Soulcalibur V Exciting new addition to the game series or a total letdown?

Soulcalibur V, one of the games i myself waited for a long time has at last been delivered and now it has seen few months of life in the sweaty hands of me and my fellow competitive gamer´s and the world.

So lets dive right into the game and see what it looks like on different angles.

Is it for casuals, competitive gamer´s, or single player fanatics?

The game is definitely fun for friendly couch matches and competitive gaming. But were it lacks and a lot is the single player aspects.



Singleplayer content is narrowed down to 

• Quick battle: (240) Preset AI opponents which yield tittles after you beat them
• Story mode: Uninspiring and short, the story mode leaves a lot to hope for and seems rushed and only gives you the annoying feeling that can be summarized by one sentence "seen that, done that"
• Arcade mode:You get to choose 3 different paths with different opponents, no ending videos.
• Legendary souls: A set path of very hard AI encounters.
• Character creation: A very well made character creation mode

This is not worth 60€, so if you would only buy this game for the SP content i will definitely not encourage it.

Multiplayer content consists off

• Ranked match: Well balanced leveling up system up to the rank of A from E5, now instead of loosing abundant of points if there is a gap between you and your rival on ranked match the game will actually check if the gap was against you. ie he was higher level than you = loose less points (SC IV made you loose more points if the gap was high into either dirrection. 
• Player match: Lobby size can go up to 6 players. You get to voice chat, text chat, watch the match and choose your preferred side.
• Global Colosseum: The game isn´t region locked and you can chill out at every different world location, searching for players to fight against and chat with.
• Rival System: You can register 4 rivals and you can keep track of their score and results and this way give friendly competition a nice touch
• Also: Allot of different tittles to unlock

If you are an online warrior and love these games for the online experience you should give buying it a thought might be worth your 60€

Gameplay & balance.

At the moment, after the first patch the game is looking more or less great, the developers managed to tackle problems addressed by the community right away (ie. Removing  Quick step guard and Fuzzy guard) and toning down some characters that were way to powerful ie. Natsu, Leixia, Tira


 There are problems though which will hopefully be addressed in the coming months (ie. Viola being ridiculously powerful now)


Also i cant say i´m all that happy with the back dash nerf. Moving feels a little retarded now.

Just guard: This addition to the game mechanics is more or less the new very important thing to master in this game. There are allot of things you can do with blocking strings with this mechanic, giving the difference of being on -6 disadvantage or getting a launcher onto your foe.

Brave edge: These attacks are more or less ment to be used when you are very sure you will hit your opponent with it, only few characters have viable BE moves that are hard to counter on reaction or JG

Guard Impacting: Now requires meter and is actually allot more strategical tool, when it comes to meter management you will always want to keep at least one half of a bar for a re-gi or be prepared to eat a healthy amount of punishment for getting GI:ed

Critical Edge: The usefulness of these moves varies from character to character. Some get to fill their combo damage(Mitsurugi, leixia), some get a awesome GI move(Xiba, Nightmare, dampiere), some have a dragon punch property(Hilde, Raphael, Pyrrha)

Guard Burst: An anti turtle mechanic, a more or less developed mechanic from the SC IV Critical finish.
I like how this works and its in many ways better than the system in the 4th game. Some characters are better at applying GB pressure with relatively fast moves that give hefty boost to your opponents GB value with completely safe frame values on block. When others have to use slow "blue flash" moves to apply block safe pressure which usually get JG:ed in high skilled game.


Characters and concept











Xiba, Z.W.E.I, Pyrrha, Patroklos & Natsu should die in the ever lasting flames.
Bring back Kilik, Cassandra, Sophitia, Taki.

