I have always enjoyed Square Enix's games. Kingdom Hearts was my first one and is one of my favourite series. Final Fantasy is their most famous creation though and they have no created 13 main stories. Not to mention the countless spin-offs such as Revenant Wings and A-2 on the DS.
At my school's annual summer fair last Saturday, I trapsed through the small carboot sale on the field with a couple of friends. Obviously we were hunting for games and right next to each other were two games stools.
The first I looked at had mostly Xbox 360 and PS3 games along with a few, unheard, random PS2's. I moved along to the next one and glanced at the wide variety of DS games up for sale.
FFIII took my eye! I picked it up and checked it all. I had seen it reviewed countless times and seen it with a high rank (I think it was 85%) in my monthly Nintendo Magazine - ONM.
But (there's always a but)!
It was £8. I had already spent...
£1 on a lucozade,
£1.50 on a burger,
and 50p on an impossible and crappy sideshow run by my friend's dad.
Damn! I only have £7 (I said this very angrily and loudly by the way)!
The man (old man) at the store said i could have it for £7...
Yay!
Anyway, I got home, turned on my DS Lite, popped in the game and started to play!
The first thing that struck me was the awesome graphics on the opening movie.
For 2006, they're amazing!
I did realize, that playing a port of an old game like this, there would be hardly any movie clips and the objectives would be very vague. There was no chance of it having a tutorial!
You first play as this guy called Luneth (you can change the name to suit you, but i didn't).
He kinda looks like a... well... a girl - but hey...
He falls down a hole created by an earthquake and has to fight a load of goblins, eye fangs and carbucles.
What made me confused was, playing a lot of final fantasy games, some of the enemies have the same names. In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the carbucle is a kind of cat thing and in FFIII it's a weird purple shell with one eye in the middle... I'm confused!
Anyway, in the end - you travel through this goblin cave and the first boss battles you. A Land Turtle!
I killed it easily and then you meet this crystal who says your some kind of warrior of the light.
A couple of hours later and your fighting a Medusa. This gal has, like, 3000HP. And i was level 15. Anyway, I died because 3 of my party were silenced (cannot use magic) and i had no echo herbs to cure them.
I went back and endured many stupid enemies. I only had 1 guy silenced this time... my only magician...
Yeah.. I still managed to kill the snakey hairball and when i did i was really happy. Yay!
Then i went to this Dwarf Island in my boat: The Enterprise and found out that the dwarf's ice fang had been stolen and i had to get it back. So, I turned my party into toads and dived underwater, killed some annoying, hard hitting enemies and found the guy that had stolen the ice fang. After a long and loathsome fight, I managed to secure victory dealing a measly 26 damage with a wooden bow and arrow. I was happy again!
Until i noticed a weird shadow following me after the rogue criminal mysteriously vanished and took no notice of it until i returned to the dwarves, went to the alter and returned the fang. The rogue reaapeared, stole the ice fangs and ran off to the crystal of fire.
And that's about all i've done so far. It is actually a tricky little game and it can take a good while to actually level up...
Though, it's still epic!
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Sunday, 13 June 2010
A few more games wont hurt 2
Okay, instead of mercenaries - which i had left too long and was gone by the time i got to Gamestation - I bought 2 games!
GTA: Liberty City Stories - PS2 (18)
25 To Life - Ps2 (18)
-- Grand Theft Auto: Libert City Stories --
GTA: Liberty City Stories is an excellent accomplishment by the joint effort of Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds (Also helped make Chinatown Wars - DS). Basically Toni Cipriani, part of the Lione crime family, had killed a made man and went into hiding, but now he returns to Liberty City, now voted the least place to succeed in America, and begins to takeover. Your main enemies are the Sindaccos - a rival crime family - who have the same plans and will shoot any Lione on sight. A lot of people will help you but too many will try to stop you, including your Mother who will call a hit on you. Around every 10 minutes some bald guy will drive to you in a vehicle and attempt to gun you down, usually they're really dumb and are dispatched easily. You can happily grab their dropped weapon and body armour for further use.
A lot of the game is similar to Vice City - the same sound effects, coloured orbs around weapon pickups and radio controls. Personally I preferred San Andreas' radio controls and you could switch to the next or previous radio station with up and down on the d-pad instead of cycling through them over and over with the L1 shoulder button. A lot of the time the radio stations dont appear in the usual order and sometimes it even skips some, a minor glitch. The driving controls are much better than the previous Grand Theft Autos on PS2, they seem more real and there is a lot more varience in the speed and the mass effects the speed in a realistic way which is finished well with skid marks and nice smoke from the tires. The only thing I dislike about this game - again, alike Vice City you can't swim!My Rating: 9/10
-- 25 To Life --
25 To Life is a much more linear game. It is about crime on the streets and follows the story of a man who owes a lot of money and ends up robbing a bank. For the first three levels you play as this guy and kill cops with various weapons from sub-machineguns to sawn-off shotguns. Pressing triangle allows you to switch to your melee weapon or on the police levels a zapper which allows you to apprehend criminals. One thing that i don't understand is that it can take nearly a whole round using a pistol to kill an enemy whereas if you hit them once with a baseball bat they die instantly. 
You have the main objectives which you must complete to finish the level and you have the secondary objectives which can be completed if you wish, but don't have to be. These can be things like, register 8 headshots or achieve 30% accuracy. I dont think the game has much varience at all and it can get pretty boring because of that. The storyline is really not interesting and it's one of those games where you play a couple of missions and then turn the system off. The one thi ng that really stands out though is its impressive sound track full of catchy rap tunes which actually add a nice movie scene effects to parts of the game.
Nice effects, some cool guns, brilliant sound track, but, bad storyline and too linear.
