Yea, 2 blogs in one day, WHAT OF IT.  There might be a 3rd if I am truly that bored.

So yea, Demon Soul's.  A game you are likely to have heard much about somewhat recently, be it for good or for bad.

Story

Not gonna lie, there isn't much story, in fact all of it can be summed up in this video.

After that...you proceed to play the game, and not much more is said.  It is more of a silent story, somewhat like Shadow of the Colossus.  Yes there is story, but it is not told to you, more for you to discovery as you tread through the game. 

This could be a blessing or a curse to some.  I, for one, love a good story, and while this game is light on it, what is provided is enough motivation to keep me wanting more.  On the other hand, after that little intro, it's pretty much all gameplay for the rest of the game, no cutscenes to impede your march.

Gameplay

Ahh, the gameplay of Demon Soul's.  The bread and butter of this game.  Rarely does a game come along that actually introduces innovation in a way that makes a tried and true genre, action/adventure RPG, feel new while still retaining what you love about it.

I won't lie or sugarcoat it, Demon Soul's is hard with its fair share of confusing gameplay mechanics, most notably the tendencies (I will devote an entire section to describing what the tendencies are and how they work).

HOWEVER, it is not hard in the way that Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry are hard, where the game throws hoards of seemingly invincible enemies that require 30 minutes of button combos to fell.  No.  It is hard where it punishes you for every mistake you decide to make.  Which I love.

Punishment is an aspect often left on the bench in most games that are considered *hard*.  I often liken Demon Soul's to my very reason for existence on these boards, Monster Hunter.  Both of these games are viewed as hard by the casual player.  Thats because if you make one simple mistake, it could very well mean death.  In order to succeed you need to truly understand the game and its inner workings.

Not just grind until you can overpower your enemies with a flaming sword of fire+50.  Equipment helps, of course, but its more in your execution.  Do you take out the archer first? or the swordsman?  Do you sneak around them to backstab or rush them before they have time to react?  Things like this are what Demon Soul's is made of.

There are *origins*, which can be initially seen as classes, but they are not.  Your origin simply dictates what level you start at and what your stats are, THAT IS IT.  The magician class starts with more points to help with magic where as the berserker is all focused in melee. 

However, how you decide your characters stat progression is ENTIRELY up to you, so by the end of the game, all players are essentially on the same playing field, there is none of this * X class has an advantage due to some broken skill*.  Although this doesn't mean all players will be the same.  Playing as magic user will be a totally different experience than as a sword and board melee character.

There is a hub world called the Nexus, basically where you go to store items, level up, learn new abilties and find the entrances to the other worlds.  The worlds may be done in ANY ORDER.  World 5 is not harder than world 1, it is simply your playstyle which dictates diffculty.  World 3 is comprised of magical enemies, thusly, a mage will have trouble since they won't dont as much damage, but a melee user will kick ass there! provided they aren't hit with a spell first.

One final aspect I should mention now to prevent confusion in the coming sections is the form of currency in the game, souls.  Souls are used for EVERYTHING.  Purchasing items, upgrading weapons, leveling up.  Harsh, yes, but it makes you think much harder and plan out how you are going to play to make the best use of your souls. 

Death

There is a soul form and body form.  You start out in soul form, which means you do slightly more damage (25% I think...) but only have 50% of your max health.  You can see your full health bar, but can only obtain half of it, unless you have other parameters, such as character tendency or a ring, more on that later.  Killing a boss or invading player will give you back your body, allowing you to have full health. 

When you die, you are brought back to the beginning of the section of the world you are in.  So for example, you progress through the 2nd world, kill the 1st boss, you are now in 2-2 (second world, second section) kill the 2nd boss and you will then be entering 2-3 (second world, 3rd section).  Death is the same in both soul and body form, for the most part. 

