Guns Not Included

Love them or hate them there is no denying that downloadable content (DLC) is here to stay in the gaming scene. What kind of content constituted as being okay to be released as DLC and what content is absolutely necessary to the core experience that should not be released separately as DLC? For a game like Dead Rising 2, i can certainly live without the additional costumes and raised attributes as the game is already filled with enough costumes and apparel in the basic game.

Prologue/epilogue episodes like in Dead Rising 2, LA noire, RE5 or Lords of Shadow? Again nice to have but like an issue 0 to a comic book series not absolutely necessary to experience the core story. A trio of guns from a shooter game ? Now that's a big no-no especially when it's a tough shooter like Vanquish. Three weapons in Vanquish were pulled from the game and released as a Pre-order bonus from selected stores during the game initial release. Playing the game without them is like playing handicap though you can certainly finish the game, removing these guns significantly alters the difficulty of the game. I had no choice but to begrudgedly purchase this from the PSN store recently but it wasn't like Dead Rising 2 where I enjoyed the game so much to the point I didn't mind spending an extra dollar on the game's DLC.

What's your reluctant DLC buy?

Tough Guy Talk

The general complaint is that Vanquish is too short of a game but I found the length to be just nice. The game could really use some neat bonus to enhance the replay value but unfortunately there is little offered here. I didn't unlock the skill challenge yet perhaps it requires a higher difficulty level as I decided to start the game on casual auto. I wanted to be a bit more creative about adding replay value to the game so that's why I intend to work my way up from the easiest difficulty all the way to God Hard mode. Hopefully that will gently ease me into the game enough to earn all the trophies and just give me the general satisfaction of mastering a notoriously hard game. On the bright side there are six voice-over track included on the game so you can always have a little fun with listening to the tough guys talk in German or French. All in all I had a lot of fun with this game, I wasn't itching to play it everyday like Dead Rising 2 but I end up liking it a lot more than when I first tried the demo. In fact the second demo featuring on the skill challenge had me in real doubts about getting the game at all but fortunately I decided to take the risk and give the game another chance.

Vanity Affair

I was surprised to see Shinji Mikami name on the back cover of Vanquish, and it wasn't a vanity affair like how Hideo Kojima name usually appears on Metal Gear games. Mikami may have directed many great games after Resident Evil but this I believe was the first time his name appeared alongside on the box art. One of his earlier works was the brilliantly-crafted Dino Crisis on the PSOne which I'm currently playing after finishing Dino Crisis 2 recently.

It's definitely one of my favourite PSOne games which is why I felt so cold about the second game initially. The fully-rendered backgrounds are nothing short of amazing on the 32-bit hardware and suits the modern architecture of the game though it could use with a bit more colour depth. I like the decision-making aspect of the game it's not as subtly executed as Resident Evil but it helps established a bond between Regina and her teammates as you have to choose who to side with. The mixing system for the health packs and anesthetic is still confusing today and something I would rather avoid than to get into. One other thing I enjoyed is the colour-coding for the different item box in the game and how you only have a limited number of plugs to open each box. The game is packed with little clever touches to distinguish it from its more famous cousin like how Regina never leaves your sight even in a loading screen.

It's been a long time since Mikami's last game but somehow it's always worth the wait.

The Importance of Being Old School

I take pride on being a bit of an old-school gamer, having grown up from the 8-bit era of video games. These days when story and graphics matter more than gameplay it's scary to think how video game have envolved. A close friend often lament to me how he will never play a game without any story and it's exactly these guys why games like Heavy Rain came about. I will probably never buy Heavy Rain because the game is lacking the one most defining aspect of a game; the gameplay and I refused to campaign such a game.

As I await for my copy of Vanquish I begin to wonder how much punishment is in-store. It's going to be one of the those games which I hopelessly can't master but yet can't resist coming back for more. Somehow it's always the most frustrating game which you will eventually find the greatest satisfaction in, wouldn't you agree?

Biggest Red Packet of This Season

During my Chinese New Year break I had the good fortune of receiving my copy of Metroid:Other M japan import just in time before the break. I had envision spending the next six of days of break completely devoted to the game in between the snacking and visiting relatives of course. That didn't really happened as I never imagined bypassing the region-lock on my Nintendo Wii would be so difficult. The english patch of Fatal Frame IV was so easy to use I naturally thought I won't have any problems getting this import to run as well. Nothing would work as Gecko and Neogamma refuse to load the disc though I had a little better luck getting them to run my Biohazard 0 GC Japan import. All long I had no intentions of getting the Metroid Other M US version not only because of the horrible box art but also I have learnt that it required a firmware update to 4.3U in order to run. I was still happily playing the Fatal Frame IV using the english patch on my 4.2U system so a system update was out of the question.

In the end the Metroid Other M japan import felt like a big red ang pow which I couldn't even open. On a more positive note I finally made good of my promise to add Vanquish to my collection even though it did come a little later than I expected. The beauty of it was I didn't have to choose between Vanquish and Dead Rising 2 after all as I managed to benefit from a bit of a price drop on both.

Can Dead Rising Really Vanquish Resident Evil?

Despite being the biggest creative force at Capcom right now I have never taken a liking to Keiji Inafune. His choice of projects and lack of involvement with the Resident Evil series made me think there's more to this man than meets the eye. Now his recent bold declaration of what he has planned for the Dead Rising series to ultimately displace Resident Evil as Capcom top IP merely confirms my suspicion that this guy is an ego maniac. You see Dead Rising is Keiji's own labour of love, a zombie game that has more to do with Romero's zombie movies than Capcom's Resident Evil.

For the longest time I have always had a sneaking suspicion that Inafune has distanced himself from the Resident Evil series because it's Shinji Mikami's legacy at Capcom not his, contributing to the series will only further Mikami's legacy. Now Keiji's influence in Capcom has grown to the point that his name pops up on every Capcom project yet Capcom's biggest creative head has little to do with Capcom's biggest IP. All he has done is serve as the promotion producer on the original Resident Evil 2, probably to work with Romero on those TV commercials and later doing the devil's work on the playstation2 port of Resident Evil 4. Now that his intentions are made clear about what he has planned for Dead Rising and Resident Evil it's plain obvious what kind of person Inafune is. I was planning to get Vanquish all along instead of Dead Rising 2 but now I detest the man to the point where I will not buy his zombie game.