Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, passed away this past
Saturday at the age of 55 due to the complications of the tumor growing in his
bile duct. I was shocked and saddened by the news and wrote a rather long rant
(by my Facebook standards) on it today.
No music monday today. Instead, I want to talk a little bit
about a man named Satoru Iwata. I want to share why his life and work mattered
to me, to the gaming community, to the industry, and maybe to you.
Did you know that:
-Satoru Iwata was a programmer in game development before he
was president of Nintendo? He was a freelance programmer for HAL Laboratory (a
subsidiary of Nintendo) before being hired full-time working on games like
Kirby's Adventure and Earthbound. In fact, he was a wizard programmer! He saved
Earthbound when the script went awry; he organized and compressed the code to
Pokémon Gold and Silver enough to fit the entire Kanto region into the game; he
also programmed for the original Super Smash Bros. when it was just a small
side project!
-He loved playing videogames as much as he loved making
them. It's no surprise this day in age to have a CEO of a videogame company not
know much about them or even like playing them, but they know how to run a
business and will take part in the industry if it makes them money. I've worked
in a company where every employee didn't play games or understand them. They
didn't care about making or publishing fun games as long as it made money. So
it's important to note that Satoru Iwata's desire to make "fun games"
lead to some daring and innovative decisions such as motion control on the Wii.
Nintendo has already tried motion control once (Power Glove) but were willing
to try again. It wasn't until the success of the Nintendo Wii was known before
Sony and Microsoft were willing to try motion control afterwards. He didn't
always make the best decisions, but he made ones that other companies wouldn't
even dare mention.
-Iwata became President of Nintendo during a time the
company wasn't doing very well. The Nintendo GameCube, despite having two of my
favorite games of all time in its library (Super Smash Bros. Melee and Phantasy
Star Online Episode 1 & 2), was performing poorly in sales. The
GameCube had a lot of great games: Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Tales of
Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, etc. But
they were geared specifically for "gamers" and those that played
games often. Iwata believed that games should be enjoyed by all people and not
by a small group which led to the development of the Wii and DS which garnered
a lot of casual friendly games that were easy to learn but compelling. Nintendo
stock value nearly doubled with the success of the Wii and DS. The Wii U and
3DS hasn't been nearly as successful, but games that I want to play on it
continue to release on those system exclusively. I haven't bought a Wii U yet
because of the ridiculous backlog I'm getting through right now. Otherwise, I
would have bought one a while ago.
Long story short: Iwata was a man that cared about his
product and his consumers because he, himself, loved and played videogames too.
He has mentioned that he missed developing games, but his role as president
kept him from having the time to do so. And were he not president, Nintendo
might not have taken the steps to innovate and try new things. His influence,
work, and ambitions left quite an impression on the industry. He wasn't afraid
to act silly and entertain the masses whenever he talked about Nintendo and the
games were making. He was passionate in his work and was truly dedicated to it
as he had never left Nintendo since he started working under them. RIP Satoru
Iwata, you will be missed.
I realized I never wrote anything on Valentine's Day before! Well, let me tell you a story:
My date isn't going to be here until tomorrow. And even when she gets here, I won't be taking her out...yet. I'm still processing the first encounter and don't even get me started on the 2nd encounter. At first, I hated her and all her friends. But after a bit, I started warming up to her and some of her buddies. I feel really good about this 3rd encounter, though I'm not prepared for it yet. A lot of people don't seem to like her at all. I'll give her that chance. My friends say that it's not worth it. "She's just an angry, pink-haired tsundere with no personality!" Maybe it'll be okay. I kinda like tsunderes!
So yeah, I pre-order Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII for PS3 and it arrives in the mail tomorrow! I pre-ordered it to get the Yuna and Cloud Strife costumes and because I'm very excited about the game. But I don't think I'll be able to play it quite just yet. I FINALLY started playing Final Fantasy XIII and am about 10 hours in (still in the 'process' of finishing the game) and will work towards finishing it and FFXIII-2 (haven't even 'started' it yet) before I actually start Lightning Returns. With the first 2 hours of Final Fantasy XIII, I immediately hated all the characters. All the characters are based off emotions. Lightning is always angry. Snow bi-polar and changes his emotions on a whim. Sazh can't finish his sentences as he's dubious on his stance in an argument. Vanille is way too happy for her own good. And Hope is the worst out of all of them with being portrayed as weak and helpless while blaming everyone else around him for everything. With about 10 hours into the game, I'm starting to like Lightning a bit more as she shows some compassion towards the other characters. I'm hoping I'll warm up to the rest of the cast as I get deeper into the story. I tried out the demo of Lightning Returns and really liked the combat system as it's a lot more action-orientated and require a lot of cycling through skills. Sadly, Lightning Returns has the lowest MetaScore out of the FFXIII series by critics and users alike. Some people didn't like the story or characters, some didn't like the ending, others hated how it's action-orientated and not turn-based, while some just join in on the band-wagon and throw out vague comments such as "it's a boring game". I really like the character design to Lightning but do think she has a shallow personality from what has been revealed in the first 10 hours of FFXIII so far. I started liking her a bit more when she started showing some concern or understanding towards the other characters and that's when I realized her character archetype was that of a tsundere. A Tsundere is a very common character archetype in animé where the character acts cold and/or indifferent to the other characters and ends up being more friendly near the end or in another method, they're resolute and show no compassion in the outside but hints on kindness and understanding in the inside. I actually didn't know about this until I watched Lucky Star and it pointed out Kagami Hiiragi being a "Tsundere" so often. That's when I realized I liked a lot of characters that are "tsundere". I don't think it applies to actual girls in real life though. So yeah, I'll be going through the FFXIII series this year and hopefully get around to Lightning Returns soon.
Getting back to the topic at hand: it's Valentine's Day and I don't have anything in particular planned. I'm not disappointed and it's not surprising to have anything happen while I'm in the environment that I'm in. This is why I've got to get a job outside of this city so I can meet more people! I don't have anyone to celebrate Valentine's Day with, but that's okay. Still not in the game industry to work towards my goal, that's not as okay. I'm more concerned about my ability to get a job right now more than anything and it's something I'm working hard towards. My portfolio is shaping up nicely and I'll have to do some more editing on my resumé. In the meantime, I still want to work hard on producing more music and getting better at it. It's been a pretty productive month so far with more projects lined up for me. I also started making music for a game one of my friend's is developing for the android market. In terms of gaming, I'm a bit worried. I've already spent a lot of money these past 1.5 months into this year and I've already bought more games than I have completed. I have to be careful about that since I'm more focused on completing specific games rather than large quantities of them. And most of those specific games take a long time to complete. Still, because of Valentine's Day, there were a bunch of sales I couldn't possibly ignore. So I picked up 5 more games today. Overall, I think the year started off alright so far for me. I wish I was working out more consistently (been doing 2 times a week instead of 3) and getting work done a lot faster as well as completing games faster, but I realize that I have to pace myself if I want to get anything done.