Death in body form will reduce you to soul form.  All of your souls will be collected in your *bloodstain* a mark left by you in the general area where you died (if you died in an unreachable area, such as falling off a cliff, the bloodstain will appear roughly 10 seconds before you fell)  You have only one chance to reclaim your souls.  Make it back to where you died (all enemies are respawned) and collect your bloodstain, and huzzah! all is well.  However, if you die without collecting your bloodstain, you will be creating a new bloodstain, effectively erasing and losing all of the souls in your original bloodstain.  There is no difference in this effect between dying in body or soul form.  Just because you are a soul doesn't mean this mechanic is no longer in play.

Multiplayer

Shortly after killing the first boss, you should obtain a blue eye stone and a red eye stone.  Only soul forms can use the blue eye stone and red eye stone.  By using these stones, you are offering your services to a player in body form online. 

Example.  I am in 1-3 (1st world, 3rd section) and I just got on the phone with my friend who is playing the game and also in 1-3.  I am in soul form and he is in body form.  I place my blue eye stone in the corner of a courtyard (it can be anywhere, this is just for explanation) and since he is a body form, he will see glowing, blue writing appear in that area.  He walks over and accepts to summon me, and I am pulled from my game and placed into his, and thusly, coop has just been engaged!

It must be pretty awesome, playing as a body form right?  The ability to summon other players!  Wrong.  If you are in body form, then you are victim to the red eye stone.  If a soul form uses a red eye stone, they will be *breaking* into the game of a body form.  The victim has absolutely no choice in the matter unless you play offline in which case this can't happen.  As a red phantom, the enemies will not attack you, essentially making them your ally.  You can run past the host and into a mosh pit of enemies, forcing the host to engage both you and the enemies.

However, this is not to say that red phantoms have the upper hand.  The host has the ability to call allys in the form of blue phantoms (co-op) and since he is in body form he inately has more health.  If the host is killed, then the game treats his death as a normal death, your souls are left in your bloodstain and your day has officially been ruined.  The red phantom is then granted his body back, along with another benefit about to be touched upon.

Character and World Tendencies

I warn you, I only have a vague understanding of character/world tendency.  To absolutely know everything about it, check out the Demon Soul's Wiki

Character Tendency is a parameter that dictates certain optional events in the game and will affect a few weapons/how much health you are able to have.  I believe it also effects the droprate of items?  Not sure on that one.  It is raised towards white by killing uniquely named black phantoms, secret enemies hidden in the game.  It is lowered to black by killing innocents/becoming a red phantom and killing the host.

World Tendency is much more important.  World Tendency is a parameter that effects the difficulty of the game and certain events/secret areas in the game.  It is raised towards white for killing a boss/uniquely named black phantom/primeval demons.  White tendency makes the enemies weaker/less health, but also lowers the rarity/drop rate of items they drop.  Black tendency is gained by lowering the world tendency by dying in body form/killing the host as a red phantom.  This makes enemies much harder but also increases the droprate/rarity of items.

Note: World tendency is only for the particular world you are in.

You start out at neutral.  +3 will make you go to Pure White, -3 will make you go to Pure Black.  Only at pure white/black will special events/areas open up, usually granting you a unique, very powerful weapon. 

At pure white tendency, the icons for these worlds would be glowing very brightly, at pure black, they will be very very dark, much like that broken icon.  The same goes for your character for character tendency.

Obviously it is more complex than I make it out to be, but that is the very basic gist of it.

Final thoughts

Yes, the game is hard.  Yes the game can be confusing.  HOWEVER, the multiplayer is such an awesome experience, and there is nothing like finally downing a really hard boss and feeling that huge sigh of relief and accomplishment like, "YES!!! I FINALLY BEAT YOU!!!!"

Casual gamers and anger management cases beware, but for those looking for a challenging yet rewarding game to play with friends, there ain't nothing like Demon Souls.

You may or may not be familiar with a string of blogs I did part of a category called "Uknown Gems" which basically documented my favorite games from yesteryear.  *note* I am not done with that section either so there is still more to come eventually.

