G.A.M.E.S.

OK, so, it maybe pushing the envelope as far as timelines, but here’s those Pac-Man movie trailers we were talking about. There’s really no way to introduce these with out sound borderline psychotic, so all I can say is go ahead and enjoy.

-Andrew

Not sure if the buzz has reached anybody else, or if it has if anyone cares, but the old Game Boy Advanced entry into the Kingdom Hearts series “Chain of Memories” is about to receive a makeover for the PS2. Old news, yeah? But wait, there’s more! The game has received the official go ahead to be released in the United States, fairly big news considering their was no official word whether it would make it past the Pacific.

The game it self, originally released in 2004, takes place in between the events of the original Kingdom Hearts and the second one, following Sora, Donald and Goofy and their first encounter with Organization XIII.

The game was originally released as a card-based strategy game, and I’ll be honest, that’s a big red flag for me. Nothing personal for CTS fans, I just lack anywhere near the patience for that kind of gameplay. Not to mention that the appeal of Kingdom Hearts was its blending of RPG and Action game elements, and it was really a mournful moment when I had to watch a piece of series with such a strong story more or less be unaccessible to me due to a short attention span. Judging by the new screens, this reinvention of the game looks like a brand spankin’ new interpretation of it.

The other glaring detail is its release on the PS2, but I honestly don’t see that being a huge issue. True, PS3 DOES NOT have backwards compatibility, but it’s not so late in the life of the PS2 that people have already chucked it to the curb as a relic, and seeing this game largely as fan service, most fans of the Kingdom Hearts series would already be owning a PS2.

So, that’s the bulk of background on the game, no for my hopeful and glorious aspirations. Like I said, the remake itself is old news by a year or so, it’s just the announcement of it coming stateside that’s exhilarating. And, should this be any example, I would be very hopeful for “Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix+” following suit and making the jump to our shores. A brief background on the game: Americans were spoiled with the original Kingdom Hearts release. We got Japan’s remix version, chock full of extra bosses and all sorts of other goodies. We weren’t so fortunate with the second installment, and “Final Mix+” would be KH2’s redux. While it does mean throwing down for a game that you’ve essentially played, it will probably be worth it all things considered. Also, the “Chain of Memories” remake is going for around $30, which isn’t as hefty a price tag as it could be.

Kingdom Hearts Remake Footage

You can catch the full press release from SquareEnix here.

