Ending B

Hey all! Been doing a lot of work over break (with working on my thesis, writing comics, and working on art), but I still managed to take some time to do some fun things over break. Here's what I've been up to. But first, let's start off the new year (or decade?) with...

A gratuitous panty shot! Thank you Tekken 6!

Over winter break, I played Tekken 6 and Final Fantasy X, and I watched some of Spice and Wolf. Here's what I thought of each.

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According to the Square-Enix website, Final Fantasy XIII will come to the United States on March 9th, 2010.

Don't look so apprehensive. From what I've seen, your game has potential.

Square's official site. The site itself has some short character bios, wallpapers, and other goodies. Check it out!

I had hopes for this game. High hopes. I spent the majority of the 1st disc hoping the game would get better….but it didn’t. What happened Tri-Ace? You used to be cool.

The plot so far is average at best. The game takes place in the year Space Date 10, or 2075. World War III has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable, so humanity turns to space looking for planets suitable for colonization. You take control of Edge Maverick, a 19 year old rookie space cadet who is assigned along with his teenage friends to be part of the exploration team. Why Earth is choosing teenagers who’ve barely finished school to explore unknown worlds is beyond me. Maybe the government thinks they’re expendable? In typical RPG fashion, things don’t always go as planned. In mid flight to the first destination, the ships encounter some space anomaly, causing a crash landing on, luckily, the destination planet. As if things weren’t bad enough, monsters which shouldn’t be anywhere near this planet inhabit it, and decide to wreak havoc on the survivors. After combining parts from 3 of the ships to make 1 working ship, Edge is given the task of continuing the mission to explore the galaxy, where more things won’t go as planned. Poor guy can’t seem to catch a break, eh?

The characters themselves aren’t particularly great. Edge himself starts off as a likeable guy, kind and ambitious, but gets painfully more annoying as the game goes on. Edge’s co-pilot, Reimi, takes the role of the weak woman, whose main purpose in the plot seems to be causing trouble for the party by needing to be saved in one way or another. Lymle, who looks like she’s 6 but is apparently 15 according to the manual, is probably the best character so far mainly because she doesn’t take sh*t from anyone and summons a huge Cerberus on anyone who tries to harm her. She does have the annoying habit of saying ‘kay after every sentence. I guess the director wanted her to be more “moe”. I’ve met more characters, but I won’t go into any detail about them, mainly since there’s nothing terribly interesting about them.

I'm 15 'kay

The battle system is good for the most part. Battles take place in real-time on a 3D map with up to 4 characters participating. You take control of one character and have the ability to switch who you control just by pressing the left or right bumper. Once you get more than 5 characters you can switch out one character for another. Only characters that participate in battle get experience so remember to switch out often unless you have no intention of using certain characters. The only complaint I have so far is that there seems to be no way to have one character perform an action while controlling another. Say I was controlling Edge but wanted Lymle to cast a spell. I have to switch control over to Lymle in order to do anything. In previous Star Ocean games, it would have been possible to bring up a menu over another character and have them either cast a spell or use an item.

The unique part of Star Ocean 4’s battle system is rush mode. When the little green bar under a character fills up to 100%, they can activate rush mode. In this mode, characters can attack more often and run a little faster. They also can use new moves but I haven’t been able to do so as of yet. The downside is enemies, including bosses have this too. This makes a few of the bosses particularly nasty.

I don’t know if I’ll end up finishing the game. It starts off interesting enough, but so far has mostly followed the formula of “get stuck on planet, escape from planet, repeat”. The battles are fun enough to keep me entertained but I don’t know for how much longer. My advice: play Star Ocean 2 if you haven’t already or if you’re itching for a 360 RPG, get Tales of Vesperia.

As the title of this article suggests, I've been playing Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox 360. I'm roughly half-way through the game (chapter 3 of 6, so that sounds halfway to me). This is what I think so far. I'll make sure to not reveal any spoilers that I've discovered in game and out.

Hey there, baby.

RE5 seems to be taking several steps forward as far as game mechanics goes. While I've only played the co-op mode once, I enjoyed myself. A friend of mine, Mike, and I played through the first chapter (I was Sheva and he was Chris). It was just a lot of fun, though I'm having a hard time articulating why.

