This game was given to me for review by the good folks at Square Enix.
Although I don’t often find myself a fan of stick shooters, I do make exceptions. In certain cases I find things to be too interesting to avoid, for instance: robots, laser beams, robots that bleed, robots that shoot laser beams, blood, you get the idea.
As I loaded DBC I didn’t expect a whole lot from it. It’s an xbox live title, and Square Enix generally doesn’t veer off the RPG path too often. I did however find this game pleasantly addicting. I didn’t understand why the robot burst into blood, and like most stick shooters I didn’t get why we were fighting evil cubes and laser-shooting robots. I only knew that the game was challenging, and I didn’t want to let it beat me.
DBC also has a level of depth that I didn’t expect. You have a few game modes to choose from and medals to unlock in all of those. As you finish levels you are awarded money to buy new robots, fighting styles, or worlds to fight in. I didn’t find the actual destroy all enemies to be challenging, and the first few defend your base weren’t too bad. I found the real challenge was getting over the gold, silver and copper thresholds. Calling DBC a skill-based game wouldn’t be giving it credit. It’s a god based game, you just might have to be the video game Jesus to get all their medals. Or in other words it’s fun, and way hard. Not so much in finishing the levels, but in obtaining the monstrous high scores. Giving you a reason to go back to each level and attack it, praying you can build a combo big enough to meet their vaulting expectations. The soundtrack is comprised of some fun, bouncy, robot-like techno, and the different things given to you to survive are way cool. From giant lasers, to shields that absorb enemy beams to shoot them back. They employ a weapons upgrade system reminiscent of the Gradius serious to keep you alive as long as possible. Overall I wouldn’t hand DBC game of the year, but I wouldn’t call it bad. The only technical problem I really noticed, was the controller not wanting to stop flying around the menu if I pushed left or right more than four times. (This didn’t happen every time, just occasionally for no reason.)
I think it’s a decent entry into the Xbox Live Arcade market, and at least deserves a play-through.
I’ll admit that I’m a faithfully enamored Nintendo fan, but this only applies to their beyond famous titles. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, there are others, but save to say, I spend a lot of money on Nintendo games, and I’m generally satisfied. In fact you could say I’ve come to trust them. But do I trust them for something that doesn’t have the hallmark characters I’ve become fond of? The answer is a definitive NO.
When I first looked at the pictures for Glory of Heracles I really wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was it was an RPG based around Greek mythology. (A cool premise) But Nintendo hasn’t really done that many RPG’s, and when they have, they aren’t traditional in any way. The only thing it really had going for it was the fact that some of the Final Fantasy creators were working on it. Which was just enough to make me want to try it.
Story: The game starts with an amnesiac boy who finds out he’s immortal. Traveling the world he runs into other immortals that have sketchy pasts. As you progress you learn more of each of the characters back stories, until all is finally revealed. The characters pasts were by far the best part of the story, and it certainly made this game stick out. It wasn’t trying to tell an old Greek story, but its own story, filled with enjoyable characters, and story turns that range from touching to comedic. I found myself laughing out loud several times.
Without revealing too much story, one of the best concepts in the game is that there are four Heracles’, and you spend most the game wondering who’s the real one. To add to this, each of the Heracles’ have very different personalities. My favorite of which punches a princess in the face because she won’t shut up.
Overall the story isn’t very strong, but the characters, and the dramatic revelations make it seem great.
8/10
Gameplay: This is definitely the strong suit of this game. It has a fairly traditional battle command system, you can use normal controls, or if you prefer they all work with the stylus. You can also control every other aspect of the game with the stylus, though I opted not to.
The battle commands and battle system are equivalent to any Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or Breath of Fire, but in a lot of ways Glory of Heracles did it better. Starting with the fact it had a unique front-row/back-row system. Next, It offered a mini-game power-up system for your special moves. So every time you cast a spell it would ask if you wanted to play a short mini-game with the stylus in order to increase the damage of the spell. It sounds as if it might get boring after a while, but you can always skip it, and additionally there’s probably more than twenty different mini-games. Some as easy as tapping the screen repeatedly, and some as complex as a short game of Simon.
