Dear Ps3 Friday night fight member, Dtoiders, and anyone else who would like to pay their respects

Sadly Today I make my non awaited return to the C-blog bearing sad news’s, I was informed last night that as of January 28, 2011 Y0j1mb0’s PS3 has passed away, it leaves behind 2 fight sticks, 2 controller, and over 100 games.



We feel your pain, man


My PS3 knew jimbos PS3 well, many a night were spent playing Socom, Street Fighter, Call of Duty in its various incarnations, Street Fighter, Killzone 2, Street fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter, Blaze blue, did I mention Street Fighter yet ?









yep some of the highlights



Don’t worry about jimbo though (or delete him off your friends list ) FNF regular moosehole is currently attempting to revive the old war dog, and if that doesn’t work he is already prepared to buy a slim, however if you feel like sending a gift as a condolence, he takes tequila.

As for the rest of us I ask tonight you raise your glass in honor of one of the fallen (like half of you need an excuse to drink) and the welcoming back of the old friend or new replacement, and incase that was its last game of street fighter, Godspeed , and may you rest in peace in the great recycle bin in the sky.






( long story short Don’t wipe him from your friends list he will be Back in a few.)

Went to E3, out of it ? ready for some sleep, just tired from all the awesome?











thought we wouldn be on tonight?


this sums up my feelings to that.


Very wrong


Thats right baby, FNF stops for no man, convention, or need for sleep. However I'm expereincing a lack of organization here , all I can say is I'm working on getting some hosts right now, so this is a call to action, if your on psn, and you gotta game you want to host just pm me (psn id: Nexus14) and I'll send some able body players your way.

About a year ago my 360 broke (again) not to long before the release of the first version of this game, so I paid out 100 bucks for a new one, and waited for the release. Come release day I was right there about to pick it and then…..





You see despite the fact that square had stated that no other version of the game had been planned ( because they thought that we would ignore the fact that a ps3 version had damn near been confirmed) and released the game on a system no one was expecting on riddle with technical difficulties (yeah lets call it that), this coupled with tri aces habit of releasing improved versions of these games about a year later (for those who didn’t know the version of star ocean 3 that we got was the directors cut , both versions were released in Japan) I knew the release of a better version was inevitable.

So I bought persona 3 FES instead and got that battle theme stuck in my head for about a year ,And to no ones surprise ( save for those on the internet that don’t pay attention, because the fact that the game tanked on the 360 wasn’t enough of a hint) the improved version of the game launched a year later,……….. right in between white knight chronicles (which had far more reservation at my GameStop ) and FF13 .

Things aren’t exactly looking up for this game are they. Well marketing stupidity aside lets see how this version of the game holds up.



Star Ocean: The Last Hope International Edition (price 59.99)


The story of star ocean TLH begins rather bleak, World War 3 has left a rather big mess as the leaders in power decided to make a peace treaty after they fired every nuclear missile ever, as you imagine earth isn’t looking to good so mankind takes to space and creates the SRF to explore and find a new planet to wrec… um inhabit while they fix the old one. You start of as one of the members of SRF Edge Maverick ( the current reigning champion of worst named protagonist ever with no challenger in site) as the Calnus and a bunch of other ships set off to explore the unknown, along your jump to the space time continuum all your ships come in contact with a weird meteorite and get flung everywhere and from there on its your job ( as one of the few crewmen who escaped unharmed ) to continue your original mission of exploration, find the other ships, and figure out what the hell caused the bad space traffic.


The games been improved somewhat from lasts years version, with the blu ray disks extra space and a 3 minute install a lot of the problems that plagued the 360 version are nowhere to be seen ( though it should still be noted that the game does still chug a bit when the action gets heavy ) . Visually the game looks great and the option to have the original anime look of the menus and portraits AKA they way it should have looked to begin with. To elaborate on that the CGI look is just ugly and I see why that didn’t roll over well when the 360 version was just suck with that , this game was just made with the anime style in mind, I appreciate the devs trying to reach out and expand their audiences, but shoving in an art style that doesn’t fit wont accomplish that , it will just make me question whether the art director was paying attention when that got the OK.

