Please Wake Up Kotaku

Inception is a great movie, ok I get it. But does Kotaku really have to go all fanboy out on the movie with what is probably their fifth, sixth or maybe tenth post on the movie? Kotaku is a gaming site the last time I checked so what does Inception have to do with video games? Absolutely nothing as far as I know but who knows maybe these God knows how many post might argue that point. Bottom line is I come to a game blog to really about games and not so much on movies or whatever else that interests Kotaku. I'm not sure if Mr Nolan would appreciated his latest "masterpiece" being associated with a lower medium of entertainment such as video games.

It's like they ran out of good game articles to post and simply mail one in. Heck I have been tempted to do so and in fact done so on a few occasion but my personal blog wasn't never meant to be anything more than my personal account on my favourite games. I expected more of Kotaku.

Ok enough ranting for on day, looks like I got away with one myself. Hehe.

Evil Dead Rising

Being a longtime fan of the Resident Evil series I have always long for the series to be more like Dead Rising (more zombies) but Capcom has been adamant that the series is not going in that direction even with the technology available to them. Resident Evil 5 could easily had more zombies per screen and in fact, it did at one time if you go back and watch the early trailers prior to the game release.

Playing Chop Till You Drop over the weekend made me realise more Dead rising in Resident Evil could be a good thing but more Evil in Dead Rising certainly is not. Confused yet? As Capcom was making changes to the original Dead Rising for the Nintendo Wii, the developers placed a greater emphasis on the firearms possibly to stress on the ease and precision of the Wii controls as previously demonstrated in RE4 Wii Edition.

Leaning on the firearms revealed just how different these two games really are, the zombies in Dead Rising doesn't react to gun shots with the same realism as in Resident Evil. Sometimes when I'm going to a leg shot to follow up with a melee attack, they end up dying in an instance instead. From getting shot in the knee! The guns in Dead Rising also doesn't feel as accurately portrayed as they are in the Resident Evil series making me loathe the gun shooting even more. As such I try to go about my zombie killing by any other possible way but that has proven difficult at times as you just can't charge into the mob of zombie blocking your way. Sometimes in order to make a path to the next store where you could possibly find another melee weapon you have to shoot your way though the mob.

Over the Hills for Trophies

Finishing Silent Hill Homecoming today seems a little less significant considering the game doesn't offer any trophy incentives. While trophy-less games like MGS4 and DMC4 compensate by recognising your in-game achievements with their own in-game ranking system Homecoming doesn't even track your gameplay statistics at the end of the game. A major blunder on Double Helix part considering every past game in the series had their feature even the Climax-developed installments.

Right now I only have four games on my trophy list but I intend to achieve Platinum on everyone of those games. The catch is not to over-do it and make trophy-hunting the primary aim of re-playing those game, I have a friend who grind many hours through Infamous on his way to his first Platinum trophy only to sell the game immediately afterwards because he was so sick of hunting for the final trophy. I certainly do not wish for the same to happen to me with my games but tendency to go all out on a trophy hunt is always there.

Integral Podcast

The last time I finished MGS4 at the beginning of 2009, Kojima Productions was just beginning with their integral podcast for the game. By then the game is already one and a half year old with myself finishing it twice, there was little desire to go back and play it again - podcast or not. Now that I'm playing Peace Walker, it seems like the perfect time to play MGS4 again. I'm sure that would raise more than a few eyebrows when my friends log into PSN then again I was never really the most up to date gamer anyway. When accessing the online portion of MGS4 I was overwhelmed with the sheer amount of content Konami added to the game since I last checked in 2009. Aside from the podcast, there are also remixes of classic Metal Gear tunes and new camouflage to enhance your Metal Gear experience.

The integral podcast is a lot of fun, it's like having a live walkthrough guiding you through the course of the game. Of course that's not the real purpose of the podcast but having to pay attention to the guys talking, it's nice that you don't have concentrate on slipping by the guards too much. I'm about two acts into the game and intend to keep my kills and alert record clean while at the same time, listening to these guys reflect on the making of the game via the podcast.

