Bideo James- Mayan Apocalypse Edition

     Folks hear about Bioshock Infinite being delayed another month? It totally happened. It's coming out in March now, with the mediocre multiplayer I so loved in the previous game completely removed. So that'll be interesting. Y'know. If it comes out. On a more... Japanese-y note, 90 seconds ago I purchased Disgaea 4 over the lovely Amazon internet service. I played the first one on the Nintendo DS like 4 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, and sunk about fifty million hours of my life into Disgaea 3 about three years ago. This most recent entry has uprezzed sprites for the first time in the series and from what I've seen it has a lot more to offer than the previous games. Not to say that the other games didn't have an incalculable amount of content. But still. Anime games.

This is video game. 

Dark Souls 2- From Software-lectric Boogaloo

     So Dark Souls 2 was announced. Normally, this'd be the most incroyable thing on planet Earth, but the folks who played the last game are worried. The main dude, Miyazaki, is off the team and without his influence, the game might not be the Souls everyone knows. With the talk of an easy mode for the OG Dark Souls, the charm of the game was lost for a lot of folks, and with From Software's mention of "A more accessible experience", it seems like the crushing yet beautiful mix of rage and reward that the series has provided up to this point might vanish. The sequel apparently isn't coming out until 2014 though, so it might very well be on the next generation of consoles, giving chumps like me a loooong time to think the purchase over.

Really though, that's pretty hype. 

Goichi Suda you are my favorite boy.

     So, much to my chagrin, a new Suda 51 beat is coming out in 6 days. It's called Black Knight Sword and it's a kinda Castlevania homage type deal, from the two minutes of gameplay I've seen. Grasshopper Manufacture's last game was only half a year ago in the form of the fun to watch, not-so-fun to play Lollipop Chainsaw, but they've been collaborating with other developers so it seems like they've been able to put out games a lot faster. I'm a bit iffy on the quality, but at least this upcoming game looks fairly swanky. It has a really crisp paper-y 2D art style incredibly reminiscent of the 2D segments of Shadows of the Damned, Suda's 2011 spin on survival horror. What's especially cool is it's going to be a downloadable title off of Xbox Live, so it'll be a short and sweet ride for like 15 bucks or something, which is perfect for a street urchin like myself. So yeah. The hype train. It's running tonight. 

The most hypest.

Pole Position is bigger than Jesus.

     So tomorrow Yakuza 5 comes out in Japan, which is the hypest game of all time. I don't know when we'll get it here in the land of the rising McMuffin, but I recently finished Binary Domain, which is by the same dude. There's so much going on in that game, that I'm not going to be able to lay it all down right now, but the game actually rewards you for not being dicks to the AI teammates in both gameplay and story events in a way that I've never really seen before. Most of the environments are pretty uninspired, and that's about my only complaint, but I'l get more into that on Thursday. Also. Played Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City on a whim, and it may have given me turbo-cancer from sheer awfulness. I'm just saying. Turbo/

Black Friday is a national tragedy. Like Aerosmith.

    Finally picked up another handheld game type deal after a lot of hype surrounding it. Way Forward, masters of pretty much everything they do, which are 2D sidescrollers, made an Adventure Time game that's pretty gosh darn swanky. As of writing this I've played through it twice in order to have easier access to the soundtrack. Music by their in-house guy Jake Kaufman, by the way, who's incredible at everything and whatever soundtrack he touches turns to audio gold. Game plays a lot like Zelda 2 as well, which is kinda incroyable. Alsooooo started playin' Binary Domain, which is a super coolio robot shooter by the fine folks who do the Yakuza games. It's a third person squad shooter but it still has the same great writing of a Yakuza game, and a trust system with all the characters that transfers into the gameplay pretty well. Japanese shooters aren't always the most incredible, but it's\games like this and Vanquish where they really shine. Thank youuuu Nagoshi and Platinum Games. Also the Wii-U came out and it has a big goofy touchpad. Whatever.

