So that the world might be mended

I started out my new-game gaming this month with Demon's Souls. If you want an old school, hardcore gaming experience, Demon's Souls is where you'll get it. You will die on the first level. You will give up and try a different class. You will be forced to learn what you're doing without a comprehensive, hand-holding tutorial designed to cater to illiterate frat boys. Every fight with an enemy is a fight. It is tense, you will square off and trade blows and hope to survive to get to the actually-threatening boss.

Games like this are the kind of thing lots of us grew up playing, and there's a part of me that's glad they still exist. The rest of me is punching a DS3 through my face because I fucking died again.

"In like Flynn." "...I don't get it."

I had no doubts about enjoying Uncharted 2; its predecessor was not a perfect game, but I honestly can't say anything bad about it. Wishy-washy descriptions aside, I loved it. Uncharted 2 surpasses it in every way. With better combat, a more intense story, more fluid animations, fancier graphics and even better dialog than before, I could not have asked for anything else. Of course, I don't need to tell you about it. If you like good things and don't murder puppies to eat their hearts, you already own Uncharted 2.

You can decry cinematic gaming experiences all you like, but it's games like Uncharted that are going to truly legitimize gaming. Great characters, production quality and presentation will bridge the gap and really impress anyone that likes solid entertainment.

Start a revolution, Lars.

Like most, I was expecting more action and less RTS when I fired up Brutal Legend, but hot damn if I didn't love the game. There's an older PC game called Sacrifice that most people have never heard of, but I think at least a few of my fellow Dtoiders will have played. That's what stage battles are, but with the ability to fly and chop the limbs off enemies. And guitar solos. And hotrods. And Manowar. I thought Sacrifice was awesome, so I had no problem with more. I have so much good to say about Brutal Legend, but my goal is not to ramble about any of these games.

Until we close our eyes for good.

I haven't finished Borderlands yet, but after rocking the co-op with wtfistheinternet and ponyboykami, I can't recommend it enough. FPS, RPG, humor, art—the game has a lot going for it. Right now I've got a bird called Bloodwing that's trained to kill, starts on fire when it flies, and rams its face through enemies. I've got a sniper rifle that makes people explode with fire and a revolver with a fucking sword on the front of it. Maybe when Patmann stops sucking he'll join in and we can have a proper tank too.

I can't wait to get more sweet loot.

...

Next up is Ratchet & Clank. I played the demo at Gamestop and it felt good, looked better and had a slightly cell-shaded style that really suited what the game had been doing since its inception. Even after burning through three new games (ok, I haven't finished Demon's Souls yet), I can still be excited for another when it's R&C. It will be planetary obliteraters at dawn, good sir.

I like a good dungeon crawl.



MUA2 has been streamlined substantially from the first Ultimate Alliance and while some might not approve, I feel it makes the game a better experience. Characters no longer have three or four different costumes with different powers and stats and, honestly, I think this helps the game. While it was nice that I could switch out Ghost Rider for Vengeance or the ghostly cowboy classic Ghost Rider in MUA1, it always felt like I was deciding between which couple of good powers I wanted to dig out of the slurry of stuff I didn't care about and if it was worth giving up the stuff I already knew how to use. Now they can just make all the powers useful since they stay the same, and I can play as Deadpool or plastic skull face Ultimate!Deadpool at my leisure. I'm fine with this. The buffs that went with costumes before have been replaced and similarly streamlined by passives. Choosing pro-reg or anti-reg in the story unlocks one or two either way. It might be a little weak making us replay the game to completely unlock all the character stats, but not any more so than jumping through hoops to unlock costumes.



There is much less of an emphasis on character builds as well. In MUA1, you were either using normal Ghost Rider with as much as you could put into hellfire and penance stare, or you were denying yourself an infinite firebombing machine. Now that the power lists have been trimmed and the costumes are only cosmetic, I was able to edit the characters more around how I wanted to use them instead of how the devs thought I should. As an added bonus, no one will spend time carefully statting and equipping their team just to have the AI not know what the hell it's doing.