Hello all! It's already spring and almost April! Man, time is going by so quickly. I have completed the music to one of the projects I'm working on and am waiting for it to be published on Steam and XBLA. The other project I'm on seems to be dwindling down on momentum and might cancel eventually. With that, I'm kind of out of work to do that needs my immediate attention. I've been falling behind on doing my game write-ups so I don't have any tactile proof of what I've learned from games I've played. I counted it up and I'm up to 122 completed games now! Still, my backlog is a monster I can't put down so I have a lot more to go through. I'm still not done with the Street Fighter Mix and it's driving me nuts that I haven't yet. I'm currently working on a digital drawing that's taking much too long for its quality, but that just means I need a lot more practice. As always, I've been searching for a job within the Interactive Entertainment Industry to no avail. Open positions are limited and companies are laying off more than hiring lately. Blizzard recently reported a lay off of 600 employees across their company, most of them not in development. It was sad to hear that one of my friends that had worked with Blizzard for 11 years was one of them. I'm sure he'll be able to find another job quickly if he wanted to, me on the other hand...
So speaking of Blizzard, a release date for Diablo 3 has been made! On May 15th, 2012, we will get to revisit hell in all its new technological glory as Diablo's 3rd iteration makes its return to the series since Diablo 2's expansion back in 2001. I'm really excited about it now that I've finished Diablo 2 (I'm still thinking of playing through Diablo 1). Guild Wars 2 should be releasing sometime this year too, and I think it's one MMORPG I'm willing to go out and buy to play. Besides those two PC games, I am eagerly awaiting for Warriors Orochi 3 and Dragon's Dogma for the Playstation 3 as well as The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. There are so many new games that have come out or about to release that it's hard to keep up. To name a few: Street Fighter X Tekken, Ninja Gaiden 3, Mass Effect 3, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Soul Calibur V, and Final Fantasy XIII-2. For some reason, all of those games received bad remarks from critics or fans of each of those series. I'm about to do a proper review of that on tomorrow's Superpad post.
One of my friends got me back into playing MMOs again so I've started playing games like Aion, Vindictus, Dragon Nest, Maple Story, Rift, and Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. I quickly slowed back down on all those games and finally convinced my friend to play Dungeon Defenders with me since Steam had a 50% off sale for the game over the weekend.
I've had the game for a few months now but didn't play it extensively, so he was able to catch up quite quickly and have already gone past my level. It's a really enjoyable game as it's simple to understand and learn while still challenging and engrossing throughout playing it. There has been a few other games I've been trying to finish up such as Eternal Sonata on PS3, Castlevania: Judgment on Wii, Nightshade on PS2, and E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy on PC. I completed a game called Painkiller on PC, and it was pretty interesting. The game was super fast-paced Action FPS that felt a lot like Quake and Unreal Tournament. I really liked the environment in that game. I also finally sat down and completed Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom for the NES. It was very difficult, but a lot of fun. Playing older games on the NES make me realize how much I miss action platformers. The charming graphics, catchy tunes, and simple yet challenging gameplay seems to be very difficult to capture in games nowadays. Even with games that mimic classic gameplay of retro games, it just doesn't feel the same. The boss battles in Ninja Gaiden 3 were easier than the ones from 2 and 1 except for the last boss. When I finally found the pattern for defeating the final boss, he suddenly appears with a true form that was tricky at first but I realize was even easier than the first form. Then after that, there was a "final" form that had a shield you had to destroy before being able to damage him. By that point, I was already going "PLEASE, let this be the last form..." Developers were rather sadistic in a lot of the older games. I mean, you have a limited amount of continues in Ninja Gaiden 3! If you die at the final boss, you go waaaaaay back to the last check point you were at just like in the first one. When you beat one form of the final boss, you don't regain any health back. Ninja Gaiden 3 was pretty fun, but I think the first two were more memorable.
I've been pretty much relaxing after I finish doing a blog post each day if I'm not working on music or drawing. I've still been looking for a job and sent out a few more applications whenever I see an open position. This is like an intermission I'm in right now since I'm not actively working like I was before and haven't started working on another project yet. I'm probably going to start making my own games now that I have the time so that I can add them to my portfolio. I probably won't make it as lead design yet, but maybe I can still reach out to a developer that wants music if I can't find a job as a QA Analyst. Oh well, now that my sister is home for spring break and my friend is still available to play games each day, I'm going to enjoy my little intermission for now and get back in gear right after.
Well, almost. It's a week before Christmas, but I don't have the same excited feelings I once had about Christmas. My memories of Christmas past haven't all been great, but they make me appreciate the ones I have every year. Every year, I'd be excited to go to a cousin's house, or a relatives, or family friends and be able to be around so many people close to me. It doesn't seem like we're even doing anything this year, so I'm not as excited about Christmas this year. I am; however, happy in my own way. My sister's home and I get to spend so much time with my immediate family.
Anyways, I've been continuing work for the game projects I've been assigned to doing music for and the latest track I did for Camera Obscura seems to be really liked by the team, a lot. This scares me, because it was a track for the 2nd last area of the game. I still have one more track to do left, and it's for the last area! What am I going to do to top what I did before? Though I can't preview the song or anything yet, I can say that's it's a cross between a Waltz, a baroque period invention, a romantic period melody and play style, and modern electronic music. Yup, I'm strange like that, but it sounded right in my head and turned out great as a result albeit the midi-sounding instruments. I've worked a little on the Street Fighter Mix, but I still have some left mainly because I don't have a structure for the last 3-4 character themes to work with. This means I'll have to do it all by scratch...ugh. But I definitely want to finish before the end of this year. The mix has rendered me unproductive in terms of quantity, and the quality doesn't really make up for it.
I need to improve my blog, create my portfolio site, and start creating those indie games of mine, but I don't think I'll be able to do it before the end of the year. It seems like my New Year's resolution for 2011 has mostly failed aside from completing games which I've been doing very well at, haha. What I haven't done after completing the games is doing the write-ups, which was the whole point of recording the games I've played. I'm planning to focus my last 2 weeks of 2011 to improving my blog and doing those write-ups.
So, continuing from the last post I made, I've bought quite a bit of games. After those purchases, I promised myself I wouldn't buy anymore until I've completed at least half of what I've gotten so far. Well I failed, haha. I went to the newly re-established Roseville Galleria mall this past weekend just to check out what changed and just to go out for a bit of fresh air since I'm always home working. I dropped by GameStop and went through the games and Hyperdimensional Neptunia was there as a new copy for $30!
I'm not crazy about getting the game, but I've been keeping an eye on it throughout the year as the general price online was $70-$90. It's an RPG that makes a lot of references, parodies, and jokes about the game industry. I mean, the world that it's set in is called "Gamindustri". I couldn't help it and bought it, and I'm not sure if it's worth it yet since I haven't played it. I checked up online again and there's stores selling it for $60, but there's another store selling it for $180. Why is it so rare/expensive? When I bought it at GameStop, it was the last copy! Weird. I also bought a used copy of Madworld for the Wii (finally) as it was only $7 and the condition of the disk was pretty good for a used game. I played the first mission last night and "snap" the game is ridiculous. The whole game is black and white so the red blood is VERY noticeable. It's very violent for sure, but I didn't expect the F-bomb being dropped every 5 seconds in the game. For $7, I guess it's a good game to play if you want to release some RAGE!!! Hahaha.
