Another Story

Higurashi's coming, calm down.

2012-02-01T07:45:00.002+01:00

The fileholocaust has been noticed, but I'd prefer to put stuff onto a hoster that won't leave the field next week.
Higurashi and co will come back as soon as I have explored the possible options.
The uploads have already been prepared, the question is just where to send them to.

For the time being, I'd like to ask for a bit of patience, while I'm sorting things out.

Darksiders 2: Death Eternal Teaser & Screens

2012-01-24T22:54:00.000+01:00

THQ have just started sharing new material on Darksiders II that's been exclusive to a small group of journalists until now. 9 new Screenshots and Teaser are out already, so let's take a look at them!

We have just released 9 new Darksiders II screenshots across the globe. From being up-close and personal with Death to live action showing off Death’s new weapons!

Apart from the images, there are also some more things worth mentioning regarding the Gameplay of Darksiders II. Thrifty Nerd, for example, reports on Loot Drops, Perks and more weapons (some of them seen on the screens):

In addition to the new moves, there are now loot drops from enemies outside of the scripted boss and chest items. These items falls into one of three gear sets: necromancer, slayer and wander type items that give added perks, health leech, heavy armor and agility – respectively.
Death can acquire a large assortment of scythe weapons through his journey as well as claws that deal less damage, but have a higher attack rate. To further deal damage to the foul creatures littering the landscape, there is the addition of a branching skill tree system that allows you to focus on the harbinger or necromancer branches to make Death better fit your playing style.

You can also see Death riding some sort of construct on one Screenshot - yes, that's in the game as well. Unlike the first game, the sequel is also bringing sidequests and extra dungeons on the table - and once again Vigil pointed out that the first Darksiders might be one of the many dungeons in the second game, based on size and content.

Seems like the "Darksiders 2 is gonna be huge!" statement has not been forgotten!

Yeah, uhm...

2012-01-23T17:48:00.001+01:00

I've been gone for quite some time, eh? Awkward.
Quite honestly, I simply didn't know what to post, nor did I feel like actually typing much. RL-stress got annoying and I decided to finish some books and watch anime instead.

With some books and anime off my lists, I'd like to discuss the filehoster-affair of the past week.

Megaupload is down, as you should know by now.
However, Megaupload got caught just when their service crossed US borders, while before they've always made sure to stay in areas of the world where they couldn't be touched by US laws etc while maintaining a rather fishy attitude in public.

Now even with SOPA off the table for quite some time (haha), that type of thing was absolutely vital to the US. This serves as an example that "piracy" can be fought, which somehow invalidates SOPA's necessity. However, it also threatens other Filehosters, and they're already bowing their heads and retreat.

Filesonic closed its reward program and disabled sharing of files - as a premium user, you may now only download the files you've uploaded onto your own account.
Fileserve and Uploadstation followed the same tactic.

Others completely closed their services from one day to the next, like x7.to, while others like FilePost started denying access to seemingly all users (this might be temporary). FileJungle goes the same way but also starts a deletion spree.

My favorite Hoster, Uploaded.to, which I've been happily using for years, now closed its availability to the USA. IPs from overseas won't be able to access files anymore.
While I still want to use UL.to, I don't know if it is going to be worth it.

No matter what, if you got hit by the wild panic of Filehosters and bascially lost your Premium services, contact support of the sites and request a refund. These rash actions are violating the terms under which you've purchased your account. If they won't refund your money, try the paypal route, customer protection's your friend.

So, with that said, I'm not quite sure what to expect of the near future. It certainly won't be armageddon, but it shakes the web right now, so it might be good to just wait and watch. One thing that interests me:
How many of you actually are from the US and used UL.to for downloads?

Might just as well get back to Rapidshare.com, I guess. They're sitting in switzerland and have never tried to dodge legal actions or anything. While they have no bonus program with rewards anymore due to some ruckus a few years back, they still are strong. I only really dropped RS back then due to them frequently changing their plans and site layouts and a lot of uploaders dropping the service due to the lack of rewards. However, RS still is fast as hell, even using Free downloads.

Anyway, here's hoping that the Hydra recovers as soon as possible.

Recettear & Chantelise 75% off!

2011-12-20T20:57:00.001+01:00

BUY. THEM. NOW.
Not kidding, these two games are too excellent to pass on them!
Both Alkaid and I absolutely love these little gems, they're worth every cent.
And believe me, they're dirt cheap today. You've got over 22 hours to buy them with that discount, so hurry. They won't eat your hard-earned cash without giving you a fantastic experience in return.

Chantelise comes along for 1,99€ / $2.49 while Recettear (which will last longer) costs only 3,74€ / $4.99 today. Yes, fair pricing for european customers, isn't that nice?

Grab the demos of Recettear and Chantelise on their Steam-storepages and try them yourselves!

Both games come with a charming taste of humor and heartwarming scenes, and I can only recommend them as christmas presents for people interested in gaming, no matter how old they might be. They're also fitting gifts for your kids, siblings or cousins.

A note apart from the actual games:
Carpe Fulgur is really doing a great job localizing these games, and there's more to come.
If you appreciate the effort, please spread the word to your friends, family or random strangers on the internet, show them that these games are worth the money and support Carpe Fulgur in their Holy Quest to bring us awesome doujin games to enjoy!

Click the image to visit the game's storepage on steam!

Lord of Apocalypse: The Tale of Gay Elvis

2011-12-18T02:16:00.003+01:00

Lord of Apocalypse is out, Alkaid and I are currently looking into the game to check if it improved the crap that was Lord of Arcana.

What do you think?
Isn't Gay Elvis one marvelous type of character?
We'll keep you updated!

XSEED Announces Sumioni: Demon Arts

2011-12-16T20:13:00.004+01:00

Aaaaaaand we're back with some excellent news! XSEED, our beloved publisher of titles like Trails in the Sky, Corpse Party and Fishing Resort officially announced its next localization today. This time it's all about "Sumioni: Demon Arts". Never heard of it? Well, that's not surprising, since it's a Playstation Vita title and isn't even out in Japan yet.
From the looks of it, Sumioni will be one of the launch titles for the western PSV release!

Sumioni presents the PSVita's new features, specifically what you can do with the touchscreen, and how it can benefit Games. This example featuring the Ink Demon (who looks pretty cool!) shows expertly how to involve touch controls in your games to create a unique feeling, rather than just adding them for the sake of it.
Sitting in the camp of "traditional" controls, I can't help but be excited about that game.
Thanks to XSEED it will eventually appear on my doorstep - in a language I can understand!

In Sumioni – which is literally translated from Japanese as “ink demon” – players take control of their own Sumioni ink demon who has been summoned to rid the land of evil, and are tasked with safely guiding him through 2D side-scrolling levels. Visuals are presented using a crisp, hand-painted traditional “sumi-e” ink style and a color palette that lends itself well to the game’s feudal Japanese setting. Throughout their journey, players will encounter enemy samurai, long-range bowmen and other obstacles that must be overcome using the unique controls of the PS Vita system.

While the Sumioni himself is controlled through traditional means, players can also manipulate the touchscreen itself to paint artistic brushstrokes across the playfield that their Sumioni can then jump on to traverse obstacles and avoid enemies. Each finger stroke is presented on screen as a paintbrush stroke over the background canvas of the game. This allows players to manipulate the game’s environment on-the-fly, creating solutions to problems as they arise. Various brushes can be used to create unique effects, and a scratch of the finger on the screen can set objects (and enemies) on fire, cast lightning down from the heavens or summon elemental beasts for massive, screen-filling attacks. By combining the use of several brushes on the screen simultaneously, players have a myriad of options with which to tackle obstacles and strike down foes.

Full Announcement
Official Facebook Page

UPDATE: Official Trailer by XSEED!

While it is kinda sad that the new XSEED Game won't be Trails in the Sky: Chapter 2, I certainly am looking forward to Sumioni. Time to test my luck with touch controls!

PS: XSEED just apologized via Twitter:

Apologies to everyone who hoped that we were publishing a space llama dango fighting game. Maybe next time. ^_-

This was, of course, meant as a comment to yesterday's clue regarding this announcement.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Soundtrack

2011-12-14T01:42:00.000+01:00

Download
MP3 ~693MB
Uploaded.to

Title: Final Fantasy XIII-2 Original Soundtrack
Published by: Square Enix
Composed by: Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta,
Mitsuto Suzuki, Nobuo Uematsu, Yoshitaka Suzuki
Performed by: Origa, KOKIA, Frances Maya, Shootie HG, Joelle
Year: 2011

Bitrate: 320kb/s MP3
Discs: 4
Tracks: 79
VGMDB

In my opinion, this soundtrack is testament to what has become of Square Enix, and stands in great contrast to the soundtracks I used to love, that made me pause the game just to listen for a while.
Obviously, these times are over, at least when it comes to SE, but I hope you'll still appreciate this little upload regardless.

VGAs (and who the hell is Felicia Day?)

2011-12-11T07:06:00.005+01:00

Finally, the most pretentious Gaming-related event of the year is over.
Unlike E3, Gamescom or the Tokyo Game Show, the Spike Video Game Awards are that kind of event that does not contribute anything to Gaming as a whole, but only bloats those already bloated even more.

What have we learned from this year's VGAs?
We've certainly learned that "teabagging" isn't only a Xbox Live Call of Duty thing, but is also popular amongst scripted acts of immaturity at Gaming Awards.
Now we're all a bit smarter since we've learned that rubbing a medikit on your shirt might make you feel less retarded than before - if only for a second.
And who would have thought? Standing around, talking about mostly unrelated crap and unfunny jokes seems to be horribly exhausting, and Charlie Sheen actually got onto the stage mostly sober once again - even though we have no definite proof for that yet.

One thing we definitely should memorize is that the Spike VGAs are one simple thing: Clusterfuck.
The "Host", Sheen, Jimbo and Stifler as well as quite a few others have offered us enough reasons to openly "WTF" and question even our slightest hope that the show would be even mildly entertaining on this very night.

Anyone who's been watching the show via livestream (which, if I might add, was regionally restricted, annoying a myriad of Gamers around the globe) should know by now that we've been fed more commercials, idiocy and, simply put, bullshit than gaming-relevant information.

The few exclusive Debut trailers we've seen were either very short (Command & Conquer: Generals 2), didn't tell anything about the gameplay (Spider-man, Transformers) or were only nice to look at without presenting more than a rather generic basic scenario (Last of Us). The best part of the evening probably was Hideo Kojima, shyly announcing the (already leaked) new Metal Gear Rising trailer, which was actually quite exciting.

So who's got "Game of the Year"?

Well, there's the dragon...

The buggiest and most unpolished game I've seen since the Magicka launch - Skyrim. How else could it have went?
The only nominated game that runs actually worse on PCs and got onto that list was Batman: Arkham City (which celebrates its first patch, which didn't even fix most issues),
and Zelda: Skyward Sword fails brilliantly in the eyes of longtime fans (Nobody plays the Wii these days anyway, from what I've heard).
Uncharted 3, exclusive to the PS3, never even stood a chance - it might be a huge blockbuster and take the console to its maximum, but it simply did not have the amount of media exposure and glorifications since it has been announced that The Elder Scrolls V had.
Last but first on the ladder of objectivity we have Portal 2. A game that excells in testing your braincells, offering snarky humor, accessability and a lot of coop fun as well as free updates and additional content being released over time. Also, Cave Johnson.

Sadly, Portal 2 did not win the GotY award, but to quote good ol' Cave on the topic of metaphorical lemons:

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR DAMN LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?!

That's to say that the awards have been just as fake as every year, and neither Cave, GLaDOS or Gabe Newell should have even accepted this award in any case.

Speaking of Fake - did you hear about that Youtube-fellow who got so pissed about the VGAs last time? Yeah, he got onto the stage this time, the bribe worked well enough for him to swallow his pride. Also, Jonas Brothers, speeding through most awards to make more room for Kraft: Maccaroni and Cheese and Mission Impossible, a made-up award for Blizzard, who didn't even release a single game, expansion or even Beta this year (nope, closed Diablo 3 beta does not count) and more stupid comments by our dear host.

People who most likely have never even been considered to be somehow "important, "cool" or even "likeable" by the wider gaming community presented video game awards or trailers, took more time looking stupid than doing their job - presenting the games (even though, admittedly, looking stupid IS part of what they signed up for).

B-Bioshock!

One of those people I wondered about ever having held a joystick before was Felicia Day.
Felicia Day. Who was that girl? Is she important? Did she brainstorm some popular games' plot? Did she give birth to a handheld device?

None of the above, it seems. She's an actress, I was told. After she personally replied to me and M0zilla on twitter, I found out about her being somehow involved in Dragon Age 2, which sure is something to be proud of ***.
However, none of the people I've asked who she even was knew an answer, the only one I got was "an actress", but nothing gaming-related at all.

Moral of the story: Don't look at your smartphone's twitter client after having had a more or less embarrassing performance on stage and search for your name. You might find people who didn't like you. This time, we were those people. Get used to it.

So, to round this post up at last,
here's a link to kotaku, who listed all the awards given.
Portal 2 got 5 awards (Best Actors of both genders, Best Multiplayer, Best PC Game, Best DLC), and those were actually quite something.
Bastion got 3 Awards, and thus is amongst the very very few nominees who got what they deserved rather than what bribes could buy.
Minecraft Best Indie Game and the rest was rather dull and for the most part undeserved.
Call of Duty MW3 seems to be this year's Best Shooter, which I have no issue disagreeing with (Played it, was a bad mix of explosions and mindless gunning and bad hollywood scenes), and even though I was glad they didn't pick RAGE, it leaves a sour taste.

Skyrim wouldn't even be able to apply for an event like this in my book, since products that buggy and unpolished shouldn't be allowed to enter. Then again, they even nominated RAGE, and we all know about RAGE...
A game which looks a hundred times better using the Community's mods, all forged in the few weeks since released, looks bad from the angle of a Gamer with standards, especially when its advertised at $60. But oh well, how to defy the brainless gloryfication? We didn't even get to figure that out since christianity came around...

I guess that's it - the 2011 Spike VGAs. An event with Wikipedia coverage since 2003 but still laking a "Criticism"-section like most other things already had in 2005. And believe me, the criticism has landed heavy hits this year once again...

*** I've used italics to mark the part where I broke out in laughter. If you've done the same, facepalmed or otherwise made fun of that point, good job, you won a cookie. Or lemon, in case you want to throw it against EA's heads.

Next PSX2PSP Project?

2011-12-09T16:53:00.000+01:00

I'm quite clueless as to which PSOne title to bring to the PSP next.
Working on Final Fantasy VIII was quite enjoyable, so I'd certainly like to do another conversion asap.

What would you like to see?
Hint: This is where you should go and write comments!

I might do Parasite Eve 2, or something else entirely. I really don't know, so suggestions, please!

Ah, and if you really like how I'm doing these customizations, please consider donating via paypal. Even if its just $1 / 1€, I'll be thankful, feel rewarded and it will keep my moral up. I'd really appreciate it =)
As a Bonus: The first two to donate will get a copy of the original Trine on Steam each, if donating at least 5€ and wanted.

As a short recollection as to why you might want to support me,
a list of finished conversions:

Final Fantasy V PSX2PSP
Final Fantasy V PSN [EU]
Final Fantasy VI PSX2PSP
Final Fantasy VII PSX2PSP [US]
Final Fantasy VIII PSX2PSP [US]
Final Fantasy IX PSX2PSP [US]
Vagrant Story PSN [EU]
Parasite Eve [Aya] PSN [US]
and other uploads in-between, as well as
a lot of stuff via nyaa.eu

Final Fantasy VIII PSX2PSP

2011-12-06T15:35:00.008+01:00

Yes, that one's still not dead. Thank commentator Bluealchemist27 for that!

The Project is basically done, I could upload it right away, but preparing that post would take a while, and I can't seem to want to upload a 2gb game to two hosters individually and start a torrent.
Let's just say I'm "Quality Checking" and such, let's be so nice.

~~I'll see that I'll get the torrent up and running when heading to bed tonight, so the seeding won't bother me.~~

UPDATE:
Disregard the above, I'll upload it in steps. Uploaded.to now, Megaupload maybe later and torrent when I get to it. I trust you know how to use custom eboots without another explanation.

Disc 1 comes with the Documentation I took directly from the PSN version. If you need that handbook for the over discs as well, although you'll learn everything in there throughout the first disc anywhere (and there's also the tutorial menu..), copy it into the disc's folder on your memory stick.

Final Fantasy VIII PSX2PSP
~500-575MB/disc
Uploaded.to
Disc 01 | Disc 02 | Disc 03 | Disc 04
Megaupload.com
Disc 01 | Disc 02 | Disc 03 | Disc 04
-------
Torrent

~~But to not give only words this time again,~~ Here's the preview =)
I'd also like to encourage you to leave a comment or even rate the video/share it.

Once this is done I'll be finished with Final Fantasy V to IX for PSP, with I, II and IV being available as proper PSP Ports, I wonder what should happen next? I sure wouldn't want to have wasted an hour or two just to get the software running again - any suggestions?

Magicka: The Stars are Left - Live Action Trailer

2011-11-29T17:25:00.004+01:00

Arrowhead and Paradox have done another one of their super awesome Live Action Trailers for Magicka!

We remember, there's been a PvP Live Action Trailer in the past, which still is hilarious - watch it!

The stars are almost left at this point! The DLC is on the doorstep!
What does Nyarlathotep have in store for us Wizards?
What will Pickman's Model show? Do you feel the Lurking Fear already?

Well, enough Lovecraft for now, there you go - the Trailer!

Ready for the Corpse Party?

2011-11-24T20:18:00.002+01:00

Well I sure am, so LLG goes into Corpse Party mode!
To get you into a similar mood, here's the Intro of Corpse Party for the Playstation Portable, recorded by your's truly.

This gem has just been released in the west for the first time, even though the original has been around in Japan since 1996 and went through many iterations and adaptions. Thankfully our dear saviors of portable gaming, XSEED, decided it was time to bring the PSP Version of the game over.

If you've enjoyed reading Visual Novels like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni or Umineko and others, please do yourselves a favor and buy this game from the Playstation Network. It's only $19.99 and will accompany you right into the PSVita-era.
And who knows? A sequel has been released in Japan last September...

A rather elaborate story about this decision and how it went can be found on Siliconera:
How Corpse Party Got An Invitation For Localization
How Xseed Localized Corpse Party (And Kept It Scary)
I advise reading these great posts to get an insight in just how much effort and love for horror went into this game!

So, once again XSEED saves us from a wasteland of bad sports game ports on our PSPs and delivers high-quality horror. Earlier this year they delivered the first part of the Trails in the Sky saga from the Legend of Heroes series, which has been a fan-favorite ever since (believe me, even Alkaid's weird friend fell in love with Trails!).

