Deus Ex : Human Revolution (PC)

The Good

(+) Perfectly nails the cyberpunk feel.Highly atmospheric.

(+) Excellent open-ended level design.Multiple ways to reach any quest location throughout the game.

(+) Stealth mechanics are executed properly.Good,balanced use of cover and augmentations to utilize this.

(+) Story does a great job in bringing out the ethical argument of human augmentation.Never supports any one side entirely and shows the pros and cons of both the sides.

(+) Yellow-and-black art-$tyle enhances the cyberpunk setting of the game.Impressive detail to the art throughout.

(+) Ambient music perfectly complements the atmosphere of the game.

(+) Social Augmentation and Persuasion sequences are a good idea and are executed fairly decently.

(+) Good to see the game sticking to a square-tiled inventory

(+) About 20-30 hours long.Very good length considering the games today.

(+) Multiple ways to resolve various parts of quest = Good Role-Playing.

The Blah

(?) Doesn't offer the same level of flexibility in your approach and play-$tyle as the original.

(?) Combat is unbalanced and favours the stealth side considerably in terms of XP share,general difficulty etc.

(?) Couple of useless augmentations act as fillers in the list of augs you can purchase and use.

(?) Quests don't offer the same level of moral dilemma as some other RPGs today.Opportunity missed IMO.

(?) Doesn't try to do things too different.Largely sticks to formula of the original--for better or worse.

The Bad

(-) Boss fights are mostly an unnecessity.Restrictive,force you to use a single approach,at times poorly designed and entirely missing the whole point of the Deus Ex games is to provide freedom.

(-) Last level of the game is a complete miss from a gameplay point-of-view.Boring and anti-climatic of sorts after seeing better levels before.

(-) Twists of the game are rather far-fetched and at times predictable.

(-) Like Deus Ex, it suffers from fatigue in its final quarter. Runs out of new ideas and almost edges on becoming repetitive at some points.

Final Score:8.5/10 or 4/5

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Bastion (PC)

The Good

(+) Simple,accessible yet enjoyable and engaging combat.

(+) Beautiful 2D artwork.Suits the game and makes it feel straight out of a children's storybook.

(+) The witty and innovative narration is a neat but rather obvious trick.Still works in favour of the game.

(+) Relatively challenging--always making you think while testing your reflexes.Its boss battles bring this particular trait out the best.

(+) Well-implemented upgrade mechanic--Armory,Arsenal and Distillery bring in a slight strategic element into the game.

(+) Brilliantly done music.Not only does it perfectly set the mood but it is good enough to make you notice it more than once.

The Blah

(?) Too many unwalled areas makes falling off the edge a common and rather annoying occurrence.

(?) Story isn't too interesting.Never catches your interest as it should with the unique narration it has.

(?) The narrator can be a wee bit annoying at times.

The Bad

(-) Enemy hitbox is off by a reasonable margin which is noticable particularly when using ranged weapons.

(-) Linear.Not only in the over-arching plot sense but in the basic level design.

Final Score:8.0/10 or 4/5

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FIFA 12 (PC)

The Good

(+) Two additions--the Tactical Defending System and Player Impact ragdoll physics-engine completely change the face of the entire gameplay.Playing it feels as good as playing an entirely different game now.

(+) The changes work in favour of the game.Defending gains a lot of importance and loose fire-cannon tackles will not win you possession.

(+) Nerfed-up AI complements the new defending system making sure if you make mistakes, you WILL pay for it.

(+) Change in defense mechanics makes jockeying and blocking--essential must-learn aspects now.

(+) Defender positioning is as important as timing --something which past games seemingly ignored.

(+) Player Impact engine brings in a balanced and realistic feeling to the game.

(+) A three-pronged Career Mode gives good flexibility to your play-****

(+) Be a Pro mode is a lot fun without the stupid "Must Do" list for each match.

(+) Expected improvement in visuals in general.

The Blah

(?) Online is still a bit laggy.

(?) Player facial animations still resemble wax statues at times.

The Bad

(-) Existing flaws in the Career mode from the previous games are inherited as well.

(-) New physics engine does lead to occasional glitches of entirely hilarious and awkward player animations.

Final Score:9.0/10 or 5/5

Now onto some things I want to make my opinion of very clear :

Why Light is Skeptic About Skyrim?

The game everyone apparently is excited about and can't wait to get their hands on. After all it is the next big game from Bethesda-- the makers of the highly acclaimed and loved -- Oblivion and Fallout 3.

However if you think everyone is giddy like a kid at Christmas over Skyrim then think again.

Well I personally am not.

Of course I am looking forward to Skyrim but not with the same unbridled excitement and expectations everyone seemingly has for it. My reasons for looking forward to Skyrim are different from many of you and I am pretty sure I am not the only one with those reasons when I say that.

The reason why I am looking forward to Skyrim is this : It is a game from one of the last-surviving series that carries an age-old RPG aesthetic of "large open-world to explore,mute character and seemingly open-ended freedom".

Now as obvious it is, there IS a difference between looking forward to a game and being excited to a game.

I am not excited about Skyrim.

Why?

Because I find it thoroughly hard to generate excitement for a game that's coming from a developer whose last two games--no matter how critically acclaimed or adored they may be-- have failed to impress me in varying degrees.

It's no secret I didn't enjoy Oblivion as much as many of you apparently did.I did appreciate Oblivion's improvements in combat but I felt many of its attempts at making simplifying things led to the series losing a lot of charm and flavour that Morrowind had.

Why I Didn't Like Oblivion? (Or Reasons Why I am not excited about Skyrim)

Setting

Cyrodill is bland and boring.Lacks any of the charm,lore and backstory that Morrowind had. I find it incredibly hard to spend 100+ hours in a setting that doesn't appealing or immersive enough for me.

Dumbed Down --Combat,Skills,Role-Playing

·Personally enjoyed how Morrowind's combat was a lot more strategic compared to Oblivion's push for more action-oriented combat.

·Less skills.Reduced importance of EVERY role-playing aspects -- attribute numbers mean less, alchemy's importance is lost in the transition to make combat seem more "exciting".

·Loss of importance of skills and attributes ends up creating an imbalance in the combat.

Role-Playing(Are you sure?)

·Linear quests whose every part should be hand-held. For a game from a series which is rooted in its pride of providing absolute freedom,Oblivion's quests were a black mark to the series and its spiritual predecessors.

·Role-playing has been about your character's skills.NOT yours.Making combat more reflex-oriented only damaged that golden rule.Bethesda should either ditch the "action" combat or its pretense of including numbers and skills that don't matter for the sake of being called a "role-playing game" which it obviously was very weak at.

Fast Travel -- Good Intentions,Bad Consequences

Fast travel serves its purpose. Sure it saves you the "trouble" of travelling through the countryside over and over again. But what it does lead to is a reduced emphasis by the developer on the non-civilized areas of the map.

Tell me as a developer would you spend more time trying to wilderness and countryside when you know that a considerably high number of gamers will not even bother exploring that area? Hint : The correct answer is No.

Oblivion saw a lot more copy-pasted textures and areas and reduced "events" compared to Morrowind which I see as an unhealthy by-product of fast travel. The intentions of that mechanic were good but the reduced emphasis was clearly visible in Oblivion further adding to the already bland setting.

Poor Voice-Acting and Radiant AI

I am surprised why Radiant AI was even hyped so much. It was so horribly broke in Oblivion. Voice-acting for general NPCs was poor.I mean I see Oblivion-level voice acting in low-budget German RPGs and that's not a comparison to be proud of.

Paper Thin Story (Which Wasn't that Interesting Anyway)

^ Self Explanatory.

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I won't get started with Fallout 3 because that is a game which is Bethesda's equivalent of Dragon Age II -- a game that destroys the faith you have on a developer. Just like Dragon Age II destroyed my faith in BioWare, Fallout 3 did the same for Bethesda as far as I was concerned. It is such a horrific reinvention of a series I've loved so much over the years. Compared to Fallout 3, Oblivion has a million times more interesting and rich setting.

A stellar New Vegas by Obsidian hasn't done my opinion on Fallout 3 a lot of good.

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But we're here to talk about Skyrim. As you can see I had considerable issues with Oblivion. That would understandably make me a lot more skeptical about Skyrim.

What wouldn't help is that Skyrim might have a fair bit of problems of its own :

Why So Skeptical about Skyrim,Hmm?

Now of course no one has played the game so my skepticism is based purely on what I've heard,seen and read over the game's development cycle.

In addition to whatever basic design issues get carried forward from Oblivion,these are some things that make me skeptical about Skyrim :

Auto-Aim (Or as Todd Howard put it "We're inspired by CoD Black Ops" )

Auto-aim for ranged. I think it might be for spell-casting and melee as well. Why? Because some people apparently find the task of aiming a very problematic and trouble-some one. There might be an option to turn it off of course but the whole idea behind it and how Howard has mentioned how they were inspired by Black Ops reeks of potential hazard.

Generated Fetch Quests

Yes this sounds appalling. Skyrim tracks your friendship and enemity with various NPCs across the game and automatically generates fetch quests. To think Fable III's least impressive mechanic would actually inspire Bethesda is incredibly saddening.

No Spellcrafting

Rubbing salt on our wounds,Bethesda wants to make sure it removes any trace of Ultima-inspired roots the series has.Really,Bethesda,really?

Regenerative Health

A common mechanic in modern-gaming but out of all places I see the regen-health model working,I cannot see it working in a RPG like Skyrim. It is so easy to retreat from a combat and wait till your health regenerates.

Guess that is the point that Bethesda is trying to stress. They don't want their players to taste failure--perhaps fearing some of the "less patient" crowd might give up. Sad times indeed.

Dragons Respawn

I've always thought that any cool feature if overused becomes tiresome,boring and repetitive ultimately. This may end up being the same case if what I've read about dragons respawning is true.

Level-Scaling/Down-scaling

Another feature from Oblivion and Fallout 3 which I absolutely despise. Completely kills the joy of exploration or that fear(and thrill) of stumbling onto high-level locations which games like New Vegas and Dark Souls thrive upon.

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As closer it has gotten to Skyrim's release, my skepticism has peaked. A developer that hasn't impressed me since Morrowind and who is obviously on decline if Fallout 3 is any indication needs a redemption.

Skyrim is their big chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of many Bethesda skeptics who think they're a vastly overrated developer who've built their success on games that aren't half as good as their predecessors.

Skyrim just may do that. Redeem Bethesda.

But then Skyrim may end up being just another step in the decline that Bethesda has seen over the years.

This isn't about how Skyrim is going to be received. I think it's already obvious that Skyrim is going to get high scores and acclaim (just like every big game that comes out irrespective of whether it deserves it or not). And it's going to get a lot of fan adulation with giddy man-children saying "There goes 3 months of my life" or "Gonna play it for 400 HOURS or more".

Skyrim is no doubt a guaranteed big contender for GotY and that I can say before it has even released.Since nowadays a lot of GotYs aren't decided after playing the better game,they're generally decided which game is more hyped and has generated more interest.

This is about I am going to think about Skyrim. How me and many "old-school" (for the lack of a better word to define us) Bethesda skeptics think of Elder Scrolls series rather rapid decline from a once-proud remnant of a RPG sub-genre to a crowd pleaser who has long lost the intricacy and absolute freedom in terms of quest-structure which made it so lovable in the first place.

--

Lightwarrior179

Hey everyone,

It's been a LONG time since I blogged here. Despite being active on the site, I admit I've been lazy when it comes to blogging. So its time to make up for all that lost time and bring a MASSIVE update through this blog to get you up-to-date with what I've been gaming over the past 2-3 months.

Gaming

Quickies # 1

So this time around to update you quickly on my final thoughts on some of the games I've been playing I've used usagi704's method of "Quickies" aka mini-reviews. They're not proper reviews and simply state "The Good", "The Blah" (indicating stuff I was indifferent about) and "The Bad". I'll rate the game out of 10 and out of 5 stars (no 0.5 allowed!!)

King of Fighters XI (PS2)

The Good

+ Excellent fighting mechanics that are accessible and deep

+ Does a good job in providing fair balance to different fighting s-tyles and strategies

+ Decently balanced roster

+ Good background and sprite art style

+ Challenge Mode does a very good job of offering wide and varying amount of FAIR challenges

+ Good soundtrack with some catchy tunes

The Blah

(?) Story.Unremarkable but do we really care about that in a fighting game?

The Bad

- Boss fights.SNK boss syndrome...nuff' said.

- Bosses create a huge imbalance in the roster once they're unlocked

Extra Comments :

Nothing much to add what I've already said about this game. Loved it.

Final Score :

8.5/10 OR 4 stars out of 5

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Shin Megami Tensei : Persona 4 (PS2)

The Good

+ Brilliant story and superlative characterization. Possibly one of the best and memorble JRPG casts I've come across

+ Improvements in combat means its a lot more fun than it was in Persona 3

+ More personal Social Links involving family and team members makes them more interesting

+ Social Links have a more direct impact on the combat --thus bringing the two sides of the game closer

+ Decent murder mystery with good use of red-herrings and equipped with fair amount of twists and surprises

+ Killer soundtrack with couple of truly memorable tracks

+ Social Links are developed in expected and unexpected ways

+ Captures the small-town feel of Inaba very well.Atmospheric and charming at the same time.

+ Themed dungeons make exploration a lot more relatable to the plot

+ Story uses the disturbing themes of the game to a great effect

The Blah

(?) Fewer "JRPG story sequences" outside the high-school life compared to Persona 3.

(?) Dungeon map design is predictable to the core

The Bad

- Awful pacing. Takes nearly 3-4 hours to get started and more than 10 hours to pick its pace to full speed.

- Still faces the problem of extended slumps in pacing due to "time limit of a month but players finish the dungeon early anyway and are left to wait for the rest of the month without the story progressing"

Extra Comments :

Like I said earlier this is possibly the first JRPG in a long time I've fallen in love with.Falling in love? Yeah the kind where the game really hits you on your gamer's sweet spot, you love the game and are disappointed when it ends, you listen to the soundtrack and watch tribute videos (still do) for a long time after you've finished it. That sort.

Persona 4 did that to me and I honestly didn't expect it to have this kind of effect on me even if I liked Persona 3. It's certainly my most loved JRPG of recent times but itsNOT the best JRPG I've played recently(read the blog for more on this). ;) :P

Final Score :

9.5/10 (though 9.25/10 would be more accurate) OR 5 stars out of 5

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LA Noire(X360)

No quickie here read the review if you haven't already!!! :P

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Just on the heels of P4 I played another game I was looking forward to :

Final Fantasy X (PS2)

The Good

+Great combat with enough variety and customization to keep you engaged and interested

+ Sphere Grid is the epic win of customization

+ Dynamic switching of characters in combat is epic win as well.

+ Blitzball is an addicting minigame

+ Beautiful graphics are still beautiful

The Blah

(?) Uematsu's soundtrack is largely unremarkable

(?) Claustrophobic design that goes "A to B" in 5 seconds just to see another 2-minute long cutscene

(?) Boss battle could have used some variety

(?) Story is largely average. Filled from top to bottom with cliches and has only few IMPACTFUL moments.

(?) Mixed reactions on cast. Only liked Lulu and Auron

The Bad

- Two awful leads -- Tidus and Yuna -- that tear the already average story into shreds by making you care less about it.

- Facepalm-inducing villains

Extra Comments :

I was really looking forward to this game but in the end I came out of it a tad bit disappointed. I knew it may not stand upto my sky-high expectations but I had expected the story to be a lot more consistently engaging than it was. It still had its moments -- and when FFX's story had its moments it was geniunely impressive but other than that it was a letdown.

