After finishing Rayman Origins and dabbling with Super Stardust Delta, my Vita has pretty much been sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Well, no, I keep it in a case like a proper person, but you know what I'm talking about. There have been a few fighting games I've been interested in playing, but seeing as I held off buying Mortal Kombat last year specifically because I wanted the Vita version, I figured I didn't really need more than one fighting game (not really huge on the genre) on the system. I think the success of the Vita depends almost entirely on good software on a consistent basis, and so far the system has been lacking in that regard. I do look forward to MGS:HD on the Vita, but not including Peace Walker seems like a dumb move (it's the only portable version, after all). I was hoping Kojima would pull a kojima on us and declare the incusion of the original MGS at the last minute to differentiate it from the other versions, and also get people excited, but that was a pipe dream that seems hopeless at this point.

I guess E3 will be the the event that proves Sony's dedication to the platform, or diminishes any hope of getting the thing off the ground, but I remain hopeful that the Vita will be the biggest focus at Sony's press conference this year. I mean, how can it not be? The Ps3 is going strong, and is self-sustaining enough, and the Move seems like a lost cause at this point.

But I digress, the thing I have been playing on my Vita is Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus, which is the 2nd re-release of the original Xbox game. The game holds up quite well, with good looking graphics, and an excellent combat system. It's not complicated to the point where you have to learn every combo and such, and success is largely determined by how observant you are of the situation you're in. Prioritizing which enemy to kill first can make a fight that seemed impossible turn into a cakewalk. Well maybe not that easy, the game is quite hard, but in a good way. It's hard because it forces you to think fast, and to always keep your guard up, not because it's cheap. Most of the time anyway, there's a couple of enemy-types that I'm yet to find an efficient way of killing without losing tons of health in the process, and some enemies have this really annoying slitting-your-throat move that can't be blocked.

The game also has a pretty robust inventory system where you keep stuff like various potions, to different weapons and equipment. Weapons can be upgraded using yellow orbs that drop off enemies, but the annoying thing about these orbs is that they disappear after only a few seconds, and can't be collected in the middle of a combo, so I find myself having to stop attacking enemies to get them, which often means getting hit a bunch of times. The movement controls can also be a bit shit, especially during the platforming segments, that fortunately isn't that hard, not plentiful.

Overall, this game feels like a modern action game. They probably should have converted the save points into autosaves or checkpoints, but the game usually allows backtracking, so it's possible to circumvent the frustration of dying 20 minutes after your last save.

I wasn't a huge fan of the first one, mainly because of its gruelling difficulty and the boring environments; and while the former hasn't changed, I still like it a lot more than its predecessor. The levels are detailed and feature a lot of different-looking environments that gives most levels a unique feel, instead of the same warehouse over and over.There's also a lot more over-the-top moments, like flying through the air while on fire, or hitting a mine right after the finish-line that sends you rider sailing through the air as the scoreboard pops up.

There's also fun minigames that goes from using skis instead of a bike, to controlling a giant ball through different obstacles Super Monkey Ball style. I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, but, from what I've seen, it looks fun and a good way of prolonging the game's life. The controls can be a bit finicky, and nuance is definitely the key to getting the gold, but it can be annoying to almost reach the finish line just to have the bike do a backflip as you hit the ground just because you tilted the analogue stick 5 degrees left. I guess the game itself can't really be blamed for that, though, as the fault always lies entirely at your end.

I think the developers struck a good balance of being hard without being frustrating. When you fail, and you will fail, a simple button press returns you to the start, or to the last checkpoint, without any loading times; and while waiting for the "Go" signal every time you restart can get annoying, it's doesn't last long enough to be any more than a minor nuisance.

I've never been much of an adventure game fan. Too much trial and error, and puzzles that operate under flimsy logic, at best. Telltale is one of the only developers still doing these kinds of games, and they've been fairly successful at bringing this genre into the modern world with games like Back to The Future, and the less fortunate Jurassic Park from last year. Their latest attempt, The Walking Dead is an episdodic adventure based on the comic of the same name. Having not read the comics, but seen the TV-show, this game has been on my radar for a while now, and now that it's out, I decided to try it out.

The game is very story-focused, with gameplay reminicent of Heavy Rain, and a look that feels very much comic-y. You play as the character Lee, who starts off in a police car for reasons that become clearer as the game progresses. You eventually encounter different people, and have to work with them to survive the zombie apocalype, and the first thing I liked about the game is Lee as a character, and the fact that he is who he is no matter what dialogue options you choose. One of the things that separates this from other games that involves chioces, is that Lee is Lee no matter what you choose to say. The dialogue options doesn't determine whether you're good or evil, they simply determine what you choose to say to a particular character, and so Lee feels like a defined character. My biggest issue with a lot of these games that involve choice is that they end up making the protagonist only what you choose them to be. Lee feels like a real person who's done some bad stuff, but I sympathise with him and it feels like he regrets a lot of the choices he's made. He's one of the best video game characters I've seen in a long time.

