The Dynasty Warrior series was always a favorite of mine. I can’t really explain why. The Game Play wasn’t too compelling and the five versions released on the Playstation 2 were basically the same game with slight variations. But there was something satisfying at playing the role of one of the great Generals from Romance of the Three Kingdoms and killing thousands of rampaging Chinese.
in fact, at the height of my Gundam fandom I imaged what it would have been like if Dynasty Warriors had a Gundam skin. Last year I did get my wish but for the lackluster Playstation 3. Perhaps this second version will push me over the edge and make me buy Playstation 2’s unworthy son, perhaps not. But you can’t say the game doesn’t look fun, can you?
With all the news coming from PAX about new games, game demos, and detailed descriptions of the amazing panels featuring some of the most important people in the industry I find the below video to be far more relevant to this blog.
That’s right, the Fruit Fucker! In the fleash…errr…metal! Watch as he justifies his cosplay.
In a rare and strange event US J-RPG fans will not have to wait for a release to arrive from their favorite Pacific island. Chrono Trigger DS will be released in the United States a full two days earlier then in Japan. The rerelease of the beloved SNES classic will drop in the United States on November 25th and in Japan on November 27th. Get your pre-order now so you can claim to have beaten the DS version before the Japanese even get to touch it.
I’m not sure what to think about BioWare and Segas new attempt to refresh the long suffering Sonic franchise. The two companies are responsible for some quality games. BioWares Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is not only the best Star Wars game made to date (I’m expecting Force Unleashed to knock KOTOR off its throne) but one of the best American Role Playing Games in recent years. But can they do the same with Sonic?
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood begins while our hero is on vacation after defeating Eggman (Dr. Robotnik for those stubborn readers who grew up with Sonic) when he hears from Tails that Knunkles has been kidnapped and the Chaos Emeralds are disappearing. The game is divided into two parts. The first half happening in Sonics world and the second happening in a different dimension where Sonic must take on a mysterious alien race.
The gameplay is standard RPG fair with enemies appearing on the world map and turn based encounters are activated by walking into them. Special moves are activated my giving special touch combinations with the stylus. Some of these special moves will require certain characters in your party, one such move is called “Blue Bomber” and requires Sonic and Tails in the active party.
The premise and the game itself seem to be fairly solid at this point, of course we won’t really know what to expect until someone plays it. But at this point in the development stage, only a few weeks from going gold, we’re looking at a fun adventure RPG featuring the Sonic characters. Probably nothing that will revolutionize the genre or redeem Sonics past few years of mediocrity, but a solid game none-the-less.
The points I’m worried about is use of Sonic in a turn based game. Sonic games have always been about speed. Not about killing enemies, not about collecting rings, and not about how many wacky side characters Sega can introduce. The games were about speed. How fast you can think while zooming though the levels was the element in the original games. Adding a turn based RPG into this franchise will probably not work for the fans who enjoyed the gameplay of the classics.
The other factor that has me worried about this game are the use of all the Sonic side characters in the game. These side characters have never really been embraced by the fans of Sonic games and were never counted as a strong point in the series. The last Sonic game I played, Sonic Rush for the DS, had some many characters that I didn’t know of it just left me bewildered and confused. Sticking with the dream team of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles might have been a much better choice in order to craft a solid story. But we have yet to find out if for once these characters add something to a Sonic game instead of taking away. They haven’t worked in Sonics favor so far, I don’t know how Sega plans on changing that.
I’m excited and worried at the same time. The combination of BioWare and Sega is either going to be a stunning success of fall into the muck of gaming history with the rest of the Sonic games that came out in the past fifteen years. I hope it succeeds, and I hope it will be good enough to take it’s place among the classic Sonic games. Mario RPG managed to do it, why not Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood?
Some interesting links and video about this upcoming game:
The Large Hadron Collider, CERNs new particle accelerator, has some people worried that it might just destroy time and space as we know it by creating tiny black holes we can’t control. CERN has responced by making this rap video to describe exactly what the LHC was designed to do. Needless to say, nothing about the end of the world is mentioned.
