Review #153: Shinobi

 The swell guys at Google actually unlisted my blog for a little while....

 Shinobi is one of Sega's longest running series, I believe, they usually revolve around different protagonists and settings, but they all share one thing in common: You play as one badass Ninja.

 The story while not particularly deep, serves its purpose well, and I really liked the lore. You play as Hotsuma, the leader of the Oboro clan, a role he achieved by beheading his brother in battle. As soon as the game starts, the entirety of the Oboro clan is killed offscreen, and their corpses are being used to hunt Hotsuma. Later down the road, Akujiki, Hotsuma's blade, awakens and now craves the blood of his enemies... if not, it will consume Hotsuma himself. While most enemies are rather simple, and bosses aren't much to talk about, there are a few outstanding designs, like Hotsuma who is one of my favorite Ninjas ever created, or the Evil Ninja the evil guy's head honcho employs.

 Gameplay is very action oriented, with a couple of platforming sections. Hotsuma has a rather varied assortment of moves at his disposal. Square provides the Katana slashes, targeting an enemy and holding back while attacking produces a kick that break guards, and he also has Kunais, that deal negligible damage, but stuns the enemies. Hotsuma can also double jump, and by jumping towards walls he can cling onto most of them, and move alongside it, attacking if needed. There's also a Shadow dash that can be used to dodge or quickly move behind an enemy. Sometimes you'll run into scrolls that allow Hotsuma to cast one of three spells, the offensive Ka'en fire spell, Kamaitachi that lets Hotsuma fire lightning slashes and Raijin that gives him invincibility for a few seconds. Lastly, holding R1 allows Hotsuma to target an enemy, but slows him down to a walk, I found that R1 was useful to track where the next enemy was in order to better approach him. Controls are spot-on, and moving around while Ninjaing around feels really good.

 The game's main mechanic revolves around the Akujiki, as previously stated, this sword craves for blood, even if it's Hotsuma's, basically, go on for too long without killing enemies, and the sword will begin sapping Hotsuma's health. Killing enemies restores a moderate amount of the gauge, what you really want to do is "Tate" kills. After killing an enemy, he will remain dead, but standing, for a little while, and every time you kill another enemy, so will they, the more enemies you leave in this stage, the stronger Akujiki becomes, until they fall dead. Killing every enemy in the vicinity before any one of them falls will produce a Tate, the camera will freeze at an angle, while Hotsuma strikes a pose and the enemies all fall together, restoring a huge amount of the Akujiki gauge.

 The game is moderately challenging on its normal setting. I read that the game was supposed to be "incredibly hard", but at least on the normal setting, it's pretty manageable. The game has 10 stages, and I didn't have to retry any one more than four times, same goes for the "incredibly hard" last boss, whom I defeated on my third try. This isn't me boasting, I don't boast over videogames, this is me saying that, while not easy, it isn't as hard as everyone makes it out to be. One thing to keep in mind though, is that levels don't have checkpoints, die and it's all over. And botomless pits? Sorry, back to the start of the level. Which wouldn't be so bad, but there's a fair amount of platforming required, and the platforming isn't up to snuff. The camera, while fine while fighting, doesn't aid you in aiming your jumps, and getting used to how Hotsuma jumps takes a bit of time. That said, level 8, the one filled with botomless pits over which you must jump around as you break seals and enemies, was one of my favorites.

 The game is rather short, while Stages are divided in two sub stages(Say, 1-A and 1-B), they are fairly short, and the latter "B" levels are simply bosses without preceding stages. Levels have hidden coins for you to find, and find 30 and 40 of them will unlock two different playable characters with their own strengths and weaknesses, which is pretty cool and a great incentive to play the game again on the higher difficulties. While the game left me wanting more, I found the length, for the type of game, just fine, the issue was that I liked the game so much, I wanted it to last even longer!

 Presentation is Shinobi's weakest asset. Enemies are very simple and not much to look at, and the stages look rather bland. I loved going through the stages, but they felt a bit generic, with very few remarkable landmarks. There's the level in the city, and the one underground, and the one with lava, and so on, not much to talk about. Textures are also fairly muddy. On the flip side, Hotsuma looks really cool, and the scarf makes him look even cooler. Music was fairly good, I loved most tracks, but the voice acting was mediocre, even the Japanese one.

 I'm gonna say it straight, I loved Shinobi. My biggest complaint is the platforming, which is merely adequate and could've been handled a bit better. The second one being that I wanted even more Shinobi. Everything else about the game, I enjoyed, easily on my favorite PS2 games ever created. And Hotsume is hands down the most badass Ninja ever created, no wonder Hibana and Jiro borrowed so much from his design(And mixed it with Joe's colors).
 9.0 out of 10.

