Viking: Battle for Asgard (360) Review

Yea.. Viking.. I'm not even really sure where to start. This is a game I had heard absolutely nothing about yet i grabbed it anyway. Normally id recommend against this sort of practice but I had to kill time waiting for the GTA:IV release - and vikings are awesome.

This game though, is not awesome.

Basically not at all.




They had a good idea but they fucked it up in the implementation so it turned out to be a sub-par god of war ripoff, even though it wasnt really meant to be as such.

There are some golden moments scattered throughout, the battle scenes are rather interesting, although I believe that some of the other problems do hold you back a bit. Combat is uninspired and repetitive, and it seems like the main focus of the game was the brutality instead of other qualities - like you know, story.

Its pretty much a slasher, but without any broad stroke attacks, all of your attacks save one special attack only hit a single target. So in the aforementioned battle scenes where there is sometimes 2000 enemies in the area and you are fighting a bunch at a time, you have to go after them one at a time leaving you open for assrape from the sides.

I learned a combo a few minutes into the game and used that for pretty much the entire game, special attacks were used only situationally and I only ever used the magic (which just imbues your sword with one of three types of magic) in the battle scenes because your nearby allies also gain the effect, which would often result in the total raping of all enemies in the area. There was only one special attack that would hit multiple enemies, the greatest of the 'combo' line - but the highest level would actually be better if you would STAY ON A SINGLE ENEMY TILL THEY DIED instead of 1 hit and running to another enemy for another single hit.

The magic wasn't a great feature, 3 spells - lightning, ice, and fire: that do what you would expect them to do, lighting does additional shock damage, fire lights them on fire for damage over time, and ice freezes them solid and a 2nd hit shatters them. Since they are all the same cost as far as 'mana' ice was always most used on my playthrough, since with the combo attacks youd basically be shattering guys very quickly after freezing them. In the whole playthrough I only used a magic attack maybe 15 times because of what I see as a huge flaw in the magic system: The inability to turn the spell off. If you got into a fight with say 10 guys and blow your magic and kill them all very quickly, the ENTIRE REST OF THE BAR would burn off and you can't stop it, so if another fight came up where youd need it - but its gone.

Ranged weaponry are a joke and the only reason to use them is for the achievements, they either take too long to use effectively or they are a waste of money to buy them. The firepots which are like grenades get completely lost if you get hit during the huge animation, so using them during a fight is more risky than worth it. Also later in the game the axes just suck too much to use.

Finally I personally do not believe this game was either: A) Playtested at all or B) Playtested enough. I encounted a slew of bugs, ranging from the graphical to environmental to things that directly affect gameplay. Most of them looked like they could be easily fixed or removed, so this leads me to believe there wasn't enough playtesting at all, GG Sega.

Concept: Skarin the viking dies and is reborn by Freya the creepy viking goddess, using hairgel from her bad princess leia hair she gives him some crazy sense of immortality and sends him on a basically idiotic mission to free captured vikings from the forces of Hel (not hell, do you want to get sued?) , another viking goddess who happens to command demon-type things. Also idiotic sidequests.

Graphics: The models arent exactly the most detailed things i had ever seen, but they certainly werent bad - The only decent face in the game was on Skarin, the main character. Random_Vikings all looked exactly the same, and i didnt even notice that there was women in the game til the very end. The environments were very beautiful, well designed areas that efficiently fit alot of different combat 'zones' (ie: different areas to clear) into an overall small map. The detail given to the trees, plants, and waterfalls wouldve been better spent somewhere else, like say.. storyline.

Sounds: There is only like 5 or 6 different voices throughout the entire game, since everyone sounds like a rugged viking you dont really question it. The combat sounds are unoriginal and uninspired, but how many different ways can you slap a sword against a shield, really? None of the bad guys talk, the random_minions, the main evil god and her one single pathetic 'boss' underling talk a couple times, but thats it. The voiceover for the cutscenes between the islands is a guy pretending to be thor, comedic at best.