-Andrew

Yet again I’m at the helm of WordPress, overwhelmed with optimism that I can actually stay on course this year and maintain a regular blog. Like an old man soaking in a hot bath, I’ll need to ease into this though. Going into deeper narratives will probably just frustrate me early on, so let’s try a bulleted style of what I think are some pretty important notions to touch on and call it a night. The fabled “WoW-Killer” WarHammer is stepping up mid-month in October, and having taken a glance at the beta, I’m fairly certain that any vying for the thrown of MMO king won’t be on the part of WarHammer. I won’t pretend for a moment I’m a seasoned veteran of MMORPGs, but having watched people do nothing but play World of Warcraft for the last three years, I can’t help but notice WarHammer is nearly identical. I honestly probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference as a bystander. Keeping it brief and to the point, in-game sound struck me as pretty damn funny actually, with Wilhelm-scream-esque sound effects and little else in the way of ambiance, though I think that’s probably something that will be fixed, even with a test run of the game this close to launch. Industry wise, I really don’t think it’ll do too great. The game’s main audience is going to be the tabletop gamer following, along with hardcore WoW players looking for something new, and the casual gamer just wanting to find something to fill the hours with. Of course, WoW’s new expansion is coming out by the end of the year, so you’ll probably have a large WoW audience holding out for that, so on the whole, I’m predicting as big of an MMO from WarHammer as Guild Wars, if that. On the console note, I’d strongly advise anybody with XBOX Live to go out and download Castle Crashers. It’s an absolute blast. It’s a 4-Player, side-scroller, beat-em-up, that has you going through a satirical medieval setting. The variety of gameplay elements are just right to give you a nice arrangement without it being too heavy-handed and there’s great replay value with new characters, weapons, and online matches. For those of you have spent time slumming around Newgrounds.com might recognize the graphics, style and even a character or two from the cult-hit Alien Hominid. A pretty fun (if difficult at times) side-scroller, that has the classic underdog story of working its way off the Internet as a simple flash game and onto the major console platforms. And now, for the finale, I’ll discuss the Beginning and the End. By Beginning, I refer to SIMS creator, Wil Wright’s latest endeavor, Spore, the game that allows you to create life from it’s humblest, unicellular beginnings up to the ages of intergalactic travel. I’ve actually sat down and played the game, and it’s awesome, there’s way too much in it to even begin to scratch the surface with a closing statement, but I’ve got to say it delivers an incredibly solid game that could appeal to all levels of gamers. And of course by the End, I feel it’s my duty as having the Geekiest blog on SpartanEdge to address the flipping of the switch of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Again, there’s a lot of detail to discuss here so I’ll leave it to the reader to find more, but shortly put this a very big day for science. This is probably one of the biggest endeavors in science since the advent of atomic power, and it’s actually being streamed live across the Internet, so I qualify this as a big day for journalism and the media as well. In brief, LHC is something kind of like the Cyclotron at Michigan State for locals who are familiar with it, except on a much grander scale. Aside from accomplishing a great many other things, the big buzz is that it’ll finally uncover the Higgs boson particle, something that would kind of fill in the gaps of Physics on how matter and gravity interact. Simply put, this is big. As for why I refer to it as the End? There’s a very slight, negligible chance that miniature black holes will be brought into creation and, uh, well, you know, snuff out existence on our end of the Milky Way. Kind of a big deal, but as I said, we’re talking about itty-bitty chances, odds that make asteroid collisions look like a real threat and chances smaller than me mentioning this blog to attractive women. It should be fired up sometime between 3 am and noon our time, so in case we don’t make it through the night, I appreciate you taking the time to spend your last hours with me and my pitiful attempts at prose. So, that’s how I’m going to kick-off the year, hopefully its an omen of good things to come (like regular updates). There’s big news on the horizon in terms of video games, and some big buzz in geek culture too, which I may take the liberty of gracing SpartanEdge’s pages with if nobody disagrees. So, hope all is well with everything and hopefully I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, and I apologize for being long-winded on somethings and not really elaborating on some gamer jargon, I know the vast majority of readers are just people with kind-hearts who aren’t necessarily gamers, so if anything’s unclear, I apologize, I’ll try better next time. -Andrew

P.S.
I realize this post is dated in terms of the LHC, but I had trouble uploading it that night, and ludicrous though it may seem, I am fairly busy usually, so this is my attempt to just cop out of re-writing it and explain it all away…so there you go.

I suppose the first thing I should do is apologize for a lack of posts, but I’ll trust this sentence takes care of that so it won’t be necessary. I’ll try to be a might bit more consistent with posting for what’s left of the semester, which I hope won’t be to tricky since I wrote most of these over spring break with nothing better to do, so copy and pasting shouldn’t conflict too much with my schedule.

One of the problems with not posting in months is that there was some fairly interesting news that I’d like to touch on. I’ll keep this first, returning post short, but I want to point out something that happened a few weeks ago.
Due to the tight budget and tight schedule that coincides with life of most college students, I really don’t play many video games anymore. Despite not devoting some of my time to gaming, I do follow the industry fairly closely. So, I was fairly proud of my prognosticating powers a few weeks ago.