Review #152: Blazblue ChronoPhantasma

 Because we all enjoy having DLC shoved up the wazoo.

 ChronoPhantasma is the latest installment in the Blazblue serie, technically it's the third title in the series, but we know better(Calamity Trigger, Continuum Shift, Continuum Shift 2 and Continuum Shift Extend). This version introduces a couple of new changes to the formula, new characters and a new story.

 Previous games featured individual storylines for each character, this is not the case in this game, now you have a selection of three branches, taking place in different time periods, that has you playing as the character the story demands. While this new approach should've been better, since it makes the "canon" path clearer, I have more than a couple of gripes with it. For starters, the story continues to be a very cliched mishmash of anime tropes, nothing, absolutely nothing that you'll see here is new or original. You'll hear lines like "I must get stronger to protect those I love" or "I'm not even using my full power" and the like, lines you've heard over and over again. Another thing to keep in mind, is that the game's forefront is... fanservice. Characters will be crying, but the game will still shove a female's butt up your face, taking the story seriously is nigh impossible. The story doesn't pace itself very well either, you can't follow an entire branch all the way through, instead, the game will force you to go through other branches in order to unlock other sections for all three branches, its obnoxious and a can get confusing, not to mention that the fight-to-reading ratio is very tilted towards reading, there's barely any fights in this mode, and there's a lot, a lot of fluff when it comes to writing. Conversations that serve no purpose, not even to further character developement, and there's not a ton of CG images to aid the narrative, at least we get more anime cutscenes than in the last game. At the end of the day, the story wasn't an enjoyable aspect of the game, but you can skip all of it from the outgo.

 Since I just mentioned the story mode, might as well unleash my rant about the DLC. There's an entire character on the disc, Yuuki Terumi, hidden behind a paywall. You fight him in the story mode, he's featured in the game's cover and in a ton of in-game images... yet he is behind an 8 dollar paywall. There's also Kokonoe who has been shown to be finished, and shown alongside the rest of the playable characters on the credits roll... yet she's behind an 8 dollar paywall. You can go through the drag that is the story mode in order to unlock the game's only unlockable character... or pay 5 bucks to get him without the hassle. The game's Unlimited versions of each character are unlocked by beating Unlimited Mars Mode, hiding rewards behind the hardest modes is OK, what is not OK is "offering" the alternative of paying for them, it looks tacky and greedy. The game feels like it's trying to fight you for your money all the time, it also feels as if stuff is missing since it's constantly being thrown over your face. It's not cool, it's not OK, it's disgusting.

 Now that that's over, let's talk about positives, of which there are many. I loved the new gameplay mechanics, first we have "Overdrive", tapping all four buttons at the same time will engage Overdrive mode, which is unique for each character. Some characters had Supers transformed into their overdrives, while others get unique new buffs while in Overdrive. Overdrive lasts as long as a new gauge lasts, the less health you have, the longer it gets. Bursts, pressing all buttons while blocking all receiving damage, now shares the same gauge as the Overdrive, so you'll have to think twice before using either, as it takes a while for the gauge to refill. Guard Primers have been removed, and Guard Crush got changed into Crush trigger, by spending 25 heat you can use it to break the enemy's guard. A new small, but most welcome, feature is that you can now see how your character's colors will look on the character selection screen.

 Besides Story, Arcade and VS Modes, you also get a revamped Abyss Mode(It's now divided into different abysses, with different depths and difficulties), Score Attack(It's basically Arcade Mode, but on default settings), Unlimited Mars Mode(Play different courses of Unlimited versions of characters on the hardest setting), a 30-Challenge course for each character and the staple Tutorial mode. It's a decent variety of modes, coupled with a Gallery in which you can unlock art. Most of it is, you guessed it, of a fanservicey nature, doesn't matter how old the character is supposed to be, Japan's gonna have'em wear the skimpiest clothing they can. Because Japan. Ishiwatari's art is pretty dope though. The five new non-DLC characters are actually pretty good additions to the roster, offering their very own styles to the table. All previous characters have been rebalanced, some play very different than they used to(Like Jin), while others saw changes mostly in their numbers(Like Ragna)

 ChronoPhantasma, gameplay wise, is a very good addition to the Blazblue series, it might be the most balanced installment yet, but it's hard not to feel as if ArkSys is trying to force the cash out of your wallet, which really hampered my enjoyment with the game. Story Mode wasn't very entertaining this time around either.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Shinobi

 Another day, 'nother Shinobi.