I'm not gonna make this much longer as there are still four more episodes coming, but if you like zombies, Heavy Rain, Telltale games or just good story-driven games in general, I strongly advice you to check this one out!

Back in my early gaming days, I loved long games, but now that I'm a more dedicated video game player (I hate the term gamer) I realize that long games need to have a reason to be long to keep me interested. Skyrim works because the whole selling point of the game is that it has this expansive open world with virtually endless amounts of content, and older JRPG's like Final Fantasy had combat that kept updating in interesting ways, by giving you access to new characters and abilities.

Dead Island is long for the wrong reasons. The gameplay never really evolves in any meaningful way, and even now that I'm 30 hours in, I'm still finding the same types of weapons with only an increase to the stats. The modding system does change things up a bit, but with no option to remove mods, experimentation isn't really encouraged. My main issue with the combat is that no matter how many levels I gain, I rarely feel like I'm getting more powerful. The zombies level up with you, and though I have gotten some interesting abilites, like jumping on a downed zonbies's head for an instant finisher, most of the skills are the generic +10% damage/crit chance etc... I switched to the analog combat system late in Act 1, which is a lot more satisfying once you come to grips with how to effectively use it, but it proves ineffective in larger groups because you can't turn the camera while lining up a hit, and frantically flailing the analog sticks back and forth isn't all that fun. The game has also introduced special zombies ripped straight from Left 4 Dead, except worse in every way. The Thugs can knock you on you ass with every strike, which turns fighting them into a repeating cycle of hitting him once then jumping back before he can strike. The Boomer style zombie pukes acid in your face, and I'm yet to find a good way of avoiding being hit without throwing a Deo-bomb in his face. The charger is laughably easy to avoid, but take a while to kill so it devolves into a tedious monotony.

The combat is still the best thing about the game, and my issues lie more with how the game is structured. After the great resort setting of Act 1, you are transported to the city area of the island, which both looks and feels a lot more boring. There are no cars so there's no quick way of going from one side to the other, and while being able to traverse the zombie-free rooftops is a good addition, the mandatory sewer levels are NOT. The game sent me through something like five sewer levels in a row, which not only looks even more monotonous than the city itself, but makes the game even slower, by practically removing the ability to run past zombies, unless you want to take your chances with tens of zombies clawing at your heels.

I've learned to avoid every escort quest that isn't mandatory because they can't be dismissed once they've begun, and if the NPC dies, then you have to start over, but your weapons stay in the same condition, so in theory, if you fail enough times you'll lock yourself into a loop of failure. The NPC's also act like fucking Rambo and will charge in at a group of 10 zombies swinging a bit of an old pipe while you have to act as a tank to make sure they don't die. If the game had stuck with the resort setting, and maybe made it twice as big, Dead Island could have been excellent, but the combat loses it's charm after around 20 hours, and once you realize that there's nothing more to the game, it turns into a bland little experience that probably won't be remembered fondly by most.

I want to play more of it just to get to the end, but I'm stuck in some room where I need to open a door that doesn't seem to work, so I'll try to figure it out, but a part of me want to put this one back in the box, never to touch it again.

I think the best way to get this blog going is to write about the stuff that I'm currently playing, like the first segment of the Bombcast. I feel like that's an adequate way of making sure I'll have sogmething to write about consistently, instead of updating this thing whenever I have something on my mind.

Dead Island: Not the most relevant thing at this point, but I've had this game on my shelf for a while now and, for some reason, I didn't feel like playing it until now. I'm about six hours in (I think) and so far, it's pretty awesome. The combat has some weight to it, that feels appropriate while still being challenging enough. One or two zombies are fine, but once you're surrounded by the fuckers, things complicate, and I still haven't figured out how to effectively dispose of the larger fellows without using molotovs. I went for the blunt weapons guy, and it's a lot of fun to break both of the zombie's arms and watch them flail around untll I give the finising blow. The voice acting is really annoying, so I'm playing the game while listening to the Bombcast, which takes the game to a whole 'notha level of awesome. I'll probably write an update on this once I've gotten further along, and maybe even a review, but so far It's been a lot of fun.

Fez: Beat it today, started new game +, but I don't think I'll ever play it again. The game is pretty cool, but I'm not huge on deciphering codes and secret alphabets and such, so a lot of the game is simply not for me. I enjoyed the rotating mechanic, and wish they had developed more on that because the game is never hard from a pure platforming perspective. I guess there's only so much you can do with it.

Well, this takes me back, I haven't written a blog since the old Gamespot days. In the end, I couldn't continue on that (in my opinion) badly designed website that caused so many annoyances to the point where I abandoned the whole thing shortly after the incident that created this site. The stuff I wrote was never meant to be for anyone but me, and I used it to write down (mostly) game related thoughts I had about stuff that was going on in the industry.

Whether I will be continuing to write this... thing, depends entirely on whether I feel like it at the time. Mostly doing this to unlock the blog quest...