Now Playing: Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late

 This game is amazing!!

 I loved Melty Blood back in the day, so I was very, very interested when French-Bread announced Under Night... and very disappointed since only an Arcade release was confirmed, and then the waiting game began.... and it's finally here, and it's everything I wanted. Kinda.

 First, the cast of characters: They are alright. I mean, I love the fact that there's no fanservice, there's no lass wearing a ridiculously skimpy outfit of the likes Japan is so fond of... but none of the characters is particularly note worthy. These aren't bad characters, and maybe after playing with them I will grow to like them, but so far, they are just alright. Oh, and Akatsui from Blitzkampf is in as a guest character! BADASS!

 But where it really shines, is in gameplay. I love it, it's fast, and very easy to get into. It uses three buttons for attacks, like Melty Blood, and a fourth for other actions, and with these four buttons you can pull off a wide variety of technical mechanics. There seems to be a lot of focus on this 'GRD' gauge, which seems to reward 'playing well', and it culminates in a 10% attack buff and free cancels for whoever has the highest GRD. Then there's EXS for the special moves and 'Veil Off'ing. It's very easy to jump in and have fun, since everything combos into everything(Well, not literally, but it's very easy to mash into combos). However, it has that mechanics I hate that many fighters are using nowadays.... the AutoCombo by mashing on the Weak attack button. I understand why it's in the game, but having grown on Fighting games since Street Fighter 2, it's a bit annoying, I just want to mash the weak attack! At least on Persona 4 it made sense, if you got bored of the Story Mode, just mash on the square button and carry on.

 This being a Fighting game, it's unfair to hold the story against it, but... it's a bit ridiculous. They vomit all these terms on you, like 'Hollow Night', 'Night', 'In-Birth', 'Re-birth' and the such, and they expect you to know. There's no Story Mode, and the Instruction Booklet tells you jack, so you must rely on the Internet if you wish to make sense of the story. Me? I don't care, I was having too much fun with the game as to be bothered by it.

 And, by the by, this game had a clearly smaller budget than Blazblue or the like, and they don't charge you for DLC. Extra Color Palettes? Just play one of the many modes, earn points and buy them.

 All I know, is that I'm loving the hell out of UNIBE:L.

Review #216: Escape Dead Island

 Not as bad as you've been lead to believe.

 Funny story 'bout EDI, I've known about it ever since it was first announced, but I wasn't very interested in it. 'Borderlands starts the loot-based RPG FPS and Dead Island copies it, so now that they announces Tales from Borderlands, they have to make an adventure game too, boo!'. And then it released, and reviews poured in, bashing it. But I wasn't listening, I was looking at the gameplay, and it looked like something I would like to play. Turns out, it's not half as bad as they make it out to be. How many 'Worst of 2014' list had this game in them and said that 2014 sucked for gaming? If EDI made it in, 2014 mustn't have been so bad!

 Escape Dead Island begins with Cliff... no, that's not right, it begins with you playing as an Spy of sorts, out to get some mole, as you dismember every enemy in your sight with a Katana.  But once that's over, time moves forward about 6 days, where Cliff and his buddies, Devan and Linda, are on a trip to find out what happened in Banoi Island, by travelling to a neighbor island. It probably makes more sense if you played Dead Island. Disaster strikes and they lose the boat and Cliff gets hit on the head, and it all spirals down for him then. Most of the game is spent either trying to help your friends or deal with Cliff's hallucinations... or are they? The 'maybe it's a dream maybe it's not' angle is a bit cliched, but it can be done well... as for this game? It's alright. It feels a bit rushed, and you'll be able to see most of the twists coming a mile away, but it's not too bad anyways. They also integrate Cliff's apparent insanity into the gameplay, the camera angles may twists, or stuff may rain down on you from thin air. The ending is a bit... off-putting, and makes you wonder just how true is it that this game is the 'missing link' between DI 1 and Riptide.

