Seems as though Capcom was a little shy about a foot being placed so firmly on a sea-zombie's butt. It'd be fun to hear the reasoning behind this! Anyway, enjoy your Xbox unveiling with three hours of FPS play-throughs!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Not to be crude...
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Dual Shock 4 looks good...
And I bet it feels good too. Don't you just want to hold those fatty grips in your hands? I think this could become one of my favorite controllers ever and it alone makes me interested in the PS4.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
3600 Seconds With Split/Second
It's been long enough since I've just come home from work, vegged out, and did nothing but play games until bedtime. Yesterday, I decided to treat myself to a little fun when I heard that the Square-Enix published open world sandbox game Sleeping Dogs was coming to PlayStation Plus. I'm going to avoid complaining about download time, patch download time and installation time for a free game because quite frankly I feel like a PS+ membership is a killer deal and the best thing Sony has going for them.
While waiting for that to finish up I fired up my 60 minute timed trial of Split/Second which I've been itching to play along with Driver: San Francisco and the licensed car kart racer Blur. I'm finding more and more that of all games I really enjoy arcade style racers the most. As I feel myself aging and spiraling down that ADD tunnel of "tl;dr" I'm finding more and more that a racing game can actually hold my attention if the events or career mode is laid out with a minimum of bullshit. Split/Second treats each set of races as if it were a prime time TV show and I feel as if it does this pretty well. (remember MegaRace?) It's certainly more exciting than looking for new races as icons on a map (we'll get to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit later). The announcer sounds like the guy you always hear on TV announcing what's happening in the next episode of your favorite TV show, the opening video and next episode previews are exciting, the overall visual design of the menu system works really well to get you amped up to race.
Split/Second looks great. You'll feel a bit of Burnout deja-vu with the fake super-cars flying past roadside chaos, but there's definitely something different when a giant radar antenna crashes into the middle of the race track causing a new path to open up. Actually, it reminds me of the way the tracks change between laps in Sonic Racing Transformed aside from it being triggered by the player or the CPU racers. Since my time with the game was limited I only got to play through about two and half "episodes" consisting of something like five events each. The tracks in Split/Second make the game what it is. They're the gimmick. Much like Ridge Racer, as you power-slide through turns you gradually fill a bar. This energy allows you to trigger explosions and various other disasters around the the course as you try to move up through the ranks. Sometimes it's having a helicopter drop an explosive barrel on a rival and other times you can trigger the destruction of something the size of the Space Needle to send it smashing into the course and altering the route for the rest of the race as well as damaging other racers that are nearby. Some events are canned and seem to happen no matter what like a passenger airplane making a fiery crash landing on the very airstrip you're racing down. I'd imagine as you play the game more and more you'd be less surprised by some of the cool triggers in each course, but it would allow you devise a bit more of a strategy in later races.
Split/Second doesn't have a traditional HUD. Your rank, boost meter and laps are all kept track of in the shadow of the butt of your car. It's a cool little effect that allows you to keep focused on your vehicle and keeps the rest of the view clear so you can notice impeding explosions or missiles raining down from helicopters farther down the track. Aside from the event modes you'd typically find in this type of game there's also a time trial mode where you're avoiding all triggers being automatically set off while making a quick lap. There's also a missile avoidance run called Air Attack where you avoid from hell-fire from the aforementioned helicopters scattered around the track until you run out of lives. All in all I had a lot of fun in the hour I spent with Split/Second. I'll have to spend some more time with it to know if it's truly good, but at this point I feel like I can say it's worth whatever low price it's going for now.
Split/Second Trailer
Maybe that Sleeping Dogs download is finished? How rattled will I be when I cram a man's head into an air duct fan making a fountain of blood? What clothing will I pick? How many times will I mention Shenmue, Yakuza and GTA? Check back later for impressions!
 |
| We are not worthy. (actually we deserve it) |
While waiting for that to finish up I fired up my 60 minute timed trial of Split/Second which I've been itching to play along with Driver: San Francisco and the licensed car kart racer Blur. I'm finding more and more that of all games I really enjoy arcade style racers the most. As I feel myself aging and spiraling down that ADD tunnel of "tl;dr" I'm finding more and more that a racing game can actually hold my attention if the events or career mode is laid out with a minimum of bullshit. Split/Second treats each set of races as if it were a prime time TV show and I feel as if it does this pretty well. (remember MegaRace?) It's certainly more exciting than looking for new races as icons on a map (we'll get to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit later). The announcer sounds like the guy you always hear on TV announcing what's happening in the next episode of your favorite TV show, the opening video and next episode previews are exciting, the overall visual design of the menu system works really well to get you amped up to race.
 |
| I'M GONNA WRECK IT (5x) |
Split/Second looks great. You'll feel a bit of Burnout deja-vu with the fake super-cars flying past roadside chaos, but there's definitely something different when a giant radar antenna crashes into the middle of the race track causing a new path to open up. Actually, it reminds me of the way the tracks change between laps in Sonic Racing Transformed aside from it being triggered by the player or the CPU racers. Since my time with the game was limited I only got to play through about two and half "episodes" consisting of something like five events each. The tracks in Split/Second make the game what it is. They're the gimmick. Much like Ridge Racer, as you power-slide through turns you gradually fill a bar. This energy allows you to trigger explosions and various other disasters around the the course as you try to move up through the ranks. Sometimes it's having a helicopter drop an explosive barrel on a rival and other times you can trigger the destruction of something the size of the Space Needle to send it smashing into the course and altering the route for the rest of the race as well as damaging other racers that are nearby. Some events are canned and seem to happen no matter what like a passenger airplane making a fiery crash landing on the very airstrip you're racing down. I'd imagine as you play the game more and more you'd be less surprised by some of the cool triggers in each course, but it would allow you devise a bit more of a strategy in later races.
