Here Comes Justice!!!

I finally beat Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney for the Nintendo DS!  I failed to go to fall asleep early because of how I destroyed my sleep pattern this past weekend.  I woke up with only 6 hours of sleep today in hopes of falling asleep a lot easier tonight in hopes of getting more studying done for my last final exam on Friday; however, I feel sorta dizzy because of the lack of sleep.  Anyways, I want to keep this short as I'm going to go back into studying very soon.

[Apollo Justice - Nintendo DS]

Story: The build up of the story was excellent and very well constructed with main chapters, involving characters, twists that relate to both past and present, and had an incredible concept near the end of the game for players to "find out the truth" behind a certain "character".  The only thing I would have against the story is how it didn't have a huge finale with a gratifying ending that the previous three Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban installments had.  Nonetheless, the story followed through and gave the player an experience through several characters' points of view.  9/10

Graphics: You can tell the difference between this one and the previous three installments, and at one point of the game, it lets you "experience that".  The animations were just as quirky, witty, and humorous as the others, but the rough edges were taken out (not as pixelated as before).  The beginning of each chapter has a cinematic  like opening with moving animations rather than still shots; however, there were many parts of the game where a still shot or additional moving animation would have benefit the scene, but was left empty.  Again with inventive character designs and a crazy animation of a "particular character" at the end of the game.  9/10

Audio: Sound Effects are more or less the same as its predecessors, but it's not a bad thing.  New recordings of the characters saying their usual: "Hold it!" or "Objection!" reflect the characters' personalities rather well.  The music is incredible to no surprise.  I have always liked the music composed for the Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban series for its memorable melodies and upbeat nature.  The best thing ever was to hear some tracks back from the very first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game, you'll see what I mean if you play it.  9/10

Gameplay: I have to confess right now, the game was much more easier to go through than the Phoenix Wright series.  This was possibly done for a more general audience, which is fine.  But those who were looking for a challenge in puzzle solving and detective work will get something easier than what's expected from the series.  Especially near the end, everything seemed to have an obvious interaction which didn't require as much thinking.  There were a lot of new implementations of puzzle solving that was added and possibly experimented with the very first Phoenix Wright in the extra chapter.  One other thing that crossed my mind was that I realized I miss seeing a lot of familiar characters back in the game.  Perhaps I'll see them in Miles Edgeworth's game?  8/10

Overall: The game was noobed up a lot, which made it easier to go through and a lot less aggravating I suppose.  I still enjoyed it and had a great experience going through the story.  I really hope Capcom continues to make more Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban games as it is one of the best series I've played in the longest time.  I can see why some people want to be Attorneys because of this game.  9/10

For those of you unfamiliar to the series, go pick it up if you can find it:

1) Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

2) Phoenix Wright Justice for All

3) Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations

4) Apollo Justice Ace Attorney

5) Miles Edgeworth Ace Attorney Investigations

Space Siege [Complete]

Woohoo!  I finally beat a game for once.  I guess I did beat Prinny a month ago or something.  I kinda felt like blogging about it a little.  Space Siege is a Action RPG from a top-down perspective.  By the creators of Dungeon Siege, Space Siege takes out the equipment entirely so that the player can concentrate on building the power of the weapons and individual aspects such as health, defense or element resistance.  The game is played with mouse and keyboard, and I really don't like the layout of the controls.  Thankfully, I have a speed pad.  What am I doing, I should be saying all this stuff in my review!!!

[Space Siege - PC]

So I had this game installed onto my laptop for a year and a half now and I just beat it.  It had a cheesy ending that was rather cliché and predictable, but I didn't mind too much.  I wanna be brief because I was actually game hopping/jumping (a term I coined which is just the act of going from one game to another in a short amount of time).