When Love and Hate Collide

I'm still undecided whether I like Silent Hill Homecoming or not, it's frustrating at times while being bearable for most of the time. One thing's for sure, it's not good enough of a game for me to upgrade my korean version to the region 1 version when I passed up Play-asia recent re-stock of the title.

The flashlight for the game is so bad that I sometimes have to switch it on and off using the shortcut button just to make sure it's turned on. Then again maybe the developer were trying to achieve a more realistic lighting and darkness effect like what the early Resident Evil 5 trailer promised. Maybe this is what a real cheap flashlight will look like I'm not sure. The high definition graphics is nice but by making most of the background object interactive via Havok physic, everything just end up looking crude and far bigger than they should. The meticulous art direction of Team Silent past games is never honoured, though I find Homecoming vision of the Otherworld a bit more to my disliking than the real world of Shepherd's Glen.

As for the region 1 version, I never really have that great of a Silent Hill collection to begin with anyway though I would like to add it's still better than some pathetic 'collection' put together just with copies of konami palace reprints. I guess I can live up with this korean version, I would rather put my money and effort into looking for the Silent Hill 4 The Room still missing from my collection right now.

Don't Judge Me

This morning I received an email informing me that Castlevania Judgment has just drop to $19.90 in Play-asia, great news for Castlevania fan like myself. Only problem is I ordered my copy a week ago and it arrived promptly at my doorstep today. Oh well the universe is balance and savings that I earned from bargain deals like this usually ended up funding pricey collector's edition and first-day purchases anyway.

Judging from the box art, the game support online versus play with fourteen classic Castlevania characters to choose from. Only problem I could only recognise about five out of the fourteen characters so much for being a Castlevania fan. I have been longing to add this game to my collection but I haven't actually play any of the last three Castlevania in my collection either so this is purely for collecting sake at this point. Looks like I haven't break away from my bad habit of buying games when I don't have time to play otherwise I would have save a bit more on this game.

Zero Suits Me Just Fine

Even though I have the tendency to leave things unfinished when I play a game for the first time, I don't have the foresight to compile a to-do list for future re-plays. Looking at the list of unlockables for Fatal Frame IV, it's easy to see which one is the most appealing and yet still attainable within my limits as I prepared to play the game again. Of course I'm talking about Samus infamous zero suit for lead character Ruka which requires 200 photos to be captured from the Ghost List.

Luckily for me I'm quite a completist when it comes to the Ghost list and enjoys the hunt of getting those tricky shots of disappearing ghost. In my first play through I'm came about 50 shots short of 200 ghost capture, so it should be fairly easy to unlock this. However in the process of re-playing the game I realised that the easier shots are already on my ghost list so most that remains the fast-moving ghost that require you to be quick on your feet in addition to being quick on the shutter button. That zero suit is going to feel all the more rewarding when I do reach 200 captures and who knows maybe it might actually inspire me to finally start playing the Metroid trilogy.

Inside the Darkside

I recently put away my copy of Darkside Chronicles to make way for other games but that doesn't mean I'm done with the game. Far from it as the amount of content and unlockables packed into that game is simply staggering especially when compared with its predecessor. I have heard from my friends that there is an artbook released for the game but other that a recent sighting on Play-asia I have seen little of this to convince me its worth getting. So when the book went out of stock on Play-asia yesterday I went into my usual panic mode and started googling up on the book. Sure enough from what I can see online it does look like an artbook similar to the one released for the first Umbrella Chronicles game.

A quick search online and mad rush trip downtown was all it took before i finally added the book to my collection late last night. It cost quite a bit more than the first book but hopefully judging from the sheer amount of content in both game, this will be a much more worthwhile book too. The number of pages certainly doesn't feel like so but it's hard to resist with such a nice cover and it's Resident Evil after all.