After playing two demos off the Xbox 360's Marketplace since both games will be available also either PSN or PC. I would feel guilty after enjoying both demos and finding them both somewhat addicting, not to post reviews of both trials/demos.
Warhammer 40k: Kill Team:
After seeing a trailer for this on the playstation blog, the game kind of exceeded my expectations of what I usually found in Warhammer games. The game not being an RTS this time around and instead a straight up top-down shoot-em-up, the game seemed quite tempting. After hearing that the game would come out August and curious to see if I would want to buy it down the road, I decided to hook up my Xbox 360 and download the trial.
Frankly enough, while the graphics style is reminiscent of both warhammer and warcraft(seeing how warcraft is pretty much a direct rip/competitor of warhammer), the modeling and graphics are very good in my opinion and definitely sets a good tone for the game. The control system is extremely intuitive and it didn't take me long to start mowing down orcs and bashing them with my melee gun. Not only that but each soldier class has a special move/weapon, which mine was just kicking the gun into hyper mode. This hyper mode pretty much turned my gun into the ultimate weapon where waves of Orcs only took like miliseconds to get wasted.
Pretty much as long as you were able to dodge bullets, melee the orcs when they got too close, and used the weapon with prowless and prejudice, with picking up any boosters and healing items, the game was pretty much pure orc carnage. The demo ended with "the unlock" trailer, and I have to say (pun intended) that I was more blown away than the orcs who felt my wrath.
In my opinion?
8+ out of 10.
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From Dust:
After hearing that this was not your normal Ubisoft game, and that IGN gave the game a clear 8+ out of 10. I decided to download this demo along side War 40k. Now this game was pretty much competiting with the likes of Spore, a mixture of Strategy and God Simulation that only certain "god game" people would find intrigueing.
The graphics are quite impressive for only being a downloadable, as the detail in even the "mortals" is quite good. The objective of the game was to help the mortals "populate and replenish the earth" while you helped them form land-masses, villages, and even help them fight back tsunamis with god-like powers.
The game unlike other RTS games where you're stuck to one map or village, allows you to either stay at one point and finish challenges, or if you're done populating a map continue to the next one. I found myself going through about 3 maps with the last one being the one with tsunamis, which the pacing never really made the game feel "slow".
The demo ended with another "unlock trailer" and left me with a good impression why IGN found this game fun.
In my Opinion?
8+ out of 10.
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Thanks for reading this double-review and I hope it helps my readers make better buying choices seeing how I enjoyed both demos.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Shooters and cliches: Why PC is the best market for Shooters
While people on consoles have construed a big divide between FPS and TPS markets, it's because the aiming, graphics techinques, and storylines are quite different between these two genres on consoles.
Now you're probably thinking "PC ELITISTSZZZ!", but there are sometimes reasons why PC gamers think they are elitists. Because unlike FPS or TPS games on consoles having to be mapped or programmed quite different, PC versions of both genres are usually only different by the camera system, aka the only difference is the camera between FP and TP.
All the pc shooters I own, whether they be FPS and TPS, pretty much function exactly the same. WASD to move your character, and using the mouse to aim with extreme-precision not usually found on consoles.
My friend was watching one of my Lost Planet 2 videos, which the PC version was highly underrated due to severe programming or coding problems on the console-side. He pretty much realized with a PC, no matter if I was playing FPS or TPS, that I was able to "snipe" with a rocket launcher and hit targets on the other side of an area, and usually that's just not possible or as easy to do using a controller with that type of camera system.
Pretty much what I am trying to get to, is that usually the gaming PCs of our era can pretty much reduce any "clunkyness" and severe graphics ugliness because of added accuracy and scalable graphics options. Lost Planet 2 on PC was a masterpiece but on console it was rushed and barely tolerable for many gamers.
Usually the only shooters that make it out alive on console are big budget ones like Battlefield and COD, or hyper-exclusive titles like Halo, Uncharted, and Killzone that are optimized to no bounds (well, maybe not exactly Halo).
That's pretty much it for now, keep up with my blog for more editorials and posts.
Now you're probably thinking "PC ELITISTSZZZ!", but there are sometimes reasons why PC gamers think they are elitists. Because unlike FPS or TPS games on consoles having to be mapped or programmed quite different, PC versions of both genres are usually only different by the camera system, aka the only difference is the camera between FP and TP.