 Sega really needs to start adding some kind of subtitles to their multiple Shinobi games. Shinobi on the PS2 was a game I was really fond off, it was challenging but very fun. And so far, so good. Admittedly, I don't have a ton of spare time at the moment, so I only just cleared Stage 1(Which means Akujiki's nature has been awakened, but Stage 2 would be the first one to have it zapping Hotsuma's health), but I was having fun. The music is phenomenal.

 Oh, and Hostuma is such a badass. He has a rather simple design, and while a bit too flashy for a Ninja, due to the Red scarf, it looks so good in motion that you can forgive it.

Review #151: Def Jam - Fight for NY

 Back when EA used to be cool!

 Grab some of the biggest Rap and Hip Hop artists of the moment and make a fighting game surrounding them. It should've been the biggest bust the world had ever seen since Shaq Fu, and yet, Def Jam Vendetta proved to be a great game. So of course, it paved the way for a sequel, however, since it's been a while since I played Vendetta, I can't really compare them, not that it matters since this one can stand on its own two feet.

 The story takes place right after you defeated D-Mob. Just as the police take him away, a car crashes into the police van and takes D-Mob away. You play as the new recruit who took part in D-Mob's rescue, as you try to take over the different avenues, by fighting Crow(Played by Snoop Dog)'s yesmen. The story is all kinds of ridiculous, which is what makes it so damn good. Try to take the plot seriously, and you won't get as much enjoyment out of it as you would otherwise. Picking up a lass is a matter of approaching them and fighting their dude, earning respect is done by, well, beating up other dudes. Everything is resolved by beating rappers senseless. This is my kind of game.

 The game borrows many elements from wrestling games, but with better strike play. Battles take place in arenas, usually surrounded by a crowd. Arenas are more than decor, you can throw your enemy against the crowd to have them hold him for you, or throw them against various objects and punish them with them. There's three basic attacks: Punches, Kicks and grabs. Blocking beats striking, while a well timed strike will break a grab. There's five different styles(Martial Arts, Street Fighting, KickBoxing, Wrestling and Submission), but characters can know up to three styles which vary their movesets, so technically, there's more than five different styles. The objective of each match is to knock out your opponent, which is done by dropping their health to "Danger" level and hitting them with a weapon, an object, an special move or a style-depending move. All in all, fighting is very simple, but very fun. It's not the most involved of fighters, or the deepest, but it's easy and fun to play, with no glaring unbalances between styles.

 There's a ton of modes, but they all involve fighting. You can do one on one, Team matches, Free for all with up to four fighters, Window Matches(In which you must throw your opponent down a window in order to win), Subway Matches(Throw them into the rails when the train comes by), Demolition(Destroy the opponent's car by using, well, the opponent itself), Inferno(A battle surrounded by a ring of flames that hurts whoever steps on it), Cage Match and Ring-out based matches. Quite a handful! There's also the Story Mode, which is a bit more involved as it follows a storyline and a custom-created character which you can customize by buying him clothes, raising his stats and learning finishing moves or other styles. Story Mode lasts about 2 hours on the easiest setting, but could potentially last 4 on the medium setting(My older savefile has 4 hours logged in, and a couple of losses which probably made for the longer time. Easy is pretty easy!)

 Presentation is top-notch, high production values all around. There's over 70 unique characters(Even if a lot of them are, technically, clones with only their special move being unique), most of them based on real rappers. They all look fantastic thanks to the very stylized look the game went for. Characters look very realistic, but with a sort of cartoonish flavor, it's hard to describe. Whether you dig the style or not, the quality of the graphics is undeniable, lighting effects are sublime and textures look great. Animation is silky smooth as well, with some painful looking moves. As far as custom characters go, most of the clothes don't seem to fit them very well, making them look a bit fat, a bit of a minor complaint, but worth noting. Music.... It ain't a secret that I dislike Rap and Hip-Hop, so as far as I'm concerned, the soundtrack is terrible. Voice overs were done by the rappers themselves, and they all pulled very convincing performances.

 Def Jam: Fight for NY is a great game, if you are into Rap and Hip Hop, I assume you'll get more out of it, but even for someone who dislikes the genre, the game is a blast, you don't even need to know who these characters are based on to enjoy the game.

 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Def Jam Fight for NY

 I used to love the prequel.

 But for some reason, I never got hooked with the sequel, or rather, I don't have many memories of it, since it seems I've got a 100% savefile on this game! Regardless, I chose to start a new with a fresh new fighter. The first thing you notice, is that the game looks amazing. Lightning is impressive, graphics look incredible, textures are fantastic and the animation is impossibly smooth.

