New Games |
- The 'muskethawk' is born! Assassin's Creed III rock cover
- Trains vs. Zombies 2 is a real sim game out now on Steam
- Bandai's got sweet figs of Sol Badguy, Bass, Mewtwo, more
- Strike Suit Zero devs turn to Kickstarter to finish game
- Ubisoft's unveils 'Far Cry Experience' web series
- Review: NightSky (3DS eShop)
- Promoted blog: The weight of the gun
- Blizzard reveals new race leveling in Heart of the Swarm
- Sup Holmes dry humps a PS3 with McPixel's Sos Sosowski
- Contest: Draw some fan art and win Hotline Miami!
- Dj CUTMAN and Mega Ran heat up the Halo 4 remix contest
- Games journalism came: Polydong.com
- Live show: Soldier of Fortune: Payback
- Preview: ZombiU brings back true survival horror
- Review: Orgarhythm
- 15 badass seconds of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
| The 'muskethawk' is born! Assassin's Creed III rock cover Posted: 25 Oct 2012 03:00 PM PDT
Hot on the heels of Corridor Digital's Assassin's Creed III short film is this rock arrangement by Warialasky -- consider it a spiritual follow-up to the Skyrim cover from earlier this year. With all this Ass Creed love lately, you'd think there was a new game around the corner or something. The song is great and all, but the star of the show is the ingenious amalgamation of musket and tomahawk that I hereby dub "muskethawk." The muskethawk is a versatile instrument, able to embed itself in a man's torso then fire off a round for extra lethality. That Ubisoft didn't think of this first and put it in the game ought to be grounds for major point deductions. It's alright, Ubi. Add it as DLC later and all will be forgiven. Assassin's Creed 3 Rock - Main Theme [YouTube] |
| Trains vs. Zombies 2 is a real sim game out now on Steam Posted: 25 Oct 2012 02:30 PM PDT Unlike its predecessor, Trains vs. Zombies 2 is, rather dangerously, not downloadable content. You won't need Train Simulator 2013 to play this game in which zombies have once again worked their way into a genre they probably shouldn't have entered in the first place but oh man I'm adding it to my Steam cart an--no. I don't need this. I already live through the experience of mindless people and trains on my daily commute. If you're intrigued by the premise and have $8.99 that you just can't seem to get rid of, know that the game includes five scenarios centered around New York City. On a more serious note, I have to wonder who this stuff is actually pleasing. It seems like serious followers of RailSimulator.com wouldn't be too into it, and the rest of us who are inexplicably drawn toward the spectacle of silliness will surely be turned off by the actual gameplay. Any thoughts? |
| Bandai's got sweet figs of Sol Badguy, Bass, Mewtwo, more Posted: 25 Oct 2012 02:00 PM PDT At the recent Tamashii Nations exhibition in Japan, Bandai has been showing off a ton of sweet new game-themed figurines as part of its D-Arts and Figuarts ZERO lines. We start with some Guilty Gear action in the form of D-Arts Sol Badguy, joined by Hakumen from spiritual successor series BlazBlue. Alongside the recently revealed D-Arts Mega Man and Rush is their brooding counterparts Bass and Treble. Rounding out the D-Arts line are figurines of Pokémon's Mewtwo and Charizard, with Blastoise and Venusaur's feet just barely visible at the top edge of the photo. In the non-poseable Figuarts ZERO camp, we've got a trio of ladies from the boobtacular Senran Kagura series on 3DS -- soon to be on PS Vita as well. Asuka appears in five different colors, and fans can vote on which color they prefer for the final build. Finally, Yomi and Yumi... well, I'm sure you can make your own comments about their battle-appropriate attire. Also part of the lineup are the latest X series figs that include Sigma, Black Zero, and Vile's Ride Armor, but they're the same models we've seen previously. I just want to know when I can start buying these puppies. I'm want them here, in my house, yesterday. Tamashii Nation gets bad with Sol Badguy, Forte, more [Tomopop] |
| Strike Suit Zero devs turn to Kickstarter to finish game Posted: 25 Oct 2012 01:30 PM PDT Casey's preview of Strike Suit Zero had me on board before I finished reading it. Even halfway decent space combat is an alluring prospect in this day and age, to say nothing of the ship's ability to transform into a mech. While what's been shown publicly so far has seemed mostly there, Born Ready Games could use a bit of help in finishing the PC version. As such, the team has taken to Kickstarter with a reasonable goal of $100,000 that is already well on its way to being funded having surpassed the $70,000 mark. With 22 days left to go, consider this your opportunity to nab Strike Suit Zero for $20. That's the minimum pledge needed to get a downloadable copy once it's ready in January 2013. Of course, there are those stretch goals to consider as well. The only one posted so far is set at $130,000, which would result in Born Ready unleashing mod tools into the wild. That would obviously be great for all players, not merely the tinkerers in the audience. [Thanks, Frank] |
