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Review - Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Storyline: 6.5
Gameplay: 9.0
Soundtrack: 10
Difficulty: 8.0
Extras: 10
Replay Value: 10
Overall: 9
Personal Comparison: Super Smash Brothers Brawl > Super Smash Brothers Melee

The bomb has dropped… Super Smash Brothers Brawl is now out in the wild and now everyone is getting finally getting their hands on this much anticipated Wii release.

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Brawl Midnight Opening

I went to one of the midnight openings for Smash Brothers. I found out earlier in the week that Sam’s Club was actually doing a midnight opening. I was really excited for one main reason…

• I was guaranteed a copy of Smash Brothers Brawl without the need of a pre-order…

Yes, quite the assumption I made, no? Well my logic mostly revolved around the guess that GameStop would be stealing all the Smash Brothers Brawl thunder with their tournament followed by the midnight release. Secondly, what are the chances of the usual college student (among younger audiences as well) sporting a Sam’s Club membership? Granted, having a membership is good if you’re rooming with a bunch of others so that you can take advantage of that 24-gallon mayonnaise for less than like 2 bucks or something like that (among other products).

So yes, I went to Sam’s Club nearby 45 minutes before midnight. I could’ve gone at midnight and still would’ve gotten in. There were only 5 people there at midnight. 3 of them were there for the Nintendo Wii (Sam’s Club had more than 20 I believe).

It was nice though. No rush, no chaos, and a game that was 7 bucks below MSRP.

I do, however, feel really sorry for Sam’s Club… at least the one in my area (Atlanta). It’s tough to penetrate video game sales especially if you’re a membership only store. But as a consumer, I’m glad they did it because it was a painless effort for me.

Of course, that day I was having a party to celebrate having an apartment (recently graduated and injected into the real world). Several friends stuck around and we duked it out with the limited character set it had at the time. Guess it’s time to start unlocking!

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Console Game Installations

So I mentioned back in a previous post that I was going to talk about the whole “installation experience” when I got back from the store and was just ready to go slay some demons and the like.

I didn’t mind the 20+ minute wait that the game took to install its 5gb worth of content. It gave me some ample time to start preparing dinner. What I didn’t like is the fact that it was mandatory. I’m not thinking about the short-term, but I’m talking about the long run here. Let’s say Capcom does set the trend of mandatory installations of 5gb+ worth of content and everyone follows suit in the future. That is gonna be a lot of disk space to take up for a gamer. With the 80gb model ousted and the 40gb model left to be seen these days, that’s not giving the up-and-coming gamer much to work with.

Surely one can argue, “hey, swapping drives is easy so you can get a laptop sata HD for cheap and get tons of space to boot”. The problem is, most console gamers are probably console gamers so they don’t have to deal with any of that at all. Console gaming is supposed to be ready-to-go convenient. I’m not saying this for the sake of bashing customization and upgrades (hell, I don’t even mind hopping on NewEgg to get a drive and then swap for more space drive). The point is, I’m not a good representation of the average consumer and surely I would bet that the average consumer that purchase a PS3 isn’t close to the tech saavyness that I am which is neither bad nor good. Everyone has their own hobbies and it is more likely to find someone who’s a gamer w/ other hobbies than it is to find someone who’s a gamer w/ tech hobbies, however, someone who is tech savvy is more likely to be a gamer than the other way around… at least that’s what I’ve noticed. I could be wrong.

If installations in the future become a mandatory step, even if you have your 200gb laptop sata drive, that’s only approximately 40 games that are installed on it (I know it’s hard to imagine that much, but I’m building a hypothetical here) This is also on top of the other types of random things you may have on the drive (demos, music, add-ons, videos, etc).

The feature that takes the biggest blow in the long run is something I would just call “nostalgia”. Let’s say 3-5 years down the road this whole mandatory installation is required and you’re at the point of deleting games you’ve beaten and installing new ones. Then at one point you want to relive that moment in Final Fantasy XIV or beat the crap out of your favorite bosses from Devil May Cry 4 out of spite because you felt that the 5th installment turned out to be another DMC2. This is a spur of the moment thirst you want to quench but it turns out you have to reinstall DMC4 or some other game just to relive that moment. That is where the optional “play without installing” feature comes in real handy.

This is all pretty heavy duty stuff and who knows, maybe things will get better in the future and you won’t have to worry about everything I said here hypothetically. I’m only saying this assuming that developers start to follow suit with Capcom.

