thirdworldgamer

Played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIII recently. Here are my first impressions of the game: There are times when I like the game, like when cutscenes play or when in a good boss fight. The cutscenes are really beautifully rendered and are quite enjoyable to watch. The voice acting is okay, generally speaking; it's within the level of most other video games (re: don't expect Oscar-award winning acting, but it's bearable). There are times when I really hate the game, when it gives you these long dungeons with repeating enemies that seemingly have incredible amounts of HP; some regular enemies seem to take 30 minutes or more to take down. I hate how the game overuses the theme song that was in the E3 trailer. The music is very repetitive and Square didn't bother to make music suited for each character or situation. Some boss fights use the exact same music as battles with regular enemies, which reduces the overall impact of some scenes. There are also moments when the mu...

Watching, and playing Street Fighter IV in person is a completely different experience from just downloading a video off Gametrailers or other gaming sites and just watching it. Something about the game just feels so fluid, expressive and alive. Me and my wife were talking about it and we came to the same conclusion: The animation of Street Fighter IV is the star of the show. You could take any screenshot of SF4 and complain about how the graphics don't look like it's previous predecessors; or how it doesn't look 'anime' enough. If you paused the game and looked at the design of the character models, it does seem more westernized than past Street Fighter titles. But it's when the character models in the game start moving that it starts feeling like a Japanese-made game. The animation is just incredible. There's Virtua Fighter 5's realistic animation---and there's Street Fighter 4's animation, which is just....something else. It's cartoony...p...

Also posted this on Pinoyxbox.com forums... Just played this game yesterday and finished the first and second level....that second level was really, really, REALLY long. I wish the boss fight didn't repeat itself too much but the trip to the boss had some really nicely designed areas. I have to say, though...the cutscenes and voice acting in this game are SUPERB . There may be some choppiness here-and-there in the animation but the voice acting more than makes up for it. The combat works sometimes and at other times I wish that I could see more feedback from the game as to whether or not I'm hitting something. It just needs more flashiness. For some reason it's more fun to use a gun/cannon in the game than to use your melee weapons (or maybe it's because of the character class I'm using, which is the defender) I love the world of the game, and the characters (while they could have had better faces) are very, very interesting. Gamers who want their games to have oodl...

So today I got a bit more immersed in Lost Odyssey than ever before. As we've posted previously, it's my wife that's playing the game. That's because I was spending some quality time playing Virtua Fighter 5 and improving my online fighting skills with Jacky. In the future I'm going to post some of my 'ownage!' videos of VF5 online play on this blog, just for kicks :D I guess I needed a change of pace. Every so often I glance over my shoulder while surfing and my wife's playing Lost Odyssey. Some moments really made me go 'Wow!' even if I wasn't strictly watching her progress (most of the posts here about the game are based on her impressions). So this morning I got even deeper into disc 1. Just a thought that occurred to me: When people form their opinion on a game, what should have more weight? Technical merits or the 'big picture'? With Lost Odyssey you could spend time mulling over the occasional jaggy or two, or imperfect lightin...

Took some pics during play of Lost Odyssey for Disc 3 and 4. Note that there are a lot more areas than the ones pictured here....Currently at 36 hours of play by the start of Disc 4. Also, if you don't want to be spoiled then don't look. Honestly there isn't any major story spoilers in the pictures; it's more of "location" spoilers. So if you want to be truly surprised then don't read further. These pictures are not in chronological order; in fact, one of the pics is from Disc 1! It accidentally got in there....anyway, this is just to show the expanse/breadth of the game. Yahoosoda's impressions follow: I just got to Disk 4 of the game and I'm surprised that Disk 4 doesn't entail running to the last boss right away. I'm currently at 36 hours at Disk 4 with my characters having an average level of 36. At this point, I do not have 2 levels of spell casting and I have not completed the spells for the prior levels. (Note that there are 4 spells...