| Ubisoft's unveils 'Far Cry Experience' web series Posted: 25 Oct 2012 01:00 PM PDT
Ubisoft has announced a four-episode web series (set to launch around the same time as Far Cry 3) developed internally called Far Cry Experience that, according to them, is going to be "a big gift to fans." If you've ever watched one of Far Cry 3's trailers, you'll know that the story is, well, absolutely insane and Far Cry Experience aims to show us all how such a scenario would play out in real-life. The upcoming web series sees a gamer (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) being thrown into the Far Cry universe. From there it all gets a bit crazy what with Vaas Montenegro being present and doing what he does best -- that is, freaking us all out and causing grown men to cry. For the time being we have a trailer for Experience. You're going to laugh at first when you watch it, but then you won't. Oh, trust me, you won't. My emotions... I, I don't know what to feel any more. |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2012 12:45 PM PDT Some people prefer their games to be big, bloated, fleshy bags of excess, packed to the gills with everything that they can cram down their gullets. Others prefer their games to be a little more skeletal, pointed in their execution of style and function, while leaving plenty of room for the player to fill in the negative space. The former blasts your brain with a scatter shot of over stimulation, while the latter pinpoints specific areas to stimulate and only hits them exclusively. If you prefer your game design to attack like an acupuncture needle instead of a chainsaw, then NightSky was made for you.
NightSky (3DS eShop) NightSky is a physics-focused puzzle platformer that alternates between soothing the fuck out of the player and stressing them out with deceptively simple-looking obstacle courses that require equal parts strategy and moment-to-moment decision making. The story was written by Cave Story creator Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya. It's just a few lines of minimalist poetry about a person who dreams of an orb, but it does a great job of setting the stage for what the game aims to produce. It tells the story of each and every person who plays NightSky -- a game about meditating on the shape, weight, and function of an orb as it meanders through a series of subtly surreal, dreamlike environments.
There are no enemies. Instead, this game employs several gameplay hooks to keep players on their feet. These mechanics drift in and out of the 100+ levels with little pageantry or introduction, which only works to enhance its dream-like atmosphere. Rules don't have to stay consistent in dreams as long as they work to convey the same ideas. NightSky's various hooks include gravity reversal, sticky feet, frozen controls, pinball flippers, and surprisingly enough, a bunch of vehicles for your orb to drive. There is more where that came from, but regardless of rule changes, the focus is never lost. No matter which set of rules you're playing under, the game is about the manipulating the physics of the orb and of the environment in order to achieve a desired result.
That's mostly because the physics remain consistent and natural throughout. Without consciously realizing it, you'll gradually gain a greater and greater handle on exactly how the orb will perform in any given situation; how far it will fly when it hits a bump at a given speed, when to let go of the throttle button in order to prevent overreaching a jump, and so on. This learning process is only made possible by NightSky's ingeniously designed courses which ramp up in difficulty at just the right pace. There were more than a few times I let out an audible "That was so smart!" after coming to to a point where I could fully comprehend a level design that had seemed simple at first glance, but upon further inspection, was a perfectly orchestrated combination of elements designed to take me through a specific set of emotions. As you can see, the graphics offer a combination of minimal and deeply saturated colors, overlayed with a silhouetted foreground, exuding a strong sense of place while never telling you exactly where that place is. There are a few different types of turf to explore and some variations on the art direction, but by and large, the game sticks with the same look. The dreamlike logic again comes into play here as well. There are plenty of tiny oddities to be found in the various backgrounds, which add just a dash of spice to the serene, otheworldy atmosphere. The 3D also adds a nice level of separation between the soft sky in the distance and the hard, black events in the foreground. These little touches add an element of edge to an art direction that is otherwise 100% focused on evoking a response of natural beauty.
