Friday, December 28, 2012

GK - Update

Hey guys, Kiboo here.

Just posting to let you knows what's been going on.
I'll soon be posting a review for the Chris Redfield campaign from Resident Evil 6. I'm currently on Chapter 5. The reason I'm taking so long will be discussed in the next post. Just hold on for a little longer for that review! It's going to be awesome because I'm enjoying Chris's campaign considerably more than Leon's. Chris' Badass one-liners > Leon's corny statements.

Here's a heads up of some games I will be reviewing some time in the future;



So I managed to borrow a copy of inFAMOUS from my friend, and I must say it is a most interesting game. There are quite a number of ways to describe this game, I somewhat halfway through with this, so the review should come up some time in January, so watch out for this.


Okay hold up. I know Tekken 6 is quite an old game, but be informed that I have no intention of reviewing the actual fighting game itself. Because I believe it's been done to death. Instead, I will be reviewing Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign which is an interactive story mode which was improved from the Devil Within mode in Tekken 5. You'll be able to read up on my assessment of he Scenario Campaign, which features Tekken newcomers Lars and Alisa as they try and save the world. Through fighting, which makes sense. For some reason. Just watch out for when this review comes out.


Christmas came with a surprise for me when someone gifted me with this dual pack of Uncharted. Even after years of these games releases, there is still a considerable amount of buzz going around the internet. The 3 Uncharted games seem to be on most if not all of the top PS3 games lists that I've seen online. I have only grazed through them because I needed to test if they worked, I'll be getting in deep to finishing these two after Resident Evil 6 and inFAMOUS.


Yet another old game joins the ranks. This one was a late Christmas present for myself. I was able to buy one secondhand online. They guy who sold this to me, told me that he'd still be selling some more games in the future. Seeing how the game I bought from him was in near perfect condition, I might be buying some new games from him again. Anyways back to Gran Turismo 5. I'm no hardcore racing fan, but I saw some people playing this on consoles in a mall near my house, and I became curious. I'm learning the skills and tricks at a slow steady pace. I'll be comfortable with writing about this once I learn how to make smoother turns.

There are a lot of games on my plate, which makes me excited as heck. I'll have to finish what I can by January 7, before classes start again. I'll make sure to get a post up by then.

Sidenote: In an attempt to get this blog out there, I'm trying various methods of advertising. I have found a site that "promotes" blogs on the interwebs, so fingers crossed.

WT2KAS8VNRS4

*Don't mind this crazy code, they just need to see this on my blog to verify that I own it.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Resident Evil 6: Leon Campaign

Okay hello hello, I'm back, and as I said in the preceding entry, I will now be talking about Leon's Campaign for Resident Evil 6. So let's get into it.

STORY


Leon's campaign starts out much like any other resident evil game in the past (and any zombie game for that matter), you're immediately thrust into a zombie apocalypse with no knowledge of anything, except for the fact that you just shot the american zombie president. So congrats, your first zombie casualty is the president of the United States. The feel of the game opens up with Helena (some girl beside Leon) explaining to Leon that the outbreak was her fault. You trust her or you don't but you don't have any say in the matter since she will be your companion for the entire campaign. For the rest of the campaign, Helena keeps Leon in the dark as much as possible, while maintaining ominous and vague comments that only frustrate you as a player. Conversely, Leon keeps mouthing of corny one liners and references to Raccoon. Dude you went through Europe by yourself around crazy murdery Ganados and you still whine about the Raccoon city thing? Sigh.

Moving on! Leon and Helena somewhat bond through the course of the entire campaign, despite both of them knowing next to nothing about each other. This aura of secrecy gets heightened when Helena and Leon encounter Ada Wong (more on that later). Eventually they find a common enemy in the National Security Adviser, Simmons, who apparently caused all of the bio-terrorist attacks (zombie outbreak) in the USA and China. A few bullets, grenades, and herbs later, Simmons is killed after n encounters, and you have saved the world. Hooray? No. Here's why.

