Archive for the ‘Vita’ Category
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile Review
Some titles just never seem to fair well in the West. Klonoa is a cute cuddly anthropomorphic animal, he kinda looks like he’s a cross between a dog, a cat and maybe a rabbit. In Japan this cute fella was incredibly popular and his Playstation game rocketed to the top of the charts for sales. Then Klonoa made his happy debut in the West and things just didn’t seem to fair well for the poor guy. The problem you see is we are horrible people over here in the West. Gamers here are hungry for blood like vicious hyenas, and that’s why games like Tomb Raider did well. If we have a platformer it better have attitude like Crash Bandicoot or be in 3D like Spyro the Dragon. Klonona failed to perform well and in turn the game become very rare and sought after to Playstation collectors in the West. I was lucky enough to rent this game back in 1998. Fortunately with the power of PSN, I was able to download the game to my PSP and see what this cuddly adventure has to offer and what we folk in the West failed to see.
Lost Treasures of Gaming: Oddworld Munch’s Oddysey
This week Lost Treasures of Gaming had Lorne Lanning of Oddworld Inhabitants on to discuss the series of Oddworld games. Fred goes into a little background of each before delving right into the first couple of levels in Oddworld Munch’s Oddysey HD on the Playstation 3.
You can find the Lost Treasures of Gaming podcast at http://omgnexus.com.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Substance Review
Editor’s Note: Jam originally wrote this review back in August of 2015 and somehow I missed it for almost six months. This won’t happen again but I figured we should still show love to a great game and a great review. Sorry Jam.
Metal Gear Solid 2 was possibly one of my most anticipated video games back in my youth. I eagerly awaited its release in 2002 (a little later than the rest of the world in Europe because game companies hate us). Kojima had been very smart in teasing the hotly anticipated sequel to the PS2 classic with various trailers and that infamous pack in demo with the full retail game Zone of The Enders, which no one played. We just couldn’t wait to play as Snake. On release I’m happy to admit my fan boy goggles were literally set to “Fan-tastic” as I played this game and loved the ever loving hell out of it and not buying in to some of the games criticisms post release. Well I’m older and detestably more mature so its time to return to the title and see how it fairs today. To research for this review I played through the game on the the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on Xbox 360 and PSVita. The game had multiple releases on a lot of consoles but this review pretty much speaks to every version of the game.
Metal Gear Solid 2 puts you back into the shoes of the legendary Solid Snake, who has now gone rouge with his new pal Otacon from the first Solid game. They have formed the ultimate bro-mance to travel the world and take down metal gears (those are bipedal tanks if you’re not up to date with the series). Snake ends up on a ship passing through the Hudson River in a scene which is frankly fantastic if you’re a fan of cinema. Snake casually smokes a cig in his rain coat and gradually picks up his pace to then bungee jump off a bridge onto a ship. Re-watching this cinematic is still wonderful and possibly my favourite opening in the series. So you’re all happy playing as your hero Solid Snake. You fight a Russian girl, you take pictures of a metal gear along with sleeping soldiers, and then the game ends. Well, at least your control of Snake ends. It has become known as the biggest historic bitch slap to the face of gaming history. After playing literally a couple of hours of the game, you are then put into the shoes of the far less interesting character: Raiden. Yeah, Raiden is no Solid Snake. He has blonde hair, is pretty skinny, and lacks that testosterone appeal that we are used to from the much preferred Solid Snake. So you play as Raiden thinking “no big deal we’ll get back to Snake soon.” Wrong! You continue as Raiden for the rest of the game. So it’s kinda of disappointing but doesn’t completely ruin the gaming, its just not the Metal Gear story we were expecting.
Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours Review
When you think of space shooters, the Darius series is probably not the first one you would think of, so it came as a wonderful surprise to to see this title come from out of nowhere and single handedly brought about what could be the renaissance of the space shooter series. Dariusburst Chronicles Saviours (DBCS) is a love letter to the Darius series as well as anyone who has nostalgia for the shoot-em-up (shmup) genre. This series first started all the way back in 1986 and was infamously known for its merginging of space and the ocean. By this I mean that enemy ships all look like mechanical fish. It has an incredible design to it that you’ve just never seen anywhere else. Although the Darius series has not seen recent titles in the West, it has been living on with a lot of popularity in Japan on the portable and arcade scene.
The DBCS concept is pretty simple: you’re in a small space ship flying through various environments and your goal is to unload bullet hell onto any fishy looking space ship that happens to disturb your casual flight. The main hook of this game is the “burst” feature, which is a super charged cannon and unloads a devastating beam of death once you have acquired enough charge. It’s an essential feature to use against the gorgeous looking boss battles which range from giant mechanical crabs, lion-fish, and swordfish. It felt like quite the trip to the mechanical aquarium for me as I used to be quite the enthusiast of fish in my younger days and seeing some of creatures recreated in this game brought a smile to my face. What I love about the boss battles in this game is how you’re presented with a giant “WARNING” sign before each foe appears, you have this feeling something sinister is around the corner. Despite seeing this screen hundreds of times it never got old for me. If you’re skilled with the cannon, you can time it just right for when the boss decides to give you a stream of its own beam of death, which you can counter and land an even bigger beam of destruction back at the baddie. This moment when I was clever (or lucky) enough to pull it off was one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve had in gaming for quite some time. Its not all burst beams though, ships come in different fins and shells and you can pick up power-ups to upgrade your ship along your level.
