28daveslater

This is gonna happen more and more as we travel towards digital distrabution. Soon all entertainment will be beamed into your house with no real use for retail, it's a shame that peoples job have been sacrificed to a distribution method.

Vanquish Review

With the recent announcement of Platinum games being put in charge of Metal Gear Rising I thought it was high time we took a look at Vanquish again.

So the most important thing for a third person shooter is of course gameplay.

Vanquish is fast and frenetic throwing wave after wave of robot’s in the path of your bullet time assisted… well… bullets. It’s immediately engaging and provided enough of a difficulty curve that kept the game interesting in fact one of its best features is its challenge and survival modes which span 5 waves of enemies with an ever ramping difficulty curve, too this day I have yet to complete those.

You can only carry four weapons on you at any one time, not only this but as the game goes on your chosen weapons will rank up. However in my experience I tended towards using the assault rifle and the heavy machine gun for a predominant portion of the game, this is a shame as these are the starting weapons. I just never found the drive to use the disc launcher or the multi laser and there was no incentive for me to do so.

To match the blistering speed of the game Platinum has employed bullet time to great effect in Vanquish. There can be a great pleasure found in getting head shots or shooting a grenade you just threw so it blows up quicker, all while sliding along the floor on your knees. It’s like every little boys dream when he would find a recently polished floor and just go sliding around the place.

How about the story?

Well it’s typical Japanese melodrama and bad voice dubbing, I’d let Sam go even though he sounds like a 50 a day man. But for what this story is, a tool to push the gameplay forward it serves its purpose. It’s pretty standard to be quite honest big bad Russian takes over space station, uses it to cause massive destruction so you got to stop the bastard, not really much more to say.

Presentation?

Again it’s not going to set the world on fire. The future is very white and grey apparently with helpfully bright red Russian robot hordes and to honest I think there could have been more enemy variety rather than just the same 4 or 5 types of enemy with different weapons.he art style though is great and really succeeds in capturing that anime, gundam-esk type Japanese robot design. Sam’s character model in particular with all of its constantly moving parts and a really sleek but powerful sort of design is great and really sells you on the speed and power this guy is meant to have.

Sound/Music?

Sound can really bring a game to life and this game is full of that believe me the sound of gun fire and missiles passing by is a constant back drop to your endeavours. One of the best parts of this game is hearing just the amount of enemies pounding your position with some crazy cannon in a giant dudes chest coming straight for you all while trying to figure out what to do next.

The music on the other hand tends to get a little lost but still does its job of carrying the tempo of the game nicely with synth, ambient, trance type electro music which suits the rest of the game to a tee.

Overall I had a great time playing Vanquish, it’s a little niche due to its kind of hammy story but to me that’s just part of the charm like and old Kung Fu movie. It’s fast paced with solid game mechanics a decent look and feel with a real challenge available if you’re looking for it.

This to me spells great things for Revengance a situation in which I want Platinum to bring its approach to game play and action and Kojima to bring the story, voice work and character design. Ultimately the styles of a game like Vanquish and the Raiden character mesh quite well… I mean remember this scene…

Thanks for reading.

@AhmadMetallic: Ooops my bad.

I was recently pondering “what are my favourite gaming achievements and memories?”

Well to be honest answering that question with just one is tough, but to me there is one achievement that at the time seemed impossible but was completed. It may not have been the most difficult thing to do ever but on Dynasty Warriors 3 at the attack on Hu Loa Gate I took on and beat Lu Bu in one on one combat.

Now I can guess what you’re thinking that’s not that impressive and you know what I’ll take my hat off to that but for me at that point in time it was one of my proudest gaming moments.

Here’s a video of the intro to his arrival into battle:

So what are some of your favourite gaming achievements or memories?

Hey guys.

I just want to say thank you all for reading and replying to this post, whether we agree or disagree it doesn't matter.

Not only this but I know that this is a contentious issue but the vast majority on here are very civil which is really cool.

Best regards

Dave

@Demoskinos: I would say that genuinly I only meant for the first couple of paragraphs to be nostalgic as set up. I mean I only completed VII again literally yesterday so it's not as if I have a poor memory of the game and I still thought it was great despite the technical leaps that gaming has made since then.

Although it apears that I'm jumping on XIII what I actually am talking about is what I concider the recent spate of bad Final Fantasys, I can't say I've actually enjoyed one since X, and am more trying to highlight what I think has been lost, although I can see how it can come across as nostalgia overload.

As for the localisation thing I can't say it even bothered me or got in the way of me enjoying the game, in fact if that's the only complaint people have then I'd say that was pretty stella going compaired to the veritable myriad of complaints I had about XIII.

@Zenaxzd: Oh... kay. You're right in a few ways I would say I was nostalgic as that's kind of the entire point of the post, I don't think you quite needed to make the "loss of blood flow" remark but I suppose I should expect it (civility and forum aren't two words that usually go well together). I would however say that you are quite the opposite or clearly haven't played VII in a while because you wouldn't be saying that they "never really interacted like human beings" if you had. I could give you multiple examples in which they do. Maybe you feel that way because XIII was voice acted so it's easier for them to portray emotion effectively but personnaly I found XIII's dialog hoaky and melodramatic like something you'd see in a bad day time soap.

