Before I start raving about how great Vanquish is, here's a bit of background information.

I first learned about Vanquish via one of the ads on this website. I wasn't very interested, since it just looked like another attempt by Japanese developers to make a shooter (which rarely turns out right.) That changed after I did some research on the game, and learned that Shinji Mikami (famous for the RE and DMC series) was behind it. With RE4 being my number one favorite game of all time, it got me kind of interested. I played the demo, and it seemed alright, so I thought "might as well", and went to pre-order the game. In all honesty, after playing the demo, I was expecting an average Gears of War clone with robots instead of the locust. However, to my great pleasure, I was wrong. This game is nothing like Gears, it's even better.

First of all, the graphics are beautiful. Opposed to most shooters' dirty and grainy look, Vanquish is full of color. The screen will constantly be filled up with all kinds of colorful projectiles, the map has a sleek futuristic look to it, and the individual character models look suburb with all the moving parts.

Although the game features a cover-based mechanic that Gears popularized, covering and waiting for your enemy is not a good option in this game. The enemies charge towards you like there is no tomorrow, and you will be jet boosting around the map using bullet time to blow up more and more robots using your numerous weapons, or fast and furious hand-to-hand combat. There is no dull moment of having to wait. You are constantly moving at a very high speed, and the good level design combined with excellent pacing and gigantic bosses makes the game pure fun. It's surprisingly original and intuitive (other than the cliche story of course.)

However, I've found a few minor problems, as well. First off, the crosshair becomes hard to see when you're in bullet time. This can be a problem because at times, I'd think I was hitting something, only to notice it hadn't take any damage at all. However, every enemies have handy health bar above their heads, which will serve as an indicator to whether you are hitting the enemy or not, so it's not a huge problem. Another thing I noticed was the inability to jump over certain objects (such as chest-high fences), making you have to run around them. It was also a slight annoyance that you couldn't melee attack when your energy gauge was empty. Finally, there were instances where I would get a boss's health down to a tiny bit, only to fail the sudden QTE and get killed. The QTEs themselves were well executed, but some of them felt too sudden, and having to spin the analogue stick one way, and then another way threw me off alot. In the end though, that is just nitpicking. The game is great, and you should all get it (unless you are prone to seizures, then it wouldn't be a good idea.)

I've gotten about 1/4 of the way through the game, and if the rest of the game is going to be this much fun, I would think I've found myself the best game on the 360 this year.

As some might have noticed, I've been absent from GS a good while now. Between graduation, summer job, and a bunch of other stuff, I actually was busy for the past couple of months for once in my life. Now all of that is over, I'm comfortably back to wasting my life away in front of my computer and TV. Hence I'm here writing a blog.

But who cares about me anyway, the important subject here is Pokemon White.

I imported this game and it arrived last Tuesday. Over the past couple of days I played it like there was no tommorow, and beat it last night (also known as early this morning, 3 AM).

When the credits started rolling, I had tears streaming down my eyes. No kidding.

There was a few reasons for this. First the story was the best out of any Pokemon game to date (which isn't saying much), and it was the first game in the franchise to have seriously examined the relationship between humans and Pokemon, and although the message conveyed was your run-of-the-mill relativism speech, the well-written and presented dialogue had some really touching moments. The tone of the game was much darker as well, with believable characters for the first time.

Which brings me to the next point. The characters stood out more than the past games as well. The leader of Team Plasma was perhaps interesting, making you really feel sorry for him by the end of the game. Plasma Team was a better organization as a whole, coming off as a extremist Pokemon rights organization (somewhat reminiscent of the animal rights organization PETA), rather than a generic "evil organization."

The gym leaders had more to do with the story this time around, and were all strange but likable cast. The main character's two friends, Cheren and Bell, that you meet over and over again throughout your journey were both well developed. Cheren's quest for strength and Bell's search for what she as a unique individual can do, were both riveting and heartrending.