Tomb Raider Anniversary Review
The original Tomb Raider was more than just a 32 bit title that launched a strong Playstation franchise, it was a cultural phenomenon. For those that have ever played it, especially if you’ve recently gone back, it’s rather difficult to appreciate that game without the amazing strength of nostalgia. Fortunately when Crystal Dynamics took over for the franchise with Legend the company’s second project was to remake the original. As the following reviews will attest, it was a good faith effort to not only switch up the mechanics and polish the weaker points of the first game, but ultimately the need to keep many of the levels and designs intact tarnish the experience. Crystal Dynamics played it safe with how little it tweaked of the original formula and what resulted was a game that feels so updated and tight at some points and so sluggish and archaic at others.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Review
When I heard we were going to do Metal Gear Solid 3 for the game club I came to the sudden realization that I actually owned a ridiculous amount of copies of the game across four systems. So I felt it was an appropriate time to challenge myself as a gamer and begin the month long quest of playing the game through five times across each iteration of the game. What a fascinating journey it’s been. Not only do I now eat snakes for my lunch but I find myself actively camouflaging up and hiding in the spare room from my lady friend. Fortunately, before I completely lost my mind I wrote a review on the game which covers the following five versions of the game: the original PS2 version, Subsistence version on PS2, HD collection edition on Xbox 360, the Vita version, and finally the 3DS version. Be sure to check out my breakdown of which was my favourite of the five and which one I would recommend people track down.
Metal Gear Solid Review
There were so many excellent games that came out on the original Playstation that certain paramount titles could pass you by. The reasoning is actually two-fold because you may not have missed them – I was acutely aware of the presence of Metal Gear Solid when it released and even played a little of it – but it was back in a time where if a game didn’t click with you, typically you would shrug it off and move on to the myriad of other titles out there. That was my experience when I first played Metal Gear Solid. I remember having a heck of a time sneaking to the elevator in the beginning, even harder time getting into the vents outside Shadow Moses, and by the time I find the D.A.R.P.A. Chief only to discover most people got there in 20 minutes I was so frustrated I just quit. It would appear I not only passed on one of the best games on one of the best consoles of all time, but that I was abandoning a series that stands quite high in my top game franchises of all time. That’s the thing, though, when you look back on Metal Gear Solid. It broke so much ground and basically invented the stealth mechanic (after two earlier attempts I might add) that it’s easy to appreciate it but there are a heck of a lot of caveats if you’re going to revisit it today or play it for the first time. It has much more historical value than replay value, although I did have a smile on my face most of the time.
Parasite Eve Review
Parasite Eve was born from the JRPG rush that flooded onto the original Playstation in the West after the success of Final Fantasy VII. During this time we see many new franchises that never left Japan coming over to the West as well as several franchises from the days of the 16-bit era coming over as enhanced ports on the PS1. Square Enix, one of the top developers and publishers of JRPGs, decided to create a Western-focused action RPG that was developed by Americans working closely with some of Japan’s top talent. The result is the survival horror and RPG hybrid Parasite Eve, that doesn’t quite capture the hearts of either fan, but is an undeniably unique title.
Suikoden Review
Suikoden has always been regarded as one of those many staple JRPGs that graced the North American Playstation with its presence after Final Fantasy VII paved the way for the genre to become mainstream in the United States. In contrast to Square’s innovative title, Suikoden is a transplant from the late SNES days and to a certain extent its 16-bit roots show (and not just graphically). Couple that with developer Konami being relatively new to RPGs itself and you see why the overall game feels like a dated throwback to the days before even Final Fantasy IV or VI (II or III in the US), but despite these shortcomings there is the foundation of a much stronger title. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the game has up to 108 playable characters?
Suikoden is based off of the Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan (which basically translates to the same name) that tells a tale of politics, religion, revolution, and social unrest, which is somewhat common of Eastern storytelling in classic literature. You play as a hero – named whatever you choose – that enters into the posh world of being the son of the empire’s top military officer. It’s early in your life and no one respects you yet. When your father travels off to the north to protect the borders, an adventure unfolds that has you not only questioning everything you know, but lands you as the rebel leader for the army opposing the empire. There is, of course, a lot more to it than that, but for the sake of the review and your enjoyment with the game, we’ll leave it there. From the very start you can tell that Suikoden is going to throw more characters at you than you may be used to. Some of the earliest missions you partake on have you hot-swapping up to six characters, many of which will join your party along the way and you’ll be using in battle within moments. Read the rest of this entry »
Monster Monpiece Review
For better or worse, my dissection into the world of seemingly perverse games continues. I’ve already discovered that while HuniePop does have pornographic content in it, the brunt of the game save for a handful of still images deals mostly with a hybrid of a basic dating sim and match three cell phone games. Now I’m tackling yet another game shrouded in controversy: Monster Monpiece. This title garnered most of its attention – and definitely everyone’s excuse for not picking it up – based on the fact that it contained scantily clad girls and women that you would touch, pinch, tickle, and even rub in a masturbatory way to level up. Not the most thought provoking of activities to be sure, and I certainly did not level up anyone in public, but much like HuniePop a majority of what you will be doing in the game is quite tame. For those hardcore otaku out there the game was also avoided in the West due to the fact that some of the cards were censored or artwork cut completely from the game to satisfy both the ESRB and PEGI ratings boards as well as a digital only release, which were all proactive choices made by publisher Idea Factory. What resulted was a game that the typical gamer wouldn’t touch and the more perverted gamer no longer wanted (opting most likely for the boxed, uncensored Japanese version) and Monster Monpiece was basically put out to die. This is only unfortunate because I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer size, options, and depth provided by this decent digital card game.
Gaming History 101 