People seemed pretty shocked when, after looking at the Square-Enix’s software for Final Fantasy XIII, called ‘Crystal Tools,’ they found that it would be compatible with the Wii. You can read the full story here, but the thing I’d most like to point out is that anybody who read this blog last year, before the Wii even came out, would have seen me postulate that this very thing could happen. And I quote:

“…Final Fantasy XIII is a long ways off, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can recall seeing previews for Final Fantasy VII being a Nintendo 64 release. I’ll leave it to you, trusty reader, to draw your own conclusions from that, but keep in mind, the last time Square decided to switch its console of choice was just as the fifth generation consoles were starting to come on the scene and gaming was beginning to be seen in a whole new light. Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but as of lately Square’s been getting awful buddy-buddy with its old pal Nintendo, and who knows what strange things may come.”

That’s about all I have to say on the subject for now, I just wanted my return to involve a little bit of gloating. Though, I’d like to say that I’d still say I’m HIGHLY, highly skeptical of whether or not a Wii release for the Final Fantasy XIII would ever occur, but I will probably give it a higher likelihood than most others out there. Only time will tell whether or not I speak lunacy, but I’d like to think I could be remembered as the man who predicted first predicted the potential for high-profile, multi-platform releases from Square

Likely eyeing the giant fountains of money Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime bathes in daily, Microsoft Asia-Pacific’s Alan Bowman said that the company plans to compete against the Nintendo Wii and the casual-gaming market by creating more family focused games.

“A key strategy for us is to give broad choice for people. You need to provide content which broadens your base of users from core gamers to different age groups,” said Bowman.

Bowman mentioned that developer Rare was a major player in Microsoft’s plans, adding that the studio’s current projects, a Nintendo DS port of Viva Piñata and Banjo-Kazooie 3, aim for a wider market.

“Now they’re starting to produce games with very, very broad appeal. If you look at Guitar Hero, it’s something which can be played by the whole family, by kids, males, females, adults. Kids also love our Viva Piñata Party Animals game, so it’s games like that.”

Despite Guitar Hero’s DLC being as shitty as predicted, it’s worth noting that Rock Band’s DLC is taking the non-wallet pillaging route. Case in point? Rock Band’s post-launch DLC content was announced today and it’s nothing short of amazing. The list, below:

Police pack: Roxanne, Synchronicity II, Can’t Stand Losing You (all masters)

Queens of the Stone Age pack: 3’s & 7’s, Sick Sick Sick, Little Sister (all masters)

Metallica pack: A three or six song pack, no songs announced yet

Black Sabbath pack: N.I.B, Sweet Leaf, War Pigs (all covers)

David Bowie: Moonage Daydream, Heroes, Queen Bitch

Punk Pack: Ever Fallen in Love, by Buzzcocks (cover)
I Fought the Law, by The Clash
Rockaway Beach, by Ramones

Single Songs:

Fortunate Son - Credence Clearwater Revival
Jukebox Hero - Foreigner
My Sharona - The Knack
Cherry Bomb - The Runaways
Bang a Gong (Get it On) - T. Rex
Joker and the Thief - Wolfmother
Brass in Pocket - Pretenders
My Iron Lung - Radiohead
Buddy Holly - Weezer

(swiped from: http://spartanedge.com/blogs/spartanedge5)

To say that reviewing a franchise like Guitar Hero would be futile is kind of a moot point; like what the A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin said about Saw IV, it doesn’t matter what I say, since by now, if you were going to pick up a copy, you probably already have a copy. For those on the fence though, there’s not really a whole lot new here, but Neversoft’s take on the GH franchise is pulled off well enough to please both casual and hardcore players.

It’s worth noting that Neversoft really didn’t divert from the basic formula that’s fueled the franchise: notes come down and you play them, etc. Neversoft’s said that they stressed making the game casual-gamer friendly and it definitely shows, as hammer-on and pull-offs are much easier to pull off, and the song list features more well-known songs (while GHII’s songs were still fun to play through, it’s not a stretch to say that “Psychobilly Freakout” doesn’t have the same recognition as Santana). Besides that, there’s not much new that Neversoft brings to the table besides online play and boss battles (however questionable of a concept that is). The Les Paul controller handles nicely compared to the Gibson SG/Xplorer; there’s a bit more heft to the controller and the buttons responsiveness is crisp.