Surprisingly it was the combat that stayed with me as the biggest plus point of the game. No wonder I enjoyed FFXIII so much since I loved FFX and its Sphere Grid that much.

Final Score :

7.5/10 OR 4 stars out of 5

This was followed by some indie games :

The first two were ones made by Christine Love, a writer and adventure-game developer I had been keeping track of for a while. Her first game had caught my eye a while back and I finally got a chance to play it :

Digital : A Love Story (PC)

The Good

+ Impressive use of a unique setting to build an engaging and cleverly written plot

+ Very unique interface design. Entire game takes place on a screen resembling that of a late 80s computer with a dial-up connection

+ Intuitive and logical puzzles that make you think only a little but still satisfying upon solving them

The Blah

(?) Interface can be slightly difficult to navigate.Understandable for a 80s computer though. :P

The Bad

- Trial and error design runs rampant through most of the game

Extra Comments :

Nothing to add.

Final Score :

7.5/10 OR 4 stars out of 5

Note : Please don't compare this score to FFX equating both the games. One I've rated in terms of a RPG and the other in terms of a visual-novel/adventure game.

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Ms.Love's second game being a LOT more underwhelming

Don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story (PC)

The Good

+Another unique interface this time of a social networking site around which the entire game is structured around.

+ Half-decent story with fairly "convention-breaking" characters.

The Blah

(?) Unimpressive art design for a traditional visual novel like this.

(?) Boring looping music

The Bad

-- Story gets ruined by an AWFUL twist ending that tries to imitate "The Truman Show"

-- Gets into the high-school soap-opera mode at times.Wonder if it was a sarcastic comment on nature of social networks. :P

Extra Comments :

A mistake.

Final Score :

4.0/10 OR 2 stars out of 5

Next was a shmup developed by Final Form Games :

Jamestown : The Legend of the Lost Colony (PC)

The Good

+ Great background art and impressive explosions.

+ Fast-fluid and accessible shmup that might as well fall into the manic shmup territory.

+ Hitbox size is fair and manageable most of the times

+ Good range of unlockables and challenges

+ High-risk/high-reward mechanic is put to good use

The Blah

(?) Could have used more enemy variety

The Bad

- Too short. 5 levels that are over 2 minutes long are barely worth if it weren't for game's replayability.

- Insta-death traps on the final level = Poor Design = High chance of rage quits. :P

Extra Comments :

Good shmup although it could have been a lot better.

Final Score :

7.0/10 OR 3 stars out of 5 (kinda had to round down this one due to lack of any 0.5s)

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Up next was another Shin Megami Tensei game (not the one some of you are expecting) this time one from the Devil Summoner. Significantly different than the traditional turn-based games of SMT/Persona,this is more of an action-RPG.

Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner 1 : Raidou Kuzonoha vs The Soulless Army (PS2)

The Good

+ Very atmospheric. Part film noir with jazz music and part occult caper with heavy metal tracks.

+ Brilliant use of the period setting of an alternate take on 1920s Japan

+ Narration focusing on every case works in the favour of the game's overall plot as well

+ Use of companion abilities for investigation is a cool mechanic.

+ Decent level of customization (although not to the level of other SMT/Persona games)

The Blah

(?) Unimpressive graphics and art s-tyle.

(?) Combat gets into the hack-and-slash routine a bit too quickly.

(?) Untapped potential of a lot of ideas makes them seem kind of a waste.

The Bad

- High encounter rate

- Boss battles aren't fun.

- Overall plot is weak even though Raidou establishes himself as a likeable protagonist.

Extra Comments :

The kind of experiment I expected Atlus would do. Crazy yes but it could have been a LOT better. A lot of wasted potential here. High encounter rate and hack-and-slash combat means you'll need some patience to get through the long labyrinths of the game.

Final Score :

7.0/10 OR 3 stars out of 5

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And then one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year and one I was certainly looking forward to. Sequel of one of my favourite RPGs this gen :

The Witcher 2 : Assassins of Kings (PC)

The Good

+ Rare AAA-RPG that sticks true to its principles and doesn't sacrifice it by dumbing down.

+ Despite a more action-oriented shift of combat it is always fun and exciting.

+ Technical and artistic marvel. We are talking about the Crysis of 2011 here.

+ Brilliantly written low-fantasy story. I am sure Mr.Sapkowski,author of Witcher novels would be proud of CD Projekt.

+ CD Projekt display their knack for BIG time decisions -- one that completely alter nearly 10-15 hours of gameplay

+ Decisions have massive impact potentially leading to two entirely different main quests, two different settings and more variations

+ Couple of memorable quests,sequences and characters associated with them.

+ Challenging and unforgiving.Expects the players to adapt and learn on their own..and quickly.

+ Morally ambiguous choices exist and they are occasionally harder to make now.

The Blah

(?) Popping textures after loading, load screens springing up at odd locations

(?) Less strategic than the original.

The Bad

- Poor design choices in a lot of places.Insta-deaths galore, CD Projekt's love for trial-and-error design in INTERACTIVE sequences and plainly annoying boss battles.

- Magic and Alchemy can be completely ignored and they can still succeed. A HUGE disappointment considering they are two support systems and played a greater role in the first game.

Extra Comments :

My top contender for GotY 2011 so far ahead of Portal 2 but for how long I do not know. I still prefer the original Witcher by a slight margin over this largely because of its varied quest design and more strategic combat but Witcher 2 is still an excellent RPG just displaying CD Projekt's pedigree as a top-level developer that knows how to make a fantastic RPG.

Take a bow BioWare. Your successor has just announced its arrival to the world and in what grand fashion!

Final Score :

8.5/10 OR 5 stars out of 5 (4.5 would be a precise score but no 0.5 rule means I had to round up)

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So we are done.Whew! That was quite an update. So here I am promising I will blog soon enough with updates on what I am looking forward to the most in the coming year and the next. :D

Take care all of you.

C ya

Lightwarrior179

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*You--the lonely adventurer wander the post-blog empty space wondering why the hell Lightwarrior hasn't ended his blog despite saying the farewell*

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*You wonder what's going on*

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*You wonder how many lines will you have to read like these?*

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.

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*You wonder about the incredibly sexiness of Lightwarrior179 and how awesome he is*

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*And then....something happens*

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DING!!!!!

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*You have discovered a secret area of the blog*

.....

..

.

So as I had promised a few blogs ago I am finally ready to give my opinion to the rest of the world on what is a pretty rare distinction I am about to bestow on this particular game. A distinction I've only given to a select few from the 500 odd games I've played from my collection.

So here goes :

Shin Megami Tensei III : Nocturne (PS2)

The Good

+Fantastic turn-based combat with a unique Press-Turn system that adds a whole new level of variety and strategy into combats.

+ Old-school yet incredibly progressive for the JRPG genre in new and unexpected ways.

+ An insane amount of customization possible with Demi-Fiend and demons in the main party. Replaying again doesn't get boring because partly because of this.

+ Demon conversation system has been developed with a more randomized element adding more "randomness" to random battles.

+ Demon fusion is very well done and the concept of Demon races is utilized well to place appropriate and reasonable restrictions.

+ Open-ended game occasionally resembling a WRPG in terms of its structure.

+ Significant amount of plot progression occurs through hints and one-line NPC conversations in the gameplay rather than cutscenes

+ Infinitely more gameplay-focused than over most of the JRPGs. Features minimal cutscenes and dialogues throughout the game that barely clock over a minute or half.

+ Story it conveys through those few cutscenes and conversation is absolutely brilliant.

+ Main plot combines themes of philosophy,religion,psychology and occult into one heady and memorable mixture.

+ Highly atmospheric. From mind-bending dungeons to creepy hospital corridors.Evokes horror and unrest at times too

+ Killer soundtrack by Meguro.Shifts between heavy metal,ambient,gothic orchestral,techno/electronica effortlessly. Compliments the already impressive atmosphere of the game.

+ Impressive cel-shaded graphics

+ Unique morality meter that gives little indication of which "path" you're following.Cleverly mixed linear and open-ended gameplay into one.

+ Plot is a fresh concept for RPGs. A philosophical approach towards the importance of ideologies in creation of a new order in a post-apocalyptic world. Add religion and mythology into the mix and you have a winner formula.

+ Boss battles particularly the battles with the Fiends are one EPIC WIN after another. All of them are filled with strategies and intensity that is rarely found in few games let alone JRPGs.

+ Rewards exploration and gamers who embrace challenge appropriately

+ Puzzle sequences use visual illusions to an impressive effect that suits the game's psychological theme as well.

+ Highly impressive dungeon design reaching the level of quality that exceeds JRPGs

+ Non-existent or black humour on top of the game's grim story adds to the brooding atmosphere of the game.

+ Dante is in a cameo of his life-time.Shines as a companion,as a boss.Lot more likeable than his DMC games.

The Blah

U Mad Bro?

The Bad

U ARE MAD Bro!!

Final Score :

10/10 OR 5 stars out of 5

Just checked. Nocturne's the 5th game I've given a 10/10 score and it fully deserves that score. The others being Baldur's Gate II Shadows of Amn (well...duh!), Final Fantasy VI (best 2D JRPG evah!! :D ) , Grim Fandango(prime of the point-and-click adventures...they just can't get any better) and Vagrant Story (best Square/Square-Enix developed game).

So welcome the new entrant to the perfect 10s Club of Lightwarrior179 -- Shin Megami Tensei III : Nocturne :)

Also if anyone thinks P4's 9.5/10 and Nocturne's 10/10 means both are pretty close in terms of quality...you don't know the truth. The truth is this : Persona 4 or any Persona game for that matter isn't even HALF as good as Nocturne. Yes this is the same Persona 4 I said I loved so much. Yes I love P4 a lot but Nocturne is the kind of level that only few games can ever dream of accomplish, let alone accomplish that level and then go a step or two further to shatter your beliefs on what the genre is capable of achieving.

Even if Atlus ends up becoming a company that milks its franchises like Square-Enix (that will make me a very sad person) or ends up selling their soul like BioWare I'll still respect and love them (like I love Square and BioWare) for Nocturne.

Pre-Review

I went into this game with expectations. Pre-release hype had gotten to me in some ways but I was mainly very excited about the new technology and how it'll be implemented. I am always excited for new takes on the adventure genre and despite the fact that my 7.5/10 score of Heavy Rain might suggest I didn't like it as much as others, I still found it to be an enjoyable and innovative attempt at the genre.

I was worried about few things in LA Noire primarily how the open-world mechanics would gel with the investigation/interrogation mechanics of the game. I was optimistic but cautiously so knowing that ambitious games often are the ones who fall the hardest over their own steps.

LA Noire Review

Good ideas don't always lead to a great end result. This rings quite true in the case of the latest game to be published by Rockstar – LA Noire. It is the latest in a series of attempts by the gaming industry to kick-start a whole new trend in the adventure genre which has for better or worse stuck to its old-school aesthetics. Developed by the Aussie studio, Team Bondi -- it follows the cinematic route which Heavy Rain did last year to a mixed degree of success. While Heavy Rain chose to implement QTEs as their prime "gameplay" element, LA Noire chooses a mixture of tried-and-tested open-world action/driving sequences mixed with investigation and interrogative ones. For the former, it follows more or less the same mechanics of Rockstar's open-world ventures while for the latter it brings in a bunch of innovative ideas backed by the much-hyped new studio-developed technology, MotionScan. LA Noire has its foundations on a good solid idea. It is fairly ambitious and it knows what it wants to be. For parts of the game, LA Noire can be genuinely very exciting too. The problem however comes from its half-baked execution of those ideas-- leading to weak and often frustrating action sequences and the VERY unpleasing feeling that the game's freedom is more of an illusion than reality. It also doesn't help LA Noire's case that it is also an inconsistent game – at times frustratingly so.

LA Noire puts you in the shoes of Cole Phelps, a war veteran in post-WWII Los Angeles. Atmosphere and setting-wise, LA Noire nails the film noir feel fantastically throughout the game. Smoke-billowing out of alleyways with dimly lit street-lights contrasting with the blinding lights of the Sunset Boulevard. It makes good use of its period setting in bringing out relevant issues present in the America that had just come out of the World War II. There's crime and politics and like in all film noir it's covered neck deep in filth and corruption. LA Noire does a bold take on a couple of disturbing themes and does it fairly well. The theme of young war heroes back from the traumatizing war and trying to fit back into the world runs throughout the game's story and Team Bondi pulls it off well.

LA Noire's gameplay can be divided into three sections – action, investigation and interrogation. For action, it largely follows the same rules as Rockstar's open-world games have done. For investigation, it gives you the freedom to roam around the crime scene and scour for clues. When you notice something of interest, you can pick it up to further examine it for further clues behind the crime. It often involves manipulating objects, or doing clever meta-puzzles like joining a pipeline in the heater to find out which part is exactly missing. All the clues you discover are noted in Cole's "notebook" which is the chief intersecting element between the investigation and interrogation aspects of the game. Once you gather clues, you can interview any eye-witnesses or potential suspects with questions. The questions vary depending on how thorough you have been with the scouring of the crime scene for clues. If you've missed out on a clue, you'll obviously not be able to ask the question. This part of the game is where the MotionScan comes into play. Upon asking the question, the person being interviewed will give you an answer, you will have to judge each time someone answers your question on whether they are being truthful, flat-out lying or not revealing anything. This is LA Noire in concept.

However in execution it is rife with issues – some minor and ignorable, others major and pretty frustrating. Chief amongst them are the action sequences. LA Noire is as uncomfortable as a kitty caught in the middle of a hail-storm when it comes to action sequences. You can see they were an aspect that were either forced or weren't thought out as well as the other aspects of the game. Aiming is poor. I came across situations where if I shot someone in the leg to slow him down, the person would get killed. On the contrary, if I shot someone on the chest the bullets would somehow "magically" not hit the victim. Shooting is poor and despite imitating GTA IV's model isn't even half as good as it. It's the same story for driving. Developers were caught in the midst of a dilemma on whether they should make driving into a more realistic or arcade-like model. The result is driving that seems like the unholy child of that is intent on annoying you. Instead of fixing the camera behind the car, it gives you freedom to rotate the camera while driving while making the car's trajectory relative to the camera's position. Result is a driving experience that isn't fun at all. It isn't annoying but it is never satisfying either. Luckily the game does allows you to skip the non-compulsory driving sequences so that's a good thing. There are also chase sequences on foot. LA Noire loves using these every so often and while they aren't as problematic as shooting or driving to a lesser extent they aren't anything special either. These on-foot chase sequences seem a tad bit overused in the game perhaps indicating the developer had rather run out of ideas when it came to this side of the game.

Things seem a little brighter on the other side of the game. LA Noire is more comfortable playing as a detective than as a cop participating in shootouts and on-foot chase sequences. While investigation elements does exercise the key old-school rule of "observation and interactivity" – the illusion wears a bit thin at times. After the first few cases, LA Noire falls into a sort of a repetitive limbo where crime scenes appear increasingly more "set-up" than original. While it is understandable that crime scene evidence will be marked since the detective isn't the first person on the site, more variety in crime scenes would be a good thing. Third-person camera isn't best-suited for close-range observation during crime-scene investigation. While the game does zoom into clues once you discover them, discovering them from a rather far off behind the character you're controlling isn't always an easy task. Observation however isn't entirely necessary. One can go on a blind-A-pressing spree and chances are they'll end up discovering most of the clues. So as LA Noire's crime-scene variety keeps running thin, the charm and fun from the first few hours starts wearing thin. However the game surprisingly recovers from the mid-section dip in quality and enters into one of its best phases late into the game.