Thus I publicly want to thank XSEED once more, in a blogpost, for being this damn awesome! Please keep up the great work, Twitter-fun and feed our hunger for more gems the western audience would otherwise never see.

Thank you, XSEED. We're gonna join the Corpse Party!

War in the North: Review

2011-11-11T00:39:00.005+01:00

The review is finally done! A few days later than I hoped, but earler than I expected.
A few words before you start reading - it isn't a bad game, and certainly not as horrible as I predicted from trailer one onwards.

Overall Plot

While much attention and focus has been placed on the journey of the One Ring, the assault on Middle-earth hits all corners of the map.
War in the North turns our attention towards an integral part of the storyline that is grounded in details within the books and various appendices.
This is not someone else’s fight. This is your own effort to forage a way through the dark, dangerous, and unknown landscape, defending all that is yours. This is your war.

Setting & Atmosphere

War in the North plays in Middle-earth. That alone provides a chance for this game to shine in terms of atmosphere.
Tolkien's world has always been rich with detail, a lot of distinct areas, flora and fauna.
You may explore areas shown in the movies like Bree or Rivendell, but also those you might have only read about, like Fornost, the Ettenmoors and the Barrow-downs, which have been skipped in the movies.

Does the game live up to its atmospheric legacy? Partly. Town Bree and the Prancing Pony are not even remotely lively enough, Rivendell only presents 6 elf-npcs, all of which are either Quest-related, storekeepers or the sons of Elrond, who fought with you before.
It certainly lacks the homely feeling Imladris was described with in the novels, and the same goes for other regions.
The snowy peaks around Gundabad are actually atmospheric and when smashed to the ground, snow will cover your clothes for a while. No matter how unrealistic that may seem on a lot of surfaces, it still is a nice touch.
Gundabad's interior, dwarven-halls captured by the goblins of the Misty Mountains, surely reminds you of Moria, though still different enough.
Of course, there's more to visit, but that goes mostly along those lines.
Nothing really takes any risks, however. This might result in the world feeling needlessly flat and disappoint when recalling past areas.

Despite how enjoyable playing through the game has been, it undeniably has serious issues with feeling alive on its own. While the plot is intertwined with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and many references are made to poems, creatures, legends and characters, it feels like if you took only half of that away, this game had no ground to exist on.
The plot surely gains momentum, but I personally felt that it did not build up enough to be truly exciting in terms of atmosphere.

Visuals

Firstly, this game does not look as bad as I showed you before, at least if your PC is capable of displaying the shadows.
However, it certainly does not look "2011", and considering the rather high recommended specs, the lack of polishing in the graphical terms is disturbing, telling more about lazy optimization than actual effort.
There are indeed nice areas and details - Rivendell doesn't look too bad, the Barrow-downs have a lot of funky effects, but especially character models feel like they got sticks up their arses.

Facial animations are severely lacking in War in the North, and some more arm-swinging and interaction wouldn't have hurt either.
At times, when giving an NPC something quest-related, they'll look at or read it, but that does indeed look stupid if they don't have the actual item in their hands but stare into your characters face while citing the lines.
Battle-animations look stiff as well, with the footwork of the Ranger looking especially retarded. Nobody would fight like that!

Mirkwood and Carn Dûm, however, look really exciting, although Carn Dûm delivered horrible performance drops as a result. Bad optimization and quality control strike again!

Snowblind managed to get in line with previous LotR-licensed games and the movies and ultimately delivers a world which can be accepted as part of the Tolkien-universe. Extra polishing would have been necessary for it to shine, however.

Sound

The overall sound quality is difficult to describe, since the game is painfully quiet most of the time, requiring the PC's volume to be almost earbleedingly loud. Remember to lower it again before listening to music or open a video on youtube!
Even ingame, you'll often have trouble understanding the characters without subtitles, as the volume is wavering even more. Some characters are crystal-clear, while others make you doubt the quality control the game should have gotten.

The soundtrack isn't particularly unique or inspiring, but it has its good moments. You can expect a score which won't interrupt your flow and still add to the atmosphere.
Environmental sounds are quite similar, with a lot of assets straight from the movies. No huge surprises here, it's what you already know for the most part.

Voice Acting

The voice acting is so-so, like most of the game. Snowblind and Warner might have gotten assets from the movies, yes, but that does not include the original actors' voices.
This is not a deal breaker, certainly not, for at least the voices have been picked with a bit of thought.
However, this does not seem like enough, since a lot of dialogues feel outright flat in their presentation, others oversaturated.
The scripts have also been partly taken directly from the novels and movies, which can make the dialogues sound even less authentic. This only holds true for areas like Bree or Rivendell, not in the areas untouched by the movies or books, though.
That is of course not to say there are no great conversations and acting skills involved. Especially the events that do not directly resemble situations in the movies shine and are interesting, and the Great Eagles are presented fittingly powerful.
Especially later in the game, the voices of Eradan and co kinda grow on you, and Radagast may even make you laugh.
At the end of it all, the bigger issue is the lack of interaction between characters during dialogues and lacking facial animations and gestures to fit the bodies to their voices.

Gameplay

The gameplay feels rather flat, even though it has nice touches. With only two attack types and a ranged attack, there's not much variety. You only get 3 slots for skills in both normal and ranged mode, which don't seem too special either (though some of them really effective).
Battle itself is similar to most Hack'n'Slash titles - normal attacks on one button, "special" or heavy attacks on another. Dodging is possible on a third button, as is blocking (which you won't use at all on easy and normal difficulties). The ranged attacks using bow, crossbow or elven staff are rather unrealistic, with overly big hitboxes and no real fire-arcs involved. A straight line on any distance. There is a clear lack of feedback from shooting your arrows, bolts or magic missiles which cannot be denied.
Surprisingly, my Ranger could inflict twice as much damage with a single shot as in close combat, and he was weilding two blades with fire-enchantments. Especially on higher difficulties I'd expect the bow to be much more effective than running into battles - especially when you make use of the headshot mechanic.

My biggest regret in terms of the gameplay is the lack of diversity in combat. I'm one of those who really enjoyed the Two Towers and Return of the King games during the PS2 era. The combat in these games consisted of the same mechanics, at least rudimentary, but made use of combo-attacks, different special attacks that could be unleashed by pressing the right buttons and more.
Skilltrees to unlock more and better combos would have been a great way to enhance combat in War in the North rather than having people rely on special attacks you mostly acquired early in the game til the very end.

Your inventory is quite large, with the armor types all having a huge amount of space, separate from the generic items, stones and potions. You hardly ever will have the need to drop items in favor of others, and even if so, split the loot with the other chars.
Generic junk is clearly distinguishable, gear gets sorted into categories fairly easily and marks new stuff for quicker access. Clearly lacking is any way of comparing different gear without switching back and forth between them, but considering you sell everything that wouldn't benefit you on the next best occassion, this isn't as bad as in other games.
Stores are found in the three cities which you can reach via in-level travelpoints. However, you don't actually need to travel to sell or buy stuff, as these points give you access to a store as well.

The levelling in WitN is straightforward, with 3 attribute points to spend on each gained level. The attributes are exactly what you'd expect from an RPG and the skillpoints can be spent on 3 skilltrees, depending on your preferences.
One playthrough got me to level 20, and it seems you can continue on a harder difficulty right away, keeping your progress intact.

World-interaction is rare in WitN, but you can find some secrets, open some chests, destroy barrels and boxes in the hope to find trash and arrows and so forth. For an RPG this might be too little, but for a Hack'n'Slash this is actually quite acceptable.
Sadly, the number of sidequests is rather low, and especially in the lategame, you'll miss some diversity and reasons to stray from the pretty linear paths.

Overall, the gameplay works and can be challenging, but isn't as well-developed as I'd wished it would be, especially when considering rival titles.

Singleplayer Experience

While I only played on Easy and part Normal Difficulty myself (due to having to replay large parts of the game a few times), I didn't have much trouble on my own. The AI worked effectively, but was not overly powerful. I had enough room to feel that I was flying solo and was having fun that way.
Should an ally die, he'll crawl after the surviving players - when he's close, you can revive him and continue the battle as a team. The lack of dedicated revival items or checkpoints was a blessing and helped the game feel more fluid.

At a lot of points it gets clear however that this game was designed for coop playing. I have to admit though that the singleplayer works well, and the possibility to play on your own after your friends left is bliss.

Multiplayer

Coop is a fun thing, yet it feels not significantly different from the singleplayer, which on one hand is a good thing, but on the other it takes away from diversity in dialogues and lowers the overall difficulty. On normal, neither I nor Alkaid had any issues beating Fornost. Granted, this is still the beginning of the game, but having my old equip from my earlier playthrough I was able to one-hit almost every single goblin and even Alkaid only got into trouble when suicide-goblins swarmed her.
If you have the option to play the game in Coop on your first playthrough, by all means, do it. If you or your partner have played the game already, it would probably get dull way too quickly. However, you won't get access to the harder difficulties without finishing the game on lower ones first.

Plot

The plot will tie in with the well-known Lord of the Rings novels and movies. If you haven't read the books, or at least watched the movies, do so before playing War in the North.
You'll appreciate some subtle approaches and references much more when you know the background.
If you only watched the movies, a lot of things might seem strange to you, like the whole Rangers-of-the-North thing, who were only shortly hinted in the movies, or the introduction of Radagast and Mirkwood.
In case you have no knowledge of Middle-earth yet, you'll probably find the game rather uninteresting, as Snowblind attempted to add to the existing rather than build a full story on their own.

We begin in Bree, where our trio of Eradan the Ranger, Farin the Dwarf and Andriel the Elf meet up with Strider, more commonly known as Aragorn. A short flashback about the recent events at Sarn Ford follows, telling us how the Ringwraiths fought their way into the Shire prior to Frodo's departure.
Never would be told why a man, dwarf and elf are venturing together, or why a dwarf of Erebor is so far from home. You'll be expected to simply accept that fact without any questions, which is a rather weak take on the matter.
Watching the Witch-king of Angmar meeting with a Black Numenorian, Agandaur, you get to see the antagonist of War in the North for the first time. He's a man, though powerful beyond measure and learned from Sauron himself.

In the following you're told to hamper his plans of War in the North, leading you to Fornost, the former capital of Arthedain, one of the three realms of men after Arnor was divided. It is there that you free Belaram, one of the Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains, and earn his trust. Through him the story progresses a great deal, and you even make the acquaintance of Gwaihir, Lord of the Eagles, at a later point.
Undoing Agandaur's efforts in Fornost with the help of Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of Elrond, your next stop is the Dunedain's camp at Sarn Ford, where you meet Halbarad, who was destined to wield the Banner of the King, woven by Arwen, at the Battle on the Pelennor Fields, but die in this war.
Halbarad sends you to look fro two of his Rangers who did not come back after scouting the area, and you make your way through the Barrow-Downs, where an army of of spirits and wraiths stands in your way. Finding both and rescuing one of the Rangers, your next destination is Rivendell.

You reach Rivendell shortly after the forming of the Fellowship, and you still may meet the representatives of men, elves, dwarves and the Ringbearer himself. Gandalf and Elrond tell you of a danger in the Ettenmoors, which was unusually void of trolls during Gandalf's passage.
Your next mission is clear, investigate and crush the enemy once more. Snowblind made use of the Mountain-Giants in this chapter, which is rather untypical. Agandaur seems to have corrupted one of the mighty beings of the Misty Mountains into attacking the Eagles and assembling an army of Trolls, and it is there that you meet Belaram again, who decides to accompany you til the very end.


Don't worry, you don't fight any Warg in WitN.

Until this point, the plot has been rather easy to predict and worked well with the original stories, but afterwards you'll surely get surprised how little you learn about the events covered in the movies. Instead of the Siege of Gondor, you'll defend a dwarven fortress, travel to Mirkwood to find Radagast the Brown and meet the Dragon Urgost, who demands the old capital of the Witch-king's realm Angmar as a price to stay neutral in this war.
This city, Carn Dûm, is where the last chapter of the story takes place. I won't spoil the exact events there, but it all ends with Agandaur's death and a new sunrise.
The ending is rather short and leaves you with an unfinished feeling, unlike the adventures of Frodo and others, who expected to not return home after fulfilling their tasks.
It seems like Snowblind used all their dramatic talent until shortly prior to the actual ending, which makes it feel like a weak way to finish this game.

At the end of the day, they did a nice job, however. It was not uber-nerdy, made especially for Tolkien-nerds like me, but it sure had a lot of references and points of the overall continuity to present. The worst they did to the lore was Urgost, who survived the last fire-dragon Tolkien himself decided to kill, but in the end it does not matter.
They kept true to the tales of Tolkien for the most part, and despite my earlier predictions, they are to be applauded for that.

Final Words & Verdict

All in all, War in the North is a game with heavy flaws. That's not to say that this game can't feel enjoyable to you, but there's more that could have been done on many ends. It leaves you with the feeling that there could have been more to it than just performing the same moves over and over again.
While the lore-conflicts have been surprisingly tame, I honestly can't say it has done enough to interact with Tolkien's works.
The encounter with Radagast was exciting, yet short-lived. Same goes for the Elves you rescue in Mirkwood or the ties with the Rangers of the North. While the stage has been set, Snowblind missed quite a handful of opportunities to show off.

For as long as it lasted (I guess about 15 hours on my first solo-playthrough) it has entertained me well, despite its unpolished nature and the desire to keep the safety belt on.
War in the North surely is no gem among Action RPGs/Hack'n'Slash titles, but rather average.
It leaves me with the taste of wasted potential and the thirst for a coop playthrough on higher difficulties.
The biggest disappointment during my playthrough was the encounter of Wargs in Mirkwood during a short cutscene, with the leader howling, some Wargs being seen in the background afterwards, but I never encountered a single one in actual combat. I liked the model for the Warg, so why didn't they let me fight it?

Considering all the above, a 6.5/10 seems appropriate and well-deserved.
It's not a bad game, especially not if you can enjoy it in coop, using a gamepad (like, splitscreen on X360 or PS3), but for 50€ there should have been much more substance to War in the North.
Buy it once the price gets below 25-30€, or rent it for a fun weekend with two friends.

Busy Q4, eh?

2011-11-10T18:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I surely am not blessed with much game-less time these days.

War in the North is done, Review needs some multiplayer action and polishing to be released.
L.A. Noire is on my plate, Skyrim now as well (Ragnhildr Wyrdmake has seen Skyrim already and deems it bullcrap) and in a few weeks Arkham City and Assassin's Creed Revelations will both join the list after being delayed again.

On the more "haha"-entertaining side, I'm gearing up for a rant on BF3 and MW3, which I've both been playing through a few missions in singleplayer.

There's more which I won't name here in this post, as I'm already overwhelmed with what I got right now.

Expect War in the North in a few hours at earliest or someday tomorrow at latest, and a quick Skyrim-is-so-meh-Rant probably later tonight.

Well, I've chosen to play and review or rant about these games, so I'll pull it through.

War in the North - First Thoughts

2011-11-05T06:36:00.000+01:00

Well, I finally got it, and now the video settings actually work. Before, the game only ran on lowest settings, without shadows or anything.
Even with the full settings, the game still looks quite.. uninspired and dull.

If you are a fan of Tolkien apart from the movies, better don't play it.
In case you can resist screaming out of frustration while playing, try scratching everything from your memory, don't take this game as part of the lore - it just kinda looks like LotR, used some settings and names, but does not feel like it at all.

Bree, the first area of the game which you will backtravel to a lot, feels empty and quite lifeless, Fornost feels small and insignificant, combat feels clunky and misdirected (which does not just describe the lack of a targeting system), dialogues feel artificial...

Ah, well, if it was a title for 15 bucks, I'd probably go for it without huge regrets, but as it is, I am forcing myself through the game - and re-recording everything multiple times due to bugged settings, bugged recordings (hello, lack of sound) and so on doesn't make it any better.

To close this post, I'll leave you with two videos of Bree - one with the game rejecting your video settings, the other with working maxed settings.

Broken Settings:

Working Maxed Settings:

War in the North is out - or is it?

2011-11-02T05:01:00.003+01:00

Well, at least in the USA.
Warner somehow seemed fine with delaying the Game for another 8 to 24 days, depending on the region. Of course, the UK gets to play it last, why wouldn't they?
Retailers already pressured digital distributioners like Steam to hold back Preorders for certain regions, and let's not mention the rising prices of many games by various publishers for Australia, Warner amongst them.

Ironically, all the releases of War in the North that are floating on the web already (albeit without a crack yet) seem to be "Multi5" versions, including various european languages, like German. Even the Steam Storepage tells us that English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish are included with full audio support and Russian, Polish as well as Portuguese-Brazil with localized text.
The US version got that - yet the rest of the world, which these localizations have been made for - have to wait til the end of the month.
Shady, isn't it?

Even worse, Steam let people preload the game prior to the release date, which then(!) got postponed for certain regions.
Evil tongues already speculate this has something to do with Warner joining EA's Origin project.

Now now, here comes the positive part of this post!
This delay gives all of you/us Europeans (and others) the chance to CANCEL our preorders while the US-Gamers and Reviewers present their opinions on the game.

I'm gonna get my hands on the game probably later today and will try to hurry through it (as I'm a huge LotR fan, I'd rather hurry and get it over with than torturing myself for ages). I'll give a report after my first few hours, and especially am gonna focus on whether the game is sticking to actually established lore or twists the works of Tolkien around.

In the end I hope to get a full review out asap, probably before I get back to finishing my Deus Ex: HR one (sorry about that, but it's clearly pissing me off and I could easily rant 20000 words without ceasing to find issues with the game, but nobody would read that, so I have to condense it to something more enjoyable).

Last words:
Please do yourselves a favor and CHECK REVIEWS! Gather information, make sure you really want to pay for this product!
Otherwise you'll most probably end up with a game you'll regret having bought...

Final Day of Indie Royale!

2011-10-30T21:37:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of coverage til now!

IndieRoyale is bringing cool indie games to you for a cheap, flexible price.
You can see it as an alternative to the Humble Bundle, although there's no "charity" aspect to be found here. It still brings you nice games, and a bit more regularly than the Humble one.

Grab yours now before it ends!

500,000 Visitors~

2011-10-29T06:40:00.001+02:00

Hurray, reached 500,000 visitors tonight!

It's been quite a ride. I remember the days when I was happy about getting 50 visits a day (which didn't happen often back then), and now I'm disappointed when falling short below 2500 a day. Ridiculous, isn't it?