 |
| The first time I saw this I kinda peed myself |
Split/Second doesn't have a traditional HUD. Your rank, boost meter and laps are all kept track of in the shadow of the butt of your car. It's a cool little effect that allows you to keep focused on your vehicle and keeps the rest of the view clear so you can notice impeding explosions or missiles raining down from helicopters farther down the track. Aside from the event modes you'd typically find in this type of game there's also a time trial mode where you're avoiding all triggers being automatically set off while making a quick lap. There's also a missile avoidance run called Air Attack where you avoid from hell-fire from the aforementioned helicopters scattered around the track until you run out of lives. All in all I had a lot of fun in the hour I spent with Split/Second. I'll have to spend some more time with it to know if it's truly good, but at this point I feel like I can say it's worth whatever low price it's going for now.
Split/Second Trailer
Maybe that Sleeping Dogs download is finished? How rattled will I be when I cram a man's head into an air duct fan making a fountain of blood? What clothing will I pick? How many times will I mention Shenmue, Yakuza and GTA? Check back later for impressions!
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
My Xbox 360 is weeaboo as fuck (and I love it)
Call of Duty, Gears of War, teh Haloz...
Xbox is somewhat synonymous with titles like these. The Xbox Live bro gamer crowd.
My Xbox has a Deathsmiles faceplate and is packed with radical Japanese games.
Boxed
Xbox is somewhat synonymous with titles like these. The Xbox Live bro gamer crowd.
 |
| uguuuu~~ |
My Xbox has a Deathsmiles faceplate and is packed with radical Japanese games.
Boxed
- Bayonetta
- Raiden Fighters Aces
- Raiden IV
- Deathsmiles
- Tales of Vesperia
- Child of Eden
- Blue Dragon
- Lost Odyssey
- Deadly Premonition
 |
| Yuri and company from Vesperia |
Digital
- Afterburner Climax
- Outrun Online Arcade
- Daytona USA
- Rez HD
- Guardian Heroes
- Ikaruga
- Radiant Silvergun
- Virtual On Oratorio Tangram
- King of Fighter 2002 UM
- Neo Geo Battle Coliseum
- Guwange
 |
| Virtual On's Temjin |
Perhaps things aren't as sunny on this front as they were in the days of MS trying woo over Japanese devs with fat checks, but as it remains I'll always want a functioning Xbox 360 console to play things like the superior version of Bayonetta. I think the PS3 version is garbage and feel you haven't really played the game if that's your only exposure. Sad, but true.
 |
| "Don't fuck with a witch." - Bayonetta |
For whatever reason the 360 was the console of choice for shmups developer CAVE so if you pick up the region free copies of their games you have access to a good bit of their bullet-hell history. Thanks mostly to CAVE and Sega the 360 has quite a few arcade perfect ports of games that you can't really play any other way. Of course you'll find all of the multiplatform current generation fighting games like KOF XIII, Blazblue and Street Fighter IV as well as some download exclusives like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and a few older King of Fighters games. The poor netcode in those titles still breaks my heart.
 |
| Blue skies in After Burner Climax |
Oh, and it's not Japanese as far as I know, but where else are you going to play Rocket Girl?!
Even if my console eventually red-rings or whatever I'll be picking up a replacement console because there's a few games here that I just can't do without. I'm glad Microsoft got Japanese devs to publish their games on the 360, but at the same time I wonder if they would have just all been neatly consolidated on the PS3? Hmm...
Rollcage by Psygnosis
After Psygnosis was super successful with the WipEout series on Playstation they cooked up a little game called Rollcage. I remember liking this game quite a bit and I'm still sort of searching for it. I had no idea there was a sequel made as well. Gameplay was typical for a racing game with power-ups aside from having a car that could flip over and continue driving on it's other side. Made for some really cool tracks in which you could drive on the walls, flip or fall off and continue along if you were facing the right direction. As you might imagine it had a good soundtrack much like the WipEout series. I wish this game would show up on PSN! ARE YOU LISTENING SONY?!
Game was fast and smooth! Cool lighting effects too.
 |
| PlayStation, you are so beautiful <3 |
Dragon's Crown impressions revealed!
 |
| Dragon's Crown character select screen |
| Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom character select screen |
Don't worry, it's okay because they're paying homage to D&D: ToD and a member of the original staff is working on Dragon's Crown. A few things we didn't know about the game previously:
- enemy's levels scale based on your level (probably not related to your equipment upgrades)
- the game has various mounts that you can make use of
- character control is delegated to the left analog stick as the d-pad is used for item quick select
- right analog stick controls a cursor that you can use to guide a little helper around screen to collect loot or whatever
- sounds like game length will be more arcade style with a focus on replaying the game with different characters
- it's going to be fairly difficult
Monday, May 6, 2013
Remember Me?
I almost forgot. Thankfully Capcom remixed my memories so I couldn't ignore this interesting looking cyberpunk, female-leaded, gunless game. Future Paris? Yes please.
This is coming to PS3, Xbox and PC next month. I'm not sure I'll plunk down the money ahead of time, but I'll be keeping my eyes on it.
Concept art:
Concept art:
Also, here's hoping they use Danni Minogues little known gem "Disrememberance" as the theme song. It's like, the only thing I can think of when I read the name of this game.
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