Get Axed!

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.

Depressing...

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.

Yup, it's been depressing lately.....