My sincere apologies, I haven’t been updating this at all. Not exactly demotivated, but every evening I come in from College, and I am absolutely knackered. Long days don’t really allow me to do much productive in the way of playing SF4 or writing about it. So I thought I’d apologise now for that much anyway. This post will actually be a little bit of a round-up of the games I’ve been playing over the past week or so.
As for what’s actually been going on, I’ve been having some down time. With the hyper competitive nature of Street Fighter 4, I might have a few games on an evening with it, but little more than that. SF Chris Strife, Madara and Kenwood and gladly gave me games on the evenings, but I have been sinking my time into other projects more liberally. I’ve been looking to get my kicks from more casual games. Turns out I do actually play other games other than fighters – and they have been taking up much more of my time than said fighters. I’ll probably have to return to my GameCube collection within the coming weeks. Anyway, my recent played list looks a little like:
Ascend: Hand of Kul
As with most RPGs, I haven’t got my “Caos” to look quite as badass as this dude. Yet.
F2P RPG (Free to Play Role Playing Game) on 360 Arcade. It’s kinda of an MMO, but somewhat loosely due to the lack of interactivity between players. Apparently in it’s Beta stages, but it’s still a decent time sink. There are 3 factions to join and they change which magic abilities are available to you – Light, Dark and Void. I sided with the Void Faction simply because I’m a hipster and I like the idea of Ice Powers and a moderately Neutral Faction. You accumulate “Souls” as you go, and Souls are essentially your currency. You can use Souls to upgrade your equipment, weapons and damage. It plays OK, and grants you a series of basic combos to perform and a number of different types of equipment to wield. I’ve enjoyed tearing apart the combat system. You can perform:
Fierce Attack xx Block, Fierce Attack xx Block, Fierce Repeat Inf.
Works extremely effectively and places blocking opponents into a Stagger State. You also get some form of Hyper Armour right before you attack sometimes. Basically, if you Tap Block (RT) after any attack, You will be in a blocking state and it’ll cancel the rest of the attack animation you were just performing. Same goes for Dash Attacks, Lights, Fierces, Magic? It’s clearly the most powerful thing in the game. I just hope they balance that if they actually introduce PvP, because at the moment it is horrifically broken. Makes it worse if that system was intentional. Eitherway, decent button masher and good time sink. I found I was enjoying it more, for how mindlessly powerful you can make yourself due to what is essentially “Baby’s First Fierce xx Faint xx Fierce”. The game is very vast, and has tonnes of replay ability – but only if this kind of stuff is what your looking for. It’s a lot of the same kind of combat – especially as something like Fierce xx Faint xx Fierce. Graphically it looks good for a game, in it’s Beta and an XBL Arcade game. There are however, some serious issues with Frame Rate Drops and extremely cases of lag. If this game had a functional OFFLINE mode, that’d be great, because, sometimes the lag is just unforgivably obnoxious and the load times are pretty horrible.
Other than that – it’s worth a play, as it can be quite an entertaining bash. It does feature Micro Transactions because it is F2P, but I wouldn’t bother with those it offers, as at the moment, you can achieve everything the Micro-Transactions do but with maybe an extra 15 mins gametime spent. Interactivity between players consists of sending enemies between them through Banishes and Curses – forcing you or your opponent to fight opponents from your world. Makes for either a desperate move to get enemies away from them in their world or to score “Crusade” Points for a kill on a weak player in another world. Some interesting mechanics here, and it’d be nice to see them elaborated on in the later stages of the game’s production.
Might and Magic – Clash of Heroes.
A Turn-based puzzle RPG thing… for 360 Arcade. Looks pretty damn good actually, and my brother swears by it. Looking to play it a little more in the future.
