Review: Malicious (Ps3)

While this is a game that's not exactly new, with the 'Rebirth' version being released about a month ago on Vita I thought Id take a look at the original the remastered version is based on. With the game currently priced at £6.49 (£9.99 for the Vita remaster) a Short & sweet experience is to be anticipated. So how does it fare?

Retrospective: Red Ninja End of Honor (Ps2/Xbox)

Story
The game is set in the 16th century Japan during the Sengoku period. After a young Kurenai witnessed the brutal execution of her father Ryo by the Black Lizard clan, the girl herself was brutally hung with a tetsugen from a tree and left to die. Miraculously, she survived and was rescued and adopted into a ninja clan where she obtains complete mastery of her adopted weapon, the tetsugen. Pledging her undying loyalty to her new family, Kurenai now lives to avenge her father's death and will go to any means necessary...
....And that's exactly how the story continues to play out. Its your typical revenge Ninja yarn. You wont be coming back to the game for its story or characters that's for sure, but its serviceable 

 Red Ninja is a third-person stealth title, similar to the Tenchu series. Levels tend to consist of having to dispatch enemies with either a kunai blade or fundo (a blunt iron weight) attachment to the tetsugen (The tetsugen also has a hook attachment that allows Kurenai to swing to various places) When the element of stealth fails you, Melee combat can be entered with either the blade or fundo. By dispatching enemies and avoiding injury, you can build Kurenai's ninjutsu gauge, which allows you to enter a sort of "bullet time" in order to quickly eliminate targets. However, as Kurenai is without Armour and significant reach compared with her enemies as they tend to be armed with bows, spears, or katana, most encounters will either injure you or kill you easily. It is best to avoid combat whenever possible by either sneaking, stealth-killing, or using Kurenai's feminine charm to eliminate threats. Indeed you can use your female characters charms to dispatch enemies! A seduction stealth kill is possible to unleash on a single enemy: Kurenai will perform a vaguely suggestive activity and when the character approaches, will drag him down and kill him. Stealth attacks are available if you manage to sneak up on an enemy undetected or use the blade to slice off an unaware enemy's head from a distance if your lucky. All the usual hallmarks of a stealth game also make it into this title IE hiding bodies. You also have several different methods of movement to aid with your stealth. Kurenai can wall-jump, from surface to surface, up to three times in order to find a vantage point or progress. You can flatten yourself against certain walls too, cling to ledges, hang upside down from her tetsugen to kill people, and if running fast enough, can zoom straight up walls until you either run out of momentum or hit something (Wall running cannot be done on all walls though) The game seems to fall squarely into Tenchu territory. Anyone playing those will feel right at home with this game. Bosses will also have to be dispatched

Outside of the, at times, horrendous camera: Red Ninja actually isn't too bad the graphics department. The graphical engine the game uses seems to do well enough, and everything moves at a pretty brisk pace, with no slowdown or clipping of note (The Xbox version has added light bloom effects) The game features a hefty amount of blood that spurt every which way from decapitated foes, which looks eerily similar to how its portrayed in the gory Japanese movies. There's really not much to the game's visuals though to be honest. All the levels & characters are well detailed, With some smooth textures and well detailed characters (The cloth physics for Kurenai 'clothing' are well done) but there's nothing to separate them to any other game set within the same time frame. Other similar games have managed to do creative and interesting things with the whole ancient Japan style though and Red Ninja fails in that regard to make itself stand out from the crowd of Ninja titles we had on Ps2. You could quite easily mistake it for a Tenchu title quite easily. I suppose they thought having a scantily clad female ninja would do more than suffice in that regard.

I picked the game up from a second hand store for £1.49 a couple of months back. I duly fired it up and played through the first few levels before taking a break. Maybe its just that I'm way more tolerable than most gamers, but I actually didn't find it at all that bad, which is probably why I just kept playing. Obviously the camera and lack of imagination in the game design I pointed out are issues, but aside from that nothing else really bothered me. Considering Ninja games have been a little illusive during this generation, its good to go back and see just how many we had then. This is worth a try if you can find it cheap as I have as you may find it to be enjoyable if your tolerant enough and don't expect every game to have perfect mechanics.

