08) – PSP Edition

April 28th, 2008

burnout metal gear jeanne darc psp impressions

Even though I have been raving and ranting about the PSP before the gaming blog even came to conception and while these gaming orientated articles were being posted on my personal blog, up to now, I still don’t even own a PSP myself. Thats right, the master of hypocrisy has struck again ! I have been interested in purchasing a PSP for some time now and still haven’t sealed the deal despite the release of the PSP Slim and the fruitation of an even more exciting library of games.

My reason for this is that I already have far too many games to play and should just wait until the console and it’s software is significantly cheaper. Fortunately my twin brother took me by surprise and picked up a PSP himself in a pack (PSP Media Manager + 4GB memory stick Pro Duo) as well as a few games. In the past 3 weeks we have been picking up a few games for the console and here are my impressions on some of my favourites.

Jeanne d’Arc

Jeanne d’Arc, what a fantastic little game. As an enormous fan of the original Final Fantasy Tactics I must say that I am throughly enjoying this (rather similar) little strategy RPG romp. If you have played FF Tactics before or in fact any SRPG game then you should immediately have some idea as to what to expect from this game. The basic; attack, defend, skill, wait options are all featured as well as the obligatory elemental triangle and the same weapon equiping system you’d expect. What makes this game such a fresh experience though are a few key factors; namely the gorgeously lush visuals, olde France thematic and the user friendly design. The last point shines in all its glory throughout this title and is a testament to Level 5’s role playing expertise.

jeanne darc psp

Now as mentioned at least three times already, I personally love anything that is or is heavily inspired from Final Fantasy Tactics (non inclusive of the GBA and NDS titles). So when I talk about this game, I will literally be gushing out the love. My apologies.

Cutting the fat though and attempting to stick with the gameplay for a moment, Jeanne d’Arc’s skill system works a little differently, each party member has 3 slots in which you can equip any skill to, this includes spells, concentrated attacks etc. With this you can equip various elemental attributes which align and add power of the respective element to your player. You gain these skills (as equipable items) through the spoils of battle.

What concerns me about this system is the lack of breathing space, there are only 3 slots for skills. Hopefully this will increase will leveling up or else I for see this system being highly restrictive. Especially considering how these slots are also used to assign yourself to various elements.

Marching onwards, the presentation in Jeanne d’Arc is simply magnificent. Everything in this game is lush and beautiful, each object has it’s own semi cell shaded look that developers; Level 5 are renowned for (see: Rogue Galaxy, Dark Chronicle). The colours literally burst out of the screen. There are plenty of subtle details too such as smog, dust and special effects. The whole graphical presentation reeks of polish and is visually stunning. Sound is equally as worked and used appropriately within the context of the game. I am listening very closely to the game’s music and attempting to gauge the difference between this and the gorgeous music from Final Fantasy Tactics. So far Jeanne d’Arc is holding it’s own in that respect.

Jeanne d’Arc is a bit of a sleeper hit unfortunately, much to my own misunderstanding. The PSP, in my eyes is the current console for SRPG gaming. With Jeanne d’Arc, Disgea and Final Fantasy Tactics leading the way. I have a lot to look forward to playing, that is once I finish obsessing over the next PSP game on the list: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Play Impressions | Comments (5)
Tags: burnout, final fantasty tactics, Jeanne d'Arc, metal gear solid, playstation 2, psp

Link Out (1/1/2008)

January 1st, 2008

Hey guys, happy new year. I hope you had an enjoyable new year transition. ^_^ Over the past few weeks I’ve built up a nice collection of gaming links to share with you. They are a little out of date but here goes:

Commodore 64 Guitar Hero

This one is quite interesting, its about a project that someone is working on to convert the basic gameplay elements from Guitar Hero onto a Commodore 64.

Udon Comics Interview

I believe that I’ve mentioned these guys before, Udon Comics do the artwork for the Street Fighter comics and manga. They also work on art for World of Warcraft, Darkstalkers and other important comic and gaming franchises. This interview is about their latest selection of Street Fighter comics and manga. You can see some of the covers here as well.

AU Developer Auran Files For Bankruptcy - Game Industry Wire

Game Industry Wire have been following the story about Auran (one of Australia’s largest game developers) and the rumours and now confirmation of their bankruptcy. I was originally going to post about my concerns over this matter after receiving an email from PALGN with details on how to enter a competition to win 1 of 1000 copies of Auran’s last game; Fury.

Burnout Paradise Soundtrack – MTV Multiplayer

The Burnout games contain some of the best sountracks for any game series ever. The latest soundtrack for Burnout Paradise was announced. Surprisingly it contains the new Seether single on there too.

Funbucket Turns One

Jordan from over @ The Fun Bucket is celebrating The Fun Bucket’s first birthday. So if you haven’t already head over there and give him a heads up. Oh yeah, the obligatry Happy Birthday Banner:

funky kong birthday

Killer Instinct Arena

You might remember the Killer Instinct – Awesomeness in Character Design article that I posted up not too long ago. Now if you have even better memory you might remember that I said that I had some difficulty finding some pictures of the lovely B.Orchid. Well thankfully a reader has come to the rescue and let me know of their site: Killer Instinct Arena which has some images of the babe. So I have taken some images from the site, posted them up in the article. So I want to thank this reader by personally plugging his great site. ^_^

Posted in Link Out | Comments (3)
Tags: auran, burnout, commodore 64, Killer Instinct

The Playstation 2 Story

June 20th, 2007

slim line playstation 2 australia

How it (tradgically) went down

I haven’t posted about this yet and I really should. Basically I’d been meaning to buy a PS2 for probably 2/3 years now and I finally got around to it the other week. I have been keenly looking for one for about 3 months and found and pretty good deal at Harvey Norman. That was:

-Playstation 2 console
-Extra Controller
-8mb memory card
-2x Platnium titles Total price - $299

So I worked that out to be about $170 or so just for the console by itself. Which was close enough to my target goal. The deal had everything that I needed to get started so and I was getting a bit anxious of just watching a few decent sales go by. So I decided to get it.I was assuming that they may have a few other titles that I might want to pick up down at my local Harvey Norman so I was prepared to maybe buy a few more games. Unfortunately their range of games were pretty average infact I was more impressed by their PSP bargain bin. Out of the limited range I chose Burnout Revenge and Tekken 5 as my 2 platnium titles, they also had the Prince of Persia Trilogy for $50 which was too good to pass up. Especially having played the original on the old C64.

