CB Game Reviews by Dogma

A long long time ago, in a small country home there was a young boy with a PS1. It wasn’t very reliable, the memory cards seemed to find their way into everything except the console, and every controller seemed to meet the unfortunate end of being eaten by the cat. But after awhile the boy got bored of his Crash Bandicoot, his Ape Escape, and Parappa the Rapper. Which thus motivated him to look for something new, something different and complex.

Alas, he stumbled upon a completely new kind of genre, a quirky, long lasting, high thought kind of thing, called the RPG (namely Final Fantasy.) Though, we’re not going to make mention of FFVII, because the one he really liked ended with no numbers, and just said “Tactics.”

This, was the birth of a new, lazier kind of gamer. Who appreciated other games for their straightforward kind of value, but still looked toward these familiar and mysterious type of games to curve his boredom. Even if he initially sucked at them.

However, now that I’ve come out the closet about being an RPG fan, it goes well to note that more then ten years later, that a lot of these games really aren’t that good. In fact, they suck and just fall short of expectations.

However, Magnacarta (and I don’t know why the writer forgot his fucking spacebar) boasts a few good additions, and a few less then simple procedures that kind of make it good, and still make it kind of shitty.

Now, on the Xbox 360, there isn’t exactly a huge list of RPGs, most of them look about the same, feel the same, and play the same, ending on exactly two notes. Either the story and the characters suck and are boring, but the gameplay is fun and interesting. (I.E Last Remnant) Or, the story is amazing, the graphics are great, and atmospheric, but the gameplay is about as fun as churning butter. (I.E Lost Odyssey)

So with Magnacarta 2, a sequel to a text heavy stylistic, and at the least pretty looking PS2 game, its somewhat hard what to figure out which one this is.

There is this Kingdom, its name is Lanzheim, and its at war. I’m not sure why its at war, and it didn’t look like it was that tough to take over, so an official looking guy named Schunzeit just waltzed up and took over the throne.

I was curious if there were other countries or nations around Lanzheim, but when I inquired about it, the game kind of shrugged and asked me why I wasn’t off doing a quest for the chief of the starting village. When I had officially reached the “good guy” HQ, I looked for an NPC to question whether or not it was a civil war, that technically consumed the world, or just the country, and once again the game just kind of shook its head and replied “No. You’re playing for keeps.”

Still, that’s about all there is too it and the “unified” land. Once the main castle is taken over by the main bad guy, and he goes through the trouble of putting up new drapes, arm chairs, and matching pillow for his throne,  he starts to kill innocent people for the lulz. The princess, and it is always a princess, is immediately forced to leave her home. She is quickly tracked down and nearly killed like her mother, but she gets away and goes and meets this green haired looking noble, and they form a warring faction.

So if your earth didn’t shatter with the thought of two forces at a power struggle, coupled with an amnesiac angsty young male protagonist, and a handful of other clichés that are prevalent in both fantasy and RPGs, then you understand that Magnacarta 2 is immediately represented by the latter.

Majority of the characters themselves seem to be handily copied out of other stories, or even some anime. The main character is the Cloud, Capell, Rush kind of fellow who is angsty for no reason, and typically enigmatic until later on. The princess is clearly like any other princess, there is the tsundere little bitch, the ditzy big boobed character, and draw in a gentle giant, a sarcastic pretty boy and you’ve got a great big old pot of same old bullshit you’ve seen before.

Not saying that the story is completely boring, and not interesting, but if you’ve played one RPG, you get the feeling you know what’s going to go down in this one, however the combat is rather fun and interesting, and breaks the boring standstill mode of most Rpgs, and adds a bit of depth.

You can control up to three characters at one time switching periodicially between the leader, and attacking a certain amount of times on a small cooldown bar until it fills up and you overheat. The skills are pretty good at killing everything, and the attacks aren’t too bad to look at so you get a feel for the rhythm of utilizing skills, chains, and overdrives to beat up anything dumb enough to not be main characters.