My Rating 5/10
Saturday, 12 June 2010
A few more games wont hurt
Sorry I haven't done a post in a while, but, hey. Anyway - got some new games from a few thrift shops.
GTA: Vice City - PS2 for £2.99
Judge Dredd: Dredd VS. Death - PC for £1
-- GTA: Vice City --
GTA's addictive - i got San Andres a year and a bit back, so, i know the casual "Drive there, kill him, drive back" gameplay style. I love running from the police, it's always fun seeing how many stars you can get before being shot to death then being brought back to life at a random hospital. I hate dying - you lose $100 and all your weapons which you payed thousands for, for all of the ammo too. The main thing i have against this game is that Tommy Vercetti (the player) cannot swim. Therefore, if you accidently drive your car off a bridge or something or fall out of your boat you drown instantly and get put somewhere 10 minutes away from the mission start. Dieing on missions is not fun!
It has a sweet soundtrack and some funny quotes on the radio stations. The weapons are impressive and some of the effects that show when you fire a weapon look impressive and realistic. Parts of the game can be pretty hard as you can have nearly 20 enemies against you with a pistol, at those times it gets frustrating and you need to save up for better weapons and more ammo.
A highly addictive game and the free roam aspects like any other GTA improve the whole experience. Some funny scenes and quotes from the radio, cinematics and pedestrians make it more amusing.
My Rating: 8/10
-- Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death --
Judge Dredd i already had on PS2 so there's actually no difference in the two games apart from the fact that you can team up with players online in multiplayer - though because it's really old (2003) and not well known, not many people do so. It's pretty fun going around with your lawgiver mark II gun. You can change the ammo type with the mouse wheel to stuff like Hi-Explosive and Incendiary. Setting people alight, whether they're good or bad decreases your law meter - arresting people and completing objectives inctreases it.
If the law meter decreases to zero you lose the mission and the special judicial squad comes along and kills you... nice!
The whole game is linear as it is a FPS. Playing the game i think that the first person shooter style has been executed very well for the game and there seems to be next to no glitches when enemies like the vampires jump at you unlike other older game i've played where the enemies just morph through you. The variance in the ammo is really a unique and fun way to play the game and what i like is that there is a lot of difference between the ammo type. For example using a heat seeking bullet will work against civilians and anything living. But, when you get to the undead/zombie levels you cant use heat seekers against them of course, they don't give off heat - they're dead!
The main storyline is about an outbreak of vampires which occurs in the first mission of the game. This is the work of the dark judges and throughout the game you end up killing their mortal bodies and capturing there seemingly immortal spirit forms. In the end you go to the Dark Judges' home world which is void of life as the dark judges kill the living as every crime is committed by living things. You have a team of special Psi judges and they use there special mind powers to destroy Judge Death' mortal body... confusing!
Unique ammo types make it more fun, FPS style executed well, but, story mode very hard.
My Rating 7/10
Later after the next world cup match between Greece and South Korea, I hope to go up to gamestation and grab Mercenaries - PS2 for £2.99!
GTA: Vice City - PS2 for £2.99
Judge Dredd: Dredd VS. Death - PC for £1
-- GTA: Vice City --
GTA's addictive - i got San Andres a year and a bit back, so, i know the casual "Drive there, kill him, drive back" gameplay style. I love running from the police, it's always fun seeing how many stars you can get before being shot to death then being brought back to life at a random hospital. I hate dying - you lose $100 and all your weapons which you payed thousands for, for all of the ammo too. The main thing i have against this game is that Tommy Vercetti (the player) cannot swim. Therefore, if you accidently drive your car off a bridge or something or fall out of your boat you drown instantly and get put somewhere 10 minutes away from the mission start. Dieing on missions is not fun!
It has a sweet soundtrack and some funny quotes on the radio stations. The weapons are impressive and some of the effects that show when you fire a weapon look impressive and realistic. Parts of the game can be pretty hard as you can have nearly 20 enemies against you with a pistol, at those times it gets frustrating and you need to save up for better weapons and more ammo.
A highly addictive game and the free roam aspects like any other GTA improve the whole experience. Some funny scenes and quotes from the radio, cinematics and pedestrians make it more amusing.
My Rating: 8/10
-- Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death --
Judge Dredd i already had on PS2 so there's actually no difference in the two games apart from the fact that you can team up with players online in multiplayer - though because it's really old (2003) and not well known, not many people do so. It's pretty fun going around with your lawgiver mark II gun. You can change the ammo type with the mouse wheel to stuff like Hi-Explosive and Incendiary. Setting people alight, whether they're good or bad decreases your law meter - arresting people and completing objectives inctreases it.
If the law meter decreases to zero you lose the mission and the special judicial squad comes along and kills you... nice!
The whole game is linear as it is a FPS. Playing the game i think that the first person shooter style has been executed very well for the game and there seems to be next to no glitches when enemies like the vampires jump at you unlike other older game i've played where the enemies just morph through you. The variance in the ammo is really a unique and fun way to play the game and what i like is that there is a lot of difference between the ammo type. For example using a heat seeking bullet will work against civilians and anything living. But, when you get to the undead/zombie levels you cant use heat seekers against them of course, they don't give off heat - they're dead!
The main storyline is about an outbreak of vampires which occurs in the first mission of the game. This is the work of the dark judges and throughout the game you end up killing their mortal bodies and capturing there seemingly immortal spirit forms. In the end you go to the Dark Judges' home world which is void of life as the dark judges kill the living as every crime is committed by living things. You have a team of special Psi judges and they use there special mind powers to destroy Judge Death' mortal body... confusing!
Unique ammo types make it more fun, FPS style executed well, but, story mode very hard.
My Rating 7/10
Later after the next world cup match between Greece and South Korea, I hope to go up to gamestation and grab Mercenaries - PS2 for £2.99!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)