Dead Rising Redemption

I recently got Dead Rising 2 from Play asia weekly special, what you could call a rash decision as I only found out about it on the closing day of the offer. You see I have just returned from my trip to Singapore that time though I did managed to pick up Lost Planet 2 for a mere $7.50 while there. I was on a row and this weekly special on Play-asia was simply too good to be missed as these two Capcom games were only released just recently.

The first Dead Rising on the Nintendo Wii gave me fixed feelings, I felt deprived of the true greatness the game achieved on the Xbox 360 platform but yet I was grateful that Capcom even took the chance to port this wicked game onto the Wii platform. Having endured some of Dead Rising's rougher edges on the Wii platform namely the strict time clock and frequent loading time, I was able to avoid a lot of these common frustration when playing the second game on the PS3. I just don't think that would have been possible had I not "suffered" through the first game which I'm still playing through right now actually. Playing the two games has also made me appreciated the first game even more since it has not been ported to any other system, if you don't count the IPhone edition. These two games may have restored my faith on Capcom but I honestly can't say I missed Keiji Inafune departure at all though.

Unworthy Sequel

It's ironic that Grasshopper Manufacture enjoy making toilet references in No More Heroes when it's starting to reflect the quality of their games, this sequel truly feels like a pile of crap! At first I wasn't really sure but now that I have finished the game I'm utterly convinced that the sequel is a poor follow-up to the first Heroes game.

The lame assemble of assassin is one thing, what happened to the cool introduction where their names splashed across the screen with a creepy silhouette of the assassin in the background? Also GHM clearly needs to watch more revenge movies because the vengeance plot in Desperate Struggle is about the lamest I have seen. This game took more than six months after its release to make its Japan release, perhaps GHM knew what they had in their hands with this game. Hopefully Suda 51 will be inspired by Nintendo forthcoming new hardware to come up with a better sequel as the first game was clearly inspired by the Nintendo Wii unique wii-mote.

Brothers of War

Kratos is the alpha male dog, there is possibly no other character as manly as him in the realm of video games. So it's only natural that Kratos gets to show another side of his man-liness by engaging in a little male-bonding in the new PSP chapter, Ghost of Sparta.

It's so weird to see Kratos searching for his lost brother Deimos and being all apologetic with him as the man is usually angry at everyone he meets. Strangely enough he still talk with his guff angry voice even when reunited with his brother Deimos. Male bonding may be as cliche as old love songs but some things just never go out of style.

Eyes to Behold

I have gone and done it again. This time I was so desperate that I didn't even bother with a standard Play asia coupon code. Speaking of codes, it's funny how those things are so readily available when you don't need them and when you do need one, you just can't seem to get hold of one. Story of my life I suppose.

Dragon's Quest

There's a dragon on a mission right now and that mission is to earn as many missing trophies as possible in Yakuza 3. Free from the constraints of the story mode, I'm able to focus my attention to areas which reward you with trophies for your hard work and so far, the trophy hunt has been the ultimate thrill. Some are getting exceedingly difficult to achieve like finding the remaining locker keys but having Kiryu adequately level up does help and certainly make you feel up beating the hell out of anyone who gets in your way.

I actually dislike trophies that require you to go out on a limb beyond the context of the actual game and the trophy that best describes this is the 'careless dragon' trophy. I'm just glad to have gotten that out of the way but there's still a ways to go as I'm only about 50% done with the game. Hopefully I should be able to get most of these done and also put some time into the japanese import before the localised Yakuza 4 ships early next year.

An Analog Hero in a Digital Age

I'm a bit torn when it comes to the mini-games on No More Heroes 2 where you have work the odd side-jobs to earn income as entry fee to the assassin federation. While I love the "bite-size" nature of what these mini-games can offer, I have yet to fully master the controls of a 8-bit Travis touchdown with the analog stick. The game offers classic controller support as suggested in the opening moments of the game but I have yet to break out that controller in frustration. The D-pad on the Wii-mote is also perfectly function-able in these mini-games but its positioning makes it difficult for me to fully wrap myself between firing the A&B buttons and moving Travis with the D-pad.

Guess it just goes to show that some things never go out of style so long as these 8-bit 2D games are still around, there will always be a use for the D-pad to go along with it as the analog stick simply doesn't capture the simplicity of the controls. I'm not sure how many more times I can endure another failure because I couldn't push the analog stick to the right angle at a crucial moment.

Less Means More or Less?

No More Heroes was one of the early favourites on the Nintendo Wii platform but as time grows the "series" began to lose its charm with me. It's a real shame as the first No More Heroes still sits at the top of my longest playing time list on the Nintendo Channel, something I suspected will not change for a while until I find the time to pick up playing Monster Hunter Tri again.

It started when the game made an appearance on other consoles as a high -def port of the Nintendo Wii original. This was right around the time when Grasshopper Manufacture were about to release the sequel Desperate Struggle on the Nintendo Wii, a sequel which Suda 51 had earlier decided to step away from the directing duties and instead served as a executive director. Understandably, it caused quite a damper in my excitement for the game despite the glowing reviews early on.

Now that I have the game, I can finally see how much better this sequel supposedly is compared with the original. The most obvious difference when you first start playing is the world hub from the original is completely gone, every location in Santa Destroy is now a button click away with a loading screen in between. There are a lot of loading time maybe because the playing time on each mini-game is so brief especially if you fail, you spent very little time actually playing the "real" Travis Touchdown. A sequel is expected to have more content than the original but somehow I can't tell if that's the case for Desperate Struggle, a startling discovery considering how much content was in the first game.