Sabo

Downloaded the Untold Stories bundle for Resident Evil 5 and am pretty much only playing Mercenaries Reunion these days. Some people hate the scoring system but I love it, a lot more challenging than standard Mercenaries scoring system that was more focused on building time in order to get a high score. In Reunion, the kill combo is really important now so you definitely don't want it to break. The higher the kill combo the more points you get for killing enemies. You'll want to save the boss enemies for last that way you'll get massive points and let me tell you, trying to keep your combo alive while simultaneously having a Reaper/Execution & Red Executioner/Chainsaw Manjini/Giant Manjini chase you around is tense. Character balance is also much better than standard Mercenaries (which was pretty much the Wesker show). Every character in Reunion is very capable and if I had to pick the best out of the bunch it'd probably be Excella but only because she gets a GL with Flash rounds.

Right now: Vanquish- Ugh, really not feeling the game. Shinji has always been hit or miss with me and this is a miss which sucks because I was really looking forward to playing it. I actually haven't beaten it yet because I just stopped playing it and moved on to other games. AC Brotherhood- Single Player isn't as good as AC II's but they did make some nice improvements to the combat system. I also like how you can map whichever weapons you want to the d-pad now. The ability to call a horse at any time is nice as well but it makes you wonder why they even bothered to add in horse stables if they were going to give you the ability to do that. The thing that bothered me about the campaign was how they removed a lot of the freedom you use to have when planning how you were going to complete the mission. Now there's little checkpoints that lead you on and I much prefer the way AC II did it. Still a very solid campaign though with a crap load of optional stuff to do. The MP is an absolute blast to play. I haven't gotten this addicted to an MP game in years, I've been pretty much playing it non stop. It's definitely got some flaws but the foundation is very solid and I can't wait to see how it evolves and improves in AC III. The only beef I really have with the MP is when you hop into a game that happens to have a lot of roofers... ugh, it really just ruins the whole experience when you play with these dumb assholes. Thankfully I tend to only play with people who know how to play the game so I don't have this problem that much. Dead Rising 2- Garbage. Hate it. Hate it. Hate. It. Played it for a couple hours and then immediately sent it back to Gamefly.

Finally got around to playing Castlevania LoS and just beat it an hour ago. The ending was straight up stupid, Kojima definitely must've had something to do with that. As for the game itself, it was alright. The combat is pretty rough around the edges though, lots of dumb design decisions had me rolling my eyes. For starters, I don't like what they did with their counter attack system. To do a counter/parry in most games you have to block just before you are hit by an attack but this game doesn't use that same timing. You actually have to push block a lot sooner, I guess some would consider this a very generous window but it kept messing me up because I'm so use to waiting until I'm just about to get hit in order to trigger the counter/parry. It took up until chapter 8 or 9 before I finally reprogrammed myself to parry/counter as the enemy is beginning their attack. Some other things I don't like are really odd choices when it comes to invulnerability frames, hit stuns, attack signals, and the jump cancel. It is so annoying that the dodge doesn't give you invulnerability against the shock wave attacks and instead you have to jump to avoid them. I could overlook this but when you cancel into a jump you don't have invulnerability while you're rising in the air nor can you control your direction. Gabriel jumps straight up. Another problem with these shock wave attacks is that they all tend to be vertical attacks in design so even if you try to jump cancel to avoid them you'll still get hit because you're literally jumping right into the attack; unless of course you're attacking at long range but I tend to keep at close range so jump cancel to avoid the shock wave attacks was useless. The only effective method I found was to dodge then jump but that didn't seem to work all the time. To add on to the problems I have with the combat is also a problem that shows up in every other aspect of the game: the craptacular camera. There were way too many times in this game where the fixed camera angle was downright terrible because it seems MercurySteam is full of themselves and would rather give you a camera angle that shows off their 'pretty' graphics instead of giving you an angle that would actually be, oh, I don't know- HELPFUL. I'll leave the camera complaints to the combat side of things only though. Their are too many encounters in this game where the camera angle was pulled back too far so I really couldn't tell what exact attack an enemy was doing. The situation is made even worse because you're usually tasked with fighting mobs of enemies (who by the way can attack from off screen) and with the view pulled back so far and so many of them on screen (or off screen), it gets really annoying trying to keep track of everything especially when you can barely make out what it is they're doing to begin with. It's in these moments where I just start spamming the more ridiculous abilities/moves just to thin out the numbers as quickly as possible... which I found myself doing a lot in this game. Now let's throw in two more problems into that mess, those being the attack signals and hit stuns I mentioned earlier. Enemies in this game can bust out of hit stun at random so it's really important to know to always be ready to dodge. This is fine, the game wants to make sure you're not just mashing but you're actually paying attention. However, a lot of times an enemy will pop out of hit stun with an unblockable attack and these attacks come out fast. The only warning you have is a small glowing white orb like effect that the attack is unblockable. Would've been nice for these attacks to have an audio cue as well because this effect can be hard to recognize when there's so much enemies onscreen as well as the camera being too far back. I couldn't tell you how much times I got hit by one of these attacks simply because I didn't even see it coming or I thought it was a regular attack. Obviously, each time it happened it was fanfuckintastic. A final thing I'll touch on is the boss fights and several of the larger enemies you'll fight in the game. All of these encounters play out the same. Every single one of them. It basically boiled down to me doing nothing but hit and run tactics against them all. Hit twice, dodge, hit twice, dodge... etc. Look for that easily telegraphed attack that can be countered and use that to farm for focus then back to the hits and dodge. During the later half of the game these types of battles were happening frequently and I was getting bored. So yea, there are some other things I could touch on relating to combat and I haven't even discussed the other aspects of the game but this post is long enough as it is. Plus I'm hungry and I want to it.

