Review #122: Assassin's Creed

 7 years too late, but here I am!

 Assassin's Creed is, at the moment, Ubisoft biggest cash cow, it quickly became a yearly franchise after the first one, the one I'm writing about today. Rough around the edges, Assassin's Creed was the first entry in the series, so it's only fair that we start off from here.

 The game is set in two different eras: Present day, with Desmond Miles, and during the Third Crusade as Desmond's ancestor Altair. Desmond is captured, before the game's beginning, by Abstergo and is now strapped to the Animus, a machine that puts him in the place of his ancestors, in this case, Altair. Turns out Desmond is a descendant from a long line of Assassins, and by relieving Altair's crusade against the Templars, Abstergo aims to obtain something. Desmond's short sequences are easily the most boring, but they are a bit interesting, Altair's story is much more interesting. The story itself is alright, and while the dialogue is nothing special, it does have a couple of shining lines. Furthermore, the whole lore surrounding the Assassins and Templars is very interesting. Oh, and the game ends with one of the biggest cliff hangers ever conceived, not cool Ubisoft!

 First things first, Desmond is the means to tie up subsequent sequels, his sequences consist of him walking around and asking questions... now, the meat of the game lies on Altair. The game features an open world with three huge towns, an "overworld" that connects the towns and a smaller village where the Assassin's guild resides. The game employs a functional parkour system, while holding R1 and X, Altair will try to climb or jump his way through buldings, walls, stands, windows or what have you. It works well most of the time, but occasionally Altair will stop dead on his tracks, requiring you to let go and then press the buttons again, and sometimes while trying to run in a direction, he will try to climb a wall. Luckily, most of the time it works well, but it clearly needs refinement. As an Assassin, Altair should kill without alerting anyone, should he be found out, he'll enter alert mode, not unlike Metal Gear Solid's, while in this mode you can either kill all the guards that spawn or avoid their line of sight and hide in a haystack, or bend with walking erudites or civilians sitting on benches. It's more fun than it sounds.

 Combat is fairly simple, and Altair packs a couple of weapons to make his job easier. The Hidden Blade is useless in battle, but it can be used to kill unsuspecting or fallen enemies, but when it comes to fighting he wields a sword and a small knife. The knife doubles as the projectile weapon, according to the distance, Altair will shoot a knife or try to hit his enemies with it. Fighting with the sword or the knife, at close quarters, is virtually the same, you can mash on the attack button to attack, time a Counter Attack(Which may or may not kill, which means its usefulness can vary!) or sidestep. To be honest, combat is dead simple and easy, only a couple of enemies can perform counterattacks and most of the time mashing on the attack button is all you really need.

 The game is fairly formulaic once it gets going. Very early in the game, Altair gets his arrogance get the best of him and gets demoted to the lowest rank, and must now prove himself to the brotherhood. The game is divided in chapters("Memory sections"), each chapter has up to three assassinations for Altair to perform, quite conveniently, each assassination takes place in a different section of each of the three towns. Before each Assassination, you must obtain at least three pieces of information, which is done by performing sidequests. Sidequests come in a few forms: Climbing vantage points, races, eavesdropping, pick pocketing, assassinating some targets without alerting guards or saving citizens from guard abuse. It's easy to tell that the game can get quite repetitive. Fulfilling sidequests has the added benefit of increasing your hit points("Synchronization rate") so it's in your best interest to do as many of them as possible. Regardless, after you get the information you need, you are off to Assassinate your target, each of this major Assassinations are the highlight of the game, and while they usually go down the same, the set up is entirely different, as well as their last words. After each assassination Altair will also go up in rank, regaining a weapon alongside a skill.

 The game also offers some optional quests in the form of hidden flags throughout the towns and 60 hidden Templars for Altair to defeat, but since the PS3 version has no trophies, they are not worth it. One thing that really irked me is that you can't manually save the game, you must rely on the autosave system. The game autosaves every time you find a collectible or clear a side quest, but it would've been nice to be able to save at will. Another annoyance, albeit much minor, is that when you are selecting a Memory Section, the nice Abstergo scientist will nag on Desmond, it quickly grows annoying when you are just checking stuff out.

