Beyond Good & Evil

This post relates to: Beyond Good & Evil

While I was recording footage for a yet-to-be announced video of mine, I came across this little bit here. "Space whales live in space, man!" followed by one asshole of a puddle. I was listening to 1UP FM, in case you were wondering.
 

This post relates to: Shadow Hearts, Drill Dozer, Super Robot Taisen Original Generation, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, Ōkami, Halo 3, Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 2, Gears of War 2, Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Fable II, Spore, Rock Band 2, NHL 09, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Mega Man 9

Did you ever get the feeling the hosts have A.D.D.? Its an adventure in off topic land this week. Jason hits the ice and starts checking random people against the boards in NHL 09, while Steven's blood boils from the difficulty level of Mega Man 9. Plus the Top 5 Most Overlooked Games of the Last Generation, Spore makes more headlines, and Wii owners get some great news about Rock Band 2.


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This post relates to: Beyond Good & Evil

Always wanted to play it.  Just picked it up on the Xbox for 99 cents at the local shop.  Fuck yes.  I'll write more later, but here's a quick list of what it (and a lot of other games) get right within the first hour:

• Semi-serious narative with semi-silly world and characters (Psychonauts is another good example of this, as are Jak II and Jak 3)
  
• Colourful world... dude, too much shit is gray these days
  

• Collecting mission (you have to take pictures of animals around the world with your camera) is given right at the start... and it's optional... and makes your study the beautiful world more
• Combat is secondary to puzzle solving
• No guns!
  
• Slow jog is default movement, running requires holding down a button (I personally feel Ubisoft perfected this scheme in Assassin's Creed)

Anyway, more later, as I progress further through the game.  I'm already in love though.  Just, wow.  I can't believe I missed this gem.  Definitely recommend picking it up (no backwards compatability with 360, though it's also on PC and PS2).

This post relates to: Gex, Final Fantasy X, Super Mario Galaxy, Beyond Good & Evil

So, I finished BG&E this morning, and the final segment of the game really brings the story together and ends with a bang. I am excited to see what the sequel is going to be like. Truly this game is a gem, and it's really a shame that it was not marketed well enough for more folks to buy it. There should be plentiful of copies in your game store's bargain bin. Do yourself a favor and pick this game up.




Now that I've beaten that, I can move on to a couple of other games I aim to finish this summer:

One of the best, according to many.

So, I'm going to continue where I left off months ago in SMG starting tonight, and then I'll throw in a good session of FFX tomorrow. It's great to be playing games of this caliber y'know. Dull moments never really ensue, very seldom thoughts of, "Ugh, I really don't feel like playing games today." At least, I hope it totally won't be that way. I was going through that earlier in the week.

I've also started writing more reviews. For instance, I finished my LoZ: Phantom Hourglass review early this morning; just having it copy edited so it should be up on my page later this evening. Beyond Good & Evil will be my next user review.

Lastly, I treated myself to some retro goodness a bit earlier. I was searching through my PSX collection and I found my disc of Gex! I don't know how many of you played this awesome platformer, but back then as a kid I found it awesome; although I never beat it, lol. As messy as the back of the disc appeared it still worked swell in my PS2. So I played a few levels and it still holds up well as a fun platformer; a genre I truly miss and wish was more implemented in today's software. I started researching info adding to what I already knew about the game and there's a crapload of cheat codes for it. But that's what we did in the good ol' days amirite? I'm now intending to edit the games entire Giant Bomb page, I've already added some general info for it. Submission points galore :P.

Alright Bomb Squad (that's what I'm calling the community, "Giant Bombers" is too plain imo), hope you're enjoying the weekend. Catch you later.

Peace. :)

This post relates to: Beyond Good & Evil

So, you know what I spent a large of amount of Friday doing? Eh, take a guess...(like this serves a purpose, lol). I've been slaving over collecting these pearl items in Beyond Good & Evil; in a need to advance to the final segments of the game. I just finished getting the last pearl I need to complete this certain purchase of a part that will allow me to progress where I need to be. Boy did I work for those pearls! I must admit, while it seemed a bit daunting at first it was a fun and worthwhile session of gaming in addition to experiencing some extra goodness of BG&E. I will finish all that remains of its story in the morning.

There's one more thing I would like to discuss in terms of what I experienced today and have done the same in some other games. It's this game design component in which the player must backtrack to collect something or a number of things in order to beat the game. The primary examples that come to my mind are the previously mentioned title and Super Princess Peach; which if you had frequented my Gamespot blogs, knew I was  proudly playing. With this game, the object of each level is to save all the toads that are trapped in these pink question-marked boxes. There's three in each level and while you can make it all the way to the 8th Area, you must have all the Toads of the previous areas rescued before you can face the final boss. Initially this seems like a slap in kisser to the gamer and surely some will be turned off by having to backtrack to such an extent.

So essentially, this design option can be a flaw or a significance. With Super Princess Peach, it is a slight flaw (even though I'm going back to get all of the Toads because I need to beat the damn game :P). With BG&E, it's a significance, because I indeed had fun collecting those amount of pearls I needed to move on today. This was also implemented in games like the beloved Final Fantasy VII. Actually, it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this design component tends to appear in RPGs more frequently than in other genres. I think I'm wrong, but my point is, developers and game designers should be more cautious as to how this will affect the overall experience of their games.

Peace. :)

This post relates to: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise , Velvet Assassin, Spore, Diablo III, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, LittleBigPlanet, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Boom Blox, Mirror's Edge, Call of Duty: World at War, Street Fighter IV, Alpha Protocol, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Prince of Persia , Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, Halo Wars, Halo, Halo 3, Alan Wake, Beyond Good & Evil, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Too Human, Forza Motorsport 2, Dead Rising, Dead Space, Infinite Undiscovery, Tales of Vesperia, Resident Evil 5, Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Final Fantasy XIII, Fallout 3, Fable II, God of War III, Gears of War 2, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Grand Theft Auto IV

WTF is with the tags above?!








Anyways as my first little tid-bit of gaming goodness I thought I'd draw your attention to our earlier E3 coverage over at XboxOZ360, particularly what we wanted to see at E3, but for the most part we didn't... Although we did pick the Final Fantasy shocker! ;)

Why the plug? Well there are four key reasons:

1) It's more exciting and entertaining than anything at the slowly dying E3!
2) It's better than any other lists out there because we justify our choices. Each Top 10 is around the 2000 word mark!
3) It'll get the fanboys into all kinds of convoluted flaming and illogical arguments... See the third list below as it should now read Top 9 (thankyou Square!). ;)
4) I'm a shameless promoter, who whores himself out without a moment's regret.
 
Enjoy and make your voices heard. :)

Top 10 Confirmed 360 Exclusives @ E3 '08 - What made the Top 10? And how do we rate the big hitters in Gears 2, Fable 2, Halo Wars and Banjo Kazooie.

Top 10 Unconfirmed 360 Exclusives @ E3 ' 08 - How did we come up with 10? And where does Bungie, Rockstar, a fugitive and someone Wake-ing up fit in?

Top 10 Exclusives We'd Steal for the 360 @ E3 '08 - Every platform has great exclusives, which ones would we steal from the PS3, Wii & PC if given half a chance?

Top 10 Multiplatform Titles @ E3 '08 - Who's got the Edge? Who's had a Fallout? And are we Good... or Evil? Or why should we love EA, Ubisoft and Capcom?

Top 10 360 Hardware & Xbox Live @ E3 '08 - We nailed this one... Errr except for the Newton! But it's best just to ignore that (like I have) and see how right we were! :P