Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Boy am I having a hard time on Bayonetta, earning an Enzo Stone rank at almost every level. I'm sure I'll get better eventually with enough practise but right now I'm really getting my rear whipped. Luckily the cinematics are cool and the game is littered with Easter eggs to make things bearable and interesting.

Of course, most Devil May Cry fans would know that Enzo's name first appeared in the openning pages of the first Devil May Cry manual where he writes a brief account of his first meeting with Dante. Then Bayonetta utters Dante's famous words when she too tells one of the bosses in the game to flock off, feather-face.

The highlight for me is when pretty boy Luka talks about his past girlfriends after sharing an intimate moment with Bayonetta. Each one of them happens to be a leading lady from past Kamiya games! There's Claire from Resident Evil 2, Trish from Devil May Cry, Silvia from Viewtiful Joe and finally Ammy from Okami. At that point I totally geeked out and wonder if there are any more surprises in store?

Plastic Terror

I ordered these Biohazard 4 gashapons a while back from Play-asia but never got around to openning all of them. I was pleasantly surprised with the level of detail and quality of series 1 which i still proudly display on my desk along with my Viewtiful Joe ones, also by Agatsuma. The great thing is i ordered a full box of six for both Biohazard 4 and Viewtiful Joe and managed to received the complete set not withcounting the chase figure and without any duplicates.

Earlier while admiring the virtual figures and bottlecaps in Resident Evil 4 & 5, i got the urge to open the remaining series 2 for Biohazard 4. You see these figure were based on the virtual bottlecaps which you can earned from the shooting range in Biohazard 4, which was carried over to Biohazard 5. This time, i lucked out on the Ashley and merchant figure instead ending up with a duplicate of vertigo, salazar's menacing bodyguard. I did however scored the chase figure which to my disappointment is the rather unremarkable male villager with the axe.

Take A Bow

I can be a pretty big geek when it comes to games, for example i love to keep track of whose responsible for my favourite games. As such, i love to view game credits after beating a game especially if it's a hard fought game like Viewtiful Joe. So you can imagine my disappointment when i finished Siren last weekend and didn't get any ending credits apart from the facial/voice actors of the characters. I realised that's probably why their names along with everyone else in the development were featured in the game manual although it isn't of much use for anyone who doesn't read chinese.

I made it a point to finish Siren: New Translation last weekend before my copy of Resident Evil 5 would arrive so i can devote my time to it. I probably would have finish it a lot sooner if i wasn't distracted by the RE5 demo a month ago. I remember there was period of two weeks where i played nothing else but the demo on my ps3, before going back to playing Siren. In the end i was pretty happy with my pace of playing Siren, it was a nice little horror fest before the real nightmare begins.

Paper paper

I was playing Okami on the Wii last night when the rolling demo kick in at the start menu after leaving your controller idle for too long. I'm sure it was footage taken directly from the playstation2 version because it had a completely different look to it, the infamous paper filter effect of the ps2 version.

Now i'm not familiar with japanese art style but paper filter effect to someone with a casual eyes like myself just looks like hazy, grainy, blurry effect. I really wonder if the developers intentionally created such an art look for the original version or they just couldn't get the ps2 to generate such rich vibrant colors? After all, the gamespot reviewer remarked that the Gamecube version of Viewtiful Joe had richer more vibrant colors than the subsequent ps2 port. This is all just pure speculation from my side unless someone is able to provide me with some proof that the paper filter on the original ps2 version was intentional. Anyone?

It's a Mad Mad World

It took the guys at Clover studios a while to realise but eventually they finally got around to realising the cold hard truth, sex and violence sells even more so in video games. Developers are still very cautious when it comes to pushing the envelope for sex in video games but they are certainly not shy of pushing the level of violence in video games. While everyone applaud and sing praises for Viewtiful Joe and Okami, there is no denying that the lack of violence in those games was what led to the lack of interest among the general gaming community and ultimately, their poor sales.