  Graphics are a mixed bag. Most textures are fairly muddy, and character models aren't very pretty. Hilariously enough, Altair is the only Assassin missing a finger, which is supposed to be a trait shared by the brotherhood, not even Altair's Mentor is missing his finger! Also, secondary NPCs share heads, even with the Mentor who is a rather important character, or the Assassin Knights in the Assassin's HQ having 20 fingers(I'm not kidding!)... yeah, characters don't look very good. On the flip side, the world itself is beautiful, towns are a joy to see from above, and having the screen filled with NPCs walking around is really nice. Music is used very sparingly, but it's nothing special, and the voice acting is just passable. Altair in particular was fairly unimpressive.

  Assassin's Creed was a very decent first game, but it clearly needed a lot of polishing, and as repetitive as it got, I found myself having more fun than I expected.
 6.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Assasin's Creed

 It's time to begin the Assasin's Creed.

 It is time. I've never been too interested in the series, until Assassin's Creed III, set in a time period I love. Then IV got announced, and while I didn't care for it as much as I did three, the interest had set in, so now here I am, ready to play all six of them.

 First impressions? "This game looks ugly!". It does! Models look a bit shaggy, textures are muddy and movements are a bit off, and there's a tiny bit of framerate drops every now and then. The city, however, looks fantastic. Altair's voice actor doesn't manage to impress me either, the rest of the cast is as unimpressive. The gameplay is fairly alright, the parkour is really fun, but it definitely could use a little bit of polishing and Combat is dead simple. There also seem to be collectibles, but I am oblivious to their use, specially since this game doesn't support trophies.

 I may sound overly negative, but despite everything, I'm having fun with it.

Review #121: Vanquish

 It's all about them Space Marines.

 About four years ago, Sega released the Platinum Games' developed game Vanquish, a game that was touted as being the evolution of the third person shooter genre. While time has proven that statement overblown, how well does the game fare today?

 The game takes place far into the future, where Rusia has invaded and taken control of a North American Satellite that doubles as a weapon of mass destruction. As Sam Gideon, an ex-quarterback turned space-marine, you are equipped with the ARS(Augment Reaction Suit), an armor that allows for fast movement and enhanced reflexes(AKA Slo-mo), you are tasked to save Dr. Francois Candide from the Russians. The story is pretty cliched, with twists that you'll see coming a mile away, and the dialogue is downright terrible, typical action-movie stuff. The game is surprisingly cinematic, with a ton of cutscenes between and during chapters, they look fairly cool for the most time.

 Luckily, story is the last thing you'd play Vanquish for, its gameplay is where it's at. At its core, it's a third-person action shooter set in space, a dime a dozen, but it introduces a couple of gimmicks that make it unique. The ARS allows Sam to slide at frenetic speeds through the battlefield, how long you can slide is determined by a gauge on the bottom right corner of the screen, deplete it and the suit will over heat. There are two other actions that deplete the gauge, entering slo-mo, by dodging and then holding down the aim button, or using a powerful melee attack. The gauge also acts as a safety net of sorts, you don't get a health bar, instead the game uses the now obligatory regenerative health, if you take lethal damage, the game will slow down for as long as you have energy left, allowing you to easily dispatch of the aggressors or run into cover, as soon as the slo-mo ends you'll be in Overheat status. Overheat is something that you want to avoid, as you won't be able to dash, use melee attacks or slow down time, even worse, if you receive too much damage while Overheated, you will die. While the controls are extremely responsive, sometimes when slowing down time when aiming, soldiers, objects from the stage or even Sam himself will stand over your aiming reticule, making it hard to aim. It didn't happen too often, but enough to be worth mentioning. All in all, it's a very engaging mechanic, as you will want to make the most of your suit while being careful of when to push it.

 You can take with you up to three different weapons, from a total of 8(11 if you purchase the DLC), they all fill very gratifying to use, and you can upgrade them as you go through the game. Dying actually resets back one level every weapon, it only happens upon your first death on a chapter, but it actually encourages to play carefully if you want to keep them! Almost every stage has you allied with some space-marines, they are not a huge asset, but they can draw enemy fire, and if you revive them before they fully die, they will drop a weapon refill for you. Interestingly, while the game encourages you to zip around your enemies with the slide mechanic, the game offers a very functional cover system, if you so wanted to, you could play this game as you would any other third person shooter. Regardless, the game feels very arcadey, with a score based grading, which I really liked.