There are very few things in this world that would get me interested in Knitting, but one of them is video games! Cassie started a blog dedicated to her goal of knitting all of the first level of Mario into a single scarf.
Check out her blog to follow the progress up to the scarfs completion: The Mario Scarf Blog
Editors Note - This was the final skit of the evening and by far the best. It was such a fun night. If you ever have the opportunity to sit in a room packed full of nerds watching other nerds pretend to be amine characters… I highly recommended it. Please excuse the girlish screams that Miss Pocket Mouse and the fans around her let out, this is the best amature video of the Exhibition Skit to hit youtube and even with the screaming the sound quality remains excellent. Besides, if I had taken the video the girlish screams I let out would have drowned out all of the skit, not just a tiny part of it. Which would have had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t have been farther away from the stage and could barely hear anyway.
Without further whining the final AnimeNEXT 2008 Masquerade Skit, The Exhibition Skit: I’ll Make a Host out of you staring the award winning Mario Bueno
This is the major ending to this masquerade, featuring the Ouran Host Club! They are making a special appearance with Tamaki singing his heart out, making the fangirls scream! Poor Haruhi–she’s being picked on! She’s a girl after all. Ohh, if only Tamaki would of known…or will he?
Two weeks out of E3 I feel like I need to say something. Years ago E3 was the big event for gamers. I remember fondly back to E3 2005 where the PlayStation 3 became official, Spore was announced, the glamour was at it’s high, and Epics new graphics engine was demonstrated. Now that E3 has been hacked to bits and turned from the industry’s largest trade show into a giant press conference where absolutely nothing is exciting anymore. It is possible that this year is a bit of a transition year. The seventh generation consoles starting to seriously establish themselves as opposed to being new. But that is only one thing that lowers the impact that a large Video Game trade show. This is the year that software should be coming out to impress the fanboys and convince those of us who have held back from picking between Microsoft and Sony to finally decide. What we got was a mess.
This year almost no new game was announced at E3, no game changing announcements were made, and nothing was really accomplished that couldn’t have been done if each of the big three simply hosted their own small press conferences instead of having to drag all of their staff and equipment to this so called “trade show”.
Nintendo announced Animal Crossing, Sony Announced DC Universe Online, Microsoft announced nothing… who cares? The show was mainly made up of companies showing off new footage or featuring playable demos of games that were announced months (or in the case of Spore years) ago. There is no reason to treat E3 2008 as a special event, it’s just a mess of small updates to a couple dozen upcoming games.
One of the most insane examples is from the latest installment of the Total War series, Empire: Total War. It has been one of my favorite franchises for years now. Total War games have had the same basic game since Rome: Total War. The new edition sets the game in the age where Europe was building Empires across the world. Navel battles have been expanded to be as in depth and complex as land battles. At E3 they showed off… a navel battle. A feature we already knew was going to be in the game. Things got a little more detailed on the way the navel battles were going to look but nothing substantial was gained that Total War couldn’t have done in a press release, or in a new trailer. This is the kind of silly announcements that plagued E3, to the point where I just stopped caring after day two.
E3 used to be important. But if it continues to be anything like this year than it will stop being important. It’ll just become a hassle. The industry is going to have to take a step back and look really hard at this years E3 and made a decision if next year will even be worth anyone’s time. Maybe 2008 was just a stale year for announcements. Maybe because of the constant blog coverage these announcements just fell flat for me but would have been exciting for someone who doesn’t constantly watch gaming blogs. I’m underwhelmed, I’m frustrated. E3 used to be something special, not an excuse to show off games we already know were coming.
I’m not the only one who feels this way, nor are any of my comments original when you look at the greatsighofdisappointment that happened after the dust settled on E3. If I was there I’m sure it would have been exciting. The stars of The Totally Rad Show seemed like they had a blast. But as a lonely second rate Blogger I don’t have any hope of gaining a ticket to the show. There is no reason why anyone who wasn’t there to play with these long awaited titles to be excited about E3. It’s an excuse to allow the press access to games that won’t be seen any time soon. An insider trade show where consumers no longer wanted.
