Ninja Blade: Pressing one button is fun

I played Ninja Blade a little more than a week ago, but I feel like now is the appropriate time to actually write about it. Ninja Blade, while is really does want to be the next great action adventure title, falls short on so many levels for one very good reason. Now, you may like quick time events, but I guarantee even the most patient gamer will be frustrated by the fact that the majority of the game requires you to press a single button at a specific time. We’re off to a great start already guys!

Watchmen: The End is Nigh…more like…Watchmen: Bad game

To celebrate the release of the excellent film adaptation of Watchmen, I’m going to talk briefly about my limited experience with the first part in a series of downloadable Watchmen games. This game is titled Watchmen: The End is Nigh, and it’s available now on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network for a hefty $20. The question I now ask myself…is it worth the money? Not at all! Even if it were $10, I’d say to skip this cheap beat ‘em up.

For those lonely guys: Onechanbara

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad was released a couple of weeks ago, and I finally had the “privilege” to play it myself. And the result? The worst 360 game I’ve ever played. And yeah, some my my previous worst games for that system were Bomberman Act Zero, Two Worlds, and Operation Darkness, all of which were my least favorite games of their respective year of release. Onechanbara is one of the very few games that would get a 1/10 from me, if I were to rate a game on that scale.

Bungie, the developers of the Halo series and…Oni? What?

Yeah, Bungie developed Oni, the anime inspired third person shooter that barely works. And when it does work, it’s kind of boring. There are some legitimately fun moments in the game, but they are all overshadowed by the fact that the game is buggy and pretty much terrible in all respects. I was never a big fan of Bungie to begin with, the Halo series is incredibly overrated, but this just gives me more of a reason to dislike Bungie.

Excuse my lazy post: Eternal Poison is awful

I don’t have much to write about and not a lot of time to write up a quick post, so the first thing that popped into my mind for today’s post is a little something about a game that I regret wasting $30 for. Eternal Poision is a Strategy RPG for the PS2 that seemed very promising, especially at an Amazon discount with a free artbook, but it definitely makes me wish I never added it to my collection in the first place. Lucky for me, I’m almost finished with it.

Point and click adventure games: The good, the bad, and the stupid

Point and click adventure games are still around today, surprisingly enough, but aside from popular titles such as Myst, the genre has never truly been able to survive much in this industry. I’m going to talk about a few good (well, great), bad, and downright stupid point and click adventure games that I remember either playing or seeing someone else play…or both really. Let’s take a look back at a genre of games that most people didn’t care about!

Devil May Cry 2: The biggest disappointment in gaming history

This blog post is inspired by Noi’s recent play through of the game. Thanks Noi, you awakened the angry demons inside of my head and fed them some terrible game I tried my best to forget.

Maybe that’s going a bit too far? No, no it’s not, at least not from my point of view, Devil May Cry 2 is a mockery; even Capcom wants to try and forget it ever happened. It takes everything that worked in the original game and completely ruins it, so much so that it actually made me hate the series in some ways, despite the improvement that has come to the games since those dark days. Let’s go through what makes Devil May Cry 2 the Superman 64 of action games.

The reasons why a bad camera can ruin a game

Bad camera angles suck, and in almost any genre, they can ruin a game completely if they are so bad you can barely see any thing. Action games are the worst offenders; when you’re fighting a group of enemies in intense combat, the last thing you want is the camera to move completely away from the action, giving you not a damn idea what is going on in the process.

What brought this up? My recent playing of Ninja Gaiden II. Here’s an example of a good game that isn’t completely ruined by an annoying camera, but said camera definitely hinders the experience. And in a game like Ninja Gaiden II, which is in a series well known for the almost impossible at times level of difficulty, having a camera that doesn’t like to follow the action too much tends to be a bit…annoying, for the understatement of the century. It doesn’t happen all of the time in NGII, but it happens enough to inspire this post.

Ar Tonelico: Worst RPG of all time? I’d say so.

Ar Tonelico 2 is coming out soon. Will it be good? Probably not, but I have a feeling it’ll be better then the original, which is a disgrace to video games and one of the worst games I’ve ever played. It’s a mess of a game, and has the most incoherent story I’ve ever seen in any game. It’s almost impossible to follow, and usually a story is important in an RPG, but only if it works.

