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Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (PC)













I'd heard it played very similar to Deus Ex and it does!

Lost Odyssey (360)

Having finished this epic JRPG earlier in the year i thought that i would post my thoughts about it on here. Released back in 2008 Lost Odyssey was created by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's new company Mistwalker and features a soundtrack by fellow Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu.

Lost Odyssey plays very much like a classic old school JRPG in the vein of the pre XII Final Fantasy games. It's battle system is simple to grasp but offers a huge amount of depth of customisation. This is down the the various rings that can be equipped by your party members which offer certain increased skill bonus' such as increased element damage or an increased chance of a critical attack.












What separates Lost Odyssey from the majority of modern RPG's is it's mature melancholy storyline and it's approach to characterisation. Yes there are a couple of cliches (the queen's approach to clothing for example) but in general it pulls it off very very well indeed. The dream sequences in particular are very intriguing and add to the depth of the main characters.
Also setting Lost Odyssey apart from the pack is it's old school approach to difficulty.

The random battle encounter rate is quite low when compared to other games in the genre but each battle presents a significant challenge. Adding to this is the fact that you can only gain a limited amount of XP from fighting the same set of enemies repeatedly, meaning that grinding your party up to a stupidly powerful level is practically impossible. This clever approach to level gaining added to the experience for me and maintained the tension and excitement throughout the game.












The bosses are a particular highlight and can be very tough indeed, as with the normal encounters each boss fight relies on using the correct strategy rather than using brute force
Graphically the game can be stunning in places but there are a couple of ropey looking areas. A couple of character models in particular could've been done better.

Voice acting is not too bad, i've certainly heard worse but the game benefits from the option to use the original Japanese voice track rather than the moderately enjoyable English one.

The soundtrack is a classic, the overworld theme is now one of my favourite Uematsu tracks and is probably his best work for quite a few years.
People have criticised both the after battle and game over themes of sounding too similiar to their Final Fantasy counterparts, but the way i see it this is a direct and intentional homage. They wanted to make a traditional Final Fantasy game in everything but name and that's certainly what they have done!













The game is not perfect though and there are a couple of small niggles. The game can be fussy with regards to lining up your character correctly for a context sensitive action such as opening a chest and the skill learning system can initially be confusing. These are very minor points however in what is certainly the best JRPG i've played since the PS1 days.

Lost Odyssey can be picked up very cheaply now (my practically new copy cost me just £5) so if you are a fan of the genre and own a 360 then you have no excuse really not to pick this up!

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles

Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP represents one of the best value purchases currently available for the console. Not only do you get a remake of one of the best Castlevania titles - Rondo Of Blood but you also get full versions of Symphony Of The Night and the original Rondo Of Blood on the disc as unlockables!

This in itself is fantastic as Rondo Of Blood has never been released outside of Japan (until it's release on the Wii Virtual Console) and the PC Engine original has always commanded a high price.













I have spoke before about my love for the original Rondo so i will move straight onto the remake. Graphically it's a bit of a mixed bag, some areas indeed do look gorgeous but other areas can look a bit shoddy, especially the character models. I feel that the game would've benefited from being proper 2d instead of the 2.5d polygon look.



















Music is decent, Rondo always had an amazing soundtrack and it's nice to hear the old tracks performed in an orchestral style (i do still feel that the original soundtrack is far superior though).

Gameplay wise the remake plays pretty much the same as the original - very hard! This isn't helped by some of the muddy textures in a couple of areas sometimes making it hard to pick out certain enemies (bats at the start of stage 3b being a prime example))

Maria also seems to be less effective on the remake compared to the original, her attacks don't seem as powerful as they did. I've found myself struggling on a couple of bits with her which i blitzed through in the original. I hate what they've done to her and Richters character models, i loved the sprite work on both of them in the original.
















Symphony Of The Night is still fantastic, and having it on the lovely little PSP screen is a joy to behold. This is reason enough really to own the Dracula X Chronicles in my opinion especially as it can be picked up for around the same price as Symphony Of The Night costs on the Playstation Network.

Ridge Racer 6 (360)

Consistently passed over by the mainstream in favour of other more realistic racers in recent times the Ridge Racer series is still the cornerstone of any good console launch line up. Ridge Racer 6 released for the 360 in stiff competition from the like of Project Gotham Racing 3 but has since developed a following amongst arcade racer fans and fans of the series alike.

