Boy Cried Wolf

Being a metal gear fan who have lost interest in the series after MGS4, i haven't been keeping up to date with the development of Peace Walker the folllow-up to Portable Ops that's set to be release on PSP this May. Now with the release just months away, i'm only beginning to catch up with what's the game all about since i do have a Sony PSP gathering dust at one corner.

The marketing advert are proclaiming this to be the first true Hideo Kojima game on the PSP and while they are pretty accurate with the statement, this actually isn't the first time they have said such a thing. Portable Ops was also hailed as the first Hideo Kojima Game on the PSP when it came out which most fans knew wasn't entirely true as kojima only wrote and produced that game. This was because the earlier two Metal Gear Acid! game were not part of the Metal Gear canon and had little to no involvement from kojima though it isn't to say that they were terrible games. While i understand that Hideo Kojima name is a big sell among Sony gamers, you kinda get the feeling of boy cried wolf here and maybe, just maybe kojima fans has left the dire portable in search of other thrills. Let's hope there is still enough of an audience on the platform to meet the expectations.

Darker Side of the Void

I have this attachment to demos of games i liked even long after i have finished the actual game. It's quite fascinating to go back and view the demos to see if they changed anything over the course of the final stages in the development. Then there is the darker side to demo disc where hackers will crack the disc to uncover all these things that never made in to the final game. Of course i'm referring to beta that shipped on demo disc where storage space is rarely an issue. In this digital age, i don't know if downloadable demo will still contain all these hidden treasure dumped onto the disc.

Not that it make things any easier as i still have my RE5 demo which i just boot up today to see if the online servers for the co-op mode still works. Surprisingly the servers are still active and i could easily find other gamers to co-op on the two demo levels. Looks like i will just have to find something else to delete in order to make room for the Dark Void demo that due to be out this week.

Son of A Gun

Call me gun crazy but i appreciate the attention to detail when it come to guns in video games and the Resident Evil series so far has done a nice job with the firearms featured in their games. So you can imagine my disappointment when i learnt that Darkside Chronicles wasn't faithful to the original Code: Veronica with Claire using the same Browning HP as she did in RE2. If you don't remember Claire was supposed to be using the Beretta M93R as her signature weapon in Code: Veronica. It's only a minor detail but the fact that the Gun Survivor game based on Code: Veronica was able to get that right and not this kind of bothers me a little.

Seed of Destruction

One of the most compelling aspect of a great villain is how they went astray, if the villain doesn't have an interesting origin then he's probably not that great of a villain to begin with. As i inches closer to the end of Darkside Chronicles, i'm intrigued with character development of Krauser from a true blue american soldier to the power-crazy mercenary in Resident Evil 4. From the moment Javier's B.O.W tear into krauser's left arm in the middle of the boss fight, i begin to see the seeds of destruction being sowed to giving him his own hand of doom in RE4. I got really excited at this point [cue geek moment music] so much so that i stop playing because i already had enough of my fix for the day. When I first started, I wasn't paying much attention to krauser probably because i was too caught up with how good Claire looked and also because i knew you won't get to see how krauser ends up being presumed dead in RE4. After all, Leon didn't know that when they meet up again and the fact Krauser knew nothing about B.O.W at the start of the Javier mission didn't help either.

But unlike the Russian Umbrella stronghold chapters in Umbrella Chronicles, the Javier chapters seems to play a greater importance in the RE saga as the box art clearly describes how the timeline of the game begins with Leon and Krauser in 2002 with flashbacks to the events of Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica. While the flashbacks ends up taking the bunk of the game's playing time that doesn't necessarily mean the Javier mission won't be of anything significant. Hopefully there are further development to the krauser character and the ultimate payoff would prove to be more satisfying than how Capcom decided to leave the Vergil character in DMC3.

Bewitched Again

Finishing Bayonetta a few weeks back i immediately feel the urge to play it again, not because the entire campaign was too short (10-12 hours) but because i had such a horrible time with my first play-through that i knew i would enjoy it more the next time around. Weird huh? Not so if you are familiar with action games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry.

You see Bayonetta has a rigid save system where it only allows you to save the game at the end of the level so not knowing how long the level is and when exactly you can save can be a very scary feeling. Not to entirely bash the game, i suspect the game auto-saves your progress at designated checkpoints because there's always an auto-save checkpoint on my ps3 save file utility. But not wanting to risk losing any of my valuable progress, i have never tried not finishing a level and saving my progress at the end before exiting the game. So here i am, trying to better my score on every level while uncovering the secret mission portals and notes which i may have missed earlier. Not entirely different with what happened with Devil May Cry 4 so maybe that's why i knew once i finished Bayonetta for the first time, there can only be good times ahead.

Rule #32: Enjoy the Little Things

One of my early gripes with Umbrella Chronicles was that you never get to see your character or partner enough. Even though it's a lightgun shooter, i must admit i sometimes i enjoy watching my characters breaking out of the zombie hold just so i can catch a glimpse of them before them pull back behind the camera again. This time around on Darkside Chronicles while the camera stays behind the character at all times, it turns and faces your partner every now and again so it never feels like you are sitting on an amusement thrill ride but rather witnessing the events through the eyes of the character which is how it should be. The camera also shake and bobs around in a frantic motion to convey a sense of panic in the character movement and really make the game all that more difficult. Your partner also actively engage in the gun fights with the undead unlike in the past when they are too bust engaging in the conversation to even lend you a hand. Sometimes you have to get your partner out of a fit but it never happens too often for it to be a pain and often times, your partner is usually more capable than you are.

The other little things including seeing your character guns while re-loading and even the amount of shells your character sticks into the chamber depends on the number of rounds actually used, making re-loading time much more crucial in the heat of the battle. While this makes the game more of a first-person shooter than a lightgun shooter, it's a decision that i applaud because of my strong attachment to the characters. There is even an option to turn on the laser sights for all the weapons making it feel like a first-person shooter of Resident Evil 4. While all these little things may have blurred the lines between first-person and lightgun shooter in Darkside Chronicles, it's making me enjoy the game just a bit more than the first one.

Darkness Falls

After what seem like forever, my copy of Darkside Chronicles has finally arrived. Using free delivery during this time of the year can be very risky, i remember my RE4 Wii Edition going missing a couple of years back during this holiday season. Luckily Play asia was able to compensate my loss with another copy of the game and i regret i was not able to repay their good deed by devoting more time to that version. Rest assured this will not happen with Darkside Chronicles as i almost 50 hours into the first Umbrella Chornicles.