Well, I feel that its time to add a new category, *Shiny and New!* which documents my favorite "next gen" games that are more or less culturally relevant right now.

And so I begin this new segment of blogs with the latest part of one of my all time favorite series, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time.

Gameplay

For those who are unaware of what this series is about, its mainly a light platformer heavy on weaponry/action.  The name of the game here is weapon upgradability...that a word?...don't think so, but deal with it.  There is a metric buttload of weapons in this game, all cleverly designed, each with a unique feel and filling some sort of niche.  The fast firing, low damage gun? Check.  The huge explosive rocket launcher? Check.  Shotgun? Check.  Interdimensional-tentacle-monster-rift-opening-gun-of-doom? CHECK!

Those are only 3 of the massive amount of weapons, each with the ability to level up with constant use, gaining more power and eventually evolving into a better gun.

The game is 3rd person, and like I said before, has some light platforming, or rather in this games case, a decent amount of platforming.  You get rocket boots that allow you to *skate* across the ground or hover to the ground from a high fall.  These are what you generally use for the platforming elements of the game, which are pretty fun/clever/interesting.

There are also various armors to buy, gadgets to discover, a decent amount of collectibles (get to those in a minute) and sidequests to perform.

The game takes place over a series of planets, with an open world *hub* connecting each planet out in space.  You fly around in your spaceship, choosing to do side missions by exploring small moons with a spherical *twist* on gameplay (think Super Mario Galaxy) or by finding NPC's to help. 

You find small creatures called Zoni across the game, which upgrade your ship to give more firepower/defensive measures, as well as the ability to travel to new star systems.  There are also Golden Bolts (bolts is the form of currency in the game).  Gold bolts are used to purchase skins for Ratchet, changing his appearance (purely cosmetic, has absolutely no effect on gameplay whatsoever)

Nothing is more fun than walking into a room filled to the brim with enemies, unleashing a salvo of rockets and see an ocean of bolts fly at you through the smoke and carnage.

But that is JUST Ratchet's portion.  The game is split into 2 halves, trading off between the two several times throughout the game.  Clank's portions are more about puzzle solving, with this truly ingenious puzzle element where you perform an action, record it, and then do another action while your previous recording performs the one you just did.  If it sounds confusing, thats because it is.  Some of the puzles are absolutely mind boggling but they will make you feel like a genius if you complete them.

Story

One might think that story isn't big in a game like this, but the story is absolutely epic, in my opinion.  Of course I'm a fanboy, but aside from that, the story really is well done.  Not going to give away much, but it deals with time travel and Ratchet and Clank reuniting.  Along Ratchets travels he finds another member of his species, the Lombax, named Azimuth who knows what happened to their race (this is relevant because pretty much throughout the entire series Ratchet has been the only one of his kind)

Clank has been transported to The Great Clock, a marvel of science and sorcery located at the eexact center of the universe...give or take 50 feet.  Clank discovers that he is the heir to The Great Clock and begins learning the inner workings of it and how to maintain it, gaining time control abilities along the way.

In the middle of all of this is Dr. Nefarius, trying to claim The Great Clock for himself so that he can reverse time and make it so that villains always prosper and heroes always fail.  Nefarius is the true iconic villain in every way.  Maniacal laugh, delusions of grandeur, frivolous pursuits.  All the things that a real comic book villain represents are present in Dr. Nefarius and it really brings the game to life as all the antagonists from previous installments in this series were pretty meh worthy I found.

And of course I can't talk about a Ratchet and Clank game without mentiong Captain Quark.  A"so called" hero of the universe and often the source of the comedic gold that comes from this game.  Quark has been a mainstay throughout the entire series, and that sure doesn't change here.  Pretty much every line Quark has will make you chuckle, if not burst into laughter.

Final thoughts

Put shortly, this game is a must have for any PS3 owner.  The graphics are honestly the best I have ever seen, EVER, better than uncharted and killzone 2.  The gameplay is satisfying, story is epic, and it has a fair amount of replayability. 