The special “fusion” attacks can be repetitive, but if Juggernaut is included, the developers would have been required to create 276 unique and useful fusion moves. For example, lets say your team is Deadpool, Luke Cage, Juggernaut and Green Goblin. The Pool & Cage fusion is basically identical to the Goblin & Juggs fusion, but they both involve one super strong character and one character with grenades. I would have liked more variety, but will take “this is always effective” over 250 completely useless, “why do you even have him on your team?” fusions.

The graphics are... acceptable? They won't be wowing anyone all the time, but there were a few times that the camera was in the right place and the environment looked right and I talked to an NPC and got a pretty well animated, decently textured dialog sequence. Most of the time, the camera is much further back anyway. I was never blown away, but I never wondered if it was Bring Your Child To Work And Let Them Ruin Your Game Day at the studio; a resounding “eh, fine, I guess.” I'm not losing sleep over a dungeon crawler lacking individually rendered buttons on clothing.



It's hard for me to judge the quality of the story, as I thought the actual Civil War event was handled poorly. If what I heard is correct, it was supposed to lead readers to initially side with the anti-registration group and then bring things around and see how having a bunch of weirdos with superpowers running around with masks and without any accountability was bad, then side with the pro-registration. The wrench thrown into the works there was that the generally liberal writers were living in a country with a conservative president that was doing a shit job. The idea of a government doing something reasonable was abhorrent to them so they shoehorned in Iron Man doing a bunch of horrible, unreasonable things while the people fighting against the SHRA were valiant paragons of freedom that absolutely weren't led by a hypocrite. I suppose it's a good excuse for a bunch of characters to be slapped into a team and beat the insides out of a bunch of mooks, but whether you enjoy the narrative is going to be up in the air. It's very video-gamey.



Coming in near the bottom of the quality scale are the sound and character interactions. The sound effects are very “effecty”; explosions aren't explosions,they're explosion sound effects. The same goes for swords, guns, fists and generally everything else. It doesn't hurt the experience like it would have in other games or other genres, but Killzone 2 this is not. The dialog is weirdly forced, casual and impersonal. There's a little personality presented in the different options you're given, but you'll still get murderous supervillains chatting it up with heroes in a surreal, chummy way.

I only hit one bug while playing through.and I simply restarted from my last (very recent) checkpoint and all was good from there on.

**If any of my fellow PS3-owning dtoiders want to give Legendary difficulty a shot, search for hidden items or just punch dudes, my ID is in the sidebar and my goblin glider is warming up. I'm interested in trying the online play. Download the Juggernaut compatability pack from the PS Store and we're in business.**

It's been a while since I had such mixed feelings about a video game. That's not to say the game is bad, but it it seems rife with things that I would have done differently (or demanded someone else do differently while sipping a fine brandy and lounging in a big leather chair).

The best thing about the game is the graphics. Not only does it properly support 480p so it doesn't look like vertically-letterboxed ass on my HDTV, but it legitimately looks good doing it. I'm sure it would look better in HD (everything looks better in native HD), but I won't penalize the game for what might have been. The getting into the game is easy and there's the linger “just one more boss” feeling even when you're an hour past when you'd like to get to bed.

On the other hand, I found the interface to be awkwardly tuned. The slightest touch of the control stick up or down will cause you to jump or duck and the stick must be returned to a vertically neutral position before the action registers again. More than once I died because I had the stick a fraction of a degree up and my character refused to jump or roll. Similar issues can be found with the sequence of button and direction holds required for some of the different moves; in short, I approve of the arsenal but not the triggers to fire it. Block and attack are mapped to the same button, attacking can reflect projectiles and blocking them reduces your sword's soul meter (basically HP for the sword). Several times, I had swords eaten away because the game couldn't tell that I meant A: Attack and not A: Block and once blocking, the recovery time stuck me there blocking a torrent of projectiles until the sword broke.