Gameplay: This is where it hurts the most. As i said before, the combat system isnt meant for a game with huge battles but instead is geared tward single combat. The in game minimap is a joke, its basically only there to guide you tward bags of gold, nothing of any fucking interest appears on the minimap, enemies or landmarks or basically anything other than gold, vendors/people to talk to, bosses/mini-bosses. WHY EVEN HAVE A MINIMAP, you cant even use the thing to gauge which way is north because you cant even fucking see the N on it 95% of the time, you have to hope you can swing your screen at an angle where you can have a very light backdrop and you can see the like 80% transparent N. The dragon support during battles is stupid, you have 3 dragons why do they all hit the same place... are they just flying around the rest of the time? Additionally they added a 'hop over' animation to skarin so that he can move fluidly over objects and up stairs and shit, my favorite being the one where he hops over a waist height wall as soon as you tap it. The drawback of this is that several of the towns are on top of massive cliffs, and said cliffs have.. halfwalls.. blocking people from falling off, they also have alleys with random objects that force you to move 'near' said halfwalls. I think I unintentionally touched a random cliffside halfwall like.. 6 times, and every time it resulted in skarin instantly hopping the wall, though there was no ground on the other side.. and falling to his death. Would it be so hard to add a 'check for landing ground' clause before he hops a wall? seriously?

And heres my favorite part..

Viking Gear Solid: I always assumed that the people who pitch ideas to the board of directors at a company were at least semi-intelligent, and would realise something compltely idiotic before it was released to the general population. But the guy who came into a board room, looked people plainly in the face, pitched a viking slasher game, and then followed it up with "and we'll add stealth elements, similar to metal gear, where you sneak around a city to collect various things" seriously just needs fired. Skarin has arms like fucking tree trunks, hes gotta weigh as much as a VW bug and hes like 50% naked, also hes a fucking VIKING. Why in the goddamn sam hell would anybody even consider adding stealth elements to a viking game is beyond me, the guy walks like a fucking T-rex, his idea of a 'stealth kill' is to cleave a guy in half. Why in the living fuck would you think it a good idea to have this bigass olaf 'sneaking' around AT ALL. Vikings dont fucking sneak, at all, ever - WHY WOULD YOU CONSIDER THIS ASIDE FROM SOME SORT OF PRACTICAL JOKE. In the first sneaking event, on the first island, the first time they even mentioned it, i spent an hour. There is so many fucking ways to get seen and thus end up fighting like 50 dudes by yourself, its a joke.

Final Score: Viking: Battle for Asgard gets a 4.5 for me, the battle scenes are pretty goddamn cool, and the game really isnt long enough to totally ruin the entire experience, but its not completed. The amount of bugs strewn across the countryside, from warping enemies to bad graphical bugs to shitty locking with the targetting almost ruined the entire experience for me, more playtesting would fix this. Graphically not bad but the story just doesnt seem to exist to keep you going, the combat system isnt that good for anything other than small fights. This game desperately needs a re-haul of the HUD, especially the minmap.

The Damage: a Short game, I only spend about 15 hours slashing my way through the lands of midgard, but i achieved 850 Achievement Points.

My Recommandation: Unless you are going for Achivements, pass on this one.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP) Review

The PSP is a fantastic little thing, in addition to porn, you can play games on it. Some of which are kinda good, this is one of them.

Crisis Core is another in the continued exploitation of money out of the Final Fantasy VII franchise that they refer to as the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII". This one is set years prior to the events of VII, and you play as Zack Fair. For those of you who didn't pay much attention to FFVII, Zack Fair is the guy that Cloud thought he was for most of the game. Where Cloud was never in
SOLDIER, Zack was. Where Cloud never actually got to bone Aeris, Zack hit that shit.

Through the standard exceptionally awesome psp movies, you get to see some fuckin SWEET cutscenes that were probably done by the same people who did Advent Children.

