Killer robot, meet high-powered assault rifle
Showing posts with label Previews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Previews. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2012
Impressions on Binary Domain
The third-person action shooter market is pretty crowded these days. There are plenty of options for those that want to play burly men who shoot things in the face and move between conveniently placed chest high walls. When the folks at Sega announced that the mind behind the Yakuza series, Toshihiro Nagoshi, was making a third-person shooter, my reaction was along the lines of "...kay." I love the Yakuza series, but another military shooter just wasn't something I cared about. Binary Domain releases on 28 February, which was another reason to skip it. It falls right between Syndicate and Mass Effect 3. So, I skipped over reading more about the title and promptly forgot about it.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Impressions on Mass Effect 3
We are only 20 days away from the epic conclusion to EA and Bioware's space odyssey. I couldn't be more excited to see how my Paragon female Commander Shepard unites the galaxy to stop the Reapers. This entry promises to tie all the loose threads together and show players who have been dutifully transferring their saves between games how their decisions play out. The demo for the single-player campaign released on Valentine's Day (on PSN, today for XBLA) takes the same road as the Mass Effect 2 demo: it shows the opening mission and a truncated mission a bit later in the story. This game has me so excited!
Commander Shepard and crew mean business
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Impressions on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Coming out 7 February is the first title from 38 Studios: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. This project has an all-star line-up behind it. The story is penned by R. A. Salvatore, celebrated RPG visonary Ken Rolston is in charge of the project, toy-maker Todd McFarlane is in charge of the art and it's all backed by former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. This project sees Forgotten Realms, The Elder Scrolls series and an impressive art styling coming together. EA has put out a meaty demo that covers the first tutorial dungeon and then gives you 45 minutes (coversations/menus pause the timer) to run about and do whatever you choose. Everyone can (and should) get an early look at this open-world, third-person action RPG.
What I Liked
The game has a visual pop that is rather impressive. The colors are vibrant, the architecture is impressive and the scale of everything is massive. It reminds me of World of Warcraft in that it is slightly stylized and things are exaggerated. The opening area is great because it isn't the dull browns of most games these days, but the lush greens of a forest. Really, the world itself is massive and well thought out. Even though I couldn't range too far from the opening town, there were plenty of places to explore and plenty of new things to see.
The game systems were well done, too. The combat (which I'll get to separately) functioned well and was brisk. Doing the usual sorts of RPG tasks all felt really solid. While searching for ingredients, the harvestable plants offered a telling glow. Picking locks is very similar to Fallout 3 and works very well. Disarming traps in dungeons was quick and easy. There is a satisfying ease to tasks in this game. Not that they are done for you, but that nothing I came across was obtuse or needlessly difficult to do.
I loved that classes were fluid, too. You put your points into archetypes that then open up specializations. But, these aren't set in stone. Using destiny cards, more options become available to you. I loved this aspect because it means that in the long run, your character will play how you like them to. It's always hard to pick a class at the beginning of a game and be locked into it. I mean, sure, I normally play rogues, but what if I really love wielding Great Swords? Kingdoms allows you to shift your class at will and lets you experience the game as you want.
Talking to folks brings up the great voice acting. Most characters I ran into were fully voiced and nearly all of them were well done. There were a couple of strange sounding accents, but that's to be expected. A vast majority of the speaking characters sounded good. Nearly everyone has a quest/job for you to do, too!
What I Was Mixed On
Picking up with my last point, though many folks had quests/jobs for me, they weren't very interesting. In my 45 minutes, I picked up 8 or so quests, and many of those had multiple quests branch off from them. An example: the head of the church sent me to find a wayward member of his order. Finding that lad then saw me tagging along with the boy as he sought out an item to share with his friends. That finally done, I could return to the order and report that I found the missing member. OK, so that's not so bad. But others saw me fetch flowers for a lady, who then gave me a dungeon to delve looking for other items, which saw me killing bandits to get what I needed. I returned to the dungeon lady and got an item to return to town. What got me was that every single quest was a fetch quest. It was early in the game, but when %90 of the quests I was given involved "run here, collect that, return" I wasn't really excited.