New goal: Getting more comments that don't revolve around "this game doesn't work" - you can help achieve that one =p

Anyway, glad you're here, thanks!
DC

Never More -Reincarnation:PERSONA4-

2011-10-28T18:51:00.001+02:00

Download
MP3 ~117MB
Uploaded.to
Torrent

Title: Never More -Reincarnation:PERSONA4-
Published by: Aniplex
Composed by: Shoji Meguro
Arranged by: Shoji Meguro, Atsushi Kitajoh
Performed by: Shihoko Hirata
Year: 2011

Bitrate: 320kb/s MP3
Discs: 1
Tracks: 12

Tracklist:
01. Pursuing My True Self
02. Heartbeat, Heartbreak
03. Like a dream come true
04. I'll Face Myself -Battle-
05. Reach Out To The Truth
06. Your Affection
07. Reverie
08. SMILE
09. Heaven
10. Signs Of Love
11. specialist
12. Never More

VGMDB

Magicka: The Stars are Left

2011-10-27T20:25:00.001+02:00

A grand day for all who love Lovecraft's works, like me, and Magicka!
Cthulhu's gonna arrive soon, spreading mind-entangling madness amongst wizards all around the world!
R'lyeh is calling, just like all the interesting puns Arrowhead already started to use!

The Stars are Left includes:

• An all-new adventure, several levels long, allowing players to get lost in space and time
• 2 new challenge maps
• 2 new robes
• 2 new bosses
• 5 new achievements
• 7 new enemies
• Considerably more than 2 new items and Magicks
• Also, we make fun of Minecraft this time

Are you gonna join the magical madness when The Stars are Left launches this winter?

PS: If you want some madness already, pick up Cthulhu Saves the World on Steam - its featured on the Halloween Sale for $2/1,33€!

Final Fantasy Type-0

2011-10-26T22:06:00.003+02:00

It's out, you might wanna pick it up.
I myself am gonna laugh about it tonight. Maybe there are still parts SE did not yet spoil in magazines, trailers or whereever, who knows?
Priority: Checking the Camera/Targeting improvements they promised

Yes, the download is quite large. It's 2 UMDs, what did you expect? They've filled the discs with a hell lot of video sequences after all.
No mirrors aside from UL.to and Torrent unless requested by a few people.
Final Fantasy Type-0 [JP] ISO
~3.28 GB
Torrent

Ah, yes, the god-damn Opening is even longer now. I hope you got a good book at hand, you won't get to actually play for about 15 minutes, judging from the demo and the longer opening.

PS: Don't worry so much about all the different characters! At least one of them seems to die early enough for Square Enix to not mind putting her onto magazine covers!

Dunno if this control scheme plan is still valid, but heck, I don't care enough to check first, maybe it helps anyway.

Trine 2 IGN Preview

2011-10-20T16:27:00.000+02:00

It's getting closer and closer - Trine 2 is hitting stores soon!
IGN prepared a Preview video for this promising sequel - look for yourselves, it's amazing!

Some sources like Amazon list Trine 2's releasedate as beginning December, and even a Collector's Edition seems to be waiting (including the first Trine and the Soundtrack).

Frozenbyte's Joel also dropped some info on the length on the game on the official Frozenbyte forum:

The Trine 2 campaign will hopefully be a bit longer than Trine 1. It's not a whole lot longer though, and it's hard to judge accurately right now. It will probably hover around 6-10 hours for most people. There is a lot of replay value though, especially if you enjoy playing online multiplayer, and there's also all the experience orbs and hidden chests to collect.

We will most likely release at least one DLC campaign after release but that will take a while (perhaps in the spring next year). We'll know more after the game is out and we see all the feedback etc. :)

More Info on Trine2.com

PS: Not dead, just hibernating.

Steve Jobs dies and I'm like "Ha~Ha!"

2011-10-06T09:23:00.000+02:00

Aye, I hated his guts, still do, still laugh about him and think the world has just become a slightly better place.
One totalitarian asshole less.
kthxbye

Bethesda now blaming Drivers for RAGE

2011-10-05T22:23:00.003+02:00


Yeah, that's shopped. Not far from the actual game, though.

Yes, indeed. A game that's been in development for six years does not run nicely with drivers of the past year. id seemingly didn't have enough time to test their product on normal machines to make sure it runs on current hardware - who would have thought of technological advancement?

While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues, we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible.

We know that you want to experience RAGE at its absolute best, so we’ll continue to use this blog post to keep you posted.

The responsibility of making your game run smoothly now has gone to the video card producers. These have to make sure their drivers adapt to every pile of crap developers put out, why would you ask the developers to adapt to the environment they're working for in the first place? And god, why would Bethesda and id put any video configuration settings into their damn game?

AMD/ATI released a Performance Driver-Fix rather quickly, which doesn't solve all issues however. Nvidia seems to have something underway, but RAGE won't run well without quite a few patches.

Simply blaming the two leading Video Card providers for their drivers sure is the way to cover up bad planning and failing all across the board!

But let's be honest. Even without the "Issues" RAGE has, the game would be no gem of this generation either.

On a brighter note, Steam has started giving out refunds for RAGE.

And thus, Bethesda picks up the shovel again, ready to dig their own grave even deeper...

Source

Partner Project

2011-10-05T16:43:00.000+02:00

Aye, I admit I've been lazy on here lately. And most of what I posted is, well, a direct copy of another post I wrote mainly for a partner project with Alkaid.

We've decided to start a Game-centric review/news/thoughts/rant-blog as a team.
Believe me if I tell you that raging and ranting has never been more fun than with Alkaid!
I'm actually surprised she agreed to that project, though, since she always declined writing some nice little rants as a guest author etc...

Anyway! We're working on that other site, noone knows how it'll develop. It certainly is fun already, writing about RAGE, Deus Ex, Square Enix and of course some happy news as well.

We don't have a name for the site yet, hence the URL is temporary as well. Simply took something we liked, added some Game-related term and voila, work-in-progress name. The styling isn't done either, but with every new post we write, we somehow get to introduce more customized stuff, and we're sure to expand the site further over time.

That's why I mostly do things that can be applied to both blogs without heavy tweaking. Doing it that way ensures that the site will have some backlog once we're going to promote it directly. We won't start from zero when people get a bit more exposed to that site, so that's a plus.

This post is basically just a explanation of what's going on at the moment and a short heads up on a side project of mine you might want to check once in a while.

If you want to, head over right away and read Alkaid's Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review - it's pretty sweet and hopefully will distract you from the lack of mine~

RAGE - This will Piss People off!

2011-10-05T03:09:00.006+02:00

Who would have thought that Bethesda & id Software's new game "RAGE" would actually enrage customers like it actually did since it unlocked tonight via Steam?

Not only did Bethesda show its true colors in the court case against Mojang, but also the most recent game seems to be a magnificent dickmove against customers playing on PCs.

While even the developers themselves admitted it was a huge mistake to start developing for both Consoles and PCs at the same time 6 years ago, they didn't come to realize their mistake early enough, it seems.
Six years ago, both X360 and PS3 were still young, and easily up to par with most PC configurations of the target audience, if not more advanced.
The rise of PCs against the static hardware of consoles was clearly visible to all, yet id didn't rethink their strategies.

Now the damage is done. RAGE has been released in the US and it screams
"I COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE IF IT WASN'T FOR MY CONSOLE STEPBROTHERS!" into the World Wide Web.

Already players all around the world have noticed the horrifying lack of Video Settings, customization of the game mechanics, gruesome Texture Pop-ins paired with minimalistic texture caches and framerate-caps found in this long-praised "Best of E3 2010"-title.
I don't think RAGE can live up to the expectations gaming magazine authors had over one and a half years ago, when they threw around these titles like dollar bills in a strip club.

Graphics that have to be seen to be believed - Powered by id's cutting-edge new id Tech 5 engine, new Megatexture technology brings the vast wasteland to life in never-before- possible detail with action running at an astounding 60 frames per second.

60 Frames per Second alright, but never more, since it's capped at that. I wouldn't have believed how bad the "Megatexture technology" actually is if I hadn't seen it for myself.
Go ahead, open your eyes - don't shy away!

The heaviest blow has hit AMD/ATI setups. While the ATI guys have quickly put up a "RAGE Performance Driver"-fix out of the usual update loop, it doesn't help much to reduce the issues with RAGE.

I tried the game myself. My PC is far above the Minimum and Recommended Hardware, so there shouldn't be much issues, right? WRONG.
After booting up RAGE for the first time, I noticed the horrible screen tearing and texture issues. Moving the camera even a bit seems too much for the game - textures have to be loaded at all times, and dare not to do a full turn! The game doesn't cache the textures already loaded for long. Shaking your head will make you dizzy like that.
After applying the ATI fix, the pop-ins got a bit better, it seems like the game stored more textures than before, and the loading was a bit faster, but the issue is still obvious.

Wall textures missing, decoration not being shown at all for seconds, scenery popping in as you move... that's not what they advertised, no?



Showing some character models...

The scenery is dull, the same atmosphere everywhere from what I've seen. Enemies survive multiple headshots even on Normal difficulty, despite not even wearing real clothes. It's usually easier to kill them manually (read: with your fists) than shooting them. The knockout-revival-mechanic is nice, but that's about it.
Furniture etc are not destructible (they won't even show texture scratches), and I seriously ask myself why they've put antique porcelain vases into the game if you cannot destroy them when filled with RAGE in front of your screen.

The only thing looking good up to this point were some of the NPCs, while your player character looks like a total faggot (no offense).
But what's wrong with the constant showing of the NPCs name when you face one? Is that some special Bethesda-thing that people need their names printed onto their foreheads so you won't forget while playing their games?

And what's that? Why do girls in post-apocalyptic settings feel the need to show so much skin and dress up like they're doing cosplay on comiket, just without colors?
The absence of colors rather than brown or brown/greyish shades sure feels like a Bethesda game, though. More of the same, methinks.

Lastly, when I wanted to enter a building/"dungeon", the game crashed, and that's that for my part.

Honestly, if I had paid $60/50€ for that game, I'd be more than just enRAGEd!

The only way I'd consider RAGE fun:

Dayum~

2011-10-01T15:56:00.000+02:00

Currently working on two reviews, one being Space Marine and the other Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Yes, I finished HR last night, and it had quite an impact on me. Different from what I hoped and expected, but an impact nonetheless.
If all goes well, Deus Ex will go live tomorrow, but only if I get food and drinks asap.
So that was the short update, later~

The Witcher 2 - 2.0 Patch Live!

2011-09-29T19:34:00.000+02:00

Finally, the day has come! Geralt of Rivia will once again hunt for the Kingslayer,
this time in an even further improved version of The Witcher 2.
The long-awaited 2.0 Patch brings not only bugfixes, but also quite a lot new content!

Steam Users still seem to have trouble getting the patch delivered, but the rest of the world already got it. If you are an unlucky Steam user, simply wait, have patience and maybe restart your Steam Client once in a while.

I bet Alkaid will join me taking a look at the new Tutorial and Dark Mode, or dive into the game again herself!

The White Wolf hunts again!
Official Website

New Game Modes
Arena - is a new gameplay mode that is separate from the main adventure and narrative of The Witcher 2. In this mode, Geralt of Rivia duels a variety of foes to the death in a gladiatorial arena located in an unnamed town somewhere in the Northern Kingdoms. In addition to winning gold and valuable items, players also receive points for their wins. They can then post their point totals on-line to compare their achievements against those of other blood sport enthusiasts around the world. Geralt can encounter both foes and allies in the arena. He can recruit the latter for a fee to assist him during his most challenging clashes.

Tutorial - The game tutorial takes the form of a brief adventure during which players learn how to use a range of game mechanics and functionalities. Assuming the role of game protagonist Geralt of Rivia, players save a wounded knight named Bolton of Ironford while learning game controls as well as the basics of combat and alchemy. This transpires step by step as the tutorial guides players through a series of minor missions. Upon completion, based on demonstrated abilities, the tutorial recommends the difficulty level which the player should choose in embarking on the main adventure of The Witcher 2.

Dark Difficulty - The ‘Dark’ difficulty setting is the most demanding difficulty level in gameplay terms. Under this setting, each and every foe represents a significant challenge. In addition to raising the difficulty bar, the module includes several new sets of equipment/items that are linked through a dark legend detailed in the Journal. Once all their components have been collected and donned, the Blasphemer’s, Oathbreaker’s and Kinslayer’s outfits provide great advantages in combat. The swords included in the outfits strip opponents of Vitality while supplementing the witcher’s. However, given that they are cursed, the swords provide no benefit and harm Geralt by sapping him of Vitality as long as the outfits to which they belong remain incomplete.

More Patchnotes

Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle is live!

2011-09-29T13:03:00.001+02:00

What do you get out of it?
Only one game for the time being - Frozen Synapse.
The game normally costs ~$25 (though you get two copies for that).
UPDATE:
Now includes TRAUMA as well!

If you donate more than the average amount you'll also receive the Frozenbyte Bundle!

But let's not forget the wonderful feeling of helping a good cause!

The Games are DRM free and you can download & play them right away, but have also the option to redeem your Humble Bundle on Steam - all games will get unlocked for your account in an instant!

Now now, go and spend some money!

HumbleBundle.com

Bethesda and Mojang heading to court over "Scrolls"

2011-09-27T16:29:00.001+02:00

Yeah, up until now, we always had the benefit of doubt.
Bethesda's lawyers have threatened Mojang, who are responsible for the successful Minecraft sandbox game, with legal charges for ages, ever since Mojang registered the name "Scrolls" for their new trading card/boardgame like game.

Bethesda, who are the minds behind titles like the "Fallout"-franchise, critically butchered "Brink" and in the first place the "The Elder Scrolls" series, feel like using the name "Scrolls" would infringe their rights on "The Elder Scrolls", which has its next game "Skyrim" upcoming this year.

Of course we would confuse an indie trading card game with a multimillion dollar "open world" RPG that's being advertised everywhere and sold for ridiculous prices, with the promise of day-1 DLC!
Is Bethesda feeling that insecure to sue a successful indie development team over a name?

And let's bring this case into context with other games!
If you can't use "Scrolls" because its a part of "The Elder Scrolls", then let's sue Bethesda for using "RAGE" as a title for one of their own games. Let's look at the "Streets of Rage" series back on the Sega systems, or, surprisingly, TWO actual card games of the same title!

This, I say, is reason enough for myself to not pay a single cent for upcoming Bethesda titles. Skyrim? Nah, don't want that anyway. Rage? Nope.

I really hope Bethesda will fail so hard, it will hurt them badly. This is a shining example of why our current trademark and copyright system needs to be heavily reworked. It's just ridiculous that way.

Scrolls is Mojang's next game and offers a new and unique game play where you fight to outmaneuver your opponent on the battlefield using the destructive powers in your collection of magical scrolls. Tear your opponent limb from limb with the might of your summoned armies, lay waste to the defenses with the obliterating power of your siege weapons or open up the very skies and let bolts of lightning shower his minions until only ash remains. The road to victory is yours to choose. Obtain the powerful scrolls and decide which ones you will take to battle as you fight to become the mightiest Magician of all.

Stanton Lanier is awesome.

2011-09-25T02:34:00.000+02:00

Yes, he is. Thanks to my PSP's webradio, I found this great classical artist.
I was in quite a dire situation when I found his track "Alleluias Dancing", and it immidiately made me want to hurry back to my PC so I could google him.
I've been trying hard to remember his name and the track, so fantastic it was!

Now now, I found him, I bought the whole Album due to this one single track that amazed me. Great stuff.

If you're interested in picking the Album up, visit his site!
Also to be found on Amazon & iTunes.

Steam Weekend Deal: Company of Heroes Franchise

2011-09-23T18:51:00.002+02:00

Relic's Company of Heroes-franchise is 80% off this weekend on Steam.
80% discounted? Hell yes! That's 4,99€ in EU areas for the complete series, $9.99 for the US.

Company of Heroes brings a strong narrative onto your PC. World War II hasn't seen a better strategy game ever. The atmosphere is captivating and feels authentic.
The game's RTS mechanics are deep, the cover system is essential, the point-capture-system makes sure the game stays dyncamic rather than having base-rushing like present in Blizzard RTS games.

While the Dawn of War 2 franchise might be more focused on game dynamics due to completely dropping basebuilding, CoH still comes with construction, more ressources, strategic perks and a few more factions, giving you enough freedom to fit into your personal preferences of warfare.

Another great advantage is that all of the 3 games available - Company of Heroes, Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor - are stand-alone titles.
Owning licenses for all of them unlocks the full package, all game-modes, factions and Campaigns, while all of them share the same multiplayer community, regardless of which games you own.
This means you could buy one of the games right now, play all you want and buy the rest when you got convinced by the game's brilliance.

I'll take the chance to shoot some Krauts today. Care to join me?

Rant on LotR: War in the North

2011-09-21T23:31:00.000+02:00

Yes, this is an announcement rant.
Lord of the Rings: War in the North is gonna be released November 1,2 or 4, depending on your region, and I am going to play that game. And crush it for twisting the lore and not being in line with it for the most part.

I hate to see Videogame Publishers trying to push more and more crappy additions to the Lord of the Rings franchise, adding and mutating established Lore that's been written over half a century ago. The original works have so much room for cool games, yet they fail to adapt them and instead fill games with their own crappy wet dreams.
Only company that's twisted the lore more than WB and associates is Games Workshop, but those at least do some interesting miniatures and write out actual character background to justify their additions.

You see, this is personal. I've always adored the works of J.R.R.Tolkien. All of them. From The Hobbit to Roverandom, over the Children of Húrin and the Silmarillion. My shelf got quite a lot of Tolkien's works standing on it.

Yet, instead of retelling the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the tale of Túrin Turambar, the fall of Gondolin or other epic tales already written, they decide to stick to the War of the Ring era, fill it with copy-pasted characters they send into different directions fighting fictional enemy forces and make things seem like they're essential to how the war ended.
The first Battle for Middle Earth (EA) game was great, the second twisted the lore like hell (again, EA), and Aragorn's Quest was just plain horrible.

Yes, people are familiar with the story of the Ring, and while that reduces the need for proper introductions of the scenario, it also ensures that people grow tired of recycleware.
If you want to use the licenses, use them with respect and think about what to do with them.

See, Vivendi released "The Hobbit" in 2003. I'm not gonna lie, I loved that one. It wasn't as artistically refined and mature as the movie-licensed games, but it fulfilled the purpose of the original novel just great - that was a book for children!
It was colorful, with the Orcs looking weird but it had riddles all around, and especially late in the game you had to actually think and take care. It was a great game for its time.
Critics bashed it in unison, but that's to be expected. It was different.