All the pc shooters I own, whether they be FPS and TPS, pretty much function exactly the same. WASD to move your character, and using the mouse to aim with extreme-precision not usually found on consoles.
My friend was watching one of my Lost Planet 2 videos, which the PC version was highly underrated due to severe programming or coding problems on the console-side. He pretty much realized with a PC, no matter if I was playing FPS or TPS, that I was able to "snipe" with a rocket launcher and hit targets on the other side of an area, and usually that's just not possible or as easy to do using a controller with that type of camera system.
Pretty much what I am trying to get to, is that usually the gaming PCs of our era can pretty much reduce any "clunkyness" and severe graphics ugliness because of added accuracy and scalable graphics options. Lost Planet 2 on PC was a masterpiece but on console it was rushed and barely tolerable for many gamers.
Usually the only shooters that make it out alive on console are big budget ones like Battlefield and COD, or hyper-exclusive titles like Halo, Uncharted, and Killzone that are optimized to no bounds (well, maybe not exactly Halo).
That's pretty much it for now, keep up with my blog for more editorials and posts.
Shooters and cliches: Tactical Horror
Now, I enjoy me-self some Fatal Frame and Ghost Recon, but I never thought of the two concepts of merging into one bloody and almost glorified hilarious venture. When I first heard that Capcom was going to be one of the "firsts" to delve into such wizardry with co-development made by former SOCOM devs Slant Six, I was skeptical that these two overrated genres could provide a big huge mess gameplay-wise.
That's the thing though, this new title dubbed Operation Raccoon City IS a big huge mess, but seems to be a masterful mess at that. Third person squad-based combat mixed with reveling zombie bloodshed creates a niche that people like me would love to bathe in. That and the "knife" usage is out of this world, being able to fling and slash zombies and stab them through like vegetables.
With that and the Future Soldier style camouflage and Tactical style cover system, this game could be one of the greatest spin-offs seen in a wavering franchise, and bring in new fans including myself to help boost morale needed to fund a RE-6.
That and this being a true co-op and multiplayer shooter with roots in Lost Planet 2, it's been said you can bring 3 of your buddies along to help thwart the raccoon city situation and also delve in USS VS Spec Ops action online, hopefully with zombies still mixing up the servers.
Capcom is taking a big risk with fusing both genres into a niche you could call "Tactical Horror", but maybe it's a risk that might help save Capcom from their previous bad decisions.
That's about it for now, stay tuned for more S & C editorials.
That's the thing though, this new title dubbed Operation Raccoon City IS a big huge mess, but seems to be a masterful mess at that. Third person squad-based combat mixed with reveling zombie bloodshed creates a niche that people like me would love to bathe in. That and the "knife" usage is out of this world, being able to fling and slash zombies and stab them through like vegetables.
With that and the Future Soldier style camouflage and Tactical style cover system, this game could be one of the greatest spin-offs seen in a wavering franchise, and bring in new fans including myself to help boost morale needed to fund a RE-6.
That and this being a true co-op and multiplayer shooter with roots in Lost Planet 2, it's been said you can bring 3 of your buddies along to help thwart the raccoon city situation and also delve in USS VS Spec Ops action online, hopefully with zombies still mixing up the servers.
Capcom is taking a big risk with fusing both genres into a niche you could call "Tactical Horror", but maybe it's a risk that might help save Capcom from their previous bad decisions.
That's about it for now, stay tuned for more S & C editorials.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Animation purity: 2D VERSUS 3D, and how do you define 2.5D?
Now, I know this has been a thorny subject for many animation fans for years, but having research it myself I would like to point some facts, even though they could be opinionated facts.
Animation at it's core is pretty much defined as any form of entertainment that has little to no live action bits. Though you could say there's plenty of live action that uses Animation(but preferably/professionally known as CG/CGI), but let's not focus on that really.
2D has always been my prefered style of animation, simply because due to various technologies and the art of anime, this about 100-year phenominon has grown into a overly-massed market that the whole world has enjoyed without much criticism.
That said, 2D has taken a harsh trail for many people when the dawn of FLASH arrived, which made it almost entirely possible for "non-true animators" to slap something together and call it animation. While there are about of handful of decent flash productions done nowadays, some of the stuff on a site known as newgrounds could almost be considered blasphemy when it comes to the form of art.
Flash wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't for the almost anti-beginner status of 3D Animation.