Zack starts off as a less than cool SOLDIER 2nd Class, which is pretty much the equivilent of the guys in the yellow or blue shirts on Star Trek whom just go with Kirk to the planet ENTIRELY TO DIE. Over the course of the game you see Zack rise up to SOLDIER 1st Class and hang out with much cooler people such as but not limited to everyones favorite female looking villain, Sephiroth.

Lets just please the fanboi population right now. Yes - Sephiroth is all over this game like herpes on a whore. Yes - Sephiroth is a boss fight in the 8th chapter "The Nibelheim Incident", Yes - You get to see how the whole shit goes down, again.

Many of the events have of course been seen before in various scenes in FFVII, in addition to the famous 'Nibelheim Flashback" in Kalm after you leave Midgar; You get to see Zack meet Aeris, Zack and Aeris fall in love, blahblah, Zack builds a Flower Cart for Aeris and gives her the idea to sell flowers, Wutai get their asses kicked in a war against Shinra, and uhhh a couple other little details, like the entire score of LOVELESS (that play on the billboard in Midgar).

Crisis Core also introduces some other new characters that havent been in other games: Angeal, who serves as Zacks mentor and superior officer in SOLDIER until all the shit happens. Dr.Hollander; who is behind Project G which was referenced a good amount of times in Dirge of Cerberus. And a new Turk named Cissnei; whom nobody knows dick about except that shes hot, and somehow doesnt die in Crisis Core, but doesnt end up in FFVII or any other later games - though she did appear in that shitty phone game in japan.

The other Character introduced is Genesis, whom first appeared in the hidden ending of Dirge of Cerberus to save Weiss in an underground cave after the credits roll, refering to him as "brother". Genesis being the main antagonist, since Sephiroth disappears from the storyline completely after the nibelheim incident. Genesis discovers that he is infact a result of Jenova Project G, and that his Cells are degrading, leading to his impending death. Project G being the pre-cursor for Project S, and well if you cant figure that one out you are pretty retarded. Genesis is rather key for VII story, since Sephiroth didnt just 'figure it out' and go raid the Shinra Mansion Basement, he was told - by Genesis, and then things go the way they did...

Graphics: Where its just the PSP, the graphics are pretty damn good, not even counting the movies, the movies are basically the same thing as Advent Children. In game graphics are probably better than Dirge of Cerberus, but that game was a hefty bag of shit really. Seeing the events of VII redone with ps2-quality graphics was just enough to give me a semi, but only when I see a true remake will I get a true boner.

Lemme put one of the better movies in here so you guys can see how sex they are.





Sound: This part shines, they got all the voices from Advent Children for the V/O, qualityyyyy. Cloud sounds like a homo because hes totally green, and it shows in his voice, even though its the same guy, Fantastic. The other sounds though are pretty much taken from various versions of FFVII - Even the beeping when you move around in the menus. The game has a more rock and roll soundtrack, including "One-Winged Angel" for the Sephiroth fight. Alot of the music is just remixed tracks from VII, and i noticed that the common combat theme was taken from the Ending Credits of FFVII: Final Order (the anime that never made it stateside).

Gameplay: OK soo.. this is where the game kinda.. loses some points. The combat system is made up of a basic hack and slash game, except when you hit the 'attack' command, zack actually runs to the targetting monster. This resulted in my doing entire fights by just hitting the X button over and over. Instead of experience there is the DMW (Digital Mind Wave), its a fucking Roulette wheel, constantly going in the top left corner of the screen. If 2 of the same face comes up all combat stops and the DMW takes up the entire screen, if 2 of the same number come up, the materia in that slot goes up a level, maxing out at 5. If you get 3 7's, Zack gains a level. If 3 of the same picture come up you do a limit break based on that person or summon. Example: 3 Bahamuts is Megaflare, 3 Sephiroths is Octaslash, 3 Tsengs is an Airstrike from Helicopter. This mgiht sound pretty gay as far as Materia growth, and I assure you - it is 100% homosexual. But upon a little research Zack gains levels pretty much independantly, there is an invisible exp counter and when you go above your Level up requirement the odds of you getting 3 7's is pretty certain.

