Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially announced today, only an hour and a half ago.

Rest well, KotOR, among gaming's most defiled. This is a sad day for gamers everywhere.

:( x1000

It finally happened. After laughing at everyone else get the RROD, it finally came back and bit me in the ass while at the shore this weekend.

At long last, Heavy Rain has returned in the form of a new trailer at Leipzig GC '08. Alas, once again the new demo does not have any relation to the actual game, but now that they have shown the gameplay, I am more excited than ever.

The demo depicts a woman named Madison riding her motorcycle into an unnamed town. She pulls into a standard suburban neighborhood, arriving at the dingy house of a taxadermist who has become a prime suspect in the case of the origami killer. Madison is an investigative journalist who has taken it upon herself to find evidence on whether or not this man is the killer or not. Madison makes her way into the house through the kitchen window, which was left ajar. She looks throughout the house, in which you can interact with almost everything. Making her way upstairs, what else does Madison find but...the corpse of a woman in the bathtub, and two woman in another room who have apparently been stuffed...by a taxidermist! Just then, the taxidermist decides to arrive at home. Here's where things get interesting for me. In the demo, Madison is discovered by the taxidermist, which results in a QTE of Madison trying to escape the house with the taxidermist hot on her heels with a knife. BUT, that is only one possible scenario of what could happen. According to David Cage, writer and director behind Heavy Rain, there are many different ways in which that scene can turn out. Madison can escape the house without alerting the taxidermist, or she can hide from him in around 30 hiding places. She can also be killed, and the story will still go on. In Heavy Rain, says Cage, there are no game overs. Sounds intriguing...

If only they would release that demo on PSN!

Fable II Pub Games was released a few days ago, and I must admit, it is addicting. I much prefer it to the frustrating turd Braid (no offense to those who rotted their brains completing that piece of crap.) I just wish I'd known beforehand just how easy it is to get so far into debt.

It's simple, clever, and enjoyable. Too bad there's no multiplayer. Nonetheless, it gets me even more excited for Fable II's release. Speaking of which, I don't even know when that is!

Aside from that, Nemesis has been giving me a hell of a time in RE3. STOP STALKING ME ALREADY!!! I started reading The Call of Cthulhu just in time for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth to ship from GameFly. H.P. Lovecraft is a genius. Reading his stories really makes me regret selling Eternal Darkness however long ago. My favorites so far include The Rats in the Walls (those who played Eternal Darkness know will love this story, as one level was based on it), Pickman's Model, and In The Vault (which actually had me nervous to go to sleep).

It's unlikely that you've ever heard of a little-known Xbox exclusive called Breakdown. It was extremely overlooked and underrated. The sad part is, many attribute the curret advances in first-person gaming to games like Condemned 2 and Half-Life 2. Unh-unh. Breakdown did it first.

So what is Breakdown about? Well, it was kind of confusing, but what I do know is that you play as Derrick Cole, a man who just reawakened from a coma. You are trapped in a research laboratory until the military decides to kill everyone within. Including you. That almost happens until Alex Hendrickson, a beautiful femme fatale, slaughters them. The two of you escape from lab, part of the Carter Science Center, until you discover what was also being researched at the CSC. The T'lan. T'lan are, from what I can tell, some bastardization between human and something else. Their skins are covered in some kind of crystal or metal, and they have innate shields which deflect bullets and fists directed at them. For a while, you have no method of fighting them, until you discover your own innate abilities: lightning crackles down you forearm, you can suddenly harm the T'lan, as well as deflect bullets directed at you. Derrick and Alex rendezvous with Glen Ogawa, a scientist who works at the CSC. The T'lan are controlled by a supercomputer (for lack of a better word) called Nexus. It's up to you to find it and destroy it. Only thing is, both the T'lan and the military want to destroy you first. Along the way you are pursued by a T'lan entity known as Solus, who bears a striking resemblance to Sephiroth.

You also meet up with a military commander by the name of Gianni De Luca, who disobeys his orders and helps you instead of pursuing you, and Stephania Wojinski, a researcher at Terminus 4, the place where the T'lan, and T'langen, the substance which gives both you and the T'lan the powers you have, were researched. Your objective: travel to Site Zero, where Nexus is located. Site Zero is apparently where the T'lan came from. Making your way there, you battle both the T'lan and the military (who's it is, I don't know). As you make your way through Site Zero, you watch everyone who helped you die. First, you watch Stephania thrown to her death, then Gianni, who is overwhelmed when you are not able to reach him in time. Then you witness the T'lan invade Earth. Then, Alex, who was kidnapped by Solus. When you find her, you get into this pretty awesome duel with Solus. Suffice to say, you lose. Alex tries to defend you, and is killed in doing so. Just then, the military decides to pull their final trump card on the T'lan: nuke Site Zero. Before Solus can finish you off though, a nuke lands right in the same room with you...and goes off right in your face.

