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Muramasa Rebirth

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/10/2014
Posted in: Editor's Choice, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Marvelous AQL, Aksys Games

Developer: Vanillaware

Release Date: 6/25/2013


Available Exclusively On

  • psvita

Muramasa was a highly acclaimed Wii game from Vanillaware of Odin Sphere (and now) Dragon’s Crown fame. It had high speed and fancy fight moves but was extremely challenging and had memorable characters. It now makes its transfer to Vita in HD with bright gorgeous graphics and two whole storylines to play through.

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I played through Momohime’s (Peach Princess) storyline so my experience is based on that. Momohime is possessed by a spirit who wants the infamous Demon Blade and will cut anyone down in her path. She goes from Hell to Heaven and even cuts down gods. The game is 90% combat and man are it tough and fun. You can equip three different blades at once and switch between them with a triangle. When your blades are flashing you can press triangle to unleash a powerful full-screen attack. Each blade has its own special power which is key to winning hard fights. If you use the blade too much or block too often the blade will break and you will need to switch to a different one and wait for it to recharge. You can use whetstones to hasten this, but as you level up and forge new weapons they will break less often.

This is basically all there is to combat: You press the attack or use special powers combined with directions. It may seem simple but the game is so tough you can’t just button mash. You have to use strategy mixing up dodges, blocking, and special and regular attacks. The game constantly kept me on my toes and I had to learn every boss’s moves and sometimes restarted dozens of times. When I finally beat a boss it was so satisfying. In between, there’s some platforming and item hunting but you travel from locale to locale and get stopped by fights between each screen. I had a lot of navigating the gorgeous environments and even stopping to shop for health items and various other ones to help out in fights.

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One other small feature is being able to cook with items you find. These are used to heal you which you will use often. Always make sure you are stocked on health items or you will never make it through the game. Outside of all the fighting, the dialogue is interesting and the Japanese voice acting is fantastic. The characters are memorable (I have already purchased a $145 figure of Kongiku) and you will stay hooked. With two stories to play through, there’s a lot of content here.

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Vanillaware is known for its unique high-fantasy mixed with the ancient Japanese art style and it really shines here. The game pops to life on the Vita’s OLED screen and just makes your eyes water it looks so crisp. The controls are perfect and extremely responsive, honestly, even though this is a port, it’s one of the best Vita games available right now. That makes two Vanillaware games on one system. If you love 2D games or action hack and slash games this is a must-buy.

Soul Sacrifice

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/20/2013
Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: SCEA

Developer: SCE Japan Studio

Release Date: 4/30/2013


Available Exclusively On

  • psvita

Soul Sacrifice is one of those games that looks cool but when you start playing you will be completely lost for a while. The game starts out with you being captured and put into a cage with bones everywhere. A book wakes you up and starts talking to you. It’s a journal of a mad sorcerer, and he later explains you need to stop this powerful sorcerer, but in the meantime, you need to level up, gather strong weapons, and learn about his past. The story never really pans out and it is just stretched so thin that you lose track of what’s going on. The presentation is interesting with literal storybook pages and an ominous narrator, but I would have liked something more.

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You basically just select a mission and it will tell you what you’re supposed to kill. There are tons of fantastic and memorable lore wrapped around every enemy and battlefield. These stories read out like Grimm’s Fairy Tales and I was really hooked and couldn’t wait to read the next one. The enemy designs are really neat and unique as well as the bosses. You can customize your character’s looks, albeit not by much, and then it’s off to equip your weapons. Weapons are arranged in several categories of armor, arm, blood, power, shield, etc. You get weapons why defeating monsters and they are awarded to you. These weapons can be combined with dupes to give you a higher cast count, or they can be fused into new weapons. This is a great idea if the game didn’t constantly throw crappy weapons at you. Halfway through the game and I was still dying several times per boss because I just couldn’t get any powerful weapons. It’s like they all did very little damage. Some bosses and enemies are weaker to certain elements and types. Some bosses you can’t get up close to at all so you need powerful projectile weapons. If you don’t know that going in, you have to restart and re-equip. This trial and error are frustrating and one of Soul Sacrifice’s many flaws.

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If that wasn’t enough you are limited by how much you can use each item. You can equip up to six different weapons for each match. Some can be passive for healing, but if you run out of casts you break your weapon and it’s gone forever. You have to use a special vision mode to find hidden regen points for your weapons but they are limited. Several times I ran out of casts for all my weapons and had to restart because I couldn’t beat the boss. Thankfully a special sacrifice power allows you to do massive damage but at the cost of sacrificing something. One power lets you burn everything around you but your skin becomes burned and your defense is halved. To get rid of these conditions you need Librom’s tears and these are only granted every so often by exiting the book and checking his eye. A neat idea, but frustrating nonetheless.

That’s the combat and that is the sole focus of the game. It’s great and fun at first, but very frustrating and monotonous early on. You just fight the same types of battles over and over again and the same enemies as well. The only thing keeping you going on is to see more of the story. I honestly got tired of the side quests and just stuck with the story to get it over with. Another major part of the game is leveling up your health or magic. You can sacrifice or save enemies after they fall by holding L or R. This is a unique idea, but you can be stunned and killed while doing this. Your teammate can fall and you have to resurrect them or sacrifice them for a boost. Once you do this you need Librom’s tears to bring them back. They can revive you thankfully, but many times they died right when I did or vice versa. There’s also an online co-op to solve this issue which really helps, but most people aren’t going to do this.