The English voice acting is really bad, and it doesn’t help that the characters are borederline stereotypes, something that surprised me because star ocean 3 voice acting was rather good, and the characters (like em or not) were well thought out and voiced perfectly (still kind of over acted but good) , thankfully the Japanese voice acting sounds a lot better and this version allows you to switch between both freely.

Also it should be noted that this stories relevance wont click unless you have played the past games , what your essentially going through here are the early days of the Pangalatic Federation (and if your asking what the pangalagtic federation is, your probably a lost cause as far as the story’s concerned) I thought it was funny only parts of the story where making sense ( I beat SO3, I’m playing through 2, totally missed 1) then I did some Wikipedia reading and things got a lot clearer so if your new to the star ocean franchise this isn’t the greatest starting point and I definitely recommend you play through the fist departure, the second story, and till the end of time first.

Thankfully unique combat system is intact and great. You have 4 characters on the field 1 you control and the rest the computer controls the rest, it plays a bit more like a simplified fighting game when it comes to the combat, and its pure awesome, seriously if they had put out a demo with a few short fights, this game would be selling a lot more. Special attack are hardwired to the back triggers instead of the face buttons ( my guess being because the game went multi plat and the 360 doesn’t have pressure sensitive face buttons) but the transition went smoothly. However there are a few issues I had with the combat.

First off your Anti Aura shield has been severely nerfed in this game and blocking is dependent on the hit stat of the enemy your facing instead of how much energy is in the fury gauge, so things you would like to block against you know like bosses will always break your shield in half because their stats are outrageous . I agree the shield where a tad bit overpowered in SO3, making them borderline useless wasn’t the answer.

Also the Teammate AI is starting to show its age , it handles most situations well, but its useless in any situation that requires precision, LIKE ALL THE BOSS FIGHTS. The main story bosses now have cores that have to be exposed and hit in order to effectively damage them, and when there exposed the computer doesn’t seem to have the common sense to join you in attack that specific spot. All the bosses do this But the second and fifth boss are the king offenders of this. It makes the boss battles more annoying than challenging as your teamates are just cannon fodder for the boss.


And I hope Barachiel dies in a fire

However despite this few gripes I had with the combat it remains one of the best experiences I’ve had with fighting in an rpg , the worlds of star ocean are huge and the true meat and potatoes of this game lies in fighting and exploring (no switching disks required) and I have to point out how frustrating that would be to have to switch disks every two planets or so, once synthesis opens up (no its not available at the beginning of the game so you can break the bosses with ease) if you truly want all those legendary weapons, armor, items and such your going to have to backtrack like its metroid, a lot of treasure chest require certain elemental rings to open, and a lot of those rings you don’t get till late in the game.

I do however have one last gripe with this version of the game, there’s really no new content whatsoever besides the stuff removed from the original stateside release, none of the rumored extra areas or characters made it . Let this be a PSA to all game developers, when one side has to wait more than 6 months for their version of the game (much less a year) EXTRA CONTENT IS NOT OPTIONAL, and no fixes for problems that shouldn’t have existed in the first version do not count as additional content, nor does materials you shouldn’t have removed in the first place, seriously tri ace you failed right there.

However despite the obvious flaws this is a solid title but definitly the weakest tile in the star oceans series, and it’s a hard recommend as you have to be a fan of the series for the story to make sense, and even though this is the better of the two versions, its only better because the removed content from the original American release was added, and some bugs were fixed. All that together definitely DOES NOT add up to 65$ though, grab one of the psp remakes of the first 2 titles and wait for this one to go down in price, the extra back story will help believe me.

To start I am now a proud owner of a new notebook ( laptop, although I can hardly call it that its huge, I think its bigger than my first TV), it plays blue rays , and has a bunch of other stuff I’m reading on the side of the box that my tech guy was nodding in approval when I bought this thing , might even be able to run crysis, maybe .