EA's "The Third Age" tried to tell a slightly different story alongside the original fellowship, combined with a Final Fantasy X-influenced Battle system. Sadly, that game had heavy flaws in its mechanics, and the end was just horribly architecture. Suddenly you're standing on top of Barad-dûr, fighting the Eye of Sauron with sword and axe. Hello?
Fighting Mûmakil on the Pellenor Fields who try to trample you in turn-based combat just felt wrong. But at least they tried something and got an average game out of it which, despite its flaws, was able to captivate me for a while.

Now we're getting another new fellowship created by WB. Dúnedain, Elf and Dwarf. Cliché ahoi! This is getting so old...
They're not directly giving you access to the wizard they had in early footage, but they're involving Radagast the Brown, one of the 5 Istari aka Wizards. Radagast only had a minor role in the trilogy, so I hope they integrate him well and believable. Good thing they seemingly scratched drawing a new wizard out of their hats.
The antagonist seems forced from what I've seen and read, and I predict him to lack character depth and impact, but let's hope for the better.

I have to admit, the Art around the game is stunning. Locations are beautifully depicted, concepts are neatly worked out.
However, it is questionable if they'll be able to carry this style over into the game.

Fact is, this game is on my list. I'm gonna play it. And I'm gonna be harsh. Harsh yet fair regarding the actual gameplay.
If the gameplay is good enough to enjoy playing this game, it won't score too badly, but it will suffer if the plot integration is inconsistent and rejecting established lore.
I'm more than willing to give this one a chance, but disappointment will be punished for sure.

New F2P Title on Steam: Rusty Hearts

2011-09-21T04:48:00.002+02:00

Rusty Hearts appeared on Steam today, adding another Free to Play title to Steam's range.
The game just opened its Beta phase to everyone and is still in development.

Rusty Hearts is a multiplayer online game with fast-paced and highly-stylized brawling combat combined with a solo or team-based dungeon exploration experience. In this gothic inspired world of vampires, half-vampires, and humans, players will be able to unleash devastating combo attacks, engage in a wide variety of epic monster battles, collect valuable loot, and become a unique hero.

Sounds not too bad, huh? Let's take a closer look!

I quite enjoyed the character selection screen, felt somehow nice and atmospheric. However, my character of choice isn't done yet, meaning I can't pick gunslinger Natasha yet. Disappointing, but can't help that. I'd rather have the developers steadily add content to a free to play title than throwing out all there is from the start and leaving it to die.

After a slight disappointment that my character of choice is not ready yet, I started out with Angela Strraugend, who seems to be a witch apprentice and focusses on close combat and magic.
The tutorial felt quite enjoyable, albeit short. The video sequences were fun, the character interaction interesting and atmospheric.
Graphics-wise I have seen better, but Rusty Hearts seems true to its unique style and that counts more than the polygon count after all.

The gameplay seems captivating enough to make me want to explore the game more. I'll make sure to use my DualShock2 for Rusty Hearts, though, since I can't help but think it was intended that way.
Slaying monsters, picking up items, earning experience and completing the tutorial after watching a really intriguing cutscene and the promise of getting even more stuff like that with coop buddies made me drag Alkaid into the game as well. She has not started yet, but I'm sure she'll have more fun than with Spiral Knights.

The character creation might seem dull to some, due to being limited to only 3 characters as of now, which all have their set rolls in the plot, but don't be mistaken - there's a lot of room for customization in the game.
Either paying cash for fashion or helpful things from the store or finding materials to craft these nice shoes you've seen somebody wearing, you'll be able to modify your appearance a lot.

Sadly, the cash shop seems a bit expensive, but it's gotten cheaper overall throughout the game's development. Costumes are now permanent purchases rather than overpriced stuff you could rent for a month, due to heavy protests from players. This surely gives an impression of how feedback is being handled.

The developers' presence on the Steam Forum is also quite encouraging, especially with the comments they're making - these guys got humor!

Sadly, regional restrictions might hit you, and your characters are bound to the server you start them on, alongside your cash-purchases, which quite honestly sucks. Let's hope they'll rethink that and open your lockers to all servers after having paid once.

Of course, these are only the initial impressions I got from playing the game's first 30 minutes and looking around (mostly checking outfits...), combined with things I came across reading the official and steam forums, but it's a start.

Alkaid and I will take a look under the surface asap, slaying monsters side by side.
We'll keep you updated, sharing our thoughts on Rusty Hearts and will in time hopefully be able to present a real "review" of our experience.

For more information or diving right into the game, please check out the Rusty Hearts Website and the Steam Storepage.
Please take note that aside from Steam, you'll need a separate "Perfect World" account. That account can be used for other F2P games by Perfect World Entertainment as well, so even if Rusty Hearts might not satisfy you, it won't be completely useless.
Steam is not necessary, but surely beneficial and also awards you with promotional items if you choose to start this week.

Magicka Content Update/Sale!

2011-09-19T00:09:00.002+02:00

As predicted, the Paradox Week on Steam ends with a huge Magicka sale!
75% off on all titles of the franchise, excluding the newly released "Gamer Pack".

The Gamer Pack comes with three new unique robes, inspired by popular videogames.
That is not all there is to today's Content Update, though, as there are two more robes you get for free!

As a Warhammer-nerd, I am overwhelmed by joy about the new "Space Marine" robe. He's quite strong and endures a lot of punishment before going to the ground. His Bolter does not only sound cool, but the shells explode on impact and set surrounding enemies ablaze!
He can charge with his staff, doing no damage to foes, but getting you out of trouble (or directly into enemy lines to do maximum damage).
Immune to Life, your Marine will need to rely on his Regeneration. Poison is no issue to him, and his Power Armor gives him a fire and cold resistance.
He's vulnerable to Lightning and Arcane, so be careful!

Alkaid is more hyped over the "Tron"-Mage who shoots discs that bounce from enemy to enemy, dealing damage to surrounding foes (or friends) until they vanish. He absorbs Lightning but is immune to Life and Arcane (according to description, Arcane immunity still did damage to my mage when I tried)!
You'll never die when reviving your friends with the Tron mage. If you're wet and try to conjure Lightning, it will immidiately heal you. As you don't need to press anything aside from the A-key to conjure Lightning, you can build up tenthousands of hitpoints healed.

One thing that's true for most of the new robes is that Arrowhead is now playing with even more specific traits for robes.
While the Wizard Hat DLC was purely cosmetic and the Vietnam and Patchwork Wizards had their unique starting loadouts, they've been exact copies of the vanilla wizard, aside from their looks.
The Party Robes pack, introducing Tank, Support and Rogue robes changed that, modifiying speed, hitpoints, resistances and spell strength.
With the new robes we got today, even more things got specifically changed to fit the themes of the robes - which traits these are is up for you to find out.

In case you never heard of Magicka before (which is a shame in itself, considering the successful nine months since release), or just haven't picked up the game yet, fear not!

The COMPLETE Magicka set, excluding the new Gamer Pack, is available for only $6.24/6.24€ today. Go for it, people! Only 19 hours left til this sale ends!

Space Marine and Tron are free for all - do you recognize the Gamer Pack robes?

Learn With Portals

2011-09-17T22:00:00.003+02:00

Software/Game Developer Valve shows again that they've got their hearts and heads on the right spots.

"Learn With Portals" is the name of the current project started by Valve, trying to engage children in schools with science, make them use their heads to solve physics puzzles and get a feeling for problem solving.
Bringing the Portal-franchise into schools sure will be a lot of fun for the kids (and teachers)!

Intrigue. Engage. Inspire.

When we heard the buzz surrounding the new role video games are playing in education, we had to throw our hat in the ring. Today, innovative educators are finding ways to incorporate Portal™ and Portal 2 into their classrooms—helping teach physics and critical-thinking skills. It’s eye-opening to see how video games can be used in amazing and unexpected ways to help educate our next generation.

One of the biggest challenges in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is capturing the students’ imaginations long enough for them to see all of the possibilities that lie ahead.

Using interactive tools like the Portal series to draw them in makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun which gets us one step closer to our goal—engaged, thoughtful kids!

That, of course, is not all there is to the project!
Until the 20th, the original Portal is gonna be free for all those who don't yet own it anyway.

If you're new to Steam as a platform, you can pick up Portal and get the full feature unlock for free, without having to buy anything. Yet.

Tell your friends, spread the word! Portal is free once again!

Nyan Eleven is over and I still don't care

2011-09-12T17:45:00.001+02:00

Hate me if you want to, but ten years, a damn anniversary and nothing blew up.
That's the only reason I followed the news yesterday.

The US hasn't changed squad, unlike Obama promised back then. It's still the same course, they're meddling with shit of others and then cry loudly because someone might retaliate.
Still killing innocents, still covering their own crimes.

Fighting for freedom of speech? Because what happens on the other side of the globe limits what people might say?

No, sorry for those families left behind, but certainly nothing I'd shed a single tear for.
If you wanna be the arrogant prick trying to force others into your ways, then don't cry if somebody smacks your face once he's getting sick of it.

Square Enix registers Final Fantasy XIII-3 Domain?!

2011-09-10T06:29:00.000+02:00

AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHH SERIOUSLY I HAVEN'T LAUGHED SO HARD IN AGES! REALLY, NONE OF THAT COMPANY'S MANY FAILURES THESE PAST YEARS MADE ME LOSE MY MIND LIKE THIS! I'M STILL LAUGHING LIKE A MANIAC WHENEVER IT CROSSES MY MIND XDDDDDD

Okay, so they registered another domain. finalfantasyxiii-3.com.
XIII-2 isn't even out yet (and looks still like crap) and XIII was a disaster in terms of reviews.
Versus XIII is not even close to release with very, very little information ever getting published, which mostly states how they changed plans on something again, blablablanomurahasfunlivinghiswetdream.

Now now, XIII-2 is so brilliant, a real highlight of the series. It has cities. It seemingly is going to have stores (one can only hope) and you can TALK TO NPCs WHICH THEN SPEAK THEIR TWO LINES OF TEXT! OH MY GOD! THIS IS SO NEW!!!
Aside from that, we get "world is doomed, future guy comes back" time paradox bullshit. Last guy on the planet? Noel, right, you're the last motherfucking unicorn, I know, but you still are damn annoying.

To understand XIII-2 is to understand that Square Enix is making losses without end these years. Profits are shrinking rapidly, and the company seems even more focused than ever to throw out enough crap titles to even remotely stay in business while other studios they bought one day after the fusion of Squaresoft and Enix do the proper games that actually allow them to exist at all. Endless outsourcing takes its toll.

FFXIII-2 is full of things Square Enix did not do these past years. Pokemon, time travel, towns, proper NPCs, sidequests, hiphop and another cliche plot.
Okay, the last point is nothing new, we had cliche plots before. But seriously, they've thrown so much random crap into this game, they seem desperate to attract every single group of nintenyearolds there is.
They don't seem to have enough freedom for their projects to do something proper anymore. No time and money to risk a new engine, plot and characterdesign.

Seriously, at this point, they might just do the same they did to Final Fantasy Agito XIII/Type-0 to Versus XIII: Rename it.
Noel saves his future, gets back into the Versus XIII world. Voila, XIII-3.

Or the damn Valkyre Lightning isn't real Lightning, has no sister in that paradox and always has been guarding Etro. Of course, Vanilla and Fang will be forgotten as they don't exist in that Paradox without the real Lightning. Serah is gonna be heartbroken (again...) and will look for real Lightning throughout XIII-3, finally getting rid of the sucker Noel who now is in his Versus XIII future.

Serah will then travel the worlds of other Square Enix titles that failed to sell well or be critically acclaimed, and we'll go look for Type-0 Lightning, Aya Brea Lightning, Lightning Nurse and Lightning Owuhabunga in Nigeria. There has to be a reason they recycle their character models so damn often, right?

No, for real people, I'm done with this shit. I can't laugh about it anymore after typing this post.
Knowing Square Enix' recent failures, which pile up higher than the skulls for Khorne's Skull Throne, this is gonna be just another bad game yet good example why this company's ruin is well justified.

First Thoughts on Space Marine: Multiplayer

2011-09-06T08:03:00.000+02:00

Finally, after about one and a half years since my registration on the official Space Marine forum, the game got released. At least in most of Europe and a while ago in the US.
Sadly, UK people and others still need to wait til Friday.

I don't really need to say much, I think. The Game is GREAT.
It feels natural, the difficulty is still fun and rewarding, and the Multiplayer gets better and better the longer you play.

It's now 7:37am, release was at midnight, and I have 5+ hours on my record already.
Surprisingly, after 2 hours of the Singleplayer Campaign, I switched to Multiplayer.
Before I quit I had some very enjoyable rounds alongside and against Relic-employees, which made a nice event. Gaming with the Developers of the game you're adoring? Brilliant experience. Now I can claim that the guys at Relic are my Battle-Brothers for real!

The Multiplayer will frustrate most of you. A lot. Not kidding.
Even shortly after the game's release, gaps between player ranks were obvious. Granted, they weren't that large yet, but due to the Weapon Unlocks and Perks, you got your ass kicked pretty fast.

In comparison to the Singleplayer, where you regenerate Health by Executing enemies, in MP you regain Health when staying out of battle. Executions are not possible, which honestly is a good thing, since it would break the flow of the battle.

On Rank 1, you start with a simple Tactical Marine. Bolter, Boltpistol, Combat Knife, Frag Grenades, Teleport Homer.
While Tactical Marines are the backbone of the team and can be extremely flexible, they are not very effective in that initial built when facing Tacticals using Plasmaguns or the Stalker-Pattern Bolter, or Devastators using Lascannons.

Devastators get unlocked once you reach Rank 2, fulfilling a more defensive role. A control point needs to be held? Stand ready and fire your Heavy Bolter. The strong weapon comes with a price, though: Speed.

My favorite class currently is the Assault Marine, who gets unlocked on Rank 3 and closes the 3 available classes.
Assaults use their Jumppacks to quickly move to capture and ground pound to close in on enemies, killing them in close combat. Due to their role, they tend to die easily, and you'd better pick your fights wisely.

On Rank 4 you finally get access to the Customization menu. If you're lucky, you already fulfilled some Armor or Weapon Quests to unlock armor pieces and a bigger arsenal.
Granted, unlocking all these items will be a drag, but since you can use them to show off, it feels rewarding.

With every level you should get access to a new perk, weapon, loadout or whatever might be included in the game, and I tell you, there are a lot of things you might want to try.
Long term motivation is surely given!

Sadly, there are only 5 maps in the game at this point, and Coop is still not out (but planned as a Day 30 update). Relic has stated that they'd like to add content and maps, however, making this feel like a small range of maps will be enough to get used to the pace, gameplay and level up a bit.

One huge downside is the always active voice transmission. You cannot turn that off without basically disabling your microphone, and even then you'll need to manually mute every player in the current session to not hear them burp into their mics (really happened, and I don't think that guy was aware of us listening...) or crazy wives screaming at their husbands playing.
THIS needs to be improved on. Give us an option to not take part in voice madness at all, and it will be fine.

However, the voices were clear and the connections stable. I had no lag on my end, which surprised me, considering the P2P nature of the online mode.

The Settings did not get expanded, which I found quite odd in the beginning, but hell, its fine. Space Marine runs fantastic on my machine (reminder: 3.4GHz Quad AMD Phenom II, Radeon HD5750 1GB, 4GB RAM) without any hiccups. There could be slightly better textures, but it looks great enough the way it is.

Overall I am very, very pleased with Space Marine.
Relic has done a great job bringing 40k to life once again, proving that they're the right ones for the job of developing 40k Games.
While I'm not a huge Multiplayer fan myself, I couldn't help but enjoy Space Marine's Annihilation and Seize the Ground matches for hours already.
My impatience was well justified and the game did not disappoint in the slightest.

If you haven't grabbed the game yet, I suggest trying the Demo for starters and picking up the full game asap.

First Thoughts on Deus Ex: HR

2011-09-05T06:15:00.003+02:00

So, me's grabbed Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
I don't know if it will be worth the buy yet, and I'm not far into the game.

However, I already have some thoughts about the game I'd like to share. Maybe some of you can comment on them to hopefully assure me it'll get better later on.

My first time playing involved dear Alkaid, who'll work with me on a Game-related Project. We're preparing stuff currently, thinks are extremely confusing since neither of us has been working on a team project like that before, and especially the presentation needs to be done well.
More on that soon enough. Important point is I'm directly talking about the game while playing, streaming via skype.

View the Full Post to read my list of thoughts.

1) No Window Mode support. Fuck 3D.
I really don't know why Eidos feels like they should integrate 3D stuff but no Window Mode features. Eyefinity and co are on the go, Multi-Monitor-Setups are spreading all around, yet there is no Window Mode support in the game.
Now compare the ones that would like to run their games windowed with those actually wanting to utilize 3D features or even have the equipment at this point.
Streaming won't be easy like that, and I am afraid that the performance will suck during action scenes.

2) Unskippable 30 seconds of ads of Publisher, Devs, Technology etc every time you start the game.
Thankfully, I was able to use a patched file to remove these ads, which is bliss.
Now I am not tempted to spit on my screen anymore whenever I see the Square Enix logo.

3) Mouse controls feel really sluggish.
Even after adjusting the sensitivity (which comes without numerical indicators but only filled/unfilled bars and has to be adjusted for both X and Y axes separately) this did not change.
While I'd have liked to use Mouse and Keyboard for this game, I decided that it wasn't worth the hastle and switched over to my beloved DualShock 2 Gamepad.

3.5) No General Gamepad Support
Even when using a X360 emulator, it needs tweaking to even work. Granted, the tweak is easy to do, but it shouldn't be necessary. In fact, the X360 only restriction shouldn't be existant in the first place, but what am I complaining about, that's how developers work these days, especially with multi-platform titles and ports...

4) Ass-Long Loading Times
I've been waiting multiple minutes until my savegame loaded. I can accept these times at the start of a new chapter, but not for loading a savegame bringing me back a minute before I screwed up.
This is said to have been tremendously improved via patches, but as I've not gotten mine to work yet (not the correct version number), I cannot say that this is a pre- or post-patch issue yet.
UPDATE: I successfully patched it just now and the loading time til I got to my savegame was actually really fine. Let's hope it stays that way, so I won't regret having the 30 second ads back...

5) "Gaming" on Rails
While I accept and appreciate a good introduction, I can't help but feel disappointed about the freedom you actually have during the prologue. I've spent more time "on rails", with only a pause menu (not the real menu) available and the option of turning my head in a ~45° range. While it was nice seeing a quite detailed and cleanly animated, alive setting and the rails weren't feeling artificial, it annoyed me, who sat back with his gamepad and wanted to do something myself.
However, this mostly got irrelevant after I got to finally play, crouch, take cover and shoot on my own - disregarding the video tutorials...

