Singularity provides a much needed break from the strains of tumultuous gaming to offer an experience that is just plain fun.

What I like,
Is how the story is developed throughout the game; In the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union discovers a rare and powerful new mineral known as E99 hidden on the small, remote island of Katorga-12 just off the eastern coast of Russia. Using this strange new element, the Soviet government begins harnessing the powers of E99 via strange and dangerous experiments and discover that E99 has the ability to alter time.

The results of these experiments lead to the creation of a mechanism known as the Time Manipulation Device (or TMD), and later, in light of Russia’s attempts to use E99 against the US, cause a catastrophic event known as the “singularity,” an disaster which the Soviet government sought desperately to cover up.

More than 50 years later, on a mission to investigate a bizarre radiation emission coming from the island, Air Force pilot Nate Renko and his crew crash land upon Katorga-12 following a strange blue flash. They soon discover the history of this place and find themselves at the mercy of the ongoing effects courtesy of the singularity.

You will assume the role of Renko, who quickly finds himself in possession of the TMD and in control of the time manipulation powers it contains. The game’s story is nothing new, nor is it anything original. It’s your fairly average Soviet-bad, United States-good cliché with time travel thrown in.

What makes it worth talking about, however, is the way the game deals with the shifts in time. Speaking strictly from a story perspective (we’ll get to the time travel’s gameplay use in a second), the story will frequently jump back and forth between 1955 (the date of the singularity) to 2010 (the date of Renko’s crash landing).

Seeing the world around you change right before your eyes on more than one occasion is an interesting approach to the time travel scenario, wherein usually the person is the one going back in time. Here, instead, the entire island itself is actually stuck in a time loop, struggling to maintain itself in each period. You’ll frequently come across Russian military troops in either time period, as well as the island’s various mutated inhabitants that still roam following their transformation from the singularity.

What I don’t Like,
The gameplay is your average First-Person Shooter with big influences from atmosphere, progression, propaganda – taken out of Bioshock, to the more mechanical things from games like Half-Life 2 and Dead Space. Don’t get me wrong, those are some awesome mixes for the game – but the mechanics for the game feels like it wasn’t finished.

There’s also the problem with little ammunition in the game with a couple of scenes I’ve bumped to with little to no ammo to defend myself against the enemies; forcing me to use my TMB, wasting all of the energy plus avoiding getting hit while it recharges in hope to use the TMB more.

The AI is pretty dumb even on the hardest difficulty; repeating the same cycle making it easy to predict for the mutant-species. Same goes for the soldiers running straight towards you making it so easy not-to-miss the shot.

If it wasn’t for the story, I wouldn’t be playing this game at all. There’s quite a few bugs you encounter in the game and a lot of moments where you really wish you could just skip through(some parts feel like repeats from a previous part of the game). Now time to finish the game and see what the three different ending show with USA blown to bits, Save USA from Russia, or Destroy Russia entirely(lol okay i made it up but it wouldn’t surprise me if it does).

I sure hope so.

IMPLICATIONS, IMPLICATIONS, IMPLICATIONS

One thing that stories of the 21st century have in abundance, are implications. Little things that are unconfirmable to the viewers/readers of the story, which all have to with the background.

When you go to wikipedia or book review site and look at the story summary, they are often shown like:

“Since the Italian government in Gunslinger Girl is implied to be corrupt, support for the PRF is considerable, ranging from civilians and businessmen to government officials and elite special forces units.” (PrintPage – older Gunslinger Girl wikipedia revision )

It is implied that genetic engineering has been used extensively to manipulate human beings so that they are all colorblind, and physically conform with Sameness.
(Gradesaver – The Giver wikipedia summary)

Even extra information for stories dates probably further than the Star Wars expanded universe books. The trope for that is All There in the Manual. For books and movies these implications are all apparent based on the amount of detail the story has. Videogames do this through exploration. We are just talking about implications, because videogames do implications the best. The reason I’m writing this, is because someone finally pointed out the fact that Valve (a game studio that you are likely all somewhat familiar with) uses this storytelling method quite often.

[The grafitti left behind in the safe rooms of Left 4 Dead] essentially tells the story of the game, without showing the player through things such as cinematics. A similar approach was used in one of their earlier game series. (Left 4 Dead wiki)

Whilst the Halo game series fall back on the novels for extra information. Valve games usually rely on fake-websites or very specific game details for such info.