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As it is, Soul Sacrifice suffers from constant repetition and a lack of polish. Not having powerful enough weapons, lackluster customization features, and a weak story kind of hurt this game. The graphics are fantastic, but that isn’t what makes a game good. I was hoping for more variety and more of a cinematic story, not a menu drove battle selector. If this game had more variety and something else besides killing the same enemies forever it would have been one of Vita’s best games.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/11/2013
Posted in: Gamecube, Microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Xbox. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: EA

Developer: EA LA

Release Date: 11/11/2003


Also Available On

  • xbox1
  • ngc

Pearl Harbor was one of the worst terrorist attacks on the US and was what got us involved in World War II. EA decided to leave the frontlines of Europe and head to Hawaii at Pearl Harbor and into the Japanese and Philippine frontlines. It’s a nice change of scenery, especially back in the day when WWII shooters were coming out nearly every day. The problem is, Rising Sun is a reskin of Frontline with a lack of polish, and detail, and just doesn’t feel complete. Rising Sun needed about 6 months more of development before being anything remotely decent. What we have here is a sluggish, boring, and mediocre shooter, probably one of the worst shooters of 2003.

The game actually starts out pretty nicely. The bombing of Pearl Harbor feels epic in this game, you are just a nobody sailor who gets woken up by the bombings. After you see the poorly pre-rendered cutscene you start controlling your guy and it feels very similar to Frontline, too similar. Right off the bat, you realize the control issues haven’t changed. The aiming is really sensitive and finicky, there are no iron sights aiming, and the controls just suck still. Once you run around the boat trying to escape your notice you can save at checkpoints. This is actually one of the only two major issues that were fixed from Frontline. The missions are very long and you no longer have to start at the beginning of every level when you die.

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Once you get out you notice the framerate is worse than Frontline. The FPS drops to single digits often and it actually affects gameplay. Trying to shoot someone when the game is chugging along at 5 frames a second is nearly impossible. It doesn’t help that the aiming is already wonky. The change of pace, in the beginning, using the turret on the boat and shooting down planes is fun, I also have to mention that the only great part of Rising Sun is the music. Medal of Honor has a fantastic score across all the WWII games, but Rising Sun needs more than that to save it.

Once you start the next level you realize the game is just so bad. The level design is abysmal with confusing mazes, it was cute for EA to try to make you feel like you have multiple paths but you really don’t. It just makes things more confusing. There are also secondary hidden objectives this time around but they are nearly impossible to figure out, hell even the regular objectives are hard to figure out. Items don’t flash so you can’t tell if it’s part of the scenery or something you need to interact with. Most of the time you just get lucky when a prompt comes up on the screen when you pass something.

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I like the new selection of weapons, the shotgun, Type 99, Sten MKII, and a few other Pacific Theatre weapons. That’s probably the only other great change from Frontline, but the guns control so horribly that you won’t care. The most annoying part of Rising Sun is the forced and failed implementation of stealth. During one of the last few levels, you get recruited into the OSS and have to infiltrate a Japanese summit at a hotel. The game gives you the Welrod which is a one-shot silenced pistol. Sure that’s fine, but Rising Sun wasn’t built for stealth. I shot the first few people silently then all of a sudden I was being attacked. I had to run around the whole level with just a pistol and the Welrod. Not very fun. The hints say to stick to the shadows and stay in the column areas. Yeah, sure what shadows? The stealth is just completely broken, but at least healing items give you more health so the game is a bit easier in that regard.

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Let’s finally talk about graphics, the game is butt ugly, even uglier than Frontline. During the jungle levels, the devs just put a flat texture of a forest on the walls. Yeah, good jobs you lazy jerks. The game is just ugly and is so unpolished. The events in the game are so unbelievable that it’s hard to think that these things actually happened. Did I mention there’s still no blood? The last thing to go is the terrible AI. The friendly AI just stands there while they’re being shot and completely ignore enemies, the multiplayer is also as boring as ever.

Rising Sun sold millions of copies, but couldn’t live up to the quality of the previous game. With ugly graphics, horrible framerate, terrible AI, bad level design, and various other issues, Rising Sun stands as one of the worst games in the series.

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault – 9 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/07/2013
Posted in: PC Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: EA

Developer: EA LA

Release Date: 11/4/2004


Available Exclusively On

  • pc

2004 was a year when WWII games were at their peak, Rising Sun was a huge disappointment, so EA went after the Pacific theater again with Pacific Assault. The game was much better than Rising Sun and was a graphical showcase. It pushed PCs to their limits back then and was a solid shooter. The only problem was that it didn’t advance the series’ formula at all and was just another shooting gallery. It did have some great cinematic moments and showed what Medal of Honor could really do on better hardware. The consoles couldn’t handle what Pacific Assault was able to do so it remained the last PC-exclusive MoH game.