However, combat is not without a few gripes because if your timing is off, or you don’t set the AI to exactly what you want to see, majority of the time you’ll be able to move your character anywhich way around the opponent but have several moments where you can’t safely attack again without risking an overheat. Similarly you might lose out on a few random skill points because it’s a windy area and you want to use fire so the game just tells your fire to go eat a dick sandwich for a little bit and you die to the boss who loves the wind.

It just seems a little bit avoidable, I believe combat could have been much smoother. While it does bring a lot to the table, it doesn’t break it. Unlike the game I keep mentioning for its combat, you can only bring your character a small portion of the way, and add more skills to the repertoire. Minor things that really boost performance are left out for a two sided skill tree that simply designates which weapon you prefer, and when you want to use it.

It goes good to note, that the combat kept me interested for quite some time, all the way into Disc 2, because the story kind of put me to sleep. However, it did pick up, and I grew an increasing interest in the story and actually wanted to see how it all concluded. So despite being cliché its not all bad.

Mangacarta 2 looks rather impressive, if you ignore the character models. The graphics are crisp and well animated, but for some reason they took the beautiful, and visually striking art of Hyung-tae Kim, and made them just look weird.

The character, particularly the young human characters, look foolish and malnourished. Its not even a matter of classifying it any other way, because in almost every cutscene, there is the desire to scratch your head and just kind of wonder just what was the idea behind the design choice.

I get you can’t profitably turn something quite as vivid and amazing as Hyung-tae Kim’s artwork for an entire twenty hour game with ease, but this borderlines just questionable. As majority of the time, the characters just look childish, and ugly in a story that is surprisingly more grown up then I thought.

The music is a step up above the visuals, but majority of the time I forgot the music was even playing due to the fact that its not really amazing either. A few tracks in particular are worth mention (The menu theme) but otherwise, no real rush.

The voice acting isn’t very good though. A good dub is typically one you don’t mind having on either the original, or the dubbed version and seeing as this one doesn’t make the former available its mostly you wishing it was. Johnny Yong Bosch makes yet another appearance in yet another game, and does the same “angry at the world teenager” he’s been doing for years now. The rest of the voice actors aren’t bad, but well once you get Johnny Yong Bosch you can pretty much imagine how the rest of it is going to turn out.

Now that I think about it, this is particularly negative in a game that I didn’t think was bad, just not really all that breathtaking.

Magnacarta 2 has a handful of really positive things, its just a shame they got it from other games of an incredibly similar nature. The few things that set it apart from your typical rpg game, or that made the first one so much different feel a little bit lost in translation.

I can tentatively recommend it, but its hard to want to play this game at times. There isn’t enough story, substance, of vivacity to really bring you to the table time and time again,  and although similar to Last Remnant, here the combat is the strongest aspect of the game, but doesn’t really evolve much after you figure out a few tricks.

As it is currently, I can only recommend it for the art and the value as an RPG in a mostly RPG-less season till December (JRPGS that least.) Get it, play it when you feel like playing it, leave it off otherwise.

Dogma Game Reviews, Games Bandai, Fantasy, Game Reviews, J-RPG, Softmax

As I said before, Section 8 is a good game that barely reaches that platform off of trying to copy another popular game, while housing elements that build off of that. While ODST is a good game that is trying to copy another popular game, while housing elements that try to build off that.

Do you see what I am getting at?

“Like Halo” has infested quite a bit of the first person genre for the past several years, and the only other thing that stands alone majority of the time has to be Call of Duty, because even if it prayed to God every night it would be no more like Halo, because it actually makes some fucking sense.

It’s a little ironic that Section 8 takes so many elements out of the general feel of Halo, the look behind Halo, multiplayer of Halo, while possessing a bag of rotten eggs for the single player.

While ODST has nothing but a single player, which is more atmospheric, more enjoyable, and more interesting then just the same old shit with Halo, but neglects multiplayer for the same old Halo 3 bullshit with all the maps and no changes whatsoever. The most pure dick move ever constructed at Bungie.