6) Video Tutorials spoil the upcoming events
Really, this. When I first got to freely move, I got shown a tutorial video, rather than a coaching while playing. This video isn't as annoyingly long as the one in BRINK, but instead you get quite a lot of them. And they show exactly how ruined the facility is before Adam Jensen, your character, gets to see it himself. While informative, it is a design choice I regret.

7) Cover
Honestly, I felt it was just fine. Taking boxes with you to hide behind felt a bit weird, but in the end it was kinda interesting. The switching of positions felt nice, although it needs some getting used to, and that "looking over" your cover had different grades of exposing yourself/taking aim was really cool.
The Cover system in general makes you already feel sorry for Square Enix's own title The 3rd Birthday, which pretty much failed to make Cover and the clunky Barriers all around the maps feel natural.
At the end of the day I like the Cover system, but can't help but feel like it might really get annoying later in the game.

8)The "actual" Opening sequence
Yeah, thats right. Minutes of Intro, rails and video tutorials were succeeded by a short gameplay experience, followed by getting your character beaten up badly and as a result reconstructed with the very augments the facility you've been told to secure.
The scene was in all honesty quite a sight, I'd be tempted to call it awesome, even.
Somehow I got a slight Ghost in the Shell vibe (Making of a Cyborg), which is generally a good thing.

9) Actual NPCs with spoken dialogue that is actually interesting
I am so glad Eidos can actually do this stuff, where Square Enix lost it long ago.
You even get some choices to make. Informing people peacefully or tackling the topic head-on, more aggressively? The dialogue itself was well written, really builds up an atmosphere. Maybe its too quiet at times, though.

10) First Mission Choices
Getting shortly briefed for your first mission after recovery felt exciting, especially considering you're left to choose your overall course of action. Storming the party or taking the stealhy turn? Long Range or Close Combat? Your choices affect your initial loadout, which was nice.
Meeting a SWAT team at your target to question about the situation inside was nice, especially since again the dialogues felt natural. How much info on what would you like? Your choice.
Taking a more stealthy course or going straight through the door? Again, your choice.

Of course, I failed to stay silent due to getting confused with the buttons, throwing remote detonating stuff all around giving my position away and making even more noise to attract the other guards by blowing up the bombs, but hey, such is life!

Other positive things I wasn't able to experience yet but were hinted are the Augmentic Improvements that act as a skill tree, and that all the mails you may read on your playthrough by searching through terminals and PCs will get globally saved in your database.
The HUD felt logical as well, due to the augments.
Also, there are quite a few settings to make, from Antialiasing to 3D stuff. The lack of window mode hurts, though.

Overall, while Alkaid didn't understand or quite frankly even remotely liked the way I went into the mission after ruining my stealthy attempt, gunning down all foes from cover, I kinda liked it.
Even though I am not going to simply spend 50-60€ on this game which benefit Square Enix, I'm already considering picking it up once it gets available at a 50% discount.
As it's a Steamworks game, it can simply be a retail copy as well.
If only it was Eidos only, without Square Enix being involved at all, and I didn't have 4 games up my plate only for September, I might go for Deus Ex: Human Revolution at its preorder price.

Space Marine Collector's Edition is MINE!

2011-09-03T18:18:00.002+02:00

Yes, it is mine, I bought it today. And yes, its marvelous.
The Purity Seal is awesome (magnet) and the Artbook is full of inspiring pieces.
They even went and did a damn lot of variations of Power Armor, weapons and Orks.

Here, the unboxing:

http://www.spacemarine.com/

Persona 4: The Golden for PSVita Announced

2011-08-31T18:15:00.000+02:00

Take that, Nintendofags!

You can't believe how I cheered about a Persona 4 remake for Playstation Vita. It means we'll get all of the PS2 version AND MORE!
Sadly, this means I'm in a bad spot. I haven't completed the PS2 version yet, and the Anime adaption is only a month in the future. September being a bitch, I won't get much time to play all of the awesome games, right? Especially since Persona 2 Innocent Sin gets released in the US in about 20 days.

So should I rush through the game, then enjoy the Anime and replay it on my future PSVita?
Enough reasons to play it again are given:

New Features:
- 3G and Wi-Fi support
- New event scenes
- Added Personas
- Added character outfits
- New character Marie, voiced by Kana Hanazawa. She's a "mysterious girl" who appears before the main characters.
- When you're about to die in a dungeon, you can send a message seeking help to other players. It's not specified how this system will work exactly.
- Additional anime movie scenes, with new voices
- 1.5 times the voice of the PS2 original
- New song for the opening movie
- An element that has been highly requested by fans
Source

Japanese Release is set for Spring 2012, so it is basically not long after the Vita launch. I expect it to hit US shelves around Summer/beginning Fall.

In case you want to give the Soundtrack a go, look over here.

Looks just as pretty as the Original!

New Feature & New Anime-Scene

Oh September, Thou Art A Heartless Bitch!

2011-08-26T14:25:00.002+02:00

Wow, half of the year there are no decent bigger Games getting released, with exception of The Witcher 2 and Dawn of War 2: Retribution, and then Fall arrives.

First in the wave of awesome "Must Have!"-Games was Catherine, which cost me around 70€ to import.
Next up, Black Rock Shooter, which cost me 90€ just three days ago.
Now we're close to Space Marine's release.

But that's not even close to enough.
September also throws Disgaea 4 at us!
The 20th will also give us Persona 2 Tsumi for the PSP, and the end of the month will get celebrated by Atelier Totori's release.

Okay, if you've ever considered donating, the button is in the top navigation. My head is already dizzy calculating the prices, and I'm already stepping on the breaks with other stuff, but you never know. *sighs*

Okay, I'm leaving you with the awesome Disgaea 4 Trailer!

Space Marine Demo

2011-08-23T15:55:00.000+02:00

Only 3 hours til the Space Marine Demo goes live for all of you people, not only those who preordered via Steam or Honour Guard Members.

I've just stopped streaming two playthroughs for Colorless people, and I can tell you that this game plays extremely well, both the PC controls and the Gamepad ones are easy to pickup, it is comfortable and it feels like waging war for the God-Emperor.

I'll be off to prepay my Collector's Edition so I can pick that up on release.
Once I'm back, the streaming will continue as I'm eager to deliver the Emperor's wrath to the Ork infestation.

PLAY THE DEMO

Livestreaming Games

2011-08-22T07:27:00.000+02:00

Well, one thing I've always enjoyed was skyping while playing.
However, due to Skype's limitations, I cannot stream a video to more than one person without paying.
I've then considered streaming via some website, which might transmit the video slightly delayed to the audience, but at least gives the same quality video to multiple people at the same time.

I haven't yet figured out which service is best, but I've settled for livestream.com for now. I won't ever get a Premium account, though, as they charge ridiculous prices for that ($350 A MONTH), so bear with the ads and not maxed out quality.
The only possible way to get would be a free promotion due to popularity, but that is highly unlikely - not even Notch got one, when his channel went to the number 1 spot on livestream.com in less than an hour.

However, I hope we'll see Youtube's Live Stream feature being rolled out for all as a nice christmas present. Youtube has been giving access to "Partners" step by step during the last few months, and if it goes well, it might be available soon.

Anyway, for now I'll offer this stream. It's mostly irregular, but it should add recordings of the live shows in the future.
I don't talk on air, at least not at the moment. I might do so to reply to chat instead of pausing the game if questions get too overwhelming, but that would only be when the demand gets even more overwhelming than some of your questions.

I've taken a break to post this, have been playing Darksiders til a few moments ago (Twilight Cathedral chapter, Apocalyptic difficulty) and might not play again right away.

Watch live streaming video from darkchaplain at livestream.com

Finished Bastion

2011-08-21T07:44:00.001+02:00

I just got to finish Bastion after quite a few days full of fun and excitement.
Once I find the right words to describe this highly amazing game, I'll write a review. Just don't expect it to be as long as Assassin's Creed was. This will be more compact.
Also, the music is beautiful, flowing well with the art and overall atmosphere. Ordered my signed CD already!

Now now, watch this amazing Trailer and try the Demo if you're already interested.

Black★Rock Shooter PSP Game Pre-Release Roundup

2011-08-19T03:56:00.001+02:00

Only one week til the official release of Black★Rock Shooter's PSP Game, and more and more trailers are popping up. Most are poor quality things, but there are some gems really worth staring at.

Release date is August 25, that means I'll take it as a slightly late (and much later arriving) birthday present.

I also hope you already have an eye or two on the BRS Game version figma!
Trust me, I know how it feels to miss a chance, as I am still mourning the lack of Dead Master on my shelf. Get her while you can!
I know I preordered her right away...

Also, if anybody finds a not-too-expensive store still offering Dead Master's figma, I'd be EXTREMELY thankful!

AmiAmi - Hobbysearch - Otacute

Speaking of the BRS figma line AND the game, tell me, how can I not pay a hundred bucks to claim the Black★Rock Shooter PSP Premium Box including the White Rock figma?
ISN'T SHE GORGEOUS?!

The Preorders seem to have been closed kinda everywhere already, so if you still get a chance, use it!

AmiAmi - Otacute

Black★Rock Shooter getting TV Anime

2011-08-19T03:23:00.002+02:00

A television ad has announced on Friday that a Black Rock Shooter anime will run in Fuji TV's Noitamina timeslot in the January season next year. Noitamina producer Kōji Yamamoto and Black Rock Shooter creator huke both confirmed the news on their respective Twitter accounts.

Source

You can't believe how I am cheering right now. It seems that there really are some shows to look forward too, even though the next season's chart looked kinda dull, aside from the Persona 4 Anime.

Visit the official site here, and check for updates once in a while!

Catherine arrived!

2011-08-13T12:39:00.000+02:00

Seriously, no matter HOW DAMN TIRED I am, I can't stop smiling and laughing like a maniac. I love this box, I love the game, I love the shirt, the pillow case, the boxers, the artbook, the sound disc, the game and Atlus themselves.

THIS is how you do a fucking amazing Limited Edition!

On a sidenote, I'm already on Brotherhood, well into the game, I think.
Skype sucks completely these days, though. Nothing aside from trouble, even though I only want to stream AC:Brotherhood so I won't have to do it completely on my own, forced into fullscreen mode.
I expect to finish it til next weekend, unless I get my hands on a shiny PS3 to marathon Catherine into oblivion...

Final Fantasy Type-0 Demo out

2011-08-11T09:02:00.003+02:00

Just copied it onto my Memory Stick and am now in the Menu.
Quick Review and Short Thoughts on the Game/Demo following later when I'm back home.
What I can say for now is that the Intro is the latest trailer we got, which shows quite a few late-game scenes and is effing long. Also, before you get to play, you'll get to watch even more cutscenes. Mehness.

In case you wanna give it a try as well, here you go.
Extract and copy onto your PSP. Also, it's Japanese, so get used to the switched X and O buttons and that you're on your own.

Demo Download

Control scheme:

Steam Beta introducing official Steam Gift Trading!

2011-08-10T07:20:00.002+02:00

Hello everyone!

First off, I'm finally in possession of an uncracked version of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and am enjoying the Multiplayer a lot (if I can make it through the matchmaking, that is...). This probably will lead to a rather short Multiplayer Review sometime soon, which hopefully will lead to another review once Revelations is out (yes, I'm aiming to get that for Launch), so I can compare the old system with the new, "improved" Multiplayer.

Secondly, LIMBO is great and I might throw up some theories once I sorted out my mind.
Also, Terraria is weird and I don't know if I like it as of now.

Now the main point of this post.
Steam's new Beta Client Update introduced Gift Trading (also working for Team Fortress 2 Items, though), and thus gives people finally the necessary official way of trading.

We all know, trading never was officially supported by Valve, and even had some lines in the Terms of Service, but they couldn't have ignored it much longer.
Thus, now we have a Gift Trading service, which works rather well. Some tweaks will have to be made, such as adding privacy settings, Macs have massive trouble, hiding some specific items and games from public etc.
But overall, it's quite nice.

Lacking a real auction house or place to offer stuff, I'll take the opportunity to offer and request some stuff on here.
If you are interested in something and got something I want in return, you can simply add me on Steam (top-right corner, steam profile link) and we'll talk about it.
Take note that this is just my current list of things I don't have issues giving away, and now that the system got introduced, I won't need to worry about not having people taking spare copies anymore.
If you want another game in the price range of your offer, talk to me.

Offering:
- Blood Bowl: Legendary
- Civilization IV Complete
- ~~Clones~~
- Counter Strike: Source
- Dog Fighter
- Monday Night Combat
- Overlord Complete
- Trine
- World of Goo

I also have 3 retail keys of Darksiders, but those I cannot activate on Steam due to already owning that game.

Looking for:
- Bastion
- Chantelise
- From Dust
- Guild Wars
- LIMBO
- Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands
- (Terraria)

Please note that I don't give a damn about Team Fortress 2.

EDIT:
Clones is gone, brought me a copy of Terraria. Fun!

Assassin's Creed 1&2 Dual Review

2011-08-07T00:15:00.010+02:00

FOREWORD

Finally, I got this massive review done.
Over 5400 words, maybe too many to read, but certainly not enough to fully touch every aspect of the games.
As already stated, I'm combining the first two Assasssin's Creed titles, so you'll find two paragraphs on almost every section as well as two scores at the end.
Please keep in mind that I played the PC version, which will have a bearing in the technical aspects of the review.

It took me ages to write all this down - although I admit I took too many breaks and got distracted far too often. I hope you'll forgive me for postponing this post so many times, but I couldn't help it. Now, without wasting further words, go ahead and read my impressions - and ratings - of the first two Assassin's Creed games.
I hope you'll enjoy it!

Overall Plot

This section is supposed to contain as few spoilers as possible and outlines the overall plot.

Assassin's Creed:

Altair

Barkeeper Desmond Miles gets kidnapped by Abstergo Industries so that they can experiment on "genetical memories" while pursuing an unknown goal.
Using Abstergo's "Animus", a machine to decode and visualize the memories in Desmond's DNA, he travels back in time to relive the life of his ancestor, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad - an Assassin.
Fighting the Templar Order by assassinating several targets throughout the Holy Land, both Altair and Desmond learn that "Nothing is True" and "Everything is Permitted".
Desmond learns about the Assassin's Order still existing in present times, while Abstergo is a Templar organization.
He's being supported by Lucy Stillman, who works on the Animus project and turns out to be an Assassin infiltrating Abstergo.

Assassin's Creed 2:

With Lucy's help, Desmond flees the Abstergo facility and both meet up with other Assassin's in secret. Again, Desmond has to use an Animus to relive an ancestor's memories -
Ezio Auditore da Firenze.

He learns about the Templars' goals, their intentions and that the history of mankind and the earth is based on lies. Throughout the next sessions, Desmond relives Ezio's course for revenge against the Templars who killed his family.
In the end Ezio is being fully introduced into the Brotherhood and battles Pope Rodrigo Borgia for the mysterious "Pieces of Eden".
The game ends with Ezio learning about himself only being used for communication with Desmond by "those who came before" and the Assassin's hideout being attacked by Abstergo while the credits roll.


Desmond talking to Lucy in the Hideout	The young Ezio Auditore

Setting & Atmosphere

Assassin's Creed:

Altair watching the marching Crusaders

The first AC title plays in a sterile Abstergo facility. White and shades of grey make up most of the surroundings. Even the ancient cities Altair visits (Jerusalem, Acre, Damascus and Masyaf) seem rather dull and colorless.
The 3 big cities themselves are all split in about 3 districts you have to work through during the course of the game, and while the individual cities all have their different styles in architecture and layout, you can't help but feel like it's all just the same.
The preachers on the streets are saying the same things in all the cities, the civilians you rescue all share the same few lines, and the guards all act and say the same. These are all just minor visual differences.
However, the cities themselves have been created in their historical images, and you can't help but feel impressed with the amount of detail put into that task... until you reach the next city/district and notice that the same details have been recycled everywhere.

Assassin's Creed 2:

AC2 is lightyears ahead in terms of setting. The cities are much bigger and less repetitive than in AC1. Also, instead of travelling back and forth between Masyaf and the 3 big cities like in AC1, just to visit the next district, the areas unlock more naturally.
The missions bring you through the whole district, rather than telling you to go to some points to do mindless missions and call it a day.
Out of the 5 major regions (Florence, Tuscany, Monteriggionni, Romagna and Venice), you'll spend the most time in Venice, which I thought was the most impressive city.
All the regions have their own style of architechture, which might still be pretty similar, but there's much more variation.

The districts are actually full of life, much more than in AC1. People come and go, carry their wares through the streets, complain and chat rather naturally, or insult you when you tackle them.
There's a lot more natural feeling around things. Even the doctors and storekeepers will call out for attention, or tell you goodbye depending on what you bought, if anything.
I liked that there's a lot of water in Venice - seeing ships on the docks, or gondolas moving over the water surface made me enjoy the scenery even more.
One major flaw in my eyes is that there's no life between the streets and rooftops (where only guards and thieves reside).
Even in Venice, where you find balconies everywhere, nobody will populate these.

The Auditore-Villa in Monteriggionni is a place I personally enjoyed to visit and see grow, but sadly it was far too easy to completely upgrade the city (read below) and thus didn't offer anything new in the later game.
Still, having a base of operation to fund you, rather than make you watch a cutscene before being able to progress, was a plus.

Throughout Italy you can find both tombs of Assassins and lairs of Templars with hidden treasures. While the Tombs will grant you seals to unlock Altair's armor in Monteriggionni, the Templar tombs only offer treasures and challenges.
These challenges are well designed and atmospheric, from underground passages to huge churches.
These were probably the places that impressed me the most.

Visuals

Assassin's Creed:

The visual aspect of Assassin's Creed heavily suffers from said dull scenery.
While the whole game looks alright, it cannot live up to your expectations.
There are highlights, yes, but these are so few, they just cannot come to bare.
Facial expressions hardly ever come to bear, with only mouths moving.
However, Altair's face is hidden anyway, and you'll have a hard time finding a camera angle that really shows the face of the persons he's talking to.
Character models have been recycled on all ends, same goes for architecture. While I understand that they had to resort to recycling, I cannot comprehend that they still wanted to do three massive cities.
How impressive are huge sceneries when you don't feel like it's unique or at least memorable? In Assassin's Creed, you can't help but feel like you've been there before.

Assassin's Creed 2:

Even though the cities recycle a lot of parts, due to the higher complexity of models, textures and overall ambience, it doesn't bug you that much anymore.
Florence and Venice look much more interesting than the whole Holy Land, with their artistical roofs, balconies, bridges, stores and historical buildings.
AC2 shows a grade of architectural finesse I did not expect to see after AC1.