Steam Winter Sales started today, oh dear...That means buying more games, haha. The site was so imploded today that it couldn't even start. The servers are getting raped by millions of patrons buying and downloading games right now. There's also a drawing for an epic giveaway at the end of the event where the grand prize winner wins...ALL GAMES ON STEAM! That's too nuts, not even I'd want that. Still, the objective event thing is back for the winter sales which means I'll be playing Steam games for the next 2 weeks. I beat Crysis 2 last night on PS3 and I have so many games on it that I'm not sure what to play next, but I guess I'll switch around and play a bit each night before fulfilling those objectives on steam each night. I may not be looking forward to Christmas this year, but I look forward to playing games every night for the next two weeks.
Have a Merry Christmas Everyone! And a Happy New Year.
I won't be able to attend E3 this year, but I'm still excited for it. There's a ton of good games to be showcased at this year's E3 and I am particularly hoping to hear more about Phantasy Star Online 2!
I'm not sure what else to talk about right now. I just bought Dynasty Warriors 7 today and will try it out tonight. I have a lot of work lined up to do, but I feel sorta lazy for some reason. There's a lot of things I want to do, but too much of what I need to do to make time. I finally beat Demon's Souls and I started a new character and beat it again in 1/3 of the time (68 hours the first time, 21 hours the 2nd time). Dark Souls will be shown at E3 this year I think, so there will be more gameplay footages to show hopefully. There's a lot of good games coming out, but I guess I'm so overwhelmed by uncompleted games, work, and projects that I'm even more selective of my games than before. Well, I don't want to continue ranting on for the heck of it. Guess we'll get to see a lot of cool games next month once the press gets news at E3.
I had an okay weekend I guess. I spent most of Saturday playing piano and beta testing Legend of Edda in its closed beta. Sunday (yesterday) I spent about 2.5 hours playing violin and guitar and then spent the rest of the day beta testing Kitsu Saga from Aeriagames. After that, I did some game hopping. I'm not sure if its an actual term, if not, I invented a new term! Dahahaha~ Anyways, it's the act of jumping from one game to another in small durations so that one can play various games in a short span of time. It also shows will power if you can pull yourself away from one thing to go to another. So, I think it went something like: Team Fortress 2 (PC), Beat Hazard (PC), Trine (PC), Global Agenda (PC), Mount & Blade (PC), Cabal Online (PC), Sega Superstar Tennis (PS3), Demon's Souls (PS3), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (PS3). I think that's the best game hopping in terms of quantity I had. And yes, I enjoyed it. I got something out of every one of those games (well, maybe except Mount & Blade because all I got were extra items...).
Anyways, it's a new week and I'm planning it out as I go along kind of. I might skip finishing a game this week in order to devote time into beta testing Medal of Honor and work on a music project I have in mind. I haven't much got to do what I wanted to set out for post graduation, and so I thought I'd start doing some of that now. I've also noticed how much I written about videogames and have been considering doing an actual public blog to share with the gaming community. We'll see. I'm also debating whether I should do some open beta testing for CosmicBreak since it's back up for a 2nd round. I enjoy that game and am considering to play that game for real and devote some time into it. I don't think I've devoted as much time to any game lately as much as I have for Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, both which have over 100+ hours of gameplay logged in. I've been trying to log more hours into Global Agenda since I haven't really played it since I've bought it. It's a shame that I don't since it's a fun game.
Here are some quick comments on recent betas:
[Legend of Edda - CampusGames]
The voice-over is kept in its original Korean language, which I don't mind and am kind of glad for. The game is pretty straight-forward in terms of typical MMORPG elements. You are sent somewhere, you get a quest to kill x amount of enemies and then you turn it in. There are six classes to choose from, and you get one of the skills right from the start. The graphics are adorable and the environment is very clean (meaning it's not cluttered and hard to get around). It bothers me a little that the camera is fixed, but it's not that big of a problem. Honestly, it's not a game I'd want to really log in hours to. The fact that I've played over 30 Point-n-Click MMORPGs makes me more picky on which ones are good and which ones feel more desirable to play for long durations. If you've never played an MMORPG or want some type of time killer, then it's worth a try when it's out of beta. The quality of the game is nice though.
[Kitsu Saga - AeriaGames]
Had to do some research, but found out that this game was developed in Taipei, Taiwan and a lot of the text still has grammatical errors, coding errors on names, and some text is still in Chinese. A lot of the games that come from China have been kind of "ho-hum," cookie-cutter, boring with good ideas. The number one common issue I have with Chinese developed MMORPGs is that there is an incredible amount of walking an each one. Not so with Kitsu Saga. The places are close by, the story progresses smoothly, and battles don't take forever (seriously, Legendary Champions takes 2-3 minutes for one enemy to die...) Something that bothers me specifically in this game is that the labels of names of your character, players, NPCs and enemies are huge! They take up so much screen space that I can hardly find my way around. I'll be sending that in to Aeriagames and see if they'll do anything about it. I do like how in Kitsu Saga, and many other Chinese MMORPGs, how there is a auto-routing mechanic that allows the player to click on the destination name or person they need to speak to and the character will find that place. I spent much more time on this game than I did for Legend of Edda. It takes some time to really get into the game's core combat system when you choose a clan and is given abilities that can fight multiple enemies at the same time. The quality of the game is poor, but the gameplay is interesting. I may beta test it longer, but I don't think I'll be playing the actual game.
[Cosmicbreak - Cyberstep]
Back up with its 2nd open beta in the process, Cosmicbreak provides all that's fun in an MMO and allows the players to do them fairly quickly. Instances, PvP, FvF, PvE, Quests and such can be started remotely from the main city or by walking to a certain area. The RPG is action based is reminds me of games like Virtual-On and Exteel, both which I really liked. The game is fast paced, the PvP is exciting, and the boss battles are large scale and intense. The voices are kept in its original Japanese language, and I think it fills a certain atmosphere into the game that makes it feel right. Oh, and the game doesn't take up that much hard drive. It's less than 1 GB worth of memory. Lots of customization, lots of characters to use at the same time, no grinding, levels between players don't mean as much as the team-work and skill it takes to pvp, and clean graphics makes this at least a must try. I'm gonna continue playing it when it launches.
[Medal of Honor - Electronic Arts]
I'm about to try it right after this blog post. It's open beta from today till friday. I didn't care much about this game, but the more I see footages of it, the better it keeps getting. I just hope the gameplay is just as good.
[Nucleon - Team Awesome Fabulous]
What's this you say? Why it's one of the games that spawned from the Week-Long competition I hosted in the videogame development club! I also did the music composition and sound effects for it. We're practically done with beta and planning to publish it this Friday (I hope). I'll finally have a published game under my name to add to my resume. Once I get word that it's out on X-Box Live Arcade, I spread the word.
Ahhh, there's so much news to talk about. I don't want to drag it out though. I just checked the length of two posts ago on this blog with Microsoft word and found out I wrote 17-18 pages worth of words double spaced. I think it'd be able to do a 100-page analysis on Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 if I had to, haha. Anyways, right off the bat I wanted to say that I beat Resistance 2 on PS3 and was disappointed with it. But there are things about it I did like, I'll get to that last I think as I want to talk about a few other news first.