You think, that can't really be the end, can it? Well, no, the game's far from over. Apparently, thanks to the nuke, you 'time-slipped' and was sent to the future. You wake up inside a machine called the Memscan, which was sorting all your memories into chronological order after suffering from amnesia. Turns out all 7 hours you just played was nothing but stuff the happened 15 years prior to current events. Since you failed to defeat Solus, the world was overran by T'lan and humanity was enslaved. Right after you wake up, T'lan invade Terminus 4, which was thought to be a safehouse. Most people are killed while you try to escape. You meet up again with Alex...only she doesn't know you. You meet up with Glen again, now much older, who gives you the Ultra Accelerator, which really turns you into a badass. After protecting Glen and Alex, you are affected by the Pendulum Effect, which is the result of being time-slipped too long. To be short, you're returning to your own time.

Before you can protest, Alex joins you in the Pendulum Effect. She gets sent to the time when you first met her, you get sent to right after Solus kidnaps Alex. Yeah, you get to replay the last two hours. Only now, with your new powers, you can save everyone who died. First Stephania, then Gianni, and finally, Alex. The duel with Solus drags on too long for my liking, but what can you do. When he finally dies, you continue on to destroy Nexus. With some annoying design choices, you finally do. In the end, the four of you escape from Site Zero as it is collapsing. This time, Derrick saved the world. T'lan were eliminated and everyone makes it out. Before you can celebrate though, Alex is affected by the Pendulum Effect. Here's where you choose which ending you get. Either walk to her and join her in the Pendulum Effect for the good ending, or stay in the helicoptor for the not-so-good ending. Since I prefer good endings, I went with her. Well, sure that timeline is saved, but the other one where the T'lan rule over earth, is not. So naturally, it's a cliffhanger of sorts. All I can say is...GET ME A SEQUEL! NAO!

The story may be excellent, but the a lot of the design choices...not so much. Yes, the melee system was way ahead of its time (I was still finding new moves near the end of the game), but the execution is not quite there. Gunfights are pretty much just tacked in there, as there are only 5 weapons, including grenades. Sometimes, there are just too large gaps between checkpoints, making even easy, well, not so easy. The developers just made some stupid decisions from a design standpoint. But through it all, for me, at least, the story keeps you going. To be short, the game's innovation was way ahead of its time, and is not given credit for what it did before others. It's just that the execution is not quite there.

Final Rating: 8.3/10 for a great concept and story, but flawed gameplay and level design.

Now, for Heavy Rain.

Here's a close-up: http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/gallery/heavy-rain-image-gallery/heavyrain-three.jpg

Here's a close-up: http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/gallery/heavy-rain-image-gallery/heavyrain-four.jpg

In case you want to see more, here's the base article: http://www.ripten.com/2008/08/06/new-heavy-rain-images-pour-in/

Just beautiful, Heavy Rain is unarguably the best looking game of this generation.

I'm a pretty frequent sufferer of Writer's Block. Obviously that's a major problem when you're trying to write a novel. In two years, I've came up with and subsequently scrapped three major ideas. Last night I watched an indie black comedy "Lady is a Vamp". A sort of half-serious vampire romance. It wasn't all that great, but I liked some aspects of it. I enjoyed the dark humor (for example, while they are trying to hide dead bodies, "Clean up your mess" from Barney starts playing). But what the movie did do for me is it gave me the idea for what I think might be my first legitimate book. I'll share more once I have a more solid story, but just for forewarning, I hope you like vampires, dark humor, and a focus on character relationships.

Oh yeah, I finally saw "Jacob's Ladder" because people have said it's one of the best horror movies evar. Well, this is why I don't listen to "true horror fans". I can stand weird-ass hallucinations, but that ending was bloody ridiculous. Not just in the sense that it was bad, but that it just didn't make a whole lot of sense. Suffice to say. the whole movie never really happened.

On the other hand, "The Professional" wasn't half bad. The ending I didn't particularly like though. I mean, I thought it would have been cooler if Leon survived and continued to teach Matilda to be a hitman, but that's just me. Ah, well...

So apparently Heavy Rain, of which I'm sure you know my obsession with, was shown at E3 2008, but behind closed doors. Meaning journalists who got into see it had to sign a waver to keep their mouths shut about what they saw. But, N'Gai Croal, General Editor of Technology for Newsweek, in case you're not familiar, gave a little blurb that he saw HR at E3 and that it will be shown at the Leipzig GDC. Yay!! (I think Zoe's (from Wraith) use of language is starting to rub off on me.)

