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.

Another unknown gem that I've gotten into again to just kill some time/relax/kill my boredom.  De Blob!

For the Wii, which is why I'm including it here, as I feel that it received some MODERATE popularity at launch, when people realized its a great game like, "Holy crap, this is a game for the Wii...and it doesn't suck!!" but then quickly died off.

Story

The plot is simple.  What was once a great city of expression and color is now under siege by a military regime called INKT.  The once cheerful citizins of Chroma City, the Raydians, are now restricted and forced to do what INKT says.  INKT covers up the Raydians colorful appearance by putting them into gray shells, thusly deeming them, the Graydians.  INKT turns the colorful city into a gloomy, gray and white ghost town.

In enters De Blob, an entity who can absorb the paint that INKT has confiscated and commences to take back the city from INKT, turning it into the colorful metropolis it once was.

Gameplay

The game is quite basic and at the same time, has a level of depth to it.  At its heart, there are only 2 BASIC functions you will be performing.  Moving and jumping.  Thats it!  This is a GREAT game for non-gamers to pick up to get introduced to gaming, people like grandparents, girlfriends, children, anybody who isn't a big gamer can have fun with this game without much frustration or confusion.

As De Blob, all you need to do is roll into a paint container to color yourself and then simply touch a gray/white building to color it!  That is ALL you need to do, thusly, newcomers to games are satisfied!  BUT, this is not to say that the game has no depth. 

There are missions around the levels, as well as collectibles, which should satiate the OCD collector in all of you, as it certainly has done so for me.  The missions generally involve coloring certain buildings with certain colors, racing to a landmark or coloring a large building by shaking the wiimote/nunchuk.

Collectibles can be found, such as *styles* which will give every building you color a cool style to it, such as camoflouge or stripes or spots or etc.  There are also *medals* you can achieve by completing small achievements in every level, such as coloring every tree, coloring the blimp (more challenging than it sounds), rescuing all the Raydians, etc.  These medals don't do anything other than show your dedication to the game, which is a bit dissappointing, but oh well, its still fun and for the OCD collectors, will provide some reply value.

The game is also quite large.  One might expect levels to be short, 10-15 minutes.  It starts out that way, but the further you progress, the longer the levels become.  In the final levels of the game, expect to spend 45-60 minutes per level.  They are absolutely massive, a surprise I wasn't expecting, but I love it.  Its awesome to climb to the top of a tall building to see a giant expanse of rainbow buildings left in your wake.

(this is an EXTREMELY small portion of a leve. This is about 1/30th of the entire level)

The game has a very cute/silly feel to it, which is great!  The game has a sense of humor that often makes you smile/chuckle, which makes this a great game to play when you are in a bad mood/peeve about something.  I often play it to unwind. 

Upon entering the next level, you are greeted to an intro cutscene, not lasting more than a minute, though still very funny and entertaining.  These usually introduce a new type of enemy/task in some funny manner and I can't get enough of them. 

my fave is when the police officer is showing his plans and he flexes, I crack up everytime

Just because its cute/silly and is on the Wii doesn't make it bad, a VERY common misconception.  If you play games to feel macho, you have some very serious issues that I suggest you find a therapist to deal with.  Games are fun, and this one is very.

Yea, this one came kinda fast, but I'm bored so this is going to occupy my time.  Gungrave is an often overlooked game, as well as being hard to find (there isn't a single copy within 10 miles of me available for purchase) 

Some of you will be surprised to hear that the game was created by Yasuhiro Nightow, creator of Trigun, and as such, there are MANY similarities between this and the TV show.  Just to name a few, the main character, Beyond the Grave, wears glasses much like Vash did as well as a coat with a very high collar and carries a giant coffin on his back that houses an arsenal of weapony, much like Wolfwood.  The game features a very over the top style, having Grave often do a pose before/after he displays his badassery.

To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the story on this one, just wanted to get in and do some killing.  To be noted, there is an anime of the same name, which was made after the game and provides much more story than the game does, obviously.