[Golden Axe 1/2/3 - Sega Genesis]
Remember my last post about Golden Axe: Beast Rider on PS3? Well, I played the original three Golden Axe games on Sega Genesis (it's old, but it still works, haha) to see if I was really fooling myself in thinking that the old Golden Axe was better than this new rendition. Right away, having no two-player co-op on the PS3 version was upsetting and took a huge element out of the gameplay from the original one. If I were part of the development team, I would have went for a three player co-op, if not two, with an sort of angled overhead view of the environment and adjusted the mechanics of the already existing counter system into it as I find huge potential in their design.
The music of the original three were a huge hit of nostalgia and I still remember them very well. They really impacted the mood and setting of each level and especially the boss fights. Death Adder had such a daunting theme when you fought him. The battles were intense too. Sure, it wasn't filled with spectacular special effects, CG cut-scenes, and had a dialogue, but the Death Adder from the very first Golden Axe struck me as dominating and powerful. The Death Adder in Beast Rider was a joke when he took off his armor (not going into too much detail just in case anyone plans on playing it in the future) since it destroys the image or perception of his existence. He was more of an entity rather than a physical being, and that mystery behind him made seem almost haunting. The music truly had an influence to the series, but it did not carry into Beast rider.
The AI in the original ones were actually programmed really well. When I was a little kid playing the game, I just thought "wow, evil monster!" When I was playing just a week ago, I was thinking "Wow, the programmer really thought this through!" Sure enough, they had a pattern that could defeat them, but the enemies were smart enough to get on each side of the player to chain attacks. Skeletons were capable of charging at the player and when missed, immediately about face and charge again. I laughed at how awesome that was, even though I was getting my butt kicked. Sure enough, the old Golden Axe was really difficult. The new one followed a lot of the same frustrations the old one had such as enemies knocking the player off a cliff, enemies chaining attacks that immobilizes the player, formidable bosses that required patience and reading patterns, and of course getting knocked off a beast frequently happens. So maybe I was a little "too" harsh on Beast Rider; however, the criticism on the death concept still stands.
The original Golden Axe games were based off an arcade game, which in turn made the game very short. Players were able to continue right where they had died with a set amount of lives right from the start. The problem with Beast Rider is that it is an on-going adventure that requires much more time. Lives were found and not given, which doesn't guarantee the ability to continue with each passing level. Since the player just continued after dying each time in the original, the flow of the game kept moving forward. But in Beast Rider, the player must constantly go back to each checkpoint after dying to repeat the same tedious task of taking out the enemies they've slain several times over already. The flow of the game was very disruptive and killed the mood of the player. I wasn't imagining things, I really did like the old Golden Axe, and I think I still do.
News time! I think I'll bullet-point them and make them brief with more information linked to each one:
-Nintendo's 3DS announced for next Spring and reveals hardware capabilities. Also this neat trailer of how some of those components will be used:
Is it wrong that I like this trailer? Aside the fact that it's a date-sim game, I'm excited to see how developers will utilize the hardware and perhaps create augmented reality games.
-James Benson finishes animation project he's been working on for 4 months:
-MAG for PS3 get's a huge patch that changes the way players level up their skill trees and acquire weapons. I got to play an hour last night and really enjoyed some of the changes and frowned a little on others (I can't use Anti-Personnel Mines until Level 44 now...).
-EA "says" that pre-orders for "Medal of Honor" exceeds all previous ones in the series and expects a huge number of sales. No actual numbers reported, so we'll see.
-Like MAG, Team Fortress 2 undergoes game changing updates to the client and added new levels, mini-games, items, modes, and a micro-transaction system (ew). I haven't gotten to play it yet since I was playing MAG and Resistance 2 last night. Oh, and it's also 50% off on Steam right now in introducing its new patch.
-Activision's new Guitar Hero is busted. That is, consumers all over the world are experiencing a "disc read error" on the newest release of Guitar Hero and is causing quite a problem for Activision. I bet the higher ups in EA are laughing their butts off on this one.
-Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is coming out November 2nd.
-EA releases "Medal of Honor" for multiple platforms on October 12th. Open beta for multiplayer is from Oct. 4th-7th, I think I'm gonna try it out and see if it's any good.
-Vindictus Open Beta launches on October 13th. This game is a.k.a. Mabinogi Heroes.
-Cosmicbreak is going through their 2nd Open Beta and closes on October 17th. I like the game, I went through 1st open beta. The game doesn't take up very much HD space, it has an in-depth multiplayer system for both PvP and PvE, lots of different characters to choose from, and doesn't require grinding.
I believe that is all I have from the top of my head. Now, about Resistance 2...
[Resistance 2 - Playstation 3]
Resistance: Fall of Man was really fun. I bought that game late (just last summer) for very cheap ($20 was it? As opposed to $60), but really enjoyed it. The original had a gripping storyline/narrative, creative weapons, and non-stop action. The sequel I bought just recently since my sister and I beat the first one on super-human difficulty and wanted to know what happened in the next one as well as having another co-op game to play. Well, sucks for us since the developers took out two-player co-op in campaign mode and made a separate online/offline Co-op mode. The sequel improve tremendously on graphics, animation and controls. The schematics for the controls mimics those of Call of Duty for a faster-paced shooter in this installment of the series. There were things about the game I liked, but there were so many things I didn't like as well.
Graphics
Hands down, the graphics are impressive and very believable to the world of Resistance. The background is filled with hundreds of moving units, creating a happening environment around the player as they go through the story. The boss battles are large scaled enemies with detailed works all around each component of the anatomy (the weapons, animation, lighting, etc.). Old, familiar foes appear as well as a slew of new ones that keeps the player on their toes as to how to deal with them. Aside from the graphics artistically, the design of some of the areas are not quite balanced for the campaign as some cover doesn't help at all or leaves the player out in the open entirely. Despite some setbacks on some of the awkward animation of dismemberments, movements of characters and enemies, and some small problems near the end of the game (lighting effect glitch on characters face and the proportions of the environment to the player), the game had a solid grasp of the direction they wanted to take the art style to. Graphics: 9/10
Audio
Ugh, they changed the voice actor for Nathan Hale (main character) and in turn also changed the personality he possessed from the first one. I actually liked Nathan's passive, non-speaking attitude he had in the first one. In Resistance, they turned him into a typical American war-fighter: butch and headstrong. The quiet personality he had in the first one made him seem more mysterious and dangerous. I found him to be generic and annoying in this one. The music changed and I didn't like it as much in this one. The composer is different, so it's not a surprise the style wouldn't match the first one. The voice-acting was top-notch though. Though against my acceptance to Nathan's new voice actor, the whole crew really brought the characters to life and made it fitting for the mood and situation they were in. Sound effects were about the same, good quality. Audio: 8/10
Story
I won't spoil anything, but I personally did not like the story to this installment. I didn't like how it was told, what it told, and how it ended. The story was not told through a narrative, but rather through dialogue from the characters in-game and through cinematics. It's very similar to how the story was told in Valve's half-life where characters in the game spoke to the player directly while playing. It felt unfitting, forgettable, and detached from the player. It should have been more involving since the player took the role of Hale and saw everything from his eyes rather from another (like in the first one). The flow of the story wasn't fluid as well. The narrative was told in chunks with each passing chapter and created a gap between each area. The progression of the story in the first one was seamless, and so it had a very nice flow to the story and the gameplay. In the 2nd one, I felt as if I was dumped into a story, and then thrown into another when I got to a new chapter. Like the first one, the ending was a cliff-hanger. But unlike the first one, which delved into the curiosity of its players with the question "what happens next?", Resistance ends with a predictable "shocker" with a groan-worthy hook: something worse is about to happen. Actually, the ending to Resistance 2 is very similar to Golden Axe: Beast Rider and gave me the same reaction I had with that one too! Clichés can be useful, but they can also be detrimental to the world of creative writing. I'm really curious to how the story is going to be like and told in Resistance 3 as it seems like the player will be taking the role of new faces and might work with other players in a multiplayer co-op style gameplay. Story: 4/10 (hey, at least I got to find out what happened!)