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The game starts out with the storming of Ottawa Atoll Beach on November 20, 1943, 8 months before the French D-Day that is so famous. The game takes you through the jungles of Japan in some pretty gnarly guerrilla warfare. There’s lush flora on your way, and the Pacific theater was a huge change of scenery from all the European battles everyone was tired of. Many new weapons were introduced like the Japanese weapons and some others like the Riot Gun. One scene has you carrying an MG to set up an ambush along a river. You can pick it up and move it. It’s nice to see things like this in WWII games but there just isn’t enough like that.

Most of the campaign was just endless jungles and disabling this machine gun nest, eliminating those patrols. It repeated over and over for about 6-8 hours. The one mission where you were on a plane was nice because you controlled the rear MG and then took over the plane itself. The controls were a bit hard to get used to because the whole thing is controlled with just the mouse. The game was relentlessly difficult like all Medal of Honor games. You couldn’t refill your plane’s health so if you died you restarted the entire level or your last quick save. The checkpoints are spread very far apart sorely on constantly quick saving otherwise you will be angry. I also didn’t like the default control setup. Aiming was done with Left Alt and melee was done with the right mouse button. What kind of controls are those?! I had to change them manually.

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The game is also full of bugs and glitches. Most were patched but some still exist. The game crashes every so often, friendly AI gets in your way to where you can’t advance and have to enable the developer console and use no clip to get through them. The biggest issue is that you have a health bar and can’t refill it with health packs. Once you die a corpsman will come to heal you if you’re lucky. They only came sometimes and I died often because of the stupid AI. Why not give me health packs like older MoH games? With that aside, the weapons feel great to shoot and the action is solid. There’s a lot going on screen, but the framerate can’t keep up with the action. Back in the day, everyone thought it was because the engine pushed PCs too hard, now that PCs are way more advanced it’s just the engine. I got 60 FPS most of the time then suddenly it dropped below 20 for no reason.

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Pacific Assault is a solid shooter, and if you missed out on this try it out. Almost any computer can run this game these days, so there’s no excuse not to. Pacific Assault is also one of the better Medal of Honor games and really advanced the series past the dated gameplay from Rising Sun and back.

History of History: World War II Shooters: Medal of Honor Series

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/02/2013
Posted in: Blogs, History of History: World War II. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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Medal of Honor pretty much kickstarted the World War II first-person shooter way back in 1999. It is the longest-running World War II series, but also one of the worst. It did really well early on and just lost focus and sight on what made the series great. The series did make revolutionary leaps and bounds for the shooter genre in general, especially with Frontline, it changed the way we play shooters today. Like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor gave PC owners special treatment early on because it was the only platform that could handle the visuals the game wanted to achieve. Medal of Honor supported PC more than Call of Duty did early on, but later switched to consoles only because that’s where the money was at. As you will see, Medal of Honor was once a great series, and even to this day, is one of the most hated shooter series in existence.

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Medal of Honor

Release Date: 10/31/1999 — PS1

GameRankings: PS1: 87%

Sales: 2,670,000

Medal of Honor was revolutionary because it really pushed the PS1 at the end of its life cycle and was one of the last great games for the system. Being so authentic and delivering a great WWII experience was nothing that older games like Wolfenstein could do. The guns felt great to shoot, and the atmosphere was spectacular. Of course, it wasn’t anything like later games with massive assaults and explosions everywhere, but it got the job done and is still an enjoyable shooter today. Little did everyone know that the series would go on for 15 years and continue to fail release after release. Medal of Honor was a huge seller and was one of the most sold PS1 games of all time. This alone is the reason why it went on for so long. It is also one of the most sold WWII games of all time.

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Medal of Honor: Underground

Release Date: 10/23/2000 — PS1

GameRankings: PS1: 85%

Sales: 970,000

After the first game received such high acclaim EA went at it again with a direct sequel. It was just as fantastic and improved the visuals even more on the dated console with the PS2 on the horizon and the powerful Dreamcast already out on the market. Fans still bought the game because it rose the sales charts along with the next-generation games. People were starting to wonder if the series could change much on next-generation consoles and what else it could offer. There’s only so much you can do in a WWII shooter. It wasn’t the million-copy seller like the first game, but it still had a huge following.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

Release Date: 1/20/2002 — PC

GameRankings: PC: 91%

Sales: Unknown

While being the most highly acclaimed Medal of Honor game to date, it was for a reason. The game was so cinematic and was beyond what anyone expected since seeing Underground on PS1. The game had huge explosions, amazing visuals that were a graphics card seller and a benchmark game at the time. With 2001 being a quiet year with no MoH insight, this date was highly anticipated for PC owners, but console owners were angry wondering when their shiny new PS2 would get a Medal of Honor treatment, it was right around the corner.

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Medal of Honor: Frontline

Release Date: 5/28/2002 — PS2

GameRankings: PS2: 86%

Sales: 6,830,000

Frontline was deemed the last great Medal of Honor game. I remember borrowing this from a friend and being blown away by the D-Day level when the game opens up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Explosions everywhere, gunfire, artillery hitting the water, it was cinematic and surreal. PS2 owners got the game first and didn’t come out on Xbox and GC until later in the year. What was here was probably one of the finest World War II shooters ever made, but with Call of Duty on the horizon would people be able to handle two different shooters at the same time? Would EA continue to pump out quality WWII shooters? Only time would tell. Frontline is probably the most sold WWII game of all time. The series in total sold nearly 9 million copies, which was a lot back then. Frontline helped propel Medal of Honor to make future games.

