BoandKaze's Gaming Blog

Devil May Cry – First Impression

2012-04-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

So today I played the Devil May Cry HD collection, and it’s not like I thought.

The Game select menu is well designed, and the cut scenes are assumed by the PS2. The games themselves are newly rendered and look great. The only thing that really bothers me is that they simply taken the pause menu from the PS2 and have not made the effort to beautify it. Well I'll write no rewiev because there are hundreds of reviews form PS2 times and the gameplay has not changed. Nevertheless, I believe I can only recommend the purchase.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend - Review

2012-04-11T15:23:00.001-07:00

"This is a total rip-off - but it's still damn well worth it!"

BlazBlue first appeared as an arcade title in japan in July 2005, with unexpectedly high success, so a home port soon followed. This marked the return of 2D fighters on home consoles - although not without some fierce competition from Capcom.

But this happened quite a while ago, so let's just time jump to the present.

In February 2012, Arc System Works released the fourth entry of the BlazBlue series - but technically speaking, it was only the third update of the second game, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. Why they did that? Shits 'n giggles might not be too far away, but it was mainly due to the constant work they continued to put into Continuum Shift. But where most dev teams simply drown you in

updates and DLC, ASW decides to "disc" you to death AFTER some expensive DLC. In short: after Continuum Shift was released, three additional characters were thrown out as 8$ DLC, then they released Continuum Shift 2 for portable consoles (with all DLC included),

and THEN they decided to release Continuum Shift "Extend" for PS3, XBox360 and PSVita - all DLC included, of course. But there's more to it than it seems at first. And this is where this wall of text might start to become actually informative.

So, enough useless stuff, let me introduce you to BlazBlue: Continuum Shift EXTEND!

-GAMEPLAY-

The control basics are easy enough to understand: move forward/backward and jump with the Analog Stick, attack with the four buttons on the left of your controller (just in case you didn't know). So far, so useless - this won't help as much as you might hope, so let's go into more detail:

Each character has Weak(A), Normal(B) and a Heavy(C) attacks, but there's also a Drive(D) move whose effects are different for each character: some have more attacks, others have special skills for several strategies, and so on... the differences between

the characters are so high that none of them play equally, but require different approaches towards victory. Mastering these ways is only one of many means to win a fight, but the special mechanics complicate this task even further by allowing you to

cancel your attacks, smash the opponent away via Burst, or breakhis defense and leave him helpless for some seconds.All of this comes packed in a high-speed fighting system with near endless possibilities and 19 playable characters. Add 10 different

modes to it and you might get an idea of just how BIG this game is.

Gameplay-wise, BlazBlue takes the cake in the fighter department. Perfect balancing, various action possibilities and a fleshed-out combo-driven fighting system give this game enough depth to keep (especially competitive) gamers busy for hundreds of hours. But the

controls are considerably difficult compared to many other fighters. The inputs for special moves are sometimes very complex which can be rather intimidating against beginners. The high learning curve and difficulty spikes easily frustrate button-smashers and

first-timers alike, but once the basics are mastered, it becomes much easier to learn new stuff. It's the players patience for the most part that decides wether to keep the game or to toss it in the corner.

Rating: 87/100%

-STORY-

The story of Continuum Shift Extend slightly "extends" (hahaha...) the one of Continuum Shift, but is still the same around. For those who missed Calamity Trigger (shame on you!), there's a quick reprise of the plot leading into Continuum Shift. It's still not the same

as playing through the long version yourself, but it'll have to do. Basically, you play every characters story separately, so it's really hard to say where to start... I'll just have you experience it yourselves, period.

The plot of Continuum Shift itself is still full of mind-cracking twists, weird open endings and even more unanswered questions. Every characters' story has a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a Gag Ending. None of them are either the "right" or the "wrong" ending - instead,

the story modes are like a collection of two possible outcomes and one hilariously off end in which the game itself becomes a joke. This makes it hard to keep track of what is important and what isn't, but eventually you MIGHT get it sorted out.

A complex plot isn't automatically a good one, of course... but in this case, it is. In fact, the sotry is very good - if you're into animé or japanese stories in general. The plot mostly plays off like an interactive animé with battles, including all the goods, but also

quite some bads. Though it's very fleshed-out, parts of the plot are just plain bad cliché of the animé world - especially on the personality plane, where from the dumb hero over the dead-serious rival and the naive (dumb) blonde with key importance to sadistic kids,

everything is in here, making the characters' personalities seem very unoriginal, yet it isn't annoying sice it still fits them well and is also explained by their backstories.