Interrogation is undoubtedly the most original and the best aspect of LA Noire. It runs hand-in-hand with MotionScan and the technology complements these sections. People being interviewed offer a wide palate of facial expressions and emotions and the key is reading them to decide whether they're telling you the truth, hiding the facts, or flat-out lying using the Truth,Doubt and Lie options. Not all people behave in the same way under nervousness of course which is why its great to see different people exhibit a varying degree of facade before breaking down. A Hollywood star can be very good at faking emotions and expressions while a 15-year old victim may not. A criminal may be smug at the start of the interrogation but as you uncover and prove more evidence linking him to the crime, you can slowly see his facial façade wearing thin. On the other hand, wrongly accusing someone can make them further retreat behind their mental wall making it difficult to squirm out the truth from them. LA Noire walks along the believable side of the spectrum and never goes for too much over-the-top. One can be picky and perhaps complain that the highly realistic facial animation with the sub-par body animation can break the illusion sometimes but that's just being a bit too criticizing about the game's issues. That said however even the best part of LA Noire isn't without its problems. Most of these problems associated with the interrogation side of the game come from the fact that you can never quite predict what Cole is going to say and more importantly in what tone. Chief responsible for this problem is the "Doubt" option. Often doubting a suspect can lead to screw-ups of epic proportions. Cole decides at random to speak in either comforting or accusatory tone when you choose to "Doubt" someone. This makes it very hard for the player to judge exactly how Cole rather than the interviewee will respond.

That was the highs and lows of the three main aspects of the game. However the general design of LA Noire has its own shares of strengths and flaws as well. It can be a VERY inconsistent game. It may put you one moment in a typical recreation of an old-school adventure gaming puzzle and the next moment it may put you in an annoying platforming sequence that involves you rope-walking to reach a chandelier. LA Noire loves watching the gamer's mental graph jump from enjoyment to annoyance within matter of a few minutes.

Another underlying problem throughout LA Noire is that it is afraid of facing its players with failure. In crime-scene investigation, when Cole picks up something that isn't of any importance to the case, he says so aloud. This only further destroys the illusion and makes it seem more and more that the crime-scenes are nothing more than a "set-up" location of fixed points of interaction. LA Noire also is very linear and can be sometimes annoyingly hand-holding in its design. While it does give you an occasional amount of freedom to choose the order in which you'd like your investigation to proceed, it makes sure you follow the path for investigation it wants you to follow. It will also not allow you to revisit places you've already visited at times so this means that if you get the order of investigation wrong you might end up performing a lot poorly in your case report than you should have. This only enhances the feeling that LA Noire is a highly linear experience that tries to provide illusion of freedom but to little success. That said there are cases where you may end up putting the wrong person in the jail due to lack of proper implicating evidence or wrong deductions. It is smart in that aspect yet severely restricting in player's choice and freedom otherwise.

LA Noire's story follows Cole's journey from an ordinary patrolman on the streets to one of the celebrated detectives of the LAPD. The game's story are divided into five desks of the LAPD – Patrol, Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson. Naturally each of the desk focuses on a particular crime but the common story keeps building throughout the run of the 20-odd hours of the game. Much of this story proceeds through flashback cutscenes narrating the traumatic experiences of Cole as a WWII-soldier in Japan. There are also newspapers scattered which give you further insight into some of the plot elements. The case desks are naturally where the inconsistency in quality of LA Noire comes into the picture – not all desks are as good as some of the others. Patrol is like an extended tutorial to the game, Traffic more of an appetizer of sorts. Homicide is where things go really wrong. It should have been a strong and interesting section of the game – however Homicide is where LA Noire's glaring lack of variety in gameplay comes to haunt the game and overshadow some of its finer elements. It is without question one of the low-points of the game and it contributes to an extended dip in quality during the game's mid-sections. However when almost all hope is lost and LA Noire seems to have run out of gas, it makes a surprisingly strong and rather stylish comeback in the Vice desk and by the time it enters into the final few hours the game has become a full-blown film noir incorporating a lot of familiar elements that aficionados of the genre will certainly appreciate.

Ultimately LA Noire ends up giving the feeling that it could have been a lot more. It is unquestionably a very frustrating and oft-annoying experience but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun playing it. Part of the fun comes from the uniqueness and well it implements the new technology and plays to its strengths. It is a game of sharp highs and lows. Inconsistent in quality and plagued with issues –some which can be ignored others not so much. These flaws are compounded by its design which can be severely restricting if it wants to and which derives some sort of pleasure in exciting and annoying gamers within the space of few minutes. LA Noire is built upon unique and innovative ideas but not all of those ideas evolve into enjoyable and fully-digestible gameplay mechanics. LA Noire shifts between stylish, ingenious moments to ones plagued with issues pretty quickly. In that sense, it is an unquestionably enjoyable experience but also without a doubt a very frustrating one too.

Score

Post-Review

I enjoyed LA Noire.I can say that for atleast. Sure there were many moments in the game where I was furious how Team Bondi was putting me in one annoying sequence after another. The action and platforming sequences were clearly not the game's strength and when they were badly designed they came off as even worse. The chandelier rope-walking and swinging had me fuming at how ridiculous and stupid all of it seemed.

I guess everyone who has played LA Noire will have their favourite "desk" -- mine was Vice. There was something about its three cases that oozed s-tyle that has become synonymous with film noir. That and Roy Earle is one wily detective partner to have. This was also around the time the game's dipping quality did a complete U-turn for the better. LA Noire hits its peak late into the game. The final two desks are without doubt the better ones and the intersecting plot elements does make it all seem a lot better.

Of course there is a lot I can't talk about here with the risk of giving away spoilers so here's the customary spoiler tag :

*four attempts later* @%!$ GS! It ain't workin'.....again! :evil:

Oh well in absence of the spoiler tag here is

SPOILER WARNING IN CAPS

Cole Phelps was a flawed protagonist. Not flawed in a good way though. He came across as inconsistent and during the late stages very unrelatable. It was like Team Bondi got confused between "Let's create a good honest cop" and "Let's create a typical film noir protagonist with moral greyness". In that sense, I thought Jack Kelso was the true film noir protagonist of the game. Not only did his position and his quest against insurmountable odds make it seem like so but also his personality. The Arson cases weren't anything special but Kelso made them better. The final showdown was awful though although the game did end on a satisfying note. ;)

Favourite Case? Black Caesar probably. One of the few cases in LA Noire that didn't take itself too seriously,maintained a light humorous tone and was witty with contrasting personalities at the same time. I liked A Polite Invitation as well but that doesn't really count now does it?

TEH SPOILERS END NAO!

That is all for now.

See you guys later.Do recommend the review if you like it or find it informative or helpful enough. :)

C ya

Lightwarrior179

P.S : I am LOVING Persona 4. 25 hours in and I wish this game never ends. :D

Hey everyone, light's back this time with something more of an update blog. Have got a lot of things to tell so let's get started without any more chatter before.

Of Collection Goals -- PS2 Edition

When I bought a PS2 I knew only one thing -- this console has got a massive library of games and even that comes across as an understatement in many ways. I knew if I had any hope of making my way through the massive PS2 library as quickly as possible I had to make smart purchases. I had to avoid making purchases atleast initially of the games which didn't interest me. And to satisfy my long-awaited urge to try some PS2 games I would need to hunt down the games I want the MOST first.

I divided a large part of my PS2 wishlist into categories and tried my best to sort them according to priority on the basis of how excited I was for them. I would hunt down those games first that I was eager to play the most. Here's the collection goals in categories :

(Games already purchased are in bold)

Final Fantasy -- Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII

Shin Megami Tensei -- Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1, Digital Devil Saga 2, Devil Summoner 2 : Raidou Kuzonoha vs King Abaddon

Fighters -- King of Fighters XI, Tekken Tag Tournament, King of Fighters 2002UM, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, Arcana Heart,Soul Calibur II

Beat-em-ups -- God Hand,The Warriors,Viewtiful Joe 1, Viewtiful Joe 2, Yakuza 1, Yakuza 2

Shooters -- Killer7, Gungrave

Platformers --Klonoa 2 Lunatea's Veil,Ratchet & Clank, Sly 3, Jak & Daxter : The Precursor Legacy, Jak III

Racing -- Burnout 3 Takedown, Gran Turismo 4

Action -- God of War 1, God of War 2, Odin Sphere, DMC1

Adventure --ICO,Shadows of the Colossus,Okami

Metal Gear Solid --Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater or/Subsistence

Shoot-em-ups -- Gradius V, Mushihime-sama,Rez, Espgaluda, DoDonPanchi

Other RPGs --Dragon Quest VIII : Journey of the Cursed King, Tales of Symphonia,Shadow Hearts,Shadow Hearts 2 Covenant, Suikoden III, Rogue Galaxy, Disgaea Hour of Darkness

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I missed out on a LOT of worthy titles I know but I feel that these are the ones I need to track down first. If you don't see a DMC or KH in there it might have something to do with the fact that I played them in entirety over the years on my cousin's PS2.

I have already tracked down quite a many and have even finished a couple of them. Let's see how many collection goals I can finish in the next two-three months.

As you can see, I finished one collection goal.Shin Megami Tensei. ALL games of it available on PS2 bought.....except one which is Devil Summoner 1 but I'm not interested in it. I had a gut feeling that I would go crazy about this series the moment I would play a game of it. I loved Persona 2 EP and had a fair idea that this would be the series that would come to my rescue when my opinion about JRPG was really low.

That was just the beginning of things. Shin Megami Tensei series has surprised,shocked and made me wet in different ways.Well I did enjoy Persona 3 FES (as you can tell from my review) but even though it might seem rude to P3 fans I must HONESTLY say that P3 felt like a mere appetizer for the main course.....

Which brings me to this....

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Occult, Philosophy, Fallen Angel and.....

Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne.

What can I say about this game. I can copy paste about 50 odd tweets I have posted over weeks I played this game but I'd rather not.

I'll simply say that I am glad I played this game. I am REALLY glad I bought a PS2 and played this game. I haven't come across games like Nocturne too many times in my gaming life so far. And when I have.....I have had a special feeling about such games.

The moment I finished this game I had that similar special feeling. The feeling of being bummed out. Yes as odd as that may sound that "special feeling" is the feeling of being bummed out after finishing the game. The feeling of "that's it" and "this game is over". Hard to describe but few games give me that kind of feeling where I'll really miss playing and being part of the game,its world and its characters.

I'll post a review of this someday. Not now. Not the next week. Maybe not even the next month. All I can do is I can promise you guys that you WILL see a SMT Nocturne review from me some day. It can be really soon or it can be when all of us are old gasbags. :P

(Wonder what that "and..." in the heading of this section leads to? Hmm...how about you guys fill in the blanks,hm? :P )

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MOAR UPDATES

King of Fighters XI :I was never a massive fan of the fighters. I liked them but somehow I didn't have the determination or the interest in putting so much dedication that is required to really "get" into a fighter. Dead or Alive 4 reignited my interest in the genre after all those years but it was Arc's BlazBlue Calamity Trigger which truly made me into a convert. It not only showed me the true depth and versatility the fighting games can possess but how it can be easily accessible yet incredibly deep if you're willing to put the proper amounts of dedication and effort into it. BlazBlue CT went onto become my GotY 2009 (edging out Dragon Age Origins ) and is possibly one of my favourite games this gen.

However when I bought PS2 I said to myself : "This is my big chance to really become a proper fighting gamer". I immediately cracked down on KoFXI and Arcana Heart although I couldn't find Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus even though I tried. KoFXI is a fantastic fighter in nearly every way. It is accessible yet deep and has a pretty varied and balanced roster. I came across the infamous SNK boss syndrome too with some incredibly cheap and annoying bosses but got through them.

I haven't played too much of Arcana Heart yet but from what I have I can tell it sounds fun.

As for KoFXI my main trio is like this : Kula, Mai and Gato

Love Kula for her wide range of s-tyles and moves and pretty easy-to-perform LDMs and DMs. I even ended up mastering the art of DC and SC and I am pretty quickly acing KoFXI. Even though I am not the best fighter player I learn quickly. :D

I would also like to thank three people : usagi704,HartKnight and TheDuskwalker. usagi for all the tips and support he's given me including that awesome fighter's glossary, Hart for his clever inputs, and Dusk of course for the ever-amazing advices and in-depth analysis of tiers and character plays-tyles. Without these three guys I'd find it a lot difficult managing through a genre which I'm still not as good at as I want to be. :)

But hey I can always get better and this game is giving me plenty of reason to.

Final Verdict : Solid fighter filled with incredible flexibility and good content with enough depth to keep you engaged for long

Score : 8.5/10

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Soofla! Attu Goopla Boomsot Kukla! -- The Sims 3

Don't try to Google Translate that or your browser will go BOOM. That's no known human language but the gibberish talk of The Sims.

Yep that's right. I bought Sims 3...or let me correct that I borrowed it from my girlfriend's little brother (in exchange for Arkham Asylum..meh). I have always liked The Sims games for what they are -- pure casual fun. The kind of games you can put in at any time and be entertained.

Sims 3 refines the model to perfectly suit that kind of mindset. It restructures into a more role-playing game with goals both short-term and long-term that you can either try to fulfill whether you're playing for 10 mins or for couple of hours. The game has also opened up to the entire town addressing one of my major problems I had with Sims 2. Its actually an excellent sequel in nearly every way. Less technical issues, more flexbility, newer elements add a lot of charm and customization, realistic behaviour of the Sims, less manual handling required and they work just fine on Auto-Pilot.

Yet I found a problem that the game severely lacked content. It only had one town. That's it. Plus EA removed ALL the features they introduced in Sims 2's expansions.....only to re-introduce them in Sims 3's expansions. Stupid monopolistic EA. Nobody with proper sense would buy any of those expansions.

Final Verdict : Improved sequel but the main game faces a severe lack of content

Score : 7.5/10

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Back to Aperture Science -- Portal 2

I loved Portal. Yes the game didn't feel like a "game" but more of a concept demo and the test chamber design and short length did accentuate the feeling. If Portal was a rough edit then Portal 2 is the full-feature movie. Bigger,better and smarter were the words that best described Portal 2.

Puzzle design has improved and that involves massive outdoor scenarios instead of indoor test chambers. The game is also very much a narrative driven experience however unlike Half Life since Portal's world is sparsely populated by any sort of NPCs you don't have to stand around and wait for the "NPC talk" to finish.

Valve's writing headed by Wolpaw and Faliszek has definitely improved. They experiment with different kinds of humour in the game with the different NPCs. There are a couple of large laugh-out moments in the game and its really good to see Valve getting better at this. Story's a lot heavier in content and notable than the first as well and its packed with one or two surprising and unexpected twists.

Puzzles use some newer elements (yet again taken from the intern projects) like gels and light bridges and tunnels. I have to give thumbs up for gels in particular as they make some of the dull sections of the game(story-wise) a lot more interesting due to some cool platforming scenarios they generate.

In the end Portal 2 was a solid sequel. It did lack the "shock and surprise" factor the first one had since we all knew what to expect more or less from Portal 2 but it still ended up impressing us by adapting HL's narrative s-tyle pretty well.