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the characters in the story didn't really connect with the players. By the end of the game, I really couldn't care less about any of them (Hawthorne, Blake, Warner, Malikov, Capelli), even Nathan Hale. There was a lot less characters in Resistance: Fall of Man, but the characters' interactions and dialogue with one another made the story much more involving. Resistance: Retribution for the PSP probably had a better story than that one actually. The main character in Retribution had personality, progression, and connection with the player. I actually really liked how the story built itself in Resistance Retribution. Stephen Cartwright, Rachel Parker, and Nathan Hale were characters that spoke to the player (literally!) with Parker narrating the events Nathan Hale went through and was thus made her opinions matter in the first Resistance. James Greyson from Retribution had a bitter attitude towards everything as he was forced to kill his own brother who had turned into one of the Chimera in the beginning of the game. The way his character changes throughout the story and how he changes was memorable and meaningful. In Resistance 2, I believe the writers were trying to achieve on telling an epic story about humanity itself and how only one man can change that. But the story was predictable, straightforward, and boring. The first one had mystery and a gripping narrative. Retribution had progression, realization and change. But Resistance 2 was just "earth is in trouble, go save it" and then went on to stuff as much innovation from different games into the campaign (read through Gameplay). I hope this is a much better justification of not really liking the story.
Gameplay
Yeah, I separated the story from gameplay this time since it was such a pivotal role to my interest of the game. I believe that the team that worked on this installment of the game is different from the first one since a lot of the elements of style in all the works (art, audio, writing, game mechanics, modes, weapons, etc.) are all distinctively different. I couldn't help but feel that this game used a lot of aspects from various first-person shooters that released to the market before it, and it can be notable when each of those aspects presents itself during the game. The controls changed, which really threw me off when I jumped in to play, to an action orientated schema that mirrors the controls of Call of Duty. The scope is hold rather than toggle, which I really did not mind after adjusting myself to it, melee is R3 rather than a face button, weapon switch system is taken out entirely, and a few others I can't quite note at the moment. Rather than carrying various guns for certain situations, the player can only hold two weapons at a time. The ship areas looks very similar and plays very similar to the design of Halo. True, the first one had a similar system with its self-regenerating health-bars that borrows the idea of Halo's shield system, but it was unique in its own way. Well, that health-bar was taken out in exchange for a Call of Duty style "blood" system where the more red the screen becomes, the closer to death the player is. Staying out of enemy fire for a small duration returns the health back to normal. What sucks about this is that the player can experience 1-hit kills to the head by a random bullet from enemy fire. The narrative is done in a similar fashion to Half-Life. Sections of the game where 30 skinny chimeras (the enemies in the game) come after the player seems to pay homage to Left 4 Dead's massive scale zombie attacks. One part of the game had the player running across boards and objects to go up to avoid the rising water which contained a sort of alien fish that kills the player in one hit. I felt like I was playing Mirror's Edge jumping around like that frantically. Well, those one-hit, headshot kills do remind me of Counter-Strike, but that happens in many FPS games. There are other times where the player dies instantly though: monster in the water, invisible creature (chameleons), pitfalls, strikes from boss monsters, etc. Those moments reminded me of Half-Life where everything seemed to kill the player in one hit. The difference was that in HL, you could save anywhere and load anywhere. In Resistance 2, you die and then go back to the last checkpoint, unskippable cut-scenes and all. The new system to see enemy heat on the Auger, that didn't apply to the first one, is similar to the revealing system Haze had when using nectar. The difference was that it was yellow in Haze and green in Resistance. This was cool and all since the developers really tried to innovate the gameplay so that it wasn't exactly like the first one; however, this amalgamation of various styles really broke the game apart and its consistency interrupted multiple times throughout the campaign, a flow that the first one had that this one didn't. This section does not pertain to the multiplayer as I'll do a separate section for that. Yeah, I didn't have fun playing the campaign, I doubt I'll be playing normal and difficult (yes, I was playing casual). Gameplay: 5/10
Multiplayer (Offline/Online)
There are two multi-player options: Cooperative and Competitive. Offline, you can play 2-player split-screen cooperative which I find very difficult to accomplish. I played with 4 of my friends who are more skilled than I am in FPS and we still couldn't finish the very first level. Well, I tried out online early this week in a 8-player co-op match up on that very level. It was mass chaos since the more players there are, the more enemies show up! But with so much more players in-game, there is a higher chance of survival since players can revive each other while other pushed the enemies back. I had a BLAST playing with those people and ended up with the least kills, but the 2nd most experience points since I was the medic and healed more than anyone else. Everyone else had an average of 50+ kills. I think the first place team mate I had was up to 181 kills, that's how much enemies popped up throughout the level. I was thinking that competitive mode was a straightforward death match with the weapons from the game. Nope! You can change your loadout from the beginning in a team death-match with a special ability that gives perks to players who contribute to the team. I played long (didn't feel long) match of 30 vs 30 to 1000 kills and had a lot of fun playing that too! Sure it was hard, players didn't die as fast as they would in MAG or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but it had the same arcadic magic that 007 Goldeneye had when I played with my friends back in the N64 days. Weapons were aplenty (maybe not as much as GE007, but still a good amount), battles were hectic, team play was fair since each shot to the enemy gave experience points, and levels were nicely designed for both co-op and competitive modes. Unfortunately, I think the community playing Resistance 2 is dropping in numbers since there was only one other server that had activity besides the one I played on. Multiplayer also has a level system that makes room for progression for the player. I think I'll continue playing this game for the multiplayer since both co-op and competitive was very enjoyable. Multiplayer: 9/10
Replay Value
I honestly don't believe the campaign is worth playing again a second time, unless you plan on buying the third installment and forgot what happened in the second one. The multiplayer is definitely worth playing and has the potential of 100+ hours of replay time since the player can constantly level up and receive more items and levels. Replay Value: 8/10 (I haven't played multiplayer long enough to verify whether I'd get bored playing it or not, so 8/10 as a general estimation.
