Website Update

Hey guys,

Just wanted to update you on the website situation. I am currently the proud holder of a web domain, retryquit.com (don't copy it into your web browser just yet as it doesn't actually go anywhere)! Hope you guys like the name!

Interestingly, I'm making the site on wordpress.com which is actually a blogging platform. It has slightly more functionality than blogger.com and will actually let me make a more streamlined web design for Retry Quit.

It does have its limitations however, so I hope you can be patient while I figure out completely how to use WordPress. The moment retryquit.com goes online, you'll see material from de Blog in dedicated sections, like News, Reviews, Editorials and Coming Soon, as well as brand new content to keep you guys interested and amused.

I've also just spent $1000 on a couple of short courses which begin in April and continue until June. This means that I'll soon have the skills to write like a professional web journalist and subsequently increase my chances of gaining employment in the field in the future. These are exciting times, friends!

With Easter coming up, I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday weekend. I hope by next week you can start enjoying brand new content on Retry Quit.

Until then, safe travels!
Jono

Site maintenance

Hey folks,

Just wanted to let you know that the blog - soon to be full-blown website - is undergoing some internal maintenance.

I'm in the process of finding a new domain and improving the web development skillz. Unfortunately, any good URLs pertaining to 'de Blog' are taken so the name will be changing and so too the focus of content to some degree. I'm also about to embark on some short courses that will get me some credentials for web writing and editing.

If you have suggestions about what you would like to see in the new site, shoot me an email:
jonosasson@hotmail.com

Suggestions may include:
Names for the site
Logos for the site
More 'news' type posts
More editorials
More game revies
Pictures and videos
Content other than video games

I encourage you all to email in because the new site should be just as much yours as it is mine.

I'll keep you updated with the progress of this move. In the meanwhile, you can expect an update this week about one famous blue hedgehog...

Links

Hey guys,
I just wanted to update you with some links from around the web. Peruse at your discretion.

The Escapist:
Zero Punctuation reviews Bioshock 2
Zero Punctuation reviews Bayonetta
Zero Punctuation reviews Darksiders
Unskippable makes Bayonetta's opening sequence a little more entertaining
And the Darksiders opening sequence a little more bearable

IGN:
An optimistic review of Final Fantasy XIII
A cynical review of Final Fantasy XIII
The editors give their impressions of the Playstation Move

G4tv:
Sony CEO talks up Playstation Move

Screw Attack:
The Armoury adds FFXIII's crazy Shiva motorbike (I looked for this on Screw Attack but it's not up there, however this link will take you to IGN)

Hope these tide you over for a little while.
Jono

No Apocalypse this week

Hey everybody!

So big news! In the last week, Final Fantasy XIII came out (you should know this - I mentioned it at least three times in last week's post!). I've played for about 30 hours and you'll be able to read my thoughts on the game below.

Also, the Tokyo Game Developer's Conference 2010 has been in full swing and we've heard a lot of exciting announcements like the Playstation Move, the PS3's answer to motion control which couldn't be any more similar to Nintendo's Wii Remote; OnLive, an online service which will allow you to play PC games on any (Windows compatible) computer by streaming gameplay through an external server, among other things. To see the entire Playstation keynote, click here. GDC usually eases the wait between E3 each June. For those not in the know, E3 is the largest videogame conference in the world and is open to both the media and consumers.

The gadget that may single-handedly make PC gaming accessible to everyone

With fewer shifts to work this week, I've been able to devote a hefty amount of time to more games so that I could bring to you...

GAMES THAT I WAS EXCITED FOR WHICH NOW I HAVE PLAYED FOR YOUR BENEFIT (Part 2)

Final Fantasy XIII
(PS3, 360)

Let me get this out of the way: if you think this is the best Final Fantasy game ever then you are seriously deluding yourself. All the pretty, flashing colours have probably triggered some minor case of epilepsy which makes you think stuff is awesome. Get real; compared to the other iterations in the series, this one is worse than XII (I actually really liked XII so I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I wrote that).

Final Fantasy is like Videogames for Dummies. It is so linear for half the game (let's remember that the game is over 60 hours in length!) that if you can find enjoyment out of pushing the control stick upwards, and occasionally twisting it left or right, you should probably be in a mental asylum. The overworld is tediously similar and drawn out to extreme lengths to the degree that some sections become incredibly boring and make you feel like you have to put the game down so you can revitalise that urge to bore yourself to death for the next time you play. It does not help thatthe width of this linear world (for the most part) is like that of a doorway. Though sparse, there are times when the path diverges for 3 - 4 (5 if you're lucky) footsteps so you can collect a treasure which contains the same item you collected 15 hours prior.

The second-most annoying enemy returns in HD brilliance

There are two diversions that make the overworld a little more tolerable. Firstly, there's the battle system which is deep and interesting to explore. Each character has a few classes they can switch between at any time. You can choose Ravagers who use magic to damage foes; Medics who heal teammates; Saboteurs who cast debuffs on enemies so attacks deal more damage, and Sentinels who draw enemy attention away from weaker party members - to name a few. Choosing when to switch roles is crucial in battle, as fights tend to be more difficult than other RPGs and the tide can change at any time. Enemies each have their own quota of battle damage that, when reached, forces them into a temporarily weakened state where you can deal upwards of 500% of normal battle damage to really up your odds before they revert back to normal. This mechanic is also very important as foes can take a hell of a beating before going down. You can also summon special beings known as Eidolons who deal great damage and can transform into a kind of vehicle mode (crazy Japs!) where they zoom all over the screen dealing even more damage for a short period of time. Battles are all timed and ranked; higher ranks mean better items at the end.

I do have some gripes with the battle system, however. Firstly, the variety of enemies in most areas doesn't usually exceed more than four kinds. You'll often fight at least two kinds, and the game just swaps between different combinations of these few enemies and stamps it 'VARIETY'. With long-winded overworld stages, these battles too become tedious and you'll begin to find yourself wanting to skip fights after constantly battling the same enemies ad nauseum. Also, you can only switch roles from pre-selected combinations in the menu between battle. You can't set individual roles on the fly which is sometimes annoying when your pre-selected ones don't quite do the trick and you're left fighting a strong foe for more than four minutes because you didn't put a saboteur combination in the presets. Finally, the ranking system is at times absolutely outrageous. You get an average rank (three stars) if you hit the target time, give or take a few seconds. You get five stars if you're about a minute ahead, but this is entirely up to the developers. There were some battles where I was upwards of 1:30 ahead of the clock and it only gave me 4 stars. I would have thrown my control at the television where it not so damn expensive! A silly addition is that your health is considered dangerously low when it really isn't. The game goes into panic mode if you have 500HP when your max is 700HP. It's like an insatiable child who cries for attention when a fly lands on their arm. The game is totally and unnecessarily insecure! Finally, you can only control one party member while the rest act according to their current class. Having the ability to set conditions to their actions (like a simple version of the FFXII Gambits) would have been really helpful, like say, 'Use a potion if a party member's health is below 30%'. These are only minor little things, and the battle system is really very deep and keeps you wanting to explore different combinations of classes against different types of enemies.