Dork Sols

    So lately I've resurrected my love for Dark Souls. I'd forgotten what it meant to get destroyed by a vidja. Hard. Mucho hard. The DLC just came out for consoles a few weeks ago and apparently it adds some pretty nifty-like stuff. I took some time back into the game and suffice to say I have made negligible progress since I started back up. The second Grand Theft Auto V trailer dropped this week, too. That looks like sorta the most interesting thing coming out in the next year. It's apparently following the trend of multiple protagonists, but instead of playing all their parts in chunks, you switch between them on the fly, which leads to different mission paths and whatnot. I've never really seen much of that before, but according to the preview it actually seems to work. None of the characters are as goofy as that ol' Siberian Niko Bellic from the last game, but there are jets now so that's okay. Yup. Bowling.

Too many games come out in November

     Here's a... Thing. I'm writing a Resident Evil 6 review but it's taking longer than usual because of how different all the parts of the game are from each other. So that ain't goin up yet. But I shall carry on. So the Wii-U comes out this month, and I have absolutely no intention (or funds) towards getting it. The promise of Bayonetta 2 is awesome, but I'm holding off on buying a console for it, no matter how crazy great it shall be. Instead, obscure puzzle games on the DS! 999 is again appearing before me, and it's kinda swell. It's bordering on a visual novel with how text-y it is, but I suppose it's got some nifty puzzles so it's an adventure game. And the sequel's on both the 3DS and the Vita so it looks a little different, but I'm hearing good things about it. It also apparently has 20 something distinct endings, which is always intriguing. Not like Bioshock with all the lame endings, though. Andrew Ryan.

Detergent

     Most of my video game-type playing lately has been that of Silent Hill 3. It's kinda an interesting experience because I haven't really had to solve any survival horror puzzles on my own in a long time, so I'm getting a lesson in wandering aimlessly. Other than that, that game is a bit awesome. Akira Yamaoka returns with a super oppressive industrial soundtrack that makes you feel awful at all times, which is a good thing. I've also been really interested in this new sequel to 999, which is a series based around math and being not awful Japanese Saw. Apparently the whole game is based around the Prisoner's Dilemma (That old problem about the betrayal type stuff) So that's so experimental it almost makes me wanna play it just based on that. Also folks swallows bombs and blow up. Boom.

Cats on Mars

     Two games have kinda really been on my brain lately. El Shaddai, with all the crazy fancy artsy-ness, and Assassin's Creed 3. I know El Shaddai's technically like a year and a half old and apparently has kinda terrible gameplay, but it's sposed to be an experience (Maaaaan) looks real purdy and the music is kinda incredible. On the other end, I haven't really been following Assassin's Creed 3, but I loved 2 and Brotherhood so I'm assuming it's the same level of quality except with powdered wigs. I'm assuming they've shoehorned multiplayer in there for the third time around, so needless to say I won't be playing that whole deal, but that's half because my internet sucks. I do tend to gravitate towards multiplayer that was obviously just shoved in as opposed to your Call of Duties and your Battlefields. Like Dead Space 2. That had terrible multiplayer, but you could run around as a baby and eat people. Babies are frightening and also soft. Yup.

Wailing Butt Rock- Starring Jake Muller

      So Resident Evil 6 has Sonic Adventure style wailing butt rock. The kind that wouldn't be out of place in a Nickleback album. Like really. During one of the credits sequences they have that wonderfully awful deal. So then I went back to Super Meat Boy after a year. I know McMillen gets a lot of credit for Isaac nowadays (Reviewed on my old blog, heyyyyy) but Meat Boy's still awesome. When I first played it about a year and a half ago I got a bit discouraged from dying six million times, but that really is the entire point. Instead of making any actual progress I went back and got all the extra hard stuff from the easy levels for babies. For ten bucks the amount of content in that game is kind of overwhelming. The only other thing I can really compare it to is the Undead Nightmare expansion for Red Dead, which really is an entirely new game. I've had an incredible urge to play that again too, mainly because it has El Chupacabra. Goats.

This is a blog post.

