Devil May Cry 4 Demo

Yes, I know this post is outdated, the demo did come out on the 24th of January after all. However, I am a XBox Live Silver user, being too stingy to pay the AU$99.95 for a one-year Gold membership - so I couldn't get the demo until several days after 24th January. So how is the demo? It's short. Really short. It's like, maybe 20 minutes long. But what would we expect of a 613MB demo? Some demos are 1GB large and end up giving even less than 20 minutes.

Things I learned from the demo about the game I've been waiting for:

1. The game still feels the same. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing or a good thing, but the game still feels the same to me. Besides Nero's EXCEED gauge (which is cool), and Nero's Devil Bringer arm (which is even cooler), it feels the same. Slashing, shooting, combos and even enemies feel positively Devil May Cry.

2. Nero kicks ass. The EXCEED gauge is brilliant if you are looking for some added strategy. Should I charge it while waiting? When should I fire off the first hit? Do I have time now to press that right trigger a few more times? (Yes, I suck horribly at charging the sword while slashing around.) The Devil Bringer abilities feel kind of broken sometimes. While in the demo, we're only shown two: the Buster and the Grim Grip. The Buster is well, quite honestly cool looking when you use it against Berial. The Grim Grip is well, kinda funny. To me, it serves as a way to continue a combo, since it's a pretty easy way to disable enemies, or grab one you hit too far away back to dish out another helping of damage.

3. The game looks awesome. The graphics are nice. The frame rate is nice. The fighting is nice. The cinematic scenes are nice.

4. Loading screens are crap. Why are there loading screens everywhere?! We're in next-gen and I'm still seeing loading screens everywhere. LOL. Of course, that could have something to do with me playing it from a CD instead of a DVD or HDD. (Hats off to Microsoft for delaying demos for us cheapskates. Buggers. I'll be sure to buy less XBox 360 games from now on, see how you like it. :P)

5. I still definitely want the game. Heh.

Call of Duty 4 Completed

Yeah, I know I'm slow with finishing games, but I've finally finished Call of Duty 4's single player mode. It's short and it's fun. It looks and runs great, the story is simple and entertaining. I have no doubt multiplayer will be bloody fun. Gameplay is solid - besides the few run-ins with the infinite spawn business. The stealth/sniper level felt very scripted, but I'm all for an easier nicer looking game. The AC-130 minigame of sorts? Perfect. Off I am to go finish another few games. I'm currently playing Grim Grimoire, God of War, Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon. Hopefully I'll finish them before I get back to Australia.

Why I'm Unhappy with Crysis

It doesn't take a genius to know why I'm unhappy with Crysis. This is supposed to be technical achievement of the year. Well, I'm having trouble seeing it. This is my computer running Unreal Tournament 3. (both details settings at 4, post processing at Vivid - 30fps - which I believe is the fps limiter kicking in)

(Click on the thumbnail to see the whole picture. A note? UT3's default for my computers made the game look really really bad. Most games do that when they autodetect my settings - funnily enough, I didn't expect to have to turn up the settings up to 4 to find the REAL optimal settings that it should've found to begin with.)

This is my computer running Call of Duty 4 - practically default (optimal settings from autodetect), besides my turning up the anistropic filtering and resolution up from 1024*768 - runs at 30fps - also fps limiter, if I'm not wrong.

(Click on the thumbnail to see the whole picture. Second screen is from multiplayer. I haven't played far enough to get to the outdoors section yet - but I've already played it on the XBox 360.)

This is my computer running Crysis. (been tweaked till the moon turns orange - it's as smooth as it gets after tweaking everything - optimal defaults look horrible)

(Playable settings - roughly 21-30fps)

(Slightly higher quality settings - roughly 12-16fps)

(Click on the thumbnail to see the whole picture.)

The screenshots are taken after I have adjusted every possible setting in the normal menu - yes, I know nowadays you can tweak the .INI file down to every detail, but if the game doesn't have the option in the menu, I figure I'm better off not tweaking it. Everything is running at 1024 by 768. Everything I have tweaked to achieve a general 30-40 frames per second - no point turning everything up if I can't play it that way.

