How To Ruin A Character 101

The 3rd Birthday just came out... and fans of Parasite Eve are livid. Not only has a revived RPG series been changed into a shooter game, but Aya Brea has degenerated into a moeblob. Even being voiced by Yvonne Strahovski who I respect as an actress doesn't mean that I'm liking the changes made to her character.

I've never gotten the appeal of playing as a weak character. Most people wanting to play a game do it to play as a strong, powerful protagonist. Nobody wants to play as a wimp and seeing a character that fans have wanted to see return for a decade suddenly become weak and pathetic leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If anything, this phenomenon is worse in gaming than it is in passive media since the character shown on screen is menat to be representative of the player. People have certain expectations for who they're going to assume the role of when playing a sequel and making a previously loved character unlikable will only cause the series to lose fans.

Two perfect examples of this phenomenon are Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat and Samus from Metroid. Kung Lao was a character introduced in Mortal Kombat 2 as a stoic monk who fights only out of a sense of duty to prevent Shao Kahn from conquering the world. When Mortal Kombat: Shaolin: Monks was released, Kung Lao became a snarky, obnoxious brat who was tired of living in Liu Kang's shadow. While Kung Lao had more personality than he had in the past, this contradicted everything that had been established about the character which the audience loved. Kung Lao may have had more of a personality but he was certainly lacking in any identifiable characteristics.

Samus Aran is an even more controversial example. Ever since the first Metroid, Samus has been seen as a stoic badass who was the inspiration for many of gaming's other sci-fi heroes, namely Halo's Master Chief. Yet, when Nintendo decided to outsource the production of the next Metroid game to Team Ninja, the new development team created a new version of Samus who's entire personality was the polar opposite of the character that fans had known for years.

The new Team Ninja version of Samus was no longer a strong independent renegade but was now a moefied submissive BDSM fantasy who I and others could no longer identify with, see as a strong protagonist or even recognize as Samus anymore. She was an overly obedient yes-woman who suffered from crippling emotional issues that she didn't have previously.

So if these changes are universally abhored by fans, why do developers insist on changing characters in fundamental ways like in The 3rd Birthday? Why do developers think that players want to play as ineffectual characters in action games which should ideally function as power fantasies? The answer probably lies more with bad writing more than marketers truly believing that audiences enjoy seeing their favorite character be destroyed.

There's a difference between a protagonist being emotionally vulnerable and being utterly pathetic. Solid Snake is a good example of a protagonist who was made more vulnerable in the series third installment that was a change for the better. Unfortunately, lesser developers thought that excessively whiny and occasionally inept protagonists were everything that gmers wnated to see and began creating characters that had all of Snake's (realistic and well-executed) flaws and none of his actual strengths. Hence why we get characters like Tidus and the Other M version of Samus just like comic book authors thought that adding in gratuitous gore and amorality would make their comic as awesome as Watchmen.

And yet The 3rd Birthday is even more problematic given that Aya is now a walking female cliche, powerless and driven by emotion. I happened to like Aya since she was a streetwise cop and now taking her personality and turning her into walking sexist stereotype is an insult to every single Parasite Eve fan who begged Square-Enix for a decade to make this sequel.

Review of Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age 2 is a flawed masterpeice. It's an incredibly fun and ambitious game that was sadly rushed out early to avoid being released too close to Mass Effect 3's release. In some ways it manages to outdo its predecessor, in other ways it fails spectacularly by cutting corners in ways that I thought the gaming industry had abandoned years ago.

First the good. Dragon Age 2's story is excellent with terrific companions that are loaded with personality and bring the game's world to life. The narrative structure is similar to The Princess Bride, where a narrator tells the story of how somebody named Hawke caused a war and takes place across three acts. Along the way, Hawke's story will take multiple unexpected turns that are guaranteed to take the player by surprise the first time through. Moreover, cameos from many of the characters from Origins are present and will often make references to choices that players of the previous game made which should bring a smile to the faces of everyone who played the original.

The dialog is handled well with three main personalities for Hawke that all come across as unique while companions have very distinct and diverse personalities that differentiate them from the Origins companions who all had a tendency to drop snarky one-liners. Villains all have their own motivations aside from performing random acts of villainy, which makes them seem more like actual characters rather than obstacles. Then there are the sucker punches that I'll leave unspoiled except to say that when companions inevitably betray you, there is indeed a real sense of shock. I'd expect no less from Bioware's writing team and while a few characters like Bethany come across as dull, it's mostly because everyone else in this world is so exciting to listen to.