The only major complaint I have with it is that the puzzle and story sections felt disparate other than in two sequences. Puzzles felt like they were merely THERE to solve instead of combining a proper narrative push to it. The game felt maddeningly intense when puzzle and narration both fused into a single entity and it became one of the more memorable gaming experience of recent times but alas they were few and far between. If Valve can improve on this somehow in Portal 3 then maybe we'll see this series finally live upto its amazing potential.

Final Verdict :Bigger,better and smarter than the original and a few significant flaws aside easily one of the best games of 2011

Score : 8.5/10

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Now Playing : LA Noire

I began playing LA Noire yesterday. It was lying wrapped unsealed since 3 weeks along with Portal 2 and Witcher 2,the latter which I still have to crack open. Why I didn't play these 3 games which I was genuinely excited about? Blame SMT Nocturne. :P

So yes a few hours in and I've reached the Homicide Desk. It's still a bit early but I'll give my full impressions in the next update blog but for now all I'll say is that it is pretty much standing upto what I expected from it : great but flawed concept and sub-par execution.

I have to applaud its shooting though. Its so "realistic" that shooting someone in the leg kills them while shooting them in leg merely injures them. Yeah right. :P

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I also bought Super Street Fighter IV yesterday. In case you didn't know Capcom and Activision's games are AWFULLY over-priced here. The likes of MW2,SSFIV are priced at about 85-90 bucks. And since console games prices are never reduced or cut down here for sales(only PC games get that treatment) I never even consider buying them. But yesterday while celebrating the completion of my first year at uni (A BIG YAY FOR THAT!! WOOO!! :D ) I came across SSFIV.....at HALF the price. :shock:

Naturally I had to get it. I could have waited for the upcoming Arcade Edition but that'd be overpriced as well. A half-priced SSFIV would do for me over an over-priced SSFIV AE anyday.

So let's see whether the "most definitive" version of the most popular fighting game this gen is actually worth all that hype or not. I go a BIT skeptical but hopefully the game'll impress me.

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I'll be leaving for a holiday trip to Darjeeling tomorrow and as it is always whenever I go on a holiday trip I choose to AVOID taking any sort of internet with me. I love that precious occasional feeling of being cut-off from the rest of the world. :D

So I'll be taking lots of novels --Haruki Murakami's "Wild Sheep Chase" (one of my all-time favourite novelists) and Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor"....(ugh! not a fan) and a lot of music packed into my ipod. No games of course since I also avoid gaming. I mean holiday trips are for a change of pace right. Why do stuff which I'd do anyway the rest of the year? ;)

So I'll see you in 2 weeks time. Until then stay safe and take care of yourself....don't take TOO much care of yourself though...I heard you can put on a lot of weight if you do that. :P

C ya

Lightwarrior179

Different "Review Blog" pattern from this one.

With that let's get started quickly..... PERSONA!!! *shoots himself in the head with a gun-like Evoker* :D

Shin Megami Tensei : Persona 3 FES Review

Pre-Review

I had played both the Persona games before it and even owned P2 Eternal Punishment. I liked the series back on PS1 for their uniqueness and freshness compared to the teeny-bopper SquareSoft JRPGs.

A decade later and the JRPG genre had hardly changed. I knew Persona 3 was a significantly different game than the previous two and it had also got a LOT more attention than the previous two or any other Megami Tensei game had got. Of course games that signify the commercial breakthrough of previously niche series signify trouble -- FFVII wasn't the best example of its series by any stretch of imagination atleast as far as I am concerned.

So what was Persona 3 going to be like? The next big thing for JRPGs or just a mere addition to the crowd of "just another JRPG"? Let's find out.

Review

Accessibility. It's a word that sends shivers down die-hard fans of any series. Especially if it happens to be a series whose fanbase is largely restricted to a niche audience as Shin Megami Tensei. Its spin-off series, Persona had been the first SMT games to be released in the West during the PS1 era and naturally they garnered an interest from the niche audience. Persona gave that audience a rare JRPG experience that was completely unique from the angst-ridden adventures of SquareSoft titles.

A decade later cut to Persona 3 and the JRPG world is still the same for better or worse. P3 embraced the word "accessibility" in ways I could never have imagined it could. For all Square Enix's attempts in making JRPGs more "Western" to increase its appeal, it is highly ironic that a JRPG that is as rooted in Japanese tradition as Persona 3 becomes the next big thing in the genre.

It achieves it in different ways but no change helps it in its goal towards greater accessibility than the fusion of traditional turn-based combat with dating-sim structure. If that combination sounds unique, unexpected and puzzling then those were exactly my thoughts the first time Persona 3 presented me with such features. What I didn't expect was how Persona 3 used those features to completely enhance and in a way revamp how JRPG conventions were looked upon.

Persona 3 follows the suit of all the Megami Tensei games by putting you in the shoes of a silent protagonist whom you get to name. He's a student who's just got transferred to Gekkoukan High School. However fresh off the transit he stumbles across something strange and unsettling. It's after midnight yet time has frozen. The moon has got a greenish hue to it, people who were walking on the street become stationary and coffins replace where they originally stood and all sorts of strange things happening all around him –welcome to the Dark Hour.

Persona 3 brings back these very familiar Megami Tensei elements of horror and mystery into its story and stylishly so. In the day you live the life of a normal high-schooler but by the night you investigate the mystery behind the Dark Hour along with a group of similarly gifted high-school friends who aren't affected by the Dark Hour's transmogrifying effect.

Day-time is when P3 brings its dating sim elements into play. You go to school, attend cla$$es, occasionally answer trivia questions teachers may ask you, and then hang out with friends once the school's over. However the latter part of hanging out with friends once the school's out is where P3 switches into open-world mode. It gives you the rare degree of freedom you can rarely find outside Megami Tensei games. To support this newly refined structure, P3 introduces a key element– Social Links. Social Links represent the bond you share with different people.
Social Links are a sort of a metaphor that signifies the strength of relationship between you and the other person. The more you spend time with them and the more you interact the stronger your Social Link gets. Each of these 22 people have their separate stories. These stories are delightful in different ways no matter which you choose to develop. The more you interact with them and the stronger you build a relationship with them the further their story progresses and more of their character is revealed. It is a fantastic innovation that lies at the very heart of Persona 3 that in a way redefines character development and story progression and totally unconventional ways.The Social Links however serve a very important purpose – they act as a link between the two sides of Persona 3-- combat and the dating sim.

Combat is still the traditional Persona which can be aptly described as a hybrid of turn-based battles of Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest with Pokemon. You battle in a party of four-your main character and the other three characters of your choice. Your other party members have power over only a single Persona whereas you can switch between a variety of them at any time during the combat. To perform an ability you need to summon a Persona. So the characters basically play the role of the base summoner who direct or command the summoned Personas who actually carry out the bevy of attacks in the combat.

Then there is the dungeon-crawling aspect of Persona. Combat takes place almost entirely in the 263-floor tall dungeon of Tartarus which consists of randomly-generated maps on each floor. There are bosses and guardians of course at certain points in the dungeon which give an additional challenge to the player. Battles are NOT random. You can see your enemies on screen and can choose to attack them beforehand to gain an advantage or ignore them. P3 also provides some neat features like giving your party commands while exploring that make dungeon exploration a lot more fun and easier.

Combat focuses on the importance of discovering the weakness of the enemy and using it quickly. It introduces a rare degree of urgency into the combat works in the favour of the game.Persona 3 however goes one step ahead to iron out its combat's weaknesses by making sure that when you summon a Persona you inherit the basic skills and its weakness and strengths. This is complemented by the fact that unlike in Pokemon , Megami Tensei have strengths and weaknesses as mutually exclusive. Fire's weakness is ice. Ice's weakness is fire. So if you plan on attacking a fire-strong enemy with ice attack you always know that there's a risk that the enemy might attack you with your own weakness too. Momentum can shift almost instantaneously in a P3 battle and which is why its battles never get old, repetitive or a chore. You may be attacking an enemy with the weakness but a slight mistake and things can quickly shift in the favour of the enemies. I can't honestly remember how many JRPGs have earned the same compliment from me when it comes to battles.

Persona 3 however gives you control of only the main character. The other team-mates are controlled by the AI. However as you build stronger relationships with the dorm-mates/allies you'll gain a wider range of tactical control over them. Their roles, their strategies and their moves can easily be manipulated to give you a greater tactical control over the entire combat. While this may annoy some who like complete control over everyone in the party, I think Persona 3 handles the element of customizable party AI very neatly.

The player-controlled MC(main character) has access to a large number of Personas all of which can be accessed via the Velvet Room. Here you can fuse two or more Personas into even more powerful Personas. Different types of fusions get unlocked as you progress further into the story and you're given a very handy compendium which keeps the track of all the Personas you've created, summoned thus far. Each Persona can belong to any one of the 22 Arcanas.

22 Arcanas. 22 Social Links. This is where the social link aspect comes back into the picture. The bonds you create with people during day-time also get carried forward to strengthening the power of Personas of the corresponding Arcana.The stronger your Social Link becomes, the stronger does your power to summon Personas of that Arcana becomes. It's a brilliant synthesis of the two disparate parts of Persona 3 into a unique example of character customization.

Persona fusion is a very important part of the game where you fuse Persona of two or more Arcanas into a stronger Persona of a different Arcana.You can also fusing Persona into weapons giving them special abilities. The game explains the basic rules of Fusion but leaves you to discover the laws and rules of combinations on your own. It is a very enjoyable aspect of the game trying to discover all the intricacies and abnormalities of the Fusion process.

This brings me eventually to the story of Persona 3. All its unusual structure of character development and plot progression aside, Persona 3 tells a highly impressive story. The story much like the game gets off to a decent start but keeps getting better and better with numerous twists – some of them shocking and unexpected that keep you glued and entertained throughout. Everyday holds something unique and if not then there's always Social Links and the little character-oriented stories they have you can progress. Persona 3 never takes the satisfaction of progression away from the gamer.

Characters deserve a special mention here. Unlike most of the JRPGs outside the Megami Tensei series, Persona 3's characters are highly believable and most importantly grounded. They reminded me many times of some of the friends I had in high-school. Realistic and believable are two central aspects of Persona 3's characterization. They are teenagers and they occasionally act rebelliously but they also bear the maturity of people who are on the verge of turning adults. I can't recall a single character from the main cast I didn't like and frankly there aren't many JRPGs out there I can say the same thing for.

Persona 3 is a very stylish yet highly philosophical game without ever being pretentious. It has a lot of stylish anime cutscenes that are combined with the stellar rap and J-pop soundtrack makes P3 a delight. However the true strength of P3 is that it can change its forms almost like a chameleon. It can almost seamlessly change from the trendy high-schooler dating sim into a sudden reflection on the meaning of life and death. These characters being in their late teens grapple with these very philosophical questions that almost every teenagers do. This strength of switching from an unconventional narrative structure to a more conventional one is the primary reason what makes P3's story so utterly memorable. The story is utterly memorable and emotional but without it ever appearing forced. These emotions are not of the sappy nature either but one that represent a more sensible and mature tone of the game (its rated M for a good reason)and its gamers.

However Persona 3 comes with its own share of flaws. The dungeon-crawling aspect is thankfully not a chore due to the various exploration options at your hand but part of its design still seems stuck in the past. There is an annoying fatigue system where you and your allies can get "fatigued" if you do too much dungeon-crawling for one night. It is a silly mechanic that serves to only restrict exploration and results in the few occasions of backtracking in the game. Add to that the design of Tartarus, the prime and the only dungeon in the game doesn't change by a great deal over the course of 263-floors. Repetitive syndrome strikes players as floor after floor, block after block appears almost same.

Persona 3 despite a lot of innovations has strangely stuck with the "no auto leveling" mechanic that has become almost outdated in recent RPGs. It means that those allies that are not in your party will not level or gain experience. This means you can focus on building a strong team of MC and three allies but often story's twists and turns might leave you without one or more of your ally which is frankly a cheap way to put the player at disadvantage.

Long-time fans of Megami Tensei and Persona may also not be happy to see the rather "fruity" and "cheery" $tyle adopted by Persona 3. The cheesy J-pop tunes with rap make P3 sound almost like an anti-thesis to what the previous SMT/Persona games stood for. However as the game proceeds to it's latter stages familiar themes of the series like occult, horror, apocalyptic cults and shock factor all come into the picture.

Persona 3 is a game that starts off well but it keeps getting better and better. Introducing newer mechanics, newer tactics all the time while it reveals more and more depth of its story. During the late stages, the game transitions smoothly into a typical SMT title –one that is filled with apocalyptic cults and a tone that is so depressive that it at times ends up depressing the gamer who is so invested in the world and its characters as well. The music by series veteran Shoji Meguro seems to be highly reliant on peppy J-pop and $tylish electro-rap music yet it slowly changes its musical landscape to the more somber orchestral and ambient electronica as the game speeds towards its highly memorable finale.

The FES version provides an additional chapter, "The Answer" that takes place after the ending of the original game. Contrary to my fears the story doesn't end up spoiling the PERFECT ending of P3 but instead even enhances the philosophical depth of it. However it is a pity that the 20 odd hours of The Answer are littered with boring dungeon-crawling with no Social Links or interaction at all.

Few JRPGs pull off such an epic adventure as well as Persona 3 does doing numerous innovations and revamping the narrative structure, character development and plot progression with the help of Social Links. What's more is that P3 also manages to combine these disparate elements wonderfully into the combat which is still a very good turn-based battle system despite few shortcomings.Persona 3 is the Final Fantasy VII of its franchise. Both the games marked the commercial breakout of their series. They had elements that made traditional series mechanics a lot more accessible to the masses. The difference? One marks the heights of the typically adorable overblown JRPG excesses of its most popular franchise, the other marks the confident yet understated depth and innovation that is still possible within the genre. Like the memorable Aigis, an increasingly human-like robot tells in the end, destiny is yours to make as long as you believe you can make it, P3 might have just made its own destiny.

Combining the traditional elements that long-time fans will cherish while revamping some of genre's decade-old conventions to bring one of the freshest, unique and more importantly highly accessible role-playing experience from Japan in a long time.

Score

Post-Review

Trust me it's not an easy thing to review this game and fit it within a review. It's been one of the more challenging reviews I've written in a while and I believe an even greater challenge awaits me on the horizon (Damn you Nocturne :P )

Persona 3 is possibly the most philosophical game I've played since Planescape Torment. There! I've said it. And I stand by every word of what I said. It is true that P3's true philosophical notions come to life during it's magnificent latter stages all peaking at the point of the game's wonderful ending.

Yet upon looking back at the entire P3 journey I can see that the entire game itself serves as a giant metaphor of sorts. I know a couple of people I know on GameSpot agree with me on this and I think Atlus did a rare amount of justice in making such a great story even more philsophically richer. I don't think it's as philosophical as Torment (well...accept it nothing can) but its about as close as a game has gotten in giving me a similar feeling as Torment did. I love philosophy and a game as littered with metaphors as P3 deserves applause in true honesty. :D

Here are a few songs I keep listening to from P3 to remind me of some moments from the game :

Burn My Dread -- Title Screen Version(I kinda dig the place where she goes "Burn my dread" :P )

Memories of the School(makes me nostalgic of my high-school days....I don't know why but it does)

Memories of the City (my personal favourite....music defines the late stages of the game in a nutshell)

Kimi No Kiouku/Memories of You(comes at credit-roll....just at the moment you realize its all over...man that feeling :P )

Anyways I hope you enjoyed the review and do recommend if you liked it .:)

That's all for now.