In Half-Life 2, as you travel across the highway you see huge shoreline as well as grounded ships. I personally did not pay attention to this detail, but later a fan-made timeline surmised that this was the result of the Combine (the aliens of the series) draining the oceans.

In the finale of Portal, you see a red phone disconnected. You can imagine there nay have been lots of discussion about this phone. However, the Orange Box came equipped with developer commentary and it was explained that this phone was originally installed for the scientists to contact each other in the case that a certain AI got very upset and started killing people.

I actually don’t have very many examples of this sort of thing. But I’m hoping more games (whether or not they are by Valve) will continue to implement this. Games with large universes and lore are quite nice, and this is simply part of that.

That tagline is a bit misleading...

I have talked about my anger concerning 3D movies, and movies that gain popularity due to the “revolutionary” peripherals of 3D. Here we have a movie that would not benefit from 3D, and manages to be most entertaining.

But I’m not going to talk about that.

The Setting

The setting is never fully described, but can best be called “the near future.” We are simply made to accept the existence of dream-accessing technology. We are never told how it works, we are only told how the dreams behave.

Ultimately though, not even the physics of the dreams are fully described. This is both good and bad, some audiences will take this confusion, others of course will create their own ideas surrounding the technology and the physics.

The Production

The movie plays out like a heist film that involves elements of dystopia and existentialism.
The terminology is well incorporated, in that it is clearly set up and described to the viewer. But there are even some ideas that are never even used in the film (such as the practical uses for the dream technology and the reliability of the totems).

Plot vs Characters

What becomes striking once you finish this movie is the revelation that it does not rely on its characters too much. The acting is nothing to complain about, but far too many problems have arisen with movies focusing on relationship dynamics rather than awesome events that unfold.

This is perhaps signature part of what Nolan achieved with his last film (The Dark Knight). Aside from Inception I have only seen three of Nolan’s films.

The Prestige used romance as the driving force between two rivals and demonstrate the issue of trust in their profession.
Batman Begins utilized kindness in character in order to demonstrate that there was hope in Gotham City.
The Dark Knight only used character romance as a way of demonstrating how much attachment the heroes (Bruce and Harvey) had to Rachel. Other characters were only used to forward the story, explain the philosophy of the film, or scare the hell out of people.

But the characters of Inception are not badly used. They are just not relied on.

Acting

To follow up on the characters, I would just like to point out something. Leonardo Dicaprio (obviously playing our protagonist), I cannot get my head around him. I can’t tell if his acting is over dramatic or not, his acting is very distinctive. He is not a bad actor, he just confuses me.

Yet, that’s what made him perfect for this role. The movie is hard to grasp, so why shouldn’t he be?

SFX

I find that the best special effects are the ones that don’t create some fictional/fantastical creatures. Inception’s special effects play on weird physics and the craziness of dreams.

In the last half of the movie there is a fight scene that I’m sure everyone will simply refer to as “the corridor fight”, this sequence has some of the best fight choreography I’ve seen in a long time.

Calling it good, may be confusing. You know how in the Matrix some of the fights were legitimately good (you could feel the heat of the moment) while others had nice special effects but simply average in that the fighting proceeded almost too well for either side?

Well this corridor fight is legitimately good part, but manages to include the special effects with some nice camera angles.

Conclusion

As you can see. I love movies that make people think. Please comment if you want to argue against anything I’ve said.

So, the third version of the same game. But this time with even more features than ever before. And some drawbacks.

I think that all of you know how much I enjoyed Persona 3. Even if I haven´t written it out when you read about Persona 4 you see that I liked it.

So this time Atlus decided to release it for the PSP. And they made some changes.

Female main character? Lovely
One of the biggest reasons for me to get this title was that now I get the choice to be male or female. Having been male in the last two versions I gladely took it upon myself to be female this time around.

And she is lovely. I named her Minato Kuji. Yes I suck at names so what can I do?

With Minato I started the adventure. The very first thing I notice is that now the game is more like a visual novel/dungeon crawler than every before. Lines of text is displayed with a static background and the characters face and body talking.

Even most FMVs have been reduced to text only. I don´t mind.

She is also more full of emotion than the male lead. Giving her more personality.

The bonus for this is the ease of traveling. With all screens being a static image with the characters you can talk to and places to go within your reach it´s faster than the original when you want to go somewhere in school or town. I love it.