Retrospective: Team Buddies (Ps1)

Story
One fine and sunny day in the land that Buddies roam, there was a great and mighty disco in a tent. This tent would bob up and down with the music. All of a sudden, a large, flat, grey, flying THING blocked out the sun (The Great Eclipse) and began to drop crates. These crates were filled with all sorts of goodies such as Uzis and Bazookas. Inevitably, chaos broke out and the buddies became segregated according to color...
...and with that the game begins. The story does open up a lot when playing through the games campaign which was suprising for me the first time around. Its nothing fanciful but it does more than good enough of a job for a game of this type.

Hooray It's Persona Day!

I personally requested to write this article. I'm going to present you with all the known information then provide you with my personal thoughts and feelings on this matter.

Geoff has stayed pretty level headed on this matter while our very own Remy has flown off the handle. Me? I'm fairly happy about all of the news, but more on that after the announcements.

All in all a collection of new titles for a highly popular series. While I won't be touching the dancing title that honour will be for Geoff, I will talk about Persona Q! 

Persona Q: Shadow Of The Labyrinth

New 3DS crossover game involving talent from Persona & Etrian Odyssey

Persona 4: Dancing All Night

Dancing All Night is a Vita bound rhythm game along the lines of the Project Diva series. It is being developed along side Dingo who make the PSP Project Diva games. More info on this to follow in a later blog post .

Persona 4: Ultimax Suplex Hold! 

The follow up to Persona 4: Arena continues the story where it left off & reintroduces some old characters and stages! More on this in the coming weeks

Firstly a bit about me, iv been playing Shin Megami Tensei games for countless years. My first time was with SMT:III Lucifers Call (Nocturne everywhere else) and I was hooked from that. Since that game I have gone onto completing Shin Megami Tensei 1 & 2 SNES, Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2, Raidou Kuzunoah 1, Persona Revelation, PSP port of Persona all quests, Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Persona 2 Innocent Sin PSX version, Persona 3, Persona 3 F.E.S, Persona 3: The Answer, Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Ps2, Devil Survivor and Strange Journey. I have started a play-through of Devil Summoner:Soul Hackers, Devil Survivor:Overclocked, Devil Survivor 2 & DemiKids on GBA, I burnt out half way with P4:G and sold my Vita & I'm in the process of tracking down a copy of P4:Arena to finish that before the new version drops. Also I am eagerly awaiting the release of SMT IV on 3DS and due to being in Europe I only have the means to play Devil Summoner:Raidou 2 on PC which will happen once I have completed Soul Hackers. I even have a copy of Maken X for Dreamcast ready to play because it has the same art! 

Ontop of all that I have also watched the Persona 4 Anime, Devil Survivor 2 and Persona Trinity Soul & the Digital Devil Story OVA. Why I have listed all this is simple, so you know that my views are from a long time fan of the series who hasn't just gotten off the Persona 4 train.

So where to start with Persona Q, first thing that will strike you is the art style, Chibi art style doesn't really bother me too much, I got used to the anime art style of 3 & 4 after A while so I would imagine same applies here. It's obviously a spin off with this art style and the inclusion of a certain main character, a fun take on the detective storylines of 4 and to an extent 3.

I like the different interactions if you pick SEES or Investigation Crew. I'm interested to know what will happen with mix and matching characters and making your Persona dream team. 

Upon seeing a member of staff from Etrian Odyssey is working on P:Q peaks my interest greatly. For anyone who hasn't played any of them they are hardcore old school RPG Dungeon crawlers. 

What this says to me is hopefully it's going to be despite it's art style a more hardcore SMT style dungeon crawler. I would even be more than happy to see the first person exploring return, another nod to the previous Persona games. 

The fact it is on 3DS for me is personally a great move. Atlus has graced the 3DS with several titles already and all have sold well. As Persona has a huge fan base now it only makes sense to move it to a more popular and better supported console. In Europe I believe Nintendo has actually helped bring SMT IV over to our shores in 2014 which was a huge shock to everyone. 

I understand Persona has been near enough exclusive to the Sony platforms but considering how well Atlus titles do and the larger fan base why this is a shock to people is beyond me!. 

Fans didn't really seem to cheer up until the announcement of Persona 5, it's good to see they are finishing the story from P4:A with a sequel though hardly shocking. 

A large amount of complaints are from people who own the Vita and have come in from Persona 3/4 and have little to no experience with anything SMT barring Persona. 

Could it be that sense of entitlement that is causing such unwarranted feedback?, yes it blows that you invested so much time into P4:G and now the spin off is on a different handheld. For someone like myself I have to miss out on Golden because I can't justify the purchase for 1 game when I can own the 3DS and have access to more SMT titles than I would with the VITA.