Game series that need to die

Let’s talk about a couple of game series that I absolutely cannot stand and I think need to die. Game series that do not deserve further releases most notably due to the fact that most games released in the series have been terrible, or a series just hasn’t lived up to the legacy many gamers considered it a part of. I’m prepared to accept plenty of hate for this post, but hey, I don’t care; hate is what fuels me! At least sometimes.

First we have what I consider the worst on going series at this point in time, Dynasty Warriors, or Samurai Warriors, or Warriors Orochi. The series with the hacking and the slashing and the needlessly repetitive button mashing and the absolutely dull and boring gameplay. The series that continually has some of the worst voice acting I’ve heard, and also hasn’t actually had a “new” game since the original. These games are absolutely awful, with little to no depth and a true lack of innovation. They never cease to amaze with just how little Koei changes each of the ten million iterations these multiple “Warriors” series have had. Copying and pasting is fun, I guess.

Second on the list is Harvest Moon. I know a couple of people on Backloggery who love Harvest Moon, and why that is I will never understand. First things first, I actually enjoyed some of the earlier Harvest Moon games. Harvest Moon 64 is probably one of the best among them all. But now, enough is enough. Harvest Moon: Boy & Girl? What the hell is that crap? I honestly can’t wrap my head around what makes these games appealing to anyone at this point. I would just keep playing Harvest Moon 64, but even that once decent games has been ruined by the fowl stench of other, not so great sequels. Maybe the series has been more of a cult hit than anything, but it doesn’t mean it should stick around much longer.

Next on my list is Tomb Raider. Despite the “resurrection” of the series with Legend, it really is starting to show gamers just why the series kind of died off after Angel of Darkness’ release. Sure, you can refine the gameplay, but you can never fix an old and tired camera system that NEVER SEEMS TO WORK WHEN YOU WANT IT TO. And the controls always seem to be a mess, especially during the most important moments of platforming and general “adventuring”.

Underworld wasn’t a bad game, just a mediocre one, and we haven’t really seen Lara Croft in a great game since the original Tomb Raider. And even that game wasn’t that good to begin with. Uncharted is a game that came out of nowhere, made by a developer that hasn’t made a very realistic game like it. Naughty Dog managed to take all of the elements found in Tomb Raider and do them even better than any Tomb Raider developer ever has, and make it actually fun. It’s a shame, but Lara, you’ve aged, and it hasn’t been for the better.

Finally, I have the one I’ve talked much about in the past and will continue to talk about for quite some time: Sonic the Hedgehog. Every single 3D release ( I mean EVERY one) has been an insult to the Sonic games of old. Sure, Sonic Adventure 2 is probably the closest game out of all of his 3D adventures you could classify as “good”, but that was far from perfect. Sonic Unleashed, at least the 360/PS3 version of it, is an absolute joke. Sonic Team just wants to add something new to each game, something different, but WE DON’T WANT ANYTHING DIFFERENT.

But with Sonic Unleashed, the game that probably came closest to emulating that classic Sonic feel, still didn’t feel right. The daytime stages were fine, but only in the 2D areas of the game. When the camera was behind Sonic, it was right up Sonic’s ass, and he just moved too fast for you to be able to carefully and easily avoid anything. And I love randomly throwing in quick time events that only completely slow down the action and take you out of the experience completely. Oh yeah, the Werehog, is it really worth mentioning? I guess Sonic likes God of War too.

I will admit, however, the 2D Sonic games found on handhelds have been much better than any of the 3D shovelware games. So, I’m saying if Sonic has to stick around, let’s keep him in 2D. And let’s keep him by himself please. Tails and Knuckles are alright, but everyone else…no thanks. It’s a shame that the most die hard Sonic fans are so desperate, they cling to a game like Sonic Unleashed for comfort when I guarantee a good number of them realize that the series has gone down the tubes. I used to love Sonic, I really did, but it’s time to call it quits. At least on in the third dimension anyway.

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Shameless plug time! Me and four other Backloggery users  (Sobou, Endaso, Ashen, and mechagojira) have teamed up to form the best team blog ever! It’s called Press X to Win and everyone should check it out.