Category Archives: Games and Software

The Fourth is All Around Us

For any PS Vita owners out there, you can get your Star Wars fill for $20. Three Battlefront games (Renegade Squadron, Elite Squadron and Battlefront 2), Star Wars: the Clone Wars, Lego Star Wars 3 and Star Wars: the Force Unleashed are all bundled together ready to steal hours of your life. To be fair, they were made for the PSP so the graphics are a bit dated, but the gameplay and nostalgia make up for it. There is a similar bundle for the PS3 with several PS2 titles, but, yeah, not quite as good.

11212315_10102479570303286_1066439376_nWhether you have them all or not, it is worth noting that all six Star Wars movies are available digitally for a nice, round $90. I have also seen the full collection available on Blu-ray as well. Be it physical or digital, you can cancel your cable and cram over a decade of galaxy-defining awesomeness into your memory banks.

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Live it up, fans; this is definitely your year. May the 4th be with you all.

Silent Hills Cancelled, My Hopes Shattered

It’s official. My hope for a new and improved bad-ass, amaze-balls Silent Hill game has been dashed, destroyed.

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It was too good to be true honestly: Guillermo del Toro, Hideo Kojima and Norman Reedus all working together on a new iteration for a series I love and cherish. P.T. alone is amazing, so Silent Hills was bound to be something incredible. Now we’ll never know. Maybe, when Kojima has officially moved on, he can get the gang back together and create the horror game we were promised; it won’t be Silent Hills, but I think we would be cool with that.

Konami is committed to new Silent Hill titles, however the embryonic ‘Silent Hills’ project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued. — Konami to Kotaku

Konami tries to downplay the bad news by explaining there is still hope for a new Silent Hill game, but it’s not going to be the same and will be years before a decent team can make it happen. We all know Silent Hill hasn’t been great in years. Numerous developers have tried to spark some life back into the series—Double Helix Games (Silent Hill: Homecoming), Vatra Games (Silent Hill: Downpour), WayForward Technologies (Silent Hill: Book of Memories)—but all have failed to fully capture what really made Silent Hill frightening, suspenseful, intriguing, addictive, a true psychological horror.

What is really happening behind the scene at Konami? Last November, the publisher notified its investors that it planned to voluntarily delist from the New York Stock Exchange, which went into effect on April 24. Konami claims delisting is not a sign of trouble, but there is a definite pattern happening. Why such a huge fall out between the publisher and Kojima? Of course Konami has not given a clear reason as to why Kojima is leaving. Some only confirmed Konami fired Kojima. Something big is going down. I really can’t imagine hearing any good news from Konami anytime soon.

From the Controller to the Big Screen

Five Nights at Freddy'sPrince of Persia, Doom, Hitman, Max Payne, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider—yeah I can do this all day. There are more than enough examples of gaming franchises that have made the leap to the big screen. What about it though? With Five Nights at Freddy’s going to the big screen, a thought occurred to me: I have never been a fan of gaming movies. Before you bemoan me, let me explain.

First and foremost, a lot of these movies are terrible. Except for Tomb Raider, they were all pretty poor representations of what the games actually are. Don’t agree? Take Street Fighter for example: what were Ken and Ryu even doing assisting in a military operation like that? What was Deejay (played by Juwanna Mann’s Migel A Nunez, Jr by the way) doing working with Bison? And why, God why were the fight scenes so dry? The entire franchise is in the fighting genre and is usually centered around the conflict between Ryu and the dark hado within him (see: darkside of the force). They chose not once, but twice to focus on the military struggle between Shadoloo and basically the rest of the world.

street fighter

Then there’s Mario with John Leguizamo. You can love that movie all you want to, it was doomed from the moment the gumbas were 6 foot tall. Star power is all well and good, but most of these characters have been around longer than the people they try to get to play them. Under no circumstances did I want to see Jake Gyllenhaal play Prince Dastan in Prince of Persia. Find some random, hungry actors who—gasp—actually resemble the characters they’re suppose to portray.