Now the newly reformed Platinum Games seems to have abandon their previous approach and have decided to follow the trend of the market by doing exactly what the public wants, more violence action games. The first two up are Madworld and Bayonetta, with the latter being a return to the action genre for hideki kamiya since his last foray being the first Devil May Cry. I personally am pretty excited to see Bayonetta though it would have been nicer if it came out before Bulletwitch because the early concept of the lead female character looks awfully lot like her. It remains to be seen if these games will go down well with the critics but one thing's for sure, better or worse, these games look to sell bucketloads more than Okami or Viewtiful Joe.

Kinda sad when you really think about it don't you think?

Omoi about Okami

You gotta take your hat off to Hideki Kamiya, what a guy he is! When news of Okami Wii missing it's ending credits got around to the creator/visionary (albeit a little late seeing the port is only US-bound and has no plans for a Japan release), you can bet he wasn't very pleased.However, instead of being mad about not getting the credit he and his team deserve, as you would expect, he was actually more concerned about how this will affect the player ! You see, he has this philosophy of this special omoi (don't ask me what it is i'm just as clueless as you guys) that brings a sense of closure to the game and rewards the player with a sense of accomplishment. Basically the harder or longer the game is, the greater the reward and he also goes on to talk about what was the theme and message that went into each of his previous games (Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe).

Oh in the end, Hideki is also aware that many have not finished Okami and choose not to reveal it for the benefit of those, despite being aware that the game is actually two years old now. Hideki-san, you rock!

Get Smart

Ever play an action game and got stuck at a devious puzzle before? If no, you should give Viewtiful Joe 2 a try. If you ask me, puzzle and action game are a deadly combination, when it comes to an average action gamer with an itchy trigger finger the approach is always the same, shoot first talk later.

In Viewtiful Joe 2, most of the time you have to have enough smarts to go with your reflex if you are to survive to the end of the day. I admire team viewtiful approach in this sequel but have rarely feel so dumb on so many occasions when playing a game. Most of the puzzle are pretty straight-forward and actually quite clever once you figured it out but the problem is you just don't get into a game like viewtiful joe expecting to put your thinking cap on, reminds me of my early days playing those classic Lucasarts adventure games... except now i end up with hurting my fingers as well as my brain.

The First Time

Remember what's the very first game you bought for your new console? well i do, in fact most of the time the first game i get for my new consoles will probably raise a couple of eyebrows. it's not that i'm trying to be different by buying something else but most of the time, i end up buying a new console in advance before the game i originally got the console for is out and therefore, i end up buying some other game in the meantime to fill up my time. The first game i got for my Nintendo DS? Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble ! Hardly a memorable DS title now, but back then i was really curious what kinda graphics the Nintendo DS could pull off and Clover Studio portable adaption of their hit franchise does seems to stretch the Nintendo DS graphic capabilities and stylus gameplay. When i got my Sony PSP, the first ever UMD i got was Metal Gear Solid: Digital Novel. I know it's not even a game but this quirky idea of reading a graphic novel on a PSP along with Silent Hill Experience was what initially got me interested in the system.

By the time i got around to getting my Nintendo Wii, i had a lot of catching up to do because my goal right from the beginning was to play as many Gamecube games as possible before the Wii catalogue starts to pick up steam, much like what happened with the Nintendo DS after the first launch year. Some may think it's a bit silly to pay so much for a Wii only to play Gamecube games but if it saves me the trouble of having another console around and offers me the same experience as playing it on it's original platform then i'm in. I was lucky enough to find a non-Player's Choice version of the Resident Evil Gamecube Remake and ended up finding most of the Gamecube titles i originally set out to get, save perhaps the Gamecube version of Viewtiful Joe. Of course i eventually started playing Wii games too though i still only have two miserable Wii titles (not including bundled games) despite getting the system more than five months ago. My first real Wii title was Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles which while was fairly entertaining, is a couple of notches below No More Heroes, my second Wii title. I have a feeling the best is yet to come for the Nintendo Wii and i look forward to see what Capcom and Konami will bring to Nintendo system.

Looking back, i guess the first game for your new console is kinda like your first love it may not be the best you have experienced but it's one that you will surely remember for life. Either that or i'm just a sentimental sap even when it comes to games...