Some tasks seem to be intentionally annoying. Cooking takes no less than half a dozen button presses just to use a healing item (one to select, one to take the lid off the pot, several to eat, one to replace the lid, one to reflect on your fucking meal, and one last press to get out of that tedious bullshit), and using anything from your inventory automatically kicks you back to the game. Since you can just pause the game again immediately, it serves no purpose other than making you run through menus again.

The combat is pretty weak, and I had quite the chuckle when I skimmed GameFAQ's message board and saw users talking about BnB combos. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's short for “bread 'n' butter”; they are standby combos for reliable execution and damage. Comedy gold, as well, seeing as this involves mashing A and holding forward. There really doesn't seem to be any other combo. There are 108 swords but they come in two types, so you have two shallow sets of moves with no variation other than “blade” or “long blade”. You also gain new swords with increasing attack power fast enough that it's difficult to really gain any affinity for the secret arts that differentiate one sword from another. I read in another review (Joystiq's, I think) that it was like a 2D Devil May Cry. This is true, if you consider a Devil May Cry made so lacking in depth that it appears to be two dimensional.

After finishing the game with both characters and going back for several of the post-game white barrier caves and paths, I can't imagine how this was supposed to be fun or interesting. For starters, there's no indicator to tell the player which caves have been cleared and which haven't, and no label until you go in. Only one of them has held a unique boss instead of fight X number of Y enemy, and ultimately, the best I'm going to get out of it is the option to replay the final boss fight with the best sword and see a third ending for a game with a terrible story. It sure does run up the gameplay timer, but that's about it.



Finally, the bosses. Oh bosses, you're so retro in a completely annoying way. Start, find out every attack starts you on fire, die because you can't change equipment during a fight; equip anti-burning item, restart, try to learn bosses attack pattern but you can't because the boss likes to fly off the side of the screen and shoot stuff at you, die; restart and die a few times until you learn the sound effect that comes before the boss stops uninterruptedly attacking for a couple seconds, maybe finally win if you don't get juggled for all your life by a chance hit. I've come to terms with video games being “unfair”. It's one guy against an army, led by a quirky boss squad, where they feast on the pain of damned souls and poop atomic, soul-damning explosions in some freakish circle of life. This is fine. Losing because I don't psychically know the status effects and attack patterns of bosses in a game I've never played before isn't fun. No, don't champion how “old skool” the game is. People stopped making games like this for a reason.

TLDRz! Here's my honest opinion of Muramasa
Very pretty and kinda fun. It's an alright 2D action game with a ton of stuff that pisses me off, just not quite enough to trade the damn thing in...yet. I played it because it was new and then stopped playing it because I have lots of other games that I could replay instead of slaving away for the chance to do the last boss battle four more times.



Who does a man have to screw to get Viewtiful Joe 3? And lets make sure it's on PS3/360 so we have plenty of buttons at our disposal.

I mentioned this in the forums, but I'll risk a failblog to give my fellow cbloggers a heads up in case they miss it.


Not even vaguely metal colored like this.

I was in the local Gamestop on Friday and the guys there were unpacking the collectors editions of Batman: Arkham Asylum. You know that sweet batarang? It's not at all sweet. They cracked one open (one reserved for one of their fellow employees) to check it out and we were all treated to a scratched up chunk of black plastic that's permanently affixed to, and perhaps even molded out of the same piece as, the stand. The book was slightly cooler, but still a lot thinner than the CE picture would lead you to believe.

If you still want to go for the CE, we can hope that specific one was just poorly made. It's a $40 risk though, enough for a slightly older new game. You could get MGS4 or Uncharted and stop for some fast food tacos for that $40.

Rather than screw around introducing the game to you, I'll just jump straight into the review. It's hard to introduce downloadable, retro titles because they're generally so uncomplicated. Instead, I'll say I hate the term "metroidvania" with a passion and would love for it to be made into some manner of arcane homunculus that it might actually die in a fire.