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I won’t be completely negative. There are magical times when the jump to a movie does actually work out. There’s one trick to it: animate it. There is no more shining example of this than Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Done hands on by SquareEnix to ensure it was legit, fit with the story, and looked beautiful. There is a clear difference when a team truly loves and enjoys what they’re working with instead of simply doing it for the love of money and deadlines. Not to say that it’s perfect, but the way the Japanese markets cinemate—just made that up, means to make into a movie, you’re welcome—their manga is usually animated. They may not always be cannon, but you never have to worry about wild creative tangents that mean nothing to the source material.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

There’s always hope for the future. The current Marvel cinematic universe shows that not everything has to fall apart once it hits the big screen. With blockbusters like Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed gaming could get a better look as well. Fingers crossed, I would really hate to see Nathan Drake embarrassed in front of the masses.

Final Fantasy Type-0 Review

Ever fire up a new game and within the first twenty minutes feel morbidly depressed? I have. Recently.

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a remastering and localization of the PSP title of the same name. This release comes out of the Square Enix pattern of remastering their games; however, this one is unique because this is the first time it is playable in English. The game follows the story of a country being torn apart by a war comparable to World War II, focusing on a powerful group of young adults trying to make a difference.

SONY DSC
The PSP housed some experimental game design from Square Enix.

Before I go into this review, let me assure my readers that I did take the fact that this is a PSP game on the PS4 into consideration in all aspects of my criticism.

Those teens are members of the most elite group in Akademia, Class Zero. These characters each have their own style, making it fun to experiment with several characters to find one that fits. The combat engine is set in real time, but common battles take place in their own separate space most of the time. Many main quests actually stay in a battle mode, allowing players to engage in skirmishes in the overall war or avoid enemies altogether. There is even a real-time strategy inspired mechanic that appears from time to time. While it adds variety, these segments usually lack depth.

Golem is acquired by talking to someone. . .
Golem is acquired by talking to someone. . .

There are many side missions that often reward curious players with items, spells, and abilities. These missions are fairly bland, but are a nice option, since the main game is fairly short. Unfortunately, there are many rewards that are worth putting up with lame missions. Players will find themselves running back and forth for much of the game just to find cool content.

Sice is one of my favorite characters, even though she fits so many anime cliches.
Sice is one of my favorite characters, even though she fits so many anime cliches.

Visually, Type-0 has an anime inspired look and feel, with detailed character models and effects. Compared to previous Final Fantasy games, Type-0 is much darker in tone, even though it pays homage to several other games in the franchise. Violence drives much of the drama with characters dying on screen with sprays of blood. Classic Final Fantasy creatures are also given an interesting spin and feel more dangerous.

The summons of Type-0 are awesome in design and execution.
The summons of Type-0 are awesome in design and execution.

Class Zero’s warriors each have unique animations that flow well and look great. The choreography alone is worth praise as monsters are chopped up, blasted away, or lulled to sleep by pleasant flute music. Summons still hold up as some of the best moments of the action as powerful allies burst into existence. These beings are also controllable, adding to their presence on the battlefield. The way these creatures are designed are always interesting to compare to past iterations.
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One of the biggest drawbacks to the game is its graphical issues. Action is fast paced, fluid, and cinematic, but the game’s camera has a hard time keeping up. This is especially true when trying to manually pan the camera, as many assets simply disappear in an attempt to have motion blur. I also found the game to be hurtful to the eyes in long stretches, making it hard to play.

Please Square Enix, fix the frame issues.
Please Square Enix, fix the frame issues.

Adding to this is the dreadful pace to the game. The first hour or so of play is filled with gorgeous cutscenes, tons of action, and culminates in the summoning of Odin. These moments set the stage way too high for the rest of the game. Players must prepare for missions by poking around the world in search of events.