The combat is intense and exciting given that it has undergone not only a speed increase but is now possibly the first party-based tactical action RPG. Now playing like a more complex version of Bioware's previous title Jade Empire rather than DA:O, the hack and slash battling is far more fun and entertaining than its predecessor's combat ever was. The same amount of strategy is required to win battles but everything simply runs smoother than it did in the past. This amounts to the console versions being worth playing for more than just the storyline which should bring the game to a new audience that simply couldn't get into the original game.

The graphics are also a noticeable improvement from DA:O's generic art assets. Everything appears brighter and more stylized this time around though no less detailed. Enemies explode into bloody chunks in the same way that they did in Baldur's Gate II which is a nice homage for longtime fans of Bioware's work. Dragon Age 2 doesn't shoot for realism, it instead attempts to look amazing by its own standards and succeeds beautifully as each and every spell effect, major character and background has a unique flair that stands out as memorable and visually striking. While the game may look like a cartoon now, it looks like an amazing one that's far more Pixar than Scooby Do and dethrones Mass Effect 2's technical graphics and Jade Empire's artistic designs as Bioware's benchmark and does a lot to shed Bioware's reputation as the developer that makes great albeit ugly games.

The sound is equally impressive. Being a massive Torchwood fan, it was a true delight to hear Eve Myles voicing a companion who is a massive departure from Eve's role as Gwen Cooper. While Kate Mulgrew and Brian Bloom are the only other notable names, the rest of the cast consists of mostly unknown actors who still manage to perform stellar jobs that sound perfect for their characters. The soundtrack is also far more epic this time around. While I never bothered to listen to anything other than the title theme from Origins and can't remember a single other piece of music from it, Dragon Age 2's music is far more impressive, anthemic and memorable. Dragon Age 2 is as just much fun to hear as it is to look at which should please anyone who was let down by the soundtrack of the original.

Unfortunately, there are some very serious problems with Dragon Age 2. As good as the gameplay and story are, there are a myriad of other problems with the game that simply can't be overlooked and lie entirely with the design and quality assurance teams. For as many positive things as there are to say abut Dragon Age 2, there are also a number of deeply serious flaws with the game that have really hindered my enjoyment in ways that most contemporary developers would never allow to become present in their titles. Dragon Age 2 suffers from some absolutely atrocious level design and truly game breaking bugs

One thing that must be noted is that Kirkwall is a very small city that doesn't change much with each act and the outlying areas are nearly as static. The only things that change are the locations of the dungeons which all have the exact same layout. This reuse of dungeon maps is inexcusable and made much of the game feel like a chore to play through and if the combat and storytelling weren't as good as they were, there would be no way that I'd finish the game due to the sheer monotony of revisiting the same exact areas over and over again. One of the best parts about an RPG is exploration and yet there was nothing left to explore after the first act, merely a multitude of cut and paste caverns that filled otherwise entertaining quests with a nauseating sense of deja vu.

There are also countless sidequests that consist of nothing more than finding an item and having to deliver it to somebody whom you never encountered before who Hawke suddenly knows would need the item. Fetch quests are an RPG staple and probably won't ever go away but receiving quests with no context is simply sloppy design. This was a problem with Borderlands and it's a shame to to see a developer known for creating such excellent stories run out of ideas for how to handle story-based content. As it stands, there's a real abundance of content that should have been cut due to being underdeveloped.

Then there are the bugs. Dragon Age 2 is quite possibly the buggiest AAA title to be released since Fallout: New Vegas. I encountered my first bug during the first cutscene before any actual gameplay started and I noticed that the sheer amount of bugs increasing exponentially after the first act ended which ranged from obnoxious and immersion lessening to absolutely game-breaking. Dragon Age 2 remains proof that a fifteen month development cycle isn't enough time to develop a sixty hour game. When character models implode during cutscenes and companions get locked into my party for no apparent reason, it's a sign that Dragon Age 2 truly needed more time spent in post-production.

Overall, Dragon Age 2 is indeed a step forward for gaming as a medium, it's just a shame that it's so much of a rocky one. While it's enjoyable and worth buying, another four to six months of development time would have quite possibly made this a perfect game. As much as I absolutely love the game for the most part, it's still a flawed product that's obviously rushed and should have been delayed until summer. For every step two steps forward, the game takes a step back, another sideways and then stays stagnant where a step should have been taken to improve upon Origins. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come and Dragon Age 3 will be the game that Dragon Age 2 could have and should have been.

