Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi

As you may or may not know, I am a huge fan of Dragonball Z.  I am less so now that I have aged a bit, but when I was younger, DBZ was a big part of my life.  I had shirts, action figures, trading cards, and of course all the DBZ video games that I could get my hands on.  I think that I've played most, if not all, of the DBZ games that have been released, even the ones that were SNES exclusives and released only in Japan with few imports.  Those were extremely difficult to understand, but still fun as hell.  I'm not going to talk about those today, though it would be fun to do a huge mess of quick reviews for all of them, and instead I'll be talking about DBZ: Ultimate Tenkaichi on the Xbox 360.

I personally love this title shot; that badass crackling energy is awesome.

Right off the bat when playing this game you realize that it's not your typical fighter.  I don't know exactly what it is about the controls, but they just feel alien to me.  There are two ranges that you can be at, and each range specifies what type of attack you can use: Melee or Blast.  No matter the range you are at, you can string together three normal hits, or a charged up strong hit, to start a chain.  If you succeed at a short Rock, Paper, Scissors; without the Rock; you can continue to attack your enemy until the chain has finished.  To move between the two ranges, you double-tap the dash button and you'll rocket towards or away from the enemy while performing another attack.  During this time you play another Paper vs. Scissors with the left stick to determine if your attack hits or if the opponent hits you.  Either way you end up in the range you wanted to move to.  To perform a super attack, you can be at either range while tilting the right stick either up or down; an ultimate attack is done by pushing in the right stick.  Along with all of that garbage, you can also move in three dimensions.  It's hard to explain how it feels, but like I said above, it just doesn't feel right.  I'd rather stick with a 2d fighter and "normal" controls all the way.

This is in Japanese I guess.

The main draw to this game for me is the Hero Mode.  You can create your own character, from unlockable clothing and skillsets, to fight in a parallel DBZ universe.  This mode is pretty fun, but it's repetative.  You always seem to battle the same combatants while you attempt to level up your abilities.  As for the Story Mode, it's so short that you'd never realize that the show had so many seasons.  There are a lot of characters to choose from for the battle modes and the World Tournamen, but both of those are basically just time filler.  Where the hell did all of the story content go?  I don't want to fight against random online opponents, I want to play the frickin' story!

A giant boss...In a fighting game.  This isn't Shadow of the Colussus, people.

The developers included a few giant boss fights in the game, I think that's where the energy went for the Story Mode.  They seem to take up most of the time while you're playing; they take a few tries to beat and can last for up to half an hour if you don't memorize the patterns quickly enough.  Why in the hell would a fighting game include giant boss fights?  Shouldn't these be reserved for adventure games?  For each of these giant bosses, I could see more fights included that actually affected the story and weren't edging up on ridiculous.

Despite the massive amount of characters that you can play as and the huge variety of super attacks to choose from, this game falls pretty far from the DBZ tree.  The lack of a significant Story Mode really made me feel like this was far too rushed.  Hell, there's another DBZ game coming out in short order anyway, DB Raging Blast 2 is already on the way and Ultimate Tenkaichi isn't even a year old yet.  They pump these games out so fast that the quality ones are hard to find.  Overall, Ultimate Tenkaichi isn't necessarily terrible, but it's far from great.  In my opinion, stick with DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and avoid this game unless you really are a die hard fan and need to play all of the DBZ games.

Minecraft for XBLA: First Impressions

If you don't know what Minecraft is, I'll give you a little background to help bring you up to speed.  It's an open-ended, creativity game where you mine for resources to build and create pretty much whatever you want within the bounds of the resources you have.  The world is made up of blocks and all of the resources you place are placed into a grid in block form.  There's no ultimate goal, unless you want to complete the game by defeating an end-game boss, so the game continues forever.  The core idea is to mine, build, and survive.  The graphics are retro and block-like, but sharp, and raise a huge level of nostalgia for the golden days of video gaming.


Even though it's blocky, it's still really good looking.

 The main differences between the PC version and the 360 version are the inclusion of a tutorial and a much more seamless multi player experience.  The tutorial is integral for those who haven't played the game before, and it's a much better way to be introduced to the game than if you play it on PC.  There you have to rely on videos and tutorials created by users that came before you that can be pretty hit or miss.  As for the MP game, I haven't had a chance to sample it yet, but there's four player split screen and eight player online game modes.  From what I've heard, there's nothing better than a Minecraft session with some friends.

Just one example of a sweet construction.  And animals.

Moving on to my experience so far, I was thrown off a little by the lack of a main goal.  I started out okay with setting a goal to get a shelter up and then build a forge, but once I hit that point I kind of lost myself and started exploring.  After a ton of exploration I realized that I needed to upgrade my tools with some ore before I could go any further so I started looking for some Iron Ore.  Throughout this time I kept on detailing and upgrading my shelter until it was a two story, island fortress with a defensive wall on the outsides.  Before long I had a second structure up as well where I was starting my third major excavation...Why am I boring you with this detail?  To help explain how I managed to lose like five hours of my day yesterday and how I kept myself busy with goals that I set for myself.  So even without structure, Minecraft is not only able to keep you busy, but also keep you creatively managing your own goals.  It's a total black hole for your free time, but it's really addictive.

The only issue that I experienced during my game time yesterday was that during my first long period of playing, the server unexpectedly crashed and I lost all of my data.  I was pissed at first, but starting over didn't seem too bad since I could just create on a new world in a brand new starting position.  Don't get me wrong, I was still irritated, just not as much as I would have expected. 