I played MoH for a little while and walked away from it. I only got to like the 5th mission and the majority of them were taking place at night. Got too annoying for my tastes, I don't mind night missions but I think they should be used sparingly. As for what I'm playing right now: Playing Spiderman Shattered Dimensions now. Pretty fun game even if it is rough around the edges, but in any case it's nice to see Spiderman get away from the open world gameplay. The different Spidey's don't offer that much different gameplay though. Amazing, 2099 and Ultimate pretty much have the same kind of gameplay to them. Noir has stealth missions which are kind of similar to Batman's predator missions except you don't have gadgets to play and plan with. I should also mention the enemy line of sight is terrible so it's actually sort of easy to take them out one by one without triggering an alarm. But these missions do give you a nice change of pace since the other three Spidey's play so similar like previously mentioned. Combat system gets better as you get some upgrades and new tools to work with but the combat system isn't deep enough to keep you playing for too long. Not a purchase but definitely worth a rental if you're a Spiderman fan. Fist of the North Star. Haven't played too much of this, only played it for a little bit. Not really much to comment on right now but it seems okay I guess. Will comment further after I get some more playtime with it.

Way of the Samurai 3 and NIER. WoTS3 was better than I expected it to be. Not the deepest game but it has a lot of replay value thanks to 20+ endings and plenty of weapons to collect with new skills to learn. NIER is a game I picked up because of the word of mouth. I find the combat to be mind numbing. I'm literally getting through on hard doing nothing but mashing one button with ease, there is a defend and evade button but I have no real need to use them. The combat is just that simple. The side quests are extremely annoying time sinks. What should be a simple fetch quest ends up being much more than that because you're usually required to do some backtracking or farming enemies for an hour in the hopes they'll drop the items you need. Speaking of backtracking, there is just way too much of it in this game. The only good thing I can say about this game is the soundtrack is amazing and is among the best I've heard this gen.

Diablo II in 1680x1050

How does it look?

He can clearly see each pixel. So yea, it looks pretty damn good.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night. It's been years since I've played the game so it feels brand new again. Still holds up really well even today, a true classic.

Finally got around to playing God of War III. This game is so ridiculously good looking, easily the best graphics I've seen in a video game. I'm not even kidding, this game is a real treat to the eyes. This is the first God of War game that I actually want to keep replaying, the level design is so damn good it's nearly flawless. There's a flow to the game that I just get lost in and before I know it five hours have passed. The only real knock I really have against the game is the puzzles weren't as challenging as you'd come to expect from the series and there weren't many of them.

Same here. The Labyrinth was wasted opportunity IMO. Once you finally got it all set up I was expecting some real brain benders but instead we just got three simple rooms and it was over.

Finally got around to playing God of War III. This game is so ridiculously good looking, easily the best graphics I've seen in a video game. I'm not even kidding, this game is a real treat to the eyes. This is the first God of War game that I actually want to keep replaying, the level design is so damn good it's nearly flawless. There's a flow to the game that I just get lost in and before I know it five hours have passed. The only real knock I really have against the game is the puzzles weren't as challenging as you'd come to expect from the series and there weren't many of them.