The Good
There isn't much to SC in terms of story or thought; aside from an environment-based kill or secret passage it's pretty much just run and jump, so the mechanics that are there have to be tight. They are. In about 1.9 trips (I've stopped just before the end to go collect everything) through the game, I never felt hampered by the movement controls. They are responsive and, most importantly, consistent. Things always work, and always work the same way.

The bosses look cool and are well animated. They're totally video game bosses and I never believe they would be applicable for anything else, but when they show up, you know shit is going to go down.

Maybe my favorite thing about it is the frequency at which upgrades are acquired. In some other games, there's this mid-game drag where you have all the basic stuff and what's left is the game-progression keys that are handed out really sparingly to make a player run around and pad for length. When you need something in Shadow Complex, it's there instead of the other end of the map. You will find “locked” doors for lots of optional stuff, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of (unnecessary) padding.

The game isn't graphically impressive, in fact, some textures are downright bad, but the distant camera hides it and the game is “shot” well. The camera pulls back at the right times to show off spaces and the environmental effects have enough variety that areas feel distinct.



The Bad
The method Shadow Complex uses to fire into the back- and foreground is unreliable. I feel the Destructoid review glossed over it a bit. There were a couple points in the game where I actually couldn't aim at enemies that could fire at me with expert accuracy. I angled the stick back and the auto aim locked onto a barrel instead of one of the three machine-gun wielding baddies. The barrel itself was actually obstructed by a computer or something so I was unable to do anything but pump bullets into a wall or charge through a hail of bullets hoping there was some cover off the left side of the screen. It happened on both playthroughs in exactly the same way, so it wasn't chance. It's one thing to wiggle the stick around to get the auto-aim to pick someone running around in the background and another entirely to be completely unable to shoot enemies.

There's no way I can talk about this one without giving something away, but that won't stop me because it's so unforgivably bad. Skip the rest of the paragraph if you don't want to trade spoilers for avoiding terrible frustration. The penultimate three objectives are acquiring the final parts to the armor. Waypoints lead you to the first and second pieces, sometimes by way of a nearby switch or whatever that unlocks the room. The point isn't always right on the item. The third objective, however, makes it impossible to get the final armor upgrade. It isn't required to finish the game, but what the fuck?! After providing reliable objectives for the entire game, you will be given one that will permanently bar you from 100% of the items. The game lies to you! This is, of course, just before the final boss, so I hope you're ready to play the entire game over again because you dared to believe the map. Spoilers over.

Speaking, now spoiler-free, of the end of the game: it is one of the most abrupt ends I've ever experienced. It didn't seem to build to it, nor was it especially satisfying for story reasons I won't spoil. It's like they all got bored and decided to slap the ending on and call it a day.



In Closing
Yeah yeah, I went on at greater length about the bad points; I always do. All that explanation fills up a post. If I had to give it a score, it would be pretty low considering the pure hate its flaws inspire. I won't give it one because the game is actually fun in spite of said flaws. If you have the points, pick it up.

We are on the cusp of the end-of-the-year game deluge, so I went over some release lists earlier today to see just when some games I want were slated to hit shelves and, to my dismay, I found a ton of goddamn games. I copied them down anyway and decided to go through and give them some kind of priority. Which games do I really want? Need? Will die without? Once I started I decided just to make a blog out of it and share it with Destructoid.

Shadow Complex -- August 19, 2009
Purchase likelihood: High



Shadow Complex being a download game, lower price and all, really bumps it up. I was initially pensive about a purchase and I still plan to try a demo before spending my Silly Bill Fun Bux, but every trailer has made it seem like a great combination of retro style and modern development.

Batman: Arkham Asylum -- August 25, 2009
Purchase likelihood: Already Paid Off

I was almost sold when I heard Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill voicing their respective characters; I was even closer when I saw gameplay videos of combat and stealth; I made a run to Gamestop the day I heard about the demos on PS3 kiosks and I wasn't disappointed. I'll admit a bit of enjoying this title was due to the license, but I genuinely had fun cracking Arkham inmates in half.