      So lately I haven't really been moving much so suffice to say I haven't really played any video game type stuff this week. Well, that's a lie, I played some stuff on the PC without any audio because of a weird issue, but I've been sorta really impressed with some of the mods that've come out lately. I know I'm late to hop on this Half-Life mod bandwagon, but Grey (the survival horror type deal mod thing) reminds me too much of Silent Hill for me not to love it, and Black Mesa (the Half-Life 1 remake, even though my computer sucks and has some trouble while running it) is sort of mind-blowing. Apart from that it's been relatively low gaming lately, but Zone of the Enders HD comes out next week, so I have that to... Look forward to. Speaking of, I've been thinking about Mr. Kojima a lot lately. I've been scouring the web with very low effort to try to find a good version of Snatcher because it's like... Good. And I've been hearing a lot about Policenauts lately so I sorta want to check that out too. Japan. Arrivederci.

Video games are a thing and I play them sometimes

     Last week I played through the first 2 acts of Dishonored and I sorta love that game. It's like Deus Ex if I was semi competent at it. It really is pretty similar to Human Revolution, with all the different ways to complete each mission and the upgrade able superhuman abilities. It's a bit like Assassin's Creed in that you get a target for each mission, but the ways you can deal with them are actually kinda cool sometimes. In the case of a non-lethal playthrough, you can (tee-hee) dishonor them by like, playing the confessions of a dictator over the loudspeakers, or sending away a lady to live with her obsessed admirer. Or you can just go  stab everything like a mongoloid. Either way, it's pretty solid, even if it does go by fairly quickly, even while taking a stealthy approach. It could do with out the requisite zombies that appear in every game, but apart from that it's one of the best new IPs I've seen in a while. Anyways. Video games are played on a screen. Ciao.

Some October stuff, I guess.

     So I sorta wanted to talk about the end of the month releases coming up in a few weeks. I've been playing Resident Evil 6, which is pretty much Gears of War with less tentacles, but anyways, Zone of the Enders HD Collection is dropping pretty soon with the Metal Gear demo, and I hear those games are great, so I'm really excited for that. Also, Assassin's Creed 3 is totally on the way. I haven't been following that one, and I never played Revelations, but what little I've seen has been pretty impressive. Code of Princess is a more recent thing as well, and it's apparently like an RPG beat em up from the fine folks at Atlus? Whatever it is, it's a supposedly really awesome 3DS game so I'll keep my eyes peeled for that one. Other than that, Dishonored came out, which I have a feeling I won't get around to playing for a long, long time. Long. Adios.

Resident Evil 6 is a many video games

     So lately I've been playing a wee bit of Resident Evil 6, and it's kinda strange how it manages to be like 4 different games, yet none of those 4 are truly Resident Evil. I would say that true survival horror is dead, but then I would play something like Lone Survivor which is (relatively) recent and see that people can still do it right. So by that logic I suppose it's fine if Capcom wants to turn Resident Evil into an entirely action-based series. There aren't really any scares anymore but all the sort of action-y elements they added to the gameplay work pretty well. You can move and shoot now, which people have been complaining about since Resident Evil 4 but I never really had a problem with, but the big thing they've done is make a character in a survival horror game sort of mobile, unlike the tank controlling heroes of the past. It's interesting for sure, and there's a lot I've yet to see in this here game. Adios.

October has mucho thangs.

     So Borderlands 2 hath been completed. Kind of incredible. Review of that up soon. Resident Evil 6 is out, and this is the time of year when you have to make the tough choices, the kind that lesser folk shrivel away from. The last third of the year multiple awesome games a month choice. Resident Evil 6, or Dishonored coming out in a week. I've been following Resident Evil 6, but I haven't really been paying attention to Dishonored up until recently. It looks like it could be awesome, but I'm a bit iffy. Then again I'm a bit iffy on Resident Evil 6. Bah. Zone of the Enders HD Collection comes out at the end of the month as well. Video games.

