Spartan Redemption

Last time I posted, I was getting pretty frustrated with Dead or Alive 4. And I ended the post by saying that the game had better do something to redeem itself, or I'd be selling it back.

Trust Halo to save the day: I think I'm keeping the game now.

I finally finished the Story mode with all of the standard characters (which got supremely frustrating at times) but the reward is pretty awesome: a playable Spartan soldier. It looks just like Master Chief, but they say its a female soldier named "Nicole." It looks pretty badass, with its shiny Mjolnir armor, and it plays just as well.The Spartan is huge, towering over the other characters, and its punishing punches and kicks befit the size. It's also fairly fast, and has a combination of attacks that worked pretty well on that uber-cheap final boss (which was a huge relief for me). Check out the pic of her in her red armor beating the snot out of some chick.

But one cool character wouldn't be enough to redeem the game, if the rest of the game was as frustrating as the story mode. But I also tried out the offline multiplayer with my brother, and found the game can be a ton of fun when its balanced. We played vs. mode for quite a while, trying out the various characters against one another. One of our favorites was the new girl for DoA 4, La Mariposa. She's a masked wrestler, a very sexy masked wrestler.

Then we tried out doubles vs mode, which was even better. Pick your favorite two guys, and switch one out when its hurt so it can slowly heal while the other guy fights. It adds a fun balancing and planning aspect to the matches.

I also started playing Survivor mode, mostly doubles, which seems far less cheap than the Story mode. Using the doubles mode you can rest up one character while the other gets a couple of kills, then switch back. It's a nice strategy, and I managed to do pretty well in it.

So the game is saved from the chopping block, thanks to Spartans, Survivor Mode, and balanced & entertaining multiplayer. A full review will be coming shortly.

- Scott

Hardcore = Bad?

I started playing Dead or Alive 4 yesterday, and I've been pretty disappointed so far. For a game that is so well known and got positive reviews, I am shocked at how frustratingly difficult and poorly designed it is.

Most of you probably know Team Ninja's reputation as a "hardcore" game developer. Their leader, Itagaki, is famous for his arrogance and his skill at designing games. He and his team make it quite clear that they think their products are the best, and that their games are not meant for kids or "casual" gamers. But since when did being a "hardcore" game mean that the game had to suck?

The first thing I noticed, and the first thing I tried to change, is that their is no English dialogue in the game. At all. The characters all speak in Japanese, and their is no other language choice or option to turn off the voices. I have nothing against Japan, but when you're playing a game all day and all you hear is some gibberish that you don't understand, it gets annoying. Is this part of their hardcore plan, that they refuse to translate the game from its original language?

Because if so, its a stupid plan. The translations on the subtitles are awful, which only makes it worse, as everything is either confusing or painfully cliched.Then there is the gameplay itself. The fighting started out pretty smooth, and coupled with the excellent graphics I was enjoying myself. Until I got about halfway through the story mode (which is a series of 8 opponents), and I reached the incredibly cheap and frustrating enemy AI. The game purposely takes it easy on you for the first few matches, but after that, its all over.

The AI enemies can counter anything you do, making it impossible to pull of long combos. They can also interupt any of your attacks with throws, which they can then chain together. They can also spin around you while attacking, something I don't think human players can do. They also do far more damage in Story Mode than they otherwise would, while you do less damage than you should. Which all makes for a completely unfair experience, that is ridiculously frustrating. I almost threw my controller through our 4-foot HD TV. And I love that TV.

I managed to get to the last fight, the final boss, through a combination of some skill, a lot of luck, and the unbeatable AI getting bored of beating me. I wish I hadn't reached the boss though: the frustration got worse, way worse. The boss can teleport at will, while running, attacking or defending, making it nearly impossible to even hit it. It ALWAYS teleports away when it is near a wall, so you can never hit it into something to do extra damage. It can also leap across the arena in a single bound to tackle you into a wall, killing you. A single throw takes away half of your HP, or more if you hit a wall. Suffice it to say, I have NEVER fought a boss as difficult, cheap, or frustrating as Alpha-152.

So... the game is looking pretty bad so far. I also looked up some of the achievements, and saw that this is one of the hardest games on all of 360 to get achievements for, which is just fantastic. Something in this game better redeem the Story Mode, or this will be the 1st Xbox 360 game I trade away.

- Scott

Activision Threatens the PS3

I just read a news brief over at GameInformer.com, that said that Activision "might have to stop supporting Sony." Nothing has been decided as of now, and they won't pull support for games coming out this year, but its not good news for the Playstation crew.

Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick was the source of the comments. With the words coming from the highest echelons of the company, you know these rumors are serious. He said that the PS3 is very costly to develop for, and that they just aren't getting a big enough return on their investments. The 360 and Wii, he said, make for much higher profits, and it sounds like they are easier to develop for.

This is certainly not the start of problems for Sony, and it won't be the end either. The PS3 has consistently sold worse than XBox 360 and Wii since its launch, so the installed base of PS3 users is far smaller than for the other systems. Which in turn means that fewer copies of software are sold for the system, the problem for Kotick and Activision.