All of the new characters are more or less just Japanese pop culture phenomenons.
We got the stereo typical
The Skunk haired EMO bad ass (not really) look = Z.W.E.I
The hungry wana be funny, pretty boy that should just die of hunger = Xiba
The over confident bitchy nothing like her master ninja pupil = Natsu
The whiny, cry happy bitch = Pyrrha
The golden haired bishi male (yuck) = Patroklos

Thats not to say some of the new characters are at least plausible, mainly only Viola being at least bearable.
And some of the old characters look well detailed and interesting; Aeon(ie lizardman), Cervantes, Nightmare, Raphael, Yoshimitsu, Mitsurugi.




Final Verdict


I hate giving games a single score because many players nowadays search for completely different things from games. So instead i will give a score for every kind of player i can think of right now.


Casual gamers (Singleplayer) 4.0/10
Casual gamers (Friends & Couch) 8.0/10
Online warriors 7.0/10
Competitive gamers 9.0/10

Game capturing and the means to do it!

The answer for my prayers is here! And for all you fellow readers who have wished to record your gaming on your Xbox360, PS3 or Wii.

The product I´m talking about is of course the new AVersMedia product "Game capture HD" (C281)

The simplicity and ease of use is what makes this piece of electronics shine the most, and the quality of the captured content can speak for itself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6_6gyYfrME

This linked youtube video was made by me while using the product. capturing with 720p HD resolution.

Resolution cap goes up to 1080i only down side being the fact that some games don´t support this output and only use 1080p which this device cant handle.

Game capture HD also has tons of cool functions like
- Screen caps
- Instant replay
- Possibility to record real time commentary with USB head set
- Slow mode with mass screen capping to find the perfect shot


So how does this thing work?

Everything except the hard disk is included in the set. You can use external or internal hard drive even and USB storage stick to save your capped material.

Setting up this baby from the box takes only about 15minutes and you really don´t need to be any tech wiz to figure it out as the box comes with a very simple 8 step guide.

The hard drive I´m using with the device is an External 1TB WesternDigital with USB 3.0 and so far I´ve had no complications.

So how much did I pay for this?

Well of course its not going to be super cheap. It is quite a new piece of technology and first of its kind in the market that gives this easy way to cap material from consoles. All in all the purchase costed me around 300 € that includes my external Hard disk. but if you already have such luxuries you can get it with around 136€ = 176$

So it really isn´t anything "huge" as an investment. 

I´m giving it a 9.0/10

Heres a link to the Game capture HD´s mini site

http://www.avermedia.com/avertv/upload/c281/swf/index.html

Assassin´s Creed Revelation

Assassin´s Creed in my opinion is one of the greatest story driven game series of our time, easily on par with series like Metal Gear Solid.

The game series is a wonderful mix of all the following element: Puzzle solving, action, stealth, history, conspiracy.
If you don´t know about the game series or what the main plot revolves around,  here´s a small synopsis.

The game is set into the year 2011 were human DNA can be explored through machines called "ANIMUS". Your character is a person that has left a group called Assassin and is now targeted by a certain antagonistic group called the Templars. These two groups have waged war for thousands of years against each other so that their vision of the future would come to being. The major events that unfold in the game world are revealed through your protagonist  visiting his ancestor´s memories through ANIMUS simulation program which can make i´ts subjects re-live memories locked in their DNA.

If you haven´t played the earlier games from the series and want to avoid spoilers discontinue reading right now. As for "Revelation" i will do my best to not spoil anything from it.

So how does this "Filler" & "Story arc ender" pan out in the end? Lets dive right into the subject!

What has changed?
The game has gone through some very interesting changes and it shows that the development team is doing i´ts best to keep the game fresh and new.

The game keeps everything you loved from the earlier parts: hidden gun, crossbow, poison darts, parachutes, assassins, huge range of different weapons and all that you´ve learned to rely on.

In addition to the old you have some new impressive things to use and/or  look out for in your mission to fulfill your creed.

BOMB´S!

Yes you had your smoke bombs before but now... now you´ve got skunk bombs, lamb blood bombs, sound bombs, poison bombs... BOMB´S BOMB´S BOMB´S! nearly 100 different mix of bombs in this new bomb crafting mode.