The music is soothing and sweet, working to compliment the visuals without overpowering them. There are times when the music stops entirely, if only for a few seconds, which adds a bit of drama -- and dare I say it, "realism" -- to this videogame about an orb trying not to die as it gets from one place to another. The sound effects add even more to that sense of realism. It's a subtle touch, but the sound the orb makes each time it hits a wall or a jump does a lot to add intensity to the feeling of gravity and impact. That about sums up the core of NightSky. There's a bonus area to unlock if you find enough hidden collectibles throughout the main game, and an "alternate" version of the campaign that offers more difficult puzzles and obstacles, and a few amazing surprises I won't spoil here that do a lot to put the whole game in context, but these bonuses and additions do little to fatten up NightSky. Instead, these extensions work to add a few extra bones to what is one of the most elegant skeletons of game design in recent memory (along with Journey, Fez, VVVVVV, and Thomas Was Alone), though the game doesn't have quite as much spark as those four titles. And like most skeletons, NightSky isn't particularly large, either -- most will get through it in a few hours, maybe more for the Alternate version. It's hard to hold length against the game, as it was clearly never intended to be more than that.
Personally, I would have liked to to see a little more story interspersed throughout the game, but I also respect the creative decision to keep the narrative to a minimum. Though the price may seem a little steep for a game of this complexity and length, there is no denying that NightSky accomplishes just about everything it sets out to do. |
| Promoted blog: The weight of the gun Posted: 25 Oct 2012 12:30 PM PDT [Dtoid community blogger RamWar shares his thoughts on the power of the gun in a videogame. Warning: minor spoilers for Heavy Rain, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Metal Gear Solid 3 ahead! Want to see your own words appear on the front page? Go write something! --Mr Andy Dixon] (Author's note: this article isn’t about guns from a societal perspective. It’s not about desensitization to violence or any of those topics. Nor is it about gun control or any real life issues. There isn’t anything I can say about those topics that hasn’t been said a hundred times before in better ways by better people. This is about guns from a narrative perspective in videogames.) This is mostly a problem with the writing and pacing of most games rather than the sound effects and visual effects associated with firing a gun. A lot of research often goes into how a gun should sound when fired and a lot of games do their best to emulate it. The 2006 game Black did its best to make firing a gun impressive and exciting every time. As such it had a fantastic presentation... for the first hour or so. After that the player often stopped being impressed by the game's visceral presentation. They fired the gun so many times it lost its impact. |
| Blizzard reveals new race leveling in Heart of the Swarm Posted: 25 Oct 2012 12:00 PM PDT With an upcoming patch for the Heart of the Swarm beta, Blizzard is going to introduce a new race leveling mechanic in StarCraft II. Mastering a race will give reward players with new decals and portraits to show off just how good they are. Each of StarCraft II's three races will each have a separate leveling bar; playing in either Blizzard matchmaking or custom games on Blizzard maps will get you XP for either Terran, Protoss, or Zerg depending on which race you're controlling. Crushing your opponent will net you some big rewards and the developer is looking at XP rewards for things like getting your first win of the day. Leveling up your races will net you the aforementioned portraits and decals, but you'll also get a ranking next to your player portrait. I imagine this is going to to be a great psychological tool against players; seeing a lvl 20 Zerg player would put the fear in me for sure. |
| Sup Holmes dry humps a PS3 with McPixel's Sos Sosowski Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:45 AM PDT
[Update: Find the rerun of the full episode above, or listen to it in podcast form on iTunes. Tune in this Sunday when we welcome Nicalis CEO Tyrone Rodriguez back to the show.] Time for an all new, totally well marketed episode of Sup Holmes. This week we'll be talking to Sos Sosowski, the creator of comedy great McPixel, the first game to snag a spot on Steam through the Greenlight process. Prior to that, Sosowski had promoted his game through a bold partnership with popular torrent site Pirate Bay. We'll be talking to Sosowski about all that, plus the usual autobiographical fun, talk about game design techniques, motivations for working in the industry, and other games by Sosowski like Congress Chainsaw Massacre, Chess Without Turns, and the hot up-and-comer Thelemite. We'll be adding anger and tits to the show this week because marketing. Join us in the live stream chat at 1pm PST/4pm EST and you may win a Street Fighter Bobble Budd! |
