Wily still packs a punch close to the end, even on Easy. This time, he has an obvious Robot Clone backing him up. This Robo-Wily can be shot at, but not damaged (and I expect the differences to be not-so-subtle on Normal or Hard difficulty), and its shots are very hard to dodge. Even so, Wily still falls prey to the weapon in your arsenal you’ll probably use the least (I won’t tell you which one it is…you’ll have to figure that out for yourself).

Some first impressions:

• Final Fantasy XIII:
  • I can’t help comparing this game’s “Crystogen” character development system to the “Sphere Grid” in Final Fantasy X. Even though you’re spending points to unlock new abilities instead of collecting spheres, it’s mostly the same concept. I’m quite sure this was intentional on the part of the developers.
  • The Active Time Battle system flows a lot more smoothly than any game (that uses a similar system) I’ve seen so far. Final Fantasy X-2 was pretty good about it, too.
  • I have a feeling that I’m going to be comparing this game to FFX a lot more than any other game in the series.
• Yakuza 3:
  • Kazuma isn’t very good at golf. At least in this game, you only have to play three holes.
  • I wonder why Kaz gets so hyped up for his special HEAT attacks against the bosses, when they don’t quite have enough attack power to finish them off all the way. Maybe it’s time for me to start beefing him up.
  • The karaoke booth mini-game is pretty fun. Then again, I tend to like rhythm mini-games in general.

I’ll have more to say once I get past the third chapters in these games. See ya!

WARNING: Thoughts and plot spoilers below.

Near the beginning of the movie, Ted Daniels (Leo DiCaprio’s character) finds a note from an escaped mental patient that simply reads “The Rule of 4 / Who is 67″? The director of the Shutter Island mental hospital mentions that there were a total of 66 inmates in the asylum, and that the 67th had escaped somehow. Guess who #67 was? Yep…your U.S. marshal Teddy, who’s been having nightmares about his involvement in World War II (where he and his fellow soldiers gunned down a bunch of Nazis they captured) and his dead wife (who herself had gone insane and killed their three children).

The moment that triggered this suspicion happened shortly after Ted and his partner Chuck separated, and the director mentioned to him that “you never had a partner…you came alone”. From that point, it became pretty obvious that he wasn’t going to be conducting any kind of investigation on the island…

I’m left with a few questions after the movie ended. First, if Ted had been committed to Shutter Island over two years ago, how was it that he was able to leave the island via ferry if he were such a dangerous criminal? The movie couldn’t have covered more than two months’ time. Also, what was the deal with the “rule of four”? “Who is 67″ was pretty obvious, but I still wonder what the first part of that message meant.

After you complete Arcade Mode, there’s a mini-game that you play during the end credits with Yatterman villain Doronjo, and you have to ride across a series of bumpy hills on a bicycle with her and her henchmen in order to collect all of the gold letters that are placed in the credit names (they spell out “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING”). Accomplish this, and you unlock another mini-game called Ultimate All-Shooters, which is a fixed-scrolling shooter (kinda like Commando) where you control Ryu, Ken the Eagle, Tekkaman Blade, or the PTX-40A mech suit and shoot down Akrids (the beasties that infest the Lost Planet universe) and other bug-like creatures through four stages. So far, I’ve beaten it with Tekkaman Blade, but I’m not sure how the path selection works, so I guess it’ll be a while before I achieve 100% completion in that mode.

My next goal is to finish Arcade Mode with all of the secret characters (Frank West, Zero, Joe the Condor and Tekkaman Blade – the last one I think I already finished with) in order to unlock Yatterman-2, Yatterman-1’s girlfriend and partner-in-buttkicking. This journey should be…interesting, to say the least.

And all I had to do was answer some trivia to win this...