The development team has done a great work making a lot of different tactics for players to use in the game with this addition to the weapons range.

HOOKBLADE!


The new extension of your arm. This blade can be used for multiple purposes including: zip-line travel, extended climb reach, hook´n run and some other nifty tricks. Its a fun new element which you can´t get enough of.

ENEMY ARCHETYPE


The enemy archetypes have gone through a nice change. Now that gun powder has been invented for mass use, Ezio finds out some enemies have invested into armor that can withstand bullets and the gun isn´t a one shot kill weapon anymore all though the poison still works as one. There are new moves which you will need to take use of when fighting certain enemy types like counter throw. One of the "toughest" enemy types in the game are called Janissaries which need the most tactical approach in melee with careful reading to counter their gun shots, dodge their attacks and kick to gain advantage.

ASSASSIN DENS


The game now has dens which can be captured and afterwards inhabited by your assassins which you will train in the course of the game to become master assassins. And with this addition comes a towerdefender type of minigame were templars are trying to recapture the dens. This mode is a ton of fun and tactical enough to keep you developing new strategies for it.

FIRST PERSON PUZZLES


Each Assassins Creed has had some puzzles (disregarding the first) this time around you will be hunting animus data fragments to unlock 5 different first person platforming puzzles which each delve into Desmonds memories. The puzzles are fun but short in quantity and you will feel like it wasn´t enough compared to the older games.

So what else has changed?

Now to be honest nothing else has changed from the other games that much. Setting is different like always with allot of awesome historical details and scenery. You get to hunt 100 objects in the map this time called animus data fragments. You have 10 memoir pages which unlock the dungeon for the best armor in the game. There are allot of things to buy and renovate just like in brotherhood which all though is time consuming still manages to be pretty fun.

What about the story?

This is the part I find the newest part of the game lacking. The historical settings is nice and the characters are intriguing and fun but the actual progression of the main plot "Desmonds story" is minimal to the point its obvious the game is a filler. You wont learn anything new that you wouldn´t already have managed to put together with the information revealed in brotherhood and AC 2. Ofcourse this doesn´t mean that the story fails entirely because it still succeeds to bring  an end to the story arc of both Altaire and Ezio which is epic in its own right and managed to give me goosebumps.

So... Should you buy this game?

The game still manages to tell you just enough to make it a must buy for any Assassins Creed fan. All though it lacks in some departments its still a good game and worth your money.

My history with Mortal Kombat

Where would i start?

Alright time for a small history recap regarding my experience with this particular video game franchise. The first  game I played from this series was Mortal Kombat II (SNES). I must have been no more than 2nd or 3rd grader in primary school when my dad decided to buy this game for himself. So more or less me, my dad and my big brother all got really into it. I played Raiden&Scorpion back then having a ton of fun, mostly having allot of epic matches against my brother doing the legendary sub zero versus scorpion match ups. We really didn´t know any fatalities but it was always awesome to get the AI to do them on rare occasions and always would our mother come out in the room being angry about the fatalities. Yes you guessed it she wasn´t happy about this game, always being very mad regarding the fact you could punch women in the game or even worse do a fatality. Now don´t get me wrong my mother isn´t a feminist but all of us three brothers grew up in a house hold where we were taught certain courtesies towards women and our mother just didn´t want us to grow up as women beating assholes. (Classic parental exaggeration regarding video games effects at that decade)

Next up was UMK III which had the great feature (Ultima demonstration)  If you have played the game you will sure as hell know what im talking about and you can also guess how happy our mother was regarding this small feature in the game. Anyway we continued to play UMK3 for a long long time before forgetting it and migrating to other games. Afterwards there begun a long break from MK games we had all but forgotten about the game series because there where allot of new great games spawning out on our high school years. At some point our parents bought us a Sega Dreamcast (Unfortunate souls that bought it just before they announced it was going out of development)  That console really did have potential with great game series like Shenmue. (please continue this series through PSN dear god PLEASE)  Back to the point, we got our Sega Dreamcast and bought MK4 (Named Mortal kombat Gold) for it and we were instantly hooked again, first time did we get that great MK feeling  with all new 3D models and awesomely new brutal fatalities with the epic quan chis leg smack down (God that was awesome)  This game had our souls devoured for almost two years we just kept coming back for it and having EPIC (scrub) matches.