Overall
The game was both a disappointment and a surprise since I didn't like how the campaign was re-designed, but loved what was done for multiplayer. Unfortunately, I never played online for the first one, so I have no basis for comparison. I bought the game for $30 I think if not $40, but I wouldn't have been happy to have bought it for the original $60. For the price it is now, I think it's worth getting just for the multiplayer until Resistance 3 comes out. I think the third one will be really different and will be multiplayer based judging from the trailer it released. Overall: for campaign (5/10) for multiplayer (9/10) for the game as a whole (8/10). If it was $60, I'd probably give this game a 7/10 since a developer shouldn't ignore an entire campaign mode for an innovative multiplayer. If that is the desire, create a spin-off or separate game so that half the game doesn't suffer from it. So yeah, Overall: 8/10
I think I'm getting dizzy from all this writing, or maybe it's from the whole week as I've been hard at work finding a job, applying, getting projects done and such. There are a lot of articles I'm planning to write soon. I wish I would get paid for all this opinion giving since I'm investing so much time into them. I could (with ads on the side and all), but I have too many personal things I add into this blog such as school, life, and work. And if I started a new blog, I might neglect this one. Though that is an option, I shall consider it. I'm off for now~
No, I'm not talking about getting deodorant or anything. I'm talking about the game I said I was finishing up "Golden Axe: Beast Rider." But before I get into that, Realtime Worlds has my regards on having to shut down servers to "All Point Bulletin" after just a short run of 79 days. It's hard maintaining an online game and I've played many of them to see them shut down, acquired by other companies, or overlooked altogether.
Unfortunately, their services weren't that great which was the main downfall to the game. This is based on players of the game who blogged about it and by my own personal opinion when I was "trying to" beta test it. The game had potential, but there were too many problems, hackers, and lack of communication with the people maintaining the game which killed off a lot of their custom's interest in continuing the game. I've heard rumors that they might go for a free2play format, so perhaps I'll give it another shot if that should ever happen. They could get acquired by another company and go free2play then. That's what Flagship Studios did for Hellgate: London
I can't express how excited I am for an international release of Hellgate: Tokyo. I love Hellgate: London and am still playing it now. Now then, I had a game I wanted to talk about:
[Golden Axe: Beast Rider - PS3]
This game was TERRIBLE! Everything I loved about Golden Axe was chewed up and spit out into this abomination of a game. But on the utmost unbiased side of me, this game was ambitious and had a lot of potential that was ruined by faulty game mechanics due to creative concept choices and unchecked computer AI. This is what critics were saying about this action hack n' slash train wreck.
"With the exclusion of co-op -- what people really want to play -- and the constant hint that a sequel's already on the way, Beast Rider feels like a difficult, drawn-out, $60 tutorial. Why bother?" -1Up
Yes, the game was hard, but that wasn't the problem for me. I beat the game and found it much more frustrating than challenging. The original Golden Axe was hard. Ninja Gaiden (new and old) is hard. Shinobi (PS2 one) is hard. Demon's Souls is hard. This game wasn't hard, it just had a lot of problems in design that made it hard. The only time it'll get hard is if you played on the hardest difficulty (which you only get after beating the game) and see that the enemies don't have an aura which tells you whether you should parry or dodge (I'll get into that later).
"If you ever plan to design a hack & slash-game, you should definitely play Golden Axe: Beast Rider. It's the perfect example of what not to do." -Game.nl
I kind of agree, but also think that this game was going somewhere really great. There were a few times I was genuinely having fun and found it challenging and exciting. But more than often, there were problems with the combat system, the thing that made the game so great, that it caused more anguish and annoyance.
"If that wasn't bad enough, the glitchy, jerky graphics are further ravaged by a spastic camera that literally had me woozy at times. [Holiday 2008, p.84]" -Playstation: The Official Magazine (US)
If you're wondering where I'm pulling all these quotes from, they're from metacritic, which I tend to check often now. This quote is quite right on the graphics. I found the game lagging a lot on transitions, particle effects, or when turning the camera.
"This is a game worth avoiding like the plague, even if the classic remains deep and warm within your heart." -IGN
This game spits in the face of fans of the series and devours newbie gamers with its difficulty. For gamers who are familiar with counter systems, action orientated hack n' slash, and harder games, normal isn't that bad for this game. But new players or casual players would be turned off by its complexity and faulty controls. Heck, I bet even hardcore gamers would be disgusted with the mechanics of the game. The game still has the dwarf and barbarian, but they both appear TWICE in the entire game with barely a story to give a background. And you can only play as Tyris Flare, which is alright; however, the game has unresolved problems that made me not care.
"The graphics and sound are great, and the numerous challenges and arena modes offer some diversity. If you're up for a quick hack-and-slash game, rent it. If you want a game with depth, however, this Axe needs sharpening." -GameDaily
That's the best quote I could find on MetaCritic for this game. The game DOES have depth in my opinion, but it also has problems. I'll go through them now:
Graphics
The graphics are fine. They're actually beautiful in terms of environment and detail. A lot of the artists are from China I believe, since all the names were Chinese for Art when I was going through the credits screen. Like an earlier quote noted, there are randomly dropped frames, slow downs, glitchy animations and such throughout the game. This wasn't actually too big of a problem for me. One of the biggest gripes I had about the graphics was the camera orientation. It's a given that it should be behind the character for a hack n' slash like Dynasty Warriors; however, the combat is heavily based on using dodges and parries to counter attack enemies. When an enemy attacks and has a blur aura around their arm, you must parry. Blue magic can be deflected as well. If the enemy strikes with a heavy attack with an orange aura around their arm, you have to dodge. If you don't do this accordingly, you either get hit or stunned respectively. This is okay when you have 1-3 enemies and they're all push overs. But when you have 5-9 enemies surrounding you, auras are blocked, enemies are in your blind sides (such as behind the character AND camera), magic is flying towards you from off the screen, and you get juggled to death because the counter mechanics can't dodge or parry more than one consecutive attack at a time and you can't do either when attacking either. The other problem I had is not being able to get onto of roofs and platforms that are reachable. The designer decided to not allow the player to get up on higher places...Even so, animation was awkward, cut scenes weren't magnificent, and graphics were only okay. Graphics: 7/10
Audio
NO MUSIC! Can you believe it? One of the greatest things in Golden Axe was the music that set its mood with catchy tunes. There WAS some audio in the background though. The whole game consisted of a lot of generic tribal ambiance and was barely audible. The most audible background music is the title screen, and it isn't even that great. The only two notable tunes in the game is when the stupid gnomes come out. They play the same obnoxious clip they did in the original with revamped instruments, but can barely be heard. The game over sound is the same too, but is also very quiet. I am very annoyed with no music in games and make few exceptions to them. Counter-Strike and Hellgate: London was okay with no music. I'm sad that Demon's Souls doesn't have music in-game, but I soon realized that it was so that the player can hear creatures around the corner. I would have loved to hear some of the old songs from the original in this one, but am glad they didn't now that I've experience how bad the game was. The sounds effects were alright though. 3 points for sound effects. Audio: 4/10
Controls/Gameplay
As I've discussed before, the game concentrated on a counter-system that required the player to respond to an attack with a defensive maneuver before counter attacking. The problem is the camera angle, the fact that the controls don't allow consecutive dodges and parries to multiple enemies, and non-responsive actions (you clearly dodge, move, or attack an enemy and it doesn't register. Throughout the game, I am constantly juggled by a string of attacks, bombarded by ranged attacks not within the view of my screen, ambushed from the back or sides, or knocked off a ledge or killed RIGHT before a checkpoint (I kid you not, I was at the end of a challenge with one enemy left and am usually killed right then not knowing when the next checkpoint was and did not want to restart from the beginning). When you die in Beast Rider, you get to choose to use a Dragon Statue, which is like a 1-up or freeman if you will, that revives you right where you died. Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, you could go back to the beginning of the checkpoint from 5-20 minutes ago and start over. I started over so many times because I didn't want to use a dragon statue. They are rare and not given, you have to find them. In the end, I used a lot of them because I didn't want to start all over. One of the stupidest creative choices they could have made was giving tips and descriptions of a new enemy AFTER you've defeated them, leaving the player clueless to what they're up against and how to kill them. I could go on and on about this, but I'd be just rambling. Gameplay&Controls: 5/10
Replay Value
They made this game under the impression that the player would play it more than once and do the challenges. The more loot you get, the more stuff you get. After beating the game, I have all the spells and all the outfits. I have 3 of Tyris' swords, but I'm missing 8 of them. I don't have the nerves and patience to continue playing this game any longer. I truly want to like this game, but it's just so bad...The final weapon is the Golden Axe, and you get to use it on the very end of the game anyways. Everything explodes into pieces when they get near you! =D Except for the boss of course. The final boss, Death Adder, wasn't even hard. It took me the 2nd try (because the first time, I thought you only had to fight him once). The ending of the story was really stupid too. Actually, the whole story was pretty bad. They tried to follow the original Golden Axe in their story and setting, but it didn't feel like it at all. Pretty much, the ending was a huge hint that they're working on a sequel already. Terrible..... Replay Value: 5/10 (I enjoyed some parts...)