The other reprieve is the level-up system known as the Crystarium. Here, characters have a unique skill tree for each class which you can level up with experience gained from battle. The amount of experience you pour into each tree will affect skills in battle and attributes like Strength and Magic Power. Obviously, if you devote more time to one tree, you will be less-efficient in another which could mean the difference between victory and defeat in battle. It requires a lot of forethought and planning so that you don't neglect a particular class as the Crystarium expands for further development.

As far as graphics go, I can safely say without a doubt that it is the best looking game I have played, period. Yes, it looks even better than Uncharted 2 which seamlessly switches between cutscene and gameplay without any difference in quality. There is a particular CGI scene in FFXIII about 25 hours in where you see a re-enactment of an historical event played by these kind of firework spirits and it's breathtaking. The amount of detail that has gone into each landscape is not at the expense of the detail of characters faces either. There are times when the game could have been filmed with real-life actors and you would not be able to tell the difference (good luck emulating those hairstyles though!). Even the Crystarium looks awesome thanks to lots of bloom lighting on the bright-coloured crystals. There are no hitches in battle either which is surprising given that there is always so much going on at any given point.

Lookin' good!

You can't review a Final Fantasy game without talking about the Soundtrack and unfortunately FFXIII misses the mark on the scores. Although there are some very notable tracks, there are others which don't do anything for me. I was a massive fan of the XII soundtrack which so many people did not enjoy, which comes as a great surprise to me (funnily enough, it was the same guy who did XII's soundtrack who did that of Valkyria Chronicles). Many said of FFXII that the loss of Nobuo Uematsu from earlier FF games ruined its soundtrack. I did not agree, but now for FFXIII, I can see that his greatness can never be achieved, and FFXIII is all the worse off for it.

Anyway, despite all its shortcomings, Final Fantasy XIII is still an all right game. For me it's the story which really has me wanting to play on and not much else. The graphics are spectacular and truly have to be seen to be believed, and the battles are very enjoyable and challenging. Ultimately, this is not the best game ever, nor the best Final Fantasy game ever and fans should not expect to find the same greatness from earlier games in this one. I do recommend a playthrough though if you can tolerate the mundaneness of the first 30 hours of play.

Heavy Rain
(PS3)

Another over-hyped game of 2010 which incorporates one of my many banes of videogames: quick-time events. Heavy Rain is one massive quick-time event, not suitable for people with the reflexes of a brick. I don't think Heavy Rain is a bad game by any means but the gameplay mechanic which is supposed to draw you in is its biggest flaw.

Basically, when your character has to do something involving movement, you have to press buttons on the control which correspond very loosely to the action on-screen. For example, when stumbling down a muddy hill where grip is practically non-existent, you tap the left and right shoulder buttons on the control stick which translates the character's footsteps as he slips downhill with growing momentum. In another instance, you have to disinfect a man's wound by slowly rotating the control stick clockwise (which translates to the girl swabbing the wound with a rotation of her wrist). A great deal of effort has gone into making these actions seem somewhat similar to what it would be like if in real life, we were all Playstation 3 Dualshock controllers. Unfortunately, the gimmick wears off quickly (after the tediously slow introductory section where you have to watch a man shower - among other things) and the frustation builds up.

I would be able to cope better with this mechanism were the controls actually responsive, but for anyone who has played a Playstation 3 game that uses the motion capabilities of the Dualshock control, you'll know that to get any response from the control, you have to shake the control harder than you would your best friend who passed out from a drug overdose. It would seem that my Square button doesn't work properly either and you have to press it down with enough force to pop a pimple, but when I play any other game, the button works fine with a simple tap.

Where the game shines though (and this is not unique to just Heavy Rain) is that your actions can affect whether a character lives or dies, and regardless the game continues. There's a scene early in the game where you come head to head with a gunner and you know that if you miss one action, the character is as good as dead. Your heart pumps at one million miles an hour as you hope, just hope that you can survive long enough that you might knock the man out. This happens a lot so if you have a weak heart, maybe give this one a miss.

What I fear though - which hasn't happened to me just yet - is that the control will not respond at a crucial moment and my character will be shot dead and their story will cease to go on through no fault of my own. It seems you are allowed to miss a few actions - in another instance, you're forced to drive against the traffic on a highway and failing to hit a button to swerve out of the way just makes you clip another car - but the game doesn't indicate how many times this is possible before that's it for your character.

The intriguing part is that the story will go on. Presumably as long as one of the four characters lives, this murder mystery will find closure. This provides for numerous endings and playthroughs for anyone foolhardy enough to trust that their heart won't give out at the next scene. The story is fascinating - though my knowledge of criminology tells me that these type of killers do not exist - and will keep you wondering what will happen right through. The game forces you to switch between the four characters, allowing only short bursts of play for each one which triggers the annoying habit of 'I'll just playing for one more scene'. I didn't get to bed until 3am last night because I played just one more scene five times in excess.

The graphics are give or take. A lot of detail has gone into characters' faces but not so much into other body animations, particularly hands. The loading screens are mind-numbingly long at times (2 - 3 minutes sometimes) without so much as a simple minigame to make the time go faster. Then there's the voice-acting. Heavy Rain has quite possibly the worst voice acting I have ever heard in any game to date. They're all played by Brits putting on American accents and the results couldn't be worse. Some characters sound ok at best, with possibly a mild disability that makes them talk the way they do, while others sound like a mix between German, Swedish and French accents with a frontal lobotomy for good measure. The kids and one particular psychiatrist suffer from this the worst and though it is highly comedic, the intention clearly was not this.

Anyway, I'd play this game for the story if nothing else. The gameplay, graphics and definitely the voice acting aren't anything to write home about but the story of the Origami Killer will have you on the edge of your seat for hours to come.

Bioshock 2
(PS3, 360, PC)

Picture this. You're standing alone in the city - silent, dark and run-down - where anything that moves is not going to be friendly. There are noises in the distance, shrieks, quickly getting louder and louder. You have a gun with only 5 bullets. Thankfully, as quickly as the noise was audible, it's gone. Now you're dead.

Welcome to the world of Bioshock 2! In the undersea world of Rapture, human folly has led to its downfall and all that's left is the worn-down ruins of a once great society, now just a sombre reminder of the sad fate this world has befallen. The city of Rapture has fallen victim to human nature and once more the gods are laughing.