| Contest: Draw some fan art and win Hotline Miami! Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:30 AM PDT Our friends at Devolver Digital have delivered 100 Steam keys to Dtoid's doorstep for their new top-down shooter Hotline Miami! The game looks literally insane, and I mean that as a compliment. Though it may appear to be an homage to the original Grand Theft Auto games at first glance, there's a lot more going on here, so check out review for the lowdown! To win the game for yourself, just draw us some Hotline Miami-inspired fan art! You can hit up the video or gallery below for inspiration (including a piece of fan art drawn by a 10-year-old), but as crazy as this game is, literally anything you can come up with will be eligible, so let your minds go wild! The contest closes this Sunday, October 28 at 11:59 PM Pacific. Good luck, and have fun! |
| Dj CUTMAN and Mega Ran heat up the Halo 4 remix contest Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:15 AM PDT Microsoft and 343 Industries are drumming up excitement for the upcoming release of Halo 4 with an official soundtrack remix contest. Musicians choose one of three song stems to chop up, upload the finished work to SoundCloud, then wait for the "favorites" to come piling on. The winner with the most "favorites" will earn a Halo 4 prize pack, not to mention Internet swagger. My boys Dj CUTMAN and Random a.k.a. Mega Ran have joined forces to pop out "The Promise." CUTMAN worked the instrumental while Ran penned the verses. Together, they school the rest of those chumps without even breaking a sweat. Well, that's not entirely true -- over 100 hours of work went into making this track spectacular. Naturally, they'll be getting my vote. Of course, you don't have to vote for them. You can visit the contest site, sample some of the other remixers work, and choose one of those. But c'mon! We all know who the grand champions are already! Let's not kid around!
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| Games journalism came: Polydong.com Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:00 AM PDT You'll know that you've made it when Destructoid makes a dick joke about you. By now, you've surely heard of Polygon, the new gaming portal by the people that ruined Engadget. Congratulations to Chris, Brian, and the whole crew for having a website that you can now make videos about. We at Destructoid look forward to working with you scholarly gentlemen, and by that I mostly mean stealing all of your ideas and implementing them inexpensively with no copy editing whatsoever as Samit no longer works here. In fact, your new venture has inspired me to launch a new games journalism project of my own. What if there were an even newer gaming site that sometimes displayed editorial from Polygon, and also randomly plagiarized editorial from all the other people that they didn't hire away? What if we also randomly displayed animated .gifs from the two most perfect sources of games criticism, NeoGAF and Reddit? What if our junk hung lower than their junk? Welcome to the post-modern newestest newer new face of games journalism. Touch the PolyDong. Also, cocks. |
| Live show: Soldier of Fortune: Payback Posted: 25 Oct 2012 10:45 AM PDT [Mash Tactics airs Monday through Friday at 4p.m. Pacific on Dtoid.TV. Watch King Foom play a variety of games, each day with its own theme. With a heavy focus on community and viewer interaction, you can be as much a part of the show as anything else.] So, a while back, I was reading an article about terrible games that you just have to play, and I was intrigued by one game in particular. That title was Soldier of Fortune: Payback. Why is it bad, you ask? I've heard things about terrible pacing, horrid graphics, brain-dead AI, and it just being an overall generic military shooter. Why am I playing it, then? Dismemberment. Sweet, delicious dismemberment, and heaps of gore to the point of it being ridiculously over the top. Sounds like a "win" to me! Check it out tonight with us on Mash Tactics! QotD: What is your favorite "guilty pleasure" game? |
| Preview: ZombiU brings back true survival horror Posted: 25 Oct 2012 10:45 AM PDT 2012 is the year of the zombie. It’s been a strange, but wonderful year for the zombie sub-genre. With games like DayZ, The War Z, and The Walking Dead, the demand for the walking, shambling undead seems to be at an all-time high. And with Nintendo’s new console just on the horizon, what better way to debut a new kind of horror game featuring zombies? The developers at Ubisoft Montpellier have been hard at work on a brand new title that’ll prove to be a fresh take on the zombie sub-genre. My hands-on time with ZombiU showed that Ubisoft knows what it takes to show the big names what true survival horror is all about by returning to the roots, and bringing back what made these games so engaging.