Again, there’s not a whole lot that’s new here, but for what it’s worth, it’s a solid entry to the Guitar Hero franchise. Where the franchise goes from here is questionable though; opportunities to innovate on a formula like GH aren’t exactly bountiful (as Rock Band took the next logical extension for the franchise), but one can’t help but wonder how Neversoft’s going to keep the momentum going on the franchise.

Verdict: More of the same, for better or worse.

Game: Yaris
Platform: XBLA
It’s not often I feel the urge to throw my recently obtained Xbox 360 out the window, but Yaris, god forbid, made me come increasingly close. Unfortunately, as I can’t write a review consisting solely of “EERGH”, I’ve got to come up with at least 97 more words for this article, but that’s slightly harder than shooting fish in a a barrel of vaseline. Normally, I’m not one to shoot a gift horse in the foot, as Yaris technically is free, but Yaris, to put it plainly, isn’t worth the space it takes up on your hard drive.

Graphically, the game falls somewhere between an Atari 2600 game and a midbrow Playstation game; it looks horrid, even by XBLA standards. Yaris is plagued with lo-res textures and enough jaggies to make the game look like a low-end Nintendo 64 game. The controls are loose and unresponsive, and to boot, the gameplay’s nonsensical and bland. The game relies on the XBLA-formula of high score based gameplay, but it lacks both the addictive qualities of Geometry Wars and the visual panache of Pac-Man C.E., relying instead on a low end version the Sonic tube minigames that’s twice as repetitive and nowhere near as fun. Yaris may be free and offer 200 Gamerpoints, but it’s really not worth it to trudge through this mess of a game.
Score
-10 out of 5

Heavenly Sword is the restart of Sony’s fall 2007 game avalanche. Lair was the actual start but it currently maintains an average review score of less than 75%, something that I’m sure will translate into more negative Sony press. Fortunately, Heavenly Sword’s angry red-head leaves a much better taste in the mouths of PS3 owners than smoldering dragon carcass ever could. But the important thing is that it’s also a much different taste than any next-generation game has left so far.

The most accurate thing I can say about Heavenly Sword is that it’s the Army game. Remember the U.S. Army’s add campaign at the dawn of the millenium when they liked to say “We do more before 6 a.m. than most people do in a lifetime”? Well Heavenly Sword does more in seven hours than most games do in an entire series. Make no mistake about it, this heavily anticipated game clocks in at only 6-8 hours even if you stop to smell the roses. However, by the time the credits roll, you’ll have a sense of conclusiveness that few games, no, few series have managed to emulate.

HS tells the story of Nariko and her clan. Led by Nariko’s father Shin, the un-named clan is one of many being hunted down by the evil King Bohan and his ninja (?) army. The game literally begins at the chapter titled “The Final Battle”, but chronologically speaking, it starts with the 50 person clan fleeing a battle with hundreds of Bohan’s troops. It’s quickly revealed that Bohan has already decimated dozens of other clans in the land, and that Nariko’s is one of few remaining forces of resistance. The king is searching for the titular Heavenly Sword.

The sword itself is one of the game’s main characters. Those who wrote this game off as another God of War clone will be quickly proven wrong after their first encounter with this weapon. It’s basically a short blade connected to a hilt with a length of chains. The chains connect to another, larger blade which also has its own hilt. Due to some pass events (as told by the Legend of the Sword, a 5-part anime/promotional tool downloadable via the Playstation Store) the sword also drains the life of any mortal who controls it.

