Pepsi_Biofusion

I still can

I want to get one thing off my chest before anyone speculates, I am no ND fanboy, infact I think there the most over rated developer in Sony's roost but that doesn't mean they havn't done great things, and I would like to think that the original Jak and Daxter is one of them. If your wondering how good this HD port is, well its solid, the frame rate is smooth, theres very little loading and the 720p visuals do look good, 1080 may have been better but hey. However there is the odd blemish such as some icons and menus havn't been beefed up to HD. Theres also a solid trophy list thats very easy to get them all and the icons are lovingly crafted assuring that this is no botch job port. the game itself is simple, its a platformer first, second and third, almost to a fault. The world is bright and charming, Daxter is hillarious and the charcters infectiously amusing. Gameplay basically consists of jumping on platforms, drivng a hover bike here and there and punching bad guys, which all works well part from enemies encounters sometimes feel like filler as there too easy and too few variations of enemy. the camera also is problematic as it constantly jams in awkward possitions and can make jumping between small ledges a pain, its not nearly as bad as Jak IIs camera, and the excellent controls largely offset this issue. Another minor quible is the music, it doesn't have much of an identity often feeling like some botched tunes from Crash Bandicoot were half-heartedly brought over, however a lot of the music is very solid. This game is all about collecting, whether it be powercells or orbs, all you need to know is its very addictive and rather easy, perhaps a little too easy. It took me just 10-12 hours to Platinum but it was joyous despite being a tad simple and dated but I can say with honesty that this is the best PS2 game I have played thus far and I can't wait for a possible ratchet and Clank collection.

I am not a strong fighting game fan by any means but I went ahead and purchased SoulCalibur V in its limted edition box based on my fond memories of SoulCalibur II and general interest of the fighting genre. I wish that i could keep my found memories but alas SCV is just a bit of a lazy effort that actually, isn't as good as its 8 year old counterpart. First things first, story, not a staple in fighting games yes but thats NO excuse, its absolutely disgraceful, an hour long (2 at best) and flicking between two boring uninspired characters in a drol story thats an absolute cake walk, oh and most of the cutscenes are done in sketches that make a reciept look like a work of art. Also why did that advance it 15 years? just to cut out all the good characters, wheres Talim etc? and that could've been fine if it wernt for the tedious new charcters that arn't worth the pixels that form there name, the developers reasoning also not exactly favourable, they axed a female charcter 'cause she was too old to fight, what mid 30's... when you have elderly guys, somethings tells me she just wouldn't have been "pretty" enough for the odd pervert they were trying to cater to. Then theres an ever bigger issue, content, seriously Namco, where is it? In SCII we got an art gallery, could have matches without time constraints, could move the hud display and resize it to our liking, chance the display area, read character bios, have substantial single player content and purchase weapons of our choosing, none of which is avaliable in SCV. So what does SCV have, well its has great music, a decent customisation system, a solid fighting engine and some pretty graphics. Well actually much of that is subjective, yes the game looks pretty but there are A LOT of graphical blemishes, mostly through clipping of clothing and hair, bland enviroments and just generally a weak art style, some arenas notably are prettier than others too. the customisation is good, in that you can create a cool character easily however I find although theres plenty of clothing to choose from, theres a lack of different faces, hair styles, body shapes and sizes to choose from so you'll find most of you're characters looking quite similar. you also can't create you're own fighting style and have to pick a hieght based on fighting style, so if you like Lexia's style (a lot like Talim from SCII) you're big hulking brute will have to be converted to a fat stubby bloke just to go into fights without the dissadvantage. Speaking of dissadvantages, the fighting engine is somewhat inblanced at best, I recall far too many people selecting siegfried online aswell as nightmare to an extent as they are way overpowered or advantaged. In all fairness though the fighting is fun despite a lack of single player content to really get used to it, although those new attacks, whatever there called, have proven more redundant both online and off than an Atari Jaguar, needless to say you won't see players (who are trying to win) pull them off very often. The online conection, at least here in Scotland with my terrible broadband, is actually very good, I didn't notice any slowdown or lag whatsoever in my 110 online matches, however to play non-competitavely you have to spend 90% of the time waiting for other players to finish fighting, which I know is a staple in many fighting games, but seriously thats no excuse, I payed for this game and I expect to actually be able to, you know, play it. This game does have a few saving graces other than online and customisation though, theres a lot of statistics kept for you to compete with you're friends from the major contests (total wins, win ratio) to the utterly useless (total distance traveled)... but its allways good to be able to beat them at something right? The arcade mode has numerous paths and difficulty settings and is fairly enjoyable, theres a mock online mode with is decent but ultimately the AI is VERY exploitable and theres a real sense of comunity online, regardless of how little Namco may have actually contributed to that. So yes its a decent game, just one that lacks that level of polish you would expect this generation, indeed when i have my SoulCalibur itch, just know I'll be popping SCII into my Gamecube rather than delving into this fighter again.