The other thing I want to mention is that this game is FANTASTIC for Taking a shit, If we had a Taking a Shit meter this would get 5 out of 5. There is a rediculous amount of totally optional missions avaliable from any save point - each taking 3-8 minutes total. So you could pop your ass down to drop the kids off at the pool and do a couple missions easily and enjoyably from the comfort of your throne.

The Damage: Thirty hours, probably couldve done it in 20, i did alot of the side missions, theres a god damn TON of those. I throughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

Final Score: 9 out of 10. It does get a bit repetitive later on, but they give you alot of freedom to stop dicking around any time you want and continue the story to avoid any repetition, and the boss battles are rather easy. My second Playthrough is a New Game+ on Hard and i'm hoping that is a bit more challenging in the boss department. I honestly expected to lose to Sephiroth, but it wasnt even really that close. Overall a good addition to the world of Final Fantasy VII, but this doesn't stall the need for a remake or sequel anymore than another movie would.

Forgot to Mention: Its a prequel, so I cant say 'they left it open for a sequel' but Genesis appears in Dirge of Cerberus which is 2 years after Advent Children. So.... My feeling is that there will be one more game for the Collection of FFVII, and that it'll go back to basics with Cloud. Or it'll be FFVII-2 (hoping for that.)

Lost Odyssey (360) Review

The first thing that caught my eye about this game came long before I even had the disc loaded into the tray, as soon as the box was handed to me a dark sense of forboding came over me as I felt it - like being handed a bag of potatoes, this box was heavy. Upon opening the box my fears became reality as Four Discs came into my field of view. I was in for a long road, and I knew it.

Lost Odyssey is what I consider to be the first good RPG for the 360, sure I haven't played Blue Dragon, but frankly that game looks like shit anyway so who cares.

This game added to my usual thoroughness resulted in the loss of 86.5 hours of my life. Granted about 5.5 hours of it was 'Lost Time' due to a bad incident with the checkpointing system not saving much on disc 4 (God did that piss me off). You dont even notice the time you spend playing, but all those little animations and flavor shit they add in combat really does take up alot of time. Average random fights last about 5 minutes, just due to the amount of time it takes to do animations - of course you dont notice it at the time, largly in part to you staring at Ming Numaras breasts and having to pay attention to the ring system.

On many review sites they rip this game apart because of its unoriginal and bland combat system, sure its basic Final Fantasy 1 - Turn based /w commands and you pick targets for everything. Its unoriginal but does that make it bad? its tried and true - and I saw it as a breath of fresh air, classic enough to be new again.. kinda. Recently all the rpg's that ive played go out of their way to try some sort of original new combat system, in some sort of attempt to push the envelope, but often times these attempts to be new and original backfire and ruin a game. Sure Final Fantasy 12 was a good step in a new direction, but how many bad games are only bad because of chances they take on combat? Eternal Sonata didnt have a bad combat system, but it sure as shit wasnt good. No Risk No Reward might be true, but if it isnt broken why fix it?

The Storyline is believable, makes sense, keeps momentum up throughout and doesn't really disappoint, although there isnt very many twists and turns, no 'hidden twists' at all actually, but it is still pretty good, it isnt fantastic, but this game already lost its chances to get a perfect 10, so..

You play as Kaim Argonar, and they basically dont give you much more than that at the beginning of the game, you are the sole survivor of an amazing catastrophe during a battle (video on that later) and everybody starts asking why, Turns out you actually are a 1000 year old immortal, but you cant remember your lifetime, hence the title "Lost Odyssey"

Over the next couple weeks of your life you regain Kaims memories, meet up with other immortals (who also dont remember anything), and fuck all kinds of shit up. About halfway through the story you get your memories back, the main antagonist is exposed, and you start on a semi-political course to fix the world, blahblahblah, then you kill the dude and you see the credits, and rejoice.