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Medal of Honor: Frontline

Release Date: 11/10/2002 — Xbox, NGC

GameRankings: Xbox, NGC: 78%

Sales:

Xbox: 1,490,000

NGC: 590,000

Being released just 6 months after the PS2 game, it wasn’t received very well. Frontline became a PS2 console seller and Frontline promised multiplayer updated graphics and 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. It was one impressive package and was as close as you got to HD gaming back then, but everyone was already getting tired of the WWII genre. Allied Assault was blowing PC gamers away and this new Call of Duty was just around the corner with more Medal of Honor games for the holiday season.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead

Release Date: 11/11/2002 — PC

GameRankings: PC: 75%

Sales: Unknown

With Frontline out and Allied Assault released just 10 months prior, PC gamers were ready for an expansion. Spearhead was solid but was criticized for being too short and not offering much news for the series. The expansion was solid but just didn’t do enough news to wow players into thinking it was the best shooter out still. Would the next expansion do what Spearhead didn’t? No one knew. With Battlefield 1942 being released most PC gamers moved on to that series and were quickly crowning it as the best multiplayer shooter at the time, how could MoH compete?

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Medal of Honor: Underground

Release Date: 12/2/2002 — GBA

GameRankings: GBA: 49%

Sales: 80,000

With handhelds still not being very powerful, the GBA was about as powerful as they came and really the only handheld around. Underground couldn’t translate its 3D graphics over so what did it do? Try to force it making it one of the ugliest GBA games ever made. Being the first portable outing for Medal of Honor was tough and Nintendo fans were quickly let down. It wasn’t just bad, it was just downright ugly. The graphics were colorful pixelated rainbows of washed-out nonsense. You couldn’t tell what anything was and it just played badly. Nintendo fans quickly learned that FPS games just didn’t work on the GBA. I feel sorry for all 80,000 souls who bought the game.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Breakthrough

Release Date: 9/22/2003 — PC

GameRankings: PC: 68%

Sales: Unknown

With no MoH games being released during 2003 fans were wondering what was going on. Allied Assault fans were getting bored with Spearhead and countless delays pushed Breakthrough back. Upon release, fans were highly disappointed that it didn’t deliver not only on the greatness of Spearhead, but didn’t add anything new or interesting. In fact, Breakthrough was better off not being released at all. It was just more of the same and fans were really bored of the series by now. Medal of Honor hit a rut in 2003 and never seemed to get out of it. With Battlefield 1942’s expansion out as well fans quickly forgot about Allied Assault and moved on.

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Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Release Date: 11/11/2003 — PS2, Xbox, NGC

GameRankings: PS2: 69%

NGC: 68%

Xbox: 62%

Sales:

PS2: 5,130,000

Xbox: 1,170,000

NGC: 420,000

Nearly 18 months later the highly anticipated Rising Sun was released following Frontline. Being based on the Pearl Harbor assault from Japan it promised to finally do something new for the series, but really just felt like an expansion to Frontline. It was also highly unpolished and just didn’t feel as spectacular as Frontline. This was one of the first signs of EA pumping out new MoH games to get sales. It was becoming quantity over quality and it showed in Rising Sun. I actually remember renting this and not really noticing much of a difference from Frontline and really enjoyed it, but if I were to go back now I would notice. 2003 was a sad year for MoH, nearly a year of waiting for bad games. Despite the game getting poor reviews, it went on to sell nearly as much as Frontline. Rising Sun is one of the best-selling WWII games of all time.

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Medal of Honor: Infiltrator

Release Date: 11/17/2003 — GBA

GameRankings: GBA: 81%

Sales: 150,000

Wow, hold the phone! A good MoH game came out in 2003 but it was on the GBA? No way! Learning from their mistake with Underground EA made this from the ground up and was a top-down shooter. It had excellent graphics and provided the MoH experience everyone loved. This would also go on to be the best MoH handheld game and one of the last great games in the series. It was praised for mixing what everyone loved about MoH with cartoony shooters that were popular on GBA at the time. There were even a few FPS sections that were done right. It sold fairly well for a GBA game, but EA decided it didn’t sell well enough.

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Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault

Release Date: 11/4/2004 — PC

GameRankings: PC: 79%

Sales: Unknown

2004 was a slow year for MoH. After all, the harsh reception of the games for 2003 EA played it slowly from here on out, yet kept delivering games no one wanted. 2004/2005 was a year when WWII was at its peak and kept slamming our systems with endless WWII shooters. Pacific Assault returned to PCs and was exclusive to make PC fans happy. The game was well-received for actually doing something new and bringing us to the Pacific theatre of the war and being very cinematic. It also pushed PCs to their max requiring GPU upgrades yet again. Pacific Assault would be the last PC exclusive Medal of Honor.