Bioshock 2 follows ten years after the events of the first game; now a new political sociopath has come to power and she wants you dead. Although she has the best intentions for Rapture, her selfishness and greed prevail and once more the city suffers with you caught in right in the middle. Everybody is an enemy; nobody can be trusted. The game may even convince you that you cannot trust yourself. This game is dark and I love it!

Atmosphere is key in this game, so much so that if you think you have a moment's reprieve, the game has fooled you. Danger lurks around every corner; light is used sparingly and the music is a constant warning that safety is not nearby. Ammo is more scarce than light and if you find yourself out of ammo in a gunfight, your hopes of survival are minimal. For the faint-hearted this truly is a terrifying game, but you have so much to gain from continuing onwards.

Not so luxurious anymore I suppose

The story is revealed to you via radio communication from various characters, some on your side, some not. You can search around for extra radio diaries which speak of the horrors to come or shine light on characters and their motives. This ruptured method of storytelling is enthralling, leaving you to piece everything together yourself and come to your own conclusions. Not many games give you this sort of freedom of analysis. If Bioshock were a novel, you would study it English class. That said, it is by no means alienating; no knowledge of the first game is required, but it enriches the experience if you know what happened ten years ago. Despite its complexity, the story is easy to follow. So compelling is it that I beat the game in two sittings; one three hour sitting, one seven hour. If you think ten hours is short then you'll be pleased to know that you can play through again for different endings or go back and find all the radio journals.

The gameplay is more or less the same as the first game with a few extra tweaks like being able to dual-wield guns and plasmids (magical powers, if you will); being a Big Daddy means you have a drill to play with which is great fun, and the hacking minigame has changed to be a much more on-the-fly experience. These make the FPS gameplay much more fun and keep you on your toes with a higher difficulty curve to boot.

I haven't tried the multiplayer but I'm told it's very good and some new Downloadable Content has become available including some new maps and characters to keep things feeling fresh.

Although this is my shortest review this week, this is without doubt the best game of the three. You must pick this one up!

Editorial: Motion Control and why Nintendo are Douchebags

2010 is the year of motion control it seems. Both Playstation and Microsoft are dipping their finger in the motion control pie and both have their own versions slated for release later this year. They hope to gain some ground over Nintendo with the unprecedented success of the Wii. What does this mean for gamers like you and I?

At GDC last week, Sony of America CEO Jack Tretton promised gamers that their new Playstation Move technology would not cut out the core gamer by only focusing software on the casual demographic. He continued that the Playstation would be the next logical step for the causal userbase of Nintendo looking for HD graphics, DVD and Bluray capability and a deeper gaming experience. To misconstrue his words just a little, he pretty much said that the Wii is a shallow gaming device for people who know little or nothing about games and are ignorant when it comes to knowing what real gaming is all about.

If that's what he was really thinking, I agree entirely.

I was away recently with a friend, female, foreign to gaming but more than willing to try. Her previous forays into gaming included Guitar Hero and Wii Sports. She'd seen advertisements for Assassin's Creed II and was itching to try it out. I thought with its difficult control scheme she would find her first real game extremely challenging and might turn her off the experience forever. I was right that she thought it difficult, but I was surprised that she was determined to hone her skills and play on. There were a couple of occasions where she would spend the entire the day inside just playing Assassin's Creed II - just like a real gamer! By the end of the trip she was probably more than half way through the game and playing like a pro.

Playstation Move: fun for the whole family - mum included

'Incredible,' I thought. Since the Wii's conception, I thought that casual gamers were hopeless idiots when it came to gaming. But in two weeks Sophie alone turned that myth on its head and opened my eyes.

Nintendo treats gamers like they're idiots. The games they allow to be manufactured for their system treat people like they have half a brain. Naturally, hardcore gamers looked down on casual gamers because Nintendo was brainwashing these people. Nintendo really is more evil than I thought.

And now, Sony comes up with the Playstation Move, a Wii Remote look-alike with greater potential, possibly more phallic-shaped than before, which could restore balance to the madness Nintendo is responsible for. Their promise to deliver quality games to casual and hardcore gamer alike could break down the wall which has created so much resentment within the gaming community. I like the route Sony has taken and I hope that they do not travel the same path Nintendo has.

I would talk about Microsoft's Project Natal, but they have been very coy about the details up until now. I foresee it will be a major aspect of their E3 keynote speech. Right now I'm in no position to consider whether they are following in the footsteps of Nintendo... but if you want to know my opinion, I think they will.

Reggie Fils-Aime, the douchebag that is Nintendo of America's CEO said in an interview with IGN that he is not intimidated by Sony and Microsoft. In fact, he said they should be intimidated by Nintendo. He refused to acknowledge the economic concept of market competition by stating that Nintendo do things how they want and do not bother with other companies. Well, it's no wonder Nintendo have their head stuck up their own arse. Mr Fils-Aime seems to believe he knows exactly what the consumer wants ("there really is no loss for the Wii consumer" when it comes to Netflix and HD capability) and that's exactly why much of Nintendo's original userbase has migrated to other consoles. Tell me Reg, since when have consumers ever wanted a device that measures their heart rate while playing a game?

He is reading your mind right now

Nintendo's problem is that developers found a way to milk money out of the Wii. This exploitation has left Nintendo sitting on millions and millions of dollars, leaving them lazy and complacent. The developers keep making shit games, the people who Nintendo trained to be idiots keep buying them and Nintendo revel in the money they've made. Meanwhile, the people who loved them for their quality games have been left in the dark and go on to seek refuge in the companies who actually respect their gamers and cater to their interests.

I think that Nintendo too believe that they made a mistake somewhere along the line and have too much pride to say they were wrong. They manufactured a machine which in turn has manufactured more crap than a cow on haemorrhoids and nearly 5 years in they're in way too deep. So Nintendo, I invite you now to come to the stage and admit that you made a mistake. I won't judge you. Change your game plan, fire Reggie and Cammie and we can kiss and make up, k?

My resentment for the casual gamers is fueled by the existence of motion control technology. At first I believed that Sony's foray into the market was going to be a big mistake, but after GDC, I've seen a glimpse into the future that's in store for the gaming community as a whole, and I can only hope it is a bright one.

Oh, and Nintendo suck.

Other Things of Note

I need not talk about the games I've been playing this week as I mentioned them all earlier. This section will return next week when hopefully I can talk about some new games. God of War III, perhaps?

People have been asking me recently just how many games I have in my entire collection. Well I can't give you an exact figure as I currently have some of my Wii games rented out to a mate, but on PS3 alone I have 34 games. On the Wii, I think I have about 20, and on 360 a mere 3. That's not counting games I have downloaded on my systems. Between my PS3 and Wii, I have another 30 or so. That brings the total to around 87 games. That's a fair amount of money I've poured into gaming over the years and that doesn't count my DS or PSP games.

This is what I've been trying to tell everyone!