Nariko uses it as though it is actually three different types of weapons. The three stances, range, power, and speed, are the foundation for one of the deepest combat engines of any action game to date. In range stance, Nariko seperates the two blades and swings them by their connecting chains. This obviously allows her to hit enemies who are far away, but it also takes away the heroin’s ability to block. Speed stance has Nariko using both swords seperately, with one in either hand. This is the standard combat stance and it’s also the fastest to use, hence the name. Power stance is when Nariko puts both swords together and, for lack of any other possible method of description, kicks a**. Players also have the use of a simple, yet skill-based defense system. You block automatically whenever you’re not in an attack animation. Blue attacks can only be blocked in speed stance and orange only in power stance. Hitting the triangle button immediately after a successful block leads to Nariko counterattaking her foes and pressing the button at the exact moment of a block causes a one-hit kill counter. You can pick up and throw almost anything within reason in any given environment (including your opponents’ corpses) and there’s a “kill everything” move mapped to the circle button. That’s about it. The depth and genius of the system comes from the fact that it’s so applicable. You can use the stances and counters in one-on-one fights or in 2000-on-one fights. Stances are changable mid-combo on the fly wthout the weapon switching or pause menus featured in nearly every other recent action title.

Heavenly Sword’s plot was designed to rival that of a summer blockbuster film and it more than achieves that end. It does this differently than one might expect, though. While the story isn’t rife with plot twists or moral decisions, the art of storytelling is tested here. I could probably tell you all the events of the game in two sentences, but watching them unfold is what makes this game a must-play event. The characters actually play their roles. Each one from Nairko to the bosses to a random soldier in Shin’s clan gives a dramatic performance the likes of which have yet to be seen in another video game. They all look amazing graphically, but their lifelike movements and visible emotion really sell who they are and what they feel. Mark my words, you have never seen characters talk like these do. A cutscene in Heavenly Sword is the equivalent of a clip from an oscar calibur film.

And these extremely high production values aren’t just limited to the nonplayable segments. The environments you’ll peruse are amazingly detailed no matter where you are. In any outdoor area, you can look around and see for miles. There is no “pop-in” as you close the distance between yourself and far away objects. The level of realism in this game’s visuals is absolutely unparalled in any game on shelves.

The sound also fits Heavenly Sword beautifully. The music itself isn’t exactly Halo theme memorable, but it lends itself to the atmosphere very well. There are multiple sound effects for almost every action. I actually tested this. You can stand still and keep unsheathing the sword and it’ll rarely repeat sound effects. During the large scale battles, it really sounds like there are 3000 people and a dozen catapults in the area. And in the small fights, enemies are quick to comment on the beating they’re receiving or dishing out. It was revealed sometime over the summer that Heavenly Sword has over 12 gigabytes of sound, and after finishing this game, your speakers will certainly be ringing.

There’s really only one problem with Sony’s new showcase game: It’s short. While I’m not one to say every game should be a 40-hour epic this game deserves that treatment. It gets straight to the point, but it’s the only game in recent memory that caused me to wish it digressed a little. It’s long enough to give you a conclusive feeling and it definitely tells its story all the way through, but you’re still only going to play the game for seven hours. When a game goes this far to create such a detailed world and cast of characters, a player should want to stay in that world as long as possible. Heavenly Sword doesn’t give you a chance to do that. You strictly follow Nariko’s story and when it’s over, there’s nothing else to do in the game. The initial playthrough unlocks “Hell mode”, the only other difficulty level, and there are unlockable making of videos, but that’s all you’ll get out of this $60 package. It’s almost heartbreaking that these characters and this astonishing setting will only take up a few hours of your game-playing career.

Graphics: 10-This is currently the best-looking video game on store shelves.
Sound: 9-Quality-wise, it’s top notch. The music isn’t really memorable, but it’s effective. The voice acting might as well have been ripped straight out of a 4-star film.
Gameplay: 9 The controls are tight. Sixaxis motion control use adds to the experience, but is optional. The combat engine, like most of the game, will have you begging for more.
Value: 6 Even if you love the game, the length and lack of purposeful unlockables will limit your time with it to maybe a week at best.

Overall 9


News Roundup: The News You Need To Know, In A Mostly Late Fashion and credit to Jenn Frank for the original graphic


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