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Medal of Honor: European Assault

Release Date: 6/7/2005 — PS2, Xbox, NGC

GameRankings: PS2, Xbox: 73%

NGC: 72%

Sales: 

PS2: 1,880,000

Xbox: 530,000

NGC: 250,000

2005 was the peak of WWII shooters and European Assault was the only release for Medal of Honor. It was praised for trying something new by giving you multiple paths and feeling very solid, the game knew what it was doing. The only issue was that it was the same game we’ve played dozens of times already. How many times can we replay Operation Market Garden or some other part of the war? By now they all felt the same, just shoot every German that passes on screen. The MoH releases start trickling down at this point while Call of Duty is in full force. The Xbox 360 is due out in just 5 months and the highly anticipated Call of Duty 2 comes out just three months from now, how can Medal of Honor keep up? Despite the mediocre reviews, the game sold surprisingly well with over 2 million copies sold.

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Medal of Honor Heroes

Release Date: 10/20/2006 — PSP

GameRankings: PSP: 69%

Sales: 2,570,000

EA beat Activision to the punch for releasing a WWII shooter on the PSP. 2006 was another slow year for Medal of Honor. Call of Duty was unleashed on next-generation consoles while everyone was wondering if Medal of Honor had finally died. Heroes were praised for controlling well on PSP and looking very good, but it was really short and offered nothing new from previous games in the series. It was a hit with PSP fans and went on to have a sequel less than a year later. It seems that PSP owners were desperate for a good shooter because it was one of the best selling PSP games, and best selling MoH games in a long time. The high sales garnered a sequel.

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Medal of Honor: Vanguard

Release Date: 3/26/2007 — PS2, Wii

GameRankings: PS2: 64%

Wii: 57%

Sales: 

Wii: 60,000

PS2: 30,000

2007 was a confusing year for Medal of Honor. While every next-generation console was out, they were still making games for the dated PS2. Why Vanguard was released is beyond anyone’s guess. It didn’t need to exist, yet did so anyway. The game was literally just the same WWII shooter that everyone was sick of and sold poorly, in fact, most people forgot this game even existed. It was lost in the next-generation hits that were being released. This was the first Medal of Honor game on Wii and suffered from terrible controls. The genre was slowly petering out, yet Medal of Honor kept trying to cling on like a desperate lover. It showed that gamers just didn’t want Medal of Honor anymore, the game sold less than 100,000 copies and was the worst-selling MoH game of all time.

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Medal of Honor: Airborne

Release Date: 9/4/2007 — PS3, X360, PC

GameRankings: PC: 77%

PS3: 76%

X360: 74%

Sales:

PS3: 1,110,00

X360: 1,040,000

PC: 20,000

EA finally released their one and only next-generation WWII shooter and was considered one of the worst. The game was literally the same again just prettier. It got everyone’s attention because it looked fantastic, but no one cared. It tried an “open environment” approach by allowing you to drop down anywhere on the map and pursue objectives as you please. The issue was that the game was extremely difficult and sent dozens upon dozens of enemies after you when you couldn’t stand a chance, it didn’t help that the weapons were highly inaccurate. By now EA finally got the hint, but they needed one last hoopla for 2007. The graphics were a main selling point for the game and it sold surprisingly well, however not nearly as much as older games in the series.

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Medal of Honor Heroes 2

Release Date: 11/13/2007 — PSP, Wii

GameRankings: Wii: 74%

PSP: 69%

Sales:

PSP: 1,110,000

Wii: 390,000

The final Medal of Honor WWII shooter went out on the Wii with great success. It was fun on rails arcade shooter, but in the end, was exactly the same as the rest. The PSP version wasn’t well-liked because the Wii version was superior thanks to the motion controls. Heroes 2 was just another WWII shooter that no one asked for though, the series should have died three years prior. The series kept proving to everyone that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and kept forcing its way onto shelves like a bully. PSP fans just ate the game up, but only sold half of what the first Heroes game sold.

The Medal of Honor WWII series sold over 30 million copies making it the second best-selling WWII franchise of all time, just a few million shy of Call of Duty. It was a juggernaut that gave EA billions of dollars. In the end Medal of Honor started out great and trickled down into mediocrity. It had a hard time jumping to next-generation consoles and released way too many games no one asked for. It shows that sequelitis can set in and ruin even mammoth franchises like Medal of Honor. I grew up with these games as a kid and played them over the years and lost interest after Call of Duty became the superior game. It had fewer releases, but the games were more fun and were just better in many ways.

The Mark of Kri – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 11/27/2012
Posted in: PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: SCEA

Release Date: 7/29/2002


Available Exclusively On

  • ps2

The Mark of Kri is a curse passed down from generation to generation and each firstborn child bears the mark on their skin. There are six at all times, but some crazy guy wants to kill off the curse or something like that. The story isn’t explained very well and is not very interesting. The Mark of Kri’s strong points are the stealth, but it has sluggish combat and camera issues galore. It may have been pretty good ten years ago, but not today.

The game is very linear with usually only one pathway to follow. You have a bird that is your companion that you can send off to certain points to scout ahead for you.  This is mandatory otherwise you will be fighting off tons of guys all the time and dying. Once you use Kuzu to scout ahead you can plan an attack. Use stealth by sneaking up, buckling against walls, or dropping down on enemies. You use the right analog stick to sweep a beam around that assigns a face button to an enemy, that’s their attack button. You can stealth kill two enemies by starting the attack on one and then pressing the buttons shown above the second enemy. Sometimes you need to distract guards by shooting bells with your arrow, scaring animals, and other things. This is pretty fun and finding the right path through enemies can be fun. It is the actual combat that is sluggish and troublesome.