I synced my iTunes library with my Playstation 3 the other day and for the first time I'm hearing my music in 5.1 Dolby Surround. It is so awesome. The more bass the better. If you have a spare $800 lying, I highly recommend investing in some surround sound. The transition from 5.1 back to stereo is always a difficult one to make. I wish life was in 5.1 surround.

If you have anything you want to email me about, the address is:

jonosasson@hotmail.com

I appreciate anything from support to hate mail to comments to suggestions. Feel free by any means.

Until next week,

Jono

Pictures courtesy:
Playstation
OnLive
Game Trailers
IGN

Support a writer, read a blog

Hello kind readers!

Wow, it's been a while... again! Maintaining a blog sure is hard!

I've been on holiday the past month and only arrived back home a week ago before being drawn into the inescapable abyss which is work! Now I find myself bed-ridden and in a lot of pain from a combination of post-belated staff Christmas parties and 18 hour shifts/30 hour weekends. This, I thought, was an opportune time to get the creative juices flowing and explore a little the world which is video games.

Ironically, I wrote my last post in a blazing heat wave reaching 43 degrees at its worst and I write this one in a maelstrom of torrential rain and hail attacks. Indeed, the next time I write, it could be the apocalypse!

Before I headed up north to Queensland to bask in the sun and take some time off work, I had started writing a list of the games I was most excited for in 2010. Since then, the list has become somewhat of a 'games I have played in 2010'. In the first two and a half months of 2010 alone, we have seen a great number of blockbusters hit our respective gaming consoles. Thankfully, I have played almost all of the best ones (or at least own them for later review).

Your wait has not been in vain! Harbouring guesses that I had abandoned de Blog were unfounded! Today, I bring you a section adequately named...

GAMES THAT I WAS EXCITED FOR WHICH NOW I HAVE PLAYED FOR YOUR BENEFIT (Part 1)


Darksiders
PS3, 360

When I say "Zelda," do your ears perk up? Do you slide to the edge of your seat and ready yourself for a deep conversation about Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Do you perhaps search your brain for everything you remember about Zelda D'Aprano, the women's rights activist from the 60's who chained herself to an Australian bank advocating equal pay for females? In either case, I'd be forced to slap you for being so outrageous - this is a gaming blog; of course I'm talking about The Legend of Zelda, you incessant arsenic sniffer.

Moving on...

Darksiders - if you didn't already gather from the prelude above - is a Zelda love-affair with similarities so striking that you could call the game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Apocalypse. It begins with the targeting system which looks and acts so much like Zelda that you'll be calling shenanigans! Then there's the gameplay progression which has you visiting new locales and discovering crafty items which affect both combat and objects in the world around you. Even the dungeons play the same! There are small keys, boss keys, minibosses, puzzles, treasure chests. You even collect (the equivalent of) heart pieces! And a horse. You get a horse. Enough said.

All that aside though, you can tell that the developers have a genuine love interest with the Nintendo cult classic, and this game doesn't so much offend as it does ignite the same sense of love and devotion that we all experienced in Ocarina of Time. However, as little as an hour into the game, you begin to realise that Darksiders is much more a mish-mash of other favourites too such as God of War, in that the combat, right down to the button combos remind one of the anti-heroic Spartan. For those familiar with the Legacy of Kain series, you might also see some resemblance in the atmosphere and overall feel of the game's world. It is dark and lurking and at times even uses similar colour schemes to the original Soul Reaver. As an aside, you also get a power-up which lets you float across chasms and the like which can at times trick you into thinking you're actually playing as Raziel...

War contemplates investing in some lighter - yet equally
badass - armour

But before you go casting judgement, you should first remember how brilliant the games that Darksiders has drawn inspiration from are. These are some of the best games of all time so even if Darksiders isn't the most original title to date, it certainly moulds the best of each of these games into a very intriguing franchise, certainly worth a look. With a unique storyline which casts War, one of the four horseman of the Apocalypse against the legions of heaven and hell, you will definitely find yourself liking Darksiders from the get-go.

Bayonetta
PS3, 360

It's not often that female characters get a starring role in videogames, but when they do, the result is often... big boobies. Yes, that's right, massive jubblies. We've seen it before in what was coined in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, "Sexaxis," a play on the PS3 motion sensor, Sixaxis. Jiggle physics has been around in games since the first move to 3D gaming! Now, Bayonetta comes to our screens just screaming sexual charm and Japanese quirkiness. But at the crux of the game, do the boobies really get in the way of the beat 'em up gameplay? Not at all (except for their size, in which case they do)!

The game plays very similar to Devil May Cry, but has a very in-depth combo system based on the kind of weapons Bayonetta has equipped. There are 10+ weapons that can be equipped to both hands and feet, and each combination of weapons gives way to new combos. As an Umbra Witch, Bayonetta can also harness the power of her own hair which provides her very own armour and summons hell's most fearsome demons who assist her in taking on various incarnations of angels from Heaven. Yes, this game is typically Japanese, but the game plays out in a serious manner and you will be drawn into the world which Platinum Games has created.

The graphics are, quite frankly, breath-taking. The combat is very cinematic and action-packed, leaving each new combo you discover leaving you in utmost awe. Seeing enemies absolutely decimated by Bayonetta, guns in hand and lollipop in mouth, you can't help but smile, look back at the destruction you've caused and think to yourself, "Yep, I did that."

A moment's silence for the guy on the receiving end

Each level is split up into segments which are each individually scored based on time taken, damage given and taken, lives lost and style in battle. This gives you all the more reason to replay levels to aim for high scores and collect more halos, the in-game currency used to buy more weapons and moves.

My first impression when I played the game was that it was going to be just another typical beat 'em up, but I was very much mistaken. The story is very intriguing and constantly has you wanting to see what happens next. The combat alone is enough to get you hooked, but the story and Japanese quips keep you coming back for more. Definitely worth your time.

Army of Two: The 40th Day
PS3, 360

This game annoyed me for two reasons. The first is that its claim to fame is that it trumps the previous Army of Two with better gameplay but only now puts it on par with the other gajillion First Person Shooters out there already. The second reason is that the title makes no sense. What happened on the thirty-nine other days that makes the fortieth day so special?! Did the guys not have sex for forty days and forty nights, and so this game is the eventual love-fest between two beefed up men whose vocabulary surely wouldn't reach that far into the hundreds? For the love of god I hope not. The game has been described as "bromantic" and a "bromance"...

Luckily, from what I did play, there was no anal penetration to speak of. But the game did suck. I don't claim to be very good at FPS', but some of the mechanics in this game are so convoluted and poorly explained that when you fail a mission because you didn't kill a guard at exactly the right moment and have to do it all again, failing over and over, it takes the fun - in every sense of the word - out of the game. Even on normal difficulty in co-op mode, my mate and I struggled to beat the first boss who has armour heavier than War's and his single weak point the tiniest slit in his helmet. Give him a shotgun, fifty other enemies to deal with at the same time and a checkpoint further back than a man with hyper-sensitive sense of smell who just caught a whiff of fart and you have a very broken game.

