Castlevania Judgement

I should either be playing videogames or sleeping right now, because I haven't had a rest time in a long while since I've been working on projects and essays.  Anyways, I was at my Videogame Development Club yesturday with my RPG group planning out our second Island for the game.  I was pretty much done with what I had to do, so I was watching some trailers and looking at IGN when I came across some new videos for Castlevania Judgement while they were discussing the next step.  I saw a lot of interesting gameplay in its development, and then I saw the newest trailer for the US version of Castlevania Judgement.  The Japanese trailer is totally different after the beginning:

I never noticed how GODLY the song for the game was until I saw this trailer.  It was probably because the past trailers had a lot of background noise and they muffled the music.  But WOW, the game really got my attention with this trailer revealing 10 new characters not mentioned before.  Characters from Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse up to current day Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia all mashed up into one fighting game.  A lot of negative feedback from those who tried the demos at conventions have been spread all over the internet, but I personally am expecting it to be a refreshing and intuitive game.   I remember hearing about it in July when I bought a copy of Nintendo Power to find out about the "new" Castlevania on the Wii.  I was going "nooooo, Koji Igarashi, what are you thinking?"  When I got home from Irvine during my orientation in July, I saw some trailers for the game, and  then I was more relieved when I saw that it was free roaming movement.  I didn't want a Soul Calibur rip off for a Castlevania game, so I had some hope for the game.  Then when I saw this latest trailer, I got so excited for all the characters (except I have to complain about how Takeshi Obata drew Shonoa like an ugly nun.  He blocked off all of Shanoa's beautiful hair!!! ; .;).  The only thing that'll make me love this game even more is more interesting modes, more characters, and good multiplayer concepts.  Came out today November 18, 2008 (well, it's Nov. 19 now since it's past 12) so go buy a copy today!!!

LOL, this just in.  Right before I was going to click Publish Post, I got some reviews from three sources.  Here are the scores:

Nintendo Power: 7/10

IGN: 7.5/10

1UP.com: D-

I'm not sure of Richard Li even played the game extensively or what.  A "D-"???  That's pretty harsh right there.  But yeah, a lot of other gamers on the board are complaining.  Most of them are complaining about Takeshi Obata's art ruining the game (which I find only true to Shanoa, he did a wonderful job for everyone else in my opinion) and of the mechanics of the game being horrible as a fighter.  Oh well, it's everyone's opinion.  As a Castlevania fan, I am most likely going to buy this game when I get back home to Elk Grove.  You guys can come over to try it and decided for yourself what you think during winter break.  ^_^

Accomplishments and Anticipation

The past 3 weeks have been a crazy ride of work, and it's not even over yet.  In taking a bit of time to unwind at the moment, I wanted to reflect on recent accomplishments and think about things to look forward to.

[Hagakure - Book]

I finally finished reading Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai!  I recieved it as a christmas present 2 years ago from my sister, and I thought it was strange since she knows I don't read too often.  Well, I started reading it earlier this year and stopped for the whole summer (I did not read at all this summer).  It was kinda hard to get into since it was supposed to be deep, intellectual anecdotes that follows the many philosophies of being a samurai and of how to act as a human being.  Some passages were actually inspiring, though it would be difficult to recall a specific one at the moment.

Throughout the last half of the book however, it was mainly about chopping heads off and performing seppuku (cutting one's stomache out at the death of one's master or as a consequence for one's foolishness).  So many stories of cutting a man down and blood flying everywhere and lopping heads off....it was funny and scary at the same time.  Did you guys know that you can stop the bleeding of a wound from drinking a mixture of horse feces and water?  LOL, yeah.....we have alternatives to stop the bleeding in our advanced technological age of medicine.  All in all it was a interesting book and I do not regret one bit in reading it.   Thanks to my sister for buying the book for me.  "It was about samurais and Japan, so I thought you'd like it." - Sam  (I did like it, very much.  Thank you).