Ridge Racer 6 does initially start off quite slow, the first few races can seem a bit pedestrian because of the speed of the lower class cars. This is much less of a problem if you're playing in the first person view rather than the outside car view as this heightens the sensation of speed.













Once the game gets going and you move on to the next few classes of cars then the experience is scintillating. Ridge Racer 6 takes the blueprint laid out by the two PSP entries in the series and brings it into the HD age. Of course using the PSP titles as an initial template means that the nitrous gauge is now present which brings a whole new strategy to the gameplay as you drift to fill the gauge and then attempt to chain the boosts together for added speed.

The nitrous and how you use it is the key to winning races, especially later on in the game when it becomes very challenging indeed.













Graphically i think the game looks great and it's look (as always for Ridge Racer) is a world away from all the conservative, realistic looking racers out there. I also enjoy the music but i can imagine anyone else present in the room whilst the game is on would find it slightly annoying!

Resident Evil 5 - a re-think

As noted in a previous blog entry i was very disappointed in the general direction that Capcom took this game after the awesomeness that was Resident Evil 4, my main point of disillusion being the "forced" co-op with the terribly coded A.I. partner.
Over the past couple of months however i've found that my opinion has changed considerably, i actually now really like the game! I think this turnaround is down to a few different reasons...

Downloadable Content:

The Lost in Nightmares DLC is absolutely fantastic, although short at approximately an hour long it is a lovely homage to the original game and actually shows how stunning a "proper" Resident Evil game would've looked using this game engine. Jill is a million times less annoying than Sheva was also and of course the team of her and Chris feels 100 times for natural in the context of the series.

Desparate Escape is less good but one thing i will say about it is that the partner A.I. seems greatly improved from the main game, if only they'd spent a bit more time making Sheva's AI as good as this.












The Mercenaries reunion DLC has also improved my enjoyment with Rebecca Chambers becoming my favourite character to use and I've also began to prefer the new soundtrack included in this mode.

The competitive online Versus modes have also been a blast to play with a friend although it suffers from many people using the overpowered version of Wesker that you can unlock.


Achievement & Trophy hunting:

Due to this being part of my favourite gaming franchise I've really wanted to unlock as many of the single player achievements as possible, which has lead to me tackling the higher difficulties which has increased the tension and made the experience a much more exhilarating experience especially on the Professional difficulty level with it's one hit kills.
I can honestly say that completing the game on Professional with a like minded friend is one of my treasured gaming memories of recent years.
I've also spent time upgrading all the weapons to unlock achievements which leads me nicely into my next point..












Special weapons:

After the initial couple of playthroughs one of the problems i had with the game was that there seemed to be too many generic weapons in comparison to the ones found in Resident Evil 4, especially the assault rifles. This has now changed now that i have everything unlocked and upgraded, the 3 barreled Hydra shotgun and the 3 Magnum pistols being my absolute favourites. In fact i don't even bother with the boringly similar assault rifles anymore preferring to use a fully upgraded V761 Sub machine gun with infinite ammo (reminds me very much of the glorious TMP found in the forth game)

So in closing i guess i was pretty much wrong about the game, I've put in 50hrs with the 360 version and around 25 i think on the PS3 so I'm obviously enjoying it far more than i thought initially!

Call Of Duty: Black Ops (360)

If there is one word i would use to describe this game it's Lazy. Yeah the multiplayer is fantastic and the single player campaign does have a couple of nice moments but in general it all feels a bit safe.

Putting the multiplayer to one side for one minute the single player campaign feels really dated, much like the earlier Call Of Duty games enemies spawn and spawn, spamming grenades as they do - it all just feels so unrealistic next to something like Medal Of Honor which at least tries to make it's encounters a bit more authentic.












The plot is stupid, yes i know Modern Warfare 2 had a stupid plot also but it's set pieces and combat were far better. I really don't know what to think about the single player segments of this series anymore, it all just feels tacked on as if they know most people will only play the multiplayer anyway. It's a shame as a couple of levels in Call Of Duty 4 really felt like the future of military first person shooters ("Crew Expendable" and "All Ghillied Up")











I think the Zero Punctuation review hit the nail on the head when he said that the game has no sense of pacing whatsoever, there is no downtime really to create tension - a trick which all the best FPS's have used. Here it's just explosion after explosion it just feels completely robotic.

Tune of the day:

This awesome track from Lost Odyssey, composed by the legend that is Nobuo Uematsu