"Play this game and we'll shoot!"

Oh, and the game has unskippable cutscenes. Yes, if you die or fail a mission (for the hundreth time), you have to watch the same cutscene all over again. Unskippable cutscenes are so archaic and unwanted in games nowadays that that's enough to warrant not purchasing a game. What is this, the 20th century?!

MAG
PS3

If you were reading my review of Army of Two and thinking that I'm clearly biased against First Person Shooters then my review about MAG will quickly overturn that notion. MAG, short for Massive Action Game, is a PS3 exclusive, online only (no bots to speak of), 256 multiplayer game. It takes place some time in the future when inter-PMC (Private Military Company) warfare has broken out and three major companies are trying to come out on top.

From the start, you align yourself with one of the Raven, Valor or SVER and begin training. As an FPS it has all the basics; guns, melee, grenades etc. It also features a deep level-up system which dictates your skills and progress. As you level, you gain skill points which can be added to one of many categories, allowing you to carry new weaponry, learn or upgrade combat skills or operate useful gadgetry like health kits for reviving fellow team mates or charges for demolishing key objectives. The level cap is at 60 which leaves for a lot skills to be learned and future planning to do. This adds an interesting element to gameplay itself which aside from being a massive online game is your fairly standard, run-of-the-mill FPS.

Massive AWESOME Game

Being online-only, there is very little, if any, lag to speak of. The graphics do their job well and the framerate constantly remains very high.

The guns within each faction are just slightly different. It's really the maps where your choice of PMC comes into play. Depending on who you play as, you will start in different areas of the map, often times advantageous to one group and handicapping the other. For the advantaged, it's a matter of protecting the objective point with precise shooting and non-complacency. For the disadvantaged, it means communicating effectively with squad members to find weak points in the enemy's defences to take victory.

Given the scope of these battles (from 64 players all the way to 256), each team is split up into squads and platoons with players able to take on leadership roles which carry more battle skills and privileges. Win or lose, the game rewards you for your actions in battle. If gunning isn't necessarily your thing, you can opt to specialise as a medic, reviving and healing your friends to increase your chances of victory. The reward is still great.

In either case, the game is very enthralling and will keep you wanting to play for a very long time.

Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing
PS3, 360, Wii, NDS

One thing I miss about previous generations of consoles is local multiplayer. In fact, in previous generations it was only called multiplayer because no other forms of multiplayer existed! But back to the present, this generation is dominated by online multiplayer leaving people with real friends behind in the dust. Currently, I cannot think of any other decent racing game on PS3 that supports Local Multiplayer, so for this reason, Sonic Racing (I will call it for short) already stands out above the rest.

Sonic Racing is Sega's answer to Mario Kart. It features characters from many of Sega's franchises, including Sonic (obviously), Billy Hatcher, House of the Dead, Virtua Fighter and Space Channel 5. It also features some familiar Sega worlds and tunes which feels very nostalgic. But none of this means anything if the racing doesn't feel good. Fortunately, it feels like a cart racer should. The karts are weighty, drift physics work like you would expect them and there's a very nice sense of speed all the time, makes races feel intense.

The AI is pretty tough, even on Easy Mode (seasoned racers will win pretty much every race however). I dread to see what they're like on the hardest difficulty. The game also features 60 missions which include collecting rings, driving through gates and destroying targets in a set time. There is of course Time Trial Mode, and a large number of challenges which reward you with Sega Miles which you use to purchase new characters, tracks and songs.

This game is a great fan service to lovers of Sega

This game really shines with its multiplayer mode. It features both local and online and both play very well. There was no lag in any online races I participated in, and I wasn't actually coming first in every online race which was often the case on Mario Kart Wii. You will need some serious skills to beat some of the people online!

The 360 and Wii versions feature exclusive characters which is possibly the only incentive to get the game on these consoles. The game plays best on the PS3.

If you're after a racing game with good multiplayer, excellent graphics (everything is so bright and happy!) and just quality cart racing in general, look no further than Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing!


Look for my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII, Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles next week in Part 2!

GAMES I'M PLAYING THIS WEEK

In this section, I briefly describe the games I'm playing this week (hence the title) and rate them using a fairly basic scale which looks like the following:

Highly Recommend: This game is awesome. I love it and you should too
Recommend: It's a pretty good game but nowhere near perfect and will only appeal to certain people
Hardly Recommend: It's hard to find things to like about this game. Certain aspects are good but the game as a whole doesn't play very well
Don't Recommend: I wouldn't go near this game with a ten-foot stick. Nothing about this game is good

It's a shallow system, but I'll always note who each game will appeal to. I will not use the arbitrary system of number rating. Ever.


Note: A lot of the games I have listed above I have been playing this week, and all of them with the exception of one being very obvious I either Recommend or Highly Recommend. Being away however, I also got to take the time to play a lot of the games I hadn't beaten yet, so here they are...


1. Uncharted 2 (PS3)

No wonder this game won the esteemed Game of the Year 2009!! This game is absolutely brilliant! The graphics set it apart from every game out at the moment at the time of writing (FFXIII is out tomorrow though... ). The whole game is literally like playing a movie. It's like one big interactive cutscene.

So pretty...

The gameplay is much like the first but has been improved in some areas. Instead of the static 'adventure section, gun section, adventure section' ad nauseum, Uncharted 2 for the most part intertwines the two, so you can expect to see enemies at any time.

The environments differ a lot more from the first too, from oppressed cities to train yards to car chases to the freakin' Himalayas! It's totally awesome!!

I don't need to give an entire game review to express just how much I Highly Recommend this game! Get it if you haven't already played it!



2. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)

Valkyria Chronicles is quite possibly one of the most touching games I have ever played. The story takes place in an alternate Europe (Europa) where a small neutral country named Gallia is caught in a war between two major super powers (sound familiar?). It follows a small platoon in the Gallian army with a heavy focus on character development. The story is beautifully narrated with an amazing soundtrack to boot.

The gameplay does not suffer as a result of this. Valkyria Chronicles is a third-person strategy RPG with elements from shooter, strategy and role-playing genres. Each battle takes place within a confined area, and you are given a certain amount of moves per turn based on how many generals you have in your platoon. Prior to battle you can equip different guns and armour to each class of unit for that added advantage. At the start of each move, you are taken to a birds-eye view of the battle map where you select any character from tank commander, scout, heavy gunner, grenadier, sniper or engineer. Once selected, the game switches to over-the-shoulder view where you move to either take out foes, conceal yourself from enemy view or move to a more strategic location. Once all your moves are done, it switches to the enemy's turn and the process repeats.