ZombiU (Wii U) You begin the game with your survivor looking for safe haven while wandering the abandoned streets of London. Just when you’re ambushed by a horde of zombies, a mystery man using the city’s CCTV network alerts you of the nearby London underground train station, which your character promptly makes a dash for. From here, you take control of your survivor, who is unarmed and must explore the station to find your mystery savior. Along the way, you encounter an ex-survivor turned undead. The former survivor comes equipped with a backpack, which serves as your inventory and storage when out in the field. Managing it is very intuitive and easy to get a grasp of. Swiping the backpack tab on the Wii U pad will engage the backpack menu, where you can organize your gear by dragging and dropping onto your quick-select slot on the pad. When sorting your items and equipment, the game will not pause, leaving your character vulnerable. And in an more a clever twist, it’ll prompt players to focus their eyes on the Wii U pad. The gameplay on the television will cut to your survivor focusing on his backpack, much like the player, while the player navigates the inventory on the Wii U gamepad's screen. This not only is a cool twist on management, but it also adds tension by putting the player in the shoes of the survivor. After wandering the halls of the station further, you’ll eventually reach a makeshift safe house in the one of the security rooms. This serves as your hub for the majority of the game. Here, you’ll be able to make use of the CCTV network and monitor the surrounding areas for supplies and zombie activity, store items and weapons, upgrade character perks (weapon handling perks in particular), apply mods to your guns, and sleep to rejuvenate your character. After resting up, you’re tasked with venturing out to the local supermarket to collect supplies. Get use to seeing the safe room, because you’ll be returning to this place often. An interesting element is the survivor system. The characters you play as are randomly generated -- complete with their own name, gender, occupation, and costume -- and taking one of many influences from Dark Souls, player death is not only a very painful moment, but also a learning experience. As you’ll come to learn over the course of the game, it’s best not to get too attached to your characters, because one wrong turn down an alley leading to a swarm of the undead, or even a long drop down a scaffolding, can spell the end for them. Upon the death of your ex-survivor you come to a results screen showing how long you lasted and how many zombies you took out. Afterwards, you take on the role of a new survivor who also found the safe house. When your handler brings you up to speed, you’re tasked with finding a backpack. And from where else? Why your former survivor, of course. As I’ve mentioned before, getting attached to your character can be troublesome. I spent almost an hour with my first, and after finding him as a walking corpse with bloodshot eyes as my new character, I genuinely felt bad about putting him down and looting him afterwards. But alas, it must be done. Though be warned, dying before successfully looting your previous character will result in the loss that particular set of gear. So you only have one shot to regain any valuable gear and items from you last character. During my trek through the train station, we got to make use of more equipment. We were introduced to our scanning device, which made use of the Wii U pad’s gyro sensors. Players hold up the control pad vertically and shift it around to scan the environment for clues and loot. As one of the Wii U’s launch titles, Ubisoft Montpellier has went all out to show off the capabilities of the controller pad. With 18 different functions for the Wii U pad, across the single-player and multiplayer modes, the developers hope to keep things fresh with offering players a variety of methods to explore and survive the world of ZombiU. The element I admire the most is the fact that it doesn’t fall into the same trends as other modern zombie games. ZombiU lets players know from the outset that the run-and-gun attitudes of other horror/action games won’t cut it here. Your survivor has to avoid most of the undead, scrounging up any weapons they can find. The first weapon you get your hands on is a cricket bat, which he or she will attack with very