Pros
+ The characters, story and dialog are excellent and among Bioware's best
+ The Graphics are sharp and stylized
+ The music and voice acting are packed with personality and memorability
+ The combat is fun, addicting and challenging
+ Possibly the world's first tactical action RPG that mixes the best of Risen with that of Front Mission

Cons
- Many quests are random and have no context
- Reuse of dungeon assets is both annoying and unbecoming of a title developed by Bioware and published by EA
- The game is unforgivably buggy

7.5/10

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Review

It's been 11 years since Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was the last hurrah of arcade fighting games. Now finally the sequel to one of the most beloved fighting games of all time has finally arrived and while it may upset some purists, the fact remains that it's an absolute blast to play.

While the roster lacks some series staples like Zangeif, Mega-Man and Juggernaut, the new additions like Dante and Pheonix manage to more than make up for the lack of old faces. Other characters like Jill Valentine have been completely reworked, creating a very different feel despite the number of familiar returning faces like Dr. Doom and Ryu.

Still, other changes include a simplified control scheme which will undoubtedly upset older fans of Capcom's fighting games. Taking a cue from Arc System Works' Blazblue, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 uses three buttons for successively stronger attacks and a fourth as a special button that launches enemies into the air to extend combos. This is a drastic change from the previous punch and kick buttons of Capcom's other fighters which suits the engine for MvC3 perfectly but takes some time to get used to and limits player options which will annoy fighting game snobs to no end.

Then there are the balance issues. Some characters have super moves that can instantly KO other fighters, even during assists. That's hardly what I'd call gameplay balance and those issues should have been fixed back during the alpha stage, being flaws with design rather than actual bugs. The game is further unbalanced by the addition of Simple Mode which uses a similar control scheme to Super Smash Bros. While increasing accessibility, it gives a noticeable frame advantage to players using the mode, allowing them to pull off super moves instantly instead of having to buffer the input, giving new players an edge over veterans and making the game more about timing than skill. Simple mode isn't so much a feature as it is a disservice to every player who takes the time to truly learn and master the game's various characters.

For all of its flaws, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is still a blast to play and may quite possibly dethrone Smash Bros Brawl as the many gamers' party fighting game of choice. The graphics are an even more stylized evolution of Street Fighter IV's art style filled with bright vibrant colors and shimmering particle effects that make MvC3 the best looking 2.5D fighter that I've ever had the honor of playing. Being able to unite so many characters from various backgrounds into one specific art style is no small task and the developers deserve a medal for maintaining continuity with their art assets.

The sound is even more impressive with fears that the limited number of backgrounds leading to decreased audio assets being completely unfounded with each character having their own musical theme. Each track of the OST stands out on its own while always being appropriate for a fighting game, with previous themes that weren't appropriately intense enough reworked into the harder, darker sounds that fighting games need to retain their atmosphere as fighters shout the names of their attacks and various projectiles fizzle out and explode across the screen.

While Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is far from the technical fighter that it was anticipated to be, it remains a very fun casual fighter that will be a party staple for years to come. If you're looking for a varied fighter that looks and sounds great with a ton of replay value and will hopefully have a strong online following, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is your game.

Pros
+ Great for parties
+ Sound is on par with Capcom's previous fighters
+ Graphics set a new benchmark for fighters
+ Diverse set of characters that all play differently

Cons
- Lacks balance between characters
- Simple mode gives too much of an advantage to new players
- Roster lacks fan favorites like Ken and Cyclops

8/10

Sakura Wars Review

It's hard to tell if I'm just culturally biased or if I really did play an objectively terrible piece of crap since apparently Sakura Wars is a very successful series in Japan. While Sakura Wars did do a few things right, it still manages to mix tedium with poor pacing and the worst approach to leveling up since Final Fantasy II.

For one thing, each fight is successively harder yet there is absolutely no means of grinding in between bosses. Instead you have a limited amount of time to talk to travel around a city hoping that you encounter a party member at each stop you make and then selecting the correct dialog option to get their approval up and not end up decreasing it. The player doesn't make choices between good and evil, the player makes choices between right and wrong with consequences for gameplay rather than story that don't increase the challence from enemies but instead cause the player to level down. It's still an original design, which I guess has some merit. Then again, it's original because it's simply poor design.

Sakura Wars also suffers from very bland one-dimensional characters. The only character who has any real depth is Chairon (who's name is pronounced Karen) and yet her nuance is what makes her unlikable given the idealized purity of other protagonists .