Do you love to be tortured by electronic software? Do you love to have to spend near 100 hours to beat a bland story across repetitive backdrops? Or would you be thrilled if I told you it only costs about double the game itself (£40) to buy enough DLC to cut out the mindless grinding? If you're answer to all of that is no you may wonder why I would stick an 8 onto such a game, and its because, frankly, despite blatantly being built to rip you off with DLC or soak up 100 hours of you're time to accomplish very little, this is one fantastic strategy JRPG. I've allready got most of the bad out of the way but theres a few more bad points I'd like to warn you of, namely this game is very half-hearted-ly made, in that enemies/sprite/environments/sound effects/special effects by and large come from other IF games like Cross Edge and Trinity Universe, I can't imagine it took more than 2 months to patch this game together. However A Zero can get away with that based on a brilliant combat system, amongst other things. Battles take place on a grid and you can have 6 members in battle at any one time, its a lot like Fire emblem, only (dare I say it) better. You can excecute combos by placing party members in certain possitions in relation to each other, and you can further add to the skill element by selecting a map that suits you. For example you can choose a map with areas that increase you're attack power, especially usefull against enemies reliant on magic, you also have an SP guage which adds even MORE depth to the battle system allowing you to use extra powerfull attacks if that party member has taken a lot of hits (not damage but sperate hits) or has defeated some foes. Ofcourse this wouldn't be an IF game without insanely hard boss battles, which are brilliantly designed and will even challenge the most seasoned JRPG vet EVEN if you bought all the DLC the last few bosses will give you a run for you're money (quite literaly) Ofcourse battling waves of tough enemies and numerous brutal bosses could be stressful so A Zero attempts to relieve you're aching trigger fingures with laid back activities, from getting to know some very beautiful women that bit better (and earning the right to see them in more revealing... ahem interesting costumes) to the good old IF beach and hot spring scenes. Its not just pretty ladies ofcourse that will aid you through tough battles, although there is another way they aid you (more on that soon) as you can also do the industry standard of capturing monsters and having them fight for you, aswell as being able to combine them together to make all sorts of beings, you can also synthesise new items, inhance existing weaponry, earn titles (such as to win 100 battles or have a certain number of rare itmes) and enjoy vacation days where you can just chill and talk to your favourite characters. A Zero only has 2 generations, which for those of you new to Agarest (like I was) is a system where you choose one of 3 girls to have a child with (it doesn't show you how ofcourse) and that child becomes you're new main character for the second part of the game, the girl you pick affects various things from you're new characters appearance to his stats (the more the girl likes you the better they'll be) I also mentioned DLC (and bashed it) early on for one good reason, its really expensive but without it this game can last 100s of hours, especially considering there is A LOT of post game content, possibly more than the story itself aswell as new game plus with an even more brutal difficulty. To make life easy you will want at least £15/$25 to shorten the game, in all fairness its a cheep game in the first place, but the 2 PP packs plus a weapon pack will shave off 50 hours from the story, and save you from grindng AT ALL (just) Some DLC is ridiculously overpriced though but completely unecessary such as to unlock character voice samples. On a technical level Agarest Zero doesn't fair to badly, the graphics, although simple, are actually rather nice with high res textures and art aswell as adorable sprites, the music is great and very fitting and up beat and the loading times rather short. One last note there is no English dub, subs yes but no voice over, but you do get an excellent cast of Japanese voice actresses/actors to listen to. Long story short, this is a fantastic game despite obvious shortcomings and its well worth buying just to experience a genius battle system and to really challenge yourself.