Bumble Inbie Gumble

        So after investing an incredibly small amount of money in the most recent Indie Bundle I graciously received my six games with the soundtracks and whatnot. Then of course the Old Gods of PC gaming decided to bestow upon the world 4 more games in this thing, and I think this bundle is singlehandedly getting me back into PC gaming. It even came with Torchlight, which is that poor-man's Diablo that I still haven't played. I've been spending a lot of time recently playing Shatter, which is a very interesting callback to the brick-breaking days of yore from games like Arkanoid. It even has the goofy brick breaking boss battles against monsters composed of big dumb squares that Arkanoid was known for. Also added was Jamestown, the awesome 16-bit shoot-em-up that I've heard so much about. So reviews of more manageable indie games are foreseen in my future. Toodles.

Resident Evil Schmix?

             The final countdown to Resident Evil 6 is upon us. Like 6 days. I don't now who hasn't been excited for that so I'll be going for a day one purchase. I have yet to play Resident Evil Revelations, so I'll be on the lookout for that, as well. The little demo that came with the woooooooonderful Capcom game Dragon's Dogma (I don't know why I didn't ever write more about that one on the old blog) was apparently a pretty good representation of the rest of the game, so I'm gearing up to like 2/3 of the game. The action segments in one of the storylines that boil down to just shooting and taking cover from zombies that are shooting and taking cover, so it's pretty much just a third person shooter at that point. But I'll buy it anyways because that game is gearing up to be awesome. Of course. Capcom doesn't really put out too many awful games, anyways. So there's that.

S'more Borderlands nonsense

     So this isn't my review for Borderlands 2, mainly because there's too much in that game to properly describe it in the short time I've played it. I really enjoyed reviewing the original Borderlands, so I want to do this right, obviously. I can say some about the game in the meantime, though. The way you can go about building up your character this time around is actually pretty involved, unlike the trivial stat bonuses you would receive in the previous game. You can actually build your own play-style, and the plethora of skills really increases the replay value, even with a character you've already played as. Randy Pitchford and the Gearbox team seemed hellbent this time around on making each character, even in the same class, its own little snowflake. If that snowflake lit people on fire with an alien shotgun. I'm really very excited to get more into this game and lay down a review in the future, and I'm looking forward to what the next few months hold for gaming. With the announcement of Kingdom Hearts HD for PS3, I'm kinda ready for anything. Resident Evil 6. Pay attention to that, y'all. Toodles~~

An update for the ages. (Or not.)

     So today was a pretty good day for video games. Probably the most aggressively hyped game in recent memory, Borderlands 2, dropped today. I was a giant fan of the first one, so this was a day-one buy for me. Honestly, the beginning isn't very Borderlands-y, but it's been picking up. Today also marked the release of the Humble Indie Bundle 6, which had me thinking. I've reviewed Binding of Isaac, but I've acquired quite a few PC games for being a console gamer, making me sort of want to review some more indie games. I was playing Lone Survivor, which is a sort of 2D Silent Hill. I'm pretty well known to have a survival horror kick, and this game actually manages some scares even in a 2D format, which is commendable. Sooooo PC games. Comin your way. No review tonight because I haven't finished Kingdom Hearts yet. But soon. So soon....

The Show Must Go On.

      Ever wonder about mortality? NOT ME! With my recent purchase of a 3DS, I've rediscovered 2 things. One, Kingdom Hearts is pretty good, and two, 3D is the worst gimmick of all time. So I've been playing Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. I'm not to keen on a couple of the new mechanics they added to bounce you between the two characters and I sort of hate the voice acting,  but I've been enjoying myself with it. More portable game reviews in the future. Pretty sure.  Recently I've also been playing Resonance of Fate, which is the RPG from the Star Ocean folks that was eclipsed by Final Fantasy 13. It's actually a pretty cool take on the tired old thing that is steampunk. Definitely expect a review of that, Nolan North and all. So yeah. Ciao.

Review- Silent Hill 2 HD

            Let me say that I never played Silent Hill 2 in it's original run, so all complaints about a lack of crazy fog in the HD version are lost on me. That said, let's begin. 