3D Animation didn't get it's real start until the projects known as "Reboot" and "Toy Story", two of the first fully 3D productions that started a new dawn of computer generated animation. While these shows had very few flaws, the trend they started has created some of the most notorious "shovelfilms" that give almost any decent 3D movie a bad name.
Thus, this is why 3D has given many an animation buff the likeness of being overrated, not because the technology is bad, but some of the movies that use it are just plain horrible, and it weren't for the flash industry, 2D would have almost cleared it's name of aweful usage
That said, the japanese have been known to almost excel at both these arts. With the form of both 2D and 3D "Anime", the japanese industry has been almost a godsend to people who have lost faith and/or interest in western interpretations. Movies like the new "Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D" and productions such as "Ghost in the Shell" showcase that the japanese take their productions far more seriously, and who can forget the almost perfect line of Studio Ghibli titles?
Also since the early 2000s, companies like Disney have incorporated both forms into a single production, which people have debated to use the term "2.5D". Now people have debated what exactly defines 2.5D, but it's obvious that many titles since then to possibly cut down work and time have implemented either 3D backgrounds or 3D models that would be more painstaking to do hand-drawn.
One example would be Robotech, where the original seasons' fighter-scenes probably required hundreds if not thousands of frames to depict the different angles and attack patterns of several attack-craft. While the latest movie version opt-in to just create the ships and fighters as 3D models so they need to only use a computer replica.
The only usual downfall of this method is that the 3D and 2D almost never blend well and the two styles almost give the movie a wierd "ugly" look due to the simplicity of the 3D models. Even Macross Frontier used this method and tried to counteract this effect by using forms of cel-shading to give the 3D models a "2D look", which made the models only slightly more tolerable.
As you can see, the Animation industry has become nothing more than a big huge mess of different styles, and the demand for greater techniques has grown, but the production of said large demand has thinned greatly. It is if almost technology or the people who use it have gone backwards to what people in the mainstream demand.
I'm just glad there is still at least a handful of animation experts who got their heads on correctly.
.
Animation at it's core is pretty much defined as any form of entertainment that has little to no live action bits. Though you could say there's plenty of live action that uses Animation(but preferably/professionally known as CG/CGI), but let's not focus on that really.
2D has always been my prefered style of animation, simply because due to various technologies and the art of anime, this about 100-year phenominon has grown into a overly-massed market that the whole world has enjoyed without much criticism.
That said, 2D has taken a harsh trail for many people when the dawn of FLASH arrived, which made it almost entirely possible for "non-true animators" to slap something together and call it animation. While there are about of handful of decent flash productions done nowadays, some of the stuff on a site known as newgrounds could almost be considered blasphemy when it comes to the form of art.
Flash wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't for the almost anti-beginner status of 3D Animation.
3D Animation didn't get it's real start until the projects known as "Reboot" and "Toy Story", two of the first fully 3D productions that started a new dawn of computer generated animation. While these shows had very few flaws, the trend they started has created some of the most notorious "shovelfilms" that give almost any decent 3D movie a bad name.
Thus, this is why 3D has given many an animation buff the likeness of being overrated, not because the technology is bad, but some of the movies that use it are just plain horrible, and it weren't for the flash industry, 2D would have almost cleared it's name of aweful usage
That said, the japanese have been known to almost excel at both these arts. With the form of both 2D and 3D "Anime", the japanese industry has been almost a godsend to people who have lost faith and/or interest in western interpretations. Movies like the new "Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D" and productions such as "Ghost in the Shell" showcase that the japanese take their productions far more seriously, and who can forget the almost perfect line of Studio Ghibli titles?
Also since the early 2000s, companies like Disney have incorporated both forms into a single production, which people have debated to use the term "2.5D". Now people have debated what exactly defines 2.5D, but it's obvious that many titles since then to possibly cut down work and time have implemented either 3D backgrounds or 3D models that would be more painstaking to do hand-drawn.
One example would be Robotech, where the original seasons' fighter-scenes probably required hundreds if not thousands of frames to depict the different angles and attack patterns of several attack-craft. While the latest movie version opt-in to just create the ships and fighters as 3D models so they need to only use a computer replica.
The only usual downfall of this method is that the 3D and 2D almost never blend well and the two styles almost give the movie a wierd "ugly" look due to the simplicity of the 3D models. Even Macross Frontier used this method and tried to counteract this effect by using forms of cel-shading to give the 3D models a "2D look", which made the models only slightly more tolerable.