Free for October on XBL. It’s packed with content and modes for your Solo gamer, your Couch Multiplayer Gamer or your Online Gamer…
or your Online Co-operative Gamer…
It’s gameplay functions are basically Taking turns with your opponent, lining up lines of “Same Colour” “Same Type” units, and depending on how you arrange them, their stance will change. Lining 3 “Same Colour” “Same Type” units vertically will result in an Offensive manoeuvre that will result in an Attack being performed. Every attack has a Start-up of “X” amount of turns, “X’s” value changes depending on the unit type. Arranging them Horizontally will result in each unit involved transforming into a defensive wall, helping to nullify or reduce damage done directly to your health bar. Attacks deal damage to the health bar if they connect with the back line, and defensive walls help reduce damage or nullify damage to the health bar. Idle Units (units that are literally hanging around, not doing much) will act as defensive barriers – albeit weak ones in comparison to walls. Each attack has an Attack rating, and each unit/wall has a defensive rating – each unit can take their defensive rating’s worth of damage before they are removed from play. It has a deep meta game, and I won’t even do it justice by explaining here. There are tonnes of mechanics so you’ll rarely find yourself doing a useless turn as there will be some purpose to it. It has grounds for good Multiplayer, and a pretty lengthy Single Player Campaign – playing as multiple factions, which grant tonnes of Unit Types, Special Units and “Hero Spells”. Eitherway – check it out on the marketplace if your looking for a puzzler – it’s Free 2 Play for October I think. I’m likely going to be looking into playing this game a bit more.
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair
Now.. I just really like this game. I’ve been playing it for a long time and it’s been on the XBL Marketplace for even longer. It’s usually the middle ground where me and my brother agree on what we wanna play. Becoming less like that now, as we’re each getting ever so close to literally maxing out our favourite characters. For those who aren’t aware, Castlevania HoD is essentially a Action/Platformer? Maybe. If you have ever played the early Metroid Games or Castlevania Symphony of the Night – it plays like that. Unlike those, it is very Co-Op heavy. It’s a 2D platformer, with various salutes and hails to the earlier Castlevania series such as playable characters and stages from various games in the series.
This is Chapter 4. It takes heavy inspiration from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin on DS – featuring environments, enemies and bosses from that game.
The environments are this big though – there just aren’t many of them.
Unfortunately, most of the notable stages are DLC stages and some of the notable characters are DLC too. For example – Jonathan Morris (Portrait of Ruin) is the ONLY character with a whip in the game until you look at DLC, and the stages inspired by Symphony of the Night are all DLC ones. That in it’s self is disappointing – but excellent practice from a marketing stand point. This is one of the few games that I have been quite willing to invest in DLC content. It’s an interesting game, but I will admit it is incredibly slow to start – and multiplayer isn’t exactly the most fun until you can feel like you can contribute, and that will take AGES. It’s been out for a long time now so the vast Online who still plays it is extremely well equipped. And equipping yourself takes an AGE of grinding and a patient mentality. I find I avoid the main cast of this game, and I ended up downloading a few notable DLC Characters – Julius Belmont, Richter Belmont are the ones I play quite literally all the time, because I’m one for diversity. 😉 eitherway, I love playing this game – there’s a certain quality or vibe of Devil May Cry that I get from it. There are few stages (6 with the main game and the rest of them are DLC) but this encourages runs of these stages that can get as close to flawless as possible. Richter is a moderately technical character as using his copious amounts of movement options and varied attacks is kind of key to landing the most damage in any individual series of attacks. Every enemy in the game has pretty telegraphed attacks, and it plays in a sense of being familiar and identifying the correct situation to attack and which attacks the enemy is doing and how your character can avoid them. It essential makes the level of difficulty extremely subjective to how well you, YOURSELF can avoid damage and land it safely. Doing this reliably and consistently definitely gives a feeling of Devil May Cry styled satisfaction. This is probably the primary reason I have been playing this game for so long, because I value the whole “self-improvement” aspect (I am getting better at this, not just my avatar). I personally find reward in completing the stage better than I have done previously, and improving in the evasion of damage, and I find the same with Devil May Cry.
Improving your character requires different things for different people. This is where the grinding begins. It’s arduous and will take up a lot of the playtime invested. Some (Soma) will have themselves power up relatively quickly overtime. You only improve through collection of better equipment or following specific rules of the character. Some of these are never explained in game. Improving each character requires different collections or uses:
– Soma
Collecting Souls of the enemies killed. Works off a percentage drop chance that it will release a Soul. This ability happens regardless of whether you kill it – or whether your ally kills it from miles away. Likelihood is improved through changing the character’s LCK rating and the use of Soul-Eater Rings. This method of powering up is consistent with Dawn of Sorrow and Aria of Sorrow.