Gameplay is a combination shootemup/beatemup.  For anybody who has played Godhand, its much like that, only with ranged attacks instead of melee.  Basically, you traverse linear levels, CONSTANTLY flinging bullets left and right, building up combo with every shot that lands, subjecting even the environment to your scorn in lieu of points.  The more points you accumulate, the more demolition shots you can do.  Demolition shots are the special attack of the game.  You can either turn your coffin into a rocket launcher and shoot 1 or 3 rockets in front of you, or turn it into a gatling gun as you spin around, spraying everything with bullets OR you can expend a demolition shot for health (lame).

Long story short, the game is just simply badass.  The game, more or less, aims for you.  Its not a FPS, accuracy is not the point of the game, its to dispatch tons of enemies in the coolest way with as little effort as possible.  You can have a constant stream of bullets shooting at any given time, there is no *ammo*, you can shoot as much as you want.  You can shoot and move at the same time, which is all fine and dandy, but the real fun is watching Grave do his *dance* if you shoot while standing still.  Stand still and continue shooting and instead of just holding his guns in his usual stance, he does what I can only describe as a dance with his guns, looking awesome and shooting twice as fast.  Very effective.

There is also a sequel, Gungrave: Overdose, which features everything the single player had, as well as 2 new characters, a guitarist and swordsman.  If furthers the *over the top* style even more so, adding in epic finishing moves to the games bosses, making for a very cool and rewarding cutscene after finally putting each boss down.  My personal fave is the 2nd of the guitarists finishers, great buildup and delivers the final blow at the high point of the theme song, epic.

I can easily see why Gungrave wasn't a smash hit.  Its EXTREMELY linear, almost no sense of character progression and very repetitive.  But sometimes, I just want a game where I can kick butt while looking cool without needing to play for 50 hours to master the games mechanics, thats right, I'm looking at you DMC/Ninja Gaiden.

Stay tuned for more.  Will most likely get bored and do another one tomorrow.

Time for yet another one of my games that I feel is underappreciated.  This time, it comes in the form of Xenosaga.  While I mean Xenosaga, the franchise, I will be mainly talking about Xenosaga I.

Where to even begin, Xenosaga is known as the *spiritual* successor to the popular Xenogears for the original playstation.  Fans of the game should notice many similar themes in the gameplay.  Xenosaga is an INCREDIBLY story rich game.  Its one of those games where if you don't pay attention/know whats going on, you likely never will unless you start from scratch.

What I love about the series is it references MANY different religions.  Nearly every prominent religion is represented somehow in the game, grounding it in our *reality* and giving a very cool backstory as well as giving a vast scope to the game as it deals with life after death/gods/demons and stuff of the sort.  Just a few examples, there are 13 monolithic objects throughout the game called Zohar (hebrew for "splendor") is reference to the Jewish religion and each one is named as a different disciple of Jesus, a reference to christianity.  There is also much symbolism of angels and demons, the main character KOS-MOS is often protrayed as an angel where as another main character, Jr. is often portrayed as demonic/devilish.  Anything dealing with angels and demons gets a plus in my book.

Here is a trailer for the 2nd game, which I feel accurately portrays the kind of action/story the series displays (its in japanese, deal with it)

Story

I can't adequately describe the story, as it would take hours to appropriately tell the games tale and this is meant to simply enlighten people of the game, not bash it into their psyche.  Long story short, the games story is absolutely epic.  Those of you who wish to know more, there is a xenosaga wiki.  Go find it.

I will however give backstory on some key characters.

These are the party members you will be fighting with as well as the games main antagonist.

Shion Uzuki

This will be the character you control.  Chief Engineer of the KOS-MOS project at Vector Industries, first R&D division, aka, shes pretty damn important.  The weapon you see her wielding is a giant mechanical arm that sits gingerly on her own, with the ability to electrocute/shoot fire/lasers/pwn.  Quite honestly, she bores me, so enough about her.

KOS-MOS

KOS-MOS (greek for "order") is the games main protagonist/plot point most of the time.  Developed by Shion to take on Gnosis, a race of violent alien-like beings.  The first of her kind, she is completely robotic, able to transform her right arm into a variety of weaponry, possesses superhuman strength, can materialize oversized guns at will, yada yada.  She is generally the games trump card, if something goes wrong, KOS-MOS is employed to blow it up.  KOS-MOS in particular has seemed to have won the hearts of otaku in asian culture, as she appears frequently in many *vs* games, like super robot taisen, and is often references in many other games of the sort, she even can be created in soul calibur 3.