The right analog stick should have been used for camera control in this game because it gets lost all the time. It never focuses on enemies like it should and take forever to sweep around. The combat is ok when there are just a few enemies, but later on, in the game, 15+ will surround you. You get better weapons like the axe that can lock on up to 9 enemies, but this whole lock-on business just doesn’t work. I would rather control the camera and have a more fluid combat system that way. The reason why I died so much was that Rau will stop and rub his head, trip constantly, bang his weapon off of stone walls, get it stuck in wood, and this is frustrating. In the meantime, you are being hit and dying while all the unnecessary animations are playing out. Once you get surrounded or trapped you’re dead. Backing out is impossible because once you unblock you get bombarded by attacks.

If that isn’t enough the save system is annoying. There are no save points, just save scrolls. You have to find these and they don’t carry over to the next level. The same goes for max health upgrades. You will end up using your save scrolls or squandering them because you want to save at a hard part. Another issue was using the bow. Aiming at enemies takes forever because you have to wander around the enemy until you get a lock on and if the enemy is too high up you have to fiddle with it until you hit the enemy. Not fun.

The graphics are just average, even for back then. The game is only 6 levels long and can be beaten in about 4-5 hours. The story is underdeveloped due to the short length and you won’t care about any of the characters. The combat has sluggish controls and the whole sweeping lock-on system is a terrible idea and doesn’t work right. The camera has a lot of issues, and the list goes on. For just a couple of dollars this is a decent stealth game, but be wary of all the problems.

Red Ninja: End of Honor – 7 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/20/2012
Posted in: Microsoft, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Xbox. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: VU Games

Developer: Opus

Release Date: 3/30/2005


Also Available On

  • xbox1

I try to be forgiving with games, but there are some that just can’t be overlooked. Red Ninja is a perfect example that has mechanics that are broken beyond reason or repair. The story is the first thing you will notice that isn’t very interesting. You are trying to stop a rival clan from getting a machine gun blueprint from yours to use to destroy their enemies. The beginning cut scene shows your clan using a machine gun to cut down hordes of samurais. Just one machine gun. After this, your leader tells the man in charge of making it to destroy it because it dishonors the rules of engagement. Sure that’s noble, but all this for one stupid machine gun!

You will notice the game is severely flawed in the tutorial. The camera is completely useless, the controls are awkward, the platforming is uncontrollable, and the enemies are stupid as well as generic. The only interesting thing in the whole game is the tetsugen weapon and Kurenai’s panties. The camera is inverted no matter what you do. In the options, you can turn it off, but it becomes inverted vertically instead of horizontally. I constantly had to consciously remember to turn the camera the opposite way I wanted it to go. This is so frustrating during already busted boss fights or when surveying enemy patrols. On top of all this the combat works a little but needs a lot of work. You can use the tetsugen as a melee weapon or throw it from a distance and slice enemies in half. One awesome feature was being able to run around enemies in a circle while one is tethered and trip them down or cut them in half. Good luck keeping all the enemies focused because of that broken camera.

Secondly is the platforming, this is probably more frustrating than anything because you need to do this to avoid enemy detection. You can shimmy ledges, ropes, wall run, and dash around, but the combination of the camera and the weird controls make it frustrating. Wall running consists of you having to be in a dash while running at a wall. You have to continue running while moving the analog stick in the direction you want Kurenai to run. This is ridiculous and unintuitive. A lot of times I had her bouncing off walls because the camera just couldn’t keep up. Enemies will detect you even when you are on rooftops which is weird. Swimming is no better because enemies can always see you and you can only hide underwater while being still. Completely useless. You can use projectiles by picking them up, but aiming them is just too time to consume. There should be some sort of auto-aim for these.

If that isn’t enough for you to stay away I don’t know what will. I got two levels in and just couldn’t take anymore. The camera constantly going berserk and doing its own thing, the stupid AI, weird control scheme, bad platforming, and just overall an unpolished mess. The combat is somewhat saveable, but the camera and controls make this frustrating as well. The game looks pretty good, but in the end, you won’t even care. Not even the sexy seduction kills are enough to save this game. I hope one day this series is revived but needs to be built from the ground up. Just stay away from this pile of garbage.

Oni – 11 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/13/2012
Posted in: Mac, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Rockstar Toronto

Release Date: 3/9/2001


Also Available On

  • pc
  • mac

Oni was a very hyped anime-style game back in the day. This game was made by Rockstar before getting into the 3D Grand Theft Autos and other games. This game has a lot of potentials but is flawed in a lot of ways that make the game more boring and frustrating than bad. With that said, the only redeeming quality is the good-looking combat animations and challenges.

Right out of the gate you will notice that the controls are complete upside and backward. All the combat moves are on the shoulder buttons. Why in the world they thought of this is beyond me. You actually don’t really use the face buttons all that much. This makes jumping, fighting, and shooting clumsy and cumbersome and you can’t change the controls to something more natural. These are just some of the worst action/adventure controls I have ever used. The actual combat is fine, but executing these moves is a pain. I felt like I was stumbling over myself because I had to think about the controls. These just aren’t natural! Jumping with R1, L2 and L1 are kick and punch, and you pick up items with R3. What?! I felt like I was trying to solve a Rubix cube, not play a game.