The bad years, MK had allot of them. MK4 was great in its own right but it  changed midways strategy for the next games in a horrible twisted way. Changing the game to completely 3D coupled with side steps and all that shit (Deadly alliance) was that small poison which in the end nearly destroyed the game series. Sure games where trying to find ways to change themselves to be fresh. So what started as a one bad step by Midway  soon continued on as a full marathon of bad calls. God only knows why Midway didn´t listen to its fans and revert back to 2D earlier and kept spawning these broken bad games. Well in the end all it took was Warner Bros buying them off and starting up Nether Realm studios which has proceeded to spawn one of the greatest games ever in the series of MK. The game that I now have such love for that I´ve started to play on competitive level.

Later on I will delve more into Mortal kombat (9) The greatest reboot of the decade.

Dead Island first hour imperssion

9.9.2011, The day I was supposed to get Dead island was a grim one. The game wasn´t delivered and I was pretty much ripping my hair out and getting frustrated. There was a huge mix up with the importer which supplies Finland´s internet stores and because of that the first batch of dead island games for consoles went missing.

So after making excessive amount of calls and e-mails I was left with the following information.
"We are receiving the game batch on 15.9 but we might not get enough of the copies for everyone that had ordered and some have to wait till 25.9"


I was a bit late myself on the pre-order having made my order on 6.9 and of course I was panicking and being completely sure I wasn´t getting my copy from the first batch. Needless to say I was wrong and extremely happy about it. My own copy came with the morning mail today and now I have played the game for 1 hour and decided to log my first impressions.

First things first, you can turn the "Name/Hp/Level/Damage" indicators off. Halle-fucking-luja! This was one of my first fears regarding the games immersion value and now that I´ve seen the game without those atrocities Im more in love with it than ever before.

The melee fighting is like I thought well-modeled. If I was to compare it to some other game I would have to go with fallout new vegas, except that this ones allot more refined and fluid. From the character roster I tried out Sam B and as far as I´ve played the character hasn´t had any specific dialog just some phrases on certain cut-scenes. I cant stress how fun it is to play with this character, mabye its just me and my love for the game GTA San Andreas which has definitely made me enjoy gangsta styled characters.

Graphics are in my opinion great, sure they aren´t top notch but well above my standards for a game to look good.

Multiplayer seems to be implemented well, you can join up with people just with a click of a button and making a private game were only your friends can join is possible as well and quite easy to do.

So these are my first words on the game, I will be making a more thorough piece on it later on when I´ve actually played it more

MMORPG´s the easy way to reward your brain

The feeling of accomplishment, every single human being gets it from somewhere. It might be gardening, racing, painting, debating, competitions, getting a killer job from that local business giant, but one thing is in common. Everyone needs it to feel fulfilled and happy.

For some time now there has been a relatively easy way to achieve this "high" to be exact 14 years. And yes i am talking about MMORPG´s(Massive multiplayer online roleplaying game) which started innocently enough with Ultima online back in 1997 and later on got popularized by Everquest which in a short time led to a myriad of new ones spawning all over the internet. The World of warcraft(WoW) taking the lead as the most successful one by far. What these games give you as a human being is a virtual world bursting with ways to activate the brains pleasure system. These games are made easy to approach and learn so that anyone can play them and get relatively good. It starts up as you as a player being a lowly ranked (level 1) internet avatar with basic skills and poor equipment. The main goal is to rank up (level up) your avatar while gathering new equipment for him/her to wear. The way you can do this is represented in different forms, you might do quests where you go on hunting for certain monsters/items or bigger challenges where you co-op for bigger and better rewards. One thing though is always in common with these games, only a very small portion of the players at any time get to the point where the game cant offer anymore rewards. Mostly this is due to the constant updating of the virtual world with new "better" rewards. The reason for this is to create an infinite loop of you as a player giving the game developers money while they supply you with a relatively cheap "drug".