I just can't bring myself to get the batarang edition though.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade -- September 8, 2009
Purchase likelihood: Pretty High

Much like Shadow Complex, Muramasa looks like it combines oldschool style with modern design ideas. It has pretty graphics and everything I've seen makes it look like a ton of fun. I don't know what else to say about it, but I'll probably be suckered into one of those Classic Controller Pros. Maybe I'll wait until I can get my mitts on the controller first, since I have no idea when they'll be letting us roundeyes buy them.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 -- September 15, 2009
Purchase likelihood: Mediumish

I am a sucker for comic books, Marvel, goofy match-ups and anything that includes more obscure characters. This seems to do all of that, present a hopefully less Liberal-bullshit laden (DA GUBBERMINTS IS BAD!!!) version of the Civil War plot and, with any luck, will have a more cohesive end quarter than the last game. They've got my attention at least, but this might be one where I wait for a review just to be safe.

WET -- September 15, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium High

I may have mentioned it at several points in the past, but here it is again: I love third person action games. They are exactly what I look for. I can see the character and form a connection, they can have lots of variety while maintaining the basic framework I like (Uncharted vs Devil May Cry vs Armored Core) and they're just plain fun to play. Wet does that, and has the very “unserious” grindhouse over-the-topness that made any plot issue irrelevant in HotD:Overkill. If only more developers would learn that a game that rocks easily replaces a game with some extra-grim story they demand be taken seriously.

Unless it gets really atrocious reviews, it will end up on my shelf.

Katamari Forever -- September 22, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium High

I likes me some Katamari rolling and I would love to have a new one in HD, but this really isn't “new”, per se; it's revamped old levels It's in HD, but it doesn't look like the current-gen power has done anything but pumped up the resolution. A bit of a tangent, but what I always want from new generations is not fancier graphics—those are easy—it's better physics and environmental interaction. This doesn't really have that, but I have no idea if a Katamari game could even exist with fancy physics anyway.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 -- September 29, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium

Once again, third person action. Unfortunately NG2 took itself far too seriously for my taste and was a technical abomination. Some of it seemed like it was easy to fix; make it not freeze, make the framerate not blow ass and for god's sake, fix the camera. If they can fix the horrible technical problems, I can get past the completely stupid story and writing easily enough to enjoy the combat.

Alpha Protocol -- October 6, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium with a dash of Low

There's a lot about Alpha Protocol that has me interested, and nothing that has me sold. For all the variety and dialog options and customization, it just hasn't hit me as particularly smooth in operation. Trailers seem stiff, but there's time to fix that, and who's to say the age of the build used for trailers in the first place? It looks like Mass Effect with spies, and like a game I can play through a few times without sinking back into the same methods I did as with Fallout 3.

Demon's Souls (Deluxe Edition) -- October 6, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium

Demon's Souls looks pretty awesome, but a big draw for me is the multiplayer. This is something I'm going to echo with Borderlands when we get to that, but I like teamwork, I like classes and I like customizing to work with your team. Demon's Souls would be all about that if it had a straight up multiplayer component. It doesn't, but it still has a dark, foreboding atmosphere and tons of character customization. Want it, but I'm skeptical of my own ability to stick with it when I really want to play with someone and have to some crazy phantom stuff.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising -- October 6, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium Low

Really, what does this one in is my own lack of necessity for another shooter. I do think the concept of the game is awesome though. A big, open area that's almost impossible to navigate on foot, teamwork, lots of ways to approach objectives. It all looks good, but I'm just not as excited for this one as I am for others.