 Unlike the other games in the series, this is not an RPG FPS. It's not an action game either, this is an adventure game with some Metroidvania elements sprinkled in. You'll come across high ledges, or chambers filled with gas that you can't explore, initially, but get your hands on a grappling hook and a gas mask, and you'll be able to explore them. However, there are no hidden optional areas or nothing of the like, these rooms just hold a few collectibles and bullets, and nothing else. Still, you are rewarded for taking your time and backtracking for them, but they are not mandatory in the slightest. And this is another thing to keep in mind, the game is mostly linear, it's always pushing you forward, you are always told where to go next, and holding L1 triggers a marker towards your destination, but you can explore on your own if you so want to, and you should! However, the in-game map is very unreliable, so hopefully you can navigate your way through, and unlike a bonafide Metroidvania, you don't open up shortcuts, so you've always gotta go through the long way.

 Why would you want to go back and explore these rooms? Well, the game has a whole slew of collectibles. Most of these are pretty much worthless, like taking photos of NPCs or random objects, for some commentary on Cliff's part, or useless postcards but there are a few, like audio logs, that deepen the narrative a bit, not that I cared too much about them. But you may come across the occasional weapon upgrade or health upgrade. The game employs a 'regenerative' health, and you are to realize how hurt you are by how red the screen gets, so it's not readily apparent just how useful the health upgrades are. Same goes for weapons, the game automatically replaces the old weapon for the new one, so you have to trust it that your new weapon is better than the last. One thing to keep in mind is that you can't manually save the game, so even if you found a new collectible, gonna have to wait until you hit a checkpoint and the game decides to autosave, which is pretty annoying in a game like this.

 Combat is... dead simple. Cliff has a Stamina gauge that is tied to Strong attacks, dashing and dodging, which is something that you need to keep in mind when engaging enemies, plus, near the end of the game, you get to choose between melee weapons, and the heavier one consumes Stamina even on weak strikes, but I digress. Weak attacks come in the form of a three hit combo, which is the same regardless of what melee weapon you are using. Eventually you'll come across a gun and a shotgun, these have their uses, like enemies on higher ground, but they are not very reliable. Early in the game, they are fairly good, but latter enemies can take a whole lot of lead. Plus, the game's framerate can be... inconsistent, which can make aiming and shooting a pain in the butt when it's crowded. And even then, it seems that guns have a rather short range, a ton of times I felt as if my bullets should've hit, yet they missed their mark. There's also some rather sloppy stealth mechanics implemented. They're never mandatory, but can make combat a whole lot simpler. By getting to an enemy's back without being noticed, you can press X to pull an instant kill... and sometimes, even if you are in front of them, you have some leeway to get to their back and instant kill them anyways! Still, stealth isn't very polished, sometimes in your favor, sometimes in the enemies', but you are not forced to use them and they can offer a bit of a break from all the fighting.

 In the entire game there's about 5 or 6 different enemy types that get progressively stronger as you go along. It'd be easy to fault it for the simple, and eventually repetitive, combat and the very few enemies you fight... but this game doesn't want to be the next God of War or Devil May Cry. This is an Adventure game, not an Action game, it's focus is on the exploring, on going through the Island, not pulling the fanciest combos and perfectly timed dodges. Which brings me to my next point, there's no Game Overs. Dying has Cliff hold his head in his hands, white out, and recover on the previous checkpoint. Enemies respawn, and you lose anything that you collected between the checkpoint and your death. What's more, lose twice in a row(Or more), and bullets will start spawning next to you. And as easy as it can be... the last stretch of the game has a rather unforgiving difficulty spike. By this time, enemies can take a whole lot of punishment, and you'll be bombarded with enemies from every side. Enemies shooting poison at you, zombies lounging at you, zombies that can hold you from behind so that others can get cheap hits in... It was borderline frustrating to be honest, but the 'infinite lives' made it somewhat tolerable.