If you can see from the screenshots above - yes, my biggest complaint is simple. Crysis graphics may look nice if you can turn everything up - but if you can't, you are left with crap. I don't mind if the lighting is less realistic, the trees look like any other lousy trees, but it's another thing when objects which most games have no problem rendering nicely start looking worse than games running on (I'll stress) identical hardware. My computer is far from crap, and while it can't do crazy 1680 by 1050 at 30fps, it can sure as hell pull through (and look good while it's at it) at 1024 by 768. As much as people are calling it beautiful and such - im my opinion, the ability to downscale is huge, especially since the gameplay is relatively weak. While people might call my computer weak, it sure as hell ain't a pushover - and I'm as sure as hell Crysis could use some massive optimisations.

(And yes, despite what Crytek says, Crysis should run fine on a console if they worked hard enough to optimize their work. Realize the Bioshock PC does look better than it's XBox 360 counterpart - I'm quite sure console owners wouldn't mind it looking worse as long as they can play it. Of course, there's the issue of gameplay - but Crysis feels very much like a console game to me - just eats a lot of virtual memory for some reason.)

It is a bad comparison since I am comparing leaves to lack of any greenery whatsoever, but what about the normal objects? Even on my crappy computer, non-tree objects deserve more attention than none.

My Favourite Five Games of 2007

1. Favourite puzzle gamePortal

(Copyright of Valve, I think.)

I think this is a no contest and no brainer. Portal is the best puzzle game for 2007. It may not have been long, the puzzles may not have been difficult - but it was fun. Crush for PSP was probably second.

2. Favourite RPG .hack//G.U. Series

(Images from dothack.wikia.com. Copyrights belong to Namco Bandai, of course.)

Yes, I know the Japanese games all finished the previous year, but the last two of the series didn't show up in English until this year. I don't care if you think it's repetitive, all the dungeons look the same, or there's too much grinding - it was fun for me. And being in several volumes means that the storyline is waaay better than that last game that started with 2Fs (and Persona 3 is even more repetitive). A close second for me would have to be Eternal Sonata (known to some people with another title - Trusty Bell).

3. Favourite first person shooter (FPS): Bioshock (Heh, 2K Games.)

While it wasn't entirely FPS, and definitely wasn't an RPG - it was fun. Crysis and CoD4 are no challenge for its gameplay, UT3 is a multiplayer game, Halo 3 has just finally reached the stage of a good FPS (compared to the previous two instalments) and HL2 Episode 2 is too short for comparison to this behemoth (same goes for Resistance).

4. Favourite portable game: Gyakuten Saiban 3/Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (Heh, Capcom.)

No surprise here. Nothing beats this for sucking up my time even when I'm at home doing nothing else. Gyakuten Saiban 3 DS kicks ass.

5. Favourite music game: Guitar Hero 3

(Now Activision, right?)

3 words: Wireless Guitar Controller. Ok, so there's more to say. I love the controller. I love the song list. I love the difficulty and challenge. Way to go, Neversoft. Why no Rock Band? I don't have Rock Band. I happen to live in the PAL side of the world. You know how us poor PAL people get snubbed come holiday time when it comes to something as important to release at Christmas as Rock Band. (I will never forgive Harmonix and MTV Games - unless they give us more songs. XD)

There are other things to say about 2007.

Despite me liking the PS3 better as a device, I play more games on the XBox 360. I would've sold off my Wii a long time ago if not for the GameCube support. Believe it. Since computer system requirements are climbing at ridiculous rates, I haven't played much in the way of new PC games - for the most part, there aren't many good ones that came out this year, and those good ones came out on the XBox 360 or PS3 anyway. I like my consoles very much - and I believe they are the way to go when it comes to gaming. Having both the XBox 360 and the PS3 eventually land you more ability to play good games as they come than having an up-to-date gaming PC.

If you notice, I didn't put a favourite RTS there, but it most certainly is C&C3. It's just not as liked to the magnitude of the other 5 games. Supreme Commander is just way too slow for me, and the 'At War' series is well, not quite as fun as C&C3 is for me.