Point being I wanted to break this thing in with a new blog, I wanted to do a review of white knight chronicles, star ocean the last hope international, or FF13 , unfortunately playing all 3 of those at once as well as god of war 3 is time consuming , and I don’t feel that I’ve gotten to the point where I can say I have gotten most if not the whole picture( I haven’t played a console rpg in a while and in turn forgotten how loooooooong they can be ).

Fortunately while I was making space for this TV with a keyboard I happen to come across an old favorite that I’m sure got ignored during the ps1 days : Akuji the Heartless.


Never kill a man before the honeymoon, HE WILL BE BACK FOR YOU.



You start the game out on your wedding day, where Akuji’s brother shows up and kills him, literally tears his heart out and curses him to hell, and imprisons his wife, Akuji being the determined badass he is fights his way to the gates of the afterlife to go back and save the woman he loves. One problem though the gatekeeper baron semedi, won’t open the gates till you clear most of the afterlife of Akujis evil ancestors.



Akuji is a hack and slash plat former ( think god of war with levels and more emphasis on jumping around and exploring ). Your spells are located throughout the levels and have to be found each time you enter a stage, some magic power ups regenerate and some don’t so proper use of your spells can determine whether your going to have a hard time in a level or not .


The first level

The game was great for its day, and the dark voodoo vibe and music set the mood of the game , it had atmosphere in spades as Akuji story of his trials to get his beloved back really tug at the heart, especially when you consider what he has to go through to get back to her , lets just say the afterlife is filled with a bunch of really hard to kill demons.

From an aesthetic standpoint though this was god of war before god of war existed, THERES BLOOD EVERYWHERE ( though its justified ) , deaths are often messy, and this being a mature game ( this actually meant something back in the day) the art director didn’t hold back on the nightmare fuel, some of your spells are just outright creepy ( shooting dead souls I can deal with , but a shield that drinks the blood of the enemy your currently slashing up to restore your health, sheesh………… still awesome though) and did I mention your health power up is a big beating floating bleeding heart ?

And the bosses of the areas ( on top of being nightmare inducing ) are well designed and challenging, the bosses are more or less puzzles as each has a weakness that needs to be exploited ( and no I don’t mean hears the big glowing weak spot you need to hit in order to kill it) the first boss is a test of your reflexes and general, the second boss is a full blown nightmare unless you where smart enough to hold on to a certain spell and not use it to deal with his mooks, the third boss starts easy but then things get a little complicated when it spits in two and your dealing with one side blasting you with magic and regenerating health while the other half is trying to bite your face off, and the last boss is is just an all out war with all of your ability’s at your disposal. And after every boss Akuji prays to his voodoo god ( see: sacrifices something) so that he would keep his wife safe, and prayer ( killing of some unfortunate nearby mook, and a goat) seems to get messier with each boss, just mentioning how its done will probably get me in trouble with this sites HR department .

There is however one little problem with the game , the controls were on the sluggish side, there’s a definite delay between the time you push a button and the time Akuji does something, and with this game also being a plat former , this caused some issues ( two words , Bottomless pits) as the game really demands precision at some points, and from the halfway point on , every jump pretty much has to be on target, this has costs me a few Akujis ( though its funny when you die and lose your last life, you land in front of semdi who reminds you that you can die again all you want and be fine but if you ever want to save your wife you better stop sucking ).

I was hoping this would make it on the psn at some point but so far to no avail ( and with enix running
Eidos now I doubt its high on their list of priorities ) but with the spring here it might turn up in a garage
sale or two so pick it up if you see it.

Welcome to Friday Night Fights our weekly get together where we go online and pummel fools in the name of destructoid and come back to this post to brag about it. For those of you who don’t know me I’m Nexus, resident Armored Core master of destructoid , and the person who starts up those text chats every FNF. I know what your about to say, wait you don’t have a massive beard nor do you have a katana, where’s that guy?