I've read the 10th stage in FFXIII doesn't get unlock till after you beat the final boss

And the amount of CP needed i unreal

I can't get into farming CP to that level. Fuck I wish there was a game shark this gen.

-True.

-True. You need lots of CP. You'll need well over a million CP to max out all roles.

-Get the Growth Egg. Farm turtles. You'll take care of both gil and CP that way.

Resonance of Fate. Only played it for about an hour, combat system is kind of confusing but it's interesting to see characters shoot muhfukka's in a JRPG.

Okay, I'm starting to do all the end game shit in FF XIII just to finish getting all the achievements. Is adamantoise farming really the only way to get gil and trapehzonwhatevers the fastest? Because this is boring as hell...

Not as good as Silient Assassin but it's still fun. A lot more open than the other games in the series. Lots of ways to do things, it's fun to experiement with it all.

Finished Red Dead more or less. Time to move on to my next game, which should I play?;

WET

Mass Effect

Ass Creed

CoD:WAW

Dead Rising

Gears 2

GRAW 2

Hitman: Blood Money

Reisdent Evil 5

Lego Batman

Splinter Cell Double Agent/Conviction

Stranglehold

Blood Money. Awesome game, everyone should play it.

Final Fantasy XIII. One of the worst games in the series, barely better than XII. -Story sucks. I don't even want to comment on it, it sucks that bad. -Characters suck. Lightning's a bitch. Snow's a damn tool, not to mention an idiot. No, seriously, he is literally an idiot. Need proof? He lives on the beach and he's walking around in pants, a trenchcoat and a beanie. I cringe everytime Vanille opens her fuckin mouth, just shut up. Please. Just. Shut. Up. Hope just left me hoping (ha!) he would just go or better yet, die. He had a chance to win some cool points but of course he didn't kill the aforementioned idiot. Fang is alright but her VA made her sound like an old woman and that bothered the hell out of me. Sazh is really the only tolerable character but it's not by much. And OMG, some of the dialogue in this game is just embarassing even for FF standards. I was SOOOO tempted to start skipping cutscenes and that's something I thought I would never do in a FF game. I was close though, so close. -Level design sucks. I don't mind linear level design, but this is beyond that. Note to SE- You can make a linear game and have it not feel repetitive. The majority of the Chapters in this game have you going through the same hallways and going through the same large room over and over again. Some of the Chapters that are the worst offenders are hours long. How long were you guys making this game? Like, 5 years? You didn't see a problem with this? Sheesh, no wonder you guys are a second tier developer now. Finally, combat sucks. Yea, I said it. The combat system sucks. Sure, it's flashy as hell but there's not much strategy to it. COM/RAV/RAV to a RAV/RAV/RAV setup is really all I needed to get through the game. Switched to a healing setup when needed. Maybe use SYN and SAB (although I never found either of these classes to be all that necessary to get through the game) for certain missions and bosses. SYN's become useless in the late game though because I had accessories that would give me the buffs I wanted. I also don't like how battles just drag on because the game is designed around this Stagger system and using it is the only way you're going to do any kind of serious damage. It's an interesting idea that would work for a game that would be less than half this game's length, but for a game of this length it doesn't work well because the concept doesn't have any longetivity to it, there's just not much depth to the entire system. By Chapter 6 (or 7?) I got to to the point to where I was just avoiding battles because I was bored of it all. This ended up biting me in the ass though because I had to do some serious grinding in Chapter 11, I was seriously underleveled. But I've been told everyone has to do a bit of grinding at this point anyways because there's a massive difficulty spike here. So yea, got good reviews off name alone IMO. If it didn't have FF on the label, this game would've been dragged through shit over and over again.