Another thing this game got right, was the balance of the game. The way they dished out experience and money seemed perfect. There wasn’t a time when I needed to sit and level, but there wasn’t a time I felt over leveled either. The dungeons were fast paced, and well done, but the game did lack mystery. I wish they threw in a few puzzles throughout the game. It seemed as if in place of puzzles, they made the method of killing dungeon bosses very strategy based. (An acceptable substitute, but they could have done both!)
Another thing I liked was the fact that it is played straight through. You can’t loose your way, if there’s an obscure house you have to go to before moving to the next area, you will know it! I think this style worked great for a portable game. You still have 30 hours+ of game play, but you feel as if you are moving forward with every five minutes you put in.
10/10
Graphics & Appearance: This looked fine for a DS game, it had a nice Breath of Fire 3 quality to it, and the characters were well animated. There wasn’t any spectacular movies or anything, but some animations that did look cool. Although some of the graphics were cheesy at times, my overall feeling is that it looked great.
The one complaint I have, is that there weren’t that many monsters, and they reused the same ones a lot. They looked good for the most part, but I wish there were many more of them. (Not all of them had cool names, but the Hemo-goblin, made me laugh.)
9/10
Overall: This was a solid RPG that is funny, and fun to play through. The story lacks excellence, but the characters back stories make up the difference. The battle system was one of the best I’ve seen. I think everyone should try this purely for the fact that you can’t get lost during the game, and it tells a simple enough story that you can literally play it in your spare time and have a full RPG experience.
Note: this is the fifth game in the series, but the first one that they released in the U.S. (This is completely independent of all the other games in the series.) I hope they release a U.S. sequel. I’m excited to get more details, personally.
Capcom just put the trailer for the Resident Evil 5 expansion.
Based on the trailer I am definitely interested in getting this. It looks like they added a ton of options for co-op play, including making Jill Valentine a playable character. (And let’s face it, no matter how riddled the game is with problems, the co-op is really fun.) The creatures that are introduced in that trailer look cool, and I’m sure there are going to be plenty of additions for the arsenal as well. The only thing that doesn’t interest me is the new costumes, I guess I never really got that. (Except Samus in a bikini. That always made plenty of sense.)
This is unfortunately set to release the same day as Final Fantasy XIII. (March 9th) So suckers like me are going to have to blow an entire paycheck on video games that week. The gold edition is going to be offered by both download and hard copy. If you are anything like me, you’ll want the hard copy, and I would suggest pre-ordering it on Amazon now. You can do that here. I personally prefer the PS3 version, as I find that the controls are awesome.
The cover story for this month’s Game Informer issue is Halo: Reach. To be completely honest, I haven’t really cared one way or the other about this game. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really enjoyed the Halo titles up ’til this point. Although my focus has generally been on the Multiplayer first, and the Campaign second. After reading the article in the new Game Informer, I’ll have to admit those focuses have switched.
Halo: Reach is a prequel to the first three games. The story takes place on the military planet Reach, the first place the Covenant attacks the Human race. In a lot of ways, Halo will be going back to its roots. This makes sense since the game takes place hours before the first Halo game. Halo: Reach will be a much darker and scarier game.
Below I will briefly do a rundown on some of the exciting features in the upcoming title. I highly recommend you pick up the latest issue of Game Informer as well as follow them online. For the next two months they will continue to post Halo: Reach exclusives.
Feature’s Rundown:
• Health bar along with your rechargeable shield.
• Weaponry will match Halo 1 for continuity (hopefully this includes the scoped pistol.
• You’ll be playing as a Spartan III, the version created AFTER Master Chief.
• Silent take downs. Now you can choose to be sneakier and save some bullets. Or you could run in guns a blazing. The point is now you have the choice.