I have to agree with Mattaclysm on this one, as much as I love NIS this is a disgraceful game that shames the industry we know and love. For a start I beat the game in 7 hours, and there is NO bonus content, I admit I used a guide (lazy sod I am) but most people seem to complete it within 15 hours, needless to say its very short. Its also brutally difficult at times with mammoth difficulty spike every time you move to a new area (until the last few dungeons where this game is a cake walk) and the combat is flawed to the point to controller breaking frustration. You have 2 characters in battle (both so unintersting I don't know there names) but in one gets paralized, they both do, if one gets poisoned... they both do etc which is particularly brutal during fights against 7 trolls and its taken you 15 minutes to get to the last one and you're both paralized. That said the battle system has some redemtion, I quite like choosing limbs to hack at in order, orcourse picking the order which to attack 9 seperate limbs for 7 enemies in one battle takes the bulk of you're time during battle, I seriously spent most my time sticking numbers beside limbs of all things. The graphics are, well, there just awfull, the textures are fairly decent res but they are so bland and lifeless, characters models ****, and the artwork is even worse. In LRs defense I must say some enemy models are quite well drawn to be fair, a few of the smaller ones in particular are done in a cell-shaded style that actually looks rather good. The music is flat-out the very worst music I have heard in my life, 'cept for one battle theme, its hideous and always sounds like you're under a motorway... yes Hitmaker and NIS call that "music" and the voice acting is bad, the story even worse. I should also note that the map is useless on a SD TV, you NEED HD for this game to read the words on the map, the enviroments are really difficult to navigate as they are. One redeeming feature (to some of us) is this game has the easiest Platinum trophy ever, even more so than Megamind (I'm ashamed to say I have both) and thankfully this game has no DLC, so you can't get ripped off twice. I'm actually amazed at how possitively this game has been recieved, it is far worse than Sonic 06 and Hyper D, not equall, NIS should be ashamed to still have this tripe on there online store let alone there name on the box.

Trinity Universe is a solid, if rather repetitive, JRPG with 2 separate story lines and a cast of wonderful... and annoying characters. You spend most of you're time walking around dungeons beating up monsters to some very catchy music, the dungeons themselves are like any IF game in that they are bland and made up solely of corridors and square rooms. The graphics are a mixed bag with some decent texture work and polygons but theres a lot of repetition in backrounds and enemies and party members look like there made of wax for some reason. Unfortunately some of this game is plain lazy, most enemies are taken straight from Cross Edge or Agarest, many of the enviromental objects aswell, and there is a lack of variation in enviroments. While this games music is top notch, very funky, the voice acting is hit or miss... largely miss especially the english dud, although Etna stands out as particulary strong. The battles are 3 vs 3(usually) turn based (sort off) in that you press buttons to correspond to different attack types, square for light, triangle for magic and x for heavy and you can combine combos through multiple characters for big damage and high multipliers. The battle system is fun but it gets old quick, as in 5 hours in the 15 hour story (there are 2 plus an end game so you get a good 30-40 hours) you will basically know all there is to know about it and have nothing to strive for. That said the story itself is ok, nothing as clever or humorous as Hyper D but far better than Cross Edge, it notably suffers from 1 too many tedious characters, particulary the young males. I wont spoil the story but its largely there just to give you an excuse to go through dozens of repetitive dungeons, theres a dolip of humour too which did make me smile every so often. Aside from 2 stories there are optional dungeons to tackle, over 100 gallery artworks to unlock, which are often done using super-deformed characters, synthesis and monster creating, optional events to watch aswell as a lot of customisation from weapon skins to meteorites (which increase you're characters stats) Theres also a lot of DLC avaliable for TU (at least here in the UK) but its very expensive for what it is, usually £2 for 5 weapons and the like, all the DLC combined could easily cost more than the game itself and it adds rather little to an already easy game. All in all this is a fun little JRPG with plenty of content but it does outstay its welcome through excessive repetition and there are cerntainly better anime JRPGs out there.