Dungeon & Battle A B C
Dungeon crawling is the same as it was in P3: Fes. I´m not 100% sure about this but I don´t think the various errors in Tartarus were available in P3: Fes with floors that are dark with no map available, you get the full map viewable from the start, you can more EXP, Items or the best/worst “bonus”. A floor with no enemies, lots of treasure chests and the Reper coming after you fast as hell.

For battles this feels more like Persona 4 than the earlier versions. You can make co-op attacks with your teammates when the Fool S Link is high enough. You have the option to controll them on manual, no AI is needed. Maybe the best upgrade to the battle system is that downed enemies stay down even if you hit them again with an attack.

So if you have 4 enemies, 2 of them are weak to fire and the others are weak to ice you can use maragi to hit them all with fire damage, then switch to a persona that is able to use Mabufula to hit them all with ice damage and voila, all enemies are down and you are able to make an all-out attack.

Also a cool thing is that you don´t get “tired” during your stay in Tartarus so that you status changes as it did in the previous versions. This allows you to grind your way around Tartarus as much as you want. Doing quests and what not in one swing and then ease trough the following battles.

When you leave Tartarus though on the following day you are tired or sick.

Social links
When you were a boy and joined a sports club in school you could pick from kendo or soemthing else. I don´t remember. Here it´s switched as you get to choose volleyball or tennis instead. It´s still the same arcana but the character have changed.

Which is pretty cool.

You are also able to get closer to your teammates faster than ever. I don´t recall being able to talk with Junpei or Akihiko at all in the original. Here as you are a girl you can charm them if you meet their requirments. Akihiko being the school idol he has many fans so you need to be charming bee to even be able to approach him.

Junpei is Junpei, he´s glad as anyone of the opposite sex talks with him.

Getting your charm/academics/courage up has also never been easier. With the introduction of part time jobs you can work at Chagall Cafe to earn money and increase your charm as an example. There are more places you can work part time on and most of them also increase various stats for you.

Theo, a male butler for Igor is also available. Elizabeth is also available if you want her. You actually get to choose the gender of the butler for Igor as well. Pretty neat and fun to see.

All in all
Even though I have both SMT: Persona 3 and SMT: Persona 3 – Fes I don´t regret getting this title at all. It´s fun to play, it´s easier to grind and make social links grow. It´s way more easier to navigate trough school and the city and everything is a bit fresh since I play as a female lead. Getting her into the skimpy battles panties and then talking with Junpei and Akihiko was hilarious. Or getting Yukari or Mitsuru to wear it

If you haven´t gotten this game already and you want to try out the SMT: Persona series then this is a must have title.

inFamous is an open world sandbox game by Sucker Punch Productions. Creators from the PS2 series, Sly Cooper games have returned to deliver another amazing game to play.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln

The story takes place with
Cole MacGrath, an ordinary joe who works as a bike messenger. One day he finds himself delivering a package to a random location in the middle of Empire City which turns out to be a bomb. After blowing up nearly half the city, Cole wakes up bruised and battered but seemingly alive with the ability to manipulate electricity. Comic Book Hero-like don’t you think? It is. The game takes a lot of its style and story telling from comic books and does it especially well with the power to become inFamous(Villain) or a Super Hero.

As you get more control of your powers, Cole runs into a slew of characters like Zeke, his best friend who’s a conspiracy nut. There’s also Trish, Cole’s girlfriend who now hates him for seemingly blowing up the city and killing her sister, Moya a government agent who’s willing to give Cole a one way ticket out of the hellhole that’s left of Empire City if he does a few errands. That’s only speaking of supporting characters, there’s also several villains with equally surprising origins as Cole, the various gangs of Empire City: The Reapers, the Dust Men and the First sons and a mysterious hooded man who may have all the answers.

The gameplay
Neutral throughout the city as you progress you choose between Good(Blue) or Bad(Red) Karma. Whether you’d like to save the people or be a selfish overpowered bastard is totally up to you. As a Super Hero, you gain powers representing your protect towards the citizens and the city. As an inFamous, your electric powers become red representing your evil deeds as you spark through the city with destruction everywhere you go. Either choice, you gain awesome powers the more you progress through the story with a bunch of side-quests which aren’t really boring at all to do.

The Gangs in the city aren’t enemies to play around with, they do not miss a shot unless you cover yourself or go all-out crazy with your powers mixing it with various sunts for more EXP(used to upgrade your powers, melee and more). There are a few bosses who apparently have -different- super powers from your own with their own unique characteristics and role for the story. Although you never finish them off as they slip out of your hands one way or another. We will be seeing them all again in the future very soon.