Oh wait… it turns out another Capcom game coming out soon has done it again (from Kotaku)!

I’m sorry… for the sake of the market and the sanity of the average consumer, an “optional” installation would be great. Heck, what if the game started loading stuff into the HD while you’re running around getting lost for half an hour in the same zone. While it still isn’t a step in the right direction if it isn’t optional, at the very least it is making the installation a bit transparent. Actually no, just make the installation optional.

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PT: Blu-Ray “Officially” Wins

From Engadget

So the war is finally over. It seems HD-DVD is admitting defeat and Blu-Ray will be taking over the next gen format (if it already wasn’t over since around CES).

I have to admit though, I thought HD-DVD was going to win because of these two not-so-well-thought-out reasons

• The “HD-DVD” name seems more familiar… just sticking HD in front of the DVD
• Sony had a track record of 0 and 1 in the video media department (I’m only counting the at home entertainment center video media so that excludes UMD and whatever else)

I’m not much of a savvy home theater tech kind of person, but I do wonder some things. The following is completely based off my own thoughts. I never actually checked to see if what I’m about to say is already existed or not, but it’s not that crucial enough to warrant me a trip to Wikipedia.

If HD-DVD was going to win at the get go. They should have allowed their HD-DVD media to be compatible with DVD players. Of course, it is probably slim-to-none possible since the way it burns onto the disk is probably too much for the DVD reader to pick up. If they were able to build the burning and media that way so that DVD players could read it, then I think HD-DVD would have beaten Blu-Ray straight up for the primary reason of encapsulating a bigger audience.

But alas, Blu-Ray wins and now we can rest easy as there will be no need to go through tech blogs and see Blu-Ray and HD-DVD in the same headline.

For Sony, it can’t mean anything less than good things for them. After all, their PS3 may receive some impact from this win (mostly in the domain of more sales and cheaper prices for both people who want to play Blu-Ray movies or play games).

I guess that gives me a bonus for having a PS3 now. While people get edgy for bringing this format war into the video game domain, you can’t help but accept that this war will really have an impact on the PS3. As long as there’ll be more JRPGs developed, then I’ll accept it as a positive impact =P

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Introduction - Devil May Cry 4

Man, it’s been so long since I got my hands on a Devil May Cry game. The last one was of course the third one and that was awesome though it was a few years back when I played it. This time around, Dante takes the back seat while we’re introduced to a new character named Nero, who happens to have lots of similarities to Dante so the game won’t lose any familiarity to the veterans. What it does though is introduce some new mechanics that make the fighting a bit different and interesting I must say. The obvious being his “gun-blade-esque” sword. I say that only because it reminded me of the gun-blades in Final Fantasy 8. It’s actually more of a sort of motor sword.

random red/blue spider nets, enemy presence triggered hardcore metal battle music, outlandish action scenes, and sarcasm can be found in this game as it should… After all, it is a Devil May Cry game which is what I really like about it. There is a serious storyline to be told though. While I won’t spoil anything, I haven’t gotten through the whole game myself. Though I would say it’s hardly a spoiler, but Dante is a character you’ll be using in the game so you’ll have all the glamor of gameplay that was in previous games into this one when you’re using him. I can’t say much since I haven’t actually used him yet, but I’m betting the developers were conservative in implementing his fighting style whereas they were a bit liberal on Nero.

It works though. I’m liking it so far. There’s this online ranking mode that shows how your score compares to the world. It seems Japan is dominating those charts.

I got the PS3 version so I got hit by the 20+ minute install requirement. I’ll speak more about this in another post.

On a side note, for some reason, when playing this game, it kinda reminded me of another set of characters that I’ll just put in this simple analogy. Dante is to Snake as Nero is to Raiden (Snake & Raiden as they were in Metal Gear Solid 2).

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Valentine’s Day Guide

So it occurred to me that there are lots of people out there who really despise Valentine’s Day. I thought about it for a second and then it dawned on me that most, if not all, of these people who hate February 14 are single. It’s simple really. Valentine’s Day was meant to express your [insert string of words expressing love] to their significant other. And frankly, if someone has no significant other, they’d be bombarded throughout the day of such demonstrations (mostly light-medium physical especially on a college campus) and thus come to hate the day because maybe they wished they had a significant other or for other reasons.