Back to combat. Now, I liked how snappy combat was. I enjoyed how most battles played out quickly and with a minimum of fuss. The different weapon types lead to different combat styles, too. The dual-wielded knives meant that I zipped around the battlefield nimbly dodging and striking. Magical staves saw me leaving powerful waves of destruction and shooting balls of fire into my charging foes. The sword and shield were dull, but easy to understand. Since you have a primary and secondary weapon, you can swap between the two mid-combo. This meant I could launch enemies skyward with my sword and turn them into pin-cushions with my bow. Or strike them with my knives before blowing them all backwards with a swing of a magical stave! It's a shame that the combat became repetitive so fast. It was a bit too button mashy for me after a while. And the auto-targeting, while welcome, never seemed to be on the same page as me. Yes, the big troll is the largest "threat," but the stupid archer right behind him interrupts my attacks, so let's get him first, shall we? No? Oh...
What I Didn't Like
The silent protagonist. I'm done with this. I know why companies chose to have your character silent. I know that on projects like this, where the character creation is so massive that it would take more resources than necessary to voice all the heroes. And I know it's stupid to be disappointed in this. But, I am. After Mass Effect, I really can't stand reading what I say and watching my stone-faced character just sit there. It's something that I've found kind of pulls me out of games and makes me less invested. It happened with Dragon Age: Origins and happened again with this demo.
Since this is a demo, I'll forgive a lot of glitches. But, I should point out that 9 times out of 10, the water didn't load properly. The meant large swaths of grey and screen tearing as I went by. I'm sure things like that will be ironed out by launch (or shortly after), but it still was a bit jarring. When the water did load, it was gorgeous!
To go with the water issue, I also had frame-rate issues. Nothing making the game unplayable, but at times my frame-rate would drop sharply. What was strange was that I could never pinpoint why. It wasn't when loading is normally hidden (opening doors, crossing certain plateaus in the land), but seemed to be at random. While not game-breaking, it certainly threw me off.
To be completely honest, this game wasn't on my radar at all. I had seen demonstrations of it, I had read previews and saw adverts for it. But, nothing had grabbed me and shouted, "You want this game! Go pre-order this game now!" After playing the demo, that hasn't changed too much. I enjoyed my time with the demo. I'm pleased that it was such a wide experience instead of the usual short demo. I liked a lot of what I played. The game is on my radar now, but nothing I played screamed "Day One purchase!" That said, there is a lot to be excited about with this game. Try the demo yourself and you may find that Skyrim has a challenger for your open-world RPG affections.
Ken Rolston of Elder Scrolls fame
What I Liked
The game has a visual pop that is rather impressive. The colors are vibrant, the architecture is impressive and the scale of everything is massive. It reminds me of World of Warcraft in that it is slightly stylized and things are exaggerated. The opening area is great because it isn't the dull browns of most games these days, but the lush greens of a forest. Really, the world itself is massive and well thought out. Even though I couldn't range too far from the opening town, there were plenty of places to explore and plenty of new things to see.
The game systems were well done, too. The combat (which I'll get to separately) functioned well and was brisk. Doing the usual sorts of RPG tasks all felt really solid. While searching for ingredients, the harvestable plants offered a telling glow. Picking locks is very similar to Fallout 3 and works very well. Disarming traps in dungeons was quick and easy. There is a satisfying ease to tasks in this game. Not that they are done for you, but that nothing I came across was obtuse or needlessly difficult to do.
I loved that classes were fluid, too. You put your points into archetypes that then open up specializations. But, these aren't set in stone. Using destiny cards, more options become available to you. I loved this aspect because it means that in the long run, your character will play how you like them to. It's always hard to pick a class at the beginning of a game and be locked into it. I mean, sure, I normally play rogues, but what if I really love wielding Great Swords? Kingdoms allows you to shift your class at will and lets you experience the game as you want.
Talking to folks brings up the great voice acting. Most characters I ran into were fully voiced and nearly all of them were well done. There were a couple of strange sounding accents, but that's to be expected. A vast majority of the speaking characters sounded good. Nearly everyone has a quest/job for you to do, too!
Combat skills are pretty useful
What I Was Mixed On
Picking up with my last point, though many folks had quests/jobs for me, they weren't very interesting. In my 45 minutes, I picked up 8 or so quests, and many of those had multiple quests branch off from them. An example: the head of the church sent me to find a wayward member of his order. Finding that lad then saw me tagging along with the boy as he sought out an item to share with his friends. That finally done, I could return to the order and report that I found the missing member. OK, so that's not so bad. But others saw me fetch flowers for a lady, who then gave me a dungeon to delve looking for other items, which saw me killing bandits to get what I needed. I returned to the dungeon lady and got an item to return to town. What got me was that every single quest was a fetch quest. It was early in the game, but when %90 of the quests I was given involved "run here, collect that, return" I wasn't really excited.