To cut it, the story is awesome, but requires a lot of time from you to get a grasp of it. It's animé-styled plot devices make it a little

hard for some to get interested in the story, but once you're into it, you're receiving one of the best stories in fighter history.

Rating: 89/100%

-GRAPHICS-

Arc System Works has been famous for it's awesome hand-drawn 2D sprite animations as well as unique character designs (Guilty Gear fans

know what I'm talking about). And BlazBlue doesn't slack of at all, it takes it even further with HD sprites! During the story mode, you also have various character portraits accompanying their text boxes which have only eye blinking and mouth movement, but lively facial expressions. But the battles are a different book... Every character has more than 2000 (read: two freaking thousand!) frames completely hand-drawn, giving them all a load of different animations for just about everything. The backgrounds are a beautiful mix of 3D animations and even more animated 2D sprites (some stages even have weather effects or similar stuff). When actively fighting, every attack is joined by flashing effects and the especially cool Distortion Drives and Astral Heats launch a firework off effects all over the screen, but without overlaying the fight itself. All of this adds up to a party for the eyes.

Rating: 91/100%

-SOUND-

When it comes to sound, everything Arc System Works does is simply EPIC! Even in their early years, their games stood out for their great voice actings and spectacular music. And again, BlazBlue doesn't disappoint you even in the slightest. The voice actors of the BlazBlue characters are outstanding. They manage to express the characters emotion in a way that makes you feel

with the character, whether it's anger, joy or sadness, as if they were real. The variety of comments during fights between certain characters also deliver a lot of emotion between them, making the experience even more intense. But fans of the BlazBlue games were more

than just disappointed for a valid reason: unlike before, Arc System Works didn't leave the english voice acting to the US publisher AKSYS Games, but decided to do it themselves - with only few of the original voice actors. This results in different voices for the same characters

in one game (the existing dialogues weren't rerecorded). Those who never played BlazBlue before won't be bothered much by that. But the fanbase had to endure the alternate voices during every new story chapter, which can be really annoying. But voices ain't it all... the best about the BlazBlue series (audio-wise) is the music.

The soundtrack is full of energetic heavy rock tracks (some even with vocals) with each character having at least one own track. The composer of the soundtrack, Daisuke Ishiwatari, blends modern electronic sounds and heavy guitar riffs with different music styles like jazz, classic

or pop by adding a wide range of different instruments. This results in a collection of awesomeness with something fitting everyones tastes. Additionally, there are a lot of orchestral tracks for the story mode building up the tension of the situation.

Rating: 94/100%

-SUMMARY-

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend is a great follow-up for the franchise. The new stories solve a lot of questions while adding even more new to it, the voice cast, though inconsistent, is great, and the soundtrack is just as epic as ever. The fighting system itself retained its depth

and high difficulty, and the new modes add even more challenge to the already challenging game in general. Beginners might have a hard time, but patience and hard work will pay off with one of the greatest 2D fighters to have ever been created.

Total Rating: 90/100%

by Kaze

Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2

2012-04-05T17:03:00.001-07:00

Got Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 from a friend Yesterday :D

Review will follow soon.

by Bo

Review - Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)

2012-04-05T16:36:00.002-07:00

"There's always room for one more!"

Kid Icarus is one of the older series from Nintendo, yet it remained relatively unknown to

the majority of gamers. Well, the first game was released on good old NES/Famicom in 1987,

which IS quite long ago, and only received one sequel in 1991 for the GameBoy.

But now the young angel Pit makes his glorious return . . . IN 3D!

-GAMEPLAY-

The game consists of fast-paced 3rd-person action in both the single player campaign and

online-supporting multiplayer. But let's just kick in on single player for now.

The "Solo Mode" is a mission-based story of the light goddess Palutena who sends Pit out to

fight the underworld army. Sounds simple, right? Well, never judge a book by its cover.

Before even starting a mission, you can adjust the difficulty level to your needs. But this

feature goes deeper than it seems. The difficulty levels range between 0.0 and 9.0, which

effectively gives you 90 difficulty levels to choose between. Except for 2.0, every

difficulty will cost you hearts - the valid currency of the game (without any healing effects).

By playing on higher levels, you will earn more hearts from defeated enemies to buy new weapons

or play on even higher difficulties. Lowering the difficulty makes most levels a walk in the

park, but you'll have a hard time collecting enough hearts to balance out the costs.

