Mirror's Edge

While Mirror's Edge had great potential to reinvent both the adventure and first person game genre, it fell flat on itself trying to juggle both at the same time.

The idea behind Mirror's Edge was it suppose to be a free running parkour adventure game, moving as quickly as you can from A to B, and it felt like a great adrenaline rush... initially. Unfortunately, as you progress through the game, DICE tried too hard to put in something they are too comfortable with - a gun into player's hand. Whilst the gun mechanic isn't bad by all means, it does not pace well with the game. The combat mechanic is also a let down, forcing you to fight with only one shoulder button doesn't reflect on the apparent great agility and flexibility of Faith. There are many different section of the each levels where you are given no choice but to fight your way out. With the clumsy effort of combat mechanics and boring AI, the game ends up feeling very dull. The story was mostly told via cell-shaded cut scene in between each levels. They were ugly and felt very lifeless, the dialogue was extremely cheesy and cringe-worthy.

There were very few highlights on this rather disappointing game. It was good for a few hours; it was a somewhat decent effort to make a new genre. At the end of the day, there were too many obstacle, too many tall building and too many overly used lens-flare for Faith to leap over this one.

Valkyria Chronicles

Valkyria Chronicles is easily one of most innovative game that has came out of Japan for many years, but despite its exceptionally fresh new gameplay design, it still suffers from a very backward story telling method, that plagues countless of games in the similar genre before it.

The first thing that anybody notice when they start playing the game, is that the artistic style of this game is one of the best on the PS3. Its cell-shaded graphic overlays with a canvas style white out on the edges of the screen, along with a paintbrush style filter, gives the game an extremely fresh, unique and beautiful presentation. The game engine that powers the game creates some of the most fluid cut scenes, and it out do most of the anime productions from Japan. Almost every single dialogue in the game is spoken by a voice actor, and the choice of either English and Japanese is welcomed for an otaku like me.

The base game mechanic is a mixture of turn-based strategy games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea and Advance Wars with a touch of Gears of War style cover, aim and shoot element. The great freedom given by the lack of movement grid system currently present in virtually all turn-based strategy games is a definite plus. In many ways, it feels like a real time strategy in some aspect, since the battles are very fast pace and require instantaneous reactions and decisions. The player is given a set amount of 'Control Point' at the start of each round, which determines how many actions you can perform per turn. It is possible to use all of them on a single character, but the character will eventually fatigue and only moves a very short distance, so it pays off to plan ahead and use them strategically.

The game takes place in a fictitious WWII setting, the main protagonist is the young protege who magically appears and starts to decimate an unstoppable force with a mysterious love interest, a very typically Japanese style story. The game progresses in a manga style chapters with cut-scenes in between each missions. There are two types of cut-scene, one for cinematic and one for general dialogue. The latter one is extremely slow pace, in many case, it holds the game back so much because they are long and boring. It feels like its one of those case where the developers are trying too hard to be screen writers, and in this instance, you are watching an interactive anime rather than playing a game. It is disappointing that the developer made such an innovative gameplay to just have it falls back on such an ancient way of story telling. The AI is also very flawed, and is the most problematic in any of the turn-based strategy games that ever come out of Japan. They are always pre-determined, with no variation at all. The game presents little challenges, missions are always simple to finish.

There is no doubt that Valkyria Chronicles stands out as an unique product for the PS3, one of the best effort from a Japanese developer in an attempt to reinvent the genre. In many ways, they have succeeded, the game is fun, if only I did not have to press circle so much...

Z Cinema unboxing and the completed setup

Too Human is awful

I wouldn't have enough words in my vocabulary to describe how bad Too Human is. It's like going through a bad relationship, first you don't know what your expecting, so you want to spend sometime with it. Then at some point during it, you *might* like a certain aspects of the game. When you have seen all it has to offer, it is ultimately disappointing.

The game starts off with vague tutorial explaining the different mechanics of the game, how the charm and rune works, except they are next to useless. The charm and rune give some very useless procs similar to a lot of RPGs and the very minimalistic approach of using those has absolutely no impact on gameplay, it doesn't make your character any more powerful than he already is, so it makes little sense to make any effort in collecting them.

The whole draw point of Too Human was the loots, sure it has plenty, but if you even step back and think about it. Why would you bother, really? This is not like WoW, where you might need better gears to kill bosses, the game is not challenging, at all, so why even bother waste time on this half baked product? Even though there is multiplayer component to the game, it's still mostly a single player experience, so is showing off your epic loots really that cool?

There is nothing worst than trying to tell a story (and it was an awful one), then not even try to bring any sort of closure to it. To me, Too Human ended because the developer press the stop button. The story didn't end when the game end, they simple choose to stop telling it.

There are way too many glitches in the game to make it enjoyable, the clipping of Valkyrie's feet, the texture pop-ins, and I even got stuck on a structure once. If this game really took 4 years to make, then what the hell has Silicon Knights been doing in those 4 years.

I'll write about Uncharted: Drake's Fortune...

When I get every single god-damned trophies in the game, which means...











I'd have to play the game again....

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriot

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but was too busy to write up an entry until now.

This game is the final chapter in the Solid Snake's tale, it has answers for every questions that was ever raised and also closes all the gap in the story.

The control scheme and camera view has change quite a bit for me since I did not play MGS3: Snake Eater. They were bold moves to alter the style of them to the likes of many shooters that's been out on the market since Snake Eater. Kojima took a risk to lose the uniqueness of the Metal Gear Solid franchise to make the game more enjoyable for wider audience, I personally think it was a right move. The gun-play was much more fluid and fun compared to the other MGS games, the camera angle was no problem at all now since you can rotate it freely.

The story was great, Kojima's direction was clear in this final entry and was a lot less confusing. However, for 2/3 of the game, you spend A LOT of time watching in game cut-scenes, some of them are quite long (to the point where I did felt asleep a couple of times), but I didn't find this hindering my enjoyment of the game. I understand that Kojima had a story to tell, and he could only get away with telling this story in an interactive video game format, because nobody is going to watch a 10 hour long movie. The bosses weren't outstanding and mesmersizing for me, it was good and fun, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The game brings a conclusion to a story that start 20 years ago, Kojima did the series a great justice by finishing it on the PS3 platform, the graphics is nothing short of impressive. The character models look fantastic, their emotion felt real and believable, to the point where it could stand against a big budget Hollywood featured film. The environments in the game (which changes every acts), varies from a middle east city to a snow covered Shadow Mosses, they are all highly detailed and looks beautiful.

I hope that in some way or shape, Kojima will continue with this success in a different way and not make this his last game.

Fuck Nintendo

It was pretty obvious that they don't give a shit about people who actually play games on a regular basis anymore, so fuck 'em, I'm not spending another cent on any Wii or DS games.

If they think a game with no depth, pick up and play for 5 mins, throw it in corner and dust it off once in a while when your friends come over, is their way of making this so called 'game', then I refuse to be any part of it. They have gotten too desperate with the failure of their last two consoles, to the point where the Wii have pretty much turned in a toy, and now this was the best they can come up with?

Well Nintendo should have die a long time ago, RIP.