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~