Again, AC2 is years ahead of its prequel. Ezio's attire is much better defined, changes with his equipment, even dyeing his assassin robes is possible.
The historical clothes of the people are all much better defined than the ones of AC's civilians, and the important characters all got their faces modeled after real actors we've seen in the short movie "Assassin's Creed: Lineage".
The killings look more varied, smoother, the variety of weapons and equipment make sure that you won't have to look at the exactly same character model for the duration of a whole game.
Doctors and storekeepers all got variations in appearance and there are a hell lot more npc models.
Facial expressions now dominate cutscenes. The camera angles are fixed now, which makes the scenes much more enjoyable to watch, as they are better directed than ever. While in AC1 the people stood next to each other, talking, in AC2, they actually interact.

However, Assassin's Creed 2 has horrible, major visual flaws I simply cannot overlook.
Even on maxed settings (and, as I've heard, its the same on the PS3 version), the Draw Distances are a horrible mess.
Textures and scenery pop suddenly into view, even the grass around you will need to spread out before it becomes visible.
It's not unusual that a NPC suddenly grows new facial hair, or a hat appearing on his head - if not even worse, the whole NPC appears out of nowhere!
Shadows look highly pixelated, have sharp edges or simply are cut off. Even Strategy games have better shadows for their hundreds of units.

This could be handled much better, and makes me question why it took Ubisoft 4 months to port the game to the PC.
If you bring a game like this over, that had to be a bit tamed for the consoles (namingly the X360), then at least consider the PC Hardware when porting.
Having lower settings available is fine, but give people the options to max out everything, let the GPUs work hard!

Sound

Soundtrack

Both games have a really fitting soundtrack, Jesper Kyd did well. Most of the time you won't even really notice it's there, so well does it accompany the gameplay.
However, during sequences that test your speed, you'll get to listen to great tracks full of tension - just about right to get your heart beating faster.
I prefered the overall Soundtrack of AC2 over the first game's, but that's mainly due to the setting. The music in Florence and Venice really was something else!

Environment

The sound effects and the overall environment sounds were nice, supporting the atmosphere, not annoying and mostly well picked.
Some sounds were used a bit too often, but that's not a deal breaker.
Assassin's Creed 2 again has more variety, which is a plus, but overall they share the same sound traits and use the same basic soundeffects.

Voice Acting

The Voice Acting was great. Mostly.
In Assassin's Creed, where the cutscenes weren't polished yet, and facial expressions were rarely well used, and the overall character interaction was unsatisfying, the Voice Acting was what kept you interested in video sequences. Of course the team sounded a bit rough, sometimes unnatural, but overall it was a pleasing performance.
In Assassin's Creed 2, the dialogues became much more natural and intimate. You really felt that there is tension between the characters rather than having one character read his lines one after another. Not only the characters' expressions became more emotional, but also their acting skills.
It really was enjoyable to watch the cutscenes, and the visible emotions of characters really got to you.

A giant plus was the use of the italian language, accents and curses. Hearing the doctors shout "come amici" and the likes made you feel right at home in Firenze and the other locations.
Having the civilians chatter or curse you in italian made the setting feel more natural, less disturbing and believable.

One of the biggest flaws in Assassin's Creed was the repetitiveness of the game as a whole, and that does not exclude the monologues of civilians you rescue.
All civilians had a few lines of text, and although they got different actors to read them, you'd hear the same few lines over and over again, no matter who the saved victim might be.
If they've taken their time to record lines of multiple people, then why didn't they at least give them a bigger pool of lines rather than letting them all say the same?
Gladly, while the pool of lines can still be noticed in Assassin's Creed 2, due to the increased variety, this whole feeling of repetitiveness is far less annoying.

Gameplay

Both titles share the same basic gameplay. There are four action-keys/buttons relating to your head, feet and arms.
While the Head usually gets used for talking, examining and synchronizing, the Weapon Hand for fighting (aka using your active gear) the Feet and Empty Hand are a bit more interesting to use, albeit more passively.
There's a modifier for these basic controls, which lets you switch from the "Low Profile" to the "High Profile".
The High Profile allows you to run rather than walking normally, or tackle people rather than shoving them away. You'll also need the High Profile to jump and travel over rooftops. When falling down a wall, the Empty Hand comes in handy, as it might hold on to something, saving you even from certain death situations.

The basic movements and actions are nicely done that way, as you won't accidentally perform actions that would attract guards (although Low Profile isn't foolproof). The profiles give you a good sense of control I personally miss in other games.

"Speak sense Templar, or not at all!"

Fighting has the same basics as well. You have to focus onto enemies to engage them, block attacks and, of course, attack directly.
However, fighting on your own is often a rather wasteful thing to do, as enemies will block your attacks as well.
Rather than that, it is more effective to simply wait til an enemy strikes and counter his attack - often killing him in an instant.
When engaged, you cannot switch between High and Low profile anymore. Instead, the key/button becomes your block button. In most cases, blocking will keep you safe. Only when you are surrounded by a lot of enemies at once, or fighting tougher enemies, your blocking skills will fail.
Blocking is essential for countering. There are two Counter-skills in the games.
The first one is simply performed by countering an attack by well-timed attacking while holding block. You'll do this a lot!
The second one is only used to get rid of foes trying to grab or push you (which you can do as well, using the Empty Hand in combat). Doing so will often throw the enemy to the ground, which you can use to your advantage.

Combat in Assassin's Creed is repetitive as hell. All enemies in the first installment act almost the same, which gets annoying fairly quickly.
Sitting in front of the screen, waiting for the surrounding enemies to attack just so you can counter-kill them is a boring thing, really.
You'll probably want to switch weapons mid-battle, just to see some different counter-kill scenes.

Next thing to talk about are the weapons.
In Assassin's Creed, all you had were 4 weapons: The Hidden Blade, your Sword, a Short Blade which will trigger Throwing Knives if the target is distant enough, and your Fists.
All these weapons will be necessary throughout the game, altough you'll mostly use the Short Blade for its Throwing Knives and switch to your Sword in actual combat.
The hidden blade is nice, but if you don't catch your target before it gets aware of you, your assassination will fail. Counter-kills are hard to perform with the Hidden Blade, so you'd better change your weapon in combat.
Slamming your Fists into mission targets' faces to gain information is a tedious thing that you'll only do when you really have to.

In Assassin's Creed 2, the weapon system got a massive upgrade.
Aside from the 22 weapons you can buy and pick up throughout the game, which all have different stats and ways to be wielded (you can wield hammers, axes, even lances), you get quite a few new weapons and "tools" to use.

Your Hidden Blade gets three upgrades - Dual Hidden Blades, Poison and a small gun. Killing two guards at once is a plus, and sometimes you'll kill two or three more before they can really engage you.
The poisoned blade makes for a good distraction, as the target will go mad, swinging his weapon around before slowly dying. The gun is vital for some story missions, albeit slow and loud.
You can finally jump onto enemies, killing them in most cases, or pull them off the rooftops. Guards can't swim, so throw them down!

Of course, there's more! Swords, Short Blades, Throwing Knives (which now are a seperate weapon. Using knife-belt upgrades, you can carry up to 25 at once - fantastic!), your Fists and Smoke Bombs.
Additionally, you can now purchase medicine from doctors, which you can use via the weapon wheel as well. A nice addition is that you can now throw money onto the streets - a distraction even low-level guards will fall for! Also, money will keep beggars away - finally!

Including money and a real equipment system, including an inventory, different dyes for your assassin robes, quest items and so on made Assassin's Creed 2 a far more enjoyable experience.
You actually interact with the world, rather than just run from start to target, doing some killings here and there, and then move on.
AC2 feels much better than the first game, and that in all areas.

Another interesting addition to the series was the Looting of dead bodies for money, medicine and throwing knives. While in AC1 you had to pickpocket thugs for new knives, you can now regain knives from targets, keeping your supplies stable for much longer.
Pickpocketting got replaced by general stealing. Now you can grab some coins from almost every npc in the game.

Of course, you won't want to engage every single guard you see patrolling in combat! Often enough, that would mean a failed mission.

In Assassin's Creed, you could "blend", using your Low Profile Feet action. However, walking slowly like that wasn't really that great.
In AC2, however, you naturally blend while walking close to crowds, or simply by standing near them. You're blending with the masses, just like it was supposed to be.
There's also a new Notoriety-system in the second game, which consists of a meter that fills red when performing suspicious actions when seen by guards. Once it is full, all guards are much more likely to attack you.
Gladly, there are ways to lower your Notoriety to get back to an anonymous state. You can either rip off "Wanted"-posters from the walls, which will lower the meter by 25%, bribe heralds (50%) or kill Watchmen (75%).

In both games, once a guard notices you, it will try to attack or pursue you. Breaking the line of sight will give you some space and allow you to hide. Haystacks, wells, benches, everything is permitted.
Luckily, in Assassin's Creed 2, guards won't endlessly follow you like they did in the first, but have an area which you can escape. If you break the line of sight for long enough, even without hiding, the guards will stop following and clear your status.

All in all, the gameplay was a bit rough in the first installment, but much more polished in the second game. While the first AC felt repetitive all around, the additional features and improved old mechanics make AC2 a clearly superior game.

Mission Structure

Assassin's Creed:

There are only 4 types of Side Mission types, of which one comes in different flavors.
Doing sidemissions will eventually raise your Sync-bar (aka your hitpoints), which will drag you to do them.

Unlocking View Points:
These side missions and the cutscenes they trigger might seem impressive at first, but in fact, they will annoy the living hell out of you.
Climbing onto a tower (or other high building) and Synchronizing will not only bring you another step closer to the next Sync-bar upgrade, but also unveil new areas on your map.
There are about a dozen of these points in each city, so there's plenty opportunity to feel less impressed than at the start.

Saving Citizens:
You hear some civilians being mocked by guards, and go out to save him/her. Killing 3 to 5 guards normally does the trick.
Finishing these missions will present you with either a group of Scholars travelling through the city, which you can use to blend perfectly and traverse through city gates unseen, or vigilantes, who will stand around, keeping guards in check so you can flee.

This is the most repetitive and annoying type of side missions in the entire first game, if you ask me (which you seemingly do by still reading on). There are little to no variations, the civilian-monologues are repetitive, the vigilantes and scholars are unnecessary to have.
I only did all of them to clear my map from useless symbols. There's no reason to do them at all aside from early in game to get into each city at least once.

Flag Collecting:
This you will never finish. You don't have a reason to anyway.
Throughout the game, you'll find 420 flags scatted in cities and the kingdom. These flags have to be found without help.
Pick up the flags you stumble upon, but the only real advantage I thought was nice having was that picking one up triggered a savepoint.

Investigations:
There are several types of investigations - Pickpocketing, Eavesdropping, Interrogations, Time-Attack Flag Collecting and Templar Assassinations.
Sadly, the most interesting type, the Flag Collecting, which is basically a checkpoint-race, has only three occurances, and you can't repeat them once you've beaten the races.
Templar Assassinations are not always easy to beat, as you'll have to use stealth in most of these missions. Throwing knives are a must have for this type of mission, as they will save you from rooftop guards.

Pickpocketing will bring you closer to your eventual target by providing information, and that mission type is the only one next to the Templar Assassinations where you really have to use stealth.
However, pickpocketing is damn easy, making it a more or less redundant task.
Eavesdropping is probably even more boring, as you'll just have to locate your targets talking, sit onto a bench and zoom in to.. evesdrop. Nothing else.
Interrogations mean beating up your target until it starts talking, and the only reason to ever use your empty fists.

All in all, the missions in AC1 are boring, repetitive and unsatisfying. You simply do some of them, but they're mostly implemented to stretch and pad out a pretty straightforward game.

Assassin's Creed 2:

Assassin's Creed 2 is far ahead again. What else did you expect?
Viewpoints are back, but less annoying, as the buildings you're climbing often are historic sights and much more varied all in all.
Kill-missions are back, but most of them you'll get at two or three different spots throughout the city, delivered by pigeons, rather than having the missions cluttering your map all the time.
Checkpoint Races are now a more common sight, and they'll bring you through town in just a few minutes.
Flag Collecting is gone but replaced with Feather collecting, which, indeed, are harder to spot. However, there are "only" 100 feathers in the whole game and you can look up where you're missing some.
Collecting 50 feathers will result in a cutscene and a weapon unlock, completion gives you another short scene.
Minor missions like courier assignments are rare, but fun nonetheless.

A big new point are Assassin Tombs and and Templar Lairs, which are fairly impressive, as stated somewhere else in this review.
These will test your platforming skills, your speed and often how quick your mind can process possible ways.
Beating these secret places is rewarding in itself, but you'll get money and, in case of the Assassin Tombs, 6 seals to eventually unlock Altair's armor, which is the best one in the game and does not require repair.

Aside from that you'll need to upgrade the city Monteriggionni and the Auditore Villa. Investing money early will give you huge payouts periodically through the game.
Additionally, stores will discount their products for you or offer the unique Sword of Altair.
Sadly, this task is easily completed before being halfway through the game, making sure you'll never have money issues again.
However, as each mission in AC2 seems to reward you with huge amounts of cash and the treasures scattered throughout the cities, you probably won't have too much trouble with the mammon anyway.

Plot

This is the part where you WILL be spoilered if you haven't played the game yourself (or spoilered yourself before anyway). You got the overall plot outlines up there in this review already, so I'll go through some in-depth stuff.

First off - what keeps these games interesting, refreshing and exciting is not the graphics, sound, mission structure, but the really solid plot.
In Assassin's Creed, you didn't really notice the direction til the very end. Actually, only late in the game will you have dialogues unravelling the actual situation Desmond is in, but most stuff you simply won't understand before playing a good portion of the 2nd installment.
Reading mails makes up a big part of the background in the first game, but it needs actual thinking to bring the information you gather in line and see.

"They drained my soul and made it theirs.
I drain my body to show you where I saw it."

The full blow of the plot won't hit you before the credits rolled, leaving you to study hints and messages left by "Subject 16", the one occupying the Animus prior to Desmond.
These generally speak of the end of the world, 2012, different prophecies throughout time, and give you the picture that 16 has been reliving way too many lives in the Animus.
All messages are more or less ciphered, so you need to take your time, trying to decipher the meanings.

This gets even more interesting in Assassin's Creed 2, where you have to find 20 symbolic messages 16 hid in Italy. The explanations how he could are delivered by the game, so don't worry!
These messages are all using certain cipher types, so you'll have to use your head - albeit differently - to unlock the files. At the end, a short clip waits, which will make you go "wow" for sure.

16's messages, along with what the Assassins tell you and both Altair and Ezio experience, make clear that nothing is true.
The evolution theory we know is faulty, and men were really created in the image of "gods" - Those Who Came Before.
You pursue the trails of the mysterious Pieces of Eden, which Men stole from TWCB and can be used to control human minds, throughout history.
Jesus, Ghandi, Tesla, Hitler, Popes. All of them had access to these artifacts at least for a short time.

"I thought the Templars were some old guys in funny looking hats
who sat around drinking beer planning world domination with lizard people"

Altair and Ezio, as well as Desmond much later, all reach the truth at one point in their lives. They see that the Templar Order is very much alive, and not only a band of swordbrethren, but a group of fanatics trying to subdue humanity and reforge history, the universal truth, and the world itself.
Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI., is not even the most prominent example. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Nicolaus Copernicus, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Oppenheimer, Grigori Rasputin, Roosevelt, Stalin, Margaret Thatcher, all these and many more are said to be high-ranked members of the Order.

But the Assassins also have prominent members, like Marco Polo, Dante Alighieri and a lot of antic figures, although, according to the nature of their order, the Assassins generally act in secret.

It is surprisingly fitting and does not bend history too much at all.
Assassin's Creed cleverly uses gaps to fill them with fictional knowledge, conspiracies and trails of blood.
The stories connect a lot of historical, as well as fictional events and characters, without tripping over their own loose ends.

Altair and Ezio's lives are well positioned within the complexity of the universe, leading the player to look at historic events, some even mostly unknown to most people, but unforgotten in old historic texts, in a completely different context.
I won't elaborate on the lives of these two characters, though, as these are something I'd rather experience on my own than to read them in detail.
All I'm gonna say is that both are very interesting characters. They are no heroes, they question their own actions, they make YOU question their actions, but their stories, especially Ezio's, will keep you going.
While Altair lacked a certain level of character depth in the first game due to meeting him rather late in his life, Ezio grows to become an assassin, and takes you with him. Collecting the Codex written by Altair throughout AC2 gladly expands on Altair's story, beliefs, actions, plans, and even his personal life.
Their stories aren't over yet, as Ezio is the protagonist in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and the upcoming Revelations as well. I for one am already looking forward to the next chapters of the series.

"Nulla e reale; tutto e lecito. Requiescat in pace..."

Final Words & Verdict

Of course, there are points I really disliked. Playing through the first game was a drag for me, and there were quite a few bugs, both technically as well as graphically, that ruined a lot of fun.
At one point, I lost two hours of eventful playtime due to a guard multiplication bug in AC2.
Especially noticeable was that the games were ports from PS3 and X360, mainly due to the range of settings and the games not utilizing all the potential of your hardware.
The pacing in AC2 was nice, although the last sequence felt a little rushed.
I had a lot of fun with the different weapons in the second game, though, including poisoning random guards (especially brutes) standing on the street, throwing money into his range and watching civilians getting slaughtered by the guards.
If Assassin's Creed 2 is representive of how the developers improved their work in only two years, I'm thrilled to see what Assassin's Creed 3 will be like.
Assassin's Creed 2 builds upon its predecessor, expands and improves things, and comes along as a well-polished and rewarding experience.

Despite their flaws, playing the two games overall was a nice experience, and I'm already on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Now to the scores!

Assassin's Creed

6/10

Assassin's Creed 2

8/10

At the end of the day, I have played a lot better games than Assassin's Creed 1, and due to its repetitiveness, it gets only these 6 out of 10 points.
Assassin's Creed 2 in contrast improves most points I hated about the first game, but still has its technical flaws and annoyances, but is still worth a solid 8.
I absolutely love the direction this series is taking, and hope to see a lot more down that road.

Even though Al Mualim was seriously screwed up, his words hold truth in them.
Thus, I'll leave you with the following words, and the advice to simply play the games yourselves.

"Information learned is more valuable than information given."

LIMBO: Worth Your Money?

2011-08-03T14:07:00.001+02:00

Yes, the game is damn short (you can make it in about 3 hours), but it's not the length or replayability that makes this game fascinating.

It's the atmosphere and art that count. With every "puzzle"-ish game, once you know the solution, you won't forget it anymore. But while you're still on it, it will bind you to the screen, make you want to go on, escape, find the boy's sister.

The way they ended the Demo alone was making me want to continue right away. The game captured me in about half an hour of playtime.

The puzzles themselves are varied, and you won't feel like you've done this or that before. You'll have to run for your life more or less constantly, it will keep you on your toes.

