Decisions, decisions

As much as i dig the puzzles of the old Resident Evil games, some of the ones in RE Outbreak are just downright devilish. I don't know if anyone's aware but it's pretty hard to figure out puzzles in a game where you are not encouraged to pause the action as it's meant to be an online multiplayer experience. Probably if done in the right context and situation, these would have been hailed as some of the better puzzles in the series but as it stands, they are dreadful (to me at least) because of the timing and placement. It's been months since i first started on Outbreak file 1 but have yet to complete the game probably due to the episodic nature of the game and the fact i'm only playing it on my PS3. This is the last episode and i'll probably shelf the game once that is done in favour of yakuza 2.

Days of Being Wide

Contrary to what i earlier thought the new Resident Evil Archives does indeed support widescreen display unfortunately the game itself isn't made widescreen-ready (if there is such a term). This is based on what i have gathered so far as i have yet to purchase the new Archives or even test the original NGC version on my new setup.

Remember back when everyone was on 4:3 display and you always get letterbox borders when viewing widescreen movies on dvd? Well this is similar except now your display is widescreen while the source of the presentation is still well, 4:3 wide. Thus if you have your Wii set to 16:9 display then RE archives will have black borders on both sides to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio. In a way the game is now widescreen-friendly but without sacrificing the original aspect ratio of the game. Alternatively if you want the image to be stretched across your widescreen display you have to "trick" your Wii by changing to 4:3 display in the settings and then manually adjusting from your TV remote to stretch to 16:9 display. The NGC version i believed doesn't have this feature and because of this will always appear to be "fullscreen" regardless of your type of display. The solution therefore is really quite simple if you have 4:3 display you should stick to the NGC version while if you have a 16:9 display then you should really get this new version. Assuming you are the type of person who actually cares about preserving the original aspect ratio. Of course the real solution is Capcom should really have made this the definitive version by going widescreen though i heard it's a bit impossible considering the backgrounds are all pre-rendered.

Regeneration of Degeneration

The new TV has a nice little notice appearing on the screen whenever it changes from its native resolution so while watching Degeneration blu-ray again on the new setup, i happened to noticed not everything on the disc is full HD as i would have thought. The main feature is of course full HD however the Generation of Degeneration making-of is output at 1080i, not such a major issue considering it's just a making-of. Some of the Degeneration trailers are also output at 1080i but thankfully all the wonderfully-recorded voice bloopers are in full HD. The interview with leon motion-actor along with some other odd film trailers are output at standard definition (480p) probably due to the source material itself. However the real highlight of watching the blu-ray on the new setup is i can finally view the picture-in-picture (PIP) feature which i had a really hard time on standard definition as the smaller frame was simply impossible to see anymore on SD.

Metal Geared

I didn't have a good experience with my first Metroid game being Metroid Prime Hunters on the DS so naturally when the Big N announced that they are re-packaging all three Metroid games onto one Wii disc, i was still sitting on the fence whether or not i should purchase it. Then i saw the promotion pictures of how the box art would look and i was sold, the game housed in a metal tin box with a cardboard jacket looks pretty tempting indeed. To top it off, Nintendo is sure to step up and deliver updated controls and visual to the first two NGC games, unlike the recent Resident Evil Archives. The only shame here is Retro Studios are no longer developing the series and the price is still a little too steep for three old games bundled into one. My only concern at the moment is this going to be the standard version for all copies of the game or it is limited like numerous collector's edition?

Borderline Annoying

I rushed home today to find that my Biohazard Organic Dioramas have arrived promptly from Play-asia so someone should have got their commission by now and hopefully would return the good deed soon. These diorama looked better than i expected, i can't wait to display them and would certainly consider completing the entire set of six in due time. Since Resident Evil Archives was also released yesterday, i thought it might be a good time to reflect on my current decision whether or not to re-purchase the game.

