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.

At Your Service

With most game franchises having established a history of more than two decades these days, it's not uncommon to find fan service games popping out here and there. Often deemed by Gametrailers as a "loveletter to the fans", fan service games are usually filled with nods and references to past games in the series, which of course only makes sense to long-time followers. I love the concept of fan service games as i believe when done right, can elevate a downright mediorce game to a great one such as the case of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Other times, it can even turn a solid game into an even more memorable one, like Metal Gear Acid 2 though i could be blinded by the cel-shaded graphics and 3D images of Sabra girls to even notice the flaws in that game.

So by default, since i never played Final Fantasy VII before and made little sense outta Advent Children, it would make even a great game like Crisis Core seems mediorce to me as i am unable to spot the references and tribute to FFVII. Oh how i envy you guys....

Set Free the Devil

While i was out this weekend catching the new Death Note movie, I happened to find Death Trance on DVD which was quite a pleasant surprise seeing that i was looking for this title for quite a while now. L Change the World may not have anything to do with video games and is actually not even worth mentioning but Death Trance is an entirely different story. The film is directorial debut of one Yuji Shimomura of U'den flameworks and action coordinator of Versus and Devil May Cry 3 & 4. The director of the action movie often gets credit for how good action sequence looked so it's very often that the action coordinator /director gets overlooked, except maybe in the case of Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip collaborations. While Ryuhei Kitamura is a talented director himself, his work for Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes were often criticised as the action were too far-fetched and didn't fit in the context of Metal Gear or the Solid Snake character. Yuji and u'den flameworks on the other hand, seems like the perfect fit with Devil May Cry as they often combine gunplay, swordplay and martial arts in their sequence, the very stuff that the Devil May Cry series are made of.

U'den flameworks brought cutscenes in action games to a whole new level when they worked on Devil May Cry 3 though the earlier Devil May Cry games had its own strengths in storytelling as well. In Devil May Cry 3, watching the action unfolds in the cutscenes was just about as exciting as playing the game itself, a large part due to yuji and U'den flameworks dazzling camerework and motion-captured stunts. Yuji came back to work Devil May Cry 4 and i can't wait to see what action set-pieces he has in store for part 4.

Death Trance is set in a fantasy world, much like Versus and tells the tale of mythical samurai and outlaws searching for a fabled coffin that holds dark secrets. I joked with my friend that since i couldn't play Devil May Cry 4 yet, this movie will have to do for now...don't think he was amused by that remark.

Devil Beside You

As you can see, my Devil May Cry 4 has arrived, woohoo! Too bad i won't be able to play it till i get my Playstation3 though there is always the option of playing the soon-to-be released PC version but i already gave up on pc gaming a long time ago. Since i am unable to comment on how the game plays i thought i give my thoughts on the blu-ray packaging since this is my first blu-ray disc and there have been mixed opinions about the packaging ever since they unveiled it. The slighty shorter cases compared with DVD certainly looks sleek but they are no way as sexy as Sony's UMD for PSP which i admit i collect to a certain extent because of how sexy the UMD cases and disc looked, even with the rampant piracy issue circulating over the internet.

I am a little disappointed that Devil May Cry 4 japanese version has the exact same cover as the other versions but it's been that way for the series since the first installment so i guess i shouldn't complain. I wrestled over the issue of whether to order the US version or the Japan version but ultimately i settled on the Japan version because there was a limited edition tin case for the American release so buying the standard version seems like a poor resort. Also over in Japan, a budget label has already been introduced for Playstation3 so i reckon Devil May Cry 4 will very soon be re-released on budget label given it's brisk early sales. All you collectors of first edition games should take note, as Ninja Gaiden Sigma has already been reissued on Best Buy label.

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.