PS2 Spree

Feeling nostalgic i went through a few lists of kick ass PS2 RPG's and such. I ended up finding a few of the top ten titles and never having been too into the genre during its PS2 hay day I have never played any of them.

First up on the list is the Dot hack GU series. I've been playing through volume one and i have literally gone 18 straight hours playing it. A hack and slash thats not quite just a hack and slash style combat that's repetitive yet addicting. An interesting setting and story that keeps me playing and tons of side quests. The only problem the game has, a huge, glaring, obnoxious problem, are the characters. I'm not entirely sure how far into the game im at, but the characters have been just terrible since the first couple of seconds. Hasaeo, the main character is an arrogant idiot (yet seems to be the only one who realizes they're still just playing a freaking game) and the rest seem to be horribly innocent, cliche retards who seem to have forgotten that they are in fact in a video game. As annoying as they all are they all do seem to have the occasional bad ass moment though, so its not entirely bad and its no reason to stop playing.

Next on the nostalgia list is Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3. This game is so JRPG its almost hilarious. It's very fun, and the story is amazing and dark. It never gets old watching the Persona invocations (you know, a magical bullet to the head) The game as a whole does get old really quickly as the game play is very repetitive so i can only really take it in small doses, but those doses are fucking great. You play a Japanese high school student that has the ability to stay awake during the dark hour where all other humans drop into a coffin and sleep for an hour to protect them from crazy demon monsters and wake up without a clue it happens. This kid joins a group of other high school kids in his dorm that fight these demons using "personas" fractions of their mind that can form into bad ass looking creatures with cool abilities. The main character can actually summon and use every persona instead of just one which leads to some cool customization of party roles. You play half the game in school doing random social events and making friends to strengthen social contacts which in turn strengthens your personas. The other half of the game is played at night after school when you can take your team to the "tartarus" tower where all the demons come from. Working floor to floor killing demons and finding sick gear until you feel beat and return to sleep and then repeat it all over again. Slightly repetitive, but really fun and dark as hell.

I just picked up a copy of another interesting and well rated RPG in last days of the PS2. Rouge Galaxy, a fun game half single player and half online. haven't gotten a chance to play too much of it, but the combat is a lot like Persona 3 and therefore very fun.

Last but not least I have been playing through Fatal Frame 2 again. I just love it. The extremely fucked up story. The creepy as hell setting and atmosphere. The combat requiring you to get yourself as close as possible to some horrific looking ghosties. FF2 is just an amazing PS2 game and ranks as one of my favorite games of all time.

If I can get out of this PS2 kick I just might play through The Darkness 2 and Hitman Contracts.

Rant of the week

Because i have inevitably drifted back to playing WoW again, mainly due to my gf plays it. I have been pulled into the "starcraft two starter edition". Now iv never played the first one myself, but from what iv seen of it and from what iv heard i gathered starcraft 2 was essentially the same game just with enhanced graphics, which when i installed it for some reason detected my computer was not actually quite a good machine and set it at the lowest possible settings which pretty much looked like starcraft  one graphics. Anyways in the end i thought id give the game a try, as iv heard so much about how great it is, and how strategic it is, how many players out there are now professional starcraft players, etc. Being a huge RTS fan (they were in fact the first games i delved into with the PC when i was yet still a wee lad, age of empires and empire earth and all.) After the first few missions though i couldn't take it anymore. EVERYTHING i saw was just yet another ripoff from the war hammer 40k universe, which from my last post you might be able to tell i absolutely love. I have 40k books, 40k games, 40k wallpapers, 40k role playing games, and 40k figures (although unfortunately the actual tabletop isn't made for anyone who doesn't have several hundred dollars to spend.) I am a huge warhammer 40k fan and in turn could not bring myself to play anymore starcraft.....40k. Although the game play is quite different from Dawn Of War, and in a lot of ways better, and the game play itself is pretty fun nearly everything i was seeing was some sort of derivative of the 40k universe, which in turn completely shut me off from the game without a chance for logic or fun to step in and stop me. There you had it my rant of the week.


     In other news though and in a semi rant. WHERE IS MY ADVENTURE UPDATE NOTCH?!?!?

     Also been playing a little bit of "From Dust" and iv gotten about halfway through the story and so far seems a neat little game. Not much to it in the end, but it is fairly fun and when you beat the game you unlock a sandbox mode for you to drop lava on poor villages, send tsunami's to poor villages, set poor villages on fire, drop giant rocks on poor villages, well i think you get the point, its something to look forward to if you find the story mode boring.

     Now it's back to game development and continuing to learn the fine points of BYOND's game engine and language. Anyone willing to help out feel free to comment!

Count Aggro returns. With a vengance!

I waited months for a particular game to come out. Pre-ordered it. Then proceeded to play it for eleven hours straight. The game? Space Marine. A hack and slash game heart and soul fused with a 3rd person shooter with a penchant for needing fields of waist high walls to crouch behind, create a game much like Gears of War, but with the whole not needing to duck behind cover and fire around walls at alien things and being X-Box only part. No this game is far more entertaining. Relic took the brutality and the style from GoW, but turned it into a Warhammer 40k game any fan could love. By that i mean making you an eight foot tall bad ass in power armor with 80 caliber rocket propelled explosive ammo guns and chain swords and giving them an endless horde of orks to slaughter through with glee, leaving nothing but orky red residue and bolter casings in their wake. It starts off with you and only three other marines jumping out of a drop ship with a jet pack, dodging and weaving through an in atmo space fight and anti air fire to land in the middle of an ark camp, and the game doesn't ever let up, just MORE orks and  just when you start to get just a little bored of green skins, just when your looking for a little more challenge or just a slight kink in the story's over all straight forward plot line. The game throws in a chaos army with teleporting daemons and space marines with plasma cannons to up the ante. All i can say is it is EXACTLY what i expected it to be. A hack and slash game but with guns too in a over the shoulder camera angle. So if your looking for a bad ass game full of bad asses, bad assing it with non stop dark gory slashing ork curb stomping chaos eviscerating goodness then its well worth the 60 bucks, because that is exactly what you'll get, its certainly entertaining.

     In other news/games. Iv been getting back into the wonderful horrors of Minecraft. With the adventure update looming just over the horizon, and my friends pretty swell server has tempted me back to the 32 bit (i have an HD texture pack, I'm too good for 16 bit) addictive goodness. A website for the server is in the makings and full online connectivity is still in the works but you can join via hamachi. If you'd like to play just leave a comment and Il send you the server info. The server itself is still a little under development, but fairly fun as its like an RPG with a race and class system and encouraged role playing and community resources.

     I'm also delving into the wonderfully frustrating world of indie game development for something to do that's a little productive. Working on creating a simple game through the BYOND engine as its a fairly simple yet intricate and fun platform for small 16 bit games. If you haven't heard of it id check it out it has its fair share of horrifying games, but there are some fun ones such as Space Station 13.

     That's it for now, but I will be posting every other day if not daily from now on as i have a lot of material to cover, and plenty of frustrating gaming rants to go on forever about, so subscribe and enjoy my awesome talent of bullshitting and ranting, or maybe its ranting bullshit?