This figurine (called a Trexi, after the company that distributes them) was given to me yesterday as a prize for a trivia question I answered on Gamespot when Dark Void was released two months ago. I don’t even remember whether I answered it correctly…The e-mail that I was sent notified me to expect my prize within two weeks. It also came as a pre-order bonus for anyone who bought the game. Since I didn’t (and probably won’t, because I wasn’t very impressed with the demo), scoring this figurine didn’t cost me a thing.

The figurine is supposed to be Will in the jetsuit that he uses throughout the game…though with the round head and stubby arms, it could easily be mistaken for a miniature Strong Bad. The head, arms, and legs can rotate, although they’re a bit too stiff to be used for advanced poses. I think these Trexis are meant to be collected rather than played with (note the “This is not a toy” warning on the bottom of the box). Figurines like it sell  for about six to eight dollars – I don’t know whether that’s in U.S. dollars or Singaporean dollars, so it probably won’t go up in value. On the bright side, it’ll go nicely with the Ryu figurine I got when I pre-ordered Street Fighter IV.

Yeah, I’m aggravated by it, but I’m not getting too worked up about it. I do have a few other consoles, after all, so I’ll just keep playing with them until the smoke clears. The  SonyPlayStation Twitter is posting updates, and recommending that all users of pre-Slim PS3s (myself included) not turn on their consoles until a solution is found.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m still playing through Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and a few players have asked why these guys hadn’t appeared in the game. Heck, I didn’t even know this series was a Tatsunoko property until I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s funny how far a little research goes.

Most video game fans will surely recognize many of the characters on Capcom’s side of the line-up. You have Ryu, Chun-Li and Alex from the Street Fighter series, Mega Man (Legends version) and Roll from the Mega Man series, and a couple of others you probably wouldn’t expect to see in a Capcom crossover (why hello there, Soki…it’s been a while since Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, hasn’t it?) The Tatsunoko roster may not be quite as accessible to any but the biggest anime fans, as their series are a bit older, and some of these characters are making their first appearances in the U.S. Ken the Eagle and Jun the Swan from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman headline the Tatsunoko team, with Yatterman, Ippatsuman, Tekkaman (none of them rejected Mega Man baddies) and others joining the fray.

Familiarity with the source material aside, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom plays a lot like many of the other Capcom vs. titles. Each play selects two characters, and they fight until either side has reduced both characters’ health meters to zero. The requisite special moves and super attacks are present for every character, and they can (with a few exceptions) call on their partner to dish out a few extra hits for them during the match, or to switch places with them. The three-attack-button control scheme (seen in other Eighting-developed fighting games such as Bloody Roar) is easy to use, yet allows for complex combinations and all kinds of crossover attacks for fighting game veterans to use. The computer AI is challenging, and never seems like it’s trying to cheat you out of a win. You can also take your battles online and challenge players over Nintendo Wi-Fi, and while the game is good about finding opponents with strong connections, it often takes a while for it to find an opponent to begin with. The Friend Code system is still there, but thankfully you aren’t forced to use it in order to find an opponent (it’s mainly used for keeping track of friends and players that you fight often).

The game sports a 3D look that’s a lot like Street Fighter IV. While the fighting takes place on a 2D plane, the characters and their backgrounds are shown in three dimensions, all while the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The special attack animations are also suitably flashy and over-the-top, as befitting of a series with half of its roots in animated action series. Though there aren’t quite as many memorable tunes as there were in previous installments, the game’s soundtrack is decent, and the voices of the characters calling out their various attacks don’t drown out the music or distract from the action.

Because of the licensing issues that usually come with making crossover products, it can be hard for some of them to even get released in certain markets (which is why there won’t be any U.S. release for Jump! Ultimate Stars, likely one of the biggest and best such fighting games in the Nintendo DS library). Capcom took a big chance by putting together this release, and it turned out to be one of the most polished and fun entries in the Vs. series yet. This game is worthy of a 5-star rating (out of 5).

Pros: easy to pick up and play, excellent art and animation, can be taken online with little hassle
Cons: the Tatsunoko-side characters will probably be unfamiliar to a lot of players