Story of My Life

I just completed Resident Evil 4 again for the third time, twice on the Gamecube version on my Wii and the first time on my Playstation2. What can i say, it's just a part of me i can't let go. In case you are wondering, it's one of Leon's lines near the end of the game ;P

Hit ratio - 72%
Enemies killed - 1029
Number of times killed - 11
Clear time - 18:04'50''

I will just keep this short and say i can't wait for Resident Evil 5, in fact i can't wait till Play Asia reimburse me my copy of Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition gone missing.... are you listening Play?

CERO to zero

I have a, some might say rather odd preference for japanese imports when it comes to games, given the fact that i hardly know any japanese at all despite attempting to learn the language twice. I guess it started way back when i got my Gameboy while i was with my dad on assignment in Japan and the japanese games came in cute little boxes (with better cover art too) compared with the rather clumsy US boxes. Even during the 32-bit era, one of my early favourite games Biohazard had the full uncut intro on the japanese release which sadly never made it to western shores after so many iterations including the most recent Deadly Silence on the Nintendo DS. Onimusha also lost a crucial scene and frankly, some of its' atmosphere when it was localised for the Western market. That was then this is now, things has certainly changed since CERO (Computer Entertainment Rating Organization) took charge of the age rating for the video games distributed in Japan. Biohazard 4 was one of the first games to suffer some cuts under CERO as the decapitation scenes were deemed too violent and had to be censored from the japanese version. In a reverse of fortunes, Resident Evil 4 was passed through without any of these cuts in the US, making the japanese version slighty inferior. I also recently had a unpleasant surprise when i played the US version of Dracula X Chronicles on my PSP upon finishing the japanese version earlier and discovered that some footage off the openning CG intro was cut! No doubt the work of CERO again, the shot of blood trickling off the coffin of Dracula onto his forehead was missing from the japanese version.

Play-Asia just had another Easter clearance sale where everything in-stock was going for 20% less and here i was facing the dilemma of whether to order the US, Asian or japanese version of Devil May Cry 4. All three were discounted and only a few dollars set them apart, after much thought i ended up ordering the japanese import as i heard you get a slighty different intro music on the openning cutscene of the japanese version. Some things never change i suppose....

Code-breaker

Even with the two current handhelds, i have rarely played a handheld game devotely for some time now. Not even with the latest God of War PSP game, but Circle of the Moon recently had me playing religously all the way till the end, despite being a japanese import and i had to refer to an english script translation just to keep track of the storyline. It actually wasn't the storyline that kept me engrossed but the tight gameplay and finely-knitted level design that made things interesting enough to keep me hooked. I finished the game after having clocked 9 plus hours into it and the games' storyline and ending seems like a remiscent to one of the very first Castlevanina games i played, Belmont's Revenge on the Gameboy. Seeing that Konami decided to skip the Gameboy Color during that time by not releasing any Castlevania games on that platform, Circle of the Moon is a memorable return and an early sign of the great success that Konami would soon enjoy on the platform with its Castlevania series.

However if only the game didn't run into some slowdown issues whenever the action is too intense, it would have been worthy of the high praise and score that Gamespot bestowed upon it. Some fanboys call it "bad-coding", the fact that Circle of the Moon was one of the early games in the Gameboy Advance library certainly points towards that. Save for perhaps the last boss fight with the transformed Dracula, the game wasn't too overly difficult to the point where it was impossible. In fact, having just come off playing Rondo of Blood must have helped a lot, as i had a greater endurance to withstand and replay again and again some of the more difficult the boss battles. In the end, i manage to unlock the magician by inputting the password FIREBALL as the player's name which i have yet to try out.

The Great Pretender

Next gen games define the expectations of what the platform is capable of. When everyone finally got to play Resident Evil 4, no one could believe the Gamecube was capable of such feats so much so that the mere idea (back then) of porting it to a lesser platform seems impossible.

God of War Chains of Olympus evoke the same kinda feelings, the game looks and plays just like the Playstation2 games it spawned off from, save perhaps for some jagged edges on some of the background textures. Back when the PSP was first launched Sony said it's performance lies somewhere in between a PSOne and a PS2, now the PSP is looking more like a PS2 made portable. Does this make Chains of Olympus a great game? Not necessarily so as i always believe the needs like a handheld game and console game are very much different and just because some developers are smart and capable enough to 'shoe-horn' their console franchise onto a handheld without making any compromise doesn't mean that it's a great handheld game. In fact, it is pretty sad seeing that handhelds were supposed to be the perfect platform for innovations for developers to take risks and try new things without running into a budget big enough to sink the company.