The Graphics & Sound
The soundtrack is great, the ambient noise of the city makes you feel like you’re there, and the sound effects are solid. Music during the bosses make the battle more intense as each moment becomes a challenge.

Overall,
The formula of story, control and re-playability in this game is perfectly done for both walkthrough as Evil and Good. This is one of the new IP’s worth owning for every PlayStation 3 owner.

Thought of Sequel
inFamous 2 was announced back in E3 2010 out for Spring 2011. The gameplay and graphics have improved a lot but Cole got a completely new look – I don’t like it at all. The new Cole looks smaller, weaker, Horrid teenager voice (pussy voice if you ask me) is better apparently. How the hell is this better? I can undertand Sucker Punch listens to their fanbase about some people complaining of the Old Cole being too mature and all but come on; if you want a pussy weak looking super power dude go play Spiderman. That’s right America. Come get me.

I call this a good show. Spoilers for the final episodes below.

Tatami Galaxy is a show that talks about something in life that is quite important, it is about understanding the elements of your personal life as cherish-able and not trying to go farther than that.

Throughout these 11 episodes, we begin to see the problem with our main character (“Watashi”). He has aspirations for a perfect life, but of course fails to see the opportunities granted toward him.

The Rise

Eventually the consistent parallel worlds we see in the show manifest themselves into probably the funniest/scariest way. In the scenario where he chooses not to involve himself on the campus, Watashi sleeps in the 4.5 Tatami room that he has always been in and he wakes up to find that he is trapped in the same room. Like so:

You cannot escape

You get the idea, each room is the corresponding room from those parallel worlds. Now of course, he doesn’t realize this immediately. It takes time to notice the slight differences after all.

There is of course symbolism in this moment. But it really is just a visualization of the situation that our narrator is in (I talked about this last time). He is trapped in the same cycle of repetition.

And then of course there’s the fact that he can never seem to give that Mochiguma to Akashi.

The Climax

(my words do not do this part justice)

As the narrator begins to look on these other worlds. He learns of the people he has missed in the current one. Including Higuchi, Jougasaki, Hanuki, and Ozu.

In a moment of dramatic irony he notes that Ozu would have made his campus life fun (I had to rewatch this to understand it), and it seem like Ozu is indeed his only friend throughout the parallel worlds (what we have been seeing no doubt).

He then ends up in the original room (or is it?) and remembers Akashi, recalling that even in this world he fell in love with her and also has the goddamn Mochiguma.

Suddenly the moths (that have collected over the rooms of parallel worlds) flush out towards Watashi. He jumps out the window of the room and………….he has the left the Tatami world and has ended up on the night of the Gozan Ceremony (the same ceremony as the first episode, and the same one Ozu was trying to steal an airship for).

In a sequence that follows with dramatic music and and symbolizes that Watashi has the combined himself into everyone persona from the parallel worlds, he attempts saves Ozu (lacking his youkai face) from a crowd of angry people (Jougasaki is part of the crowd, and the onlookers include Akashi, Hanuki, and Higuchi). The moths from before overwhelm everyone and the two guys fall into the rapid water of the nearby river and are hanging on for dear life

Higuchi prevents the crowd from further violence, Jougasaki saves the two, and Hanuki leaves with Ozu toward the hospital. Watashi then meets with Akashi (scared to half to death by the moths) finally returns the goddamn mochiguma and he suggests they leave for neko ramen, something she has been (understandingly) wanting to hear for a while.

The Epilogue

Everything is resolved in the end. Which is plainly excellent for a series with such morose atmosphere.There is one particularly awesome moment. Throughout this strange turn of events, Watashi and Ozu have switched roles, with Watashi flashing the youkai face as he teases Ozu about Ozu’s girlfriend.

The series then ends the opening credits (making sense as it opened with ending credits) feeling me with joy cause I love the opening song to death.

Concluding thoughts

The bizarre presentation of the show made me skeptical at first, but it began to grow on me when I saw that it had very serious themes. With such a depressed protagonist, I imagine the author probably had some emotional issues that he put into the story (as is common with much Japanese media).

I’m still not sure if I love the show (well as much I love Bakemonogatari that is). But it really is one of the best shows of this year. It’s amusing, it’s trippy, and it’s about accepting your life for what it is.

Reading the original novel would be a pleasure