 On the Normal difficulty the game packs a decent challenge, but the unlockable God Hard difficulty will test even the most hardcore third person shooter enthusiast. While the game is a bit short, 7 or so hours on your first playthrough, not skipping cutscenes and figuring stuff out for the first time(Like those annoying enemies that have one hit kills!), further playthroughs will probably slim down to 2-4 hours depending on how good you are, although 4 hours will be impossible on God Hard mode! After each chapter you unlock Challenge missions, there's 6 of them, and they are all pretty challenging, but pretty fun as you must destroy waves upon waves of enemies, these fights are more intense than the skirmishes you'll face on the main game.

 The graphics are fairly good on a technical level, but characters look extremely generic. Space-marines look like any other game's space-marines, there's not a whole lot of enemy variety, the common robots you face also lack personality, even if they are colored according to their behavior(Reds are common grunts, oranges tend to stay back and blues will dash towards you). On the other hand, Sam and his ARS look extremely cool and do stand out amidst the other characters. The futuristic satellite the game takes place on also looks very neat, even if it doesn't stand out too much. The soundtrack is comprised mostly of techno tracks, very fitting for the game, and while I won't be humming any track any time soon, they are not bad. Voice acting was very good, even if Sam and the rest of the marines try their hardest to sound gruff.

 Vanquish didn't sell very well, probably had to do with reviews mentioning how short it was, despite getting mostly glowing reviews. Despite its length, Challenge mode does make up for it, and the mechanics are very solid, with just a little issue that sometimes popped up when aiming. While it wasn't the future of the genre, it does stand out against the others when i.
 8.0 out of 10.

Archile's Grab bag: Fabulous Murderous Tuesday Edition

 It smells... like a new box has arrived.

 Cut cut cut.

 Borderlands 2 - Game of the Year Edition: It's no secret that I loved Borderlands 1, and it seems Gearbox found their cash cow, as they created loads upon loads of DLC for it. At least it was made after the game was finished.

 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4: I needed Tony Hawk in my life, and this was probably my favorite one. Now I need Underground 2 and maybe, MAYBE, Tony Hawk 3.

 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Ah, the PS1 JoJo game, it was really good at a non-competitive level.

 Assassin's Creed: It's time to play the Assassin's Creed saga. The first one is the one I'm the least excited about!

 Assassin's Creed - Ezio Trilogy: The Ezio Trilogy, I wonder if Ezio is as good a protagonist as they make him out to be, heck, Ubisoft managed to create a Trilogy inside the first Trilogy. Trilogy Inception.

Assassin's Creed III: I've read that this was one of the least liked entries, but ever since the first trailers, this was the Assassin's Creed that got me interested in the series, I just love the time epoch it takes place in.

Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag: Second only to the third one in how excited I am about an AC game!

Now Playing: Vanquish

 About damn time.

 Vanquish is a game that I've always wanted to play ever since trying out the demo, but for one reason or another, never got around doing it. That changed today.

 The game is right up my alley, it's fast, frenetic and very arcadey, even if it does embrace the cover mechanics that third person shooters must have nowadays. Still, I'm having a blast, I just cleared Act 1 and defeated Bogey. I should also admit that I'm quite terrible at the game, but I'm getting better by the minute!.
One thing that surprised me was just how cinematic the game is. The story isn't engaging, the dialogue is terrible, but there's a lot of cutscenes and cool looking stunts.

 And now, I must slide away into Robogeddon.

Review #120: Bleach - Heat the Soul 7

 I wish we got Versus Crusade overseas...

 While we get Naruto games almost every year, Bleach hasn't been as lucky. While even in Japan, the slew of Bleach games have slowed down, they still got a lot of games that we didn't. Case in point, the Heat the Soul series, developed by Eighting, of the Naruto Clash of the Ninja fame, guess Western countries just want nothing to do with Eighting's fighters!

 Heat the Soul series was a 1 on 1 fighting game series up to the seventh installment, but this one added various mods for up to 4 fighters. You get tag battles, free for all or team battles. The game not only boasts a decent amount of types of battle, but also modes. There's a unnecessarily lengthy Story Mode made up of 25 battles, then you unlock an extra fight, and then another 25 battles which are the same battles from before but now you play as the villain. The story mode covers from Ichigo's duel with Ulquiorra to the Vizards arrival to Karakura town to help the Shinigami against the Espada, and fights are preceded by short cut-scenes reenacting dialogue from the series. Then there's Hueco Mundo Conquest, a challenge mode of sorts made up of over 100 challenges. There's a rather underwhelming Arcade Mode, in which you pick routes(VS humans, VS Shinigami, VS Vizard, VS Espada), it would've been nice to have a more randomized ladder, but it's alright. Rounding up the options there's VS CPU, VS Player, Training Mode and Gallery. All in all, there's a decent amount of stuff to do, even if not all of it is as engaging as it could've been.