 But graphics mean jack if you ain't got gameplay, and this game aces that regard as well. Combat is a bit simple, and I don't ever see it being played competitively, but man does it feel good. The soundtrack sucks though(I dislike Rap and Hip-hop, sue me).

Review #150: Spawn Armageddon

 This gets to be my review 150? I'm disappointed.

 Spawn hasn't had a good game. The SNES game was ambitious, but ultimately not very good, the GBC game wasn't very good either, and the PS1 game... the least we say about that one the better. There was also a Dreamcast game that looks really good, but sadly I don't own one, so I can't speak about that one. The one I can speak about is Spawn Armageddon, a third-person action game/shooter from Namco that while being on the right track, ultimately falls short of its goal.

 Notice the title? Armageddon. The game takes place sometime after Al Simmons gets betrayed and killed by a former associate, then resurrected as the Spawn by Malebolgia, the ruler of hell. All of this is told in a beautiful FMV cut-scene at the start of the game, one of two(The other one being the ending). After Spawn finishes narrating his origin, a green light engulfs the city, signaling the beginning of the Armageddon. The rest of the story is told via text-cut outs before each stage, or mission as the game calls them, pretty lame. They did borrow this from Devil May Cry 1, but at DMC complimented the text with a ton of in-game cutscenes, and while this game has a very few of those, most of the stages feel very disjointed. I am supposed to believe that "fallen" angels, which never appeared in game min you, led Spawn to another place in the world? I'm not such an easy sell!

  Spawn has plenty of tools to deal with his enemies. Firstly, he gets his axe, but you can't do much with it. You have a basic three hit combo, an airdrop slash and an upwards slash that allows you flip a certain enemy type, and just this one and only enemy type, which makes you wonder why even bother with it, this little nuance does little to alleviate the repetitive nature of the combat. Spawn, having being a former soldier and a contract killer, knows his way around fire-arms, of which he'll get plenty. Sadly, long-range shooting isn't very fun, if you want your shots to hit their mark, you gonna be using the sloppy targeting system that never manages to target the enemy you want to hit, but at least you can cycle through enemies. Targeting also slows down Spawn to a walk, for some reason he can't run and gun while targeting. This needs to be said, the game really needed a block function, Spawn's mobility really isn't up to par with his enemies who will assault him relentlessly. You do get side jumps, but they are very slow and barely move him to the side, it's only useful on certain situations. The last tools on Spawn's arsenal are his Necroplasmic powers, he has five of them, and they are pretty useful most of the time. They run on Necroplasm, which you restore by collecting green orbs. All in all, the action has a very DMC vibe, without the combo system and without everything that made the combat so good in that game.

 The game also borrows the upgrading system from DMC, defeating enemies will provide blue orbs which you can then use to upgrade fire arms, your health bar or your Necroplasm bar before each missions. And that's about all that the game has going for it, the rest isn't any good. Firstly, the camera is atrocious, many a times it feels as if you are fighting with the camera just to get it to look where you want. Once, I moved inside a tunnel before I was supposed to(Not that there's any indication of that, as you are given enough time to enter it when it starts spinning), and the camera got locked in its place, forcing me to restart the mission. Fun. Oh, glitches. At least twice Spawn got locked in the moving animation... without moving an inch from his spot, the first time an enemy was nice enough to knock me out of it, but the second one I was forced to restart the mission. Fun times. Rounding up the flaws, we have the targeting reticule that sometimes likes to glitch out and target thin air, and the terrible, terrible platforming sections that the game forces upon you. The camera wasn't built for platforming and neither was Spawn's movement.

 The game has 23 stages, but they aren't very fun to explore. Most of them are pretty plain, and nothing really stands out. The game isn't very hard if you spam your chains, the only ranged weapon that doesn't use ammo, in order to save up ammo for the bosses. There's a couple of levels that are a bit harder than the rest, one which is incredibly cheap that has lasers falling on you, as claw demons tackle you while you try to kill the lamenting demons which make projectiles spawn over you, and another one that is a very long section of terrible platforming.

 The graphics aren't very good, Spawn himself could've used more detail, and while the game is based on spawn, it seems as if you are getting attacked by generic enemies that could've come out of Quake. Animation is passable, but Spawn's three-hit combo looks so off for some reason, must be the way he has to throw his body forward for every motion. On the other hand, the soundtrack is really good, seems it was composed by Marylin Manson? Regardless, it's very fitting and very good. Surprisingly, voice acting is really good... most of the time, Spawn's reaction in the ending wasn't convincing, I almost laughed at how much it made me cringe.