All was well until I had to actually pay for the lot. This is where Harvey Normans payment procedure collapsed into itself. Chris(my brother if you haven’t caught on) and I went to the checkout and had the girl scan all of the items, we pointed out that it was a part of the deal and showed it to her in their catalogue. She didn’t seem aware of the promotion and spent several minutes staring blankly at the page. She then scanned up all of the items and looked back at the catalogue for a few minutes. Chris and I had a bus to catch, unfortunately Chris had been slowing me down(as always) before hand so we didn’t have much time on our hands. So we explained the deal to her again and kindly tried to hurry it along.

She then said that she would need to do an invoice for the package which seemed a bit bizarre. So we grabbed our goods and followed her around the store until she could find a spare staff member to do the invoice. She found one quickly enough and we sat down and this other guy went thru the products, once again looked at the catalogue for a while and then proceded to discount each item on the computer. He then wrote the discounts down on a piece of paper and led us back to the front of the store so that the other chick could finish off(or is that start?) the sale. After another customer went thru we got our goods put thru and our ‘invoice’ was printed out an overally large reciept printed from a printed that wouldn’t look out of place in the 80s.

This whole ordeal took about 25 minutes and as you may have already guessed we missed our bus. Now I can’t help but feel sorry for those poor sales people. I mean I don’t blame them for any of this as its not their fault. Except for not knowing that you have a major special in your catalogue that has been running for 4 days or not knowing how to take a few %s off a few products.(why would you employ someone that couldn’t do that?) You see its the POS(point of sale) procedure where the fault lies. There are many many Harvey Norman stores around Australia and yet they don’t have a database system in which they can scan an item an it will come up as a reduced price. What we noticed was that any price reduction has to be entered manually. Now what happens in the ‘invoice’ case is that each item must be marked down individually by a certain amount(%) and those calculations would be sent to the checkout staff to process. This is a ridiculus system of time wasting for the customer and makes no common sense.

I spose its no surprise really I very rarely(infact I don’t believe that I have even bought something from their before the PS2) shop at HN. Infact bfore I bought the PS2 I despised them for their -ve comments on the Nintendo Wii, seemingly morotic staff and well…they just plan annoyed me. But (thankfully) I have a real reason to hate them now. Ain’t gonna shop there again.

I haven’t had a retail bitch for sometime. So thank you for letting it get off me chest.

What else I snapped up

I bought the console a few weeks ago and hence in the time of me wiritng this to back then I have had the time to buy some games for it. Luckily for me its been a great time to buy games. Being the end of the finanical year numerous retailers are having great deals on some stellar games. Everything that I’ve bought has been reduced. ^_^ Here’s the list of games:

-Tekken 5
-Burnout Revenge
-Prince of Persia Trilogy
-Super Monkey Ball DX
-Soul Calibur 3
-God of War
-Final Fantasy X
-Final Fantasy X-2
-Kingdom Hearts 2
-GTA: LCS
-GTA: VCS
-Sega MegaDrive Collection

I’ve been trying to stay focused on certain games and here’s my brief impressions:

Burnout Revenge

This game is totally apt, fantastic production values, gameplay thats fined tuned to perfection. Its just too good. I love playing this game as its such a rush. I found it a wee bit tricky to settle in but now that I have its totally awesome. Soundtracks great too, go Junkie XL.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Some people think that this series is the series of last gen, but I have to disagree. The games reek of Ubisoft quality but I can’t help but feel that its not as refined as it could be. Specifically the combat, I often find myself become more and more frustrated with it. The acrobatics are definetly very impressive. The game is the perfect 3D conversion of the old 2D PoP games in terms of design. Which is very reminiscent of the older games, I can’t help but dig the nostalgic value from my old C64 version.

Soul Calibur 3

I haven’t played any single player of this game yet. Chris and I have been furiously duking it out in the Vs mode. This game is a true step up from SC2 which I wasn’t expecting. The gameplay flows more beautifully than the silk that drapes the walls of some levels. This game makes Tekken 5 feel like something from the stone age.

Sega MegaDrive Collection

I wasn’t expecting to buy this game for a while but it was price at EB($25) which was too good to pass up. The best part about this collection is that it does justice to the old MegaDrive. That is the emulations are faultless, presentation is slick and the additional options such as saving anywhere are just downright handy. Oh and nothing beats playing some co-op Golden Axe. Once again this one brings back those oh so lovely nostalgic memories, from playing this console at my cousins place every weekend when I was a young chap.

Conclusion

Its about time that I bought a PS2. I’m glad that I’ve decided to do it now as its at the perfect time in terms of software range availability and price. I’m also pleased that I bought it now instead of holding off. Thanks for reading. ^_^

Posted in General Gaming | Comments (1)
Tags: burnout, buying games, harvey norman, patriots, playstation 2, soul calibur