Well you see y0j1mb0 actually managed to get his family out of the house, upon celebration of this he hurt his back like any old man and is now confined to his couch, with enough power left in him to crawl to his bathroom and fridge, don’t worry about him though, he’s to busy playing the new resident evil 5 DLC to care much about the pain.

Unfortunately his computer isn’t within crawling distance, and so he embarked upon psn to find a host, Moose was joining him in the DLC marathon so he was out, Takeshi was drunk, Shipero is in lala land somewhere, and pikeman is too busy eating cereal, leaving me as the only functioning set of motor skills at the time, so for the fist time ever I’m running the show tonight.

So let’s get started.

the around the clock specials


M.A.G (Host if your raven Elsa PSN: Elsa if your not raven we don’t care about you) ALL NIGHT
Wanna feel like a team of unstoppable badasses? Wanna fight off a literal army of players, then M.A.G is for you, join us to see what it looks like when 256 people decide to hate each other with guns.


White Night Chronicles (Host Y0j1mb0 PSN:K0wb0y B33b0p) All night again
Come join us in the trouncing of monsters with our sharp beating sticks, show off your town and be ashamed of it once you see Moosehole land.



Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Host: Y0j1mb0 PSN: K0wb0y B33b0p) @ 7 P.M
Up first is MvsC2 for all you early birds out there, pick from the greatest heroes and villains in the marvel and capcom universes, and watch them lose to me, Ironman, Captain America, Wolverine, Spiderman, Juggernaut and whoever else I feel like messing you up with.

Resident Evil 5( Host: the old guy with the sword again PSN:K0wb0y B33b0p) @ 8 P.M
Jimbo and Mooshole have been going nuts over the DLC, So join them in their quest to make the undead ( or infected I don’t Know anymore) dead again.


Borederlands Mad Moxxie’s Underdome cheapfest( Host: Black Nexus PSN: Nexus14) @ 9 P.M
Nexuses random pick of the night, I tried to go through this myself but failed, So I’m looking for a team of lvl 50 players to come help me shut that she clown whore up for good, besides who doesn’t want more trophies.


MW2 (Host Me again PSN: Nexus14) @ 10 p.m
A game filled to the brim with glitches, but fun none the less , join me as I use my goku like teleportation skills to knife someone halfway across the battle field and get cussed out for it.


SOCOM( Host: the bearded one once more PSN:K0wb0y B33b0p) @11 P.M
Respawns are for little girlie men, join us in playing a MAN’s game where getting Tillyed in the skull results in a bit more cursing than usual, and watch as a give a few loser’s new holes to crap out of courtesy of my ALICE.

Well there you have it, the games are here, and the time's are set now let's get out the and do some REAL SOVIET DAMAGE.

Recently something good came to us, there are some games from the past generation that we would like to play, but we want the functionality of today’s games (online play, trophys, HD resolution and the like), however some of these games are a tad bit too big to be released in digital form. So apparently captain obvious made a call to Sony and reminded them they have blu ray disks and that stuffing said games on said disks with said functionality would probably be easy and convenient advertising if a sequel to said games was coming out soon.

Well a few months away from the god of war 3 release,kratos's first two adventures show up in HD for the low price of 40$. I always was intrigued by the idea of a collection like this , some last gen games really could use a revival or a second chance to win the gaming publics hearts over.

Well its review time, let's see how well the formula holds up.

I doubt anyone on this site doesn’t know about god of war but I’ll recap the first two games anyway( it is a review after all)


God of war 1 and 2 are (arguably) among the best games of last gen, the god of war puts you in the sandals of kratos (aka the angriest man ever) who is sent on a quest by the gods of Olympus to off the current god of war Aries, the gods want him dead because Aries has apparently had one to many and thinks a little favoritism shown toward his sister Athena is justification enough to wipe out all of Athens. However Zeus forbids the gods from going to war with each other, that's were you come in.


This is the guy who tells you the gods have terminated your employment, pray you never get fired should you be employed here.