 Now then, the game has more than its fair share of problems. Firstly, the framerate. It can't keep a stable framerate at any time. Even moving around barren areas won't be free of hiccups, and during combat it can get pretty bad if you are a gun aficionado, since it will temper with you aiming. The game has some animated 2-D cutscenes... and they all run like garbage, with stuttering audio and visuals, no in small part due to the fact that the game decides to auto-save when they are running. I also came across a couple of bugs. There's this cave, in the Beach Bar, at the start of the game, that has breakable trees coming out of it... this area has an easy-to-fall in corner of which you can't get out. I fell on it three times. Oh, and if you explore it and then try to exit it, it will spawn a breakable branch... that you can't break. You have to reload the game and then exit the cave. This happened twice. Fairly annoying. And then, during the lab sequence, the voices, during dialogue, stopped playing, eventually locking the game on a loading screen. At least it only happened once, and I didn't lose much progress.

 As for replay value, there's a bit actually. The game has a 'New Game+' feature, and apparently, it can be done up to four times, each time you'll get a new key which will allow you to access new areas. Some people speculated that finishing it four times might unlock an extra bit at the end, but I'm not interested in it, not anytime soon anyways. There's also free DLC that adds new weapons, new skins for Cliff, new areas and a new enemy type, which sounds pretty nice, but I wasn't able to try it out(Since I found out about it a bit later after I finished the game).

 I read some comments out there claiming that it looked like a PS2 game. Do you even know how a PS2 game looks? There's good and bad in the visual presentation, though. For instance, the game has a very colorful cell-shaded look, character models look a bit... off for some reason, but the Island is downright beautiful, although there are a couple of ugly textures here and there, like those of windows and glass. Zombies, as mentioned before, come in few types, and they have few 'alternate' looks as well, and they are pretty forgettable for the most part, I didn't care about these enemies in the slightest. One little detail that I loved was that every item or equipment piece that you found is equipped on Cliff, so you can see everything that he is carrying on him, which is really cool. Music on the other hand is laughable. Really, it's pretty bad, there are very few tunes in the game, and they are pretty darn bad. As for the Voice Acting, it was alright, no performance was particularly noteworthy, but I'm not complaining.

 Escape Dead Island is a horribly underrated game. It's far from being a great game, and I'm in no hurry to replay it any time soon, but I liked it a lot, technical issues not withstanding. It's a functional game, with an interesting premise and an alright execution. It was not their best first attempt at a Spin off, but I wouldn't mind seeing them explore the concept in a sequel... provided they can lock that framerate down, polish the combat and add more nuances to it, iron out the bugs, better rewards and a damned jump button!
 5.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Escape Dead Island

 So far... so good?

 Here's the deal, I know about this game's poor reputation, I know that it even made it to some 'Worst of 2014' lists.... but even so, it looked, from what I saw, like a game I would like... and so far, I think I was right.

 I just cleared the Prologue, and I felt like it was a good stopping point to write my first impressions and see how they change, 'sides, it's before you get to play as the douchebag on the cover! Well, I like the gameplay. It's simple, but fun. Attacks lack some oomph, mainly in the sound department, but it's just a minor issue. A bigger issue, but one I didn't care for, is that Stealth is... wonky, for lack of a better word. Walk in front of a Zombie? It's cool, you get a couple of seconds before it notices you. Run? The immediately notice and run towards you. Oh, and there's the guns. If you have a gun equipped, pressing Square or Triangle instantly brings out your sword, which is useful and makes sense... but once the sword is out, the gun gets unequipped. I understand why, L2 acts as Melee targeting or as free-aiming for the guns, but it could've been handled a bit better I think.

 The last thing I want to mention, is that I don't know how I feel about the graphics yet. It's very cartoonish, and colorful, which normally, I would like... but I think the game tries to take itself seriously. Not that a cell-shaded, cartoonish game can't be serious, but if it tries to convey horror.... the colorful, cartoony look isn't the best. And you can't do much 'psychological horror' with Zombies, so that excuse is null and void.

 All in all... I like it. Maybe the critics were wrong, or maybe the game just manages to check all the boxes of things I like. Either way, it's on!

Review #215: Injustice - Gods Among Us - Ultimate Edition

 And we're back!