Ziggurat 8

Also known as Ziggy and originally known as Jan Sauer.  As Jan, he was more or less a normal human being with a family.  For reasons unknown in the first game, his family was lost, and he commited suicide due to their loss.  He was then *reanimated* by Ziggurat industries, and thus deemed Zigurat 8, as he was the 8th person to have this done.  Since he is now a cyborg, he no longer has the same rights that humans do, and as such, is employed as a mercenary.  He generally takes on missions with very low chances of success, hoping he will be fatally damaged in the process and ending his pain once again.  Aside from his emo personality, Ziggy pwns.  Armed with various bionic body parts, most notably his left arm and legs, he is another powerhouse of your party, able to rain down meteors generated from thrusters underneath his feet.

Momo

The most advanced realian ever made.  Realians are essentially, manufactured humans made of synthetic parts and as such, employ robotic parts as well, such as being able to magnify their vision to be able to see somebodys very DNA or the ability to carry great weights, often in the form of weaponry.  But again, her background bores me, so if you want to know more, go find the wiki.

Chaos

A man of contradictions.  He, in a staggering amount of ways, is the counterpart to KOS-MOS.  He has blue eyes, she has red, his skin is dark, hers is white, his name is Chaos, and hers is order.  Able to disintigrate Gnosis by a mere touch of his ungloved hands, Chaos is quite a peculiararity.  Much is his story is unknown in Xenosaga 1, so I shall leave it at that.

Jr.

His real name Rubedo (red), Jr. has quite the story. Created by science to combat a mysterious evil that I won't go into, Jr. was one of 3 *humans* from the same embryonic egg, which you will see in a couple seconds.  Jr. was unit number 666, and as such, has that number printed on his palm.  In spite of his childlike appearance, he is quite old, by our standards.  These 3 beings each have a unique ability linked with their cells, in this game, Jr. has been able to greatly reduce the aging process of his cells, allowing him to age extremely slow.

Gaignun

One of "3", real name Nigredo (black).  He and Jr. both run one of the wealthiest corpoprations of the galaxy, the Kukai foundation, and as such, are quite the playboys.  His unique ability is telepathy between him and his brothers and the ability to hypnotize with his voice, giving a whole new meaning to *smoothtalk*

Albedo

Albedo, the last of the 3, and whose name is related with white.  The main antagonist of the game.  Due to events that happened prior to the game, he has become more or less insane, or rather, enlightened.  He has the ability to instantly regenerate his cells, able to almost immediately regenerate anything within seconds, even if his head is cut clean off, making him undying.

Gameplay

The gameplay is more or less much like Final Fantasy X.  It is turn based, with a maximum of 3 party members in combat at any time.  The combat mechanics involve enemy *types*, each being weak to a certain type of attack, almost like pokemon, so strategy is always involved.  There are special attack, similar to overdrives from FFX, and giant robotic suits called A.G.W.S, pronounced like eggs, only replace the *eh* sound with *ay*. 

Standing for Anti-Gnosis Weapons System, the are somewhat similar to the aeons/summons of final fantasy.  You can have 3 AGWS out at a time, however they are quite slow in turn for their great power.  The game is very much like your typical RPG.  You run around the game environment as Shion, talking to people, progressing the storyline, doing sidequests (the game has tons, like any good RPG should)  Although there are no random battles.  You see an enemy walking around the gamefield, and upon meeting that enemy, a battle ensues, with that enemy only being a representative of the enemy party.

The game is long, has FREQUENT use of cutscenes which many don't like, yet I love.  Some are so long there are even save point in between them, so expect to do lots of watching with this game.

The series was ORIGINALLY slated to have 6 installments, but due to poor sales and the company being bought by nintendo, they had to cut it down to 3.  All in all, I love this game and the series as a whole.  I am generally seen as a pariah in my circles for enjoying this game so much, as I am actually the only person I personally know who has even heard of the game, and so I felt it deserved a place here.

Stay tuned for more games! As I have at least 4 lined up at the moment.