[Draglade - DS Game]

It took me a while to get around beating this game, but I managed to find the time to finish it.  It's a mix of rhythm music with fighting genres into one game.  An activity or sport known as "Grapping" becomes the biggest thing in the world.  The player takes the role as one of 4 characters, and each one has their own ambition and story behind why they want to enter in the competition to become a Major grapper (kinda like going pro in a sport in real life).  Each character uses a "G-Con" (summons your weapon) to strike the opponent and create melodies out of the strikes.  This is called grapping, and you can customize the melody and the way it sounds so that you'll get the sound you want when you perform a combo.  The game can get quite challenging, and I've never played on wi-fi; however, I'm pretty sure there are some crazy pro players out there.  The concept is intuitive in that you can change the sound of your combo, combine different bullet sets to use in battle, and combine the attacks together to create some wicked moves.

Graphics are pretty nice.  They have duplicate npcs and monsters, but I'm not complaining.  The animation is pretty smooth, although the controls need a bit of getting used to.  The story mode I finished was Hibito's, the flame glade user.  He says a lot of corny fire puns like "Play with fire and you'll get burned" or "I'll heat things up".  There isn't actually any voice overs, and the dialogue is kinda weird because of the translations (I should get a job at Atlus as a translator [Atlus resides in Irvine, CA]).  The music is okay and distinguishable, though the most memorable tune would be the title theme (which I don't know the name of).  Story is very simple and predictable, but it was still fun to play along with it.  The boss battles get pretty intense, and I think that's what makes worth playing the game (besides making your own "beat").  Overall, I'd give this game about a 7.5/10 or so on the top of my head.  Oh yeah, there's co-op quest mode too, I haven't tried it yet, but that's a plus too!

[Visual Culture Project - Video]

I'm not complete yet, but got most of it done.  I just have to compose, mix, arrange the music and edit the film.  I've spent most of the past 3 weeks working on this, and since I think I'll like it, I'm probably gonna put it up on Facebook.

[Fallout 3 - PC Game]

I'm sorry to say that I haven't played (or possibly heard of) Fallout or Fallout 2.  But when I heard about Fallout 3, I still wasn't interested.....until I heard it was an RPG game.  I do love games of all genre, but after the explosion of games that came out when there was once 4 major consoles (now 3, sorry Sega) I started to become very careful on what game I choose to play that won't take up so much time so that I can play other ones.  Anyways, I heard nothing but great reviews about Fallout 3 (except that it's full of glitches).  The graphics are amazing with its crazy rendering of an entire city and vast land areas to travel to.  The quest system keeps the players coming back for more (I heard you could be busy an entire year just by playing the game).  And the concept is completely different from the once top down view and action/rpg mix.

Man, pretty violent....

[Left 4 Dead - PC Game (Steam)]

I used to hate zombie games a lot.  Especially when Resident Evil first came out, I asked "why do they make games that freak you out?"  Well,  I learned later that it was the same reason why they make horror films: "For the thrills and chills....I guess?"  Anyways, it gets your blood pumping and it got really exciting when they started making those zombie games action genres.  Left 4 Dead is a 4-player co-op Action Horror survival FPS game that pits you and 3 of your friends with a city filled with zombies everywhere.  It uses the steam system, so we can expect the controls and graphic rendering to be good.  It looks pretty crazy from what I've seen so far from this game.

I'm not going to say that it's an original concept with super intuitive gameplay and all (especially since past games on steam such as Counter-Strike, The Specialist, and Half-Life all had some sort of play vs. hordes of zombie mods implemented on the server's list), but I am very excited that there is a (supposedly) decent multiplayer co-op game coming out that my friends agreed on trying out.  A demo is available on the steam engine Nov. 11, so you'll know that I'll be trying it out this up coming weekend.

So that's it for now, I should go cook dinner, work on my Videogame development work for tommorrow, and continue my visual culture project by starting on the music!  (So tired....)