Early impressions were as expected, the game supports progressive scan of 480p but unfortunately lacks 16:9 widescreen support. The widescreen support probably won't bother me a week ago but now that i'm on widescreen display and don't intend to switch my Wii back to the 4:3 tv, it has become a bigger issue than before. I really can't stand black borders around the screen, the RE4 NGC version has tested my limits so buying a Wii edition of REmake just for the sake of collection now doesn't seems like such a good decision. Another thing worth noting was one gamer commented that the NGC version runs on "full widescreen" on the Wii without having to adjust anything while the Wii edition doesn't though bear in mind neither of these are actually true widescreen. If that is indeed the case then too bad for the latecomers and RE4 band wagoners out there, i will probably confirm with my NGC version soon and see if it's possible to continue to play that version until the price of Wii edition comes down.

Great Scott

Being a comic book geek in my youth, i do check in on my favourite series every now and again. Since Activision's first Spider-Man on the PSOne, i don't think i have ever played a bad spidey game with the last one being Ultimate Spider-Man. I have thankfully avoided the last few not because i heard they weren't any good but i just couldn't follow the direction of the game whether they were trying to be faithful to the comic or the movie.

Now the Amazing Spider-Man series is approaching its 600th issue, I was an avid collector after the 300th issue during the McFarlane/Larsen run and dropped out sometime after Mark Baegley began his lengthy run. Many years later i was introduced to the Danger Girls series which opened my eyes to a different kind of American comic outside the spandex hero genre. It also made me a fan of J Scott Campbell, who reportedly is a huge Nintendo fan and got his work first published in the very pages of Nintendo Power. Now Campbell is also pretty fond of the ole web-head as he has done some guest cover art for the Amazing Spider-Man series. Let's just say to be able to do guest cover art on a series like Amazing you must have a lot of clout and Campbell rightfully does. I planned to pick up the landmark 600th issue and also the issue after which Campbell has done the cover art for, having missed his last few i don't intend to miss this one being a fan of the black cat.

Retro Story

Before jumping into Madworld, i decided to get myself familiarised with some of Yasumi Matsuno earlier works. Matsuno who serves as a story consultant in Madworld happens to be one of the most talented game designers working today, having done Square Enix's most critically-acclaimed games, Vagrant Story and FFXII. Both were the only SE games to ever achieve perfect score from Famitsu reviewer team which is no small feat indeed. Vagrant Story as you have may have read has been sitting in my collection gathering dust so the timing was just right to finally get started on it.

The game doesn't play like a standard RPG, leaving you by yourself to make your way out of the dungeon as you progress through the game. I suspected you won't ever leave the dungeon at all as one of the statistics the game records whenever you make a save is how many percentage of the dungeon you have explored. The game like any RPG looks a bit daunting to get into when i initially start but i soon discover it to be pretty easy to get into, with a slight emphasis on weapon design. The cinematics are a thing of beauty probably the best i have seen on the PSOne library which uses in-game engine for storytelling. The only problem i have is the game camera often doesn't give you the best angle and adjusting it is a little cumbersome but the game offers enough flexibility so it doesn't become an issue, even allowing you to adjust the view during the combat.

Yakuza 2 on PS3

Yakuza 2 being a late entry into the Playstation2 game library plays very well on my backward compatible 80GB PS3 as expected. The graphics upscaled to 1080p still has a very soft grainy look on certain scenes such as the opening demo which i suspected was badly compressed judging from the sheer size and depth of the game. The other cutscenes which were rendered by the in-game engine i presumed, looks much better even when the game zooms in upclose to the characters. The game supports 16:9 widescreen so everything's in proper proportions on a LCD display unlike some ps2 games when you set your ps3 to upscaled the image to fill the entire display. The loading times has also improved significantly, you don't even have to wait for the option to press start to skip the loading come fight sequences. While it's not as fast to the point when it's seamless like in yakuza 3, gone are the days when i would dread getting into a fight in the first yakuza for fear of the long loading time.
You could certainly do much worse than yakuza 2 when looking for a game to play on your ps3 as my previous other ps2 games have been known to display a glitch or two during playback.

Hubba Hubba

Playing No More Heroes got me looking forward to the sequel, will Desperate Struggle feature a new HUB? While it's entirely possible to Travis to get out of his small apartment in Santa Destroy, it would be a bit sad to see it go. I'm completely fine if GHM retains Santa Destroy while opening out new location and stores in the town ala the Shinjuku HUB in Yakuza 2. I'm beginning to grow fond of those sadistic one-hit kill missions too so hopefully they will scatter some more of those side mission in NMH2 hub.