Ah, Chris in a wonderful moment of chivalry.

But I'm sure most of you know the old saying, "One step forward, two step backwards," right? Well, I have the feeling this is how RE5 is playing out. Item management is a nightmare in this game (they only give you nine slots per character!). RE5 divides the game up into chapters (just like RE4), but you can go back to previous chapters to stock up on ammo health items. Call me crazy, but having a surplus of supplies kinda takes away from the "survival horror" aspect. I also discovered that while there are two main characters, I can only play is Chris until I beat the game, a move that the series has never done, and quite frankly, I don't like. They also took out save-points, so the only way you can save your progress is to complete the chapter (you can quit anytime and retain any items you collect). This also means this is the first Resident Evil game ever to NOT HAVE TYPEWRITERS!

The story almost seems haphazardly put together and I also have a problem with the major "plot twist." It relies on information that they make up at the beginning of this game instead of relying on events in past games. For those of us who played Resident Evil: Code Veronica, there was a perfectly good character they could have used for the mysterious agent. All they would've had to have done is include Claire in some way shape or form (possibly as a playable character) to make it work. I know I'm being vague, but I don't want to reveal spoilers in two games.

Uh... this isn't what it looks like...

Yes, I know this sounds mostly negative, but you have to keep in mind that I am not done with the game. By the end, I could really love this game, you never know. So far, I'm giving it a tentative recommendation. If you're a fan of RE, chances are you've already bought it. If your interested, I suggest you get together with a friend who owns it and give it a try (you defiantly have to play then co-op mode).

Kaboom!

Despite my severe sadness over the death of Jill, I decided to download and try out the Resident Evil 5 demo from Xbox Live. It's a little under half a gig in size to download, so it will take a while before you can play it. On the other hand, it is free!

First of all, while you can play the demo in a CO-OP mode, you can only play it with someone in the room (no Xbox Live). But it's a demo, so that's fine. There are two levels for you to try out: Public Assembly and Shanty Town. Public Assembly is pretty frantic with an unlimited number of zombies. You'll probably die pretty quickly. The Shanty Town is a bit more laid back, which I think is perfect for a demo.

You have both Chris and Sheva with you, but as far as I can tell, you can only control Chris. Both characters have a pistol and another weapon (Chris has a rifle and Sheva a machine gun). You'll probably use the pistol for most of the demo. It's kinda like if they let Ashley have a gun in RE4, and it's pretty damn fun.

Chris and Sheva do make a good duo, but not as good as Chris and Jill... sorry, still bitter.

I actually made it pretty far on the demo. I think I got to the end boss (a guy with a chainsaw). He made quick work of my team (mostly because I didn't have a shotgun).

This is a demo, but I hope they make some changes to a few things in the final version. First of all, this demo goes back to the old RE standby by of "One item, one item slot" and you only have eight each. I honestly hope that was just for the sake of the demo because it's a tad bit to hard to try and switch your weapon while your character sits there like a moron. Second, as I stated before, I hope you aren't stuck playing Chris the whole time. It would be cool to switch back and fourth between Chris and Sheva.

The full game comes out in March, so I'm looking forward to its release.

Jill was better.

Sorry about that...

No, no I'm not.

Tales of Vesperia comes out tomorrow. Just and FYI

Does this wolf have a sword... and a PIPE?! I'm so buying this now

*edit* Apparently, in the world of video game retail, a release date (not ship date) of August 26th means 11:30am to 12pm on August 27th. Go figure.

I was watching some of the E3 coverage on G4, and I came in just as they started the Resident Evil 5 coverage. They showed some of the gameplay, and it looks very similar to Resident Evil 4 (which is good, RE4 was awesome). BUT, I was really excited to find out that RE5 will have a co-op mode! In co-op, you play as either Chris or Sheva as you blast your way through zombie hordes to do... something... I actually have very little idea of the plot on this one. Still, I've been waiting for something like this for a Resident Evil game for a while (something that's not Outbreak or Umbrella Chronicles). I guess I've have to wait until March 13th, 2009, to get my hands on this baby.

Dibs on the sexy chick with the shotgun!

Big news from E3! Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, just announced that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360. It will be released at the same time as the Playstation 3 version.

One more reason I don't need a Playstation 3