Then there's the protagonist. Shinjiro Taiga, who is quite honestly a total loser. He's not very intelligent, comes across as an utter moron even when he makes the correct decisions, is frequently clumsy, and most importantly, strikes me as unbearably creepy.

What I mean by creepy is that this is a game that's often described as a dating sim, where all five of your NPC party members are datable. And yes, one of them is a prepubescent girl who I was intentionally rude to simply to prevent this story from having any sort of disgusting pedophiliac undertones. Not to mention that when he's tasked with rebuilding the New York Combat Revue, he only seems to recruit women, all of which he shows a romantic interest in despite being their superior. I'm not sure why he didn't bring a man into the fold. Maybe because he's scared of competition. Or maybe he's simply homophobic and is so insecure with his sexuality that he doesn't see why he should have a man do a job when he could have an attractive woman do it since he's too afraid of potentially being attracted to another man to want to hire one. This hypothesis is further rammed home by the fact that the final boss is Nobunaga, who is stated by all but the most homophobic of historians to have lived his life as a gay man.

Let's review Shinjiro's personality again. He makes sexual advances towards his subordinates, one of which is a young girl. He's insecure enough to refuse to work with other men. And he's also clumsy and often incompetent. Simply playing Sakrua Wars made me feel so incredibly creepy and stupid that I couldn't wait to beat it just so it would end. While the setting may be glittery and optimistic, there's a thinly veiled layer of cynicism that permeates through everything that just rubs me the wrong way.

I'm not against dating sims. Hell, Bioware is my favorite developer. I'm simply against a game where a creepy sex perv who may or may not be interested in a girl who isn't even old enough to have a pair of tits yet is treated as my point of view. Yes, Commander Shepard does also date subordinates but I didn't feel like he was taking advantage of them the same way that Shinjiro does since he spends more time hitting on his team and scouring the city to stalk them for level ups than he does actually fighting alongside them. Now if only Shinjiro decided to use his free time fighting evil instead of showing up at the library since he knows that a woman that he likes goes there, New York may very well have avoided many of the giant robots that threatened it over the course of the story.

And while it's only implied that Shinjiro is a really insecure homophobe, at least one of the writers was. The depiction of Mori Ranmaru is so utterly homophobic that I'd normally say that it makes me want to vomit. I say normally since I already emptied the contents of my innards after seeing that there was an underage kid in a dating sim. The real life Mori Ranmaru was - much like in Sakura Wars - the lover of Nobunaga. However, he was not an effeminate drag queen who plays to the stereotype that all gay men are effeminate and girly. The real life Mori Ranmaru was not just Nobunaga's lover but also his bodyguard and a total badass samurai. Just when I thought that GLBT characters in gaming had been gaining more acceptance, I get slapped in the face with a homophobic depiction of a real life gay man that I spent most of the game mistaking for a woman.

For all of Sakura Wars' Flaws, it still did have some good points. The actual combat is fun even though there isn't enough of it in-game. While shallow and with no customization, Sakura Wars' battle system does succeed in being engaging, being a much more casual-friendly counterpart to the hardcore Front Mission series' approach to tactical mech combat. All the the myriad flaws of this game would have been far less noticeable if only there were more actual combat and less pointless running around in the hope that you stalk the girls well enough before time runs out.

Unfortunately, there's one battle towards that end that is literally mathematically impossible to win unless you make the correct choices as you need to rely on team attacks to take out multiple enemies at once. This is not only annoying but it prevents players who have spent hours progressing through the game from enjoying the ending without needing to replay Sakura Wars from the very beginning. I enjoy time delayed consequences but I do not enjoy making a game de facto unwinnable due to players making the wrong decisions. It's poor conceptual design and should have been spotted back when the game was being tested on paper during preproduction.

So even in its strengths, Sakura Wars still manages to fail. While it does have potential, the developers dropped the ball during the conceptual stage and never bothered to correct their errors. It's a shame since tactical RPGs no longer receive the type of love that they deserve.

4/10

The true game for hardcore fans

Due to all the talk about developers selling out and dumbing down their games, I decided to look at some of these "true hardcore gamers'" complaints and come up with a plan to make a game directed solely at them. I realized that what needed to be done was to make a game so repugnant to casual gamers with its very 1337ness that every hardcore gamer would flock to it in order to bask in it's aura of elitism. I present three game pitches that should be made according to many of the hardcore gamers that I see whining on internet forums.