Upon beating the game, you unlock a new game+ feature, where you play the game again on a harder difficulty, adding a bolt multiplier.  The more enemies you kill without being hit, the more bolts you get!  The game adds in a new level of upgrades for all weapons, giving reason for you newfound wealth. 

There are also the games own form of trophies/achievements called skill points, which must be discovered simply based on the name of each individual skill point.

I highly suggest this game to any PS3 owner, young or old, hardcore or casual.

OK SO....the first rule of fight club is...no I'm not THAT cliche'

But seriously, I'm not gonna lie, I have no interest in Street Fighter or TVC or any fighting games, I simply went to be a part of the community and meet Snow in the flesh (I also saw RagingDemon, awesome dude!)

Here is Snow doing a silly face

And one of him talking to Brian (PR guy) another awesome guy from Capcom

SO, I arrived on the scene at around 7:15, it took roughly an hour to get there since I live in NJ and traffic sucks.  Me and my friend proceeded to the back of the line, which was several blocks away, being laughed and mocked at how we would never get in.  Then at 7:30, Snow called me and told me to come to the front of the line to be let in! (I made sure to mock those who mocked me)

I was greeted by Snow and Seth, quite the humbling experience and proceeded to be introduced to our very own RagingDemon!!  I was like, " ZOMG ITS RAGINGDEMON I KNOW'Z YOU!!!"  Me and Raging hung out for most of my time there (I needed to leave by 9:30 so I was only there for 2 hours)

The building would only hold 250 people at a time, and there were 2 floors, but it was still pretty damn claustrophobic.

This is the main floor, you can see there are TV's with TVC or MVC2 or SF4 hooked up, using either controller OR fightstick btw.

This is the basement, where there was a DJ and was generally very hot and smelly, it got so crowded down there that people weren't allowed to enter until more people came up

The walls were filled with artwork from Capcom games, here is a nifty poster on one of the walls.

and a drawing on one of the walls (sorry for low quality and bad positioning, but you try and take a decent shot while being shoved by 5 people eager to kick some ass in TVC)

There was also free pizza and drinks!

Even managed to catch Kotaku as they secretly moved about the crowd (kinda hard to tell but thats Crecente behind this dude)

Media was going back and forth constantly during the whole event, it was quite an experience.

What surprised me the most was people's attitude.  At things like this, especially with such closed quarters and very low moving space, I expect people to be moderately disgruntled at times, but everybody was great!  It was just an awesome time, if you needed to get through the crowd, you kinda just put your hand on someone's shoulder and said excuse me, and people would make room for you.

Here is a vid I took standing near the entrance to the basement, I basically couldn't move so I had to hold my phone above everybody to show you just how insane it was.  (Sorry for the weird noise, my phone can't handle so much stuff going on so it scrapped the audio)

Snow took pics with me and Raging so be sure to look out for em!

I was on the live stream for a couple seconds, I wrote out *Bastion* on a plate and held it up next to my face, dunno if anybody saw it.  I went on the Ustream chat afterwards to answer peoples questions, it was an awesome feeling, actually interacting with the community.  Stuff like this is why Capcom>all over game companies.

Can't wait for the next NY Capcom event!!!

I am astonished that I haven't blogged about this one yet.  This is by far one of my favorite games from the last generation.

Phantom Dust

This one holds a real soft spot in my heart as it combines everything that I find AWESOME.

I'm a big fan of the Matrix series, and I must say, this game reminds me ALOT of the Matrix for some reason, prolly cuz of the environment and the way you attack.

Before I begin rambling, I'll attempt to structure this blog for your convenience.

