Heaviest Rain

A few days of hair raising moments and shouting at the game, I finally finished Heavy Rain. The game sets you up controlling three characters on the trail of a serial killer that kills children by drowning them with rain, hence the title. From start to finish, the game has a certain lethargic feel to it which, well, gets you down. But overall the story is pretty good and the action sequences feel like they're taken straight from some Die Hard fight scene. I've never really felt that way about "fights" inside a game before but in this game, I was always tense and gritting my teeth from every blow. My biggest regret is putting down 60 bucks for what you can really beat in a day. There's some replayability with it since there's multiple endings and some bonus clips you can unlock but the whole storyline won't change, there's no character building mechanics, and it's just a singleplayer experience. My only hope is that maybe they'll release some episodes as DLC with other characters kinda like Rockstar did with GTAIV.

Thoughts on WKC

I was able to finally get through White Knight Chronicles over the weekend, and I can't help but feel utterly disappointed with that game. It had some neat ideas and the online mode offers alot of replaybility, but all in all it feels pretty underdeveloped, which is amazing because the game was conceptually announced in '06. The game does offer some deep gameplay (which is of course the hallmark of any good JRPG) but it all seems too focused on the Online mode. Since the online mode carries over the exhaustive combat system, skills, and rather bland quests, the game just falls short of delivering any kind of solid positive experience.


The true heart of any decent RPG is having likeable characters that interact in an engrossing story. Kinda like a Reading Rainbow vibe. Unfortunately, the character you create doesnt talk at all, Leonard (the main character) felt more like a tool to move the story along rather than an actual dude, Eldore was just too much of a fake Auron for me to pay attention to, and Yulie kinda revolved around Leonard which didn't really offer anything for me. What does this all mean to you? If you enjoy a good RPG story and characters, move along. Another gripe with the game is the combat system.


At first, I really liked the real-time combat but throughout the entire game, I only ever used 2-3 different attacks, maybe a Combo if I wanted to see some Devil May Cry action, and spamming the White Knight transformation. For having so many different types of attacks, none of them really felt as useful as just finding the one that dealt the most damage possible. Status ailments, debuffs, buffs all were kinda short lasting and not really needed.


I have to say that the online mode is probably the only portion of the game really worth taking a look at. There's a unique Georama Hub that you can create which is essentially a small Town for others to connect to and queue up Quests, gather materials, sell/buy items, and just act as a central lobby. There's a crafting system to go along with the harvesting, recruiting NPC's into your town to add beneficial attributes, and I'm sure other crazy stuff for the online mode that I haven't even seen yet. If you enjoy a pretty deep online experience from an RPG, then by all means take a look at this game, but beware of the shoddy singleplayer mode and non-varying combat mechanics.

Windows Phone 7

My T-Mobile contract is ending pretty soon, what perfect timing...

Let it be known

White Knight Chronicles

So far this year has started off pretty awesome and this new JRPG, White Knight Chronicles, is keeping up the pace. Not your traditional, traditional JRPG game, the game has a real-time action orientated combat system which is reminiscent of FFXII's, it also has an interesting combo mechanic where you can land multi-hit attacks with quick button presses which are based off your skills that you assign for the combo, not to mention the ability to transform into a huge white knight. It's stuff like this and the game's skills system that keeps it fresh. The online portion of the game features a 4 player coop allowing you to complete quests that you purchase in singleplayer mode with others. Insert crafting weapons and armor and enchanting them as well, and this game totally feels like Japan is giving you a nice big hug.

On the downside, the game's story seems pretty weak so far. Standard save the princess stuff with piss poor voice acting, and even the script and characters seem pretty week (coming from stellar stuff from Mass Effect 2). It's got enough going for it for me to keep playing, that is until all the other stuff coming out totally consumes me in the not so distant future.

From an RPG to MAG

So I found a Best Buy gift card the other day and figured I'd finally see what the commotion was about MAG. It's got a weird mix of Battlefield and Socom to it, maybe what Socom Confrontation might have been if Slant Six didn't take over. It's got several different game modes and maps tailored for big games of 64 players up to 256 total along with a persistent leveling system where you can unlock weapons, attachments and gear. In order to spread the players out and avoid chaos, the game locks you into squads where you and about 8 others attack a single objective while the rest of your team goes after their objective on the other side of the map.

The shooting resembles something close to GRAW where guns definitely have some range to them and shooting without aiming will rarely get you a kill, even close up. The leveling is kinda fun and is a nice hook to keep you playing just like it did in BF2/2142. There are some vehicles in the game but the whole thing feels too infantry focused and the vehicles feel sort of like an afterthought in the game. It's too early for me to tell if I'll stick with this for awhile but for now its been fun playing a multiplayer fps on console again (which I hardly do cause I have issues with FPS+gamepads).

Finally... Chillin With Jason S2E3

WAT?

You know, I always wondered what the hell was taking Squeenix so long to release their nex-gen Final Fantasy game. Fast forward to 3 years later and we have the Japanese release with our version of the game coming up in March. It appears that the game was originally slated as a PS2 only release. Everyone and their mom knew the PS3 was coming out by 2006, but Squeenix held onto the development of FFXIII on the PS2 for one and a half years. What?! Seriously? Imagine playing a AAA title that was released on a previous gen console. Who does that? Why did they even consider...oh well. That just kinda blew my mind. Well it's 2010 now and I'm ready for my fill of Final Fantasy.

Oh yeah, the XIV Online is dropping this year too. Will I be able to even handle an MMO? Whatever, I'm definitely psyched about killing my first Rarab, San d'Orian pride '03 muhfuggas.