Brütal Legend -- October 13, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Very High

Over at Gamersyde, and on several other sites to boot, you can watch about 35 minutes of gameplay from Brutal Legend that covers everything from combat tutorials to the headbanger minions to the upgrades. If you don't see why I, or anyone else, would drop $60+ on this game as soon as they get the chance, go watch. You will know. And if you still don't know, then you need to go listen to Motorhead until you figure it out.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves -- October 13, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Just waiting to see if there's a special edition beyond the preorder bonuses



No, it's not a typo, I actually just made this one bigger than the rest. Uncharted was, and still is, one of the best games released this generation. It is an interactive summer action blockbuster that I enjoyed all the way through. It never got old, it didn't drag in the middle and having recently played it again, it is an example of such expert tuning I can't think of another game that truly accomplishes what Uncharted did. Revolutionary? No. Can I complain about anything? Also no. Now they're making another one and between the trailers and the beta, they seem to have made it more impressive in every way. If I had to pick only one game to buy for the rest of this year, this would be it.

No, really, I'm just waiting to see if there's an option that lets me pay Naughty Dog more.

A Boy and His Blob -- October 14, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium

I was in love as soon as I saw the hug button pressed, but my decades old attempt at playing the game on the NES has made me slightly hesitant to charge head first into this one. It looks amazing, but there is a platformer I want more.

Borderlands -- October 20, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium

I find this a bit more interesting than Operation Flashpoint just for the setting, but the ability to scrounge up a firearm fit for Super Jesus puts it over for me. Teamwork, support sniping, RPG elements but with the assurance that when I aim at someone I'm going to hit them and a sweet style make this a pretty attractive game. But, and a big one, it's still a shooter and good god do I have enough of those.

Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time -- October 27, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Sure Thing



This is the platformer I want more than ABahB. [Late night edit: Double negative that sounded more entertaining in my head hours ago feels like I'm saying I don't love R&C now. Fuck that! Ratchet & Clank rocks.] I don't know what to say about it. I think my only disappointment is that this new one isn't titled “Clock Blockers” in the goofy fashion of it's predecessors.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition -- November 3, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Sigh... pretty high

I am such a goddamn sucker, but I loved the first release of this game. I attempted to objectively review it, but I just love smashing enemies into walls that dent differently every time. I love super-scary sith armor. I love playing the bad guy. I don't know if I'll grab this one right away, but I'm probably just sucker enough to do it.

Modern Warfare 2 -- November 10, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Low

What? Yeah. I know a few things about Modern Warfare 2. 1. It's Modern Warfare. It will be fun, it will be familiar, and it will be some third f thing. 2. It will be around for a good, long time. Really, people are still playing COD4, so I don't expect MW2 to go away anytime soon. 3. I'm not going to be the first to the top rank with everything unlocked so why fucking rush it?

I'm sure, absolutely so, that I will buy Modern Warfare 2 someday. I'm just kind of set on shooters at the moment, and there's no shortage of new ones this fall. It's not necessarily a lack of interest in Modern Warfare 2, but a lack of urgency. I've got a burning need to get my hands on MAG (especially since someone on my friends list is in the beta, taunting me with NDA filtered informational goodies it would be rude to blog about) and because it's new. Modern Warfare is a sure thing, and will be a sure thing in six months too.

The Saboteur -- December 8, 2009
Purchase Likelihood: Medium Low

There's plenty about The Saboteur that I like and plenty that I am ambivalent to. It's a new take on a setting that I couldn't care less about, but it's got a cool style and I love stealthy gameplay. It's another third person action title and I've said before that those are my bread and butter. I'll need to see how this one pans out, especially after that metric assload of titles.

This isn't even every game. I didn't list anything with a TBA or a Q4 note, only games that had a day locked in. I even did my best to root out all the delays and I'm still left with a ton of games. I love being excited about games but... damn. That's a lot of them and I'm going to have to make some difficult cuts; "can afford" and "should buy" are not the same thing. Many of the games I really, really wanted, such as Bayonetta and Dark Void were pushed to next year where they can make friends with even more games I want like God of War 3.