As you can see, the Animation industry has become nothing more than a big huge mess of different styles, and the demand for greater techniques has grown, but the production of said large demand has thinned greatly. It is if almost technology or the people who use it have gone backwards to what people in the mainstream demand.
I'm just glad there is still at least a handful of animation experts who got their heads on correctly.
.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
RETRO=Modern Relevance?
Okay, so this is my third blog post today, but that's because I am on a utter role this time around. This topic here is about, Retro gaming!
After learned about the Aliens DS port from WayForward, and having played the Scott Pilgrim PSN game, that even today's 3D titles just can't beat most of the well-placed nostalgia of a good side-scroller.
Touche? Some of these more modern takes on side-scrollers who try to combine 3D and 2D on the same plane sometimes end up in utter failures, unless you're talking about masters of both dimensions like Metroid.
There are still many platforms that have, do, and SHOULD support retro-gaming and revel in it. Seeing how there are platforms that while have 3D support are more destined to be ultra-2D (Cough NDS COUGH), and the fact that many titles now have the capability of supporting hand-drawn images, 2D has never shined better until this modern age where there will always be a demand, contrary to the 3D-purists who negate our industry.
Touche? That and some of the best 3D games out there are merely transitions of what made their 2D counterparts great. Games like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania, Metal Gear, and the like are almost just three-dimensional copies of their retro counterparts, and the 3D has only made them stronger in appeal and content.
I would almost be disappointed if the industry STARTED OUT in 3D, as to say the N64 and PS1 3D capabilities were almost untolerable, which is why the systems were heavily used as ultra 2D machines, using the 3D-based hardware to make high-resolution 2D assets.
That and with the age of the PS3 and Xbox 360 where you can have a clean 1080p 2D game that is oozing with phenominal detail, as is as clear as a windexed window, 2D will always have advantages over the 3D-styled titles that have to push real hard to get a decent amount of detail and still look "nice".
That's pretty much it for now, stay tuned for new posts.
After learned about the Aliens DS port from WayForward, and having played the Scott Pilgrim PSN game, that even today's 3D titles just can't beat most of the well-placed nostalgia of a good side-scroller.
Touche? Some of these more modern takes on side-scrollers who try to combine 3D and 2D on the same plane sometimes end up in utter failures, unless you're talking about masters of both dimensions like Metroid.
There are still many platforms that have, do, and SHOULD support retro-gaming and revel in it. Seeing how there are platforms that while have 3D support are more destined to be ultra-2D (Cough NDS COUGH), and the fact that many titles now have the capability of supporting hand-drawn images, 2D has never shined better until this modern age where there will always be a demand, contrary to the 3D-purists who negate our industry.
Touche? That and some of the best 3D games out there are merely transitions of what made their 2D counterparts great. Games like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania, Metal Gear, and the like are almost just three-dimensional copies of their retro counterparts, and the 3D has only made them stronger in appeal and content.
I would almost be disappointed if the industry STARTED OUT in 3D, as to say the N64 and PS1 3D capabilities were almost untolerable, which is why the systems were heavily used as ultra 2D machines, using the 3D-based hardware to make high-resolution 2D assets.
That and with the age of the PS3 and Xbox 360 where you can have a clean 1080p 2D game that is oozing with phenominal detail, as is as clear as a windexed window, 2D will always have advantages over the 3D-styled titles that have to push real hard to get a decent amount of detail and still look "nice".
That's pretty much it for now, stay tuned for new posts.
Horror=Giggles?
After making a previous thought-provoking post about entertainment or specifically gaming. What actually makes Horror movies and games...Fun?
I have ponders this for many days, and why do many of us humans insist otherwise that unlike other beings who would rue the day if they got even the tiniest-bit scared, that we rivel in freaking ourselves out and make it almost a social-entity of having to get scared to "death"?
Having experienced it in such games a Fatal Frame, it's almost a double-edged sword when it comes to horror-media, one edge being that you're totally or slightly freaked out, but your body and emotions also entail a sense of humor and almost laughing inside when you're panicked.
This double-set of emotions is probably why people support this medium, since the reactions can be quite hysterical to the fearful and outright humored consumers.
Having watched videos of people spectating players of such games, while the player is totally fearing for his gaming life, the people who look on are either scared, or bathing in utter humorous abundance.
This is also one of the genres where people like to use terms that inflict the thought of depositing bodily waste into one's lower garments, to which kind of happens during moments of fear and laughter to someone with no physical self-control.