C ya

Lightwarrior179

Review :

Moral ambiguity is something which many RPGs over the years have struggled to get a proper grasp on. Treading the thin lines of the so-called "grey area" hasn't been an easy task for many RPGs so it was no wonder that in order to expand their accessibility many RPGs like Fable and Mass Effect began embracing a simplistic good/evil morality system in the recent years. The Witcher thus comes across as a rare creature due to a number of reasons. Firstly it features absolutely no morality system –you are left to judge your own actions on the basis of their consequence. Secondly it is made by a little known Polish developer who developed it on a highly modified 6-year old Aurora engine of BioWare. Most importantly however the Witcher occasionally exudes the rare sort of confidence and ambition that we've rarely ever seen from a European RPG.

Based on a series of novels and short stories from popular Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher tells the tale of a legendary monster hunter—a Witcher named Geralt of Rivia situated in a dark mature fantasy universe. It isn't dark only in the sense of it's atmosphere. It's dark in nearly EVERY sense –right from the major themes the game tackles to the smallest details of the universe. Sexism,corruption,racism,rape and prostitution and nearly every major evil runs deeply ingrained within every character you'll come across in this game. It is highly refreshing to see a fantasy universe that is built purely for adults and doesn't treat you like a kid even for the slightest moments.

Developed on BioWare's Aurora engine, the Witcher is naturally going to be a turn-based affair but CD Projekt, the developer modified it cleverly to make Witcher's combat appear like a highly clever twist between turn-based and action. It can be quick and hectic but it also utilizes the basic turn-based elements from the engine as well. Like most European RPGs, the Witcher's combat is not your everyday clickfest. It requires thought, precision and more importantly timing. Clicking on an enemy initiates an attack. Combos can be built on this attack by timing further clicks at proper time as indicated by a flaming cursor. To add the strategic component to the basic combat, Witcher introduces different stances. There are three different stances – Strong, Fast and Group. Strong does major damage but at very slow speed, Fast does medium damage but unleashes a good flurry of attacks and Group is for delivering minimal damage but to everyone around you.

All the stances won't work on all enemies. Like faster enemies will easily dodge your Strong attacks, so the combat does require a great deal of planning and thought even when you're right in the middle of the action. To add another twist to the combat, Geralt uses two swords – Steel and Silver Sword. Steel Sword is effective only on humans whereas Silver is effective only on monsters. This means that in addition to the action combat and the stances, there is thought and planning to be done even when it comes to equipping the proper sword. For instance, before going into a cave full of undead I wouldn't bother applying oils that upgrade my Steel sword since that wouldn't be effective. The Witcher rewards planning and strategy-making in advance and I can hardly recall any RPG in recent times that puts so much emphasis on that and rewards players accordingly.

Acting as the two support systems to the melee combat are magic and alchemy –both of which are as unique and unconventional as the rest of the game. Geralt's magic is limited to only 5 spells and these aren't your usual "pure offensive" magic either. These Spells (or Signs as they are called in the game) can be switched in between combat by simple pre-defined hotkeys. Instead of mana, they use up endurance. They are spells that generally aid your melee combat more than anything. These spells knock down, slow down enemies and blocks their attacks for a couple of seconds. As you can see, these aren't offensive spells by any stretch of imagination. The only offensive spell is Igni. Spells and parrying/blocking attacks use up Endurance. To prevent the players from spamming spells to defeat foes like in many of BioWare's games, CD Projekt kept the Endurance bar very limited. Even at an advanced level, using 2-3 Igni spells at once is more than enough to deplete your entire Endurance and it regenerates at a very slow rate.

This brings me to Alchemy one of the central components of The Witcher. The lore of the Witchers suggest they are expert alchemists and hence this part of the game gains importance. Alchemy is the chief support system to the game. On normal to higher difficulties it is absolutely necessary to have proper knowledge of alchemical ingredients. Thankfully the game does an excellent job of storing information regarding any potions, its formula, the ingredients required in a rather user-friendly format in the Journal. The Enhanced Edition also introduces a separate section of the Inventory for the alchemical components alone. Geralt can learn the formulae of potions by reading various books available across the Witcher's world. He also needs to learn about how to extract ingredients from a herb or a monster before he extracts it. Potions also can only be prepared by meditating. So if you need a certain potion before a fight, you will need to meditate and mix the potion before it's ready. Potions can last for several hours to a day so preparing in advance is once AGAIN rewarded in this game.

Since the Witcher uses a dynamic day/night cycle, meditating can often become useful to skip time until a required point. Meditation can only be done at certain designated fireplaces when there's no monsters around. Meditation also serves as a portal for leveling up your stats. Leveling up in Witcher is rather unique. Instead of traditionally increasing stats, Geralt learns new abilities and in doing so he unlocks higher levels of expertise. The same applies for the Sign/Spells upgrades too. The Witcher's character customization is relatively complex enough to please most RPG fans.

Questing is another aspect where the Witcher truly shines. There are often two or more ways to finish a general storyline related quest each leading to a potentially different outcome. Even basic bounty-hunting quests have an added layer of uniqueness surrounding it. If you're tasked to kill three vampires and bring their hearts as a proof just killing three vampires won't do the trick. You'll need to look up in books before hand with the town's booksellers to see if they've got any information regarding how to extract vampire's hearts. The game only hints you in this and there's always little to no hand-holding involved in most of the quests. The game respects its gamers' intelligence and doesn't treat them like a low-IQ idiot.

As if it weren't enough already to further demonstrate the talent that these newbie Polish developers have within them, the Witcher has some absolutely fantastic storyline quests that with the added role-playing component strike pure gold. There's a detective quest that runs central through the second chapter and with the game's heavy/moody atmosphere it often resembles a fantasy film-noir of sorts. There is another quest that involves an autopsy of a dead body which can lead to wildly different conclusions all depending upon how smart and observant the player is and how much he has researched regarding the biological abnormalities. There are a couple of more brilliant quests that one doesn't generally come across in RPGs and it's refreshing to see them in one. The game rewards you with a rare degree of satisfaction found in RPGs when you complete such smartly designed quests successfully.

The Witcher's story is broken across 5 chapters excluding a Prologue and an Epilogue. It tells the tale of Geralt of Rivia as he travels in search of a mysterious mage who has stolen the Witchers' secrets. A relatively simple premise breaks into something more devious and soon Geralt finds himself caught up to the neck in political skullduggery. Corruption, lies, betrayal are the mere beginning of this rich enjoyable tale. The game doesn't hesitate from presenting player with an array of moral dilemmas none of which fall into the good/evil category of the Fables and Mass Effects. In fact, Witchers' moral dilemmas often don't fall into even Dragon Age's "relatively good and relatively bad" system. Rather in the Witcher, everyone is evil and selfish and it's upto you to judge whose evil is apparently greater. It's often hard to judge none so greater than the end of the Chapter 1 which poses one of the most complex moral dilemmas I've come across in a game. The narration also takes a couple of risks half-way through which pays off in rather surprising ways. Witcher's narration can be hectic when it wants to but it can also slow it down to a calming stroll when it wants to.Breath-taking in both scope and execution, the Witcher's story is one of its key strengths.

The world is also highly believable and dynamic. Besides a dynamic day/night and weather cycle, the NPC behavior is something that deserves a mention. When it rains, the NPCs take cover under a roofed passageway or run for shelter. They just don't walk around pretending everything's normal. They also go about their daily chores (not to the same level of sophistication as in Elder Scrolls games) and slowly retire to home or to tavern when night falls. Since this is made on a pre-console BioWare era engine, the player has freedom to kill any NPCs that don't directly break a quest. This can be occasionally useful for getting into areas that you usually aren't allowed into. In that sense, the Witcher is certainly more open-ended compared to the newer BioWare games.

All of this may lead one to believe that Witcher is a perfect RPG in nearly every sense. Unfortunately that is not the case. The Witcher is plagued with problems that it inherits from it's own Euro-RPG genre--namely clunky controls, broken quests and glitches galore. The fact that the Witcher is made on an engine that is almost crumbling under Witcher's modifications doesn't help it's case. Crashes, graphical glitches still exist even in the Enhanced Edition. You'll occasionally run into broken quests just because you didn't reach some point at the proper point in the story. Witchers' multi-act narration kinda escalates the questing issues. Some quests get carried forward to other acts but there's almost no way to finish them since you can't access that particular area you were in the previous chapter. This leads to making your journal look a lot messier and crowded than it should be.

Add to this the controls. The Witcher was modified to a massive extent to make it seem like an action game. SEEM like one. Unfortunately Witcher's dodging is clunky and animations often don't match the damage you sustain. All of this is quite simply because Witcher is still a turn-based affair which is given an action-RPG polish over it. The illusion works for most of the time but when it does break one's frustration is justified.

One of the major overhauls in Enhanced Edition is the vast improvement in the Polish to English translation. The original's dialogues sometimes made little to no sense and this lead to a decline in the quality of it's rich storyline. It was a disappointing aspect of the original. However CD Projekt decided to do something about that and retranslated and re-recorded over 5000 lines for the Enhanced Edition. Many of these lines are meant for Geralt and one can immediately sense a much clearer sarcasm in the retranslated dialogues. Some of the story and quests also make greater sense than they did in the original.

The Witcher is a rare beast in nearly every sense. Exuding a rare degree of confidence and ambition that few of it's fellow Euro-RPGs have shown over the years, it exhibits the developer, CD Projekt's pedigree and understanding of what works in RPGs and what doesn't. Their emphasis on the often-ignored aspects of planning and strategy as well as in introducing a rare form of moral complexity is commendable. Their balancing of magic as a support system rather than a complete destroyer of enemies is another plus point in their favour. They also don't miss the key aspects of RPGs—the storytelling and decision-making and come out with some highly memorable quests. The game stumbles at a lot of places and it does require a bit of patience to overcome it's Euro-RPG inherited rough edges and clunkiness. The Witcher ultimately could have been a lot more if it knew how to iron out it's irregularities and address its shortcomings. It certainly doesn't lack the ambition nor does it lack confidence and for a large part of the game it successfully executes its unique elements into a memorable role-playing game of a high caliber.

Score

Witcher-esque Quotes (aka the Ugly and Uglier)

--"Power,Sex.Sex,Power. Both of them come down to one thing -- f***ing others"

--Referencing to his two swords--one effective on only humans and the other effective only on monsters,

Geralt says this : "I have two swords.Both of them are meant for killing monsters" :D

--Zoltan,Geralt's dwarf friend discussing with Geralt about reasons for non-humans racism.

Geralt : "Why do locals persecute non-humans?"

Zoltan : "Why do *insert male appendage* go into *insert female part*? It's the natural order of things.

-- Discussing possible methods to temper Jethro's drug addiction :

Geralt : Fold back your skin and rub.

Jethro : Err...where?

Geralt : Where you can fold back your skin and rub? :P

All right people that's all for now. I'll probably post a Persona 3 FES review next time (finished it yesterday) or do another short update blog. My exams just won't end. :cry: :(

C ya

Lightwarrior179

I've been procrastinating on a lot of things and Most Anticipated list of 2011 was one of them.I should have had it earlier but I waited until I put out my GotY list on my last blog which itself was delayed by three months thanks to some late 2010 purchases like Amnesia,Super Meat Boy,Vanquish and RDR.

This is late but this had to happen at some point or the other so better now than later :

Lightwarrior's Most Anticipated Games of 2011 (in no particular order)

Does not include any PS3,3DS,Wii games since I don't own those systems and frankly it makes little sense for me to look forward to purchasing any of those games.

Already Released :

Dragon Age II (my final verdict later in this blog)

Shogun Total War 2

Gray Matter

Not Released Yet :

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

Oblivion wasn't exactly the perfect progression it was deemed to be. Yet it did many things right. It streamlined some of the persistent wrinkles of Elder Scrolls' open-world formula, the new action combat replaced the dice-roll mechanics properly and the quest design was one of the shining strengths of that game. Which brings us to Skyrim all these years later. Built on a brand-new engine boasting of a vastly varied and unique world this is shaping up to be everything Oblivion should have been.Plus there are dragons. Who doesn't love big bad fire-breathing dragons?

RAGE

ID's first proper game since Doom 3 is shaping upto be one ridiculous thrill ride with all sorts of crazy vehicular shooter action packed in it. Sure Doom 3 was disappointing but maybe after all these years it isn't too late for Id to undo the disappointment they created with Doom 3 and prove once again what really made them them such fan favourites a decade back.

Deus Ex Human Revolution

Ever since this game was announced I was excited for it. Not only does this game feature a highly $tylized and impressive art design that nails the cyberpunk feel almost perfectly but some of the later gameplay videos also tell that this game sticks to what made the original Deus Ex such a marvel while making necessary innovations.If nothing much goes wrong between now and August then this game is set to blow minds of almost everyone who loves shooter-combat with the open-ended freedom and customization only role-playing can provide.

LA Noire

It being a Rockstar game isn't the only reason that it's on my list. It's more because of the promising technology that LA Noire uses with very realistic facial animations in it's cutscenes and then translates that very technology into potentially a gameplay element. If watching cutscenes ever made you feel disconnected from the game then maybe LA Noire's innovations can possibly make cutscene an integral gameplay element itself. That and it being a detective mystery with a very noir feel to it makes this high on my anticipated list. My only worry? The action sequences in it might seem forced.Right now they seem like they've been added only for those who get bored with playing as a detective fast. My question is : Why bother about those who would get bored of your game's premise? All these fears might seem silly once this game arrives in May though.

Anarchy Reigns

Platinum made 2010 a special year for me with two absolutely phenomenal games. In 2011, they've got one in store for us and it looks in vein with most of their other titles. Madcap action with awesomeness filled to the brim. Probably more of a follow-up to it's Wii beat-em-up MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns is the first Platinum game with multiplayer component being given a slightly more focus. I am not much of a multiplayer gamer but Platinum hopes to deliver on SP side as well and I will believe what they say because they've done enough to deserve my faith.Whenever this releases, I'll be getting it for sure.

Shadows of the Damned

The product of the collabration between Shinji Mikami and Grasshopper's Suda51 this game was highly anticipated by many largely because of the dream partnership between both the developers. So far what we've seen of this game tells us of it being an action horror game with a slight unique edge to it. We still have to see more of this game but if the geniuses behind it are any kind of indication, then this game can turn out to be very interesting indeed.

Dark Souls

Demon's Souls on PS3 is No.1 on my "Want to play BADLY" list this gen. If I want a PS3 for any one single game,Demon's Souls would be it.But alas my lack of PS3 means I'll not be able to play that. Yet From's announcement to go multi-plat with Dark Souls delighted me. So come this November and I might be playing a game which isn't Demon's Souls but is atleast along the veins of it anyway. It's just that thought which makes me excited for it.

Catherine

The first game for the new gen consoles by the Persona team this has caught the eye of many since it's first trailer. It seems part adventure,part puzzle and complete surrealist horror fiction filled with sensual imagery. What interests me about the game besides it's rather weird puzzle based gameplay and surrealist horror is that it is one of the few stories about adults in modern-day Japan. That and the numerous references and influences with one of my favourite authors',Haruki Murakami's novels makes Catherine a sure-fire purchase this year IF it gets a European/PAL release that is.

Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings

The original Witcher was one of the best PC-RPGs in years. Combining an absolutely brilliant dark fantasy and mature setting from Andrzej Sapkowski's novels filled with all kinds of grey-shaded moral ambiguities it earned a cult following amongst the PC gamers. Then comes the sequel. Primarily it is the positive change in the combat mechanics which I hope make it less clunkier than the original's combat while keeping all those things intact which I loved in the original(unlike few games....looking at you Dragon Age II). I might not get this immediately but I will definitely get this before the year ends.

Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 2 was a great sequel. It did so many things right especially when it came to combat. In the wake of Dragon Age II, I've come to appreciate some of the non-controversial streamlining which ME2 did with respect to inventory and upgrades. So what I really want for ME3 to do is to keep those things intact while retaining some of the things that made the original Mass Effect such a magical game. If ME2 lacked anything it was the glorious charm of it's predecessor. Putting planetary exploration and more plot-coherent sidequests might help it. Also since ME2 is essentially a shooter now, they should improve upon the level design. If it does all those things, while providing a satisfying conclusion to this amazing trilogy then we're in for a very impressive game this year.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

I loved FFXIII despite all the polarized reception it received. I loved it's stripping down of non-essential elements including minigames and joke sidequests and how it made the narrative seem a lot more raw. It was paced to make you feel like you were part of an adventure. That combined with a pretty impressive cast and a battle system that I loved purely because it was different in it's concept from the other titles in the series, I cannot wait for FFXIII-2. Sure I've got a right to be a skeptic after seeing what Square Enix have previously done with sequels of well-regarded games. FFX-2 pretty much destroyed the image of FFX and Advent Children did pretty much the same for FFVII as far as I am concerned. So I am keeping my fingers crossed,that SE does get FFXIII-2 right for a change.

Portal 2

After their pretty flawless Orange Box which not only contained one of the best shooters of the past decade(Half Life 2),its pretty impressive episode(Episode 1), a fun deathmatch and one of the best add-ons to a shooter(HL2 Episode 2) it also included a unique little platformer in first-person. Portal became an instant hit and not without a good reason. It's dry wit and charm combined with it's unique puzzle and platforming mechanics made it both clever and fun at the same time. Portal 2 seems to keep things pretty seem but does add a few things to keep it fresh. As long as we get good puzzle design and some hilarious writing and witty one-liners from the in-game AI then we're in for a good fun ride.

Dungeon Siege III

Obsidian was another developer along with Platinum which made 2010 a special year in gaming for me. Springing two unexpected surprises in the form of Fallout New Vegas and Alpha Protocol, they redeemed themselves in my eyes after a disappointing NWN2. Dungeon Siege III may not really give them the freedom to exercise some of their trademark elements but it'll be interesting to see how they pick up the series from Gas Powered Games who made the first two. The trailers so far don't tell much we already don't know. This is an action-RPG with hack-n-slash combat. Not an immediate buy but I'll certainly get this before the year's over.

Honourable Mentions :

Child of Eden

Gears of War 3

Crysis 2

Battlefield 3

Torchlight II

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Dragon Age II

I will firstly like to state at the very outset that all the negativity surrounding the game is more of a "reaction" than proper opinion. It is a reaction to the changes made in DA2 with respect to DA Origins. Yes those changes have been made and they change the game in varying amounts. So you get a sequel that isn't quite Origins but isn't as bad as some BioWare fans deem it to be.

The biggest change is the combat itself. You might still be fooled for a few minutes or even an hour or so that DA2 retains the tactical depth of the original but in reality it doesn't. DA2 isn't even half as tactical as Origins is. You'll still be able to issue commands,pause the play, zoom out to a lesser extent(PC only) but DA2 doesn't really encourage you to be tactical. Instead it goes for gloriously gory action combat that clearly edges more towards hack-n-slash than the Euro-RPG esque-mouse based combat. In short DA2 is more of a Diablo-like clickfest but with a tactical interface to it.

Now don't get me wrong when I said DA2 loses it's tactical edge.DA2's combat is still fun when it comes to it. You'll still combat will make you think once in a while but it's the general combat design which is its biggest flaw and kills the tactical element of the combat. In a nutshell combat in DA2 goes like this : You enter a room with 4 enemies. You kill two, four more appear out of THIN air. You repeat the process, the game repeats the process by spawning four more enemies and so on.

If there was any tactical thought that goes into mindless battles like this I couldn't find any sorry. It's not only frustrating to see the game clearly discouraging you from using the tactical elements it provides you but you also feel like a fool trying to pause and arrange for spells when you clearly know that the best way to proceed is to hack and slash at a single enemy until he's dead.The combat ends up being an ugly child which neither achieves the hack-n-slash fun nor does it end up being smart enough to be tactical enough to make you think as much as Origins would.

Another problem was the streamlining of inventory. While I did like the idea of junk and it being cleared away by a single touch of the button I didn't like how the only customizable armour was that of Hawke. It meant that if I was a mage and I fought a very tough boss only to get an armour that isn't meant for my Mage cla$$ it leads to pure frustration at the mere futility of the act. I end up thinking what I really went through all the trouble for.

Story-wise, BioWare takes risks and it largely pays off. It is a lot different compared to the general "epic-saving the world" we've come to expect from BioWare. It is a purely politically charged story and a thoroughly personal one as well.They've experimented with the framed narrative and it largely works in favour of the game. If there's anything that keeps you interested in the game throughout it's the story. The way in which it's told narrated is quite amazing as well. Dialogue is as sharp as you would find in any BioWare game. It's top-notch, the charm and humour is retained and some of the sequences are exceptionally written.

The areas are recycled over and over again. Every "new" dungeon or cave ends up looking the same. This clearly shows how rushed through development DA2 was. Curse you,EA.

Characters are a mixed bag. DA2's stronger characters include Varric,Merrill and Aveline. Isabela is decent enough. Anders is so-so but few sequences make him stand out above the rest. Bethany is okay and so is Carver. Fenris is PLAIN GOD AWFUL. If ME2's Jacob needed another competition for being the Worst BioWare Character he's got one. Fenris is just PLAIN PLAIN bad. He seems like he's straight out of a Square Enix game high on his emo-ness.

Actually DA2's stronger characters are the ones who are NOT in your party. The Viscount,High Cleric Elthina,Meredith,Orsino,Thrask etc are pretty finely written characters. The best of all is undoubtedly the Arishok. I've already said that DA2 packs some of exceptional sequences and there's none better than the sequences featuring the Qunari and the Arishok. In short,DA2's writing peaks during Act II and the sequences featuring the Qunari and their leader,Arishok.

It was during those times when I was pretty much sure I was loving every minute of DA2. The combat was getting a lot more tolerable, the sidequests a lot more varied and exciting and the main story quests featuring the Arishok were outstanding. Too early unfortunately.

If DA2 peaks during the middle,late sequences of the game it also dips by a large amount during the final few hours. In retrospect,Act III in particular features some of the most disappointing moments in DA2. It is also the time when some of the biggest flaws in combat resurfaced to haunt me. As for the ending....I'll say only one thing : My luck with endings in games this year has been AWFULLY poor. Example? Like this, Dreamfall, Halo 2 and now Dragon Age II. Go figure.

Final verdict? DA2 is a good game. Disappointing as a sequel to Origins but as a stand-alone RPG it is pretty good. There are things that'll put fans of Origins and other BioWare games like me off but if you're patient enough DA2 will reveal it's better side. In the end, it feels rushed.

Score : 8.0/10 (without the final 2-3 hours)

Actual Score : 7.5/10

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I also have a very important announcement to make....

I GOT A PS2!!!!!!!!!!!1111

Huh? No response.

Well PS2 was one console I was dying to get. Not that I didn't have enough money to buy it but I just lacked the motivation to look for it's games which are pretty hard to find around here. Yesterday my friend who's leaving for further studies in Australia said he won't be needing his PS2 and he'll leave it at my house for a cheap price(20 bucks to be precise). He also leaves behind six games pretty generic but few ones I certainly would have wanted :

FIFA 09

God of War 1

God of War 2

Jak and Daxter Precursor Legacy

Tekken Tag Tournament

Katamari Damacy

But importantly what this does is that it gives me enough motivation to actually look for games. I went on a downtown trip this morning and after a few hours of hunting around finally came back with some more interesting purchases :

God Hand

Okami

Final Fantasy X

Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater

Burnout 3 Takedown

So that means I am in for some very fun times with PS2 in the future. I am finally glad to get the console that had been missing from my gaming collection and now it's time to hunt down and play games one by one. I'll need to save at the same time for some of the other games for 360 and PC mentioned at the start of this blog. I am going to be HYPER OMEGA broke for sure. :P

That's it for now boys and girls.

C ya

Lightwarrior179

2010 was an excellent year for gaming much like almost every other year has been this generation. However what made 2010 further special was the fact that besides the big-name releases there were tons of low-budget,off-beat games that suddenly broke into mainstream attention and made 2010 pretty unique in that way.

Without further ado let's just get down to the Best of 2010. I've already done the Movies and Music two blogs back so now it's onto gaming.

Best of 2010 : Gaming

Before We Start :

• The game must have released in 2010 (duh!)
• I must have finished the game atleast once.No half walkthroughs allowed
• Only those games that I played from Jan 2010-Feb 2011 will be considered.
• Platforms considered : PC,X360,PSP
• In normal categories, there will be one winner,one runner up and in some cases a second runner-up if need arises
• This doesn't need to be said but I'll still say it :These are purely MY choices.If you have problem with it then you're free to mention it in the comments but don't expect me to listen to your arguments(only meant for trolls who MIGHT intrude)

With that out of the way let's get really started then...

Best Graphics

Winner : Final Fantasy XIII (X360)

There could be little argument over this. Square Enix were specialists in this department and they created some truly breath-taking graphics that weren't only technically superior than almost every other game that released in 2010 but also were artistically aesthetic and pleasing at the very same time. There aren't many games where you just take a pause and look around the beautiful world around you and appreciate the beauty of the world. FFXIII is one of those few games that made me do that quite often.

Runner Up :Civilization V (PC)

There are no doubts that PC with it's ever evolving hardware is technically the most proficient platform when it comes to powerful graphics. While Civilization V wasn't quite what Crysis was back in 2007, the very impressive DX11 effects coupled with some excellent shadow and particle effects made this turn-based strategy game go very easy on the eyes.

Best Music

Winner :Red Dead Redemption (X360)

If there was a major factor in what made RDR's Western setting work so well it was the music. Comprising of mostly of an instrumental score of whistles,acoustic guitar and heavily inspired Morricone music made every moment in the Western setting seem highly believable. Be it the battles or the Mexican standoffs or just plain horse-riding around the dangerous countryside, RDR's music always made the setting more special.

Runner Up :Bayonetta (X360)

Bayonetta's music did a great job in bringing energy into every moment of the game. And not just plain normal energy. but the wild over-the-top one that was characteristic of the game itself. This interspersed with moody jazz tunes and some very peppy J-Pop songs made Bayonetta's soundtrack as exciting as the game itself. Fly Me to the Moon? Sure sweetheart. :P

Most Disappointing Game

Winner : Fable III (X360)

The very reason why this game tops this dubious honour category is because I had high hopes for it. After Lionhead had redeemed themselves in my eyes with a great Fable II, I was hoping that Fable III will finally be the game that will make the series achieve the potential it always had. Instead Fable III was more of the same. Some great new ideas -- some excecuted well,others horribly. That combined with some poor design choices and "tweaks" made Fable III in many ways seem a more frustrating ride compared to it's predecessor.

Runner Up :Mass Effect 2 (X360)

Now ME2 isn't a bad game.In fact it's a pretty great game.It even improves on so many aspects that were weak in the original. But then it also is a step-down from some of the more finer and enjoyable elements like planetary exploration in ME1. But that isn't why ME2 is a runner-up. The single thing that really put ME2 down in my eyes was that BioWare for once failed to deliver on their promises. They made huge claims that our decisions in ME1 will have big impact. REALLY? ME2 doesn't even have half of the decision-effect element (new or from ME1) than Alpha Protocol and not even one-tenth of BioWare's MUCH-superior Dragon Age Origins. That coupled with some of the worst writing I've seen in a BioWare game since well...since they began making RPGs made ME2 a pretty disappointing game. It could have been a lot more.

Best Story

Winner :Amnesia :The Dark Descent (PC)

I know this is a slightly surprising choice but I somehow couldn't help but choose this. Amnesia itself begins with a cliched moment. You wake up from a slumber and don't remember anything and are trapped in a castle that's apparently haunted.Basic horror movie stuff,right? That's where Amnesia develops into something sinister. The game itself is insanely scary that merely thinking about me gives me chills but the story is a key element which always makes you dread for every discovery. The core mystery within the plot itself contributes greatly to the "scare" factor in the game albeit in a more abstract manner. You have erased your own memories? But why would anyone do that? The mystery and the way it unveils is far more chilling than it might be apparent.

Runner Up :Red Dead Redemption (X360)

This was a close call between RDR and FFXIII. But I gave RDR a slight edge due to it's rather fine way of how it's narrated.John Marston is a man of honour and he is helping government agents capture or kill the last remaining bandits in the slowly dying Wild West. Civlization has come upon the harsh desertland. The game really succeeds in describing how little difference there is between the "good" and the "bad" and it constantly reminds you that past sins never really are washed. An excellent tale of redemption and morality told by the ever-improving Rockstar.

Best New Character (Serious/Realistic)

Winner : John Marston (Red Dead Redemption)

John Marston is a character you just can't help but sympathize with. As a Rockstar protagonist, he's a natural evolution from GTA IV's equally excellent flawed protagonit Niko Bellic. Yet where Niko's ideals were formless, Marston's ideals are rigid. They form a strong backbone to the very character that we play in the entire game. His ultimate purpose is something quite simple yet how he is tormented by others because of his past mistakes and sins makes us realize that redemption is really not as easy as it seems. A thorough family man,some of the later stages in the game further refine this already excellent character.

Runner Up : Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII)

If redemption was what defined John Marston, then it was dilemma that defined Lightning. Torn between saving her own life and that of the rest of the world, the story of FFXIII did a great job in bringing out the personal struggles of the characters.Best amongst those struggles was that of Lightning whose love for her sister and her anger at what transpired in Cocoon makes her a very interesting character. Like most of the FFXIII characters she has many layers to her all of which may not be apparent immediately.

Best New Character (Cool/Bada$$)

Winner :Bayonetta (Bayonetta)

Everything about Bayonetta embodied cool. She had two pairs of weapons, one of them at her heels, she had a bevy of demons inside her hair, she could ride a missile or a bike at insanely high speeds, can transform into a panther and at the same time look sexy. Bayonetta was what made Bayonetta the game special. Everytime she stomped her way through the angels delivering one memorable one-liner after another you couldn't stop loving her. That's Bayonetta and that's her charm right there.

Runner Up : Sam Gideon (Vanquish)

If Bayonetta personified sexy and cool, Sam Gideon personified bada$$ and cool. Together this Platinum duo wreaked havoc on our consoles. Sam Gideon was the master of hoarse one-liners. On the battlefield merely watching him shoot and rocket-slide made your eyes melt into pure 24-carat of awesomeness. When Sam flicked a cigarette butt, I was immediately reminded of Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop. Few people make flicking cigarette butts seem so cool. Sam Gideon personified bada$$ery in 2010 like no other. :D

Second Runner Up :Steve "Don't Call Me Steven" Heck (Alpha Protocol)

If there were any doubts that 2010 was a fantastic year for bada$$/cool characters Steve Heck cleared those.A maniacal hyper-active,paranoid conspiracy theorist and an "allegedly" CIA agent in Taipei, Steve Heck packed some of the most humorous dialogues in Alpha Protocol. Some of his email discussions with the main character were absolutely golden. Connecting rise in strawberry prices with an international conspiracy eventually leading to a credit collapse. WHAT? That's Steve Heck for you. And Don't call him Steven. He can get VERY mad!