Overall
I wish I was part of the development team for this project. I would have been able to make this game SOOOO much better. I'm not bragging, and I'm not saying that the team who made this game is bad, but I have so many ideas that could make this game better or even great! There were a lot of mechanics that could have been viable for the creation of a truly great Golden Axe, but where flawed. Unfortunately, I think this game was a new coming and was just going to be called "Beast Rider." But Sega bought the company "Secret Level" and had them change it into a Golden Axe game, probably when they were already far into the project. To sum it up to one word, the game was a "disappointment." Lots of great and ambitious ideas ruined by badly programmed AI, poor creative choices in camera and design, and the lack of multiplayer. Overall: 4/10
I also beat Army of Two: 40th Day with a friend, I'll do a short one for that:
[Army of Two: 40th Day - PS3]
This game is weird...but fun surprisingly. So you have two guys, Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem, who is hired to do some work for the government in Shanghai. They get their job done, they get their orders to head back and suddenly "BAM" Shanghai goes into chaos with destruction and debris all over the place and people are suddenly killed by random mercenaries everywhere. So the game is a third person co-op based shooter that you could play with an AI, a buddy with split screen, or over the internet with another player. The game offers a lot in weapon customization and play style choices. Who you play with could dramatically change the way the gameplay feels (I would know playing with two friends of opposite play styles). The story made no sense until the very end, and then it gives a lame ending that reminded me of the ending for Haze. But the gameplay was deep and very involving when playing with a friend right next to you.
Graphics
Lots of beautiful visuals. A lot of pointless ones considering that things around the characters kept blowing up for no good reason. The camera control was probably the hardest thing to get around since it's shifted to once side and needs to be switched if the player wants to look at the other side of him. There were also times where my friend and I weren't certain that we were well under cover behind a wall or object. Despite that Graphics: 8/10
Audio
Music isn't as important in this game, but it had it. It's not memorable, but it had impact on the game. I respect that, and really enjoyed what the music and sound did for the game. Some of the guns didn't sound very accurate, but it wasn't that big of a problem. I think I'd give audio an extra point for all the witty comments the two characters exchanged between one another. Audio: 9/10
Gameplay
Gotta admit that customizing our guns and equipment was fun. We would spend 10-20 minutes going through everything and finding the best parts that fit our play style (sharpshooter, attention getter, sprayer, assassination, etc.) These aren't names within the game, they're just generic labels you would call your play style in shooters. A shooter in third-person feels weird at first, but does get rather satisfying after getting accustomed to it. Gameplay: 9/10
Replay Value
The freedom to make choices and take different paths each time gives this game a lot of depth and interesting options for the player to use each play through. I haven't tried the versus mode yet, but the campaign itself has enough content for about 3-7 playthroughs. If you're a achievement horde, then get ready to play this game over 10+ times. Replay Value: 9/10
Overall
Down to the point since I have to go eat dinner now: If you see it for $40 or less and you have a buddy to play with, go out and buy it. Overall: 9/10 with a friend, probably a 7/10 if you play with just AI, kinda boring.
Not to say I'm entirely depressed since I'm am enjoying freedom while friends are going back to college for another year of school, homework, studying and tests. I do miss UC Irvine for the social outings I did. I'm pretty much done with one of the game projects and am looking at finishing the others on my own; however, my time has been taken up quite often recently by things like looking for job offers, updating my resume, posting availability everywhere that relates to the game industry. Job hunting has definitely been depressing since the economy is bad, people aren't hiring, and the game industry is sinking. A lot of the business in the game industry is turning to China since their economy is now booming with success. Japan is unfortunately falling behind in the game industry with quality games diminishing. At the Tokyo Game Show this past week, Keiji Inafune of Megaman Renown expressed his concern about the game industry in Japan saying: "I think Japanese gaming is dead," Inafune told the New York Times. "When I say these things, I'm called a traitor. But I love Japan. I want to save it." Kotaku's rebuttal to his quote is that Japan is still flourishing with companies like "Nintendo." I was thinking the same exact thing when I read the article about the interview with Inafune, but I also understand what he is concerned about. Nintendo alone is not going to hold the industry in Japan by itself, and it is evident that they're becoming an international company rather than just a local one. Nintendo didn't even attend TGS and put all their efforts into E3 instead to get international attention. Nintendo took the show when I was there, as people waited 1-4 hours in line to play ANY of Nintendo's titles and merchandise. What's happening is that the most well known companies such as Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Atlus and others may still be around, but are slowly losing their once numerous support they had just a short while ago. Within 4 days of the release of Halo: Reach (which looks incredible), Microsoft confirmed that 31 million players were playing on X-Box Live. According to Inafune, the much anticipated Resident Evil 5 sold 5 million copies from release. What happened? I bought the game and already beat it with my sister and admit that it's not like the older RE games, but it's good. Inafune's concern is that Japan is 5 years behind the market in the gaming industry in terms of technology, graphics, and trend. I don't think that's the case. Part of the huge success of China's market in the gaming industry at the moment is because of free online games. This popular trend started in Korea and has made most of their profit in Japan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia, not Korea itself. The average person in Asia doesn't have the same luxury we do in the United States to buy so many unnecessary goods and entertainment. With free online games, you could choose to pay small amounts of money to buy items and perks for your characters in the game. This method of marketing is called "micro-transaction." There are literally billions of people in Asia, and when you add up all those small payments of $5, they become millions. More over, China are having more research and knowledge in the game industry which allows companies from the U.S. and Europe outsource all their jobs to China for dirt cheap. All the entry-level positions, available positions, and business partners are being given to people in China so that people here and Europe don't have to pay as much! It's just like the industrial revolution of the past and corporate companies of the present! Well, it can't be China alone that's causing the diminishing sales of Japanese games, so what else? The economy is bad, and people try to save money. What are people doing in the United States? They're also playing free online games from Korea and China. Japan has a few as well localized in America. American companies saw this trend and thought to use it within their market, thus Zynga. They have made Billions just on their design on Facebook (which I find evil and ingenious at the same time). That, and people buy one game and play it forever. When did this happen? Last year, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game is $60 and is STILL $60 because Activision knows that people will still buy it. People can complain how broken the game is with all their bugs, noobtoobing, and imbalanced gameplay, BUT the game is fun nonetheless. It can't be denied that MW2 is a good game as several million players still log on and rack up hundreds of hours onto it each month. It's the same with World of Warcraft. It's over-rated to a lot of people, but ultimately it's fun and is $15 a month compared to $60 a month. For me, I've been playing free online PC games for the longest time, but have recently gotten back to playing PS3, Gamecube, PS2, and Wii more now since I am trying to learn more about games, design, the industry and everything in-between.