 My biggest issue with the game is that it feels just like every other recent fighter by Eighting, like Naruto Clash of the Ninja and Kamen Rider: Hero Climax. If you played any game of those other two, you'll feel right at home with this one. Battles take place on a 3D plane, on a 2D angle, and it plays like a 3D fighter as well. You have sidestepping and free 8 way movement, and combos are executed by linking strings rather than command specials. That's not to say that the game lacks projectiles, there's plenty of characters that specialize on ranged combat. As for the more unique mechanics, the Square button charges energy, and letting go of the button unleashes a wave around your character, if the enemy doesn't block it, he or she will get stunned for a while. The energy bar serves a few purposes: Cancelling combos by tapping the R button or unleashing special attacks. If you charge both stocks of the bar, tapping L+R will make your character go into his or her next form, if available, or grant them unlimited uses of the energy bar for a few seconds. Disappointingly, forms and energy bars revert to 0 after each round, so there's no point of hogging the energy, and since you can't pick individual forms of a character in 1 vs 1 mods, it makes transforming a but disappointing.

 The game has a huge 83 character roster(Counting transformations), and all play different from each other, characters with alternate forms usually play very different on each form as well, except a couple of Vizards who only get stat boosts. Sadly, characters don't have very extensive movesets, but at least they are fairly unique from each other. One thing to keep in mind, if you have the UMD version, loading times can be a bit on the long side, so installing the game is definitely recommended.

 Visually, the game is very colorful, even if the backgrounds feel a bit simple at times, at least they are from the show. Models are not very detailed, but they look good enough, however, certain animations feel a bit off. It's easy to see that not every character had the same amount of care put into, some have some very awkward looking attacks, while others get some smooth and good looking animations, it's a bit jarring at times. Ulquiorra's basic Strong attack string, and a most moves from Grimmjow are good examples of this. The soundtrack is alrightish, but it would've been nice to get music from the show. Every voice actor from the show voices their characters on the game, as per usual on Japanese licensed games.

 Bleach: Heat the Soul 7 is a very decent fighter, and if you are a fan of Bleach, there's no reason not to get it. It's a bit disappointing how every Eighting fighter feels so similar to each other, but at least they use a solid engine. If you don't care about Bleach, there are a dozen better fighters on the PSP, so unless you are a fan, there's no reason to get it.

 7.5 out of 10.

Review #119: Dark Cloud 2

 Over 50 hours to finish this one!

 Dark Cloud 2 is one of the PS2's most criminally forgotten gems. While most people mistake this game for an RPG, this is a Rogue-like through and through, but a bit more forgiving than most!

 As Max, son of the wealthiest man in Palm Springs, you are to traverse 8 different dungeons, 1 per chapter, as you right the time-line that is being destroyed by Griffon, an evil being that aims for world destruction. Pretty early on his adventure, Max comes across Monica, a girl from the future who's father was killed by one of Griffon's henchmen. The story is fairly cliched at times, but it's told fairly well, even if there were some characters that were too easily forgiven....

 Each of the eight Chapter features one dungeon, usually, alongside a town that you must rebuild. While it sounds short, the game is quite extensive. Each dungeon is fairly long(Except the first one, which is quite short, and the bonus one from the eight chapter that it's the longest dungeon in the game) featuring a decent amount of floors. While the game is a Rogue like, it's a bit easier than most, for instance, you don't go from floor to floor, instead, after clearing a floor you can exit the dungeon, do your business, and when you return you can pick up from where you left, or just go back to any of the previous floors.

 When you play, you take both Max and Monica, but you only take control of one at a time. You can switch at the touch of a button, or when one of them dies. Max can also pilot Steve, a fully customizable Robot, however, in order to expand the mount of Capacity points it has, you must earn experience for it(Which means neglecting experience for Monica or Max), while Monica can transform into monsters by acquiring their "Monster Coins". Both Monica and Max have different weapons and movesets, Max wields a Gun(That can be evolved into a laser gun, Grenade Launcher or a Machine gun) and a Wrench(That can be turned into a Hammer or, well, a bigger Wrench) and Monica gets a Sword(That can be turned into a heavy sword or a lighter, faster sword) and a Bracelet.

