DmC Devil May Cry is Fun. So Much Fun.

This is going to be a brief set of early impressions because I’ve barely played the game in question. That said, I still very much wanted to write about DmC Devil May Cry because of how much fun I’ve been having with the game, ever since I booted it up earlier this evening.

Now, I’m no Devil May Cry expert, but I do love action games in general, and games where you’re afforded a high degree of agility. DmC is one such game, judging by the hour-and-a-half I’ve spent with it so far. Dante feels incredibly smooth to control and has so many different kinds of moves at his disposal that it’s sort of amazing they all fit on a single controller.

DmC started off fun enough, but the point that the game really sank its claws into me is when I found two new weapons in addition to the sword Dante always carries around with him. The first weapon is Arbiter, a demonic axe that’s good for hitting things really hard.

Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - A Step in the Right Direction

In recent years, The Legend of Zelda series has suffered from no end of problems. While Zelda games released in the last seven years have consistently been “good” (some even “very good”), there’s always been something missing. Some crucial element that keeps them from attaining the immortality enjoyed by Ocarina of Time.

Infuriatingly, this certain “something” that is missing tends to be different in the case of every Zelda game, so it isn’t as though one can simply point to a single missing ingredient and identify it as the culprit.

Ace Attorney 5 Special Episode

Orcas and penguins and murders, oh my!

Spider-Man Games Usually Have Such Great Music

Of every superhero, Spider-Man has probably not only been in the most games to date, but also the most good games to date. Great Spider-Man games date all the way back to the Sega Genesis, proceeding onto the PS1 generation—which is where they really started to come into their own—and the generations hence.

That said, while most of the Spider-Man games themselves have been fantastic, the one other outstanding quality they all seem to share in common is that they all have great music. I don't know why this is, precisely, but I would imagine it's because Spider-Man himself evokes a sense of enthusiasm and adventure, which makes it easy to compose fun, upbeat music for his games.

Below are just some of the tracks I've enjoyed from the Spider-Man games I've played. There are a lot more, of course, but these are the ones I seem to remember most fondly.

Tomb Raider: An Experience That Stays With You Long After

Earlier in the week, I discovered something that made me very happy. The new Tomb Raider game—a reboot of the series that came out a few months ago—has been nominated in a number of categories for the Spike TV videogame awards. Best of all, it’s one of five nominees in the “Game of the Year” category, which I personally believe is an award it deserves to win.
 
Now, the Spike videogame awards (now named “VGX” for that extra edginess) are by no means an effective commentary on the state of the games industry. They tend to limit the majority of their coverage to popular, big-budget titles and don’t really accommodate the stream of smaller games that really try to do something different and push the industry in interesting directions. That said, the awards are very much focused on catering to a very broad, very mainstream audience, and this is part of why they’re important—because they’re fantastic for exposure. And the more people that know about Tomb Raider, the better.
 
Tomb Raider is my favourite kind of game—one that doesn’t shy away from being “gamey” in lieu of being an interactive movie instead. A game that’s a “game” first and a “story” second, but still manages to combine the two into an experience that is both fun and makes you feel like you’ve witnessed someone grow into the person they’re going to be for the rest of their life. Tomb Raider is a game that throws you into a virtual playground and showers you with places to explore, collectibles to find, and interesting puzzles to solve. It’s the kind of game that’s fun, replayable, and will make you want to come back to it again. At the same time, it’s also the story of how a girl went from being a bright, young university student to genius archaeologist and hardened adventurer.

Testing, testing~

Let's see how this works...  Is this working?

Scarlet Ibis!

Super Mario 3D Land - They Finally Got It Right

Super Mario 3D Land is really fun and is one of those perfect portable games. I don’t have much to say on the subject, since I’m by no means an expert on Mario, and other people have already expounded on the subject enough, but it’s a great blend of 2D and 3D Mario elements.

I’m not very fond of 2D Mario games at all. They feel a little too simplistic and unforgiving, and I get bored of them very quickly, since there isn’t a whole lot to do other than run and jump—and you’re always going one direction. 3D Mario games, however, are great. I love the freedom of movement and all of the different moves and abilities Mario can use to explore the world around him, both horizontally and vertically, with no restrictions as to where he can go.

With Super Mario 3D Land, it looks as though Nintendo, after a significant amount of trial and error, have managed to identify precisely what people appreciate about both 2D Mario and 3D Mario, and incorporate those features into the same game.

Pokémon X/Y Could/Should Have Been So Much More

This is just going to be a randomly-cobbled-together list of observations about Pokémon Y that I’ll keep updating as I play more of the game. Most of these points are probably going to be complaints, unfortunately, as I find that at nearly every turn, the game makes me envision what could have been, rather than delivering a great experience.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: A Japanese RPG Like No Other

If you’re someone that’s been playing videogames for a long time, chances are  you’ve had that moment where you’ve come across a niche Japanese RPG from years past that you’d never heard of before. The kind of game that only a few seemed to care for in its heyday, but you can’t quite figure out why, because in theory, it sounds great. The kind of game that isn’t really discussed by any of the popular websites out there, but if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a number of dedicated fan sites with enough information and analysis to fill an entire encyclopaedia. The kind of game that looks like it requires time and dedication and makes you think, and in return, takes you on a journey that isn’t like anything else you’ve ever seen before.

Granted, this is a rare occurrence nowadays. Japanese RPGs aren’t what they once used to be, and with the exception of a handful of publishers, the genre as a whole has largely abandoned its pride, pandering to the underbelly of today’s otaku audience instead of trying to do what it was once best known for—telling great stories. If you’re over the age of 20, finding a JRPG with a story and characters that treat you like an adult is about as rare as Batman wetting his pants. (Which only happened once, by the way.)

Luckily, the two or three publishers shouldering the burden of keeping JRPGs relevant all by themselves are doing a kickass job of it. One of those publishers is Atlus, and this past year, they decided to revive the very RPG that made them famous in the first place—Shin Megami Tensei.