Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a third person cover based shooter that features more action than survival horror. With cooperative and competitive multiplayer, Capcom looks to try and take the Resident Evil series in a new direction.
No one should really be surprised Blades of Time is a bad game given it’s a spiritual successor to an even worse game.
It was never really a question if a cross over game between Street Fighter and Tekken would come out, it was more a question of when. Luckily for fans of both of these series, that date was ComicCon 2010, and just a little over two weeks ago, the game released to the public. My personal opinion about this game is that I think that it is an absolutely outstanding game with strong mechanics and a very large roster, yet there are a few things that seem to hold the game back from changing the gaming sphere the way that Street Fighter IV did in 2009. The fact of the matter is that the Capcom formula of releasing big name titles (especially fighting games) repeatedly, and also making small changes only to essentially re-release the same game months later, is starting to grow stale. At this point, we get into a discussion of who Capcom is catering towards, the general population, or the fighting game community? While the general populous have reacted a certain way towards Street Fighter X Tekken, if you look at any FGC (Fighting Game Community) stream on TwitchTV, you will see that the praises for SFxT are enormous. But regardless, coming from someone who is relatively good at fighting games and really drew close to the community after the release of SFIV, I will say that Street Fighter X Tekken is a very good game that I believe has the potential to become one of the first games where a tag team option is relatively reasonable, yet the single player mode is still incredibly deep.
The gameplay in Street Fighter X Tekken is a bit of a meld between traditional Street Fighter games (where there are 3 punches and three kicks), and the Marvel Vs. Capcom series (where if you press light, medium, heavy, launcher, you will launch your opponent into the air and can tag in your partner (it auto tags them in, in SFxT)). This makes combos fairly easy, as you can actually switch between punches and kicks to combo as well. What I mean by this is that if you press light punch, medium punch, heavy punch, heavy punch in succession, you will launch your opponent into the air (assuming they do not block), and your tag team partner will rush in, which you can use to increase your combo. In addition, you could do light punch, medium punch, heavy kick, heavy kick, and that would launch your opponent as well, because it is the same series of light, medium, heavy, heavy (it does not matter if you use punch or kick). You can also do a launcher by pressing heavy punch and heavy kick at the same time, and the reason that I say this is because, for the most part, you will need to learn how to effectively tag in your partner, because if you don’t, you may find yourself losing a lot of matches that should have been won. If you cannot get a launcher, you can press medium punch and medium kick at the same time to do a “raw tag”, but if your opponent is good, they will be able to combo the tagged in character, as there is a lot of startup on a raw tag.
To say that Mass Effect 3 was a hotly anticipated game would be quite the understatement. Back in 2010, Mass Effect 2 released to an extremely good reaction, and made many of the Top 10 GOTY lists, even though it was released very early in the year. The teaser trailers have been out and about for Mass Effect 3 for some time, and come March 6th, we could finally get our hands on the game itself. I found that despite the fact that Bioware had their own fiascos with the EA Origins stuff; Mass Effect 3 is a fun game that melds the RPG elements that were quite heavy in the first game with the action sequences that were much more present in the second iteration. I feel like the discussion of whether 2 or 3 was the better version could be going on for a while, as they both are very strong games, but the fact remains that Mass Effect 3 is a very fitting addition to the trilogy of games, and it does well to scratch the itch of those looking to understand more of the story of Commander Shepard.
The gameplay in Mass Effect 3 is a bit of a fusion between the first and the second in some ways, and is also a very interesting upgrade in some other ways. One big thing that I noticed was that in this game, there is a health system similar to that of Halo: Reach, where you have a shield that recharges, and then you have separate bars of health that do not. This makes it so that the medi-gels (now called First Aid), are much more important, as the only way to heal the heath bar is to use first aid. This adds an extra sense of urgency, which I thought was nice, because it forces the player to be much more aware of their health and current power statuses (if they are a biotic), and because of the fact that I found the enemy AI to be vastly superior to previous games, it really adds a challenging twist.
Binary Domain is a surprisingly competent Japanese take on a predominately western genre of game.
Asura’s Wrath is such an unusually unique experience I don’t know whether to call it more of a game or an interactive anime or even who to really recommend it to.