At ~3 hours of playtime, you can say that it's about $3 an hour.
Is the game worth that?

Yes it is.
Play it at night, sit down, relax, and let the game get to you.
Don't resist the chills. This game is worth your while.

Personally, I would love to see more titles like that.
Games that get you back to simplistic, yet captivating gameplay.
Games that don't need to copy others but can stand on their own feet.
Games that don't have to throw constant creeps on you to make you feel chills.
Games that simply score with what they are, the way they are presented, and not by overly complicated or repititive open worlds.
Games that know exactly what they want to achieve, and excel in that.

LIMBO is one of these titles. I love it already.
You should indeed give it a try.
Grab the Demo!

Catherine Sales set Atlus Record

2011-08-02T22:51:00.000+02:00

One week after it's US release, Catherine has already sold more copies than any over Atlus game during it's launch period.
Thus, Catherine's had the most successful launch of any of the company's games to date.

That being said, it is still selling extremely well!

Source

Just a quick note~

LIMBO now available!

2011-08-02T22:16:00.001+02:00

Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO

How can they stop the demo at that scene?!

Hell, that wasn't even half an hour and I'm already fascinated!
Limbo's really atmospheric, the setting is great and I actually had some chills running down my spine.

The gameplay is simplistic, with only 5 keys to use. However, the clever puzzles make it really seem like we don't need a dozen buttons on our gamepads anyway.

This game comes at $9.99/9,99€ (I know..) and is now available on Steam.
Grab the Demo!

Finished AC2

2011-08-02T11:52:00.000+02:00

Yep, I'm done. The credits were rolling about 17 hours ago, and I'm writing the review right now.
This will be quite elaborate, as it seems currently, so I'm left to hope I'll get it done today.

Just that much:
Assassin's Creed 2 is a good game, maybe even a great one. It has its flaws (and bugs on PC, which threw me about 2 hours back, ahahaha), but it's a definite improvement from the first installment.
If you haven't played it yet, you should give it a go. Especially if you were disappointed with the first game.

Now off to rant some more~

Greenman Gaming: Store Credit

2011-07-30T00:34:00.001+02:00

I just found out about some nice referal program on Greenman Gaming.

GMG is one of the many digital game distributors rising lately, alongside Direct2Drive and Gamersgate.

Right now, Sid Meier's Civilization V is up for £5.99, which is, in fact, a steal (6.80€), especially considering the lowest it got was still 20 bucks on the steam summer sales.

Now the cool thing.
You can refer people who then sign up, spend more than £5 on something, which then will give both the one refering AND the refered person £5 store credit.

I just tried it, had to pick up Magicka again as a gift (you get both Magicka and Vietnam for slightly over £5), and with the additional £5 store credit I collected all the DLCs for free.

So, if you wanna check out Greenman Gaming and think about buying something, feel free to use my referal link to get there. It will serve both you and me.

Chantelise - A Tale of Two Sisters

2011-07-28T03:14:00.001+02:00

Hey Guys and Girls, I'm happy to show you the beginning of
"Chantelise - A Tale of Two Sisters"!

Some might be familiar with EasyGameStation or Carpe Fulgur, who are also responsible for Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale.
This game was developed before Recettear fell into debt, but is entirely different - aside from the humor, item sprites, soundeffects and so on, which are used in EGS's titles.

It's easy to get into, but has quite some difficulty level. Don't get too frustrated in the beginning!

I've only recorded the first ~15 minutes, before you get to sleep and look for the town's Fortune-Teller.
I've only completed the Demo (full release on the 29th for $10, see below!), but already love this gem. I might replay the other half simply out of fun, and upload that as well.

Please visit the official site (still under construction) to grab the Demo!

If you wanna preorder the game right away, check Gamersgate

Steam's offering the game as well, but it's not yet open for orders:

Both GG and Steam offer the Demo as well, though.

In case you wanna get some additional information and discuss about this game, you might also want to join us on TheColorless.net, a relatively open Anime/Game-inspired community.

»Chantelise Screenshots«

New Space Marine Cinematic Trailer

2011-07-27T19:07:00.000+02:00

Fresh in via SpaceMarine's twitter account, a new Cinematic Trailer.
Finally we're getting a better view on the events around our Ultramarines.

It looks stunning, and I won't be able to resist. Collector's Edition, here I come!

Either wait til the retail release for PC, PS3 and X360, or preorder your PC version right away. It's a Steamworks-game, so you'll activate your retail PC key via Steam anyway.

Humble Bundle #3 is live!

2011-07-26T19:34:00.000+02:00

The Humble Bundle is a charity-sale of a bunch of indie games of which you might or might not heard of yet.

You decide how much you want to pay and who should receive how much out of it:
Charity or Developers, or do you just want your games?
You can support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play, or support the cause by supporting Humble Bundle itself, who provide the bandwidth and development - in fact, they keep the project alive.

Maybe you'll remember the second round and donated already, well, here's your next chance!

What do you get out of it?
- Crayon Physics Deluxe
- Cogs
- VVVVVV
- Hammerfight
- And Yet It Moves
and the wonderful feeling of helping a good cause!

The Games are DRM free and you can download & play them right away, but have also the option to redeem your Humble Bundle on Steam - all 5 games will get unlocked for your account in an instant!

Now now, go and spend some money!

http://www.humblebundle.com/

Assassin's Creed 2 is full of content.

2011-07-24T22:43:00.000+02:00

I won't disclose on the quality of said content in this post, though.
I just want you to know that I'm damn busy playing that game and hating on Ezio for not jumping accurately.
However, the game is packed full of stuff, missions, treasures and so on, and as I am a completionist in these cases, I can't help but want to do ALL the sidemissions in every city.

That means I just arrived in Venice, but at least got Monterigionni fully renovated, swim in money and got basically everything done that was available til now. Boo Fucking Hoo, eh?

Anyway, the Game's going into a nice direction.

PS: Skyrim Sucks.

Catherine comes to Europe!

2011-07-22T17:27:00.020+02:00

Joystiq reports Deepsilver publishing Catherine in Europe~

HELL YES! THIS IS NOT A DREAM! NOT A NIGHTMARE! IT'S HEAVEN!

Catherine is packing her bags for Europe. Atlus and European publisher Deep Silver have formed a professional relationship that will see the dramatic puzzle game making its way to PAL territories. Catherine will get some language lessons on the way, offering localized text in French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Atlus explained to us earlier this week that the company couldn't announce Catherine's European plans until it locked down a European publisher. The one thing missing from today's announcement is a launch window, something we hope to get during Europe's Gamescom convention, which is just a few weeks away.

Combining Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 Reviews?

2011-07-22T16:26:00.001+02:00

So, you see, the AC1 Review gets delayed due to me being busy with Assassin's Creed 2, and I am constantly comparing the two while playing.

The deeper I get into AC2 (8 hours in atm), the more I have to admit a positive progress in development.
While I wouldn't really recommend the first AC, due to AC2, I'd rate it more benevolent in the series' context.

In the end, the question is:
Should I "recycle" my review (which is kinda elaborate in my mind but needs to be cropped down and brought to virtual paper still) and fuse it with the upcoming AC2 one I'm writing as soon as I'm done with the game?
These titles contrast so much, it would be hard to keep them apart now, at least for the reviewer.
I'd probably enjoy putting the two titles into relation, more so than switching back and forth all the time. However, I'd still need more time to finish AC2.

What would you have me do?

Darksiders 2 Comic-Con Interview

2011-07-21T21:10:00.002+02:00

Fucking awesome, spectacular game awaits us in 2012!
Without further time-consuming text, watch the video:

no Assassin's Creed Review today, sorry.

Thoughts on Assassin's Creed: Revelations E3 Trailer

2011-07-21T15:29:00.002+02:00

Yes, you've probably seen this one already during/after E3 2011.
I saw it live (streamed) and have been watching it dozens of times since.

Partly, I've done so due to the excellent choice of music, partly for the incredibly fluid animation quality, despite the slow-motion sequences that brought a lot of action scenes down.

What makes this trailer great is the mix of music, pacing, lack of ingame scenes and dialogue.

It leaves you to your imagination while hinting the setting and overall plot direction.
The trailer's cliffhanger makes you want to see more, the appearance of Altair makes it mysterious and interesting.

It is not only Eye Candy, but also features musical and atmospherical brilliance.
One of the best trailers I've seen in ages, no doubt.

While I'm not all too happy with Ubisoft's policy, DRM-garbage and recycleware,
I tip my hat for the studio assembling this magnificent trailer.

Also, if you love the music even half as much as I do, you should buy Woodkid's EP "Iron".

Assassin's Creed 1 Review probably coming later today, if I'll get it done in time.

Catherine - Gametrailers, U Suck.

2011-07-20T21:35:00.001+02:00

Not even Katherine would rate Catherine so low!

The score is a joke, really.
But hey, at least Square Enix bullcrap gets voted exorbitantly high, eh?

What frustrates me the most about the final score is that there was NO clear indicator for it.
The game overall got a good review, the control issues okay, its hard, okay, the music is amazing, although the game comes without Japanese audio.

There was NO big drawback being mentioned.
So why that score?

Don't get me wrong!
It's not the score itself that pisses me off, I could deal with that.
But the total lack of arguments against this game is shocking me.
Also, its the complete opposite of the initial impressions GT gave people before.

I could go on and look for a scapegoat, say that the reviewer was just butthurt about the lack of Japanese audio or found the game too hard.

However, Gametrailers, this was a huge disappointment and discredits you even more than voting Final Fantasy XIII 8.6 and giving Call of Duty: Black Ops a 9.7 in DESIGN!

Catherine: Final Trailer

2011-07-20T15:53:00.001+02:00

God-dammit, I cannot wait til my Preorder arrives...
I decided to switch the design back to the Catherine theme; expect the change later today.

Click here to Preorder!

AC1 done, tackling Alice: Madness Returns

2011-07-20T13:44:00.000+02:00

Alright, the Reviews will need to wait a few more days (pretty busy over here, not only with actual gaming but also some RL and whatever stuff).

I've now been tackling American McGee's Alice and Madness Returns. Good atmosphere, but everything else I'll have to experience for a bit longer, deeper into the game.
Of course, I started with the original game. The controls are rather annoying, I have to admit. It feels sloppy, especially compared to other PS2 titles.
However, atmosphere and style keep me playing for the time being.

Oh, I preordered Catherine: Love is Over. I could not resist anymore.
Sadly, the import store I wanted to order from only had the X360 flavor in stock left, so I had to buy it from some canadian store. 70€ including shipping, okay, I could have gotten that for 60 with free shipping if only I decided to order it sooner. Let's just hope there won't be any additional costs...
Let's see if I'll put the Catherine back up again?

With Catherine covering my July, even though I don't have a PS3 til present day, Black★Rock Shooter's PSP game, which I preordered the White Box from (the one with the White Rock Shooter figma) is coming late August, means I can book that as a September order. My birthday's late August as well, so that won't be too much of an issue (I hope...).

Now how to get Space Marine onto my shelf? Coming September, wanting the Limited Edition. Ah, whatever, I'm gonna get it somehow.

If you want faster and closer updates from my side, feel free to meet me on Google+.
That's it for now

Done with Darksiders, almost finished Assassin's Creed

2011-07-16T20:23:00.003+02:00

So yeah, I thought I might put a note up here.
I'm quite busy gaming, I already mentioned I wanna write some reviews once I'm done.

Darksiders was ace. Great game, worth my 22,50€ (7,50€ on Steam Sale around Christmas, 15€ about two weeks ago for the retail Collector's Edition).

Can't tell the same about Assassin's Creed, though, and these were only ~6€ on sale.
No, Assassin's Creed has to be the most repetitive game I ever played.
It's always the same, in every city, every fight, every saved civilian, every non-story dialogue, every tower-climbing sequence....
Playing Minesweeper or Solitaire has more variety to give, at least you'll need to think about your next move.

Once I'm done I'll write both reviews, then I'll get to the next entry on my current "Games to Finish" list. See below for that one - these are only the games I wanna scratch from my growing backlog.

With that I am off again to finish off Robert de Sable... let's hope he won't be just as easy to kill as the other victims...

Trails in the Sky comes to Europe!

2011-07-16T00:24:00.000+02:00

"It's official, EU fans! The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (PHYSICAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION!) is coming your way a la Ghostlight! Rejoice!"
via XSEED

TEARS OF JOY!
It is really happening!
Now the whole world is covered with another amazing game, one of the best I got to play these past years!

If you wanna go and look into Trails in the Sky, you might do so over here

Official Announcement by Ghostlight
I’m delighted to be able to announce that Ghostlight will soon be publishing a special Collector’s Edition of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky exclusively for the PSP in the PAL region.

For those not in the know, Trails in the Sky is the first game in a new trilogy of the established The Legend Of Heroes series. The game itself is a fantastic RPG which was developed by Nihon Falcom and released in the US by XSEED earlier this year to critical acclaim (it currently has a mighty 80% metarating on Metacritic!)

As anyone who’s been following me on my Twitter will have seen, it’s also a game that I’m a massive fan of. In fact, I enjoyed it so much during our evaluation process that I borrowed a work PSP and took it home to play. One thing’s for sure, it’s a BIG game! So, for those of you who like to keep track of these things, my completed save time was 54 hours 30 minutes and 29 seconds, but there were several areas I managed to miss in my first play through. Still, now we’ve got the game it looks like I’ll get another chance to see them. Smile

The highlights for me were the amazing new battle system, where managing the turn order is key to defeating the tougher enemies, and the story itself which is brilliantly written and hilarious in places (just select each treasure chest twice and you’ll see what I mean). And that’s not to mention the fact that the game looks incredible and has an awesome soundtrack!

[...]

We don’t have a release date or price for the game just yet, but stay tuned for more information on this and also to find out just what cool loot we’re going to be including in our special Collector’s Edition. Plus, I’m hoping to have some other important news for you in the very near future.

Status Update/Apology

2011-07-14T15:53:00.002+02:00

First off, I'm sorry I let this degrade like that.
I've been kinda busy these past weeks, part because of Moderator work on TheColorless.net, Games, real life, other activities... you get the deal.

Even now, I'm running Assassin's Creed (the first) in the background and am thinking about my upcoming reviews of AC1, Darksiders, The Last Remnant and the soon to be played stuff like Total War: Shogun 2 (which I loved the Demo off) and Cthulhu Saves The World (which I already started earlier today, see Youtube).

Not just that, I'm also trying to push myself through Chris Wraight's "Sword of Justice" really quickly, as I find myself enjoying it and want to write a quick recommendation as soon as possible.

Again, I apologize for not updating the site in quite some time.

On the topic of TheColorless, I have to say it's developing rather well lately.
Our staff is working very closely together now, on almost a daily basis, discussing site-related issues, suggestions, mod applications and so on while maintaining a healthy work atmosphere.

Due to the summer deep, our forum is kinda deserted lately, while the chat is booming with activity.
No matter how you look at it, now is the perfect time for new people to emerge, as they will be well noticed on the board and get an active, entertaining chat around the clock, so visit us on TheColorless

That being said, I survived the Steam Summer Sale without spending too much yet got amazing games out of it, which made me realize I have to work through my evergrowing backlog of games.

This is where I'll leave again to play Assassin's Creed, will hopefully get this done in a few days. Please note that my expectations were not very high for AC, but I can't help to feel disappointed nonetheless.
This will be obvious in the review.

Alright, that's it. I'm alive.
If you wanna contact me, feel free to use Twitter or even Google+.

PERSONA4 Original Soundtrack

2011-06-26T07:45:00.001+02:00

Title: PERSONA4 Original Soundtrack
Published by: Aniplex
Composed by: Shoji Meguro, Atsushi Kitajoh, Ryota Koduka
Arranged by: Shoji Meguro, Atsushi Kitajoh, Ryota Koduka
Performed by: Shihoko Hirata, Tamari, Tomoko Komiya
Year: 2008

Bitrate: 320kb/s MP3 / FLAC
Discs: 2
Tracks: 52
Tracklist: on VGMDB

Download
MP3 ~301MB Uploaded.to Megaupload	FLAC ~817MB UL.to - Part01 UL.to - Part02 Megaupload
----------------------------
Torrent	Torrent
-------------- VGMDB Entry

Haven't posted in a while, thanks to the game this soundtrack belongs to!
My TV is occupied for once~

Busy.

2011-06-16T22:25:00.000+02:00

Am kinda busy with Anime, some Games and Colorless-work (although I seem to recall me quitting modhood?) and ... well, doing some stuff I left behind.

I'd recommend joining us Colorless people playing Spiral Knights, one of Steam's newly adopted Free to Play-games:

Black★Rock Shooter PSP Opening!

2011-06-09T20:37:00.003+02:00

Holy lord!

WEBSITE

Final Fantasy IV CC disguised as Dissidia's FFVI Music Pack

2011-06-08T13:31:00.001+02:00

Good news for you people.
On the EU PSN it seems like Sony/SE made a mistake and instead of the FFVI Music Pack DLC for Dissidia 012, they let you download and activate the Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection!

0.99€ for a game which is labeled as 34.99€ itself.

I tested it, its fully working on 6.37+ OFW, but the license file that comes with activating it is falsely labeled as Dissidia DLC.

However, it is fully playable and runs just fine. Don't get confused that your 3mb DLC wants to download 726mb instead. You'll be happy.
However, I recommend using MediaGo to download your (almost) free game, since downloading that much via the PSP's inbuilt WLAN will be a drag.

For 6.xx PRO users below 6.37 OFW:
(should be possible for most other CFWs as well in one way or another. Use Google!)

Download this version.txt file.
Put it into the "seplugins"-folder on your PSP,
Go to the Recovery Menu and activate "use version.txt in seplugins".
Restart VSH.
Your PSP should now be disguised as 6.39 and will pass the version check when starting FFIV.

E3 2011 Impressions

2011-06-07T01:10:00.001+02:00

http://www.gametrailers.com/netstorage/e3/e3-live.html

Alright, so after I overslept the magical Microsoft failure (only got reports, but I didn't expect anything really anyway), now the Ubisoft Presentation is over.

I'll update this post once in a while, but for now I'll only feed you tweets, and will sum stuff up after the whole thing is done.

all via Twitter

Ubisoft

Brothers in Arms: Furious 4
Meh, US-glorifying bullshit. Til now, BiA was historically backed, but now its getting to "slay da evil nazi"
I liked the fact that they don't distribute it [the old titles] in germany via steam :3
Its stupid, probably they think we're gonna be mad about shooting our "own men" from back then? XD

80's Ghost Recon looked better and more unique than the one Ubisoft is showing on E3...

Trackmania
Fail, didn't even want to listen to the presentator-woman.
to quote Orphen07:
"I'd rewatch the Kinect unvailing over this..."