Back to combat. Now, I liked how snappy combat was. I enjoyed how most battles played out quickly and with a minimum of fuss. The different weapon types lead to different combat styles, too. The dual-wielded knives meant that I zipped around the battlefield nimbly dodging and striking. Magical staves saw me leaving powerful waves of destruction and shooting balls of fire into my charging foes. The sword and shield were dull, but easy to understand. Since you have a primary and secondary weapon, you can swap between the two mid-combo. This meant I could launch enemies skyward with my sword and turn them into pin-cushions with my bow. Or strike them with my knives before blowing them all backwards with a swing of a magical stave! It's a shame that the combat became repetitive so fast. It was a bit too button mashy for me after a while. And the auto-targeting, while welcome, never seemed to be on the same page as me. Yes, the big troll is the largest "threat," but the stupid archer right behind him interrupts my attacks, so let's get him first, shall we? No? Oh...
Oh, he looks friendly!
What I Didn't Like
The silent protagonist. I'm done with this. I know why companies chose to have your character silent. I know that on projects like this, where the character creation is so massive that it would take more resources than necessary to voice all the heroes. And I know it's stupid to be disappointed in this. But, I am. After Mass Effect, I really can't stand reading what I say and watching my stone-faced character just sit there. It's something that I've found kind of pulls me out of games and makes me less invested. It happened with Dragon Age: Origins and happened again with this demo.
Since this is a demo, I'll forgive a lot of glitches. But, I should point out that 9 times out of 10, the water didn't load properly. The meant large swaths of grey and screen tearing as I went by. I'm sure things like that will be ironed out by launch (or shortly after), but it still was a bit jarring. When the water did load, it was gorgeous!
To go with the water issue, I also had frame-rate issues. Nothing making the game unplayable, but at times my frame-rate would drop sharply. What was strange was that I could never pinpoint why. It wasn't when loading is normally hidden (opening doors, crossing certain plateaus in the land), but seemed to be at random. While not game-breaking, it certainly threw me off.
There is a lot of world to explore
To be completely honest, this game wasn't on my radar at all. I had seen demonstrations of it, I had read previews and saw adverts for it. But, nothing had grabbed me and shouted, "You want this game! Go pre-order this game now!" After playing the demo, that hasn't changed too much. I enjoyed my time with the demo. I'm pleased that it was such a wide experience instead of the usual short demo. I liked a lot of what I played. The game is on my radar now, but nothing I played screamed "Day One purchase!" That said, there is a lot to be excited about with this game. Try the demo yourself and you may find that Skyrim has a challenger for your open-world RPG affections.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Impressions on Asura's Wrath
The demo for the upcoming Capcom "beat-'em-up" Asura's Wrath came out this week. Developer CyberConnect2 is responsible for the Naruto games, and the anime pedigree shows strongly. This game is nuts in the same way Dragon Ball Z is nuts. Lots of growling to power up, lot's of flying energy and people getting punched really hard in the face. After putting the demo through it's paces, I can say that this looks like a fun ride.
What I Liked
The Quick Time Events during the battles are well done. There are a few of the "mash the set button furiously" that aren't fun, but the rest are pretty cool. My personal favorite is using the Left and Right sticks to set Asura's feet and then open his arms wide in a classic "Come at me, bro" pose.
Yep, come at me, bro!
The visuals are awesome and well done. There is a real "cartoon" vibe to everything and it fits so well. I also loved the scale of things. Whether it's a giant space-Buddha jabbing his finger across most of a continent to crush Asura, or being stabbed by a sword that pops out the other side of the planet, nothing in this game seems small. There is something awesome about seeing the Earth from the moon, seeing the beauty of it all, and then being violently rammed from the moon into Earth on the tip of a sword.
To go along with that last point, I loved how everything is over-the-top insane. The demo has you punch a fat guy the size of building into orbit, you punch the crap out of a gigantic space-Buddha and you fight on the moon against your mentor (I think, the story wasn't really the focus of the demo). All of this is nuts, and it's only a glimpse of what's in store. That makes me excited to see how out of control this game gets!