STORY CRITIQUE

1. The first three chapters in the game revolves around Helena's back story, which did nothing for me as a gamer. I understood her urgency of wanting to go to the cathedral, because, "This is all my fault, I have to show you something at the cathedral." Okay, that's the game plot so I go with it. It felt as though Capcom just wanted to visit their pasts with this campaign. You start in campus, then a subway, then a semi-urban city, a graveyard, a cathedral, and some tombs. Settings they've explored in the past games. I was very confused with the aesthetics of the whole damn thing, it didn't seem to make sense, especially that makeshift high-tech laboratory that's beneath an ancient church.

2. I didn't see Simmons as my enemy. Killing him off didn't elicit that gratuitous feeling of elation when you kill a boss that's been bugging you for an entire game. Simmons didn't give me that, because I didn't connect with him in a certain way that made me want to murder his face. He didn't cause me enough grief. I mean, he kidnapped Helena and her sister, Deborah, turned Deborah into the freaking Queen of Blades, and framed Leon and Helena for the murder of the president. Those things on top of causing the outbreak. I listed four things, what else was I supposed to hate him for? His thumb ring? Capcom lacked in two aspects, not making the gamer relate with and take place of the characters (Helena and Leon), and by giving a lackluster enemy that didn't do much to aggravate the lives of our heroes.

3. Here's the big flaw. There's no overall goal. Unlike in Resident Evil 4, where your goal was clear from the get go, to save the president's high pitched shrieking daughter, Ashley(who I missed in this game, "Leooooooon, Heeeeelp"). Nothing was pushing me through this game except for the fact that I was consciously playing it. Killing Simmons didn't resonate within me to make me work hard for it. I just played through it. What pushed me through the whole thing was the promise of an interaction scene between the two  other pairs in the RE6 universe, which ultimately proved to be disappointing. 

In conclusion, we finished the game, which is good and all, but it didn't feel like we achieved something.

Next up I'll be tackling some technical aspects of the game.

CO-OP

The horrid co-op screen


So first up, Capcom. Ahem, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING WITH THIS LAME CO-OP SCREEN? The Co-op features a staggered split screen which as you can see from the photo, looks absolutely ridiculous. 20% of the screen is unused, at all. I felt that this was highly inefficient, and unpleasant to the eyes. Having blacked-out splotches on the screen distracted me from time to time. The upside is that you're not alone through the whole damn thing, but this becomes a con as well, but we'll get to that later.

REACTIONS

Reaction trigger that requires you to wiggle the left analog

When I watched a video review of Resident Evil 4 in the before years, I was freaking out. Capcom introduced a system where you can't be complacent during cut-scenes or any part of the game for that matter, because the game will require you to key in commands to avoid getting killed, murdered, dropped, etc. That thing blew my mind as a kid, that was fantastic. Then in Resident Evil 6, they took a step further, and ruined it. They overloaded the game with reaction triggers. The higher the frequency, the less special the triggers felt. The triggers in themselves, were fairly easy to execute, except for this one:

Horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible climbing

Every few climbs you make, you fall down. I got stuck here for longer than I'm proud of. I'm told that many people consider this to be a glitch. *Sigh of frustration* This is one of the biggest annoyances in a game for me, for all time. At one point, I just wanted to climb the building, Assassin's Creed style, but to no avail. :(

ADVENTURING WITH A PARTNER

Another shot of campaign protagonists Leon and Helena


Here's a crucial game-changer that got introduced in Resident Evil 5 with Chris and Sheva. Playing in a campaign with two characters, be it Co-operative or Solo with an AI. The question isn't how effective this gameplay is compared to when your character is by your lonesome, the question is, how does this change Resident Evil? From the beginning, Resident Evil has always been about giving the gamer a shocking, and scary zombie apocalypse action adventure, emphasis on the scary. I remember booting up a Resident Evil 3: Nemesis when I was a kid, I freaked when I saw the first tyrant. That was legit scary. Part of the reason why the old games were scary was because your character was mostly alone. In Resident Evil 6 you're always with your partner, except for those parts where you get separated and the game becomes significantly more challenging. But in general, it underwhelms the whole undertone of the game itself. Knowing that you aren't alone makes you more brave. You're not afraid to get tackled or groped by a zombie because your partner can assist you. You're not afraid to run out of stuff, because you can share ammo and healy-stuffs. In addition, having another player to focus on, diverts attention from any one character, it's hard to see character development when you're keeping tabs on two of them. Leon and Helena had their moments together, but in my mind, I believe the game would have been infinitely more challenging had Leon been on his own.