  Back in 2013, I did an awful write-up on Injustice. Not to say that I'm good at writing, but I'm slightly less awful than back then. I cringed as I skimmed through it, and did some touching up. Just a little, I want to keep it as awful as it is! Afterwards, I would continue to play the game on and off with a couple of friends, but it spent most of 2014 unplayed, so playing it again reminded me of how awesome it was. I'm not particularly fond of DLC, which is why I never invested in it, plus, I knew that an Ultimate Edition was coming, and here we are.

 I stand by everything I said about Injustice in my previous review, but how did it held up? Marvelously. The game is fast, way faster than MK, which I really like, the combo system is fun once you get the hang of it, and I liked how they adapted the characters into the game. Graphics are slightly less appealing than before, some textures are muddy, and there's the occasional ugly animation, plus, some character models are just terrible(Wonder Woman and Sinestro come to mind). It's also a very drab game, with many greys and browns, while the rest of the colors look very washed out. Overall, it looks decent, it's not the prettiest fighting game out there, but it plays well and does the license justice.

 Why would you want to buy the Ultimate Edition? The 6 new characters, the 30 DLC costumes and over 60 new Star Labs missions. Word of warning, it doesn't include every DLC costume. It's missing the Injustice Mobile costumes(Gotta get people to play the game and tempt them into the microtransactions!) or the New 52 Black Adam costume(You have to sync your Warner account, or somethin' like that). As for the costumes themselves, they are alright, but... poorly spread out. Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman have about 8 skins each, but then there's Cyborg and Nightwing with 3 each, or Sinestro only has two. It's a bit surprising, as there's a lot of character history for them to have drawn from, but they probably just went with what would've sold well... which is disappointing to say the least, nobody needs 8 costumes for Batman! And the DLC characters? Everyone but Zod only gets their default look.

 The costumes may be disappointing, but the DLC characters is the reason why you would want this edition. Lobo is a mid-range grappler, he is fun to play, but his Personal Action(PA) is a bit boring, he just strengthens his next Shotgun attack. Batgirl is ANOTHER Batman character, but she is a blast to play. She is strong, fast and very easy to combo with, a perfect newbie character. An agile rushdown character, her PA lets her switch between electrified knucles or bladed ones, the former deal extra chip damage, while the latter deals more damage overall. Zatana is... is definitely the most complicated of the bunch, she can switch styles, momentarily, with her PA, but it's very easy to break her out of it. Martian Manhunter's PA allows him to extend the reach of his normal moves, has a lot of tools, but is a bit on the dull side. Zod is amazing. A rushdown/zoner hybrid that has some of the best, and most fitting, animations in the game. With his PA he can call forth a Wraith from the Phantom Zone to aid him, and it allows him to pull all kinds of shenanigans with his combos! Lastly, Scorpion, who sports a costume from Comic Book legend Jim Lee, he is a rushdown character that might be a bit overpowered, but it's very fun to use. All of them come with their own endings.

 Lastly, there's the 60 new S.T.A.R. labs missions, and I will echo what I said before: They are a neat diversion, but I didn't care much for them. Most of them are the 'mini-game' kind as opposed to handicapped fights, but the Red Son storyline is a bit amusing. This bumps the mission total to 300, which is not too shabby. Something that will cause a divide, is that everything comes unlocked from the start. Tournament Organizers and a few gamers will probably see it as a huge plus and timesaver, but people that like to unlock stuff might not like that. I didn't care for it... but then again, I had unlocked everything on my previous go through the game!

 Is Injustice Ultimate Edition worth it? Yes. The 6 new characters are very unique and add new styles to the character roster. My advice? Do what I did, sell your previous copy of Injustice and then buy this new, upgraded Edition, which is rather on the cheap by now.
 8.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Dragon Ball Xenoverse

'Nother year, 'nother Dragon Ball game.

 There's only three constants every year in my gaming life: A) I will play a Fighting game, B) I will a RPG and C) I will play a Dragon Ball game. As I've mentioned countless times before, I'm not particularly fond of Dragon Ball as a franchise, but I've always been drawn towards its games, particularly its fighting games..