Darksiders: The combat is definitely very Zelda like with some slight (and I mean slight) DMC influence sprinkled in. There's only four dungeons in the game but only one of them is what I'd consider to be challenging (Black Throne). There really aren't that many puzzles in the dungeons either, out of all the puzzles that do exist in the game only two of them are what I would consider to be challenging. The majority of the time though they're really easy to figure out. If you've played Zelda or Tomb Raider (or even Portal) then the puzzles in this game really aren't going to show you anything you haven't experienced before. The game is also pretty short. You can beat it in around 10-15 hours if you ignore all the collecting and after I beat hard mode there wasn't any incentive to playthrough it again. There are barely any side quests to keep you occupied and the game really could've used more dungeons because two of the four that are in the game were over with before I even realize it. My biggest gripe with the game is the fact it never tries to be more than what it sets out to be- a well made Zelda clone but still just a Zelda clone. It even follows the Zelda formula to a tee: Enter dungeon, find key item, use key item to solve the puzzles and beat the boss, rinse and repeat. It's even a little heartbreaking because you can see the game had the potential to be much more than that. With all that said I still feel it was a solid game and definitely worth checking out. I wouldn't buy it though, rent it.

i'm curious to get your view on it.

On Darksiders or GoW3?

I played the 360 version of Darksiders and don't seem to recall the problems being that bad with it. I noticed screen tearing but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it seems to be for other people. Anyways, rented GoW3 today. Figured it'd take awhile for GameFly to send it out so I just went to my local BlockBuster and rented a copy. Will try it out later tonight.

FF13 and ME2, given up on Crysis for awhile.

And how is Darksiders even remotely similar to Zelda??

You mean besides the fact it straight up uses the Zelda formula? Enter dungeon, get new item, use new item to solve the puzzles and defeat the boss. Rinse and repeat.

At one point I did, I just kept on playing it for the achievements. I wasn't expecting Hard mode to be a huge step up in quality for the game though. Normal mode really doesn't do this game justice at all, the difference is really that big.

So I'm playing through Hard mode right now in Bayonetta and I must admit I'm finally starting to enjoy the game. The difference between Normal and Hard mode is HUGE. Makes me wish this difficulty was available right from the start. Enemies are straight up relentless and are literally trying to rip Bayonetta apart. The action is so much more intense and is really making me use Bayonetta's canceling abilities to their fullest (I'm not just talking about dodge offset either, this chick can cancel with a lot of shit). The fact the enemy encounters are different too helps because I never know what to expect in the next fight. So yea, the game is finally fun now.

why did people hate on brutal legend? it seems like a good game so far

It's alright but the game will get dull before the midway mark and from that point on it just feels like it's dragging to the end. Doesn't help that the RTS element really doesn't require much strategy even on the Brutal difficulty. I suck at RTS's but I just straight up blew through Brutal difficulty by just massing troops, taking over fan geysers and moving in for the kill. Rinse and repeat. The game really nailed the Heavy Metal world look though, well, at least on the main land. The other areas are the standard generic settings we've seen in other games.

It's a game with wasted potential, could've been much more if it was given more time or a bit more attention was given in the gameplay department.

Ugh, I'm trying. God knows I'm trying but I just can not get into Bayonetta. I want to like this game, I really do but it does such a great job either boring me or just straight up annoying me. I didn't know you had to collect records in order to unlock weapons, I was getting pissed at the Rodin guy for never having weapons in stock. Anyways, once I started to mess with the newly acquired weapons disappointment quickly followed. The combos are exactly the same across all weapons and weapon set ups. They all feel exactly the same with the exception of the sword. The sword is the only weapon with unique combos as far as I can tell. Sure, some of the other weapons may have a somewhat unique aspect but they're not unique enough. I never feel like I have to have any particular weapon equipped (besides the sword) because I could just as easily get the same moves with any other weapon. I'm just throwing out the same stuff I've done a million times over now but OH WAIT! Now the attacks will be fire based/ice based/lightning based because this weapon is equipped. It's just so generic. There's 3 more weapons I have yet to get so I'm hoping they're not going to be more carbon copies but I suppose at this point I should expect them to be. And I don't even want to get started on it's inconsistent buffer system. I'll press forward though because I'm an achievement whore and there are quite a few left to get. I will say I am glad I rented this game, I'd be pretty pissed if I bought it.

i will start playing batman aa this weekend. i didn't care for the demo. though i heard the final game is much better.

I loved it, but it's very slick and doesn't offer a great deal of challenging combat in the main game.

It's fun though, and it really does justice to the Batman universe.

does the game have any puzzles? or it just combat/stealth/platforming?

The Riddles are puzzles, some of them are pretty challenging too. The ? mark challenges for example, very creative and will have you spending some time on some of them.

Really the only big complaint I have against Batman AA is the lack of gadgets. Batman has a shitload of toys to mess around with but we only got to use a couple.