I'll try and get the Chris campaign finished so I can get a review up for posting. I'm very excited to try the Ada campaign, since she's by herself. So, just wait for them.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Resident Evil 6: Prologue Chapter

So recently I just got my hands on the newly released Playstation 3 console, the 500 GB Super Slim model, and a few other games to get this new console broken in. I went nuts when I got myself a copy of Resident Evil 6. The reason I went nuts was because I've been with this franchise ever since its early iterations on the first Playstation console. So much like what I did when I saw the game case when I came home last night, let's just get into it.

                                            I kinda freaked out when I found out that the number 6      
                                                        is made up of people and spiders

After you press start, you are immediately thrown into a panning view of a quiet dark scene. Close up to an abandoned car with a pupa slowly tearing open on its steering wheel, then all hell breaks lose.

Explosions go off and you are left lying on the floor, dazed, and breathing hoarsely. A woman beside you seemingly received more damage than you and you struggle to drag her given your current state. You take her to cover and continue to slowly walk across to your destination. You lay her down as you find some herbs to heal her with. You are quickly made aware of the gravity of your situation, it's the classic zombie apocalypse survival story. Suddenly the sequence ends and you are greeted with the opening title sequence as the prologue chapter concludes.

NOSTALGIA

If you've played any of the older resident evil games, you are familiar with the false sense of security that you are lulled into at the beginning sequence which is quickly stolen from you as something horrible happens that leads you to the beginning of your campaign. All such games begin with building your confidence, then thrusting the challenge upon you immediately.

GRAPHICS

The visuals are stunning as always. The feeling of elation when you boot up a resident evil game for the first time never changes. Capcom certainly hasn't fallen short in today's gaming industry where gamers are picky as hell when it comes to their games' graphics, heck most of them might not be able to go through an 8bit game without missing their precious HD graphics.

Your first controlled character is Leon Kennedy. I was happy with seeing a familiar face and at the same time I felt a little sorry for him, this is his 3rd zombie apocalypse(and I realized that this was Chris' 3rd as well). I know companies make it a point to keep dialogue animations consistent with the Japanese and English audio, but there were some words coming out of their mouths that didn't feel right. Forever the challenge of international game developers.

                                                                 Say Hello to Leon

CONTROLS  & OVERALL GAME FEEL


First thing I noticed was that the game itself spoon-feeds the players, I say this because the game prompts you to use the right analog stick to look around. Simple movements and motions don't require spoon feeding in my opinion. It kind of killed the mood just as Leon was getting up off the ground, I see the analog logo blinking on-screen. I immediately thought, "oh it's one those games."


A lot has changed since Leon's appearance in Resident Evil 4. The overhead camera in RE4 seemed to be more cooperative than in RE6, where you have to manually adjust your camera with the right analog. Now while some people might enjoy this, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now the default controls for the actual combat motion changed as well, you press L1 to aim and R1 to shoot, as opposed to RE4's controls where you press R1 to aim and SQUARE to shoot. I've been experimenting with both modes of shooting and aim finding myself slowly getting used to the new default controls. We shall see after a few chapters into this game if it makes things easier or harder.

                              Over the shoulder camera action

The Heads-up Display (HUD) is hella ugly. They made it transparent, which makes it that much harder to see while you're playing. Capcom completely eliminated the old inventory system where you open a case in the start menu and have chosen to stick with the inventory system used in Resident Evil 5 where you mess with your stuff on screen, in front of your character. Take note that this does not pause the game unlike in the old inventory system, this means that you can get murdered while you pick which herbs to mix ( I died in RE5 when I missed a reaction trigger because I was fixing bullets in the inventory).

                                The new transparent HUD

Visually the gameplay is stunning but the HUD, controls, and inventory system are some things that need getting used to. I have chosen to start with the Leon campaign in Co-Op mode with my cousin.
                             Leon's got himself a new partner

My next entry will tackle our first chapter in the Leon campaign so wait for that.