I could make mention how Section 8’s Swarm mode is similar to Horde mode from Gears or Zombie Nazi’s, but it sucks so much ass and is ultimately so pathetic that I’m just going to hop over it to talk about Firefight, which is actually pretty good.

Though, as you can guess, you play against waves of enemies, that change every single time, and posses more of a significant challenge each wave, because these douchebags get to turn on some skulls (The ones that make them good.)

This is challenging, fun, and interesting. Much like the objective portions of section 8, Firefight brings a lot to the table and is a step forward for multiplayer and Halo, at least that’s what I would like to believe.

Because if ODST isn’t popular, it’s not going to be tried again. Section 8 doesn’t get this opportunity, because of its semblance to a copy, its just to try their hand are something that’s already been done more or less.

The most popular post-modern/futuristic first person shooter, which is more or less Halo, is the formula now. Small game developers like South Peak games, or big game developers like Bungie, who made the shit in the first place, are really only trying to go through the motions here.

To get more money? Probably. But I see good intentions in both games. I see them trying to set themselves apart from the established formula, after gripping onto it so fucking tightly that it’s a miracle a piece of it didn’t fall off in the interim.

Which leads me to conclude on this mock versus I set up in the title, when I’m really just comparing it to a game I played back when it was the shit, but had a falling out with it, when it was just Master Chief waving his dick around with two guns while the bad guys and all your friends just die.

Section 8 and ODST are good games, despite all that’s been said, I would play them again. But I’m warning you now, and I’m making it painfully obvious, that games that only strive to be marginally different are only going to be marginally more shitty by comparison.

Halo: Reach more then likely has more people to make orders for it then a Bigmac at McDonalds, so its really just a shame that they (these two games) will more or less fall completely under the radar when it comes out.

Perhaps if they put a bit more faith in something other then a tried and tested form of space marine bullshit, maybe, just maybe, we’d have gotten a truly original game. But hey, at least we got to try that hot dropping shit out, right?

Dogma Games Action, Bungie, First Person Shooter, Game Reviews, Halo, Southpeak games, Versus

Yes, it’s Halo.

Bungie and Microsoft’s own pet project that has outgrown its rather small cage and water dish, to being about the size of a corporate lion, and bringing in so many pre-pubescent minors and woot prone high-school students that I can’t help but shrug at this bullshit.

Since the first games massive success, and the second games success, the third edition has been trying to repeat the second games success, while the addon to Halo 3, ODST, is trying to recreate the first. It’s begun the cycle (Not including Halo wars) in which something very successful is released and then a few years later all that’s able to come out is things that are only marginally more or less successful, because it lacks the magic.

Where Section 8 had nothing but its multiplayer and idea copied off of Halo, the Halo franchise itself has a number of things that sets it apart from other first person shooters, makes a decent name for itself, and then lies about halfway in mediocrity to bring out a pretty universal and occasionally fun game.

Which is why ODST caught me a bit off guard, because as little of a Halo fan as I could be, this game seems to stand out pretty far from its bigger brothers. ODST allows you to assume the role of an orbital drop shock trooper, the “best of the best” so to speak.

Which is a little ironic considering all they seemed to do in previous games was die in every single firefight, and if they are truly the best, then what the fuck do we need the million dollar Master Chief for? Cause I’m pretty sure there is a few full games of him soloing everything before every marine in the UNSC begins dick riding him.

Nevertheless, much unlike the other games, you’re completely human, and much more fragile. You can’t jump quite as high, taking shots to the face will more then likely kill you, and the usual strategy of waiting for your shield to come back up while you restore HP is removed for a tiny lifebar that goes down until you die.

A feature I fell in love with, because knowing when you’re going to get knocked by that next bullet, really makes you re-think your playing style. A feature that seems prevalent in ODST. (Section 8 shares this feature as well, but it doesn’t seem as good by comparison admittedly.)