Secondly is the exploration factor. The levels are boring. They all look pretty much the same with flat boring textures and the design is confusing and labyrinthine on some levels. There’s no direction and your compass is useless. The bar gets smaller as you get near an objective, but if you are two flights down it will act like you’re standing right next to it. Enemies are stupid and clumsy, boss fights are frustrating, and the game just can’t compensate for its own design with the clumsy controls. I can’t tell you how tired I got after just three levels of finding this colored console to open the same colored door over and over again.

The story isn’t really worth sticking around the 14 levels either. The anime cutscenes are nice, but you probably won’t even get through this slog of a game. I tried really hard to keep going, but there was never a change of pace. It didn’t help that there is no mid-level saving and the checkpoint placement is unfair. If you quit in the middle of a level you have to start all over. There are just a lot of annoying things with this game, but even if it was flawless you still have the fact that the game is just boring and not very fun.

When it is all said and done only the hardest core of anime fans will stick around until the end. You really had to have played this when it first came out, then come back for nostalgic purposes. The game is just clumsy and boring but has so much potential if only the developers spent more time on the game. As it stands, I really can’t recommend this to anyone.

Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/05/2012
Posted in: PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: NIS America

Developer: Gust

Release Date: 1/20/2009


Available Exclusively On

  • ps2

I first have to say that this is a review coming from someone who particularly doesn’t care for, or can stand JRPGs. I forced myself to play this, and I am very glad I did. Ar Tonelico II strays from the typical JRPG battle system and story with a little sexually confused boy trying to save some generic fantasy world with generic fantasy characters. You play as an entire team of people whose balance of Ar Tonelico (the world they live in) is resting on two Song Maidens. The game is full of political schemes, betrayals, and deception. These two maidens must also get to know each other more before they can sing Metafalica and bring about the paradise to Metafalss. The characters are very well designed and because of how the story is developed you get to love these characters more than you probably would in any JRPG.

The main design behind the characters and story is getting to know their deep dark secrets. This is done through Diving into Reyvateil’s minds at a Dive Shop. There are different levels of their Cosmosphere that you must explore, and these are played through dialog. You need Dive Points to trigger certain events, but this is where you really get to know the characters. After completing each level you will unlock new Song Magic which is essential for battle. Without Song Magic, you will not get anywhere in the game. You can also unlock new costumes for the three Reyvateils that will increase their stats. The Diving gets really deep into the character’s minds and actually is quite interesting. These are some very deep and well-developed characters with some serious issues that make you even question your own. There is also the Infelsphere which is where two of the three Reyvateils need to learn to understand each other and get out their deepest darkest secrets and thoughts about each other (the two depending on how you play the story).

The main protagonist, Croix, is caught in a love triangle between these two Song Maidens and the third Reyvateil. There’s sexual tension between them, which can be awkward in the game, but by the end, there are some pretty good scenes that will tug at your heartstrings. Overall, the story is well-developed, deep, intelligent, and very self-aware. When you Rest at saves you can talk to the Reyvateils and bring your relationship closer which will unlock different levels of their Cosmosphere that you can dive into. Of course, the game can’t just wing it on the story, so let’s get to combat.

The game uses mini-games during battle. There are two phases: Attack and Defense. When you attack you have to use the D-pad along with each of the two characters’ assigned attack button. This will help your Reyvateils sing better depending on what directional attack you’re using. There’s a meter that will show their desires for what direction they want. You’re banking on your Reyvateils song magic to do the most damage. You are just whittling down health and protecting them while they charge. There are different phases of each song tree that do different attacks. Thankfully there are also healing songs that you can use as many times as you want, but when you switch to another song in the same attack phase the points will carry over so you don’t have to charge again. I found myself charging a song tree as far as I could go and then unleashing the attack and then using a healing song. This also reduces the number of potions and healing items you need to use which removes that headache that most JRPGs have. This makes combat exciting because you aren’t just mashing X until the enemy dies. Those attack buttons have meters on them and you have to press the button when the green line goes by otherwise you won’t defend your Reyvateil and they will take damage. They are fragile and can’t take much so you must be on your guard and press that attack button quickly. If you get a perfect rating you won’t take any damage! But this is hard and requires precise timing. Depending on which two Reyvateils got along and went through the Infelsphere they can synch during combat and bring out devastatingly powerful dual song magic. This can only be done towards the end of the game, but it also requires doing the same attacks with your Vanguards so the girls synch.

Other than that the combat is pretty straightforward. Each Vanguard’s attacks will increase in levels during fights so you can do more deadly attacks. The main issue I have with JRPGs is random battles. These usually keep me from completing them, but Ar Tonelico II skirts this by making random battles limited. There is a meter that goes down as you do each battle. Each dungeon only has about 10 (until the last dungeon which is infinite), but it also turns from blue to flashing red which will indicate you are about to get into a fight. This lets you explore dungeons freely without getting frustrated. Once that meter runs down there are no more battles until you leave the dungeon. Even the map system is very useful when most JRPGs don’t even have one.