slowly. It does an effective job of conveying that you are normal person with no combat experience of any kind. Which makes all the encounters against the various types of zombies a thrilling experience. ZombiU isn’t a shooting gallery by any means. It is very much a thinking man’s horror game, in the vein of the earlier installments of Resident Evil. It takes some time to get use to the heavy feeling and weight of your character‘s movement and actions. This adjustment period might put off people who are too used to twitch-based FPS controls, but I found it to be quite refreshing. Guns are slow and awkward, while ammo and supplies are limited. Players have to make a choice of whether to fight the undead, or avoid them entirely. But be careful which areas you leave zombies in. The game will save your progress constantly, and zombies left unharmed from previous areas will be there for you when you make a return. Added to this tension is the fact your character isn’t immune to the infection that has taken hold of much of the population. One grab from a zombie will spell the end of your survivor. While this sounds a bit unfair -- and to be honest, I thought so too at first -- ZombiU gives you plenty of options to avoid and fight the undead. Zombies are of the slow-moving variety, which gives you a natural advantage. You can run past them, vault over obstructions, and duck into rooms to evade them. When they get too close for comfort, you can push them back which can cause them to stagger. Fighting multiple zombies, and even the different zombie types such as the screamer, which of course summons more zombies, is very unsettling. In the good way, of course. Eventually, you can acquire a vaccine which acts like a safety net when you get grabbed. Again, being grabbed even once without a vaccine on hand means the end for your character. After making it to the supermarket and clearing out the undead, I made my way to the sewers underneath train station. At this point, my time had ended with the game. All in all, I went through five survivors in the first 90 minutes with the game. Surprisingly, this seemed to be the average for most players. This was a great opener because it really conveys this difficulty of ZombiU, letting players know what they’re in for. If it proves to be too challenging for some, the difficulty can be lowered to the Chicken Mode, which is essentially the easy setting. I do have to say, at times, it feels a bit too focused on upping the tension and being hardcore-minded. In some cases, the controller layout feels counter-intuitive. Swapping weapons and items are done from quick-select icons on the touch screen, meaning you’ll have to maneuver your hand across the pad to touch the icon. This can feel a bit uncomfortable, because of the weightiness of the controller, but also because of how wide it is. Although this makes ZombiU feel tense during enemy encounters, it does so for the wrong reasons. The single-player mode doesn’t make use of the d-pad, either, which strikes me as odd. While the controls feel great for the most part, I do feel that they went for form over comfort in regards to controls in cases like this. ZombiU will undoubtedly be one of the most talked about titles of the Wii U’s launch lineup. In many ways, this game feels like a successful mix of the scares and tension from the classic Resident Evil series, along with the hardcore mechanics of From Software’s Souls games. I feel as if this could be a runaway hit for gamers looking for a uniquely challenging experience, and what better way for Nintendo to attract core gamers? For more information on the multiplayer mode, check out Abel’s preview here. |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2012 10:00 AM PDT The mysterious strategy rhythm game Orgarhythm is here, and boy does it have a pedigree. First you have Tak Hirai (Space Channel 5 Part 2, Shenmue, Meteos) at the development helm, and Ayako Minami in charge of music direction. Then you add equal parts Acquire and Neilo, and stir until you have a concoction of hype. Orgarhyhtm is a mix of rhythm and strategy -- two genres that don't normally take place in the same space. The development team has stated that the marriage is a bit hard to explain, but I don't think it's too difficult a concept to grasp, provided you have experience in the genre. To be blunt, it's a 3D Patapon. You with me so far? Onto the game!