This space-Buddha is gonna get beat down. Hard.
What I Was Mixed On
The fighting was so-so. I loved the up-close-and-personal beatings. The one-on-one fights where you must dodge and counter were well done. It really felt like a solid beat-'em-up. Where I struggled was with the ranged combat. The targeting system cannot be inverted (so, I spent a good few minutes trying to adjust), which is a bummer. The issues arose when you use the same stick to move about as you do select targets. So, while dodging giant fireballs, you are trying to manipulate your reticle with the same stick. This just felt needlessly awkward to me.
The amount of the QTEs got a tad overwhelming, too. It's great to have them in games, and I love them most of the time. But, since the entire game is based around them, that might wear thin after awhile of playing. This is by no means a deal-breaker, but it is something to consider. If you hate QTEs, stay away.
What I Didn't Like
Honestly, not much. Some of the button-mashing QTEs seemed unforgiving (but I am not very good at those anyhow, so it probably was me). And the targeting issue mentioned above was annoying. Otherwise, consider me a convert. I don't know if everything will hold up for an entire game, but what was there was so absurd and so much fun that I don't know if I'd care. This is a classic case where the fun will probably outweigh the design flaws.
Super awesome face-punching action!
My advice? Get the demo and see if it floats your boat. Fans of Bayonetta and Vanquish will certainly feel at home with this game. Asura's Wrath is definitely one to watch for when it comes out 21 February in the US, and 24 February in Europe.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Demo Inbound
I'm looking forward to this demo. Coming 10 January to US PS3 owners and 11 January to Xbox360 players, SquarEnix has announced a fully-playable demo. The SquarEnix Blog had a small post about it here.
I was rather excited about this game. The directors went to pains in multiple interviews to say that fan issues from FFXIII had been heard and everything was fixed. There has been the addition of towns, shops, more side-quests and less linear-hallways to run down. That sounds good.
Where, for me, it started to go south was when gameplay was really shown. It looks to be a shorter game, with an emphasis on New Game + stuff. While that may be fine, the core mechanic of capturing monsters caught me off guard. I'm not sure if I want a Poke-Fantasy game, but that may surprise me. The other downer has been the music. Normally, I love the music in any Final Fantasy game, but some of these tracks...well....
At any rate, check out the trailer below. I'm going to get the demo next week and see if this game floats my boat.
I was rather excited about this game. The directors went to pains in multiple interviews to say that fan issues from FFXIII had been heard and everything was fixed. There has been the addition of towns, shops, more side-quests and less linear-hallways to run down. That sounds good.
Where, for me, it started to go south was when gameplay was really shown. It looks to be a shorter game, with an emphasis on New Game + stuff. While that may be fine, the core mechanic of capturing monsters caught me off guard. I'm not sure if I want a Poke-Fantasy game, but that may surprise me. The other downer has been the music. Normally, I love the music in any Final Fantasy game, but some of these tracks...well....
The chocobo theme (a boss encounter)
At any rate, check out the trailer below. I'm going to get the demo next week and see if this game floats my boat.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
New Year, Old Game
Welcome to 2012! We're only 3 years away from this! And, strangely, one of the games I'm most excited about is a redesigned game from the 1990s.
Syndicate is a fast-paced, violent-as-hell remake of an old PC isometric strategy game. I know some fans of the original are crying "FOUL!" because the game isn't at all the same, but it has the same name. This, they argue, leads to confusion for both fans and new-comers. Old fans will not enjoy the FPS action while those brought in may find the original Syndicate dull/boring/lame.
And to this I say, "So?" I'm super excited about this game. 21 February cannot get here soon enough! I'll be posting a few of the trailers over the next few weeks to keep the hype strong. First off, enjoy the announcement trailer!
Syndicate is a fast-paced, violent-as-hell remake of an old PC isometric strategy game. I know some fans of the original are crying "FOUL!" because the game isn't at all the same, but it has the same name. This, they argue, leads to confusion for both fans and new-comers. Old fans will not enjoy the FPS action while those brought in may find the original Syndicate dull/boring/lame.
And to this I say, "So?" I'm super excited about this game. 21 February cannot get here soon enough! I'll be posting a few of the trailers over the next few weeks to keep the hype strong. First off, enjoy the announcement trailer!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
News Roundup: 23 October 2011
Well, here's a brief news roundup for the week ending 23 October 2011 after the jump.
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