Maybe it's the art style? I'm not trying to blow my horn here but iv been a fan for years and wasn't too taken with the anime art style brought in with 3. The key difference is I had enough faith in Atlus and SMT/Persona as a product to overlook this and go onto enjoy P3 in various incarnations. 

You can quote me on this, I for one am more than excited about Q. It looks to me like it will fuse the character development from P3/4 with the dungeon exploring and challenge from P1/2. Anyone who ignores this title due to art style, the fact it's a spin off or that it's on 3DS is being foolish and should think long and hard before they comment on Persona or SMT in general.

I don't know enough about Dancing All Night! though I will say i'm generally not a huge fan of those type of games but being Persona I will keep an eye out on info when it lands. Persona 4: The Ultimax Suplex Hold is another with a little bit of info but as it's releasing in the arcades very soon I'm sure i can speak to my Japanese friend and get a bit of info out of him!

As a leaving note i will say I am curious about Persona 5 & leave the teaser trailer with you here, my thoughts on this game I will keep till more is revealed about it! Till then i eagerly countdown the release of Persona Q!

Ys: Memories of Celceta Gameplay Trailer - Karna Update

Another update for YS Memories of Celceta. The character is called Karna. In the video she uses thrust attackes against enemies. For the people who know the YS fighting system these attacks are only effective against non armor type monster.

Hopefully she is a love interest for Adol ( The red haired pratoganist) ... If so he wouldn't go beyond first base anyway xD

Just a couple of days guys and my YS Memories of Celceta copy arrives :D

Persona Channel Midnight Channel strikes again

The second teaser features visions of train stations in Japan, once again delivered by the mysterious Midnight Channel. Users online have begun speculating that these train stations will serve as the players means of transportation around Tokyo, that the next adventure in the Persona series will take players to Japan's big city after giving players a taste of life in sleepy Inaba.




Update:

The cities we are going to visit in the next persona are:

Sapporo=Odori

Sendai=Sendai

Fukuoka=Tenjin

Nagoya=Sakae

Osaka=Dotonbori

Tokyo=Shinjuku

Are you ready to travel to the big city?

Yakuza Ishin box art reveal

Yakuza: ishin producer Masayoshi Yokoyama has shared the final Japanese box art for the upcoming Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 game. I think the Otaku staff really loves Yakuza. SEGA week just ended but this game is something to look forward to. 

Oohw I forget to mention this the first box art of Yakuza in colour ( This never happened in the past for the Japanese version)

YS Memories of Celceta EVERY DAY VIDEO GAMEPLAY

XSeed has released a new video of YS Memories of Celceta.  Good news for the otaku readers. I am going to review this game. I am really exited for this one since Ys Seven was one of my favorite games on the PSP and Playstation Vita ( Playstation Network. Get it ! It's just €9,00 !) The game is known for it's awesome soundtracks and you will be not dissapointed.

Xseed will release a new gameplay video every day from now on. The first gameplay video is about Duren.

(He has the ability to do a lot of damage to armor type monster . YS is known for it's different enemy types that can only be defeated by the fighter with the right ability. Thus, you need to switch between characters because every character has a diffirent ability)

Hopefully you are just as excited as i am!

Review: Remember Me (Ps3/PC)

If you guessed right with the gif I posted yesterday then you'll already be aware of what is to be looked at today. This is a game that was hyped a bit before release (As our Aigato knows all too well) before being seemingly written off. Why did that happen? Let's find out. * I have also played through most of this game on PC. The content is identical so Ill add a note at the end of the graphics section detailing any differences*

Crash Bandicoot: A Mascot returns?

There where some rumours of Sony buying the rights of Crash Bandicoot of Activision. This all happend when the Sony Commercial #4th players revealed some images like the one below:

At 0:49 you see some traffic signs with an image of the Crash!

Some really eagle eyed reddit users cocobandicoot and holmesy spotted something very interesting about the Crash Bandicoot franchise. Activision removed the crash bandicoot franchise from it's timeline and any reference on it's website.

Is this the sign of a Mascot returning? Will we once again battle against Dr. Cortex?

The orginal post from Reddit:

The official Crash Bandicoot website, owned and operated by Activision, has been taken down. The latest archived version of the site is from this past summer, when rumors of a Sony acquisition of the franchise started popping up.

http://www.activision.com/search?cc=US;i=1;q=crash%20bandicoot