But this is the PSP we are talking about and Sony has from day one marketed their system on this very basis, a handheld able to offer console gaming experience on the go. I applaud Ready at Dawn for their efforts, the game is just overflowing with production values the God of War franchise is famous for. However it's greatest strength is also its' biggest weakness as the game is painfully devoid of any innovations, it's the same type of game we played three years ago on the PS2, so as long as you don't mind playing the same type of game again on your PSP then you are sure be very well pleased with Chains of Olympus. To be fair, this is still a hit in Sony and RAD books, if Okami Wii is just as pleasing then RAD would have gone three for three on their first three games, not bad. However, putting out a game using others intellectual property is much easier than doing your own, as there is already a proven winning formula to follow so the jury is still out on whether Ready At Dawn can cut it with their own games.

Digital Novelty

I finally got a chance to play, or rather watched Silent Hill Experience after acquiring a 4gig memory stick for my ole PSP. While i would have rather play it from a UMD (trust me i would, the collector in me is just dying to get my hands on it), i recently missed the chance when Gamestop stopped giving it away with every copy of Silent Hill Origins Playstation2 version.

I guess there is always another chance and the fact that Gamestop was giving away free copies with every preorder means that there must still be tons of copies just lying around somewhere. Basically the major content of the UMD is the digital graphic novels much like the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel UMD but unlike that, there are also bonus content inserted here merely to publicise the release of the upcoming Silent Hill movie back then. Also one of the graphic novel here, Hunger was created specifically for this UMD released, so what you are getting here is a lot more bang for your buck, when compared with the Metal Gear Digital Novel.

I will admit, having been an avid comic book reader since i was a little boy when comic books were all the rage then, i never warmed up to the idea of "digital" comic. Part of the appeal of comic books to me were always the tangible parts...the familiar smell of the "yellowing" pages, the striking cover behind the "bag and board" sleeves. However, i did enjoy reading Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel as well as Silent Hill Experience, the accompanying sound effects and music, simple animation all help to create a more immersive experience and though it will never replace a real comic book, reading it on the PSP is something i can learn to adapt to.

Devil At Work

Castlevania fans are pretty divided when it comes to their opinion on koji igarashi, the man currently at the helm of all things castlevania. Some think he is the best thing to happened to Castlevania, since he was responsible for the most popular Castlevania game Symphony of the the Night while others just think he's the devil at work. For myself, i don't have much of an opinion on igarashi-san since i was a castlevania fan before the Symphony of the Night-era where the baton was officially handed to igarashi and he became responsible for the direction of the series and every Castlevania game to be released. From what i can tell, the guy seems to have a real passion for Castlevania and is trying his level best to keep Castlevania relevant and successful, what with the series having been around for 20 years now. Sometimes it's nice that the people responsible are as much of a fan as everyone else but we all know that passion can't be accounted for talent. His Castlevania are often criticised for having bad level design and poor attempt at storytelling though to his credit, i must say writing a good dracula story is never easy, just look at Van Helsing. Perhaps for those very same reasons Circle of the Moon, one of the few Castlevania games released after Symphony which did not feature iragashi was so highly regarded.

One of the last few Castlevania game to come out of Konami Kobe, the studio responsible for the Castleavania installments on the NES, Circle of the Moon was released as a launch game for the first Gameboy Advance in US, it's initial success was slightly marred by the fact that it was designed to be played with a backlight, something the original Gameboy Advance lacked. It was and still is the highest rated GBA game on Gamespot and has gone down as one of favourite of the series. Well playing for the first time, i must say it is harder than most recent Castlevania with the exception of Rondo of Blood, which was actually a remake of an old Castlevania game. Apart from that, it's quite hard to tell it apart from the other Castlevania games by Igarashi but isn't that the beauty of Castlevania? It never strays too far from it's winning formula and after two attempts to make the transition to 3D, i'm not sure if i would like see a third. However i get the feeling that people have under-estimated igarashi talents and that he will be recognised for his other contribution to Castlevania apart from Symphony. Of course, we are still waiting for this to happen.....

Boulder Dash

Everyone is excited about the upcoming new Indiana Jones movie, myself included nothing beats watching an old school action adventure movie with plain old-fashioned stunts, none of that CGi nonsense or wirework crap. It seems Shinji Mikami is a pretty big fan of Indiana Jones too, as both of his Resident Evil games featuring a boulder chase sequence when the character has to escape from a running boulder much like in the first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

While these scenes were memorable and certainly not very much out of place despite being in a survival horror game, execution is a whole different matter. In the first Resident Evil, both the original PSOne and Gamecube remake featured pre-rendered backgrounds, making any chase sequence, such as this one a chore to play. In Resident Evil 4, since everything is rendered in real-time the boulder chase sequence could have been executed much better but instead it's reduced to a button-mashing sequence which only requires a quick reflex and some finger dexterity. Since both these sequences offer not much in terms of gameplay experience i really wonder if it was inserted in merely as a tribute to Indiana Jones?