• Equipment is out, armor abilities are in. The two mentioned thus far are sprint and camouflage.
In addition to these changes, the technology has been improved upon as well. From more light sources to more on screen AI. One particularly amazing technology revolves around adjusting the detail of objects and environments depending on how close you are to them. It’s hard to sum up, but I think its a fair assumption that this will be the next big step in first person shooters.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was excited to see the full list of Mega Man bosses out today. Seeing what they did with Mega Man 9, I think these are some good picks. The list includes, Strike Man, Pump Man, Sheep Man, Chill Man, Nitro Man, Blade Man, Solar Man, and Commando Man.
Also as an added bonus, here’s a shocking glimpse of easy mode!
I found myself with a free weekend, and so I decided to download and play the freshly released Final Fantasy VIII on the Playstation Network. I thought $9.99 sounded like a good deal for over 40 hours of entertainment. (I was right!)
The download really isn’t any different than the 9-9-99 American release of the game. You even have to change disks still. (Although they are digital.) The coolest thing about these downloads is that you can play them on your PSP if you have a large enough memory card. (About 2 gigs in this case.) Playing PS1 games on a portable system has always been a dream of mine, and it seems to be finally realized.
While I think FF VIII isn’t my favorite in the FF series, I think it’s definitely one that has always stuck with me. I was at the age that I was more excited about this ones release than probably any before or after. There’s actually a story that goes along with how excited I was for this game.
I started out by playing through the demo probably 20 times. And I thought it was the most amazing looking game I had ever seen. (I thought the spider at the beginning was so cool. Though going back through again it lost some of its enchantment.) I picked up my copy first thing in the morning the day it came out. I ran back to my car, and threw the game on the passenger seat then drove home, (maybe a little fast.) I jumped out of the car the second I got to my house because I was so excited to play. Then I went around to the passenger side to grab the game, only to find it was locked. No problem I thought, and I went for the key. But I found in my rush it was also left inside. I shot a hopeless glance to the lock on the drivers side, only to see it was locked tight as well. There wasn’t a spare key, and I was literally standing at the window looking at the game on the passenger seat calling to me. I refused to go inside without the game! This was war!
I thought about breaking the window, because I really didn’t have the money for a locksmith anyway. But I calmed down and did the reasonable thing and called one. An hour later I was still waiting for him to arrive, and I thought this was a pretty good reason to just break the window again. And I even got as far as formulating the way I was going to do it. I had a hammer, a towel, and I thought I wouldn’t miss the little window in the back that much anyway. Or at least I wouldn’t miss it as much as I was currently missing Final Fantasy VIII. Minutes before I shattered my car window, the locksmith came and liberated the game from the car.
I still often wonder how much of a blunder it would have been if I had actually went through with it. But honestly I don’t think I learned my lesson at all, even to this day when I’m picking up a video game I find myself in the same type of rush. But it was never quite so bad as it was with Final Fantasy VIII.
Going back and playing this again was a treat. The battle system is a little sketchy, as it’s really easy to exploit, but the last dungeon is difficult enough to make the system merit worthy. The game doesn’t look amazing, and it doesn’t help that I have an HD television, but the story and gameplay are fun enough to get me to see past all that.
Along with having one of the most difficult end bosses in the entire series, this game also offers the hardest Battle in the entire series against a creature called Omega weapon. And is one of the few FF games where you can level all the way up to 100. One thing I love/hate about this game, is the card system. I think it’s fun (once you have some decent cards.) but it takes up so much time and feels like such a waste when you reflect on what you had just been doing. In either case this is a solid game, I think the story is one of the best told in any video game ever, and if you haven’t played it yet, I would say it’s about time!
Download this bi-otch on the Playstation network today!
Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers isn’t what you would expect out of a traditional Final Fantasy game. It’s not even what you would expect out of a normal Crystal Chronicles game. It’s something different all together, don’t let the name fool you! This doesn’t mean it’s not a good game, it just means, don’t go in expecting a traditional RPG (or an RPG at all for that matter.) If that’s what you expect, prepare to be disappointed.