 Each floor is randomly generated each time you visit it, and each one possesses enemies and chests, sometimes trapped, and if you are lucky enough, a healing fountain with unlimited uses. Defeating enemies makes them drop experience gems for the weapon that dealt the last blow, when you level up you weapon, it earns points that are used to evolve them. Keep in mind that weapons break, so taking Repair powder in your inventory is a must! Enemies will also, sometimes, drop items, these can be healing or weapon repairing items, but most of the time, they will be either Georama Items or elemental items. Elemental Items can be "spectrumized" and then fused to a weapon  to raise its stats. Depending on how you raise your weapon is how it will evolve(The game shows you all the evolution branches that your weapon can take, and on which stats you must raise in order to take that branch). You can spectrumize any item in the game, but it's the elemental orbs that will give you the most point on each stat, at least until you find the very rare precious stones.

 Now then, what are Georama items? These are items that are used to build Georama Parts in order to reconstruct towns. Reconstructing towns consists of creating buildings, trying to achieve certain goals(Like "X amount of Y placed") in order to rebuild these towns in the future. While you can take your time to rebuild each town, you will need to do it in order to advance through the game, triggering certain scenes in the future are usually a necessity to get the item needed to reach the chapter's boss. If you don't like these construction aspect of the game, you are out of luck, but at least they are not too involved. Items are also used in order to build items(Projectile tools, healing items, Robot parts, weapons), but you need to photograph ideas first, and then mix these ideas in order to find out what items you need to build it. There's also some NPCs that can be recruited on Palm Springs, by doing small sidequests, and you can then move them into each town(Many a times, having a specific NPC on a Town is one of the Town's goals). These NPCs can also be taken with you on each dungeon for various passive effects, or even allowing you to repair your weapons or baking bread for you. Finally, there's an Spheda minigame on each of the randomly generated floors, Spheda is basically golf with a color twist, Portals(Holes) are either blue or red, and in order to clear it, you must hit it with a ball of the other color, in order to change the color of the ball, you must hit it against something... but you must also keep in mind that you only get a limited amount of swings!

 I found the combat to be quite simple, but it's fairly fun. You also need to keep in mind that the game can get quite challenging, and it's usually advisable to keep both Max's and Monica's weapons up to date. The optional boss requires a set amount of damage to be done by both characters. And if you want your robot not to be a hindrance, you'll have to spend time on it as well. Basically, this is a game that demands a lot of your time, you have to grind for money if you need to buy items in order to rebuild towns(What you find in dungeons will not be enough most of the time) or upgrade your weapons or even to buy healing items, and you also need to at least keep both character with updated weapons. If both characters die, it's game over, no continues, and if the one that had all the upgrades died, you are screwed unless you can find the key to the next floor, and then find the exit.

 It's also not without its flaws, the lock on mechanic will sometimes have trouble with some enemies, getting the camera to try to jerk its way to the enemy, usually failing, so you are better of cancelling the lock, moving the camera yourself, and then locking on again. Another issue is with the items that upgrade Max and Monica's Health and Defense, these spawn after certain floors are cleared, but you are never told when they spawn, or when on the future timeline they are, and even then, they spawn on very small chests that are easy to miss. These are a must-have or enemies will destroy you very easily, so it's a bit annoying, you are better of finding a guide of when and where they spawn. Then there's also the fact that each Floor of each respective dungeon shares a common tileset with the other floors of the dungeon, so every dungeon looks exactly the same, even if the layout and enemies are different, coupled with the fact that you may need to grind for experience or gold, repetition can set in pretty soon.

 I dare say that Dark Cloud 2 is one of the better looking PS2 games out there. The animation is a bit lacking, but the overall visual style is gorgeous. It's a colorful game, with equally colorful and often times weird NPCs. Monster design is also fairly creative, even if there are more palette swaps than I would've liked. Music is excellent, very whimsical or dark according to the moment. There's a particularly peppy song that plays on every second-to-last floor that's really, really good. I would compare the quality of the soundtrack to a Nintendo game, and that's a good thing. Voice acting is really good for the most part, but there's a couple that aren't quite up to snuff.

 Dark Cloud 2 is a game that is not for everyone. You must be willing to dedicate time to it, you'll have to tough up to the challenge. But in the end, it will be worth it.
 9.0 out of 10.