I’ve Never Played a Final Fantasy; Shall We Give It a Go? Continued…

There are several hallmarks of truly a great game. I’m not planning on voicing them all now, but there is one that in particular that applies, even now, to “Final Fantasy 7″; any game that can anchor you to one spot for in excess of six hours has to be good, whether or not you can figure out exactly why. The only reason I can deduce, other than the hypnotic effect of the art design, is that its one of those “greater than the sum of its parts” scenarios.

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I’ve Never Played a Final Fantasy; Shall We Give It a Go?

Apparently the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is making its way to Xbox 360 as well as PS3 next spring has been  a subject of much controversy since the announcement at E3 last year. A few days ago I was talking about the Playstation steadily losing the strings to its bow, and if I’m to believe the hysteria, then the Final Fantasy series must represent some sort of coup. Despite growing up on Playstation, not to mention all of the above, I personally have never played a single game in this series, something I have been led to believe to be absolute sacrilege for the last few years. So f*ck it I thought; why spend time getting good and depressed about my dying hero when I can stuff my cheeks with cotton buds and drown myself in nostalgia. [Continue Reading]

Petition To Stop PlayStation Network Charging For Online

Yesterday I received a circular from someone on PlayStation Network; it was a petition detailing that PSN where going to start charging for use of the systems online capabilities. I tried to take this with a pinch of salt, but a small amount of digging showed it to be more than just harmless rambling.

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New inFamous Home Area and Firmware 3.0 Details

Ready for exciting new PS3 fans? “InFamous” is coming to PlayStation Home! Still not excited, huh? We’ll I can’t blame you. Sony’s online community service has been less than revolutionary, and I couldn’t tell you the last time I spent some time within the walls of my virtual apartment, but Sony claims it’s doing great and continues to support it with some of its biggest exclusives. [Continue Reading]

New PSP2 Rumors – Second Nub Still Absent

While it still looks like Sony is waiting until E3 to officially unveil their new PSP, anonymous sources from around the game industry are spilling the beans on what gamers can look for in the next iteration of Sony’s handheld.

1up’s sources tell them that the new PSP will indeed git rid of the UMD drive, and that a huge amount of titles will be available at launch. Two of these titles will be the freshly announced Namco Bandai games “Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny” and “Tekken 6.” (The PSP version of “Soul Calibur” will reportedly have a new character named Dampierre.) The new PSP may also be available in two units, one with carrying 8 gigs of storage and another with 16. [Continue Reading]

Street Fighter IV Review: Kickin’ It Old School

“Since this title is a direct sequel to SF II, things like air blocking and exceedingly long air combos do not exist…”

Before I begin this review I would like point out something: I don’t believe in reviews without adequate exposure to a proper title. I say “proper” because it’s almost impossible to do a review without an unlocked title these days. Indeed you can buy a game on release day, and begin your review process to submit it by your deadline for release week, but that would go against my beliefs. My point being that one can only appreciate the nuances of a title with adequate time spent with it. Even though “Street Fighter” has been around for decades, a rushed review does not make sense.

As a matter fact, it’s been about ten years since the Roman numeral in the “Street Fighter”’s title changed. With stiff competition from its predecessors, and other titles from SNK and the Guilty Gear team, “Street Fighter IV” has to bring more than just fireballs and shoryukens. Regardless, the title turns out to be pure genius for some, and bittersweet for others. What it does bring to the table is everything you know about “Street Fighter II” as well as some new mechanics. The new stuff comes in the form of a new tech move dubbed “Focus Attack” (hold medium punch and medium kick), ultra combos, and some new fighters that aren’t just fireball throwing heavies. Add that to the fact that the game runs in 3D, adheres to its 2D heritage playing field, and visually flared with a Japanese Ink brush, intense colors, decent sound effects and has a fan questioning soundtrack. All of these aspects coalesce to make one of the better fighting games to be released in a long time. Nevertheless, it is just another fighting game, but it’s one that’s done very well. At times the game clings to its roots too strongly, yet with time you come to acknowledge the conjugated old and new mechanics. [Continue Reading]

KOJIMA IN TIMES SQUARE

On June 11th, Midnight in Times Square New York Virgin Megastore, MGS4 would have reached such epic proportions of hype, Konami can only seal the deal for Western gamers by bringing Hideo Kojima himself for the launch party. Some of us are planning trips from Toronto as one NeoGaffer’ put it but whatever the case may be, this only makes the anticipation for this game even higher …. so, are we dead yet? My burning question for the man is “Where, if possible, can I get a pair of those crazy glasses?”

PlayStation Day: Mirrors’ Edge

Straight from PlayStation Day comes the debut trailer of Mirror’s Edge; an all out first person action adventure, run jump, scale, slide, evade, and if you can believe it, presented in real time in game footage. Trailers need to be like this more; just show us the goods.

This title sports an over the top style that embraces strong color schemes. Some will criticize it for being too contrasty though, but, early comments on this game say the colored objects stand out for a reason. Whether or not you’re into the hot looking Asian girls with iconic tattoos plastered on their faces will not be enough to determine the success rate of this game. Show us more please DICE.

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Badcompany … reminds me of Black

Remember Black? Yea, that EA Criterion game that allowed you to blow shit up. Apparently the boys over at DICE built this software that allows you to that times two ya. Ya, that’s right. Blow more shit up. I have to admit, Black was very satisfying and I played through every difficulty setting got all items and secrets not because I wanted to but mostly because I just wanted to blow shit up – This looks like it will deliver more of that. Let me let DICE explain it all to you -

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Home! – Not a Glorified Chat Room?

Seriously, I love my ps3 and all but I saw the Home idea as a gimmick. Yea, hate me but that’s how I felt. Its’ a fact that communication via texting and messaging is enough but yea, users wouldn’t mind seeing impressions of other users mugs either.

Great, so enter Home. You have to wonder why Sony put the brakes on that thing, even when PH had edged other parts of the Empire to push more on the “community” aspect of gaming. So what do you do? Integrate actual “game-playing, side quests, and game content extras” ino the game Home System.

See the posts here at many other gaming sites -

• Resistance integrates Home into Gameplay.
• Uncharted makes it cool.
• Warhawk adds functionality.
  

In addition to this expect to see all the advertising your eyes can handle. I’m not sure I understand the complaint about this but it has something to do with visual pollution. As a city dweller, you really can’t complain about visual pollution here but if you’re from other parts of the world where ads are at a minimum, I can understand why you might suffer from information overload.

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