Best Setting

Winner :The Mojave Wasteland (Fallout New Vegas)

This was a pretty easy choice. If there was anything that made Fallout NV as special a game as it was then the setting played perhaps the biggest role in it. Not only was the Mojave rich in detail and rewarding in exploration with dozens of secret caves and super-bosses but the role it plays in the story makes it the most interesting element of New Vegas. Mojave in a way serves as a chessboard between two major factions and many smaller ones. You are in a way a trump chesspiece which can change the tide in favour of any one faction or can completely alter the complexion of the setting for your own selfish gains. This in essence was the very thing that made Fallout NV such a remarkable RPG and Mojave Wasteland such a special setting.

Runner Up : The Wild West (Red Dead Redemption)

Rockstar's run with highly believable setting continues post-GTAIV and this is another very special one. A truly dynamic world in which random events take place without any sort of trigger from the player. A drunk raping a local woman, bandits looting a merchant caravan or a horse thief stealing one of the farm horses. None of these require a trigger.They happen almost naturally. It is left upto you whether you choose to intrude them or mind your own business. I was worried about the "morality" meter in RDR but the way it's handled left me satisfied. Of course the Wild West has some very believable wildlife be it rattlesnakes or coyotes or buck.

Second Runner-Up : Cocoon & Pulse (Final Fantasy XIII)

Neither Cocoon nor Pulse are special alone. They are something you would have seen before in any JRPG or Final Fantasy game before. However together they make a very interesting case study on the basis of their contrasts. This serves as a core element in FFXIII's plot and the setting truly describe the tremendous extremeties. Cocoon is ordered,peaceful,restrained almost lifeless at times. Pulse is chaotic,vibrant and filled with charm and colour. FFXIII is an underappreciated game at times but the setting seriously deserves more praise purely because of how the contrast serves as an abstract complement to the game's plot.

Best Games of 2010

Honourable Mentions :

Mass Effect 2 (X360)

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker (PSP)

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (PC)

Top 10 Games of 2010 :

10) Football Manager 2011 (PC)

Sports Interactive's evergreen sports strategy series reaches it's ultimate refinement yet with some excellent changes and improvements on the already excellent FM interface. That coupled with some highly impressive player behaviour and the importance of player-manager relationship makes FM2011 one of the best strategy games all round this year,sports or otherwise.

9) Super Meat Boy (PC)

This indie challenge-room platformer just went onto show how genuine challenge and innovative level design within a limited genre can give you. A highly enjoyable and challenging platformer that gets instantly addictive and will deliver some serious pain to your thumbs. Super Meat Boy is the kind of game that you play for 10 mins and realize you've almost spent an hour after it. Loved it!

8 ) Civilization V (PC)

This long-running turn-based strategy game was up for a major overhaul. In the year where StarCraft II showed an excellent game can still be made without any major changes, Civ V went for some major changes. Chief amongst them was the hexagon-tile system and the removal of stacking units. It worked in the game's favour as we had another very fine Civilization game on our hands despite few problems with the reduction in victory scenarios. It wasn't as revolutionary as we might have expected but then maybe Civilization formula doesn't really need to change that much to impress us in the first place.

7) Alpha Protocol (PC)

This was a year where Obsidian trumped BioWare for me and AP was a big reason of why. Doing everything the Mass Effect series was known for doing and then taking the decision-effect element of it to a completely another level made Alpha Protocol a truly spectacular RPG. Sure it was plagued by some pretty shaky combat and frustrating glitches in between but the strengths in writing,characters and decision-effect made it easy to overlook. Is Alpha Protocol better than ME2? If you ask me,I'll say yes.

6) Fallout New Vegas (PC)

Close on the heels is another Obsidian game. This time one that they were pretty familiar with. As ex-creators of Fallout franchise, Obsidian brought in some very fine elements from Fallout 2 which were missing in Fallout 3 and made Fallout NV into a very deep and engaging role-playing experience. Add a truly dynamic setting and some great Bethesda-inspired elements and we have a game that to a long-time fan of the series feels like the real return of the Fallout franchise. If my word meant anything, I would want Obsidian to develop Fallout 4.

5) Final Fantasy XIII (X360)

Couple of bold design choices and one amazing combat system was all it finally took to restore my faith in Square Enix. Making possibly their most bold FF game (besides FFXII of course), SE did an excellent job in removing all the distractive elements and making the story and narration feel truly focused. The pacing was excellent throughout and you felt like you were actually part of the adventure and not just in some game world. Some pretty good characters and one of the best ATB-based combat system made FFXIII one of my favourites in the series.

4) Vanquish (X360)

If there was any example of why level design is such an essential part of shooters, Vanquish is THE best example I've seen yet. Despite the fact that the entire game revolves around basically a single formula, the level design is so varied and excellent that it always keeps you on your toes and the adrenaline rushing through your veins. The game doesn't get boring on repeated playthroughs and Platinum's trademark excellence in balancing "challenge and reward" makes Vanquish one of the best shooters this gen. That along with the fact that it takes some truly hilarious punches on some of the other shooters makes this a game you must absolutely not miss despite it's length.

3) Red Dead Redemption (X360)

Quite simply, RDR is the best refinement of Rockstar's decade-old open-world formula till date. It doesn't do anything new.It won't win any new fans. But for those who love Rockstar's open-world ventures, it doesn't get any better than this. With a truly amazing tale of redemption and morality with some truly exceptional writing touching themes of existentialism,morality and judgment to paranoia and cannibalism. Add the typical Wild West elements including some amazing action sequences on train, Mexican standoffs and typical gunslinger action makes RDR one of the most impressive open-world games this gen.

2) Amnesia : The Dark Descent (PC)

From the very first moment in this low-budget indie title you smell something special. Soon it becomes all very clear. For a rare moment, the developer has perfectly grasped the concept of horror survival and has nailed it with some perfect elements. Handicapping you for one of the scariest rides of half a dozen hours, this is a game that will send shiver down your spine at the very least when nothing's happening. When EVERYTHING is happening you're sweating profusely your mind going absolutely insane. If you dread for nightmares that never end, then every sequence in Amnesia is one scary nightmare that just won't end. Playing this game above an hour is a difficult task merely because its a very tiring process. Best horror survival game since System Shock 2? Hell effin' yes.

1) Bayonetta (X360)

The surprises end there. This is a pretty obvious choice and will not surprise you if you've followed my blogs for the past year or so. This was a game that had me gripped from the moment I bought it mid-summer and it still hasn't released me. It made me spew lot of double entrandres a while back and I want to kinda avoid doing those. But seriously the supremely orgasmic (oh boy.. :P ) action of Bayonetta, the level design, the over-the-top action, the challenge,the replayability, the music, the humour in the cutscenes,those references to Space Harrier and Sega bullet hell shmups and OH GOD..those boss battles with Jeanne and Balder...I could go on and on but the fact remains : No game in 2010 or this gen has had me as crazy as Bayonetta. That's it and the No.1 deservedly goes to our super sexy/awesome/cool lady Bayonetta. :D

That's it for now folks.

Most Anticipated of 2011 next time. I know I am running late on all this. Gotta catch up.

C ya

Lightwarrior179

Mass Effect 2 Review

Sequels are a tricky business. They often leave game developers in a fix on how to proceed the series. Whether to rest on their laurels and play it safe by sticking to everything that had worked in the original. Or to make considerable revamps by working on its flaws, making it a risky but possibly more rewarding alternative. BioWare find themselves in an even more uncomfortable position with Mass Effect 2. It's not only a sequel to the highly acclaimed original but also it is the middle part of an already announced trilogy. So BioWare had the unenviable task of fixing what went wrong in the past while keeping a constant eye for the future. Mass Effect 2 does both quite admirably.

Mass Effect 2 begins with a blast.Literally.Speaking anything about it can be potentially spoiling for those who haven't played it yet. Needless to say, the opening sequence is like one cool breeze which makes the fans of the original not only feel at home but also find that very home falling apart into pieces. It's exhilarating, breath-taking and emotional to say the least. For the sequel, you step back into the shoes of Commander Shepard once again. It's been 2 years since you saved the Citadel from Saren and the Reaper's attack and things have changed. A lot.

This is a recurring theme that runs deep throughout ME2. From the very beginning, the player is given a feeling that though they had saved the Citadel from a huge catastrophe in the first game, things in the galaxy are far from alright. A lot of things have changed in the two years after that which not only changes allegiances of Shepard but also the players' notion of who were allies and who weren't.

Shepard is tasked by the charismatic and enigmatic leader of Cerberus, a pro-human organization, the Illusive Man wh is excellently voiced by Michael Sheen to investigate the recent disappearances of entire human colonies. The allegiance between Shepard and Illusive Man is clearly a situational one and the game does a great job in bringing out the tension and conflict in their conversations.

The plot in ME2 is wafer-thin. From the very beginning your final goal is laid out clear in front of you. Its simply upto you how you choose to approach that goal and in what manner. You'll be recruiting loyal and powerful members into your crew in the newly fashioned Normandy while earning their loyalty. That is basically ME2's story in a nutshell. But ME2 isn't merely that. Like Empire Strikes Back, it may not have a long story but what it lacks in plot content it makes up in it's effort of evolving the setting. ME2's story moulds the galaxy into something very different from what we knew in the original. A lot of races are excellently developed and their background is more fleshed out in ME2. A lot may not change on the surface by the time ME2 ends, but the intricacies of the galaxy and allegiances will be more fleshed out to the player. It's a finely nuanced and well-balanced narration that makes ME2 an engaging experience even when it comes to it's story even if the plot progression is hardly anything to talk about.

Another thing that ME2 takes from Empire Strikes Back is the general mood. ME2 is a more grim and grittier tale than the original. While the original was more brighter both in it's mood and tone, the sequel adopts a darker tone. It doesn't hesitate in delving into grim things clearly seen during some of the Collector base sequences. Insanity, paranoia, depression and hideous treachery are mere few themes that the sequel brushes across. In terms of art style, ME2 prefers the darker colours like black and red compared to significantly brighter ones in ME1.

But that isn't the only thing that's changed in the two years since the original. Combat in ME2 receives probably the biggest revamp with it essentially dropping all it's slow,clunky, RPG dice-roll shooting mechanics in favour of the faster, more exciting mechanics of a proper third-person shooter. BioWare has had no experience with shooters besides MDK2 but that was a decade back. Adopting Gears of War-esque cover mechanics while staying true to the squad-based and radial menu heavy combat of the original wasn't going to be any easy task. Surprisingly BioWare does almost a flawless job in transitioning the series into a full-fledged shooter. While this may come as a disappointment to some RPG fans, I think ME as a series was always designed to as a shooter, it's good to see ME2 finally living upto it's destiny.

Besides the change in the general shooting, the cover mechanics have become a lot sharper and better compared to the original's clumsy mechanics. That said, ME2 isn't a pure, full-fledged shooter. It has stayed true to the original's significant tactical side to it's combat and BioWare has cleverly designed the combat sequences such that proper amounts of shooting along with using the radial menu and commanding your two squadmates are essential in guiding your team to victory.

To complement the change in focus of ME2's combat, BioWare has also dumped the Overheating feature of guns from ME1. Instead using a clever Codex trick, ME2 introduces Heat Clips which are nothing but ammo in the system. These heat clips are universal and they work for all the weapons you have. All these changes significantly improve the combat making it easily one of the best all-round elements of the game and a huge improvement from the original. However not every change will draw a similar reaction from Mass Effect's fanbase. From the very first you get the feel that BioWare is intent on tackling the flaws of the original by making some changes. They did a great job with the combat, but not every change will draw a similar, unanimous reaction from Mass Effect's fanbase.

One of the more controversial changes in ME2 is the complete absence of a conventional inventory. The inventory in ME1 was a clunky messed up one and managing it was quite a chore. However BioWare instead of working on improving the inventory interface have completely removed it. This change has a sort of domino effect on it's subsequent systems. It not only has repercussions on general absence of inventory management but it also leads to removal of loot. ME2 has no loot or very little. What loot is essentially stripped down is mining minerals and weapon and armour upgrades. This also means that the Medi-Gel and Omni-Gel are made useless and the combat basically adopts the shooter-influenced regenerative health and shields. This may be shocking to some RPG purists but such a change purely boils down to a matter of opinion.

The Ability/Level-Up screen has seen some changes as well. Now each class has an Ability that is unique to it. But it also introduces ammo abilities which may not exactly please everyone. Weapon and Armour Upgrade system receive a slight revamp. Since inventory no longer exists, they have been stripped to basically two counters on the Normandy. Upgrades are more like a linear progression rather than "select the mods you want" method used in the first game. There are Normandy Upgrades this time around as well. While they may not have an immediate impact on your combat, they play a greater role in the story.There is also a restriction on the number of weapons you can carry at a time. You can basically carry three weapons – two basic and one heavy weapon. The heavy weapons have been newly introduced in ME2 serving as heavy punches to the enemy also adding a more flashier element into the combat.

The monetary system has seen some changes in ME2 as well. Credits are no longer necessary for Weapon Upgrades. Instead minerals have taken a greater precedence over credits with them serving as the chief requirement in upgrading weapons, armour and Normandy's technology. This basically demotes credits to buying fuel and probes.

Perhaps the biggest change besides the combat in ME2 is the planetary exploration – or rather lack of it. Shockingly so, BioWare have removed one of the core elements of exploration in the first game which was often criticized mainly for the horrible controls of the buggy-like vehicle Mako and the rather bland planet surfaces. The removal of planetary exploration is a disappointing thing since BioWare only needed to work on Mako's controls instead of completely chucking the whole integral element out of the game.

This becomes even more unforgivable when planetary exploration is instead substituted by one of the most boring mini-games which require you to scan and mine the planets for minerals. So you basically move your reticle until the scanner detects the high concentration of any of the four minerals. It's so mind-numbingly boring that it easily stands out as a singular sore point in the entire game. Plus it's something you can't avoid and hence a mini-game that is already boring is forced down your throat.

Occasionally when scanning planets you'll discover an anomaly. This is nothing but an indicator that there's a "hideout" or a sidequest on this planet surface. The game automatically transports you to the entrance of the hideout and exploration goes completely out of the window. Long story short, exploration is something you will not find in ME2 and is probably one of the biggest and most visible flaws in the game.

The sidequest design is much more varied this time. It's a more varied from the standard – infiltrate the hideout and kill the baddies that was overused in the first game. This time around there are missions which take place in wildly different outdoor environments –ranging from a foggy swamp where the only visibility is from the light of a beacon to missions where almost no combat is involved. It adds in a lot of variety compared to the rather repetitive sidequests of the first. However, ME2's sidequests are disjointed and often have no relation at all to the main quest. This gives you more of a feeling of an errand boy than anything else. ME1's sidequests while repetitive atleast had a lot more content and background with them related to the main story. So basically ME2's sidequests have gained and lost different things in equal proportions.

It might also annoy few RPG purists that ME2's missions end on a "Mission Report" screen rather than you witnessing the outcomes of the mission yourself.

This finally brings us to the characters. Since ME2's plot structure is basically laid down right at the beginning and involves mostly hiring mercenaries and gaining their loyalty, the characters play a key role in how interesting the game is. Luckily, ME2's characters are decent enough to hold your attention. Some of them will returning from the original game will immensely please the fans of the original. These are also the characters who are easily the strongest from the cast. From the newer ones, some of my personal favourites were Thane,Mordin and Legion. Besides hiring them, the game also tells you that earning their loyalty through personal sidequests is also important.