The Perfect Hardcore Shooter

1. No regenerating health. This game should be unwinnable if you don't start the level with enough helath, forcing you to reload an old save just to progress.

2. No multiplayer. It makes Halo fans want it.

3. Swarms of enemies all attacking the player at once like shooters used to have in games like Doom.

4. Be more realistic then ARMA II, don't allow for saves, checkpoints or pausing. That's right, make this game like a real war where if you die that's it. You have to play the game all over again. Also, you have a chance of dying form a single bullet and you're unable to see how much health you still have. Real soldiers can't ever retry from their last save or even pause to go use the washroom. If you really want to create a realistic experience, you should remove all arcade-style elements in the name of making the game as accurate is possible in recreating actual combat.

5. Forget auto-aim being for noobs who can't target an enemy, get rid of crosshairs. Now you'll have a game that requires true aiming skills. Prove just how good you are at this game by having absolutely no idea what you may potentially hit.

6. Distance fog should be incorporated into the game as should enemies that can attack you beyond draw distance.

7. No cover system. Hell put no cover in the game at all. Make sure that the player is always exposed. Point 6 ties directly into 7. This is a game where you will consistently die from the first enemy in the first level repeatedly becuase only true gamers will play a game that is this punishingly brutal. There are no commercial tentencies. This is a game that is meant to scare away the general public based on the fact that the average person doesn't have superhuman reflexes.

8. A real hardcore shooter uses the Steel Battalion controller.


The Perfect Hardcore RPG

1. A 200 hour game with its length increased by the need to grind for weeks on end just to defeat a particular boss and multiple fetch quests that have no relaton to the plot whatsoever.

2. Don't label your menus. Leaving them unlabeled was the best part of the Baldur's Gate series.

3. Create the deepest and most numerous NPCs of all time. All are romancable, have five personal quests each and are forty in number.

4. For every hour of play, there should be two hours of dialog and three hours of cutscenes.

5. A world that's as large as Daggerfall made using next gen graphics.

6. It must be multi-disk. Even if a disk that can contain more data than a Blu Ray gets released, multi-disk games are just better and should be utilized since we all love changing disks mid-game.

The Perfect Hardcore Fighter

1. The controls to pull off a special move must have a a very short input time, and involve motions that nobody new to the game can pull off. For instance, hitting 1,2,3 HP while crouching, which means that you have to perform it while you're still in block stun during a low block.

2. A final boss that puts Goenitz to shame and will spam an attack that kills you in one hit if not blocked.

3. AI that reads the motions you input and then counters you as soon as the first frame of your move is performed, otherwise the CPU stands still.

4. When your super meter is full, all characters must perform a motion similar to Ivy's Sumon Suffering in order to perform a super.

5. When the match is over, a fatality must be performed or the losing player will regain 50% health.

6. The game will only have five characters since only the top five from any game will be used in tournaments anyway and it's not like anybody ever plays a fighting game for fun as the entire fandom is made of tournament players.



There you have it. The outline for three games that will appeal to every real gamer in the world. Sadly this won't ever be made because corporations have to make games that only appeal to casual gamers who need to see flashy graphics in order to make a purchase. Real gamers play only to conquer, never to have fun.

New Game or Expansion Pack?

Following in the footsteps of Halo 3: ODST, new titles that bridge the gap between expansion packs and new game are being released. The upcoming Super Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and Dragon Age: Awakening appear to pack about the same amount of new content in their game as the affordable expansions by Bethesda for Oblivion and Fallout 3. The great part about the expansions for both of those games, as well as for Fable 2 was the fact that 360 gamers could download an expansion for the lower cost than a PC game like Dawn of War. Point being, it felt too good to last. And it was.

Thankfully, the expansion packs for Street Fighter IV and Dragon Age: Origins are priced lower than a full game, even though ODST was given the same price tag as a full new game despite offering half the content. On one hand, this means that I won't have to delete anything from my 360's Hard Drive, on the other, this also means that I'm going to have to shell out more money for something that I already own despite the disk space saved.

Am I the only person who feels hurt and abandoned by the fact that Xbox 360 expansions are now becoming more similar to the ones for PC games?

Michael Bay is a monster

He's making Transformers 3. http://movies.ign.com/articles/103/1030366p1.html

Calculate Your Borderlands Skills!

http://87bazillion.com/skillcalculator/
Now you'll know what you'll level up to. (you are buying this game, right?)

New Mass Effect 2 Character

She is so badass

New Mass Effect Comic Artwork

All that I have to say is, "I want that guy's gun."