Yup, that's right. That was a game that just kept haunting me, begging for me to play it, to finally understand what other retrogamers say when talking about it, and now I do :) Of course, by now I pretty much had the whole story spoiled, with everyone talking about it and whatnot, but anywa, it was en enjoyable experience. At least with a walkthrough by my side. Yeah, I know, that's kind of cheating, but neither had the time, nor the patience to play it like it was meant to. Even with the guide I got lost at times, with all the rooms, and corridors, and stairs, and shit... Oh, and the fucking inventory was a royal pain in the ass (I played with Chris, which just has 6 slots while Jill, for some reason has 8. WTF? Where does she keep the extra 2 items? Between her boobs or her legs?...).
Anyway, an enjoyable, and pretty atmospheric, experience. Sorry for not writing more, I'm fucking tired right now...
Ok, by now you're probably wondering what the fuck I'm talking about, so let's put this in context. When my PS2 came back to life a week ago, I kind of went on an import streak, first getting the Soul Eater game and then Dodonpachi Daioujou. As many of you know, donpachi is one of my favourite shmup series, and I'm a huge fan of the first 2 games. Unfortunately I've never played Dodonpachi II, but this one, Daioujou (whichc translates as "peaceful death", a joke at the amount of times we'll die), is considered the true sequel to that game, so I guess I'm not missing anything important.
Released only for arcades and the PS2, this game is considered the hardest game of the series, in fact much harder than the previous games, which I think makes it one of the hardest shmups of all time. Still, it's fun as hell, sine the gameplay remains roughly the same. Sure, now we only have 2 ships instead of 3, and there's a new "hyper" system that lets you get all powered up instead of using a bomb, but any fan of the series should have no problems getting right into the action. Except for the difficulty, of course...
This game is hard, seriously hard, insanely hard at times, with bullets flying literally everywhere, cornering our little ship and making a vulgar player like me use all his bombs to avoid getting pwned. Still, it's a lot of fun, so I alwasy ended up getting back to it. Last night I made my first serious attempt to beat it, and... I did it! Fuck yeah!!! Now I'm a true gamer!!! :D
Seriously, the last stage, and the last boss, are out of this world, but with quick reflexes, scrutinous use of bombs and motivation to not give up just because I was blown 5 times in a row and lost 1 credit in a matter of seconds...I did it!
Don't know if I've said this here, but I'm a big fan of Soul Eater. It's a pretty crazy anime with Meisters and their Weapons (which can take a human form) fighting demons and witches and whatever... No, really, it's actually pretty cool, with a great set of characters and a unique ambience. So much that its popularity is rising and a PS2 game just came out. In Japan, of course. You know how this works, Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Accel for example came out in Japan in 2007 and is only going to be released in the US next month... (no Euro release date that I know of...)
Maka/Soul vs Death the Kid/Patti/Liz
So, given the current state of the PS2, this one will probably never see the light of day over here, so why not just play the damn Japanese version? That's exactly what I'm doing right now. And I'm enjoying it very much! Unfortunately this is far from being the best anime-based game ever, but it's not a total mess either. What we have here is a traditional beat em up, with 3D graphics and 2D gameplay. You take control of the show's main characters, divided into the Meister/Weapons (Maka/Soul, Black Star/Tsubaki, etc...) and non-Meister (Stein, Blair, Mifune...) categories, but they all pretty much play like the same. There's the weak, medium and strong attacks, the ability to defend and counter and then there's the Soul Gauge.
Stein vs Sid/Nygus
This is basically the usual "special attack bar" seen in most fighters, letting you waste some of its power to do a special attack or waste it all for the über-ultra-pwnzor attack that usually means instant win! This attacks are, of course, taken straight from the anime, and they're really well done. It's always a pleasure to see Soul transform into the uber-schyte :)
BTW, this is just for fans of the series. You might have noticed that I put Stein in the non-meister category up there. That's because he doesn't fight with Spirit, although for some strange reason he uses him for his Soul Resonance attack... :/
Maka/Soul vs Black Star/Tsubaki (taken from the PSP version)
The bad part of the game is that, for purists and the most hardcore, the fighting dystem is not that deep, and then there's also some lack fo main modes. Besides the usual arcade, free battle and versus, there's the main mode, adventure, which plays somewhat like the main mode in Soul Calibur. You basically recreate all the battles from the anime and there's also some special missions with certain conditions (like fighting Sid with only 1/3 of your life bar...fucking impossible!). Of course all the dialog is in Japanese, and it's hard to guess the victory conditions of some battles, but there's already a guide on gamefaqs that as it all covered, so no big problems there.
Overall this is a pretty import-friendly game, and great fan for fans of the anime. If you're one, get it! :D
Those guys over at Blizzard sure have a great sense of humour, for yet again they mock the fans with pictures like this:
If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, it goes something like this. After many, many years of anxious waiting, Blizzard finally announced Diablo 3, the long awaited sequel to the AWESOMENESS that is Diablo 2 (only my favourite game EVAH! Yup, MGS4 and Oblivion come after). This happened last summer (curiously around the time I got my MGS4), and it was supposed to be good news, amirite? Nope. The gameplay looked awesome, no complaints about that. The problem was the graphics. Not only they showed some lack of detail, but the atmosphere was totally off, at least according to some. You see, some bitches complained about the game not being dark enough, for being too colorful for a dark-fantasy setting. OMG, it even had rainbows on it! And guess what?
And I'm one of those bitches.
I don't want no fucking rainbows in my Diablo 3! I want darkness! I want blood! And I want more darkness! By now you're probably wondering if I'm being sarcastic, but I can assure you I'm dead serious. I still think it's going to be a great game, I'll definitely buy it on day one and be hooked to it for months to come, but one thing is certain, so far that doesn't look like the Diablo I was expecting. The developers may say what they want, like "in the lord of the rings there were also green hills along the mountains of mordor", but I don't give a fucking damn about that. I've played Diablo 2 to death, the world of Sanctuary is my second home, and I'm dead sure that there shouldn't be fucking rainbows in it! "WoW gayness" is what this style has been called, and I couldn't agree more. It's like Blizzard totally messed up the settings, merging Warcraft with Diablo, making cartoony characters, pretty scenarios and even throwing some jokes in the middle. Deckard Cain! Making jokes! In my Diablo!!! Can you fucking believe it? What is this world coming to...
Welcome friends! Welcome to my personal blog, where you may find articles about the most various things. Videogames should be a constant presence here, but expect to see the occasional movie or music album review, for I'm a fan of all forms of entertainment. Also expect to see everything that comes to my mind, since this is my own blog I feel free to post all the shit that I want.
Now, have a seat, grab a beer and read what goes in my mind...