I keep finding myself comparing this game to Dawn of Mana, in both expectation, and execution. Because in both cases I had been a huge fan of the series, and both these games defied my expectations of them. I wouldn’t call either of these games bad, but it seems to me they are both a little kitschy. (Crystal Bearers less so.) And I don’t blame Crystal bearers in any way for this, it seems as if Square-enix puts a lot of resources into the making of Final Fantasy games, and so it makes sense to put less of those resources into an offshoot. Especially one that is promoting “accessible to gamers of all levels.”
Accessible to gamers of all levels? What about people without hands!? Looks like Square-Enix didn’t think this one all the way through! –Slugtron
As a Final Fantasy fan I was excited about having Wii controls for the first time, but as I said it isn’t what you’d expect. Although it starts out with a bang, I think this is Crystal Bearers strongest suit. There are plenty of moments of high action. Crash landing an airship, Falling off of buildings, being chased by dragons, basically a series of near misses. There were different new mini-games at almost every turn. (Some of them better than others…)The story played into these aspects well. Keeping a cast of characters shrouded in mystery, so that there was plenty going on.
Although, while I felt that the characters were decent enough, I felt the production of the voice acting was a little off. Which wouldn’t have been such a flagrant mess if it weren’t for the models having some very robotic hand gestures. Admittedly this is a very small complaint as I was hardly annoyed by it at all, and the models weren’t bad themselves. I thought they were pretty exceptional when considering Wii games.
What I did find a little “distracting”, was some of the battle music, and when I say “distracting” I actually mean, they would have been better off employing my autistic robot father to blow into a jug for the soundtrack. Despite the poor choice of retard, the battles (and the whole world for that matter.) had a good set of physics. By that I mean that you could telekenetically pick almost anything up and move them with your crystal power. Which I will now explain.
Essentially crystal bearers (Which your main character Layle is) have powers imbued to them from some internal crystal. That make it so they can do “Whacky stuff.” Such as, Picking people up and throwing them. In much simpler terms, your main character has the force. Although there are other crystal bearers with other powers, like pyrokenisis.
Using your crystal bearer powers in game, reminded me of using the gravity gun in Half-Life 2. The only problem is, you only get the gravity gun. Your character can’t as much as throw a punch. (I found that quite odd.) The battles were seldom enough that they remained fun for most the game, but they certainly got repetitive.
One thing that I liked in this game was the city structure. By this I mean they didn’t design the city’s to waste your time. They might have a hundred people in the city, and you can’t talk to any of them. If they aren’t running a shops your interaction with them is maneuvering around them. It made me feel like they were pushing me to the next area, giving the game a brief feel. (Which I think helps immensely.) I think anyone that’s played a Final Fantasy game before knows how much time you can waste talking to everyone in town. In Final Fantasy XII, sometimes I would sit down, shop around town, and by the time I was finished, I would need to stop playing. Although this game doesn’t have a map, and so I found that I would lose a lot of time going in the wrong directions. (You win some, and you lose some.)
Overall, I think this game is marketed more for a younger audience. Possibly a good way to get younger teens to start playing Final Fantasy. Which I think would be great, I know some of the other Final Fantasy games don’t appeal to younger gamers, and this one is pretty big on action, while being very simple to control. It would also introduce them to the entire Crystal Chronicles world, and tell a simple, yet interesting story about it’s foundations.
Also before I wrap up, I would just like to say that this has one of the coolest looking Bahamut’s to date. I don’t know where they got this new idea for the rings on dragons backs (FF10, and FF12), but I hate it, and this game goes to a more traditional style. This is one of the best looking Wii games if nothing else. If you are looking for a game that will tide you over until Final Fantasy XIII comes out, this might help pacify you. But I wouldn’t go out and buy a Wii for it.
I like Bahamut’s back ring. It makes it easy to tell him to go F%$# himself! –Slugtron
We’ll start out with some screen shots of Monster Hunter 3 that Capcom just put on their press site today.