Twisted Metal for PlayStation 3 doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to the car combat genre, but it has added some interesting new wrinkles. New gameplay modes and the inclusion of online multiplayer allowed for the men and women of Eat, Sleep, Play to expand level design to much larger scale and the addition of Talon, the helicopter, completely changes the dynamics of team based games. Twisted Metal is the biggest it has ever been and still maintains the gritty, insane feel of the original. It does what it does very well and at the same time… doesn’t. Allow me to explain.
The greatest trilogy of PS2 action platformers returns in high definition and they are still just as good as ever.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is perhaps one of the biggest (and most certainly ambitious) games to be released in 2012. Although it had been in production for a very long time (the title screen has a copyright of 1997-2012), there were enough big names behind it as to where the hype regarding the game was justified. In addition to being produced from a studio ran by former MLB pitcher Curt Shilling, the game garnered such names as Ken Rolston (of Elder Scrolls IV fame), RA Salvatore, and Todd McFarlane, just to name a few. Now that the game has finally been released worldwide, I can finally say that while Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a good game, I do not think that it necessarily transcends the genre in the way that, say, something like Skyrim did.
Those who were fans of Oblivion will find quite a few of the same trappings in Reckoning (because of the length of the title, I will now refer to the game simply as Reckoning), as the player will be running through a fantasy setting with the ability to do most of what was able to be done in Oblivion (such as lockpicking, looting, owning property, etc.). The gameplay itself is similar in a sense to something like Fable in that you are playing from a third person perspective, but where Reckoning differs is that you have a primary weapon, and a secondary weapon that are mapped to square (X on xbox 360) and triangle (Y). This means that instead of light and heavy, there are certain patterns that you have to do the button presses to in order to execute combos. By this, I mean that holding the square button and then releasing will let out a charged attack of the weapon type mapped to that button. There are multiple combos, but most of the time, I found myself just mashing the button, as that seems to be the best tactic. There are three main trees that you can put points into, which follow the basic rouge, mage, and warrior path lines, but because it doesn’t really force you into any certain style, you will come across quite a bit of loot that you either cant use or have not use for (because it corresponds to another class). In addition to the class trees, you can put points into more general skills, such as Blacksmithing or Stealth, but, if you want a pointer, you should definitely max out Sage crafting, as maxing this out allows you to craft Health Regeneration gems which you can add to your armor or weapons which will help you immensely.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is perhaps one of the biggest (and most certainly ambitious) games to be released in 2012. Although it had been in production for a very long time (the title screen has a copyright of 1997-2012), there were enough big names behind it as to where the hype regarding the game was justified. In addition to being produced from a studio ran by former MLB pitcher Curt Shilling, the game garnered such names as Ken Rolston (of Elder Scrolls IV fame), RA Salvatore, and Todd McFarlane, just to name a few. Now that the game has finally been released worldwide, I can finally say that while Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a good game, I do not think that it necessarily transcends the genre in the way that, say, something like Skyrim did.
Those who were fans of Oblivion will find quite a few of the same trappings in Reckoning (because of the length of the title, I will now refer to the game simply as Reckoning), as the player will be running through a fantasy setting with the ability to do most of what was able to be done in Oblivion (such as lockpicking, looting, owning property, etc.). The gameplay itself is similar in a sense to something like Fable in that you are playing from a third person perspective, but where Reckoning differs is that you have a primary weapon, and a secondary weapon that are mapped to square (X on xbox 360) and triangle (Y). This means that instead of light and heavy, there are certain patterns that you have to do the button presses to in order to execute combos. By this, I mean that holding the square button and then releasing will let out a charged attack of the weapon type mapped to that button. There are multiple combos, but most of the time, I found myself just mashing the button, as that seems to be the best tactic. There are three main trees that you can put points into, which follow the basic rouge, mage, and warrior path lines, but because it doesn’t really force you into any certain style, you will come across quite a bit of loot that you either cant use or have not use for (because it corresponds to another class). In addition to the class trees, you can put points into more general skills, such as Blacksmithing or Stealth, but, if you want a pointer, you should definitely max out Sage crafting, as maxing this out allows you to craft Health Regeneration gems which you can add to your armor or weapons which will help you immensely.