If Activision does pull out, Sony will be losing some big franchises and some top developers. The biggest losses will no doubt be the Call of Duty franchise and the Guitar Hero franchise, both of which sell millions of copies every year. But PS3 will also lose the Tony Hawk series, the James Bond games from Treyarch, and the talents of Raven Software (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Wolfenstein, Singularity) and Radical Entertainment (Prototype) among others.

As a 360 owner, I have to say I have mixed feelings about this news. When I hear bad news about PS3, it always makes me feel somewhat validated, that I made the right choice when buying my console. But I also feel bad for all those PS3 owners that wouldn't be getting the quality games they love. As a fan of gaming in general, I think it'd be bad to lose out on these versions.

But I'm skeptical that this split will every actually happen. Activision may not get as high a return on PS3 versions, but they do still get a return on their big franchises, like Call of Duty. At the most, I think they might not do Sony releases for the smaller, lesser-known titles.

And there's the possibility that PS3 will start selling better, so they won't need to worry about failing Activision. With God of War 3 coming out this year, I expect sales will see another spike. I doubt they will ever catch up to 360, but Kratos will help.

Either way, PS3 needs to pick up the pace. The "10-year cycle" only works if developers keep supporting the systems.

- Scott

Racing Games Have Evolved

I'm not a huge fan when it comes to racing games. I own a couple racers for all of my systems, but the type of racing games I have aren't typical. I'm the guy who plays F-Zero, Mario Kart, Podracing, that kind of thing. The old arcade racing games didn't keep my interest.

The last racing game that I owned that featured plain old cars was Cruisin USA for 64, and I have to say I found it boring. So I passed up most of the racing games during the GameCube generation, and hadn't played any yet on the new-gen systems.

But I just finished the career mode on Need for Speed Carbon, and having finally played an updated racer, I feel like a changed man. I won't say that NFS Carbon is perfect, it has its share of problems. But I was expecting a halfway decent game that would hold my attention for maybe 2-3 hours. I bought it for the multiplayer. But after spending about 40-50 hours with the game, most of that in single player, I have to admit that Carbon is a great game.

I'll post a review soon with the full run-down, but these are the new features that impressed me most. First of all, the career. The game actually featured a "Fast and Furious" style story, and though it won't win any awards for best video game story, it was enough that I always wanted to keep playing, to uncover the next bit of story.

The gameplay centered around winning races in specific areas of the city, so that I could "steal control" of those areas away from the local racing gangs. It was a nice approach, in that I knew how much I still had to do, I had a logical reason for having all of these races, and I had the conquering mentality to keep me motivated. It'd be late at night, but I'd always want to beat just 1 more race, to take over 1 more territory. And to give some freedom to the game, I was allowed to conquer most of the races in whatever order I wanted (within an area at least). If I didn't feel like drifting that night, I could just do all of the circuit races, and drift later.

That's another great aspect of the game: the many types of racing it offers. There are the standard circuit races, sprints, and checkpoints, like any racing game. But I had never tried drifting before, so that was a blast (after I figured out the rules & stopped embarrassing myself). It also featured a Speedtrap mode, where your score was based on your speed at certain checkpoints. And it featured the Canyon Duels, which were the most frustrating or the most entertaining, depending on the race (more on those later).
The Free Roam mode also surprised me. I hadn't expected the game to be an open-world sandbox, and while you couldn't get out of the car, you could drive all over the entire city, cause trouble, and start huge crazy cop chases. It felt a little like GTA-lite, and I mean that as a compliment. Too bad the achievements for the cop chases are so hard to get.

And finally, I was wowed by the massive range of options for customizing my cars. I know I'm behind the curve on this one, and I knew that all racing games nowdays featured customization, but I never dreamed of how much. I've unlocked about a dozen styles of paint, which come in thousands of colors and shades, for hundreds of aftermarket modifcations, and a limitless combination of vinyls and designs. The performance tuning is probably more realistic in simulation racers, like Gran Turismo, but the visual-tweaking in this game kept me giddily happy, and made me very attached to my little tuners and exotics.

So racers have definitely matured since I last gave them a shot. Even though I'm playing a 3-year old game, I am thoroughly impressed by it. I guess I found a new genre to get sucked into. Now if only the new games would still feature offline multiplayer...

- Scott

Grende Games Launch

This is the official launch date of my new blog, Grende Games.

But while it might be the first day for the new blog, this is the sequel of sorts to my old blog, Game-Lady, which I will no longer be updating. The name was meant to be clever, and was inspired by a nickname from one of my gamer friends, but the title no longer seems as relevant.

I would also like to aspire to some higher production qualities with this new blog, including finer-tuned graphics, more frequent updates, and some nice side features and updates.

So check back here soon as I update the site with all of the old content from Game-Lady.

NOTE: I will be re-publishing most of my old posts from Game-Lady on here, under their original posting date. So if it seems strange that there are dozens of posts BEFORE the launch post, that is why.

Thanks for tuning in.

- Scott