My favorite feature of Lost Odyssey is what they call the "Thousand Years of Dreams", these are actually so good that they even put a link to it on the main menu before you load your game. Over the course of Kaim's 1000 years he had met and experienced alot of things, 1kYoD is a collection of Short written stories that are the lore of the game, the backstory even, and the best part of it is that these stories are usually all really goddamn good. some of them even had me choking up, almost all of them are about death (life for 1k years and see how much death you experience, go for it) and about some sort of general feature of humanity or life lesson.

Graphics: Honestly the graphics are pretty top notch, the walking around the world animations and quality is damn near realism. Another neat feature is having the camera constantly focused on you, so items in the foreground and background are blurry and out of focus until you go to the same distance as them (away from the camera). The in-battle graphics are the same as story or travel, and the smell animations are pretty, i cant fault this game on graphics at all. The movies are just awesome, especially the opening movie (below).





Sound: I never caught any direct problems in the V/O, all the characters are voiced by a person whom matches their look and personality, so A+ there. Other than that, the one-liners on certain skills and spells could use some variations or alternate sayings instead of the same thing over and over. The music sets the tone of the game, and its a fantastic musical score on par with any final fantasy.

Gameplay: "Classic" combat interface with a timing-based ring system attached to the 'attack' command that allows you to do additional damage. (2 rings, one growing and shrinking and you let go of the trigger when it matches the other ring). Like I said before I think the old-fashioned combat system is a relief in times where everyone is trying to do something fresh and new. The status effects and spell-types are standard Final Fantasy, but with different names so they dont get sued. A "Composite Magic" type is something i havent seen before, with hybrid spells "Shadow(ae shadow dmg)+Flara(fire2)=All-Flara(fire that hits all)" So you have to have both of the parent spells before you can use the composite spell.

The skill aquisition system is pretty much stolen from other final fantasy games, Where you get skill points in addition to experience and other people and accessories teach you skills, then your people have those skills but there is only X slots for skills on each person. This sounds ok, but considering that only Immortals can learn skills from others, and that they get (at the end of the game) 30 skill slots - This makes the Mortal characters you can have pretty much fuckin useless in comparison, since they only have MAYBE 12 skills, max. My kaim was utterly immune to magic, and had like 8 different 'chance on getting hit' things that would either; counter, dodge, or guard. in addition to the 9999 hp he had, whereas the 2 'melee' mortals had.. 3k? hp at most and no good defensive skills, and not half the damage output. So by the end of the game you realise that its entirely about the immortals, and the 5 or 6 mortals you get are just there to feed skills to your immortals.

The Damage: I spent fucking EIGHTY SIX hours on this game, and i got 800 Achievement Points. All 1000 of the Achievement points are able to be gotten on a single playthrough, but you have to be terribly thorough (even more than me) - 99 'seeds' are hidden totally randomly throughout the game, and all 99 are required for an achievement for collecting all treasure, and the reward for getting all 99 is an item with a skill the immortals can learn, and if you dont get that you cant get any of the 'all skills' achievements on the 4 immortals, at 20gp each.

Final Score: I give Lost Odyssey a 8.25, its a bit drawn out, and honestly the best part of the game is the dreams, and i dont like text shit really. Kaim is a pretty awesome main character, but some of the situations you get put into are pretty.. dumb, and you can tell it in the lines he says. The story doesnt make any waves and the combat system does hurt sometimes, having immortals fighting eachother in boss fights seems kinda like beating your face into the wall. There was a good chunk of features throughout the game that i noticed werent finished but were too small to warrant more attention. I do think its the first good RPG for the 360, but not for anybody not willing to invest 80 hours

Easyass 1000 Gamerpoints

If you have gamefly or the blockbuster gamerpass, you can get 1000 gamerpoints easy as shit. If you own this game, im sorry.

Game: Avatar the Last Airbender: The Burning Earth
Time: About 5 minutes.