However you are wrong about me "wanting Final Fantasy 7 again" that's the last thing I want as you point out VII already exists I just want something that's comperable with it which unfortunately XIII is not, not by a long stretch of the imagination. For example I loved IV, IX and X which (especially IX and X) couldn't be more different, I just think Square's taken a serious nose dive in recent itterations. But I do hold out hope for Versus if it ever sees the light of day.

The funny thing is though I never even used the word sickening in the entire blog post so I'm not quite sure where you got that, that was my favourite word from, obviously not form my "wall of text" but fair enough.

@ChuckDeNomolos: Hell I have a difficult enough time finishing them nowwa days. To me though a good JRPG is like when your dad would show you old Python skits as a kid, you found them funny but only at the base level, but then you rewatch them as an adult and suddenly the genius that was staring you in the face reveals itself.

@SpaceRunaway: I've literally only seen it in a shop once in my entire life and that's when I bought it so I'd say it was safe to assume that yeah.

Hmmm looks like I'm gonna have to call up the Grubber brothers to pull a Die Hard style heist on this place.

Recently I had my old copy of The Legend Of Dragoon, LoD for short, repaired and proceeded to blaze through that mother in a week and oh my lord if I hadn't forgotten what a bloody brilliant game it is. And so in its honour I decided to review it for all those who missed out on what could be one of if not the most brilliant JRPG of all time.

GRAPHICS:

In my opinion the least important part of a game, especially if it's a rpg. LoD was released shortly after Final Fantasy VIII, December 1999 but wasn't on store shelves in Europe till 2001, by Sony and so obviously it's somewhat dated. However in my opinion the graphics still hold up pretty well and while playing it I couldn't help but smile as it immediately transported me back to the glory days of the rpg. For this review however I'll be comparing it to its nearest rival the previously mentioned Final Fantasy VIII. Out of the two I'd have to say that Final Fantasy VIII has the slight edge in cinematics (although LoD was the first rpg I played to actually have a voice cast a leap Final Fantasy didn't make till 10, so thumbs up) but in terms of in game graphics I'd say they're on par with each other. LoD however has some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I have ever seen and at points literally makes your jaw drop with the sheer detail involved.

GAMEPLAY:

LoD's over world is very similar to that of Final Fantasy X with linear towns and points of interest connected by set paths, this obviously isn't as good as the more free roaming over world that you'd get in rpgs from a similar period but at the same time I didn't feel it detracted at all from the overall experience and it does help to move the storyline along quickly. The star of the show however is the battle system which takes the old turn based game play and adds a sort of quick time element in which you have to hit certain buttons, X mostly, to extend your attack to complete combos that increase the damage dished out by your characters, this was also used in the game Lost Odyssey but with less effect. Some may think of this as tampering but it helps address a lot of the problems that others have with turn based gameplay by keeping the player engaged, looking for more damage and avoiding counter-attacks.

STORY:

LoD opens with the main protagonist, Dart, returning to his home from a failed quest to find and kill the person that murdered his parents only to find his village under attack and his close friend/love interest Shana captured by an invading empire. Dart sets out to rescue Shana but soon finds that things aren't as simple as a b c and his life is about to get a whole lot more complicated (I'm not going to tell you the whole thing you've got Wikipedia for that but lets just say you get dragon powers, yet another thumbs up). Being a JRPG LoD does suffer from melodrama syndrome to some extent but as most of the in game convos are in text it'll never really hit you, unlike the more modern fully voiced JRPGs. The story moves nicely and keeps you interested easily portraying the sense that you're a small man caught in an adventure epically bigger than you are. As well as this it never gets too silly or unbelievable and twists and turns will have you second guessing yourself and wanting to know more about the characters you're playing as and against. Fleshing out its characters with interesting back stories is yet another thing LoD does extremely well giving them all believable motivation or at least the sense that they've been swept up.

SOUNDTRACK:

This one is going to be short, it’s a JRPG done by Sony you know its soundtrack is fantastic already. Sure there are probably better ones but it does its job of setting moods and conveying emotion well... and that’s all it needs to do.

VERDICT:

I’ve played this game multiple times and it never bores me. It’s got a great story, engaging gameplay, characters that can be related to and dragons what more do you need guy? Nothing that’s what! This game is one of my all time favourites and takes pride of place in my collection. If you haven’t played it yet and you’re into RPGs you’d be a grade A* fool not to pick it up. Now here’s where we hit the biggest issue with the game, it’s as rare as a Faberge egg and nearly as expensive with a used copy easily setting you back £30-£40 (that’s $45-$60) on eBay or brand new from Amazon for a whopping £99 ($153). However when you get it it’s yours for life and it’ll never leave your game shelf except when it’s in your machine, and hell it can only get more rare so who knows you might even get more for it ten years down the road (I ain’t selling mine though)

An easy perfect 10 if there ever was one.