The cast is a mixed bag. Most of them are characters you'll think good of but not someone you'll really connect or care about. Besides the ones mentioned above I thought all the other characters in ME2 were pretty mediocre or at times even horrible. For a developer whose pedigree in character-development is as solid as BioWare, the cast of ME2 is pretty lightweight and probably one of the weaker ones amongst all the games developed by BioWare.

For the purpose of eye-candy, armour is customizable down to the colour, the armour accessories and helmet. This doesn't add any special attributes nor does help you in combat. The game still follows the Paragon-Renegade system which is similar of a stark good-bad system leaving little room in between for the grey. Many familiar faces will also return in ME2 and the game constantly keeps referencing to the events and the subseqent events in the first game. Even decisions made in the original are imported to the sequel.ME2 like a true sequel, follows-up faithfully from the original and to completely enjoy the sequel, you need to play through the original atleast once. It's not entirely necessary but it's highly recommended that you play ME1.

Conversation was one of the original's biggest strengths and it has been further refined in the sequel. Now the conversations are a lot more dynamic often shot from stylish cinematic angles and NPCs interacting with the environment. Triggers are a new feature to conversations in the sequel. During certain events, you'll be given an indication that you're able to perform Conversation Triggers. If it's a Paragon, then pressing Left Trigger or if it's Renegade pressing Right Trigger initiates an immediate response from Shepard to the person he's conversing with that goes along with the nature of the trigger. Paragon Triggers may be something like helping an injured civilian while Renegade Triggers may be something brash like punching someone in the face. You may also choose to outrightly ignore these triggers which will continue the conversation but on a slightly different path. This adds a whole new layer of interactivity in conversations and it's good to see BioWare introducing such an element in the game.

The entire game and its surrounding hype builds up to the suicide mission in the end and regardless of what may happen it is something that does not disappoint. If one thing can be said for sure, if ME2 begins with an exciting opening, it sure closes in an equally exciting manner leaving you thirsting for more Mass Effect-goodness.

Mass Effect 2 is in many ways is almost an ideal sequel. It takes up the raw ideas of the original and builds upon it in interesting manner with varying degrees of success. The combat has definitely changed for the better making it a lot more exciting part of the game rather than the slow chore it had become in the original. There are changes –lack of inventory and planetary exploration in particular, which don't go well and feel more like BioWare trying to avoid the issues rather than trying to tackle them. The story may not have progressed the series by much, but ME2 certainly changes a lot of elements in the universe and fleshes them out a lot more. It plays its role as the middle part of the trilogy admirably.Mass Effect 2 is an ideal sequel in many ways evolving and developing ideas from the original, while progressing the series in exciting new directions.

Score

Gosh!! It's my first review since September.I really need to get back into writing these things again. :P

If you like the review, don't forget to recommend it. Thanks! :)

C ya

Lightwarrior179

2010...what a year it really has been. I don't think anyone will deny it's been a great year (like all other years) but for me personally I can say it's been a very instrumental and crucial year. Not only because of how different my life was a year back and how the change has come into being.

[WARNING : The following wall of text AKA the 1st half of this blog is a short looking-back at my life in 2010. I'll skip out the details of course but it can be an annoying read if you don't like/don't care reading about others' life here. I am not posting this for anybody in particular but just for the sake of posting to answer all and many of you who asked :"How has 2010 been for you?" to me. This is my answer to them. Others can please skip this part and jump to the Best of 2010 part]

Whether or not you were the ones who asked me that pretty normal question "How has 2010 been for you?" I may have mostly replied with a similar reply, "From one extreme to the other".

To elaborate on that coming into 2010 I was not happy. With what? I was getting good grades in high school. I had some good friends in HS. Then what possibly could I not be happy with?

It isn't that simple....

Well firstly,the high-school system here is ENTIRELY different. It's something that thrives on rugged competition often ruthless. I had no problems studying in a competitive environment. Following is what I had problems dealing with :

We used to have weekly tests. If I used to score high in one test, I would be flooded with attention and everyone would talk nicely to me. If I performed less impressively (a FYI, I never dropped below a B-) then I would be ignored and left in the corner of the class by everyone. Friendships changed every week. If someone was your "friend" this week, then he may not be so the next week if you happened to score less.

Everyone I talked to right from the teachers to the classmates had an air of fakeness about them. It almost felt like every smile they were giving had a poisoned dagger hidden behind them. It was muddy politics being played and I still can't understand why was there a need for it to even exist.

This was just the beginning.

The students I was with had less interest in the subjects they had taken and more in the jobs they would get. They were always like, "What pay package I would get if I were to take admission into this college with this major?". It may be a normal question but the sheer frequency and ingrained addiction with which they kept asking such questions made me wonder, "Am I here to study this subject because I like studying it OR because of the pay package?" I began to become increasingly disillusioned by all this.

If all that wasn't enough. There was THE exam. THE exam we were all preparing for the past two years. THE singular exam that was the root cause behind all this ruthless competition. THE exam that was supposed to decide our future. Our teachers weren't of any help -- they were simply programmed to say, "If you do well in this exam,you'll have a secure future.Else you'll go clean boots".

My disillusionment with what I was studying didn't help my preparations. I began questioning whether I had taken the right decision by deciding the path which I had taken for these two years. I began questioning whether I had taken this subject for the "love of just studying it" or for the "pay package".

All this could already began taking my toll on my mental state. The fact I was supposed to study minimum 12 hours each day in a small room with nothing but a study and a small bed made me wish for the better days. Alas the better days were no where in sight and probably for the first time in my life I fell into clinical depression and a sustained one this time. It began in February. Got worse by March and reached it's peak by end of that month.

What happened in March last year? A couple of things. Firstly the exam drew nearer and my growing disillusionment and the resultant lack of focus led to further decline of my grades. I began facing ridicule from my classmates and at times teachers alike. That was the least of my worries I found out.

I had a friend right from the first day of the high school, he and I shared a strong bond. He was unlike others and both of us remained friends no matter what. Talking with him whether it was about movies,TV shows or football were some of the better times of early 2010.

However things began growing worse not only for me,but for him.

To add to all that pressure of his, he was having a hard time with his declining grades from his parents. They weren't as supportive and they often pressurized him too much. I tried cheering him up often when he was down but it got difficult as time passed by.

28th March. I woke up with a fellow classmate and a cousin of that best friend of mine informing me that he had committed suicide.

I'll stop writing about that but you can only imagine what sorts of ripples it created on my already frail condition. As THE exam drew nearer I became sure I was fighting for a lost cause (AND did I really want this?).

To set things in fast forward, THE exam came. I did MUCH better than any of those smug bastards who used to show their air. I did MUCH better than I could have ever imagined in those two years. I wish my friend had maintained his patience and had stayed strong.

THE exam was a turning point. Not because I had performed well in it. But because I like everybody else had come out of the horrible phase. Mumbai had just seen a series of suicides in days leading to my friend's death and while I still miss him a lot, I am glad I stayed strong.

The turning point led to things I couldn't describe. I was flooded with options. Almost spoiled for it. I viewed my options well and chose the best that would suit me.

Suddenly my disillusionment with my career choice disappeared. It became much clear what I wanted to do with my career and how I would achieve it. I began working on it slowly but surely.

I made some GREAT friends in uni.Like I mentioned in the previous blog,the uni life has been nothing short of fabulous. It's more than heaven when compared to those two years. I couldn't imagine ever being this satisfied and fulfilled with my life's position and yet look forward to the future with youthful enthusiasm like never before. :D

So like I said, "From one extreme to the other". I hope it wasn't too depressing but I hope it can help anyone younger or going through a similar phase rise up. Things may often look worse when you're in that sort of phase but trust me keep faith on yourself and things will turn out MUCH MUCH better than you would have thought. I for one am glad I kept faith on myself.

MOVIES

2010 has been a pretty decent year for the movies. While we had two masterpiece movies but besides them it was a pretty mild year. Granted I didn't watch "The King's Speech" and "The Black Swan" which are two notable misses but besides that I think I pretty much watched every major movie this year.

Top 5 Movies

5) How To Train Your Dragon

4) Toy Story 3

3) True Grit

2) Inception

I think this is the popular choice for the No.1 movie of 2010 but it lands No.2 on my list. There's no doubt this is one of the most stunning movies both visually and cerebrally you'll come across. Christopher Nolan's finally perfected the art of making intense and complex psychological thrillers. This effort outdoes any of his previous effort be it in Memento or The Prestige or probably even in The Dark Knight (although it's a close call on this one :P )

1) The Social Network

I guess many of you had seen this coming. Without doubt in a year that gave us Inception, The Social Network was a true achievmeent in film-making. Fincher's perfect direction,Sorkin's perfect script (even with the added elements to spice up the rather plain autobiography) and some very well-played roles by Jesse Eisenberg and Andy Garfield (SPIDERMAN! :P )

If Inception is a modern-day film-making achievement, this is a true-to-the-roots achievement where everything from clever dialogues, intelligent script and screenplay and great camerawork combines to form probably what is the Best Movie of 2010 IMO. :D

MUSIC

I can safely say that I've listened to more music in 2010 than in any other year in my life. The music has been also a pretty determinant role in how my mood has changed (see the first half of this blog for more). I've come from listening to Joy Division and The Cure at the start of the year to Vampire Weekend and LCD Soundsystem by the end.

Regardless of what people might say I think 2010 has been a GREAT year for music. There may have been very few big impact albums but the low-fi albums aka the indie have had a smashing start to the new decade. It's been such a good year that from the Top 10, five of the albums could have been the "Album of the Year" for any other year but 2010.Yes it's been THAT good a year.

I listened to a total 36 albums released in 2010, 23 of which have been purchased by me. Two of them in their disc formats, the rest digitally.

Here's my list :

Albums of the Year

Top 10

10) "The ArchAndroid (Suites II & III)" -- Janelle Monae

Also winner of "OMG WTF award" and "Best Debut Album" award.

What WAS this?

My first thought was this is hip-hop of the future. On repeated listening that's pretty much your impressions. Combining sci-fi afro hip-hop elements with techno to create a wild and probably the most unique thing to touch the genre. WHAT a start for a debutante! :D

9) "Cosmogramma" -- Flying Lotus

Also winner of the "Trippy Music Award"

Another one for the techno lovers. This one is more on the psychedelic side jumping mid-verse into some mid-jangling beats that sends your mind into instant frenzy and then cooling it down with some ambient keyboards. Sublime.

8) "Before Today" -- Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Also winner of "The Weird Folk Award"

The album cover is misleading. So are some of the titles. The lyrics vary from existentialist notes to redemption. The music varies from hyper-energized folk music to some jazz but on excess sugar. This is music for only the select tastes. Underrated but then for a good reason I guess.

7) "This is Happening" --LCD Soundsystem

Also winner of "Best Final-NOT album" and "Critics' Pet Award"

In what was meant to be the third and supposedly the final album of one of the last decade's biggest and talented revelations, this is as James Murphy would put it blandly on a piece of paper -- LCD Soundsystem as we know them. Drawing influences from Brian Eno and David Bowie, this is some very good dance punk. I think some critics have blown the praise out of proportion for this. It's great but at times still inferior to their previous album "Sound of Silver"

At this point I would like to interject and add that the following six albums are tremendous piece of work and lasting reason why 2010 has been such a great year. They all deserve to be named Album of the Year and maybe they would have been if they hadn't all released in the same year. :P

6) "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" -- Kanye West

Also winner of "Biggest Ego-Release Album" and "Best Pop Album" and "Best Comeback Album"

Kanye came off the back of probably his worst year. Beginning with the Taylor Swift on-stage disaster, his battered media persona spiralled dramatically downward. However no matter how big a jerk or a moron or ego-maniac he might be, he is also a VERY talented music artist which means he always has a way of getting it back on everyone who bashed at him.

And what a way he gets one back on all his haters. In what is one of the best examples of grandiose pop-excess combined with innovative elements of hip-hop and some flaring rap commentary taking punches at nearly everyone that dared look at Kanye's direction in the past two years.

It features so many talented contributions and some surprise elements that it almost feels like Kanye is managing his own stage show in this album. It combines the best elements from Kanye's previous efforts, mixes it a little and then explodes literally in a royal mess that's hard to dislike. Pop at it's best in these times? Hell effin' yes.

5) "High Violet" -- The National

Also winner of "Best Minimalist Music", "Best Mellow-toned album", "Most Poignant Moment in an Album in 2010 (Conversation 16)"

Continuing The National's strong run on the back of two solid albums, High Violet in a sense reaches a peak of sorts that sees them dethrone Interpol as the "King of Post-Punk Revival" bands atleast as far as I am concerned. Armed with a very effective and soothing baritone voice of Matt Berninger and some very sombre/sad-toned strings with poignant lyrics, High Violet brought back some of the best elements of early 80s post-punk bands.It also reached No.2 on Billboard continuing indie artists' success in 2010.

4) "Contra" --Vampire Weekend

Also winner of "Best Happy-Times Music", "Best Graduation Music", "Best High-Pitched Swooning in a song by a male vocalist(The White Sky)"

Back from their strong debut, Vampire Weekend followed footsteps of Radiohead's "In Rainbows" in topping the Billboard charts despite being independently distributed. Contra sees them expand their sounds but more than expanding it's about refinement. Brash youtful enthusiasm is displayed all through the album and even on the more quieter moments in the album, Ezra Koening,the lead vocalist's high-pitched almost Morrissey-like voice shines.

3) "Halcyon Digest" --Deerhunter

Also winner of "Nostalgic Album of the Year", "Most Underrated/Ignored Album" , "Thematically Nonsense Album"

Deerhunter's fourth confirms their place as established indie band with a consistency only matched by some of the greats. Halcyon Digest sees them climb to greater heights combining some original elements of their musical $tyle with some overlapping riffs from Radiohead, Lennon-McCartney like supporting vocals and Interpol-esque atmospheric guitars. This is an album that is a must-listen. Give it a try and I am sure you won't regret it. :D

2) "Teen Dream" -- Beach House

Also winner of "Most Refined/Improved Album", "Best Indie Album", "Best Female Vocalist(Victoria Legrand)"

Beach House, the Baltimore-based duo who single-handedly revived the dream pop genre moved to studio for this album. And a clever move. Their music -- be it the guitars or the deep soothing keyboards or the dreamy vocals of Victoria sound way more focused and refined than in their earlier self-recorded albums. So much so that this is an instant cla$$ic packed with some truly memorable songs and unforgettable melodies.

1) "The Suburbs" -- Arcade Fire

Simply speechless. That was what I was the first time I finished listening to this album. Restoring the actual meaning of an "album", one of my favourite artists from the past decade outdo their efforts (almost) in this mammoth masterpiece stretching 16 songs each of them working cohesively. Every song here connects to the other not only musically but even in terms of theme at times almost making you wonder if this is a cleverly constructed stage show being managed by these talented Canadians. It got the deserved mainstream attention and I am glad for them. Arcade Fire are the next-big thing and I hope they do mainstream music some real good. Why? Because they're OMGTHISISSOAWESOMETHATITOTALLYTHINKTHISISTHEREALDEAL!! :P

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My Games section will have to wait. I still plan on getting "Vanquish" and "Red Dead Redemption" and complete them before I can successfully call it a year as far as 2010 is concerned.

Anyways, I know its a bit late but I'll still wish Happy New Year to all of you. May 2011 bring lot of happiness to you! :)

C ya

Lightwarrior179