Vanity Affair

I was surprised to see Shinji Mikami name on the back cover of Vanquish, and it wasn't a vanity affair like how Hideo Kojima name usually appears on Metal Gear games. Mikami may have directed many great games after Resident Evil but this I believe was the first time his name appeared alongside on the box art. One of his earlier works was the brilliantly-crafted Dino Crisis on the PSOne which I'm currently playing after finishing Dino Crisis 2 recently.

It's definitely one of my favourite PSOne games which is why I felt so cold about the second game initially. The fully-rendered backgrounds are nothing short of amazing on the 32-bit hardware and suits the modern architecture of the game though it could use with a bit more colour depth. I like the decision-making aspect of the game it's not as subtly executed as Resident Evil but it helps established a bond between Regina and her teammates as you have to choose who to side with. The mixing system for the health packs and anesthetic is still confusing today and something I would rather avoid than to get into. One other thing I enjoyed is the colour-coding for the different item box in the game and how you only have a limited number of plugs to open each box. The game is packed with little clever touches to distinguish it from its more famous cousin like how Regina never leaves your sight even in a loading screen.

It's been a long time since Mikami's last game but somehow it's always worth the wait.

Devil-Bringer Back to Where It Came

Next to go on my ps3 hard disk was actually the very first game I install when I got the system, Devil May Cry 4. Sentiments aside there is really no reason to keep this game data on my ps3 as there are no patch or dlc for the game so re-installing the game in the future should be fairly quick.

I initially plan on just viewing the cutscene through the story theater and be done with it but being the sap that I am, there is no way I will be able to do that without feeling guilty. So I thought I should have a quick playthrough the game without worrying about ranking and just clear another one of the six difficulty modes in the game. A friend of mine absolutely loathe this game when he first played it for reasons I couldn't see why but I begin to have similar feeling after rushing through the game. Maybe my heart just wasn't in it this time as I was expecting enemies to be shuffled around and other surprises in the son of sparda hard mode. From what I can remember everything feels the same as before and after Bayonetta, playing as Nero just feels woefully one-dimension. In the end I just couldn't wait to devil bringer this game back to where it came - my collection where it will remain for a long time to come.

The Importance of Being Old School

I take pride on being a bit of an old-school gamer, having grown up from the 8-bit era of video games. These days when story and graphics matter more than gameplay it's scary to think how video game have envolved. A close friend often lament to me how he will never play a game without any story and it's exactly these guys why games like Heavy Rain came about. I will probably never buy Heavy Rain because the game is lacking the one most defining aspect of a game; the gameplay and I refused to campaign such a game.

As I await for my copy of Vanquish I begin to wonder how much punishment is in-store. It's going to be one of the those games which I hopelessly can't master but yet can't resist coming back for more. Somehow it's always the most frustrating game which you will eventually find the greatest satisfaction in, wouldn't you agree?

Biggest Red Packet of This Season

During my Chinese New Year break I had the good fortune of receiving my copy of Metroid:Other M japan import just in time before the break. I had envision spending the next six of days of break completely devoted to the game in between the snacking and visiting relatives of course. That didn't really happened as I never imagined bypassing the region-lock on my Nintendo Wii would be so difficult. The english patch of Fatal Frame IV was so easy to use I naturally thought I won't have any problems getting this import to run as well. Nothing would work as Gecko and Neogamma refuse to load the disc though I had a little better luck getting them to run my Biohazard 0 GC Japan import. All long I had no intentions of getting the Metroid Other M US version not only because of the horrible box art but also I have learnt that it required a firmware update to 4.3U in order to run. I was still happily playing the Fatal Frame IV using the english patch on my 4.2U system so a system update was out of the question.

In the end the Metroid Other M japan import felt like a big red ang pow which I couldn't even open. On a more positive note I finally made good of my promise to add Vanquish to my collection even though it did come a little later than I expected. The beauty of it was I didn't have to choose between Vanquish and Dead Rising 2 after all as I managed to benefit from a bit of a price drop on both.

Feeling Retro: Dino Crisis 2

I had the Dino Crisis 2 disc sitting in my PSOne disc tray for a very long time before finally feeling nostalgic about playing it. To my surprise once I started I couldn't stop as I was simply having too much fun with it. I remember when the game was first released I was reluctant to embraced it because it deviated so far from the formula and element of fear Mikami had established in the first game. The game was Capcom's swansong to the PSOne and sure enough had pretty graphics to boot but it really didn't matter as the Playstation2 had just launched.

The Dino Crisis series really went off the rails with the Xbox exclusive Dino Crisis 3 but part of the problem with the series had already begun in Dino Crisis 2. Don't get me wrong Dino Crisis 2 is certainly a worthy sequel but I always had a sneaky suspicion that Capcom felt a compelling need to introduce new and bizarre dinosaurs with each new sequel of the game. Dino Crisis 2 felt great up until the part when the Giganotosaurus was introduced into the game. I'm not sure what kind of dinosaurs were introduced in Dino Crisis 3 but from what I could remember they sure don't look like dinosaurs to me. It's almost like it's encoded into the design philosophy of Capcom for making Dino Crisis sequels at that time, to come up with new, more off-beat dinosaurs with every sequel. That's why I think the series has remained dormant for so long and will likely stay so for the time to come. We don't need new dinosaurs in every sequel Capcom we just need new ways of killing them.

No Wayne It's Luka

In an effort to clear some valuable hard disk space on my ps3, I went back to playing Lost Planet shortly after finishing Dead Rising 2. I lost my save game file a while back after updating the patch for the game so in a way, I was starting anew again. It wasn't a big loss as Lost Planet had hardly anything to unlock upon completion something uncommon for a Capcom game.

The most worthwhile was the character Luka which you could unlock for play in the online campaign as well as in the story campaign, an exclusive addition to the ps3 version. In order to unlock her you would have to locate all the hidden target marks for any one of the difficulty modes. I decided to try and do so when I started playing the game again so I had to go back and re-do all the earlier missions I cleared. What I initially thought would be a pretty quick affair turned into a long obsessive hunt as I was more consumed with finding these target marks than enjoying the game. When I finally did locate all the target marks and unlock Luka, there was a huge sigh of relief but then a quick realisation of what's the point. The cut-scenes of the game are unaffected by this change and also the viewpoint of the game doesn't really show off the character model very well. Oh well at least I achieved a new unlockable this time around and can proceed to delete the game data off my hard drive.

Unforeseeable Headache

If there is one thing that connect me to my feminine side is my low tolerance for maps in video games. It's not that I don't like them but I hardly ever put them to good use, most of the time I prefer to rely on my good memory to guide me through the game world. It helps with the immersion of the game though certain games like Silent Hill make great use of the maps, automatically noting down the locked doors and riddles so you feel that the map is actually contributing to the game.

Last week after clearing a backlog of Dead Rising games, I decided to finally get started on Metroid Prime Trilogy. What I didn't expected was to suffer motion sickness from playing the game, the thought never occurred to me from the time I purchased the game until now. To come this far from my great hunt for the game and bragging about it on my blog, only to give up now because I couldn't stomach first-person shooter was a real shame. I started to think maybe I overdid it over the weekend and intend to slowly ease myself into the game from now hopefully overcoming this problem over time. The map system in Metroid is a big help usually 3D map are a nuisance for me but Metroid's map really help me to keep track of my bearings and avoid any unnecessary backtracking. After all I'm monitoring my minutes in the game so I really can't afford to wander around aimlessly without making any progress. I managed about 35 minutes today and really thought I just about reach my limit for the day. Only time will tell if I can endure more given enough exposure to first-person games but the likes of Goldeneye will certainly have to wait.