Playstation 3

Street Fighter X Tekken Review

It was never really a question if a cross over game between Street Fighter and Tekken would come out, it was more a question of when.  Luckily for fans of both of these series, that date was ComicCon 2010, and just a little over two weeks ago, the game released to the public.  My personal opinion about this game is that I think that it is an absolutely outstanding game with strong mechanics and a very large roster, yet there are a few things that seem to hold the game back from changing the gaming sphere the way that Street Fighter IV did in 2009.  The fact of the matter is that the Capcom formula of releasing big name titles (especially fighting games) repeatedly, and also making small changes only to essentially re-release the same game months later, is starting to grow stale.  At this point, we get into a discussion of who Capcom is catering towards, the general population, or the fighting game community?  While the general populous have reacted a certain way towards Street Fighter X Tekken, if you look at any FGC (Fighting Game Community) stream on TwitchTV, you will see that the praises for SFxT are enormous.  But regardless, coming from someone who is relatively good at fighting games and really drew close to the community after the release of SFIV, I will say that Street Fighter X Tekken is a very good game that I believe has the potential to become one of the first games where a tag team option is relatively reasonable, yet the single player mode is still incredibly deep.

The gameplay in Street Fighter X Tekken is a bit of a meld between traditional Street Fighter games (where there are 3 punches and three kicks), and the Marvel Vs. Capcom series (where if you press light, medium, heavy, launcher, you will launch your opponent into the air and can tag in your partner (it auto tags them in, in SFxT)).  This makes combos fairly easy, as you can actually switch between punches and kicks to combo as well.  What I mean by this is that if you press light punch, medium punch, heavy punch, heavy punch in succession, you will launch your opponent into the air (assuming they do not block), and your tag team partner will rush in, which you can use to increase your combo.  In addition, you could do light punch, medium punch, heavy kick, heavy kick, and that would launch your opponent as well, because it is the same series of light, medium, heavy, heavy (it does not matter if you use punch or kick).  You can also do a launcher by pressing heavy punch and heavy kick at the same time, and the reason that I say this is because, for the most part, you will need to learn how to effectively tag in your partner, because if you don’t, you may find yourself losing a lot of matches that should have been won.  If you cannot get a launcher, you can press medium punch and medium kick at the same time to do a “raw tag”, but if your opponent is good, they will be able to combo the tagged in character, as there is a lot of startup on a raw tag.

Game of Thrones Preview

I think that it is apt to say that George R.R. Martin is in a pretty safe place financially.  Once his books were made into an HBO series (that has done quite well), his popularity skyrocketed, and now, with the release of the video game coming quite soon, Martin has reason to like how the near future looks.  The coverage for Game of Thrones has been a bit spotty, but from what I have seen, it looks (stylistically) like something like Dragon Age: Origins, but the gameplay system seems to remind me of something like Call of Duty (not in the fact that it is a first person shooter, but in the fact that there are multiple characters that are already set that you may or may not alternate between).  From the information that I have heard, there are two playable characters, one from the Night’s Watch (who will most likely be a warrior/tank), and one character who is a Red Priest, which will most likely be a rouge/mage type of character.  There will be two people from the television series that will reprise their roles in the game, yet they are characters that may not be as big as people may want.  The first of the two that will make an appearance is James Cosmo, who plays Jeor Mormont, the leader of the Night’s Watch.  His role in the first season was fairly light, but I would guess that he would serve as one of the main quest givers for the Night Watch character that you will be playing as.  For the other reprieved role, Conleth Hill will be voicing Varys, who was the eunuch aid to the King.  Varys had a bit of a larger role in the show, but for the most part, was a tertiary character.  With this being said, it will be nice to have some characters voiced by the actors that actually play them.

The Walking Dead Game(s) Get(s) Release Date

A while back, it was announced that the hit TV Series The Walking Dead would be getting a series of games.  This news probably came as no surprise, as the content in The Walking Dead lends itself very well to a video game format, and due to the developer being Telltale games, it makes sense that the content would most likely be episodic.  Well, not too long ago, more details about The Walking Dead were revealed, and it turns out that The Walking Dead will be much more accessible than some of the previous Telltale games, and the first out of five episodes may be releasing sooner than you think.

While an exact date has not been set in stone yet, the first of a five episode format will be coming out on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and iOS sometime in April, and the next episodes are set to follow regularly after that.  Those who remember the last Telltale game that was released on consoles (Jurassic Park: The Game) may be fretting, because the release and quality of that game was less than ideal, but do you think that Telltale can do well with a genre that some may consider to be quite used up at this point?  Will the gameplay and storytelling be easily accessible to fans of the show that may not be the biggest gamers?  Tune in April, when episode 1 releases to find out.   

Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City getting free DLC

After what seems like a never ending torrent of negative news the past week or so in regards to DLC we finally have some positive, and from Capcom no less

Ratchet and Clank Collection Confirmed

Coming to Europe in Spring and Fall in America is the Ratchet and Clank Ps2 Trilogy in HD.

Mass Effect 3 Review

To say that Mass Effect 3 was a hotly anticipated game would be quite the understatement.  Back in 2010, Mass Effect 2 released to an extremely good reaction, and made many of the Top 10 GOTY lists, even though it was released very early in the year.  The teaser trailers have been out and about for Mass Effect 3 for some time, and come March 6^th, we could finally get our hands on the game itself.  I found that despite the fact that Bioware had their own fiascos with the EA Origins stuff; Mass Effect 3 is a fun game that melds the RPG elements that were quite heavy in the first game with the action sequences that were much more present in the second iteration.  I feel like the discussion of whether 2 or 3 was the better version could be going on for a while, as they both are very strong games, but the fact remains that Mass Effect 3 is a very fitting addition to the trilogy of games, and it does well to scratch the itch of those looking to understand more of the story of Commander Shepard.

The gameplay in Mass Effect 3 is a bit of a fusion between the first and the second in some ways, and is also a very interesting upgrade in some other ways.  One big thing that I noticed was that in this game, there is a health system similar to that of Halo: Reach, where you have a shield that recharges, and then you have separate bars of health that do not.  This makes it so that the medi-gels (now called First Aid), are much more important, as the only way to heal the heath bar is to use first aid.  This adds an extra sense of urgency, which I thought was nice, because it forces the player to be much more aware of their health and current power statuses (if they are a biotic), and because of the fact that I found the enemy AI to be vastly superior to previous games, it really adds a challenging twist.

Quantic Dream is Pushing the Envelope of Gaming

In 2006, Quantic Dream floored geeks and gamers with The Casting.  A tech demo that featured a digital actress auditioning for a movie role.  The entire scene played out with the actress’ performance conveying a full range of emotions for the camera.  The realism and emotion conveyed in the performance was unlike anything seen before in game engines. Heavy Rain was eventually born out of this technology and was extremely impressive.  The game was critically acclaimed and pushed many boundaries in how video games were played.  Building on what they learned from their previous game Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain provided an expertly executed, fluid storytelling mechanic that featured branching paths.  Heavy Rain kept the story advancing regardless of player performance.  In fact there was no incorrect way to play, as the death of a main character simply altered the story and ultimately its ending.