After picking the difficulty level, the mission starts off as a rail-shooter. Enemies come

at you from all directions and attack. You use the Touch Screen to aim, the Analog Pad for

moving and the L Button for shooting to survive the level. Those rail-shooter parts normally

last for about five minutes. And following it comes a ground battle part.

Upon landing, you'll find yourself in a third-person brawler where you can still shoot, but

also take down enemies in close combat. Now you have to make your way to the boss of the mission,

and take it down.The boss battle is the last part of each mission, where you simply have to use anything at yourdisposal to defeat it.

At the end of a mission, you'll get the hearts and items you collected. But if you lose all your

health, some of your loot gets dumped as well as some of the hearts paid for the difficulty. In

exchange you can restart the mission from the last (invisible) checkpoint at a lower difficulty.

So far, that's only about the missions. There's tons of other stuff to get your hands on. Nine

different types of weapons with individual stats, a wide range of abilities to equip, challenges

from Palutena to finish a mission under certain conditions (and more), figures of all characters,

enemies, weapons and items, and so on . . . it takes a lot of time to get everything.

The multiplayer modes are either a 3-on-3 team battle or Everyone Vs. Everyone with different

rules, but the same setting as land battles in Solo Mode. You can win weapons, abilities and

hearts online to use in Solo Mode or in other matches.

In short: the gameplay is really good. The wide range of difficulty levels challenges both newbies

and pro gamers while giving both enough space to improve. The levels are simple, but not easy. But

there's a problem some people keep complaining about: the controls lack in terms of precision.

While most players can handle Touch Screen aiming, it's still not too easy to coordinate the camera

in battles. And even though the game even provides Dual Control (Analog stick to run, ABXY to aim),

it doesn't make anything better, but rather worse. Half of the time you're getting hit on ground

battles, you could barely see the attack coming at first. Like it or not, but that sure leaves room

for improvements.

Rating: 76/100%

-STORY-

The story of Kid Icarus: Uprising takes place about 25 years after the first game. Medusa is back -

and she's pissed. So Palutena sends out Pit to stop Medusa and her subordinates. But soon Pit and

Palutena will realize that there's more to it than only Medusa's war against Skyworld and the humans.

The plot is told by conversations between the characters during the missions, making it a little hard

to follow at times.

I know, I know . . . that part is short. But mentioning anything else qualifies as a spoiler, so I

have to leave it at that - it should be enough to get an idea of the story.

But don't jump to conclusions. The plot has quite some twists scattered here and there, and although

most of it still isn't very original, it serves its purpose very well. It also introduces a whole

load of characters you didn't even hear about in the previous games, expanding the full cast of the

game significantly.

While the story is by far not the best, some twists will surpirse you anyway. The conversations between the cast ranges from delightful small-talk over fourth wall jokes to serious topics. Many times, everyone is simply arguing over nonsense, but those talks are among the most entertaining ones. It really stands out with mockery, trolling and questioning weird stuff, but never overdoes it.

Rating: 84/100%

-GRAPHICS-

Despite the hardware limitations of the 3DS, the game looks really great.

The character animations look smooth and dynamic, the facial expressions are very detailed,

and the effects are a great sight. The only downside are the maps for ground battles: they look considerably bland. Though the settings have high variety, the textures are disappointingly

simple and lack some depth. Still, it looks great overall, and even better in 3D.

Rating: 86/100%

-SOUND-

There's not too much to say about sounds: the quality is good, the sound effects are fitting and add

to the atmosphere when it's neccessary. The music is a tad bit unimpressive with it's arrangements of

original parts from the first Kid Icarus game and is also not loud enough to really stand out.

But there's one point where Nintendo outdid themselves: the voice cast. The VA's are far above the

usual voicing from Nintendo games. Though especially Pit lacks a bit of emotion, most of the other

characters sound great and come with a lot of personality in their voices.

Rating: 81/100%

-CONCLUSION-

Kid Icarus: Uprising really is a good reason to get a 3DS. The game is fun, addictive and challenging.

It's well designed gameplay really adds up as you delve deeper into the ins and outs of everything.

And even though the controls are wacky, it doesn't frustrate - not even in online matches. With the

community growing continously, you can also look forward to some awesome action against the rest of the world. With this game, Pit established himself a place high up in the coolness ranking.

OVERALL RATING: 88/100%

by Kaze