– Jonathan and All Belmonts inc. Fuma (Richter, Simon, Julius, Fuma)
Acquire martial arts through collection inside of chests. Martial Arts can have their damage increased naturally along with the rest of your character. Simon and Fuma cannot collect Matrial Arts. Sub-weapons are also acquired out of chests and can be applied to 4 assignments to the B Button. Sub-Weapons are improved through usage or “Mastery”. This can be quickened through the use of Mastery Rings.
– Alucard
Like martial arts, his Dark Magic is collected in chests. However, these Dark Magics improve upon each subsequent collection of them. For example – Hell Fire can be collected on Chapter 3 – each time you collect it, it will become stronger.
– Shanoa
Acquires Glyphs off of compatible enemies. Holding UP next to an enemy about to attack with said Glyph will absorb the Glyph and acquire the ability. You will then be able to equip that ability in the Offensive Gear menu. She gets a variety of abilities and spells to use, but she needs to improve them through “Mastery”. The process can be sped up through equipping Mastery Rings.
– Charlotte
By using her RB ability – she opens her book facing frontwards with what appears to be a shield. Compatible enemy spells and projectiles connecting with this will nullify the damage and will potentially absorb and acquire the attack based on percentage chance. She can acquire a variety of magic and each levels up to level 9. Only one spell can be collected per enemy – the process will be working if a little *ching* sound is heard upon absorbing the attack.
As for other characters, I don’t really know as I haven’t downloaded them. Yoko Belnades and Maria Renard are also available to download. I wish the game didn’t cost 1200 MS points and THEN have so much additional content to download. It seems really sly to only allow you to play 5 characters (Soma, Alucard, Jonathan, Shanoa, Charlotte) with DLC Characters that exceed that number and 5 DLC Stages. Very expensive affair, but I’ve got a lot of hours out of it so far. I’d seriously only recommend playing this with a group of friends or friend who also has it, because I can imagine Solo grinding is painful. Luckily, I had my Brother wanting “Sonic Boots” too, and I get on with him, so the pain of getting the wrong item after around 60 times became slightly more tolerable. I think more for me, I enjoy this game much more that I probably should because one of my favourite games of all time is Super Metroid on SNES, and I loved the Castlevania games for DS. I never actually played Symphony of the Night before about a week ago so my love for this genre came from elsewhere. But this style holds a tight grip on my extreme nostalgia driven love for some games that shouldn’t stand up today. This one still has extremely solid gameplay, tight gameplay but is lacking on the way the developers addressed the DLC content of the game itself.
If you are thinking of buying this at all though – a word of advice. Get the version on PS3 instead if you can – you can have LOCAL Co-Op play on PS3, but not 360.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Platforms, shoop-de-woop.
Super Mario All Stars…
The HD Remix, before HD Remixes.
Lost for ideas one evening, it was decided that we’d “Whack out the SNES”. We lack a second controller so we went for Super Mario Allstars. It’s a cartridge released for SNES that contains most of the early NES Mario Games but what is essentially a Super Nintendo remake of each game. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels are all featured and they all play pretty damn well. Me, the Brother and the Sister got pretty heavily invested in the Super Mario Bros. universe. I was always pretty bad at Mario, hate to admit, but it’s not a lie. Over the past couple of days though, my Brother pretty much carried the “Squad” to World 8 – like a champ. Can’t say I have to justify Mario’s success – but it is extremely simple, extremely good, and accessible for all players. It’s fun and in equal measure frustrating, but its good and a very solid formula. 2D Platforming games in their prime.
Closing Comments:
A very casual week. And in all seriousness – that is about all I’ve been doing. Getting knackered from college is something else I guess but that wouldn’t constitute for an interesting paragraph. Good stuff – I hope to be writing a little more in the near future. Maybe more on SF4 and Marvel. Looking at the sheer amount of Dante related stuff coming up on EventHubs.com and finding it pretty difficult to ignore. Might have to jump in on some of those IFC Yipes technologies.
“Keepin’ it Stylish.”
ssf4ryu 