Fear her big, phallic-shaped object

It all works very well, as the battle is as much a battle of wits as it is one of skill with a gun. Often, a lot of the battle is thinking how your moves will affect the enemy's moves and vice versa. It is not simply enough to gather all your forces in one fell-swoop and shoot at everything; the game in fact does not allow for this. Often enemies are hidden and thoughtless moves will result in death. Because you can only move one unit at a time, you must consider everything. In some missions, you must protect a specific location or not allow certain characters to die.

The graphics top off this amazing game. It is all hand-drawn in watercolour in Japanese anime style. This may cause some to avoid the game, but I find it very endearing. The graphics give the game a very unique touch which cannot be said for a lot of the games of this generation.

I Highly Recommend this to fans of any of these genres.

In Other News...

I've recently come into conflict with myself as to where I would like to take my life. I'm currently looking for roommates to move out with - to no avail, mind you. With regards to my education, I no longer want to do the degree I'm enrolled. I'm thinking I would very much like to do some kind of course in writing, whether it be Media & Communications or Journalism or some kind of Professional Writing certificate. I ought to start looking into that.

In the gaming world, most notably Final Fantasy XIII arrives on shelves tomorrow. Though most would find this very exciting, I'm very doubtful as to how good it will be. I've read a number of reviews and there's a lot to talk down about it. I'll have my review up next week.

Indeed...

God of War III also comes out in the next fortnight which will have the knickers of Playstation 3 fans in their own respective twists. I can't wait!

Megaman 10 is out this Thursday on PSN and Xbox Live, so people looking for some difficult retro action ought to get themselves a (digital) copy!


If you have anything to email me about, feel free to do so at:
jonosasson@hotmail.com

Anything is appreciated from comments, feedback, praise, food, abuse, links (which I'll post up in the next post if it's notable for all to see); anything you like.


Until next time, have an awesome week!
Jono

43 degrees of musings

Hello kind readers,
I hope you all managed to survive the 43 degree heat. I worked all day behind the coffee machine which was pretty insane but what can you do? Life goes on.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN XBOX GAMER

So I've made up my mind about how I feel about my Xbox 360. After playing it a little more, and playing my PS3 and dare I say even the Wii for comparison's sake, I've got to admit I'm satisfied.

I've always been a Playstation man. The very existence of the Xbox always annoyed me because as somewhat of a fanboy, I always wanted others to play the same games on the same consoles as I did. But particularly it was Microsoft that annoyed me. As one of the biggest corporate giants in the world, they never actually needed to enter into the videogame market. For a company who already had money pouring out of its faucets and hundred dollar bills for toilet paper, videogames would surely have been the least of their concerns.

However, one board meeting later when discussing what market they should monopolise next (probably not what really happened), the Xbox came into existence and the race for console supremacy begun. The actual reason I now realise is valid one and goes something like this: Bill Gates was already looking to the future of Microsoft and realised that inter-connectivity was becoming a big thing. With the PC now well established, the next logical step was to create a multimedia device for the television which would allow people to connect and interact with files that had once been exclusive only to their PCs.

It was a clever business move indeed. Introduce some new technology with the already popular Microsoft brand name and it will surely sell. The videogame market however turned out to be a very different market to the one that Microsoft was used to. Videogames was a venerable club with exclusive members who smoked cuban cigars and drank blue label scotch on the rocks. This was Nintendo and Sony territory (Sega had fallen off the radar by this stage) and Microsoft had a lot to prove. It had already stolen away Nintendo's fabled 2nd party developer Rare and Nintendo fans were not happy. I know I wasn't! Luckily, Nintendo had managed to secure its rights to Donkey Kong and Starfox before Rare sold out. Other franchises like Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie weren't so lucky (as seen by the Xbox 360 bastardisations floating around at the moment).

Microsoft's big, black, bulging... box

Microsoft wanted to steal Sony's thunder by focusing Japan's attention from the hit Playstation 2. This resulted in many delays to the Xbox' release in the European PAL region which includes Australia and NZ. The effect of these efforts were largely unseen in Japan with the console failing to pass 1 million units according to NPD figures. Europe actually turned out to be the console's core market, but some gamers were turned away by the year-long delay of the console's release and instead turned to Sony and Nintendo who were already well-established with their respective consoles. However, the Xbox and its successor, the Xbox 360 managed to get their foot in the proverbial door and now have a large fan following.

I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan. I still hold much resentment for the Xbox for stealing away some of my favourite franchises. Still, with its shoddy design and hardware faults, it manages to sell thanks to a favourable price point and ignorant consumer base. Despite my feelings however, I must concede that I enjoy its company. In some ways it is better than my primary console the PS3.

Firstly, the online store is far more accessible and better-organised than Playstation's Store. The ability to search for games based off user ratings is excellent and the ability to preview game footage and access all of that game's extra downloadable content is a definite plus. I feel happy when I turn on the console and I'm greeted with pleasant greens and the smiling, yet somewhat disfigured face of my avatar who always appreciates my company. The interface is slick and easy to navigate and the ability to stream music and movies from my computer with the click of a button is great too.

However, I despise the fact that even after buying the console, you must constantly fork out even more money to sustain your gaming habits. If you want to play wirelessly, you must buy a wireless adapter which will set you back around $150. If you want to play online, there's another $90 per year for that service. Rechargeable control? $35. I'm lucky enough that my router is less than a metre away from my console that I can just plug the console in with a LAN adapter. And because my PS3 out-dates my 360 by over a year, I have a well-established online community of friends who I can play with on that. For a lot of others though, they don't have the same disposable income that I do that lets them own two other consoles or pay a monthly subscription fee to use the company's servers. It would be nice if these came at no extra cost to me.

For what I need it for though, the 360 provides, and that's good enough for me. I'm slowly warming up to its existence, but it still has a lot to prove in my eyes. I need a console that I know is not going to break down in a few months' time. Likewise, I need a console which won't scratch my discs if I leave them in the tray. There are still major problems which haven't been dealt with yet and I can only hope that these issues are addressed in the near future.

Anyway, I read early today an article saying that only 15% of gamers purchase Downloadable Content (DLC). DLC is additional game content which comes at a small cost which provides things like new characters, quests, maps or weapons. This figure doesn't really surprise me. Personally, I tend not to buy DLC because I feel that the price is usually not representative of the quality or quantity of that which I'm buying (they average around $10 but can be anywhere from $2 - $30). I'm also lucky that my debit card doesn't work on the Playstation Network for some unknown reason, so I'm unable to purchase anything from there (just as well because when I see things with a $1.99 price tag, I often buy multiple items with that price and end up spending $30 odd!).