Orgarhythm (PlayStation Vita) Orgarhythm functions very similarly to a lot of classic RTS games, but there's one major caveat: you play the role of a god controlling your army, and that god walks a set, non-negotiable path through each map. As you stomp through each area, you'll have to take things on as they come, as you don't get a zoomed out view of the rest of the world -- as a result, things are very frenetic, and more action-oriented than most strategy titles. The god is able to deal with his enemies with his three troop colors: blue, red, and yellow. Blue counters red, red counters yellow, and yellow counters blue. All of the enemies are set up the same way, so you'll have to order them accordingly to both take out opposite colors and stay out of harm's way when the AI sends counter forces back at you. All three troop colors have the option to utilize hand-to-hand combat, ranged attacks, and siege weapons. Essentially, you're playing a strategic game of rock paper scissors (color) inside of another game of rock paper scissors (troop choice). For instance, you may need red melee troops at the drop of a hat, then quickly order out some blue ranged troops somewhere else on the map. On higher difficulty levels, it can get intense, and as a result, more satisfying. Even though he is essentially on-rails, the god himself can use five abilities, which range from buffs, to heals, to a "heavenly bolt" attack. Your god does have a health meter -- if it reaches zero, the game is over. To order your troops around, you have to hit their icons with the beat, earning a "bad," "good," or "excellent" rating for each choice. If you hit all "excellents," your troops level up and grow in number. I can't stress how cool this is, as it keeps you on your toes constantly. If you can't keep a beat, your army is going to be weak, and you will struggle. As you can imagine, Orgarhythm is best played with high-quality headphones.
Once you get used to it, it's not terribly taxing. All you have to do is choose your color, type, and tap the area where you want them to go. If this does sound too confusing, there are 10 tutorials to get you acclimated to how the game operates, so it doesn't just throw you to the wolves. First thing you might notice after jumping in is that there are no button inputs. Everything, even the menus, are controlled entirely with touch controls -- and you know what? They actually work pretty well. When you hit that groove, and everything comes up "perfect," Orgarhythm is not only fun, but it's rewarding as well -- kind of like a tactical Demon's Souls. Each stage features the god stomping through the level to the beat, encountering various enemy troop types (which mirror your own), until you reach the boss encounter at the end -- which, in my opinion, is easily the best part of the game. Boss fights get really intense, to the point where you're ordering all three colors around at breakneck speeds, changing their tactics, positions, and troop type on the fly. They often take you by surprise as well; the big bads themselves are varied from stage to stage, all of which require different tactics. For a musical game, the soundtrack obviously has to be good -- thankfully, it's beautiful. Featuring a solid selection of electronic and rock tracks, the music will not only get you pumped, but ease you into hitting the beats at the right time. Oh, and the better you do, the more musical tracks are laid onto the level. Ayako Minami's experience really shows here and I'm eager to pick up the Orgarhythm soundtrack as we speak.
The only major problem, gameplay wise, is that doing the same thing over and over can be draining if you don't increase the difficulty. At the end of the day, like most strategy games, you can still distill the experience to "ordering around troops," and with the god's limited role/requirement to stay on-rails, gameplay variety isn't really the name of the game here. More than a few times I found myself putting the game down for a while -- but when I reached those boss fights, it was all worth it in the end. Additionally, Orgarhythm is very short. (On normal, you can beat it in under five hours.) So unless you plan on going the score attack/completionist route, you probably won't get your money's worth. If you choose to dig, however, you'll find a ton of new skills to earn (48 in total). There's also a Co-op and Versus option available via ad-hoc local play, but sadly, I was not able to test this out since I don't know anyone within 20 square miles that owns a PlayStation Vita. If you're willing to go at it again and again with Orgarhythm, you'll find that it's a pretty rewarding experience, and you'll have a ton of fun in the process. Sadly, your purchasing options are limited: you cannot obtain the game through retail means in the US, as it's only available via download. |
| 15 badass seconds of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Posted: 25 Oct 2012 09:45 AM PDT
I found this new video on Konami Japan's YouTube channel this morning. It's not much at only 15 seconds long, but it's good enough that I've watched it 3 times already. The video's first sneak-behind stealth kill is one of the first things we saw when the game was announced. The ceiling-to-floor stealth attack is where the money's at, and the subsequent slashing makes it even better. It's dick move on top of dick move. Love it. Do it again! *hits replay* |
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