         The Silent Hill series has had a long history of being called the best survival horror game series of all time. Silent Hill 2, in particular is held up to the heavens as the shining example of how the genre should be. The game starts with the hero, James Sunderland, receiving a letter from his 3 year late wife. Not ten minutes into the game you discover that this town that's apparently very, very evil is actually very, very evil. The town of Silent Hill seems to be completely deserted, but James is never alone. Throughout the game he meets other tortured souls, searching through their own personal hell for the thing most precious to them. The re-done voice acting is pretty solid, but it doesn't have the same cheesy charm of survival horror days of yore.

       Silent Hill is known for it's interesting way of blurring the line between the supernatural and psychological disturbance, and Silent Hill 2 is no different. Without spoiling anything, every enemy you face in the game has a significant meaning that goes beyond the fact that it's a scary monster. Pyramid Head, perhaps the single most famous survival horror character ever, and Silent Hill's representation of guilt makes his first appearance here. He evokes such a sense of power that escape can sometimes seem impossible, perfect for the hopeless nature of the game. 

                   

      The gameplay in Silent Hill 2 is a mix of some interesting puzzles and melee/ gun combat. The combat is pretty standard, it's never awful and you can run past a large majority of the creatures. The puzzles can actually mess with you, which is odd to see. For example, leaving everything you've acquired throughout the game in a locker so you can descend in an elevator, or an area of the game that's more disturbing than it has any right to be, in which James continues to jump down pit after deep pit to reach his objective. The game can take from 7 to 11 hours on your first playthrough depending on how you handle puzzles and which difficulty you're playing on. 

      Of course, as with the Lollipop Chainsaw review, I feel the need to gush over the Akira Yamaoka score for this game. The music in Silent Hill 2 is haunting and unforgettable,  and after maybe a particularly shocking revelation in the story or surreal gameplay segment, a song can stick with you forever. While running through the city most of what you'll hear is the just-out-of-your-vision squirming of a straight jacket wearing creature as it scuttles from place to place. The sound design in the game can really bother you, from the slick sounds of one creature, to the creaking, squirming joints of another, to the scrape of Pyramid Head's sword on the floor, letting you know that death is just behind you. It's a great addition and it really goes to show how important good sound design is in such and atmospheric game as this. 

    Silent Hill 2 is the reason to get into the survival horror genre. Tank controls and allegedly frustrating item management that usually comes with the difficulty aren't a hindrance here. The sound, the art design, and even the getting to see one of the game's 6 endings all mix together to make a truly supreme experience. Silent Hill 2 isn't just one of the best survival horror games of all time, it's one of the most atmospheric games ever, and it'll stick with you long after you put the controller down. 
                                                    9.5/10

Trading Spaces

       So this is the new hotness. The exclusive hub for alright reviews on things that people play. No more Tumblr, to the 20 people that care. I have made the pleasant discovery that Blogger allows for some easier captioning, which has proved itself incredibly useful in the Lollipop Chainsaw review. Speaking of games composed by Akira Yamaoka, my next review is Silent Hill 2. The HD one without the fog. The one that everyone's complained about for months. I finished it pretty recently and the claims that it's one of the greatest survival horror games of all time are absolutely 100 percent true. I wouldn't want to gush about it too much until I'm done with the review, but the music in that game really is legendary. The redone voice acting isn't terrible either, and that's what I used for my first playthrough. I'm also planning on reviewing some portable games this time around which I'm really excited for. Look for Square Enix reviews in a while. Ciao.

Review- Lollipop Chainsaw

        

     Ahhh, Suda. Used to be that a game of his coming out was a monumental event. I didn't really see a problem with his games coming out more frequently though, considering Grasshopper is my favorite name in videogames period. However, with their games coming out annually at this point, it seems like a few cutbacks had to be made in the gameplay department. We just didn't notice it until now.

    Let me start this by saying that I have no problem with this annual model. No More Heroes 2 is my favorite game of all time and Shadows of the Damned really did it for me too, and I actually did enjoy some of my time with this game. Lollipop Chainsaw was a hugely anticipated thing for me, and even after the lukewarm reviews I was anxiously awaiting my copy. When I put the game in I unwittingly prepared myself for the longest 6 hour slow burn of my life. 