The opening segment of the game also forces me to mention another problem I have with Type-0: character development is almost non-existent. This is a game with fourteen playable characters and not a one gets any sort of development in the first three hours. The driving drama of the story is the death of a completely unknown character. Even though the scene is tragic just from its direction, there’s no reason for players to care, unless they’re a Chocobo rights activist. Even after about ten hours of play, I have no idea who any of the characters in Class Zero are, what their motives are or why they’re together. Even side quests don’t offer those key character details that could make the game great. It’s a shame too, cause many character interactions, like those between Ace and Mother or Rem and Machina, ooze possibilities.

I WANT TO KNOW THEIR STORY IN A PALATABLE WAY!
I WANT TO KNOW THEIR STORY IN A PALATABLE WAY!

Before giving my final thoughts, I’d like to take this chance to clarify that I have not finished Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.

Many of the technical complaints I have about the game could, and hopefully will, be fixed in a patch. There could also be more character development towards the end, however, the game’s awesome opening left me with a lot of expectations that have yet to be matched. I want to love this game for its style, darker tone, and fluent combat engine, but its flaws make that impossible.The only thing keeping me playing is the art style.

Well, the trailers were cool. . .
Well, the trailers were cool. . .

In fact, I had lost faith in Final Fantasy after buying Final Fantasy XIII the day it released. Type-0 was a glimmer of hope for me, but I was let down. Luckily, the demo packaged with Type-0 rekindles that hope. Final Fantasy XV looks to be one of the greatest games of all time, but I won’t know for sure until it comes out.

Chichiri-and-Izana-Type-0-HD

Even considering its origins as a portable title, Final Fantasy Type-0 gets six dead chocobos out of ten.

Indie Alert: Rustbucket Rumble

Steam powered!
Steam powered!

There is one genre dominating gaming, making a splash not only on PC players, but console players as well. MOBA (Mutiplayer Online Battle Arena) is a game type that has reached an incredible level of popularity with titles such as League of Legends, DOTA 2, and my personal favorite, Smite.  With eSports becoming bigger and bigger, MOBA is a genre that’s here to stay. In fact, other games are picking up MOBA elements as additional content, such as the Defend mode in Evolve.

What’s this talk of Champions and Minions have to do with Indie game development?

There’s an interesting spin to MOBA mechanics showing up in the indie scene of late. One of which is a game I was invited to play alongside the developers, Rustbucket Rumble.

Playing with Reactor Zero was awesome and it was interesting to hear them discuss balancing and developing the game.

Rustbucket, a 2D side scrolling team-based combat game, focuses on simplicity. The object of the game is to gather parts to build a super robot that marches straight to the enemy’s base. Where does one acquire these parts? From scraps of metal of course! Of which many robots (aka players) just happen to be made of. Players can then take these parts to their base to secure a point towards building their super robot.

scene07486However, players can be revived if they sit idle long enough; each class has a different rate of revival. A team wins when the super robot destroys the opposite base.

The each class has its own powers and statistics, fitting the mold left by the titans of the genre. For example, Daisy, the Engineer, can drop turrets and use gyro-copters to snag up recycling bins, while still able to fight as the goods are carried to base. Another player, Bjorn is a bulky robot with a flamethrower and access to a shield. His interesting mechanic is the ability to throw scraps. This comes in handy not only offensively as he can toss enemies into the base for a point, but also defensively as allies tossed into base are instantly healed.

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I spent most of my time as Bjorn. Great for offense and defense.
Bjorn is the character I spent the most time as. Great for offense and defense.

Overall, the results are a frantic scooping up of players into recycling bins and tossing them about in hopes that they get recycled.

The pacing of each match is frantic and highly rewarding. Teams with coordination will usually come out on top, just like any MOBA. Yet, this game’s Pixar-like presentation is charming enough for anyone to have fun with the genre.

Colorful and frantic
Colorful and frantic

Rustbucket Rumble will be in Open Beta on March 16 to those who  sign up on the website. The game will be released on Steam later on.

I highly recommend signing up and giving this game a shot. Even in the Closed Beta, I absolutely love this game. Getting friends together is key to having the best time, but playing with strangers is still a blast. The mechanics are solid and interesting, while the art style is unique and charming.