Story

Now I warn you, I love the story of this game and one of the HUGE aspects of this game is the story.  If you have ANY inkling to buy this game, I suggest you skip over this section as I am gonna spoil some big plot points and ruin the impact it will have when they are finally revealed in the game. So...last warning

**SPOILER ALERTS ALL AROUND**

So the game starts with a retelling of the events that lead up to the beginnings of the game.  One day, a mysterious dust appeared, blanketing the earth, wiping out most of civilization, mutating those who didn't make it and erasing the memories of those who survive.  However, while the dust took from most, to some, it gave something new.  The ability to transform their will into energy.  Those few are called Espers.  The world is more or less reduced to rubble thanks to the dust, cities have collapsed with a monsterous crater being formed, unknowing how.  There is one last refuge for survivors hidden underground (all of this starting to sound like the Matrix? ^^ )  From here, the Espers venture out into the world to search for the Ruins, the only burning memory survivors have left, so they figure if they can find it, it will lead to their salvation.

On one of the searches, the Espers decide to look in the crater for clues, and above it, suspended on bridges, they find two capsules.  Upon opening them, you and another are found, almost in a cyrogenic state.  Somehow, the other survivor can remember his name, Edgar, and as luck would have it, he has a locket around his neck with a photo of a girl.  Anything that could link back to the past, before this tragedy happened, is seen as of the utmost importance.  You and Edgar begin searching the world for clues, or memory boxes, containers which record and maintain information from their surroundings form before the dust.

Eventually you two stumble upon the girl in Edgar's locket, Freia, an independant Esper who lives on the surface world.  She pleads with you to stop your search.  Edgar, feeling a connection with her due to his locket, agrees and joins her, leaving you to return underground and tell the others.  The next time you meet with Edgar he seems like a completely different person, saying that Freia has told him that she knows of things before the dust, and that you betrayed him during that time.  He then attacks you and becomes the games antagonist.  Eventually Freia attacks you, and upon defeating her she drops the memory box that taught her of life before thedust.

**MONSTEROUS SPOILER ALERT TIME**

The memory box shows Edgar as an astronaut, on the first mission to the event horizon of a black hole.  Upon his return, he found that Earth had been decimated.  Due to his travel at relativistic speeds in order to withstand the force of the black hole, his time on the ship was only 3 days, but in Earth's standards, he had been gone for 10,000 years.  In that time, mankind had destroyed itself with some great war, leaving in its wake the ruins of mankind and that mysterious dust, likely fallout from some futuristic weaponry.

In Edgar's time left on Earth, alone with his thoughts, he found that he had gained psychic powers thanks to the dust.  With this, he created Freia and yourself, his girlfiend and best friend at the time of his departure.  After you two, the rest of the world began to follow.  The ruins were implanted as burning memories into everyones mind becase that was the last place Edgar was with Freia before he left.  Even though life is seemingly back to normal, Edgar becomes disallusioned with the worlds current state and sought to destroy it and end his suffering.  The protagonist had to stop Edgar from committing such an act, and with both possessing a great amount of power, they clashed, creating the massive crater and rendering them unconcious.  Freia put them into the capsules to protect them.

Upon finally defeating Edgar, you learn from another memory box that 10 years after Edgar had returned to Earth his body began to break down and was unable to handle the contaminative nature of the dust.  He created a replica of himself to carry on his vision, but due to his subdued state, his creation was a pessimistic shadow of his former self, driving it to go insane and eventually plot to destroy the world.  Upon learning this, the shadow Edgar can't come to terms with himself that he isn't real, and disintigrates.  It is unknown why the protagonist is able to sustain himself, as he is aware of his non-existance as well.  He goes on to carry out Edgar's wish, and recreates the world as it should be.

Gameplay

Before I get into the combat, know that there is a hubworld in a sense.  In between battles you traverse the last refuge, talking to survivors, taking on quests for them, learning new abilities etc.  The refuge is very cool, reminds me alot of Zion from the Matrix.  Basically a run down, abandoned facility, filled with all kinds of technology, giving the game a very steampunk-ish feel.