Devil May Care

To called myself Devil May Cry fan is a bit of an understatement as i absolutely loved everything about the original Devil May Cry game, it's still my favourite Playstation2 game of all time. Devil May Cry was probably Capcom best spin-off from the Resident Evil franchise back then when they were still experimenting with the formula to see how far they can deviate from it. The game made a big impression with it's gothic atmosphere and character design, but more importantly how fluid controlling the main protagonist Dante was. A testament to how good an action game should be is when any enemies, even the ordinary ones are able to kill you if you are not careful, something which the original Devil May Cry possess and no other action games, even it's sequel is able to replicate.It firmly cemented Hideki Kamiya as my favourite game developer as he would go on to craved up more hits like Viewtiful Joe and Okami. Anyways going back to Devil May Cry, i lost interested with the series through the years and sequels though the prequel Devil May Cry 3 managed to win me over again, the fact that the series may never being the hands of Hideki or even surpass the original remains a concern for me.

The final straw was when Capcom decided it's high time to replace Dante as the main protagonist of the series and later announced that the fourth installment will be going cross-platform to Microsoft XBOX360.With the release of Devil May Cry 4, the development team for DMC2 and DMC3 attempts once again to take the series further to new heights but this jaded fan will not be able to learn first-hand how good this installment will be since i don't have a Playstation3 as of yet. Then again, would i want to subject my brand new sixaxis/dualshock3 controller to the mercy of Devil May Cry 4 infamous difficulty?

A Viewtiful Mistake

I admit i was a little slow to warm up to the original Viewtiful Joe despite being a big fan of superheroes and cel-shaded games since Gungrave. In fact, it took the inclusion of a cel-shaded Dante in the Playstation2 version of Viewtiful Joe to get me interested in the title and pretty soon, i was bowled over by how awesome the game was. If it wasn't for the old school difficulty, i would have gladly replayed the first game after having unlock Dante but the truth was, i had to use a cheat disc to even beat the game on easy mode! You can probably guess that all this talk about a cel-shaded Dante is because i was kinda hoping Leon's cameo in Viewtiful Joe 2 would be something similar to that. Oh boy was i ever wrong....

It all turned out to be some big misunderstanding, at least from what i could remember. The Leon cameo never exists, i know this despite getting only halfway through the game. Because i have met Leon and it's not the Leon from Resident Evil but a level boss. Confused? So was i but sometime at the end of level 3, Joe is confronted by a boss in the name of Cameo Leon, and i'm guessing this boss' name is what led me to think that there was a Leon appearance in this game. So don't be a fool like me, there's no Leon in this game kids.....

Same old song

You know the sense of familarity you get when you play sequels to your favourite games? It seems to be a prevalent issue with most Capcom games but with Viewtiful Joe 2, it's almost a crime. Though Viewtiful Joe was a great game, i dislike the cop-out ending (don't worry, no spoilers here) and now when i play the sequel, i could almost get a sense that Capcom/Production Studio 4 intentionally held back during development of the original and some of it's ideas were carried fore to develop this sequel. Perhaps the original game's director Hideki Kamiya, who seems to have developed a reputation for spending too much time developing a game didn't have enough time to finish the first game and thus had to abruptly finish development on the first game. Anyhow, i won't hold it against the first Viewtiful Joe because it was and still is a revolutionary 2.5D action game, and had one of the coolest end game credits and cool bonus unlockables in the Playstation2 version, like a fully playable Dante with his own storyline and sidekick. Having experienced all that, it's kinda hard to stomach the fact that save for a new playable character in the form of Joe's girlfriend Sylvia, the sequel is devoid of any of it's predecessor's innovations. Then again, perhaps i'm been too harsh on the game, after all the decision to make Sylvia return and playable in the sequel almost seems like a F-you to the focus group of the first game which hated the character Slyvia. Hideki made it known that he was displeased with this practicular opinion of his game and character and decided to ignore it and keep the game just the way it was. Perhaps this sequel is a continuing evolution of that idea...

Anyway, without Hideki's involvement i was almost going to skip this forgotten sequel till i heard there was a Leon from Resident Evil 4 cameo in the game. I only hope my interest wouldn't waived till i get to that part...