Game Previews

Just dropping by - school takes up a lot of time - classes are boring - timing is (sorta) tight.  But nonetheless, I find the time to work on independent projects and play some videogames.  I beat Call of Duty: World at War with Danny 2 nights ago.  Very intense battles with us dying a lot, lol.  It's a new year, and so a lot of videogame release announcements have been made.  OH, before I get to the previews and stuff, please take a look at some stuff I made for Digital Multimedia:

-YTMND: Counting Penguin

-YTMND: Origins of our Alphabet System

-YTMND: Phoenix Knows Reppuken

-YTMND: What Scared Kefka?

-YTMND: Ryouhou for you

(Spread these to your friends, I need 500 views for at least one of them for a grade! 0.0)

View Larger Map

This was a google map project.  I just sent it to my professor a few minutes ago.

And now for the Videogame previews.

[PC] Tom Clancy's HAWX - Action Flight

WOOT!  It's co-op action flight simulator game, and the teaser starts out with a glimpse of Tom Clancy's previous release GRAW (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter).  This gives me a chance to whip out my Joystick and have some flight simulation fun!

[XBOX 360] X-Blades - Fantasy Shooter (really?  Looks like 3rd person Action Adventure)

Why am I previewing a XBOX 360 game?  Because this game is coming out on PC as well!  Why does it seem interesting?  There's swords, guns, and magic.   Hmmm, sounds like things I'm usually into right?  But yeah, I'll be looking out for this one.

[Playstation 3] Street Fighter IV - Fighting

C'mon~~~How can you not be excited about this game?  Street Fighter is what made me love fighting games in the first place.  And with the return of Sakura Kasugano (gah, I love her! XD), this game is going to rock like none other.  I apologize to those Street Fighter: Third Strike fans, but I really missed the classic characters of the original Street Fighter II series.  HADOUKEN!

[Playstation 2] Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - Role-Playing

Are you guys surprised they're still releasing PS2 games?  Truthfully, there are still tons of good PS2 games that still aren't released in the US and still in Japan (Shining Wind!!!) and so they continue to import them over and sell them at full price or become rare games (like a lot of Atlus' published games....).  But yeah, I'm a sucker for RPGs and I've always wanted to play the Persona series.  It sounds like it gets better each time they release a new one.

[PSP] Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce - Beat 'em up/Hack 'n Slash

Oh man, everytime I think Koei has reached a climax point in the Dynasty Warriors series, they just keep making it cooler.  In this version of Dynasty Warriors, it's less realistic and more "fantastic" in an over-the-top action battle system where you can fight in mid-air (like in Dragon Ball Z!) and battle against monsterous bosses that fill up the whole screen!  Only problem for me at the moment is that I don't have a PSP.....*sniff*

[Wii] The Conduit - Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

This game looks very interesting.  Half-Life-like monsters with Halo themed weapontry and the like.  I'm also hoping the aiming system in this game won't be so wacky on the wii like Red Steel was (though I did like the 1 player story mode on that game).  I have high hopes for this game and for the Wii this year.

[NDS] Phantasy Star 0 - Action Role-Playing

An American release has been announced and I'm very excited.  4-player co-op over wi-fi!  Phantasy Star for handheld! (Been wishing that forever) Lots of custom character creation and as always, lots of weapons!!!  The Nintendo DS is littered with a whole line of amazing games this quarter: Ys, Valkyrie Profile, Blue Dragon +, World Destruction, Shining Force Feather, Fire Emblem, Dragon Quest V, Moon, Steal Princess, Big Bang Mini, Suikoden, Tales of Heart, Kingdom hearts, on and on.

So many good games to play, not enough time (and money) to play them all.

A New Year begins - [No pictures at the moment]

Winter Break is already over, I was very busy throughout the break, had a good time, then I got sick on the way back to campus, and now I'm sick with 4 classes waiting for me tommorrow morning......yeah.......

Anyways, I was happy to see some of my friends over the break (because a lot of other friends were busy or not even in town - you know who yous ppl are!)  I wanted to do 3 things and only got to fulfill one of them: Airsoft (no chance to), Snowboard (not allowed to), LAN night (That was fun, nearly 16 hours of constant gaming!)  We were able to play Left 4 Dead (YESSSS, being a hunter was awesome) World in Conflict, and Counter-Strike (yes, the 1.6 version).  It was good to see friends and relatives during Christmas eve and New Years Eve.  Somethings changed, somethings didn't...at all, which isn't bad or anything.  My room was intact and untouched.  How I left it is how it was when I got back.  My friend on the other hand no longer has a room, dunno where his stuff are and what it even looks like anymore (it's appearently at study room now - with a plant in it!)  For Christmas, I got an awesome sweater (which I really needed for school) that's Super Mario 3 Themed from Vanna and my sister, a wallet in a shape of a NES controller from Danny, and a book about ninjas by Ken.  My Mom and Dad have always surprised me during christmas, and I didn't think they could do that at this point...........man I was soooooo wrong.  I already knew I was getting a Playstation 3 from too many clues given within the 2 months before opening the present, but little did I know that within my sister's present hid 13 PS3 games for us to play ON that Playstation 3.  Never had I seen so many games at once in my hands.  I was definately overwhelmed and couldn't respond.  I did return one of the games (Overlord: Raising Hell) for Castlevania Judgment for the wii, and I really liked it.

Time to do a short critique: Castlevania Judgment - Wii

Pros: Very interesting concept, intuitive motion control in a fighting game, characters from many of the past Castlevania games in the past 2 decades, different from other fighting games, easy to pick up and play, incredible renditions of past soundtracks, decent graphics and cool character design.

Cons: Arm gets tired after swinging around so much, Camera angle causes one player to be unseen at times, character imbalance are somewhat appearent, some stages can be annoying to play on.

First Thoughts (Why?  Because I've only played versus mode so far on the game):  I was fearing that this game really was horrible from a lot of the things I kept hearing from game critics and fans alike, though I already knew there were going to be  lot of fans against the idea of Castlevania being a fighting game.  After playing a few rounds with Danny,  I now embrace the idea and hope that they continue on this path for a sequel (with more characters! =D).  Our first match was kinda silly since we played on the clock tower and fell off twice on our own.  The controls might seem confusing at first, but it's very easy to get used to after one or two matches.  I'm very excited to play the story mode (though that won't be till either March 21 or later since I'm back in school again....).  The relationships between the characters is very interesting because they either know each other, don't know each other, were once allies, or have yet to meet each other from their respective timelines.  So in my experience with the game so far:

Story - N/A (I haven't played story mode yet)

Gameplay/Controls - 4/5 (tiring, but simple)

Graphics - 4/5 (I didn't like the character design for Shanoa, everything else seemed decent)

Sound - 4/5 (would have been a 5/5 if it weren't for some of the cheap SFX)

Replay Value - 4/5 (Well yeah, most fighting games have a good replay value.  This game needs more characters though.  Theres 14 right now, they can do better right?)

So I would say 4/5 Overall.  I can't give it a more direct grading like 4.7/5 or anything since I haven't play enough of the game yet, and I won't be for a while.  But If I'm missing it right now, then I give it some merit for exciting me.  $50 Wii game, go out and buy/try it!

Well, I start class tommorrow.  4 classes on MW and 1 class on TTh.  My day of classes doesn't end tommorrow till 7:20PM.  Wish me luck, and good luck to those of you out there that starts tommorrow!