Story: The story wasn't very revolutionary, but at least it was consistent.  Humans explore space, they discover an alien race that wants to take over the humans, humans fight back.  That is the whole story.  Granted, there's a twist which I pretty much saw coming fairly early in the game.  What made the story interesting to me was the journey the main character (Seth Walker, such a cool name~) went through and how his personality is brought out by the interactions with the characters throughout the game.  The voice acting was very good which made the narrative more engaging and doesn't distract me when there's dialogue when I'm getting attacked (because you would have to read it while you fight which a lot of ARPGs do).  Story was probably its strong point in the game.  8/10

Graphics: It's top-down perspective, so you don't really get to see the details of the characters too often unless you have the time to zoom in and see the things around you.  The visuals for the game doesn't change all too much as its taking place within a space craft.  What is great is the animations throughout the game as there are many destructible environments, enemies with special abilities, and tiny little details with the physics that make it enjoyable to blow everything up.  It can be difficult to manage the camera angle when a wall is blocking the way.  7/10

Sound: I'm putting down sound instead of music since the tracks weren't very memorable.  If I listened to them, I'd probably recognized them being from Space Siege, but I wouldn't be able to remember what I sounds like without listening to it at the same time.  I wouldn't really put it on my music list to listen to.  Not to say it was bad or anything, it did match the theme and atmosphere of the game, so it did its job.  The sound effects; however, are great.  Explosions, voice acting recording, weapons, and lots of detail to small things like a box getting moved around or a can getting knocked across the floor.  So not counting music, sound was a strong point.  8/10

Gameplay: You're going to be pressing the number keys and "F1-F9" keys a lot, and so it makes it frustrating to try to play the game on a regular keyboard.  And like many RPGs, the shortcuts to a lot of menus like "Character Stats," "Map," or "Skills" are assigned to different keys around the keyboard.  Because of this, your left hand will be all over the place.  I really didn't like that when I was getting attacked by 12 enemies at the same times and couldn't find which key was to bring up my shield to protect my character.  Thankfully, I have a speed pad which made the gameplay immensely better.  There's a lot of action and need of focus, concentration, and quick strategical maneuvers in order to play this game, which was really entertaining when I was shooting and throwing 30 grenades in one battle.  The game is definitely difficult if you go down the path of a pure human.  I would explain this, but it might impede on the twist of the story which some people rather not know if they plan on the playing the game and haven't yet.  What's better than the single player campaign is the multiplayer mode where you play various missions with up to 4 people over the internet or LAN.  What's even better is you get to start out with every weapon in the game right off the bat, how to level them up is up to you. 7/10

Overall: Even though I had fun, the game was rather difficult going down the good ending path (if there is a bad ending, I don't know).  It also got repetitive since I'm chucking 30 grenades down the hall just to fend off 20+ enemies from killing me in 3 seconds.  I actually used cheats halfway through the game because it wasn't fun getting killed so quickly, and I just used the money cheat that gave me enough money to upgrade my abilities and weapons, and it was still hard (I still died on some parts).  Sure enough, the game was interesting enough after the cheat codes to keep me playing until the end.  I'm not sure if I would go back to play it again unless it's for multiplayer which I don't know anyone who's willing to play it.  Worth a try definitely. 7/10

[Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? - PSP]

I can't remember if I blogged about this or not, but I don't feel like doing a full review, so here's the short version:

This game is for hardcore gamers, SERIOUSLY!!!!!  You start the game with 1000 lives, that's how little faith they have in you finishing it.  The game is, no doubt, fun.  It's challenging, has charming characters and soundtrack, and humorous script writing that really contrasts to its sadistic gameplay.  If you ask me to play it again, I'd probably would after a bit of hesitation because it's capable of making players break down and cry.  I lost around 300 lives out of 1000 which is really good I guess, and I died exactly 60 times to finish the last area and boss.  The last boss is really stupidly hard/easy.  If you can memorize the pattern he goes through, you can beat it without ever getting hit (which I how I eventually beat him).

Looks like it's getting late, maybe I should just go to sleep.