Assassin's Creed deserves an honourable mention here, since it was really fun, but unfortunately, repetitive and leaves much to be desired. But still fun.

As for a per console breakdown,

I think the best game to come out for PC was C&C3. (Portal was too short, Bioshock still feels very console-like to me) A close second would have to be Unreal Tournament 3.

The best game to come out for PS2, I'd still choose the .hack//G.U. series. No second place to speak of. Unless you want to count Guitar Hero 3.

The best game for PS3? I'd say Unreal Tournament 3. Heh. Folklore comes a close second for me.

As for the XBox 360, I think the best game would be Bioshock - with Assassin's Creed a close second.

As for the Wii, I think all the games are mediocre or average at best, so I'd have to go with Super Paper Mario - with Super Mario Galaxy a close second.

For the PSP, I liked Disgaea PSP a lot. Even for a remake of a game I have already played an identical version of, it was still fun. FFTactics was a HUGE disappointment. Crush would come second.

For the DS, I suppose nothing beats Gyakuten Saiban 3. Second? I'd have to say probably Brain Age 2.

My favourite developer is Blizzard (oddly enough the one that didn't release anything). Demos of Starcraft 2 are still playing in my head nonstop. I WANT THAT GAME.

(Note that there looks to be conflicts on my list, but in truth, there aren't. My favourite games aren't necessarily the best games on the console. They aren't synonymous to me.)

Guitar Hero III

For those who have been keeping up with the casual gaming trend, you'll know that Guitar Hero III is out. I've acquired it (thanks to a nice promotion and Big W), and I've been playing it over the past week very heavily. For those who aren't so familiar, it's a guitar-sim game where you have this guitar controller and pretend to play a guitar. LOL.

I don't really have much to say about the game. The new wireless controller is good. It has a good weight to it, a detachable neck and overall solid feel. Since I have the XBox 360 version, I can also say that it works well with the Wireless Gaming Receiver and you can enjoy a good game of Frets on Fire with it. My only real complaint with the controller is that it consumes batteries rather quickly. I've had to recharge a pair of batteries every two days, and I play about 5-6 hours every day. The removable faceplate is kinda good, since I can take it off for cleaning (it's a real fingerprint and dust magnet).

The game itself has gone through some graphics overhaul, with the new Star Power meter, combo counter and of course, being on a powerful console, looks really nice. I like the new art style and the guitar battles - which are plenty of fun.

I'm the most satisfied with the song selection this time round. (I wasn't too happy with Guitar Hero 2's song selection.) Plenty of good tracks - and of course, the best part is that a greater amount of the songs are now masters (recordings by the original artist) and those that are covers sound pretty good too.

I don't know if I'm right, but I have reason to believe that the difficulty for the game has increased by a noticeable amount for every single one of the difficulty levels. I found Easy to be more demanding than it was in the previous games, and the same goes for Medium level note charts. While the 3 buttons and 4 buttons limit is still in place for the two difficulty levels, they have become technically more difficult to play.

I'm certain Hard is harder than it used to be technically - but that might be actually due to the songs themselves - a lot of which are I believe more difficult to play in real life to begin with than some of the earlier songs. I've only recently been able to play Hard difficulty songs in Guitar Hero 3 (just today, actually - most of the solos that are made to be trivial in Medium are really difficult in Hard). Why am I sure it's harder? Because I don't remember quite so many green-to-red-to-yellow-to-blue-to-orange (and practically in reverse immediately) sequences when I tried playing Hard on previous Guitar Hero instalments. That being said, those probably helped me a lot. Playing on that difficulty level helped considerably with my memory of where my hand was on the fret buttons.

Since I can't play on the Expert difficulty yet, I won't comment, but I'm certain it's gotten more difficult too - which is a good thing.

I won't bother putting photos for a simple reason - they're everywhere - no point, especially since this is kinda a late review for the game. I believe this game is currently the best in the series, and you can't go wrong when it comes to simple fun.

(On another note, the Xbox 360 is making my room really really hot, so I can't play it for too long, otherwise my room becomes a small dry sauna.)