My gripe with DLC is that developers have become lazy and purposely leave content out in games which are already very expensive, and force you to buy the DLC to finish off the story. It's a shifty deal! They expect gamers to fork out $100 for a game, then charge another $10 or $20 so you can play the complete package. I don't know who started this trend but nowadays we see many games like Assassin's Creed II and Little Big Planet which charge for additional quests or levels for absurd price tags. Not to mention that the cost of DLC is totally inflated in Australia compared to that of the US.

Not at all does this statistic surprise me! The one way to stop this is for the people who do buy it to stop, but this will never happen. This is far too profitable a business to stop now, and I believe even if the masses stopped buying it, there will always be the casual crowd who continue to buy songs for Band Hero or costumes for Pain!.


GAMES I'M PLAYING THIS WEEK

In this section, I briefly describe the games I'm playing this week (hence the title) and rate them using a fairly basic scale which looks like the following:

Highly Recommend: This game is awesome. I love it and you should too
Recommend: It's a pretty good game but nowhere near perfect and will only appeal to certain people
Hardly Recommend: It's hard to find things to like about this game. Certain aspects are good but the game as a whole doesn't play very well
Don't Recommend: I wouldn't go near this game with a ten-foot stick. Nothing about this game is good

It's a shallow system, but I'll always note who each game will appeal to. I will not use the arbitrary system of number rating. Ever.


1. Dragon Age: Origins (PS3)

Got back into it this week. I've finally finished the introductory part of the game and it has become much harder. Battles are beginning to require thoughtful strategy, many times making me rethink how I attack and sometimes even restarting multiple times. I didn't expect combat to get as deep as it has and I'm even more impressed with the game than I was last time I played it.

Still Highly Recommend!


2. The Saboteur (PS3)

There are countless WWII games these days. Most, if not all focus on one champion soldier from the US army who single-handedly qualm the German's efforts to take over Europe. The Saboteur, based also in WWII has a very different take - a refreshing one at that - casting you as an Irishman whose hobbies include racing, drinking and swearing. After starting a feud with a high-ranking German officer, Sean finds himself caught up in the French Resistance, trying to liberate Paris from German clutches.

Taking an open-world style of gameplay, you participate in missions for the Resistance, the likes of which have you running and gunning to racing and destroying key buildings and structures.

Unfortunately, this game tries to be like so many others and doesn't quite specialise in any single area. It feels like a GTA/Assassin's Creed/Red Faction hybrid, taking specific elements from each of these games. It's not a bad thing by any means; they are all great games, but a lack of polish in some areas prevents this game from being the next amazing hit.

Recommend to fans of any/all of the games mentioned above.


3. DJ Hero (PS3)



DJ show me what you got!

I know you all totally snickered and laughed at my masculinity (or lack thereof) and reasoning, but don't judge this game before giving it a try first! A refreshing take on the music genre, DJ Hero brings in an all-new style of music gameplay with another crazy, plastic peripheral! This game has an amazing soundtrack from so many genres and mashes them together to create some brilliant sounding blends that will have your toes tapping and your head bobbing as you master a new control scheme.

This game is brighter, more upbeat and features better graphics than the Guitar Hero franchise which to a lot of people has become stale and outdated.

Highly Recommend to lovers of mash-ups and rhythm games.

OTHER THINGS OF NOTE

I haven't played Darksiders yet but I am looking forward to buying it this week or next and telling you my thoughts about it.

I'm very excited for Megaman 10 which comes out 1st/2nd quarter of this year. If it's anything like Magaman 9 then we have much to be excited for!

If you're playing Borderlands, the new DLC Mad Moxxi is out Tuesday 12th. This one is worth its weight in gold! You should also check out The Zombie Island of Dr Ned.

Is anyone excited for Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver? I know I am. They should hopefully be out first quarter 2010. Gold/Silver were my favourite iterations of the Pokemon franchise so I can hardly wait for these remakes!!


If you've got any questions, feedback, or just want to say hi, please feel free to comment or email me:
jonosasson@hotmail.com
and I will gladly reply. You may even find these comments in the next post in some sort of FAQ or Mailbag section.

I just discovered I can fit pictures anywhere I like in the blog so expect some more pretty pictures and updated links later on this week when I update this post!

Until then, I hope you all enjoy your week and make the most of this beautiful weather!

Jono

Back from hiatus

Hello friends!

My my, it's been a while! 1 year and 21 days, in fact!

After a long period of feeling pretty uninspired and lazy, I'm back! With the new year and the dawn of a new decade, I've made but one resolution: to attempt to see things through as much as possible.

I think back in 2008, I was a naive person. I'd just finished school and I had my whole life ahead of me. Although the latter is still true, a year has passed and I see that life is something we all take too easily for granted. In the span of a year, I've been to university, I've dropped out of university, made friends, lost friends, gotten jobs, quit jobs. It has taken a long time to settle down, but I think finally I'm at that stage where I can say, "Yeah, life is now heading in the direction I want it to go." All you existentialists out there are probably simultaneously shouting at your computer screens, blasting me for my choice of terminology here. Largely, I think that everything that has happened has been my own doing and not the doings of a higher power like 'God' or the universe.

I work a couple of jobs and in those, discovered a tight-knit group of people who I have come to love and look forward to seeing as much as time allows. In my time off work, I try to play a videogame or two every now and then, but sleep comes first and, given how much I work, I do it often. Videogames are - though not so much a part of my life anymore - something I do enjoy coming back to on occasion.

I bought an Xbox 360 on Boxing Day. I'm not particularly fond of it. In fact, I've never really liked it, even before I had one. With its shoddy design and insatiable online community, it's a machine I've never really wanted to go near. However, for a $150 price tag, I thought 'what the hey?' and took one home. Besides the cheap price tag, the only reason I bought it was so that I could play some of the exclusive titles that aren't available on my Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii.

First impressions: it's loud. My god it's loud! When I put my first disc in there, I thought I'd put it in incorrectly. It sounded like a cow that had fallen on it's back and couldn't get up again. But alas, with some fiddling and researching, I found that this unfortunate noise is normal. Oh.

After I created my online identity (which I doubt I'll use very often, if at all), I was told that I had to create an online avatar. For those not in the know, the Xbox avatar is one of the later additions to Xbox Live which allows you to create a character who looks like a retarded version of yourself. My avatar is no different. With not enough facial designs and and only stupid, cartoony features to choose from, Xbox Jono looks like he's done one too many doses of crystal meth. But whatever, I don't actually need to look at him ever again, right? Wrong. Every time I turn on the damn console, he's there looking at me with eyes that pierce the soul and that tell the story of a lonely avatar wanting to end it all but can't because he's only virtual after all. And of course he's child-friendly.