Also unlike Halo, there is rather decent character story versus an allright looking overhead story going on. I was never really a fan of the Covenant, nor the UNSC, and found myself empathizing more with the Grunts and Brutes, because all they were trying to do is what they were told was right. The intricate amount of time spent for you to try and give a shit about both sides is wasted when one side simply walks out and has hilarious jetpack wearing morons, and miniature gremlins just kind of dicking around and dieing.

“I don’t give a shit” seemed to be my most frequently repeated line throughout Halo 3, which is why Halo: ODST really surprised me because I said it even more times.

I didn’t really bother with single player after awhile, because the melodic and often beautifully atmospheric night levels are cut short, and cut down by the nagging feeling that you’ve just got to play another samey Halo mission.

To backtrack, you play primarily as the “Rookie” a brand new ODST who is even less talkative then Master Chief, and less useful. During your drop into New Mombassa, everything goes apeshit, and you lose contact with your other squadmates (Dutch, Buck, Romeo, Micky, and Dare.)

This is a slightly clever mechanic, because instead of playing with just one type of ODST, you play as five (excluding the woman.) And while you start out in the streets as the rookie, you find clues as to what happened to your other squadmates during the drop, and are somehow able to take a look at a useless trinket and piece together what happened.

I could try and explain what the game thinks its explaining but I’d rather not. When you find something that belongs to one of your squadmates, you just play as them to find out their side of the story. Its never made clear whether the rookie knows whats going on, or whether he’s just kind of dicking about, but the game doesn’t make him speak or do much of anything like that so there’s no way to fucking know.

Nevertheless, when you play as one of the other four ODST’s, you are doing your typical Halo campaign in bite sized chunks. There’s a bunch of firefights, an amusing cast, a decent amount of dialogue, and its all in good fun. I played it on Legendary with three friends (Because I would hate myself if I was that good at Halo solo) and the game is similar to its other predacessors in most steps along the way.

This isn’t really all that bad, but not that good. As with the story ripped out and the emphasis on the characters themselves being brought to light, it’s a bit disappointing that its status as an addon and not really a full game are made clear in how shallow some of the convos and dialogue can be.

The cast is alright outside of Fuck-A-Duck-Buck, and the eternal lesbian Dare, but I wish they did more then let you chill with Buck, or Dare as they bitch about themselves while one of the most important cities left in the world gets prophet beamed to death.

To me, the high point of the game as a fan of games, is the final mission. Because few things are more epic then some vehicle sections in a Halo game, with good drivers. This I admit.

As far as a fan of games for their storytelling, the parts with the rookie in the dark of night are worth a few looks over. Even with friends, if you turn them off and just kind of wander around solo for awhile, the atmosphere here is thick, and enjoyable.

You really get the feeling that you are the last ODST, as you walk around an abandoned city with the covenant looking for you at every corner. The visor mode adds quite a bit to the game as a whole and the more tactical and intelligent approach to each confronation, but just the way the music, openendness of the city, and firefights play out, it left me rather impressed with the game when its all said and done. Despite the fact that the games ending can go eat a dick sandwich.

There is more too the game, but considering the campaign is the most there is to offer, I’m going to save that for the final part of this three part review. The comparisons.

Dogma Game Reviews, Games

After finally crawling out from underneath that rather conspicuous rock I’ve been under for the past few weeks, and breaking my cycle of only playing Batman, then playing Final Fantasy Dissidia then playing Final Fantasy XI, before copying the exact same lines I used in a previous review, I finally got my hands on something I wanted to do a review on.

In fact, two somethings.

Not that Dissidia and Batman aren’t equally good, but they’re both hardly the type of game that would really warrant a review from yours truly. Not that they were not enjoyable, but what you see is what you get. Dissidia is a fighting RPG where you run around and kill shit on a tiny screen, and Batman is simply a masterpiece.

That’s about it.

So after waiting a few weeks till my normal routine of “Just play an FPS” kicked in, I received Section 8, a game designed by Southpeak games to look a lot like Halo, play similar to Halo, have very similar things to Halo, but not actually being Halo.