 I myself have played couple of MMORPG´s during my gaming career with most of the time spent into WoW. I started playing the game in 2007 when the first expansion pack came out. The game offered all the stimulation for my brain I had gotten from other video games and it was giving it with a constant feed. No more need for new games all you needed to do was pay 12€ each month and you were good to go. I was enthralled by this games "cheap" novelty (because lets face it that´s what it pretty much is in the end). The years went by and I was giving less and less time for the console games I had loved so much before and found myself playing WoW for all the time I had for my hobbies. Why you ask? because it was easy, I always had the computer on anyway so it was just as easy to boot it up as it was to start any console game I had. The deciding factor which always led me to play this games was its lack of need for excessive brain usage. Now don´t get me wrong I by no means imply that the games end content is something that doesn´t require brains, but what I am saying is that the things you find yourself doing the most in this game (Gathering resources, reputation, gold, gear) are in the end so repetitive you could do them with your mind drifting to a zombie like state. Not to mention there are no save points while doing these daily routines, you can just drop it when ever you like and come back to continue where you left off.

So now you might ask yourself, what is this guy trying to point out? That i shouldn´t play MMORPG`s anymore? No that is definitely not the point i am going for here. My own honest opinion regarding MMO´s is actually positive. The purpose of this entry is to make you think as a player, are you missing out on games that could give you more satisfaction or perhaps another "high" entirely different from games altogether. Go experiment and don´t let yourself get way to immersed into the loop hole that is MMO gaming.

Sandbox games not your slice of pie?

From time to time I meet up with people that share one common opinion, they don´t like sandbox games.
Why does one hate this genre of games? I often ask myself that question, and now I´m going to dwelve right into the subject.

Lets start our small thesis with a well known game [Fallout 3] This game came out from bethesda softworks on 2008 and was highly anticipated by fallout fans and bethesda´s own fanbase. The game world is huge and has so much content it might actually be impossible for one person to find every single item/detail in it without relying on wiki sites or strategy guides. Some people like me for example love this kind of "never ending" games where you can actually use up to an 30min-2hours just checking out a single city district. So what makes it so hard for some people to approach these games? There are numerous reasons i´ve herd which i will now list.

1. Game has no clear ending 
2. The game world is huge and thus its intimidating and players don´t know where to start
3. The time these games make you consume is shocking
4. The fear of getting to immersed
5. OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) game gives to much stress for people with this disorder

Sometimes the reasons are alot more simple (hate the games theme, graphics, slow pace, lack of CGI cut-scenes  etc.)

Now which steps could one take to start appreciating this genre of games and lose his prejudice? Here are few points I usually hand out to people I get to debate about weather the games are good or bad.

1. If you intend to play a sandbox game you should have at least 2 hours of free time for each session
2. Take your time, treat each new area as a "level" the objective is to inspect it thoroughly 
3. Listen to each dialog and immerse yourself with your character it makes the game allot more enjoyable
4. Do not cheat the game, don´t visit wikis instead just concentrate and try your best to solve the problems yourself its way more gratifying than running to your computer and checking the wiki over and over again. Use them only when absolutely necessary

Of course its highly possible that you as a person just aren´t looking for these elements in your games, in that case there is nothing else i can tell you. But if you haven´t played any of them before i highly recommend you to give these following games a try (Fallout 3, Fallout:NV, Elderscroll III:Morrowind, Elderscroll IV:Oblivion, Dead island, GTA IV, GTA San Andreas)