Combat is what this game is all about at its heart, but its pretty unique I want to say.  Its real time combat, in designated levels, so there is no free roam but the levels are pretty damn big.  You attack by using your telekinetic powers.  Forming swords out of thin air to attack with, throwing fireballs/lases, creating shields out of the rubble on which you stand, flight, healing, etc.  Anything you can think of for combat, this game has.  Sounds pretty standard right? Nope.  The game is actually a card battle game in a sense.  You have a *deck* of powers, with 5 types of powers, Psycho, Optical, Nature, Ki and Faith.  In order to use your abilities, you must accumulate Power, which is a 6th *type*.  You can only have 2 types of powers per deck (not counting Power)  and can only have 4 skills equipped at a time.

Your deck will materialize itself as 3 floating orbs at your starting location on each map.  Once you collect the orbs as skills, new ones will appear there within 20-30 seconds.  Some skills are one time uses, meaning, use it and it will be gone from your arsenal, while others will stay until you decide to replace them.  Its up to you how to build your deck and how to strategize, making the game very different depending on which types you specialize with.

The environments are highly destructible.  For example, if you gain the Jump ability (sends you 30 feet into the air) you will then plummet back to the ground, creating a tiny crater as you land, damaging the opponent if you land on/near them.  Floors can be broken through, bridges collapsed, walls destroyed, etc.  Its truly an awesome experience sending a fireball screaming at the opponent, knocking them to their feet and causing the floor to give way from their impact, further damaging them.

Finally, possibly the selling point of the game, is that it has multiplayer over Xbox Live!  Granted, there is a small amount of lag on hit detection, as you can see in the video I posted above this section, but its minute and other than that the experience is seemless.  Combine all of these things with the fact that it released with a 19.99 price point and you have a great game on your hands.  (not to mention this is compatible with 360 now!!)

Put simply, this game is AWESOME and I highly suggest it to anybody who enjoys a game with fun and innovative combat.

I've been neglecting my blogs lately, but no more!  This time I'll be talking about Rez.

Unfortunately this will be a short blog because Rez is largely a shallow game at its heart.

It is a rail shooter at its core, but simply leaving it at that doesn't do the game justice.  It is such an ambient experience.  For example, the *combat* as you would call it is done by holding a button to lock onto enemies with your aiming reticle.  Hold the button down, sweep it over some enemies, and they are targeted, upon letting go of the button, if they are still within range, the character will automatically shoot them. 

Sounds simple, yes?  Not so much.  Each shot makes a particular noise, as well as letting go of the button.  So if you lock onto a whole bunch of enemies at once (8 max) their resulting deaths will play out a different tune than if you had locked onto 7, killed them and then individually killed the last one.  Or you could just mash the lock-on button, creating a *clapping* noise, and giving the game a faster beat.  You essentially alter the music, in a sense, depending on how you play.

I can't just leave it at that either though.  Just as much as it is an audial game, it is a visual game.  As far as I can tell, you are some sort of computer program/hack travelling through the mainframes of some sort of technology.  As such, the environment is constantly in flux, creating wireframe cities, turning the explosions from the enemies deaths into colorful blotches.  Put simply, the game has a VERY unique feel.  Words won't do it justice, so here is a vid of the first boss fight.

The game is extremely short, I believe there are only 4 levels (haven't played it in years) but often VERY hard to master.  Mastering includes killing every enemy and collecting every item.  Items are either *experience* or overdrive.  Experience is measured on the bottom left, and essentially acts as your health.  I call it experience because it is gotten from killing enemies and accumulating various amounts will *upgrade* your character, if you are hit, you downgrade to the previous form, there are 5 forms.  Overdrive is exactly as it sounds, your character goes into overdrive and shoots off a spectacular flash of death.  This tiny ball of light will fly off somewhere, normally offscreen and all you will see is a salvo of shots flying from every quadrant of the screen, decimating the opposition (in the video this happens at 1:33 and lasts for roughly 5 seconds)

The game is also pretty tough.  I consider msyelf fairly good at games, and I have a decent amount of trouble with some of the bosses.  That said, the game is nothing short of awesome, definitely one of the quirky *wtf is that game?!* games that you want to have.