounds. Infection and Onslaught are my favorites. I'm wondering whether the map pack would be worth its price on the Marketplace.
I've got the collector's edition of PDZ. The bonus disc is utterly useless, but the tin can is sweet indeed.
In Oblivion, as I have levelled my character (I'm at level
I do like the way the new threats make you think and evolve. Last morning I had to retrieve some items from a burial complex. The faded wraiths patrolling the place are far too hard for me, so I took off my boots and sneaked through the grave barefoot (it's easier to sneak without shoes) and upon discovery, legging it. It was fun, and I improved my sneak skill by quite a few points.
Nevertheless, Oblivion is still very good. Only the conversation system has proved to be utterly pointless - once you figure it out, it's no more engaging than hammering away on the A button.
There's quite a bit of things to do in the game. I only realized today that you can apply poison to your weapons!
Speaking of hard games, I tried my trusty old Ninja Gaiden on the 360. It works just fine, but the Hurricane Packs proved way too hard for me; I can't even reach the first boss! I guess I have to complete the basic game again (fourth time) to pick up my skills for the new challenge.
Next gen rising
So far the biggest next-gen vibes I've got are coming from the recent demo of Dead Rising. It's simply... fun. I like everything we've been hearing about the game, the first reviews are very positive, it looks good, it plays great, it's an absolute laugh. Its looks aren't really anything you could not achieve on an Xbox, but there are hundreds (hundreds!) of zombies on-screen, all moving smoothly. Bodies and blood splatters don't disappear anywhere - indeed, your clothes get stained rather convincingly as you plow through the horde. I've played the demo quite a few times, looking for new weapons (bowling balls, gold clubs, cash registers...) and comedy opportunities (cream cakes). You can even spit at the undead. I really didn't expect a basically very simple "zombie game" to be this good.
Capcom looks like it's got its next-gen development in capable hands. In addition to Dead Rising, their Lost Planet is very promising. I trust that more stuff is on the way.
Random observations
As a geek pursuit, I like checking out what Google searches people are coming to my site from. Yesterday one guy was looking for whatever the King Tut mask is for in Animal Crossing Wild World. Nothing much, really, but it looks awesome!
I'm also getting back into tabletop gaming after a dry summer. Miniatures, too, especially Heavy Gear (check these out... I'm salivating here), but also Warhammer 40'000.
So they chose a director for the Halo movie. Interesting! That short movie he's done is quite something else. I'm getting more and more positive about the whole endeavour. The new comic book seems like it'd be worth the (little) money they're asking for it.
[Edit: so cool! In addition to the rather neat short movie above, the Halo director has also done this excellent Transformers-alike Citroën film, which would be first of the three car commercials I can recall from the top of my head.]
I got a new portable music player yesterday. The 512 MB Philips I had was not only lacking in storage capacity, it's bugged, unreliable and cumbersome to use. My wife's Creative Zen player seems like the right stuff, so I got a Creative Zen Nano Plus (white, 1 GB). I would've liked a black one instead, but what's with charging +5€ just for the color? I haven't used it much yet, but initial impressions are good.
Update: since someone's been Googling stuff on faded wraiths in Oblivion, I finally found something that works: an ehchanted sword which does fire damage (15 pts) on strike. Unfortunately, it runs out of charges pretty quickly, but you can follow up with damage-dealing spells to conserve charges. I cleared a ghost ship I've been trying some dozen times with this. These swords started dropping from looted enemies at around level 14. If only I had the strength to carry several!
Also, after some more use of the Zen Nano Plus, I can say it rocks. It's very well-designed and the battery life is impressive, compared to the pitiful one of my previous Philips machine.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Fire on slopes, fighting chicks, consistent soundtracks and throwing enemies
Completely non-game-related stuff: I was going through my photo archives and stumbled upon my cellphone photos of the Makasiinit fire this summer. It was an old railroad warehouse complex, used for flea markets and concerts, which was scheduled to be demolished this same summer, to much controversy. It used to cater to young people and the fight to keep them as they were was very much a struggle between the leftist and right-wing types. We happened to go by just as the fire was picking up in ferocity. They still can't say whether the fire was intentional or not.
An unrelated, but gamer topic: more backwards compatibility experiences with the Xbox 360! I threw in Amped 2, which I dearly love, and found that it worked without additional patches. I created a new snowboarder and signed into Xbox Live. It wouldn't let me download the, well, downloadable content, presumably because it hasn't been upgraded for current Live standards. Oh well, I can live without that, I was primarily looking forward to some King of the Mountain action. No "quick matches" were to be found, so I set up my own. I had gone at it solo for one round (two minutes), when the first two guys joined me on the slope. Sweet! I was rather worried that there were no players of Amped 2 online any longer, but it seems that's not the case.
The gamer community has been vocal about the demise of E3 as we know it. Just as well. Every respectable game media I know of keeps complaining about how horrible it is, and you get hundreds of games you should care about: it just doesn't work. Please do drip the news all over the year, don't waste money and energy on catering to "professionals". I know I get a sort of "oh no, here we go again" -feeling, opening one of those E3 special editions of my favorite magazines.
Dead Or Alive 4. I've been playing the demo, thinking whether I should buy the full game or not, and I'm still undecided. The AI seems to be broken. One morning I breezed through the time attack in under two minutes, not losing once, later in the afternoon I got kicked around so hard that I was about to give up. I finally cleared the time attack in 13 minutes. Many times, I couldn't land a single blow! The AI blocked, threw and kept the pressure on faultlessly. This has been complained about in the retail game's reviews, too, so apparently there really is something wrong with the AI. Still, it would be primarily a Live game for me, provided that lag isn't a problem. Too bad I can't test that with the demo.
I played the DOA4 demo to the rhythm of Paradise Lost's One Second album. I love the 360's way of letting me listen to my own music within any game, at any time, replacing the game's (often crappy) soundtrack effortlessly. It even works with backward-compatible games, although you need to kill their built-in music manually.
They released a demo of Ninety-Nine Nights. The aesthetic design is unexciting (indeed, rather bland), but plowing through hundreds on enemies like Sauron on fast forward is good fun. I can see that it might get too reptitive in the long run and it seems to be all the same whether you just hammer the attack buttons randomly or concentrate on executing precise combos, but it's sweet that there ate literally hundreds of combatants on-screen at once and the framerate never suffers.
Update: Oh, and we're past one thousand visitors now, if my Statcounter is to be believed. Go audience! Also according to the same data, some of you are returning visitors. Go regular audience! An average of seven people comes to the blog each day, although recently we've seen peaks of twelve about twice a week.
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