However its evident early that you aren't doing this out of pure servitude to the gods, to keep spoilers to a minimum kratos wasn't born with white skin and blades seared into his flesh, and the tale behind how he got said skin and blades is what truly drives him, to kill the god of war. The story of god of war is one of the best ever told and unlike most other video game characters, actually justifies all the beheading you will be doing, as kratos has a good reason for being that damn angry.

Speaking of anger let's talk combat, the area where god of war truly shines, to put it frankly no one can kill like kratos, think mortal combat except almost every move is a fatality, from ripping them in half with brute strength to lopping heads off with your blades no enemy dies the same way and even the basic cannon fodder has variety among their demises, the attention to detail of each enemy and their deaths truly make god of war stand out above as maybe the best hack and slash to ever exist, however what makes it the best (for me anyway) is the way it deals with the age old action game problem, the dreaded CAMERA.

Having just come off of ninja gaiden sigma 2, I can safely remember why I loved games like devil may cry and ninja gaiden, but have to work up some tolerance before I play them. No one enjoys getting caught in the ass with a blade just because the camera got stuck on the wall. In action games bad cameras can make even the best games frustrating. God of war fixes this by taking control of the camera and always keeping it on the optimal view; they simply play test the hell out of each level to make sure the best view for kicking ass is used. Not to mention this frees up the joystick to be used for evading, a quick flick of the right stick rolls kratos in that direction, this is easily one of the best control scheme and camera ever in an action game (and I'll stand by that).

God of war 2 continues the story of kratos after he (spoilers ahead) kills Aries and becomes the god of war, Kratos not to pleased he still tormented by the nightmares of his past commands his Spartan army to go on an ass kicking spree, eventually he goes down to Rhodes to finish the job himself he finds that’s he been backstabbed by Zeus (who doesn’t want to share the same fate as Aries) And has his godly powers stolen and gets sent to Hades. By channeling the sheer might of his anger Kratos kicks his way out of hell and sets course to the sisters of fate so he can jump back in time to the moment of betrayal and teach Zeus that there is a price for pissing off Kratos.


Pictured: Someone about to get unemployed

Game play wise nothings really changed between god of war 1 and 2 and that’s a good thing considering they got it pretty much perfected in the first game, Another awesome story , more polish and bloody deaths were all that were needed, and that’s exactly what the sequel got.

So yeah improved functionality and slightly more responsive controls with HD resolution kind of make this a steal, However this being the holiday shopping season must point out that That this game isn’t for the kids. In case you’re a lost parent who’s just looking for a game for their kids and by some freak accident wound up on this blog (man your lost) know that big M (that stands for mature) is there for a reason, Nobody around here believes in shirts, women included, and did I mention that this game was about a Spartan who rips people in half. If you are a parent wondering if you should get this for you kid DON’T, go get him something with an E rating so I don’t have to read another “games are pure evil and corrupting our innocent children blah blah blah article” I’ve had enough of those for one year.

And Finally I would like to talk about the concept, while it kind of irked me a bit about re-buying PS2 games with added functionality at first but when I got my hand on the finished product I can say it was worth it. Now I eagerly await the day that the Xenosaga series, shadow off the colossus and Ico, all the ps2 ratchet and clanks games, Jak and Daxter games, and Final Fantasy 10 and 12 make it on a blu-ray disk. However Sega if for some weird reason your reading this and just got the idea of putting sonic adventure 1 and 2 , sonic heroes and shadow the hedgehog on 1 disk was a good idea understand I WILL BREAK DOWN THE DOOR TO YOUR OFFICE AND CRACK EVERYONE IN THE SKULL WITH A TIRE IRON UNTIL YOU REALIZE YOU SHOULD BE MAKING ANOTHER JET GRIND RADIO, AND ANOTHER CONSOLE VERSION OF VALKYRIA CHONICLES ALL WHILE PORTING YAKUZA 3 HERE TO THE STATES, glad we got that cleared up.