Microsoft one day decided that they would take a leaf from Nintendo's book by taking a piece of the casual market cake to capitalise on. There's nothing wrong with making a few extra bucks here and there but come on, Microsoft is no starving country in Africa. And as you look at your avatar, you can't help but feel that you've seen this all before. Avatar, I'd like you to meet Mii (I think if that ever happened, it would cause some kind of paradoxical anomalie that would surely destroy us all). There is no subtlety in the differences at all. I mean ok, Avatars have proper hands where Miis have only a spherical ball which leaves much to the imagination. But the copying is blatant. My other bane is this asphyxiation with the casual market. God I hate the casual market. They've essentially destroyed what could have become a viable gaming console in the Wii and now they've set their sights on something else. Already on the Xbox Live Marketplace, you can find games where you play as your avatar and seek to uncover some kind of whacky mystery in a Scooby Doo-esque affair. And don't even get me started on this whole motion control nonsense...

Anyway, back to my impressions. I bought a couple of games with my new console purchase; mainly RPG's which Square decided they didn't want to release on the PS3. Infinite Undiscovery is a stupid game with an equally stupid name and The Last Remnant is so poorly built and the game mechanics so convoluted that it's going straight back to the game shop to build up dust. The next game however turned out to be a real gem and segues nicely into the next section which I like to call...


GAMES I'M PLAYING THIS WEEK

In this section, I briefly describe the games I'm playing this week (hence the title) and rate them using a fairly basic scale which looks like the following:

Highly Recommend: This game is awesome. I love it and you should too
Recommend: It's a pretty good game but nowhere near perfect and will only appeal to certain people
Hardly Recommend: It's hard to find things to like about this game. Certain aspects are good but the game as a whole doesn't play very well
Don't Recommend: I wouldn't go near this game with a ten-foot stick. Nothing about this game is good

It's a shallow system, but I'll always note who each game will appeal to. I will not use the arbitrary system of number rating. Ever.


1. Lost Odyssey, X360

Since Final Fantasy X, I don't think I've played an RPG that fully encapsulates everything I love about the genre into a full-fledged epic. I like a good turn-based battle system, and Lost Odyssey does not disappoint. It's deeper than just 'I attack and then you attack', but by the same token it doesn't try to add so many ifs, ands and buts that you simply don't know what's going on.

The story is equally as intriguing, taking an immortal mercenary who is slowly piecing together the last 1000 years of his life while the whole world comes to terms with the magic-industrial revolution. The game has a lot of back story which you don't have to involve yourself in but which I have. There are dreams which are so poignant and well-written than I have to admit that one or two may have brought a tear to my eye. Let me tell you, that's well-written.

Although I don't consider myself to be a graphics whore, the game is very pretty and one can tell that RPGs have come quite a way since the days of the PS2. It's a 4 disc affair, and 15 hours in I've almost finished the first disc. This game is going to be a long one.

Highly Recommend to fans of the genre.


2. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, X360

I've wanted to play this ever since the game was released, despite average reviews and fans saying the series has taken a turn for the worse. I played Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie back in the glory years of the Nintendo 64. The bear and bird have always had a special place in my heart, but their 360 debut doesn't quite live up to my expectations.

Don't get me wrong, I like this game, but it's impossible to hold it in such high esteem is the prior iterations. It seems like Rare has forgotten its platformer roots and decided to change up the series simply for the sake of it. Although there's occasions where you do travel on foot, it's the vehicle building which asks for the most attention. Pretty much in each of the worlds, you must take up different kinds of challenges that involve you using a vehicle in some way. Whether that's racing to the finish line or driving people from point A to point B, as you're playing you just kind of ask yourself, 'What's the point of this all?' Obviously, it's all for the purpose of getting Jiggies so you can take on Gruntilda in one final showdown to end all quarrels, but in the context of a Banjo-Kazooie game, I don't think any of it is necessary. I think Rare could have taken this idea and applied it to a new franchise and spared their resources for a proper B-K game. But alas this is what we have and it's still pretty fun nonetheless.

Recommend to fans of the series and/or those who like getting creative with building cars, planes and boats.

Also, with an unfinished Stop 'N' Swop feature in this game, a future Banjo-Kazooie title is kind of implied. Something to look forward to, I hope.


3. Dragon Age: Origins, PS3, X360, PC (I'm playing the PS3 version)

This game is massive. When I realised the full scope of this game, I actually said "Wow" out loud. It's truly incredible how much effort Bioware has taken to create a truly immersive game world that keeps you coming back for more.

I decided to play the path of a Mage to change things up. I usually go Warrior class when given a choice, but this time I thought what the hey. The mage's story begins quite interestingly. You are given the task of proving yourself as a Mage by going into this kind of limbo-world where spirits go before finding a new body to consume, and defeating a fearsome demon. After completing this task, you become a full and proper Mage and prepare for your life in the Circle of Magi. However, in the outside world, things are not looking so bright. The Darkspawn, fearsome beasts of the underworld are taking over the realm, and the Grey Wardens, a conglomeration of Warriors, Mages, Rogues; men and women alike are the only hope of thwarting the Darkspawn blight.

It's hard to describe the story in all its majesty; it is well-told (far better than I could tell it in a couple of paragraphs) and shit hits the fan real quick. In terms of gameplay, it plays pretty well with the menus being easy to navigate to select skills and spells and what not. The fact that all of your actions affect the world and the people around you is pretty awesome too. For an RPG though, it lacks some pretty useful options to equip things as soon as you buy them and easily compare weapon and armour stats. It's not bad by any means though. The console versions are far more limited than the PC version but they're still very good if you don't have a powerful enough computer to play it (which I think would need to be very good).

Highly Recommend to RPG fans, people looking for an game with engaging story or people who want to devote a lot of time to a game.


4. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii

There's not a lot to say about this game. It's Mario, you either love it or you hate it. I love that this game is very challenging, has local multiplayer and lots of replayability but hate that it doesn't have online, there's no real original mechanics and that it looks almost exactly the same as New Super Mario Bros. DS.

I Highly Recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed Mario in the past and/or enjoys sitting back to have fun with a game.


OTHER THINGS OF NOTE

Still being the holiday season, there is not much happening in the gaming world at the current time. Darksiders comes out on the 7th of January, and it has already received good reviews. I played it a while back at THQ headquarters in Melbourne and it truly was incredible. Look out for it on PS3 and 360.

That's pretty much everything I've got this week. It's good to be back to writing! Hopefully I can live up to my New Year's resolution and you can all enjoy reading some of my musings sometime soon.

If you've got any questions, feedback, or just want to say hi, please feel free to comment or email me:
jonosasson@hotmail.com
and I will gladly reply. You may even find these comments in the next post in some sort of FAQ or Mailbag section.

Jono

Links:
Check out the following for some laughs!
Unskippable: Lost Odyssey
Unskippable: Infinite Undiscovery

Endnote: any hyperlinks you find in this post will take you to screenshots of the game. All links should be safe. The image at the beginning of this post is my Avatar.