You play as either a soldier of Arm, or a soldier of the infamous Section 8, two warring factions that wear about a good two thirds of a truck at all times, burn through more duracells then an original gameboy with Pokemon in it, and get to“Hot drop” into any location very much like an ODST.

Of course much unlike Halo, and its rather bland yet competent story, there are no Aliens. Section 8 seemed to forget that there is a story involving the Covenant and humanity being at War and every marine you ever met is murdered on sight, because majority of the single player in Section 8 is just multiplayer against bots with a cutscene or dialogue inbetween.

I wouldn’t know much about it, because the campaign itself is so snore worthy that I didn’t get past the first few levels before telling it to fuck off and went back to playing Batman till some friends got on.

Multiplayer is where this game shines, though not very brightly because the graphics aren’t very good.

The ability to combine PC and Xbox gamers really pays off, as a number of servers can host some rather impressive numbers, and the framerate throughout the whole thing is more then competent.

The gimmick Section 8 uses to it’s multiplayer is a lot like Call of Duty, or by someone else’s suggestion, other then my own, like “Tribes 2.” You can hold up to eight different loadouts, most of which consisting of any two combination of what guns you want to bring (Assault rifle, Machine gun, Sniper, Shotgun, Pistol, Rocket launcher), a number of different mini-tools such as a repair tool, grenades and det packs, and the finally an allocation of points that help guide your effectiveness in battle. Similar to a perk, but putting ten points into seven different categories really puts the emphasis on getting what you want out of the game.

The distinction between this and a Halo game is made painfully obvious right out the get go. Because while you have a ton of armor, everyone else is identical, and while you have a jetpack it’s only useful once within a five second period. The jumping you usually do in a Halo game is cut down to absolutely nothing and doing it in a firefight is just going to get you killed.

Similarly, you can aim. Which I know is groundbreaking to the spray and pray enthusiasts. And if you want, there is a function in your armor that allows you to lock on and gun down an enemy without a shot being able to miss.

Considering everyone gets these perks regardless of level, really leaves a nice wide open playing field for you to kill eachother on. With large maps, and firefights as impressive as sixteen on sixteen, PC and Xbox included, there can be some really amazing battles going on, that have about as much as authenticity as one would imagine from this sort of thing.

While the maps and overall idea don’t change, and you might run into the same routine every single time on each map (Capture the base > Kill everyone > Capture their base) the addition of mini-objectives made it go from a rather average game, to pretty good in my book.

Protecting the outpost, working on the beacon, delivering the bomb, etc, all are tiny little side missions you and your squad can deal with and use the ability to hotdrop  anywhere to your advantage and subsequently, win.

Those are the biggest points I noticed that were good in this game, but it goes well to mention that it stood beside a large sign of mediocrity for quite some time before I figured this out.

As I said before, the graphics are not very good, if barely up to snuff on a next gen console. The idea behind its backgrounds and scenery is to keep the framerate consistent, which it does, but most of everything looks blocky and rather ugly. The scenery itself is rendered decently, but you’d have to have played nothing since 07’ before complimenting this game on its looks.

Considering most of the game requires more then one person to be successful, it’s surprising that the matchmaking is such a douche. In fact, I figured the gimmick would be getting some friends from both consoles to team up, but instead the game just says “Fuck it” and allows very minimal in progress joining, and houses no party system of its own.

You can invite your friends mid-match, but it doesn’t always put you and them on the same team, and while it houses this ability to switch teams, it seems to get amnesia and forgets that there could have been several balancing issues going on with the teams and immediately rips you to the other side. “I hope you enjoy killing your buddies” the game typically replies as my squad got ripped apart about twice times each game for a good five games in a row.

You could always offset this with some bots, but they suck. They’re usually so slow and easy to kill, or inversely so fucking accurate and annoying that you don’t know why you would even bother. Not to mention, the lack of communication might set you back. You can only speak to your squadmates and if they don’t have a mic then you’re shit out of luck.