If you squint you might notice a chainsaw.

     So Lollipop Chainsaw begins with out heroine Juliet Starling arriving at school to discover that almost everyone is a zombie. You get an introduction into all the most basic moves you'll need throughout the game, light hits, heavy hits, low attacks etc. After a brief tutorial level Juliet reaches her boyfriend, only to see him bit by one of these things and decides she must cut off his head to keep him alive. This sets off the events of the entire game, and the banter between Juliet and the head of her boyfriend Nick is one of the best parts of the game, not unlike Garcia Hotspur, demon hunter, and Johnson, floating skull, that made Shadows of the Damned's dialogue so enjoyable. Their relationship really works and hearing Juliet ask Nick if he wants to have babies someday can really lift you up during a particularly not so great gameplay segment.

Juliet giving Nick the heads up about his recent bodily loss. Heads up. Get it?

     The way the game plays doesn't lend itself well to first impressions. For the first 2 real levels the player is subjected to awful minigames, which if lost have major effects on your end level ranking. The notion of having a chainsaw mixed in with the fluid pom pom motions of a cheerleader and some acrobatic feats thrown in to boot is actually very interesting. However, unlike in a game like Devil May Cry, you start off with an incredibly small amount of moves at your disposal. If you don't put a lot of money into getting Juliet some moves then the game becomes an incredibly shallow experience. Juliet swing her chainsaw and nothing happens apart from you cut a zombie. No cool moves activate unless you put your time into unlocking them. Apart from a few quick time events and a few cheap enemies there isn't really even a point to paying attention to what you're doing. Even once you get the moves, only a select few are actually useful. This game could've done well with a more fast paced combat system, and it baffles me why they would miss the opportunity to throw in a combo meter and turn this game into Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden.

    The whole game is divided into 7 levels, 6 of which feature a boss battle against a powerful zombie representing a genre of music. Oddly enough, even though Grasshopper has been known for their ridiculous and interesting bosses, (Killer 7, No More Heroes, everything else ever,) these feel thoughtless and incredibly easy. The battles consist of you hacking and shooting at a boss for a bit before entering a minigame where you cut them, after which they enter their next phase. Each boss has 3-4 phases, but it seems like only the second to last boss had any thought put into these phases at all. You move from area to area for 6 hours until you reach the ending, which is entirely dictated by whether or not you saved every single one of your fellow students throughout the game. Then the game ends without any fanfare. There are a plethora of new costumes to acquire afterwards, but that's where it stops. The story was kind of Grasshopper esque, which is a good thing, but the gameplay is only interspersed with short scenes where most of the time Juliet and Nick run across other members of the zombie hunting Starling family, and sometimes it feels like they forgot the story altogether.

Lollipop Chainsaw's 4th boss and representative of funk- Forget-His-Name-Man

     Grasshopper games always put a huge focus on the music, from the mysterious strums of Shadows of the Damned to the wailing jazzpop hybrids of No More Heroes fame, and Lollipop Chainsaw is no exception. There are a ridiculous amount of tracks in the game, ranging from original compositions to Oh Mickey. Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence does all the boss tracks this time around and he does a pretty good job of conveying each genre. VGM god and ex Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka returns this time around after his incredible score in Shadows of the Damned. I can't say that his music in this game is as memorable as the haunting title screen theme in Shadows, but it fits the mood well, even if it isn't as great as some of his masterworks.

     Lollipop Chainsaw makes no false claims about what it is. It's a video game full of pop music where you kill zombies with a chainsaw. The gameplay isn't groundbreaking by any means but the dialogue and whacky story, while not as crazy as any of Suda's other creations by any means, is still good fun and enough to keep you entertained for the 6-7 hour campaign, and twice that if you want to go through it and get the best rankings. Lollipop Chainsaw might not be for everyone, but it was made with me in mind, even if it seems like they forgot somewhere along the way.

                                                                7/10