Also, is it to pursue outside emotions that would relevantly never happen in the time-span of their real life, where they enduce themselves with awkward emotional bathing to ensure that they can consider themselves true humans?
Something to think about I think.
I have ponders this for many days, and why do many of us humans insist otherwise that unlike other beings who would rue the day if they got even the tiniest-bit scared, that we rivel in freaking ourselves out and make it almost a social-entity of having to get scared to "death"?
Having experienced it in such games a Fatal Frame, it's almost a double-edged sword when it comes to horror-media, one edge being that you're totally or slightly freaked out, but your body and emotions also entail a sense of humor and almost laughing inside when you're panicked.
This double-set of emotions is probably why people support this medium, since the reactions can be quite hysterical to the fearful and outright humored consumers.
Having watched videos of people spectating players of such games, while the player is totally fearing for his gaming life, the people who look on are either scared, or bathing in utter humorous abundance.
This is also one of the genres where people like to use terms that inflict the thought of depositing bodily waste into one's lower garments, to which kind of happens during moments of fear and laughter to someone with no physical self-control.
Also, is it to pursue outside emotions that would relevantly never happen in the time-span of their real life, where they enduce themselves with awkward emotional bathing to ensure that they can consider themselves true humans?
Something to think about I think.
What is Gaming?
After spending the better part of my life playing video games constantly, if not addictively since my childhood, I have comes to grips with something that sometimes is my darkest fear....what is gaming?
Now before you start badgering about your definitions, its not really to figure out the pure identity of gaming, but why are we so infatuated with things that aren't real that are hooked up to a controller?
Why do we suggest or praise a form of entertainment that is merely a mix of pixels, computer generated images, and quite clearly, is so interesting to stare at a 2D-screen for hours on end?
It's the same way with computers, while we can be out walking, working, doing charity work, signing papers for a higher cause...we just sit on our butts and stare at a screen with stuff moving around it?
Is it true that most of us don't see it that way and our brains suggest that we are watching or playing is actually a form of an internal two-dimensional psuedo-reality, similar to that of the film industry where our eyes and ears are suspended in disbelief even though logically there's nothing really there?
The people who binge-online games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Uncharted seek excitement and reward in a world that has no ties to reality, but somehow our brains process these set of images, movements, dialog, and such as a theoritical "hobby"?
Why is it so easy to become enthralled in a game like Pokemon when it's just a bunch of pixel characters or backgrounds moving from one side to the other, colliding with each other, doing battle movements on a flat screen that somehow tricks our mind into thinking something's actually there?
You can say something similar about books, how does several lines of text somhow switch on a button in your brain to where the story becomes alive through your supposed imagination?
Logically it's almost unexplainable but somehow our brains are almost toys, puppets to whatever visual concosion man has devised to sell or market as something sensual as "entertainment".
What do you think is the reason our bodies can find "reality" in a "world" for of "fakeness"?
Now before you start badgering about your definitions, its not really to figure out the pure identity of gaming, but why are we so infatuated with things that aren't real that are hooked up to a controller?
Why do we suggest or praise a form of entertainment that is merely a mix of pixels, computer generated images, and quite clearly, is so interesting to stare at a 2D-screen for hours on end?
It's the same way with computers, while we can be out walking, working, doing charity work, signing papers for a higher cause...we just sit on our butts and stare at a screen with stuff moving around it?
Is it true that most of us don't see it that way and our brains suggest that we are watching or playing is actually a form of an internal two-dimensional psuedo-reality, similar to that of the film industry where our eyes and ears are suspended in disbelief even though logically there's nothing really there?
The people who binge-online games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Uncharted seek excitement and reward in a world that has no ties to reality, but somehow our brains process these set of images, movements, dialog, and such as a theoritical "hobby"?
Why is it so easy to become enthralled in a game like Pokemon when it's just a bunch of pixel characters or backgrounds moving from one side to the other, colliding with each other, doing battle movements on a flat screen that somehow tricks our mind into thinking something's actually there?
You can say something similar about books, how does several lines of text somhow switch on a button in your brain to where the story becomes alive through your supposed imagination?
Logically it's almost unexplainable but somehow our brains are almost toys, puppets to whatever visual concosion man has devised to sell or market as something sensual as "entertainment".
What do you think is the reason our bodies can find "reality" in a "world" for of "fakeness"?
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