 It's probably due to the fact that no matter the console, you can always trust on Goku and his friends to make an appearance, and I always love seeing how they will re-envision these characters. As for my favorite... it's a three way toss up between Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension, Dragon Ball Z Densetsu and Super Dragon Ball Z, yet the one I've spent the most time in is, probably, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, go figure.

 That said, when it came to the PS2 games, I always favored the Budokai games over Budokai Tenkaichi, and when it came to PS3, Burst Limit was where it was at. It's due to the fact that between Spike's Budokai Tenkaichi/Raging Blast and Dimps' Budokai/Burst Limit, it's the former that resemble a traditional fighting game the most. And I really dig fighting games. That said, I was a bit worried about Xenoverse, as much as I trusted Dimps' previous efforts, their last anime fighting game was Saint Seiya - Brave Soldiers, which wasn't... very good.

 First thing I liked: Cha-la head cha-la, as soon as the remix started playing, I couldn't help but smile the whole way through. Cha-la Head Cha-la kicks butt. Well, it got better, on the surface, the fighting seems very satisfying. Landing blows feels good, and I'm liking the combo system, or what I understood of it so far, even if it seems a tad simple. And then there's the graphics, which not only look good on a technical level, but as a lover of all things colorful, I'm really diggin' the oversaturated color palette.

 Then there's the Story Mode. Believe it or not, I'm still not tired of replaying and replaying the DBZ storyline. It beat the crappy 'What ifs' they come up with, plus, I always hate it when adaptations mess with the source material, not to mean that I hate absolutely every change, if it's good, I can roll with it. That said... I wasn't sold on the idea of 'saving the timeline', but after clearing the first scenario... I think I could, potentially, get behind it. I'm gonna reserve full judgement until I finish it, but... It could've been yet another 'evil clones' what if, so there's that.

 As for miscellanea, I couldn't helpt but notice that the Makankosappo scene keeps getting more and more censored! Budokai 1 had a textured fleshy red hole on Goku and Raditz, Burst Limit turned it into a textureless black hole and now... now they've no physical proof of having being pierced by an energy beam. I don't really mind it though. Then there's the fact that as soon as the game starts, they kinda throw you into the wild without any tutorials, kinda ballsy in this day and age! The three fights are dead simple, so that you can try every button in the joystick and get a feel for the basics. There is a tutorial later in the game, but it's short and straight to the point, so no biggie.


 Basically, Xenoverse is badass.


 Oh, and by the by, if you didn't make your first a character a Saiyan... you've no soul.

Review #214: Tomba! 2 - The Evil Swine Return

 Why won't these pigs play nice?!

 Y'know which game is even rarer and more expensive than Tomba!? Tomba! 2. Released about two years after the first game, Tomba! 2 is a bit 'by the numbers' as far as sequels go, it doesn't shake the formula too much, not that it needed to.

 The story has Tomba! and his companion Zippo the Fly, remember him from the first game in which he didn't appear nor was mentioned in the first one? Yeah, that Zippo, as they embark on a quest to save Tomba's girlfriend, y'know, the one that didn't appear nor was mentioned in the first one, from the Evil Pigs. Yes, it's basically the same story from the last game, Evil Pigs invade the Island, curse different parts of it, and steal(In this case, Kidnap) something of Tomba's, and now he must collect the different Pig Bags and challenge the five Evil Pigs. Yeah, we lost two Pigs, but never fear, as Tomba 2 is a bigger game than its predecessor. It's easy to tell that this time around they tried to have a better story, but both the script and voice acting are fairly terrible, and the translation's quality is quite... dubious. On the flip-side, you don't play games like Tomba for the story, so it's no real loss here, plus, the ending was so corny that I kept alternating between laughs and cringes!