Alright, Silent Hill 4: The Room is driving me insane, and not in the way Silent Hill usually does. So I'm at my 2nd visit to the Forest World, so for the 2nd half of the game, including this part, I have to protect Eileen Galvin (because I want the best ending!), while running away from the unkillable Walter Sullivan (who's got a pistol and a steel pipe, subsequently replaced by a motherf**kin' chainsaw!!), and run away from the unkillable Victim 17, Jasper, while avoiding attracting all the Twin Victims (Two huge arms, wearing a poncho of sorts, with two baby heads on top), Hummers (annoying bats), and Sniffer Dogs (I'm convinced that their charge attack is glitched because they'll zoom across whatever area I'm in. Completely missing me, and just looking really odd.) MEANWHILE, while all this is happening I have to find the parts of a doll scattered in the wells in the forest. To find these, I need the torch out and lit. I can't fight with the torch. If I put it away, it gets doused, meaning I probably have to pass by Walter (Remember: CHAINSAW!!) to light it. I can't take it anymore!!!! *tears out hair*

I like how the game is tied to Silent Hill 2, even if I didn't like 2. Meh, back to Valkyrie Profile 2.

It's funny that at around the same time one of their greatest sequels is coming out (Soulcalibur IV), Namco Bandai also completely f**ks with the sequel to what I consider the greatest JRPG out there. Tales of Symphonia.

Tales of Symphonia 2: Dawn of the New World (Knight of Ratatosk sounded cooler if you ask me) has completely failed in my eyes. 'Why is that, Tyler?' you ask me. Well, to start off it looks like they hired whole new artist, because the new characters definitely do not looke like they were created by Kosuke Fujishima. They look more like they belong in the .hack series. But that is a small gripe compared to what else annoys me. Apparently your band of characters from the first game are now the bad guys... Why, I don't care to find out, because I'm sure the lazy plot twist is that they're not bad guys after all. Keep in mind that ToS was a 60-80 hour game and I completed it a total of 18 times (yes, I kept track). The game not being about them drives me up a f**king wall, after spending that much time with them. Oh, but wait, the best is yet to come. So in case you didn't play ToS or just didn't know, near the end there was a point that decided which ending you got. One ending path was about Zelos, the other about Kratos. Zelos is pink-wearing, chatty, perverted little b1tch. There are no good things to say about him, other than that he exactly copies Kratos's fighting sty1e (meaning he's a pathetic filler character) only with a stupid Maxi-esque dance to it. Kratos, on the other hand, Kratos is GOD (no, not the God of War...). For one thing, he's much more important to the story (*SPOILER* being the main character's father). He's voiced by Cam Clarke, making him badass by default. Suffice to say, Kratos is a helluva lot cooler and important than Zelos is. Which ending you get affects who lives and who dies. Zelos ending, Kratos dies. Kratos ending, Zelos dies (my favorite part :twisted: ) But wait, what is this, according to ToS2 MOTHERF**KING ZELOS'S ENDING IS CANON. It's not Kratos I see in the trailers, but that little s**t-for-brains Zelos. F**k you, Namco Bandai. Next boardroom meeting, don't get stoned out of your minds. As far as I'm concerned, ToS2 has not been made, and never will be. I'm more content with that than a bulls**t "sequel" like this. Seriously, is it really a sequel if it's not about the SAME GODDAMNED CHARACTERS!!! But you might say, well yeah, it takes place in the same world. NO, NO, and NO! This is more goddamn disappointing than KotOR 2's lack of an ending.

/end rant

...And I've been completely blown away by one of the coolest duos in recent history...

Onimusha is a very well thought-out trilogy. As I've said before, Onimusha rides the middle ground between Resident Evil and Devil May Cry. Although, as the series evolved it drifted more towards on deepening the combat and not the puzzles. (You won't see my crying.) The ending for Onimusha: Warlords was rather questionable...until 3 starts up. Right from the beginning you're given an amazing CG intro that has Samanosuke slicing up hordes of Genma (demons), resulting in an epic duel with a Genma general (I can't recall his name). Needless to say, when Jacques comes into the story, Jean Reno is just awesome. The intro when Genma invade Paris is surprisingly one of the goriest scenes I have ever seen in any medium.

While it was disappointing to learn there was no Japanese voiceovers, it was cool to have all the French characters, well, speak French. Of course, when Ako (a sort of Japanese Tinkerbell, if you will) arrives, she dissolves the language barrier, effectively eliminating the great French VOs. Though on the flipside, when that happens, the always amazing Jennifer Hale takes on the role of Michelle Aubert, Jacque's fiancee.

So far, the gameplay is almost too deep for the game. With 4 fighting sty1es on each character, all with special attacks, plus ranged weapons, throws, criticals, deflect criticals, etc, etc, it all starts to become a little much. That said, it is extremely fluid combat. (Also, as a partner, Michelle is extremely rigged, equipped with a FAMAS and grenades, she's a frickin' female Rambo. She throws grenades like they're candy.)

The story is actually something to be reckoned with. In Warlords, it feels a little incomplete. That's because they were waiting for Demon Siege to finish it. I've yet to finish it just yet. But dang, this series you HAVE to play!