Of course, there are some side things you can do like synthesizing items with shop owners. As you advance the story you will get new recipe cards from them, but unlike most games, this isn’t just menu-driven. When you synthesize it brings the characters together more and dialog plays through. Sometimes the item may not even be what was on the recipe! After a while, you can go back and try again to improve on it. Lastly, you will run into I.P.D. victims in dungeons which are high-level Reyvateils that you have to battle. If you can beat them you can do Dive Therapy on them which will give you Girl Power that can raise your stats quite a bit. You can even Dualstall during saves and level up your Reyvateils by doing onsen baths! You find Dualithnode crystals and put them in this bath and the girls will absorb them. It is not recommended to do solo baths because the effects aren’t that strong.

The game isn’t perfect though. The very last dungeon (Sol Morta) is a long frustrating nightmare with endless random battles and too much backtracking. The visuals are disapprovingly 2D and not very good-looking. During the dialog, characters pop up with different facial expressions, but there are some anime cutscenes, but not nearly enough. There’s even a lack of spoken dialog, but at least the game includes the Japanese tracks. The English voices are hilariously bad and make you want to tear your ears off. There are also a few game-breaking glitches as well as typos. The last 20% of the game is just really tough and the game stops giving you a sense of direction. This last 20% really disappointed me and was kind of drawn out and long-winded. If it weren’t for these issues I would give this game a higher score. One plus for me is the amazingly beautiful music in this game. The Hymnos are beautiful and I loved them so much I downloaded the songs and listen to them often.

Overall, Ar Tonelico II breaks the JRPG mold with unique gameplay elements from combat, to leveling up Reyvateils via baths, and synthesizing. The music is beautiful, and the story is deep with political intrigue and reveals the deepest darkest secrets a person can hold. However, that are some issues that hold this otherwise wonderful game back. If you hate JRPGs I recommend giving this one a shot.

5 Games That Need a Sequel

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/17/2012
Posted in: Blogs. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Some games are infected with sequelitis where a developer makes the same game over and over again. There are a few series that are actually good every time (Assassin’s Creed, God of War, Mortal Kombat, Battlefield), but they are rare. Some games should just stop being made altogether (Need for Speed, Call of Duty, Dynasty Warriors, Final Fantasy), but no one will listen. Then there are the games that everyone begs to have sequels for and the developers, or publishers, just will not listen. Instead of another great game, they give us another billion-dollar Call of Duty because that’s what publishers want. Here are 5 games that I think need to come back because we dearly miss them.

5. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords

(Xbox, PC)

The KotOR series is considered the best Star Wars game series of all time. It brought a whole new story and characters to the Star Wars universe and made them work. You got attached to them, you liked them, you hated them, and the story played on the Force and light and dark side masterfully. KotOR II wasn’t much of an improvement on the first game, but it was enough to garner just as many sales and high scores. Some people consider The Old Republic MMO as an unofficial sequel, but it’s just not the same. BioWare has received countless emails and letters from fans, but no such sequel has ever seen the light of day.

4. Okami

(PS2, Wii)

Okami received such high scores, but poor sales. It was part of the reason why Clover Studios no longer exists. Sure, everyone knows who Amaterasu is and what Okami is, but a lot of people have never played it. Okamiden for DS is really considered a sequel, but it technically is. Everyone has wanted a true console experience with some next-gen flair, but thus far nothing has been seen except a Wii port. Will we ever see Amaterasu again? Probably not, but here’s to hoping someone’s listening.

3. Bayonetta

(X360, PS3)

She’s a witch, she has pistol heels, and wears her hair for clothes. Men want her, and women want to be her. Her name is Bayonetta and she took the gaming industry by storm with near-flawless combat and a very intriguing story with amazing visuals. The game had attitude and style like no other since Devil May Cry. It’s been a good 3 years, but not a single word of a sequel has been in sight. Will there ever be one? Platinum Studios is still alive and kicking, but they have been pumping out brand new IPs every year. Stop and make Bayonetta 2! For some reason, Sega won’t let them.

2. Psychonauts

(Xbox, PS2, PC)

Tim Schafer is a mastermind when it comes to storytelling and character development. I never quite enjoyed a platformer as much as I did Psychonauts. There was just something about it that made you want to keep playing and never put the controller down. The characters were wonderfully created in such a way that you fell in love with them instantly. The gameplay was varied with some ingenious level design, but like most games like this, it got high scores and low sales. People even protested to Microsoft to make the game compatible with the Xbox 360 and it actually happened. It’s even available as a downloadable Xbox game under the Classics section. The PS2 version wasn’t as popular due to the system’s lack of power, but by far you should have played this masterpiece by now. So Tim, where’s the sequel?

1. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

(PS2, Xbox)

Never before have I waited for a sequel longer than Psi-Ops. This third-person shooter was just superbly developed and I had a blast with this game. I even love the band Cold thanks to the “With My Mind” music video on the disc. You got to play as Scorpion when you beat the game! Using your mind powers to infiltrate enemy bases was never more fun, and the game had a well-crafted story that made people beg for a sequel. The cliffhanger ending stills rests in my mind and after a decade there has been no word of a sequel. If you haven’t played this game yet, go ahead and pick it up because you won’t be disappointed, just after you play it and find out there’s no sequel.