 The game plays just like Tomba! 1 but with more bells and whistles. For the uninitiated, Tomba! is a 2.5 D Metroidvania-like Adventure game, in which you travel around an Island searching for items and abilities that will let you progress or interact with previously inaccessible areas or items. Remember how the last game had 130 quests? Tomba has 133, and an extra 4 if you have a cleared Tomba! 1 save file on the memory card. And here comes my first issue with the game... it does little to fix or polish Tomba! 1's shortcomings. While it is true that you get better hints as to how to complete most quests, it also has more quests that will require a guide than Tomba! 1. There's absolutely no way to tell where the 3 hidden Towers are, and the place in which they hid the Water Pig's Plate is just mean, protip: head for Circus village and travel underground to the Water Temple, you are welcome. That said, there's a lot more variety in the Events themselves, and some will have you travelling across the entire Island, which could be seen as a detriment if you really aren't digging the game enough to enjoy the backtracking. In my case, I didn't mind it, I went through the entire Island(Or what I had explored to the point) every time I got a new Key or ability-granting item, and I never got tired of doing it, a testament to how much fun the game can be.

 While it kept the last game's shortcomings, the developers instead opted on adding more stuff. There's more weapons, even though they are almost as useless as they were in the first one, almost, since now they have uses on the environment or to defeat elemental enemies that hurt you if you try to jump on them. Tomba also gets to equip different costumes this time around that grant him different abilities, like the Pig Suit that lets him talk with pigs or the Squirrel suit that let's him glide. I spent most of the game as Squirrel Tomba, since it's the most useful, but it's a nice idea non the less and some might prefer the swiftness of the Flying Suit, or would rather fall faster as normal Tomba. The laughing and crying mechanics from the previous games return, this time in the form of fruits as opposed to mushrooms, but they behave in the exact same way, and you can eventually get the same 'Mystery' and 'Normal' fruits so that you can change your state as will. And this is something that bothered me a bit, it revisits a lot of ideas from Tomba! 1, to the point of almost feeling slightly tacky. The four different keys for the four different chests returns, Tomba needs to get the swimming ability again, the grappling hook returns, the pig bags/evil pig dynamic, a frustrating on-wheels event. It is mostly a nitpick, as it's not a dealbreaker, but this being a sequel, I expected it to borrow only the basics, and then build as much as new things as possible. I though the Laughing/Crying mechanics were very interesting in the last game, but they really didn't need to return.

 It's not all bad though. I enjoyed the new Island, and it offers a lot more variety in environments than the first game. There's the initial beach, an underground city, a jungle, an ice-covered town and the Water Temple to name a few, and they all feature vastly different structures and color schemes, which makes traversing through the Island very appealing. It also does away with the life system from the previous game, instead opting for unlimited lives, and while you do see the 'Game Over' screen, you don't lose any progress. Boss Fights have been slightly revamped, for the worse I feel, as most of the time you'll be throwing the pigs towards the bag on the foreground, which works as well as you expect. They are not hard, but they can last a bit longer than they need to.

 While the last game used 2D sprites for characters, Tomba 2! only uses sprites for the items. The new 3D models look great, and the environments look just as good. It doesn't just look good for an old PS1 game, it simply is a good looking game. The music is delightful, with a lot of tunes that are still stuck in my head. The game also employs voice acting and it's.... it goes from passable to terrible depending on the character, but hey, at least it's fully voiced.

 I know that I ragged on the game a lot, but I actually really really liked it. It could've done plenty of things better, but what it excels in what it does well. Finding and clearing Events is as satisfying as ever, and sure, you may need some outside help, but I wasn't too bothered by it. It's probably not good as a sequel, since it's a bit too samey to it, but looking at it without the comparison, it's a great game, in fact, I liked it slightly better than the first one. It's definitely not worth the price that it commands now, but hey, if you can get it by other means(PSN, Emulation), it's a great PS1 game that deserves a go.
 9.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Tomba! 2 - The Evil Swine Return

 Talk about an improvement.

 So, the gameplay in Tomba! was fantastic, no two ways around it, but the visual presentation left a lot to be desired. Boom, pretty 3D graphics, and just the first part of the game alone is visually pleasing, with houses and moving hammers. Next area? An underground pipe facility. And I remember having it much more different locales. Already on a good track.

 And the music? I'm not sure if it's nostalgia, 'cause I couldn't stop smiling as I was reminded of the tunes and soundbits that play when triggering events... but either it's very memorable, or nostalgia is kicking back.

 So we are off to a good start already, good!