 While it doesn't do anything particularly well, it isn't a terrible game. At times, it can be fun, but for the most part, it feels like it lacks a soul.
 4.5 out of 10.

Review #149: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha VS The Soulless Army

 Name's quite a mouthful, eh!

 Shin Megami Tensei is a series that has a ton of spin-offs, from the massively popular, and sadly over exploited, Persona series, to the more unknown Demi Kids. Regardless, I'm not here to write about either, instead this is about one of the offshoots from the Devil Summoner spin off(Yes, a spin off with its own spin offs!), featuring Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th first adventure. Full disclosure, I had played the sequel before playing this one, and consider the sequel polishes everything about this game, I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I would've had I not played the sequel first.

 The game takes place in the 20th year(1930) of the Taisho Era in Japan, when Japan was in the first stages of westernizing itself. It makes for a very unique setting, both in locales, and the NPCs that populate the area. Raidou in particular is one of my favorite characters in the Shin Megami Tensei Universe, even though he is almost a carbon copy of a famous Japanese villain.... Regardless, you play as the aforementioned Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th, a devil summoner and a trainee detective working for the Detective Narumi, who specializes in unconventional cases. Raidou's adventure begins after meeting a girl asking Raidou to kill her, and then she gets kidnapped by soldiers in red. As much as I loved the locales and the characters, the story isn't paced very tightly. Y'see, the game is divided in 12 chapters, and the early chapters are, usually, about slightly connected cases, they all tie up in the end, and the story does move more smoothly in the latter chapters, but it gets a while to get going.

 Unlike most Shin Megami Tensei games, this is not a turn-based RPG, while it does have Random Encounters(With a, sadly, rather high encounter rate) battles take place in a small arena where Raidou and his demon can move about as they engage the enemies. Raidou himself only has access to a three hit Katana combo, a thrust and a spin slash, or he can use a gun, that while weak, can be used to shoot elemental bullets and stun opposing demons. Hitting an enemy with its weakness will stun then, making any further attacks deal critical damage, or, if Raidou's level is high enough, you can press circle to engage in a mashing mini-game to confine the Demon in a tube and add him to your ranks. Demons level up very slowly, so your best bet is to confine as many new demons as you can and keep fusing them to get better, stronger demons.

 Demons are Raidou's strongest tool, as he himself can't use magic, they are the ones that can heal him with magic or attack enemies with their weaknesses. One annoying thing to keep in mind, is that you have to reissue commands before every fight. Don't want your demon to waste its MP? gonna have to select "Don't waste MP" from the order menu before each and every fight. Demons don't just serve as weapons, there's about 10 different "orders" a demon can belong to, and each order has a special ability that Raidou may need to use in order to advance, or sometimes just to get fun dialogues. One thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have the type of demon that you need for a dungeon, you are out of luck, you are gonna have to go back to town and fuse/hire a new demon. Most of the time, there's a demon of the order that you need in whichever dungeon that needs one, but it is not always the case.

 The game isn't very hard if you exploit enemy weaknesses and keep an updated roster of Demons. While you'll be amassing a small fortune as you play through the game, costs for hiring demons is rather high, so think carefully before fusing a demon or releasing it. It's also recommended to take at least one demon with healing skills, as healing services are very expensive. It's also disappointingly short, with very few, and short, sidequests and only a single optional dungeon(Technically five, but four of them are so short and meaningless...). All in all, I clocked about 20 hours in it.

 The game has a rather subdued color palette, but it fits the game very well. All the different demons look very good, as does Raidou himself, perfectly capturing the artwork's style. The game uses pre-rendered backgrounds coupled with fixed camera angles(Duh), but it's easy to forgive them as the environments are so appealing and different from most other RPGs. As for the music, in typical SMT fare, it's all very good, with some very memorable tunes(Tsukudo-Cho's!, or the Boss Battle theme!), and it manages to be somber when it needs to, for some very fitting music to whatever is happening on-screen. There's no voice acting, sadly, but when important dialogue takes place, 3D animated cut-outs of the characters will jump to the forefront of the screen, and given that there's no voice acting, it looks kinda funny how they gesticulate and move their lips as the text appears.

 Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha VS The Soulless Army is a very fun game, with some rather obvious, but minor, issues. And, guess what, the sequel polishes or fixes most, if not all of them, which makes this first game pale in comparison. Regardless, it was a good start for Raidou's adventures.
 7.0 out of 10.