But all of that aside, what really made me cry upon beating the game was the experience it gave me. It was simular to when I played the original on the Game Boy for the very first time, many years ago. It was an immersive adventure in a strange world filled with strange creatures. I thought I would never be able to experience the same excitement again. Pokemon White delivered that, and reminded me why I love Pokemon so much to begin with.

So I guess it was nostalgia after all, but don't get me wrong, this is an amazing game, that gave the franchise a much needed reboot.

The gameplay remains much of the same, but there have been some nice additions that make battles smoother, and the graphics have improved significantly with awesome fully-rendered 3D cutscenes. The numerous areas in the Ish region is quite a spectacle in itself, ranging from quite towns in the country to a giant city.

Some of the improvements include:

Infinite use of TMs: No more having to save up BP at the battle tower to get another Earthquake TM. You can teach it to as many Pokemon as you desire, from one TM.

No need for HM slaves: Remember that one Pokemon in your party that was about 30 levels behind the rest, and was just in there to use Cut, Flash, Strength, and Rock Smash? Yeah, you don't need that anymore, because HM powers are needed so scarcely. I think you can beat the game without using any of them. Rather, they are used for finding secret areas or traveling to side locations. This is great because I used to hate it when you would be half-way through a dungeon only to find out you don't have the HM move you need, and although you have the HM, none of your party Pokemon can learn it. Not to mention dark caves were a pain in the but.

The merge of the Pokemon Center with the Friendly Mart, and making it all one floor instead of three: Yup, it's pretty convenient.

I've heard some people complain about the Pokemon design, but other than the not-so-original looking starters, I enjoyed all of them. They take a more realistic approach, causing some Pokemon to look quite grotesque, but alot of the Pokemon in the original Red/Blue versions are looked quite strange as well, so I didn't mind that. It seemed to me that this generation's Pokemon exhibited the most creativity since the first generation of Pokemon. In fact, I probably have the most favorite Pokemon from this generation than any other. I won't be posting any pics though, just cuz I don't want to spoil it for those who want to keep it a surprise. I'm guessing most people who care already have spoiled the entire Pokedex for themselves, but if you are like me, who purposely didn't spoil it on the internet so he could experience meeting new Pokemon for the first time in-game, I wouldn't want to be the one who spoils all the cool new Pokemon.

But I will post one:

Maggyo, the first Ground/Electric Pokemon. This is probably my favorite pokemon in all of Black/White:lol: It's so stupid looking it looks cool.

Anyway, I'm gonna start breeding for competitive play now, so I'll be back in a week or so with a report on how the metagame is going in the Japanese battlefield for all those who care.

Well, I went to the midnight launch of Red Dead Redemption (at which there wer a lot more people than I expected.), got my copy of the game, and played a few hours.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the single-player campaign. Amazing graphics, awesome presentation, great gameplay, and most of all, it's the wild west.

After I got a taste of that, I went ahead and played multiplayer with a few of my friends.... It was pretty fun. However, the sheer number of glitches was ridiculous. The character would turn invisible every so often, making it nearly unplayable at times. Hopefully they release a patch soon to fix it.

That's all. Now that I'm sleepy as hell, I'm off to bed. Good night to all. -ChaosmakerX

I'm finally at level 32. I would have reached here much faster if I didn't go inactive for half a year:P Anyway, the rank is Snake Eater, one of my favorite games.... Big Boss was such a great character. It was one of those games where the story and characters were so great, it outweighed all the awkward gameplay. Very few games actually make a person cry.... The MGS series is really good at doing that to you:lol:

On the side note, does anyone have reccomendations for some good unions I could join? Or if anyone is trying to set one up, I'd be glad to charter and do all the banners/icons and such. RPGs, anime, shooters, whatever. I'm just out of things to do...