Raving Rabbits:
AHAHAHHAHAHAHHA KINECT AHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH
oh god, listening to Ubisoft employees gets harder and harder with every game they show...
fun, his legs go through the .. rabbits?
really now? REALLY? You'd better be kidding me...
yeah, we understand that concept, now go screw yourself again... pretty please?

yess! thats it, he says! I survived another uninteresting title!

Don't know about you, but I'd rather sit in front of the console and be a nerd than dance like that and share pictures on the net...
No, sorry, Ubisoft, you don't really make my life more enjoyable with your games =/ haven't really done so in many years, sadly...

Guitarsmith:
So.. we're now trying to do a more serious approach to what Guitar Hero and Rockband have been doing for years? Kinda late to jump the train
as much as I like this idea, it won't succeed, since people are playing such games for the fun, and the instruments are expensive as fuck
just another store keeper, I assume

oh, more gay commercials? like, commercials that don't say much about the product in question after all?

oh noes, comic assassin's creed? looks worse than Tintin, actually

Assassin's Creed: Revelations
lets see, this should be the highlight of the Ubisoft presentation
FINAL CHAPTER, yes! no more Ezio after the next one ;A;
kinda enjoyable music again...
don't do the Boromir now, Ezio!
what the hell? Altair, wtf
oh come on, just kill him =_=
fun, they're really trying to tie them closer together like that. let's see how the Demo's gonna be
demo starts with cutscenes... fun
yay! he got hit 8D
Looks more like a bunch of more cutscenes with random movement-gameplay than a real demo right now..

25 years, but sadly not even 5 interesting titles presented.. #GTE3 #E3 #Ubisoft

I'd rather have Ubisoft develop more than a year on an Assassin's Creed title and thus put out a more refined and unique successor =/
oh, yeah, no Prince of Persia, yo~

The Witcher 2: Heading to Xbox 360

2011-06-04T20:21:00.000+02:00

You should know that I'm definitely not an xbox fan, but I certainly am looking forward to this move. It is ported the way it should be, not from console to PC, but from PC to console, and thus the PC version will still get the most attention.

But considering that they're going through the whole game again, we can expect great new patches, and experience they're gonna use for our entertainment in the long run.

It's a good move, although I really hope they're visiting the PS3 someday as well..

Witcher 2 Xbox 360 Interview

CD Projekt Red has shown that they really take customer feedback seriously and are working hard to give us the best experience possible, so hell, bring it on!

Dissidia 012 DLC

2011-06-04T18:00:00.003+02:00

Again: Original decrypting, collecting and so on by Zell1226;
I'm just hosting another mirror and did the custom appearance, updated cause people kept asking.

Download
US DLC Uploaded.to Megaupload.com	EU DLC Uploaded.to Megaupload.com

Instructions

I personally recommend updating to PRO-B6, no matter which of the 3 releases (6.20, 6.35 or 6.39). The NoDRM engine got fixed in B6, means the plugin-step will be redundant!

Download the package; I've prepared both an US and EU appearance, so pick your region, no need to get both.

In the pack, you'll find the DLC folder and an "seplugins"-folder, with the "nploader.prx".

If you're not using PRO-B6:
Go into the Recovery Menu, and under the Advanced option, turn NoDRM Engine OFF, if its implemented in your CFW.

Then copy the seplugins-folder onto your memory stick and activate the plugin like normal and restart the VSH menu/the PSP.
If you already have an seplugins folder, add the line "ms0:/seplugins/nploader.prx 1" (or "ef0:/seplugins/nploader.prx 1" for PSPGo) to the game.txt in there.

Again, this is unnecessary for PRO-B6!

Copy your DLC folder (US: ULUS10566; EU: ULES01505) into PSP/GAME on your memory stick.

Make sure to use an UNTOUCHED ISO/CSO for Dissidia 012!

Turn the ISO Driver to NP9660 in the VSH/Recovery Menu - Inferno, m33 and co give you hiccups.

I won't give any support for old 5.xx CFWs anymore! However, your question might already have been adressed on the old D012 DLC post!

Included are the following Costumes:

Warrior of Light, Emperor, Onion Knight, Cecil, Bartz, Tina, Cloud, Sephiroth, Tifa, Squall, Laguna, Zidane, Kuja, Yuna, Vaan & Lightning

And the Aerith Assist Character!

Included are also these Music Packs:
FFI - FFII - FFIII - FFIV - FFV - FFVII - FFVIII - FFIX - FFX - FFXII - FFXIII

Oh the Irony...

2011-06-04T02:04:00.001+02:00

Just posting that here so that I won't forget =)
Enjoy, if you want to!
That's the admin of TheColorless.net, btw~

Darksiders 2 Announcement Trailer

2011-06-03T18:50:00.000+02:00

Wow! Really charming!
We'll get to ride out as Death next time, the music score is AMAZING and the plot seems to be really promising again!

THQ, Bring it on!
I know why I think that they're gonna be the overall best publisher attending E3 2011~

http://www.youtube.com/darksiders

Dayum~

2011-05-29T20:03:00.000+02:00

One dead week, eh?

Yeah, I'm still alive, just not motivated to post much.

Anyway, got the Vaan-Dissidia-DLC now, and Pro-B6 got released. With B6, using the D012 DLCs is getting much easier, so expect some post about that stuff. I'm simply not satisfied with only one new DLC.

My Today is a Beautiful Day Album arrived this week, yay.

Aside from that, there's hardly anything new. Tumblr is fine for some stuff, but gets old rather quickly. The Commies on Nyaatorrents are morons, but we all knew that. Colorless v3 is gonna split the community in half. Modwork is unsatisfying and unrewarding these days.
Oh, and I finished Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, now on to House.
Been catching up on some anime stuff I've been postponing for ages, like Akagi, Bakuman, Loups=Garous & Kimi ni Todoke. That's about it

Now I'll take my leave. Hope I'll still get some of yesterday's birthday cake (family).

Nothing to say... for anything else, there's tumblr now

2011-05-21T19:27:00.001+02:00

Yeah, its MADNER! but well, I felt like doing something fresh in terms of design and as tumblr seems to be the general trashdumping area, I figured why not.

I normally am not a fan of de-centralisation of content, but well, there actually are things I'd like to say that neither fit into a tweet or deserve a post on their own.
That's where tumblr will come in handy. My future trashbin!

It's still Work in Progress, but well, I won't stop you from following or anything.
Just a note: I will only follow other tumblr-things if I think they're interesting.
I don't want my dashboard being filled with stuff I wouldn't read on my own anyway, so better don't expect me to follow you back - if I still do, well, you're one lucky squirrel.

http://darkchaplain.tumblr.com/

That's about it for now. Rapture won't come, neither will my visitor (as it seems), but who am I to care anyway?

The Witcher 2: Gameplay Part 3 - Foltest

2011-05-18T14:09:00.000+02:00

Part 1 - Part 2

Okay, I don't know if this part is gonna be the last one or not;
I did not feel good about leaving it at that, with the fight not even being over and the interrogation still running.

This part does not conclude the interrogation, but it will give us the final explanation as to why Geralt even was in prison and brings the real plot of the game to bear.

We get another few good examples of decisions we can make, and in the beginning I'm exploring the manifold of chests and boxes, piling up a lot of junk.
Then we'll get to meet the Dragon again, though only for a moment, and finally meet the Assassin that gives the game its title.

The plot development really is impressive, and as I've already played some more, finishing the prologue (yes, this all is just a prologue!), I can tell you that they shaped things up nicely.

Your decisions in certain situations really have an effect on the story, though you will not meet a dead end. Telling the Reavers to not trust into the medallion in part 1, for example, saved the poor guy's life, which he's gonna proudly report you later on. Depending on your decision, you might also meet other characters again.

The equipment system feels way better than in the first game, and the inventory does not feel too limited anymore.
Having the opportunity to really compare weapons from your inventory with your equipped ones is something I missed in the first game, as you could only carry the 'active' weapons with you.

The cutscenes are still amazing, they really give me shivers and produce an amazing atmosphere.
Look for yourself!

The Witcher 2: Gameplay Part 2 - Assault

2011-05-17T14:30:00.006+02:00

Part 1: First 30 Minutes

Well, I decided to go on and take a look at the Combat system and plot development.
The video is long, I know, but I did not dare to stop - the game actually made me wanna go on and on, as opposed to the first one that made me want to stop all the time.

I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised how the combat system turned out.
The 3 styles we knew from the first game (Strong, Quick and Group) have been replaced by simple Right or Left Clicking, which makes combats faster as a result.
The movements are very well thought through and feel like those of a Witcher, unlike those in the first game, where Geralt looked like a sword-swinging monkey, not knowing where to put it to.

The way you pick Signs and use items from your pockets, like traps, bombs etc, seems way better than in the first game - it just takes a simple button-pressing (and holding) to bring up the quick-menu. Using signs with Q and items with E seems simple and straightforward, and thus is very comfortable.

At times, I felt a bit alone, especially the part where the Dragon kills me - I was burning, saw a timer, and didn't even know what to do before I died some seconds later. Turns out I'd have been better off simply waiting and standing in cover.

The game's autosaves are much more convenient than in the first game, where you could be forced to redo hours of gameplay because you forgot to save manually.

The way of interacting with the scenery, like climbing ladders, jumping off cliffs, redying a ballista etc make the world seem really alive, and hell, a lot of fun to explore!

Still, the controls are a bit choppy, especially when looking around and picking up items and drops, and getting to tell Geralt to climb a ladder proves to be difficult at times.

I really liked the continued choices the game offers you, and the script really is much better than in game one.
The cutscenes are gorgeous, and I want to see more right away!

Another one of the few downsides I noticed is that the tutorials seem not clear enough and too small for their own good.
Sure, in the first installment, they could have gotten kinda annoying, popping up out of nowhere and interrupting the flow of the game, but at least you'd actually notice and read through them.
In The Witcher 2, I found myself in the dire need to re-read stuff on the journal, as I didn't even get how I could open the character development aka level up screen.

However, the game feels great and has just the right tone about it.
If you've watched the two videos til the end and STILL don't love the game, I really can't tell what might be wrong with you =p

The Witcher 2: First 30 Minutes of Gameplay

2011-05-17T08:31:00.000+02:00

Okay boys and (hopefully) girls, I went ahead and got myself The Witcher 2 (donations might keep me happy *hint*).

I am still struggling through The Witcher 1, to be honest. I loved the stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, but the first game felt lacking in more than one way.
It was a good game nonetheless, and the fact that I got it really cheap on Steam last christmas erased the sadness about not having bought the Collector's Edition when it was released due to my computer being kinda sucky a few years ago.

The Witcher 2 looked awesome. From the first trailer on. Unlike other games, every new trailer and diary I watched hyped me more and more. Especially this last week was a great one, and you really should check Gametrailers.com for some really sweet pre-release footage!

However, can the actual game live up to the expectations?
Games have been promising heaven on your harddrive time and time again, but failed to deliver. What about the new tale of Geralt of Rivia, then?

Well, the first 30 minutes might not be much, and mostly about dialogues (choices start right from the beginning!) and no fighting yet, but introduction into the story and some tutorial parts.

Okay, what I really like are the improved graphical aspects. The opening scenes are FANTASTIC, people look better while talking, cutscenes are no statical 'people stand around and talk' anymore. I did not see people magically standing in front of me in dialogue scenes when they actually were sitting on a chair in The Witcher 2 (yet).

We actually get to meet Triss again, get in touch with the Crinfrid Reavers, known from the original story "The Limits of Possibility" and receive some hints on the Sorceress Yennefer.

King Fornest seems kinda cool, in a way; interesting character, much more promising buildup and development than anything I saw on The Witcher 1 got til date.
We don't simply interact with him, no, we were kinda sidelined at first, seeing him talk to his subordinates, giving some background on the war we're in et cetera.

The music and voices are GREAT. A great spectacle, the voices really breathe life into an already lively scenery.
It really gives a much better atmosphere than the first game, and especially the way dialogues seem to work, they improved their skills on transitions between the dialogue-parts you decide to pick.

You also have a much bigger range of skills and items or alchemical knowledge right from the start, which seems plausible, since Geralt did not lose his memory again.

All in all, it seems more fluid than the first game, you actually feel like the Witcher you're supposed to be, instead of being 'a Witcher'.

The controls, sadly, feel a bit choppy to me. It's probably just me, but since they reconfigured the way the game plays, and I mean completely, its kinda hard for me to get in, and I find myself running against stuff all the time. Needs time to get used to, for sure.

In the end, just watch that video and comment on this post. If the overall reactions of you people seem interested, I might just as well go ahead and record some more, hopefully including actual combat!
No voice on video, as I hate 'Let's Play' stuff - I only wanna see the game, not listen to some teenage rants =/

PERSONA2 Tsumi MINI SOUND TRACK

2011-05-16T18:09:00.002+02:00

Title: PERSONA2 Tsumi/Innocent Sin MINI SOUND TRACK
Published by: Atlus
Composed by: Shoji Meguro, Toshiko Tasaki, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Masaki Kurokawa, Erik Satie
Arranged by: Shoji Meguro
Performed by: Asami Izawa, Lotus Juice, Takehito Koyasu
Year: 2011
Bitrate: 320kb/s MP3

Tracklist:
01. unbreakable tie (Opening theme[short Ver.])
02. Abandoned Factory
03. Gatten Sushi
04. CD Shop ~ Giga Macho
05. Ginko's Theme (Sad)
06. Velvet Room (#2)
07. When the Enemy Is Defeated (Unused Song)
08. Persona Ondo
09. Battle
10. Knights of the Holy Spear

Download
~58 MB
Uploaded.to
-------
Torrent
-------
VGMDB Entry

Skipping special stuff of PERSONA1; Straight to the newest stuff:
The INNOCENT SIN PSP Remake!

Have fun!

PERSONA Original Soundtrack

2011-05-15T05:03:00.002+02:00

Title: PERSONA Original Soundtrack
Published by: Atlus
Composed by: Shoji Meguro, Hidehito Aoki, Misaki Okibe, Kenichi Tsuchiya
Arranged by: Shoji Meguro, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Ryota Koduka
Performed by: Yumi Kawamura, Junichi Nozawa
Year: 2009

Bitrate: 320kb/s MP3 / FLAC
Discs: 2
Tracks: 67
Tracklist: on VGMDB

Download
MP3 ~227MB Uploaded.to Megaupload	FLAC ~557MB UL.to - Part01 UL.to - Part02 Megaupload
----------------------------
Torrent	Torrent
-------------- VGMDB Entry

Trails in the Sky - Gameplay 005

2011-05-13T20:04:00.001+02:00

http://trailsinthesky.com/

Part 005 of Trails in the Sky.
Yay! Now we're real (junior)-Bracers! Let's get some presents from the people of Rolent, learn about Recipes and meet Luke and Pat.
You'll meet those two brats again in Part 006!

I advise everyone who loves RPGs, Innovations and Storytelling to look into Trails in the Sky, pick it up! Those who are tired of the current graphic-focused RPGs should feel right at home as well.

-----------
Part 004 over here!

PS: Youtube just trolled me. Just when I was done cutting and converting, it told me I could now upload videos longer than 15 minutes. Fun.
Put the end back in, from now on its gonna be much easier to break the video into parts.
No matter how long the next one will take, we'll finish the job!

PPS: Blogger was down, couldn't even post it til now *sigh*

Blogger outage, wtf..

2011-05-13T19:19:00.000+02:00

Right when I finished Part 005 of Trails in the Sky, Blogger died because of screwed up maintenance. Read-only mode. Rollback.
The Steins;Gate 06 post still is not back, but its being told they were backupped..

Anyway, it seems back, although I'm not sure if it will last.

Trails in the Sky - Gameplay 004

2011-05-11T17:38:00.001+02:00

http://trailsinthesky.com/

Part 004 of Trails in the Sky.
Finally, the first fights! I know you're excited, eh?
Next time we're gonna collect congratulations and maybe even get our first real job!

I advise everyone who loves RPGs, Innovations and Storytelling to look into Trails in the Sky, pick it up! Those who are tired of the current graphic-focused RPGs should feel right at home as well.

-----------
Part 003 over here!

Trails in the Sky - Gameplay 003

2011-05-10T20:16:00.001+02:00

http://trailsinthesky.com/

Part 003 of Trails in the Sky.
We're entering the Bracers Guild and get through the theoretical part of our Exams.
Learning about Bracers, the world we live in, Orbments and how to equip them.
The next part will finally start the practical part of the exam, introducing the first fights!

I advise everyone who loves RPGs, Innovations and Storytelling to look into Trails in the Sky, pick it up! Those who are tired of the current graphic-focused RPGs should feel right at home as well.

-----------
Part 002 over here!

Trails in the Sky - Gameplay 002

2011-05-10T16:24:00.001+02:00

http://trailsinthesky.com/

Part 002 of Trails in the Sky, we've left the Bright's house and are visiting Rolent to become full-fledged (junior) Bracers.
But before we enter the guild and do our exams, a little walk through Rolent might be enjoyable.
The dialogues are interesting and heartwarming, don't you think?

I advise everyone who loves RPGs, Innovations and Storytelling to look into Trails in the Sky, pick it up! Those who are tired of the current graphic-focused RPGs should feel right at home as well.

-----------
Part 001 over here!

Trails in the Sky - Gameplay 001

2011-05-09T15:36:00.002+02:00

http://trailsinthesky.com/

Well, as I fell in love with Trails in the Sky on first sight, I had to record a video of the Prologue-scenes.
People keep asking why I love the game, and I think a lot of the reasons are obvious when watching these first 15 minutes of the game.

It is a heartwarming setup, a lovely, detailed world with fine humor and characters. What's not to love about it?
It's one of those games that make you want to listen to its soundtrack forever.

Trails in the Sky was first released in 2004 for the PC in Japan, followed by a PSP version in 2006.
The TitS-series consists of 3 parts, and this PSP game is just the first.
Unbelievable that it took 5(!) years for this amazing gem to reach western shores.

I advise everyone who loves RPGs, Innovations and Storytelling to look into Trails in the Sky, pick it up! Those who are tired of the current graphic-focused RPGs should feel right at home as well.

-----------

Recorded using RemoteJoy to stream the PSP-screen onto the PC. Connected a Line cable between Line-In of my PC and the PSP's headphone out.
Recorded both streams with Fraps (which I probably should not have done, since fraps tries to sync video and audio, leaving hiccups in the audio stream where not would have needed to be).

I apologize for not getting rid of the Fraps Benchmarking; however, it should not be that bad. If more videos should follow, I might fix that one.

Well, excuse me for sucking.

2011-05-08T05:56:00.001+02:00

PS:
Trails in the Sky is amazing!