Once I get further in the game I'll post another, more in-depth review, but for now this will have to suffice.  My suggestion is to download the demo if you're unsure that the game is for you, and then buy it.  It's only $20, 1600 Microsoft Points on the XBLA Marketplace and is well worth that price:

Asphalt: Injection

There have been a couple of racers released for the PSVita to date, but most of them have gotten some terrible reviews, for good reason.  Mod Nation Racers and Ridge Racer are both some pretty awful games, but I'm not here to talk about crap today, I want to talk about the exception of the group: Asphalt: Injection.  To be honest, I've only played the demo, so this is going to be a pretty short review that's based solely on what I've been able to experience.

Probably the most bland screen ever.

As you can see, the game doesn't look that great from a graphical perspective, and thus doesn't push the Vita to it's full potential.  It looks pretty much the same as if you were to buy it on the iOS.  It looks okay, but not what we would expect from a cutting-edge gaming system that's boasting the best handheld graphics on the market today.

The game play is similar to your normal Arcade racer.  You drive as fast as you can while alternating between drifting and boosting with the nitro you collect from pickups or "stunts" like getting air time on a jump.  The controls are pretty simple and only rarely will you not finish in the top three places of a race.  Touch mechanics are limited here and the only one to speak of is the back touch screen that allows you to manually shift.  It's kind of neat, but its not a game-changer in any way.

FP view in the garage is kind of a fun addition, useless, but fun.

There are a lot of unlockables, based upon how many stars you get during races, and a lot of top name car manufacturers.  We're not looking at the same amount as Forza or Gran Turismo, but there's still an impressive library considering that this is a handheld system.  One thing that's kind of annoying is that you are unable to determine what cars you own unless you are in the garage.  So in the shop, you can't determine which cars you already own versus those that you don't; they all show the price and if they are locked or unlocked.  Different paint schemes allow for some customization for you to make your cars yours.  Tons of tracks are also available, though many are recycled from past Asphalt games.  I haven't personally played the other games so they were all new to me and that downside didn't really come into play during the demo anyway.

All-in-all, this game is pretty good, but there are a few issues that would deter me from buying it.  Considering that the iOS version is $0.99 and the Vita version is $30+, it might not be a good buy unless you really, really want it on your PSVita or don't have an iDevice and are looking for a good racing game for your new handheld.  My advice in that situation is to buy this and stay far away from Mod Nation and Ridge Racer, those just flat out suck.

Sumioni: The Dark Arts, a haiku

Since it is very difficult to wirte an entire post on an iPad, I've decided to try my hand at a more creative form of review...creative and short. Believe me, that this is really hard to type all hunt and peck~like.

Sumioni arts,
game of ink and platforms brushed,
leave it to Rayman.

Army Corps of Hell

If you think the title is awful, wait until you play the game.



Don't be fooled by the fact that SE was involved.

 The idea behind this game is that you're controlling an army of minions, in this case they are goblin-looking things, and you need to fight your way through hellish landscapes to regain your position in the ranks.  The core game play has you moving your skeleton general around from platform to platform while you throw your minions at whatever assortment of monsters jumps up at you for the 50th time.

Once you chuck a few of your little guys onto an enemy they start using whatever weapon they're equipped with based upon the type of minion they are.  Soldiers use swords, Spearmen are obviously equipped with spears, and Magi use staves.  Each type of minion has a different special attack and are useful against different enemies.  Soldiers generally do the most damage with a special attack, Spearmen attack monsters that come close to them, and Magi have a good distance strike.  There's not much else to this thing; you move from stage to stage killing things with the same old strategy.  It gets boring very quickly.

It's tricky; looks like it could be good, but it's really not.

To spice it up a bit, you can alter the # of each minion type you have in your army at one time.  Some combos are better than others, but for the most part it doesn't really matter.  The customization options are very limited.  There are different weapons and items to create, you collect materials to make them from fallen monsters, but there's very little reason to not use the newest one that you've created.  Why allow for customization if it doesn't matter?

You can also equip different hats for your minions and different cloaks for your general.  Once again though, the newest one is going to be the best and you run into the same issue with the weapons and items.  IF the customizability was better, this could be a fun game.  I've already mentioned that the combat is really bland, but even more bland is the variety of enemies you encounter. 

You fight the same stupid creatures over and over again.  Once you've seen a set of monsters, the game switches it up by changing their colors and adding an ability.  Yeehaw.  Honestly, I could only play this game for up to ten stages, and after that I just gave up because I couldn't stand it.  I think the only thing that I was really impressed with in this entire pile of crap was the music; that was freaking awesome.  It's all heavy-death-metal-ish and not anything like the rest of the game.  I would buy the soundtrack for this game any day.

I expected a LOT more from Square-Enix's first title on the PSVita, especially since it's a strategy game.  I know that the Vita is still pretty new and that the system is still finding its own niche of games, but this garbage shouldn't have ever existed.  The worst part is that it's basically a horribly butchered Overlord port from the Xbox 360.  Overlord featured similar combat and customization options, but fleshed it out more.  You get a castle, a forge, different spells, etc.

Had SE taken even a small amount of the lessons that came from Overlord, I could have seen Army Corp of Hell being a decent game.  Since they decided to go a different direction, I feel like this is one of those few times where they really fucked up.  I expected more from you Square-Enix.