As the title infers, I bought SMT: Strange Journey a couple days ago.... and I'm completely hooked. It's an amazing game, so much fun to the extent that I forget to play Spinter Cell: Conviction and FFXIII. It's old-school, and reminds one that games can be fun without all the crazy graphics or innovative combat systems. A plain old, good old turn-based RPG. Just like the days of the SNES. I've been missing games like these lately:P

In addition, I made a new sig:

It's Gavan from Uchuu Keiji Gavan. The first and best of the Metal Hero Series. In addition, it also sports that greatest tokusatsu opening in history. (For those who are interested.)

That's all. See you next blog.

I watched Kick-Ass yesterday, and it was amazing! Over the top violence, crude humor, and a wonderful satire of traditional comic book heroes. As a super-hero geek, you have to love it:lol:

Other than that, it's late notice, but I went to the mid night release of Spliter Cell:Conviction, got a hold of the game, and currently playing it. It's great, absolutely wonderful... However, it has yet to beat my all time favorite, Chaos Theory (which my username is derived from.) I'll most likely write up a review on Conviction, so I won't bother going into details here.

Oh, and if anyone wants to play Co-op, I'm always more than ready:P

EDIT: Just made a Kick-Ass sig, how do you like it?

Just a few hours ago, the new Pokemon games were announced

And they are....

Pokemon Black and White!

I was guessing they would make it Black and White for fifth gen, and my guess was correct:lol: The best news? It's coming out this fall in Japan!

According to the homepage, more information will be released on April 15, in CoroCoro Comic (a Japanese kid's magazine.)

I'm so frickin' psyched!

Hello, long time no see... Or type.

As the blog title suggests, I played throughed the Splinter Cell: Conviction demo, and.... I'm extremely pleased. Being a huge Splinter Cell fan since I played the first game (that I happened to find in a $5 bargain bin at Game Stop), I had a certain amount of doubts on the direction Ubisoft was taking the game (honestly, I would of settled for the same kind of gameplay as the past four games). But I know the gamer community wouldn't be satisfied with it, and the "if it ain't broken, there's no need to fix it" formula does get old (*cough* Capcom....), so I was still eager to play the newest installment in this great franchise.

So I played through it (on the hardest difficulty the demo offered), and It was amazing. The combat was speedy and action-packed, interactive enviornments were executed beautifully, and it was all done while keeping the controls relatively simple and easy to use. The mark-and-execute system (which I feared would make the game too easy) was executed perfectly. It was just so much fun silently taking out one gaurd, and using the points you gained from that to mark-and-execute two more instantaneously. There are a plethora of ways one can get past a group of enemies by utilizing guns (which you can finally pick up from enemies), gagets, Krav Maga, and mark-and-execute, and they are all so exciting.

The only problems I found with the demo were that the Sam's character model seemed kind of blury at times, and that the camra would spontaniously jump around. Other than that, it really doesn't affect the gameplay, but being able to see the trajectory of fired bullets, and the spontainious switching to black-and-white kind of detracted from the mood of the game. All together, the game seems to sacrifice a good amount of realism for fun, which I don't mind at all.

Anyway, the demo was superb, and I can hardly wait for it to be released. (Co-op is going to be awesome:P)

Well.... I'm in my second week of school now. It's pretty easy going since it's my senior year. I'm so close to freedom:lol:

But, I never seem to have enough time to play videogames.... Between school, writing, studying theology, playing the guitar, and budo.... I just can't fit videogaming in there:lol: I still have been playing Dissidia, but I'mgetting tired of it. I haven't touched Fallout 3 or my 360 in weeks.... But, I will be importing Pokemon Soul Silveras soon as I have enoughmoney, so I'm looking forward to rackingup hours on that:P Also, I'm looking into getting Persona3 Portable, andLeft4 Dead2 when they come out.Myfriend was nice enough to give me a month free card forXbox live, so I am activating it for sure whenI get L4D2:DIt's great cuz I willturn17 right before the real ease of the game:lol:

I just noticed I have exactly 5000 posts.... So I am writing a blog in commemoration:lol:

Other than that, school is still out because of the fire. It's great cuz I get to focus on my writing:P

In other news, I'm currently taking sig requests, so feel free to ask me for one:D