Wii Deserve Better

Now that i have the proper HD TV setup that i have been longing for i can finally play the ps3 like it was meant to be played. In the process i also couldn't resist hooking up my Wii to it as well despite the Wii not being a pure HD console. Actually with some decent component cables, the Wii doesn't look too bad on a LCD screen from my early playtest of No More Heroes. The same unfortunately cannot be said of Gamecube game running on the Wii, Resident Evil 4 NGC looks absolutely terrible with letterbox borders and a very blurry image compared with NMH. I'm sure not all Gamecube games looked this bad as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes demo theatre looked pretty dazzling with progressive scan mode on. I'm tempted to switch over to my Wii edition of RE4 to see if it's any better now that i'm on LCD display but i'm already halfway through professional mode so i'll try to make it as quick and painless as possible. These are some of the games i have tested on the new display over the weekend, the best part of it all is seeing them again and how much better they looked on LCD display.

The Signature Character

Looks like i have to scrap my initial plan of waiting for the first three diorama to arrived before deciding to order the other three as the Chris and Jill diorama are already sold out this morning. When i realised i couldn't order all six in one transaction to qualified for free delivery, i ordered the Chris and Jill one first and foremost not because they looked the best but because i knew they would run out first before the rest. Even upon learning this, i left things as it is and only when i noticed the Rebecca one too went out of stock in the span of the two hours later i knew i didn't have the luxury to wait anymore.

By then the zombie mauling kenneth corpse and zombie with cerebrus were also gone, leaving me with just the tyrant one left. So i ended up ordering just one more short of the two zombies to make the complete set. I guess i should feel content because these were the four i had in mind when i first saw the set but somehow having a Biohazard set of figure without the signature character just feels incomplete.

Diorama to Die For

Ask me if i have anything in mind to buy and i will usually have a endless list of games, artbooks and figures that i may never finish buying them all. It's less so with games these days as i have run out of space in my game collection but anything else which i can keep randomly somewhere in my room, i will not hesitate to pick them up. High on my list of stuff to get are the recent Biohazard Play-arts, a collection of diorama centering around key moments of the first game. I have been looking for these for quite some time now, probably because pictures of this collection were released very early on and my favourite online store didn't stock it until quite recently. In fact i have given up on the idea of Play-asia even bringing this in as they are usually quite fast going about these things. Then months after Resident Evil 5 came out, Play-asia finally starting to stock these at their store, by then the hype surrounding Resident Evil had sort of cool off and this collection slip off my radar so much that i even forgot to put a tag on it should it ever get discounted.

My last order at Play-asia was the regretfully unnecessary Resident Evil Prima Game Guide, seeing that Capcom released an official artbook recently and all i wanted in the Game Guide were those precious few pages of concept arts. Upset about my last few purchase, i sought to stay off from ordering at Play-asia for as long as i could only to get suckered back in when i found out today that the Biohazard Playarts Collection has already been discounted. All was going well until i realised that purchasing the entire set will not entitled me to the usual free delivery as these figures are shipped in rather bulky boxes so i could only order three and had to decided quickly which to get and which to drop momentarily. Right now my only concern is whether or not i should make a separate order for the remaining three figures of the set and how long they will still be around at discounted price before i decide to place my next order. I suppose the smart thing to do is the wait for the first three to arrive and see if they are really worth collecting the entire set.

This is Your Chance

A few days ago i was pretty chuffed having save USD30 by getting my buddy to buy Madworld and Yakuza 2 from Gamestop. Today i learnt that the Collector's Edition of Resident Evil 5 has dropped to USD79.90 at Play-asia, that's like a USD30 discount not with counting any additional discount vouchers. Sure i'm mad about it especially since the Xbox 360 CE has long since been out of stock, it just goes to show how many more 360 users there are and how well the game is selling on that platform. Nothing much i can do about it, i won't have trade the experience of playing it back on 13rd of March for anything else and certainly won't settle on a standard edition that time while waiting out for the price of this to fall. For those who were waiting out for this big discount now is your chance, it may not be worth it back when it was full-price price but at this price you are certainly getting your money's worth for everything included.