Okay, so from that ridiculously long rant, what am I trying to say?
-The economy sucks and the game industry is poor, no one will hire me! They rather pay a few dollars an hour to someone in China. That, or every other position is senior level with a requirement of 5-10+ years of game industry experience.
-I'm not getting any money, games are expensive and I'm trying to play a lot of them since I've missed out on so much because of 18+ years of school. And I keep losing time each day to play them because I keep having to look for job positions and send out resumes.
-Family and friends are nagging me each time I see them to get a job. I know they care for me, but it's depressing being reminded that I have no work experience and will have a difficult time finding a job with the possibility that I might have to move far away in order to find a job.
Man, this is turning out to be a really long blog. But yeah, it doesn't really stop there:
I had the opportunity to beta test 2 more games: Legendary Champions & Final Fantasy XIV
[Legendary Champions - PC]
Made by a Chinese company and feels very much like a game made by Perfect World, but is not. The game is based off the Three Kingdom history of Ancient China with the twist in story. Cao Cao was backed into a corner in a battle against Shu and decided to use black sorcery to summon the greatest warriors of all time and space to fight for him. So you have people like Mulan the female warrior, Sinbad the pirate, Beowulf with a chainsaw, etc. in the game as a summon for your character. The trailer portrays the game to be rather exciting and intuitive. It caught my attention when it said it has "DotA-like map style PvP gameplay." Time for the break down: The graphics were outdated, but bearable. The animations to the models were awkward during battle as characters and enemies teleport, slide while attacking, get glitched, or some other problem. I loved some of the music in the game, but not all of them seemed very cohesive, and sound effects were rather generic. The gameplay was sadly slow and repetitive. In the first 30 or so minutes, I spent my time walking around the town and talking to everyone the NPCs directed me to and leveled up to 6 just from it. When it was time to fight, I spent nearly 1-2 minutes fighting one enemy. I chose a mender (healer) for my first character, but sheesh, a game shouldn't have the player whacking the same enemy for so long with the same 2 attacks available for them. When I finish a quest to kill 10 bears, I get another quest to do the same for another enemy. It then repeats itself in a mindless cycle of pointless killing. Twelve Sky 2 did a much better job in keeping the player interested, even though it followed the same method of gameplay.
The good thing about traveling in this game is that you start off with a horse, unlike Heroes of Three Kingdoms where you auto-route and walk for ten ridiculous minutes. Sadly, there's still quite a bit of traveling in Legendary Champions that can't be avoided. One thing I really loved about the game though was summoning your Champion and owning everything around you with one hit. The problem was that you can only summon your champion for 1 minute and can't summon them again for half an hour. I can't go on playing a game I enjoy playing 1/30th of the time. I waited the entire summer for this game, and it disappointed me.
[Final Fantasy XIV - PC]
I may be very biased on this game.....because I LOVE FINAL FANTASY! Yes, I know the huge gripes and complaints people had about FF13 and now FF14, but I still love it because it's Final Fantasy. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll love the game itself. So a spent a good amount of time customizing my character and going through the cut-scenes. I never played FF11, so I wasn't sure what to expect of the battle system. The fighting is still turn-based, but you can move around and plan it. It was archaic, but somewhat satisfying. I walked around town and realized I was going to be there for a while. There's a lot of talking and roaming around, but nothing as bad as Legendary Champions or Heroes of Three Kingdoms. I noticed the game was going to be more about the experience and story rather than the core game mechanics as all Final Fantasy games tend to be. Graphics were breath-taking, animations were superb, sound is excellent and music was surprising enjoyable (I found myself humming to it while I played), gameplay is a bit slow; however, if I ever had the time and money, I'd probably invest it playing through the game. Well, I like the game, but everyone that knows me knows that I don't play pay2play online games. I'm glad I got to try it and say I at least know what it looks and feels like. The disappointing part would probably be that my computer could not handle the game very well and so I graphically lagged a lot and had long load times. If you're an avid online gamer or Final Fantasy fan, I say go buy it.
My friend and I had a theory that FF11 and FF14 weren't even Final Fantasy games to begin with but was transformed into one after Square-Enix picked it up for publishing. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is like that (coming out soon!). I'm also guessing that Golden Axe: Beast Rider is like that (I'm playing through that right now). Which reminds me of my 1 week - 1 completed game mission:
[Mirror's Edge - PS3]
I BEAT IT! And I finished the game in normal mode without shooting a single person. It was an incredibly difficult task, and I was very tempted to shoot everyone on the last part, but I resisted and came through. The game is extremely fluid and graphically pleasing. I could see a lot of the textures and models were downgraded just so it could fit the sheer amount of data into the game, which I find to be acceptable. The presentation of the game is breath taking and immerses the player into the world rather well. The story wasn't very deep or thorough, but it was satisfying and gratifying in the end. I hear that a 2nd one is in the making. I will consider buying it as I've really enjoyed the challenge, puzzles, action, story, characters, and the experience it gave. I liked it so much, I think I might play through it again in the future. But next time, I shoot everyone!
[Last week's Challenge: Golden Axe - Beast Rider]
I'm still working on it actually. I could have finished it last week, but the game is so frustratingly bad and broken that I couldn't bear to sit more than 2-3 hours playing it. So far, I hate it. I'll get back more on it once I finish it.
[MAG (Massive Action Game) - PS3]
MAG is a first-person shooter played exclusively online with 64-256 players at once. I've been looking out for this game ever since it game out an finally got it used for $40. The game is rather challenging when there is limited communication between people (not everyone is going to buy a headset, I didn't). New weapons can't be acquired unless you gain the skills to reach them, which can take a while. I find the music to be unfitting for the game, but I also find it humorous, so it's okay. The game plays similar to most fps games like modern warfare. All levels play with each other, so it sucks when I'm level 6 with no items or weapons while I'm going against level 60 snipers with power scopes, little recoil, and extra health. I've been spawn killed before, but it doesn't happen often. Definitely not like Modern Warfare where you get spawn killed 10 times in a row and have carpet bombing, helicopters, grenades, knives and machine guns killing you the second you spawn where you had died. The gameplay is slower than Modern Warfare since there is a countdown between deaths before respawn, and it varies in time. I haven't figured out what makes it shorter or longer, but waiting can be bothersome when it's over 10 seconds. Either way, I enjoy the progression of levels and large scale matches in the game. In fact, I'm going to go play it right now since I didn't play anything the whole day yet.