Monster Hunter 3 Tri is being released March 31st of this year exclusively for the Wii. I don’t think these screen shots look amazing, but I’ve heard good things about this series, and so I still want to give it a try. I’ve been left out of the loop from the other games in the series because I seldom buy games for the PSP. But the whole gimmick of this Wii release is to spread this series to a larger audience, so I’m sure they’ll do a good job. You can pre-order your copy through Amazon at this link!
Next on the list is a new video Capcom released of Super Street Fighter 4
I thought Street Fighter 4 was great, and this doesn’t seem to be much different. The best part about it is that it isn’t going to be $60 dollars. They are treating it more like an upgrade and selling it from Amazon for the PS3 at, $36.99
And on the Xbox 360 at $39.82. Keeping it in my price range. This title is also being released March 31st.
Next up is some Art from Final Fight: Double Impact, being released in April on the Playstation Network, and Xbox live arcade.
The relevance of this release is Guy and Cody are announced as Playable characters in Super Street Fighter 4!
And the last thing I want to mention is the upcoming releases of Dark Void and Capcom Vs. Tatsunoko: Ultimate All-stars.
They are both being released later this month.
Dark Void is a Sci-Fi adventure game, that I am excited to try. (Which is now possible because they just put the Demo on Playstation Network, and Xbox live arcade today!)
Dark Void is being released Jan 19th. Pre-order your copy from Amazon on PS3, or Xbox 360.
Capcom Vs. Tatsunoko is a fighting game for the Wii, it looks amazing. Check out it’s preview page Here! And then pre-order your copy Here! It’s being released January 26th!
UPDATED: Releasing this week in the gaming world. January 5, 2010
Fight your way to discovering your past in this hardcore action game by Sega, read more here
Dark Siders – XB360, PS3:
Help War one of the four horsemen discover who started the apocalypse early in this action adventure title for both consoles.
My Fitness Coach 2 – Nintendo Wii:
Excercise some more on your wii!
Dreamer Zoo Keeper – Nintendo DS:
You run the city zoo!! Cuz you’ve always dreamt of it… or something.
Tracjectile – DSI Shop:
This puzzle shooter requires brain power, and explosions. Line up your shot and launch three different types of missiles with different characteristics to solve different puzzle missions.
It was just announced that this expansion has been delayed until an undisclosed date.
The Ostagar expansion allows heroes to take on a series of new quests, get new armor, and learn about the past of the fallen king.
Animal Puzzle Adventure – DSI Shop
You lead animals around to solve puzzles and stuff……
Hell’s Kitchen vs. Ludia
Cooking is war, so sabotage your enemies and cook stuff! It has online multiplayer…..
Matt Hazard: Blood Bath Beyond Xblive Arcade, Playstation Network
Matt is going back in time to defend himself (the only thing that matters) in this side scrolling shooter.
Borderlands: Mad Moxies Underground Riot for PS3
Crazy arena battles begin now for the Playstation kids! Many celebrations!!!
Although I don’t often find myself a fan of stick shooters, I do make exceptions. In certain cases I find things to be too interesting to avoid, for instance: robots, laser beams, robots that bleed, robots that shoot laser beams, blood, you get the idea.
The soundtrack is comprised of some fun, bouncy, robot-like techno, and the different things given to you to survive are way cool. From giant lasers, to shields that absorb enemy beams to shoot them back. They employ a weapons upgrade system reminiscent of the Gradius serious to keep you alive as long as possible. Overall I wouldn’t hand DBC game of the year, but I wouldn’t call it bad. The only technical problem I really noticed, was the controller not wanting to stop flying around the menu if I pushed left or right more than four times. (This didn’t happen every time, just occasionally for no reason.)
I personally prefer the PS3 version, as I find that the controls are awesome.
. Keeping it in my price range. This title is also being released March 31st.
, or 
It’s being released January 26th!