Mad For Sega

Here are the two games my fellow friend string brought all the way back from New York for me, both happened to be games published by Sega and coincidentally have similar black & white covers. I could go on all day about the similarities but i rather brag about the savings i get from having to purchase the games directly from a Gamestop outlet. Yakuza 2 ended up being a bit difficult to find with the only copy available in J&R selling for USD10 more than expected, thus both copies came up to USD29.90 each. Despite all that, the savings compared with ordering from Play-asia was enough for me to purchase another game of similar value. The savings instead went to the Biohazard 5 Official Artworks you can see in the background which i didn't really planned on getting so soon but seeing it's sold-out in Play-asia i didn't really want to take a chance with this. With all these stuff in my possession it looks like i won't be ordering anytime soon from Play-asia...well at least until their annual summer sale.

Could It Be Magic?

This here is the early cover art for NBA 9K which is scheduled to be release soon, a highly-regarded bastketball game series that has surpassed the likes of NBA and NBA Live. Basically if you are a gamer and a hoops fan you need to be playing this and not the latter, those much like THQ's Smackdown series have been coming out almost every year without any significant improvements.

I have yet to really sink my teeth into this series, i have played NBA 8K for a bit on my ps2 but playing it on an outdated console just doesn't do the series justice. I came close to owning NBA 7K for my ps3 but end up with Sony's NBA 07 instead because of the promised full HD support. The real reason i posted the cover art is because i have a real gripe with it, NBA K series have traditionally used the last season NBA champions as their cover art star and this season's NBA finals is just about to start today, isn't it a slight disrespectful much like those Nike commercial featuring lebron and kobe puppets? While i do think the Magic doesn't really stand much of a chance against kobe and the lakers, i'm rooting for dwight howard because i have always been a big fan of NBA big men and i liked howard's nice guy persona despite his lack of offensive moves. Maybe the NBA games are fixed like some have suspected all along?

Resident Evil No Go

The reality of yesterday's great announcements are finally starting to sink in today, Resident Evil designed specifically for the new Sony PSPGo? Does that mean it won't come in UMD since the new PSPGo doesn't have a UMD drive? This is not going to bode very well with my treasured collection seeing i won't be able to secure a hard copy and on top of that, i have never been very fond of digital download.

As for the game itself, i'm not too fond of the title Resident Evil Portable, it gives a vibe that you will get a severally compromised game compared with its console brethens. It has been something that has always plagued game franchises making the jump to handheld and made me approach these games with great scepticism. It's uncertain at this stage just what kind of a game Resident Evil Portable will be but seeing that Capcom stop making RE games that aren't considered canon or have at least some familiar characters, it would probably be something worth checking out.

The lazy presentation of the game announcement also bothered me, of what is clearly a mock-up of what the title screen would look like. Capcom twitter says the game is designed specifically for the PSPGo, why couldn't they use the PSPGo for the mock-up? I don't really know who's to blame for this one between Capcom and Sony, i assume the PSPGo has been in the works for sometime now before the official announcement couldn't Sony at the very least provide mock-up of what the system would look like for Capcom to use?

3 Cheers for Capcom

With the E3 promising to be bigger and better this year, plenty of surprises were in-store for gamers of all platforms to ensure that the media and everyone else were paying attention.

Capcom finally unveiled their other secret E3 game, Resident Evil Portable for the Sony PSP satisfying the long cry for Capcom to bring one of their famous franchise to Sony portable machine. While it isn't groundbreaking news, it's certainly a good move aimed at pleasing the fans as with their other E3 game, Tatsunoko Vs Capcom coming stateside against all odds after no one believe it would even have a chance of leaving its native home. Among the other big Capcom news revealed at E3 is for PS3 users as Capcom confirmed that Lost Planet 2 will indeed be made available on the platform.

Predictable? A little i guess but in a way it's all good because all the games announced happened to be coming to platform near me. Selfish yes but isn't that's what being a fanboy is all about?