For the most part, it seems obvious why people would hate Valentine’s Day. However, depending on the perspective, you can turn Valentine’s Day into something awesome. It’s simple really. And I’m just going to explain it with some simple photos.

Here we have my PS3 blasting some music I have. Most of it was stereotypical V-Day music.

Here we have some candles, wine, and dinner that I prepared using flank steak and some seasonings. It tasted great by the way.

Oh and what’s this? It looks like… yep. It’s Devil May Cry 4. Interesting game so far I must say.

Well there you have it. Take what you may have spent on your significant other and spend it on yourself so you can have the best night ever. Even though you may be content on your lifestyle, I think it’s nice to do something a little extra every once and a while… and V-Day is definitely one of those once in a while times.

So what I did was bought some food to prepare and cook, some wine, and the show stopper, Devil May Cry 4. I also played some music before and during dinner before I popped in the game and started spending quality time with it. I must say the night felt great.

Of course, you don’t have to do exactly the same thing. Other examples might include ordering some pizza and beer (or root beer for the not of age) and playing Rock Band. Basically, it’s about doing something that’s a little extra which you don’t usually do all the time. Another example could be taking a break from your guild grinding on World of Warcraft and dedicating the night to running lowbies through instances (it makes for a really stress-free night). In the end, it’s really all about perspective and attitude. Since I’m a gamer oriented person, most of my suggestions contain games in them (surprise surprise). So despite being single, I still find Valentine’s Day to be a fun day to celebrate.

In past years before I had a job, I celebrated it by making recording piano performances…

or making anime music videos…

Personalize it and own it.

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Introduction - Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

I was a deprived RPG gamer during the Playstation generation. I sided with the Nintendo 64, which is a huge mistake if you’re looking only for RPGs. This game and Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth eluded me but finally I now have a chance to experience both (thanks to the PSP). I’ll be talking about Final Fantasy Tactics though in this post.

It has very interesting CG animations. I don’t know which ones are updated or original, but I’ll just say it in general that it looks nice, especially the art style.

The biggest gripe I have so far with this game especially after playing games like Disgaea 2 and Jeanne D’Arc is the inability to take back a move once you make it. Sometimes I like to let the game itself calculate for me whether or not I can actually reach a target or how much damage it would do as opposed to counting squares or guessing damage myself. It is an SRPG so having that element would make things a lot more smoother when laying out strategy rather than frustrating when forgetting that a spell missed a height requirement by 1 thus not enabling you to attack whomever it is that is barely out of your reach.

While the graphics are somewhat outdated understandably, I must profess that I’m disappointed with the lag that occurs during attacks. The PSP is a much more capable machine I think (correct me if I’m wrong) and after all this time they could’ve at least done something to remedy that. After all, they did do all these visual enhancements with every other re-release on PSP/DS.

Other than that, the game seems to be really deep in terms of both gameplay and story. I won’t say anything about the story other than it seems to be very political. If you’ve played Final Fantasy XII, you may realize that it takes place in the same Ivalice world. Final Fantasy XII had a political (*cough* Star Wars Episode IV *cough*) storyline as well.

That’s all I can say for now. I should close this by saying that this game is pretty tough. If not because of the inability to take back movement, but for how intense some battles can be (I’ve only been through 5 so I’m sure it’ll get tougher), which is great, for me at least, because it really makes it an SRPG.

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Level 5’s Got a Sephiroth Too!

Well, not really. It’s just merely the first thing that came to mind when I saw the end of one of the latest trailers for White Knight Story, an RPG being developed by Level 5 for the Sony Playstation 3.

The trailer reminds me of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII… It looks like Square-Enix has some serious competition (if not already from the other games Level 5’s been developing). This game, according to Wikipedia, is set to be released in Japan on New Years Eve (Dec 31, 2007) and is currently TBA 2008 for the US release.

It turns out Level 5 will be drawing first blood for PS3 RPG supremacy. I should note that the YouTube link showcases a trailer that isn’t the TGS2007 version (that is, the trailer for TGS2007 is a shorter remix of the bigger trailer).

YouTube - White Knight Story Trailer
White Knight Story Japanese Site

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Portable Goodness

So it’s interesting how the Nintendo DS literally owns the handheld market. Sony PSP has been out of my radar for quite some time. Though recently, I had a sudden interest in the PSP. It was probably after the release of the PSP slim.

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