It has so many good team elements but it kind of tells them to go play in and corner and leaves them up to luck itself. While the sixteen on sixteen outpost battle in the center of the map sets this apart from other samey shooters, the lack of consistency in replicating this is what brings it down a peg.

Because when its all said and done, Section 8 can be rather average compared to the game it tries to rip off the most, a game I don’t like, but am about to do a matching review on.

Dogma Game Reviews, Games Action, Bungie, First Person Shooters, Game Reviews, Halo, Southpeak games, Versus

I’m starting to think that game designers are really trying to emphasize that Nazi’s were bad, a bit too much though.

Its bad enough that you can’t go near a Call of Duty without the emphasis on Nazi’s and their evil being brought to light, but with Velvet Assassin, Valkirya Chronicles, and Killzone still just a few months past from now, I just can’t help but ask why are we still talking about them?

I mean it goes well to note that Wolfenstein has been along for much longer then all over those games, and it would do even better to note that they are probably the king of Nazi propaganda bullshit because after the first games Mecha-Hitler it’s virtually unstopped.

Of course, this game is a bit different lacking the 3D title, lacking Hitler as a whole, and actually being rather goodin its own regards. But it still leads me to question before I even start looking at the game, is there really nothing else better to make an FPS about?

Wolfenstein allows you to assume the role of Wilham “B.J” Blascowiz, a rugged, leather jacket wearing, fast talking, obvious American who works for an obviously secret organization called the Office of Secret Actions. At the start of the game, you had just finished a mission and show up in the town of Isenstadt, with a mysterious amulet in your pocket which has the power to kill everyone when struck by one bullet, only to never do it again in the game.

While it plays like most first person shooters with a sandbox twist (I.E Far Cry 2 with a lot less roaming ability) the twist is the Amulet, which goes from an super cutscene trinket to a key factor in the game.

Throughout the course of the twelve hour storyline, you gain access to several different abilities activated through the D-Pad on the Xbox, and can either use X-ray vision, slow down time, shield yourself from harm, or double the power of your guns effectiveness which works out rather well.

The amulet goes from a nice addition, to a key part of the game, as many situations, puzzles, and fights go much easier with the help of this damn thing, and it gets to a point where most of the longer fights you have with the A.I involve nothing but it.

Now, in a simple Nazi game, you wouldn’t need super powers outside of slow-mo, but these are not histories Nazis, no t hese are the paranormal prick brigade Nazi’s who develop everything and anything more paranormal then what you’re going through.

The enemies in this game go from regular screen monkeys, to a weird looking priest guy with shields, a giant stormtrooper, Jetpack Nazi’s, and demons. Lastly ending up with a teleporting bastard that is highly resistant to bullets and can move with two blades in his hands.

B.J has the audacity to mention that if they developed something else they really might just win the War, but I’m really not sure how many soldiers in the mid 1940’s had the ability to stop a teleporting shock trooper but I’m certain the answer is 0.

Still, the enemies add a nice variety to the shooty gameplay, and at the least some of the weapons you get to kill them with are equally cool. You can use bolt actions, to a few automatics. True to the German nature you get a Flamethrower and RPG and true to the wtf nature, you get a Telsa gun, Particle cannon, and a giant anti gravity plasma nucleic weapon that causes everything in its path to disintegrate.

Its hard to imagine, but I couldn’t help but bitch at the game for trying to be so original when its easier to just make a straightforward game. Despite the cool additions, the game still drags on for a few points.

The boss fights in this game are really cool, and brooding. So cool in fac that I looked forward to each and every single one because of the difference in “Shot it here” and overall difficultly kept me interested. Albeit the soldiers themselves were a bit too stupid to move attack, and do much of anything. They’ll shoot when your in front of them, and die when you shoot them. The stronger enemies fall into the same boat, but by the time you can really observe the differences in unit intellect you’re probably on that fucking Zepplin anyways.

The plot is coherent, but much like a C rated action movie, I doubt you’ll remember it or heaven forbid try to see it again. The city they give you to roam in is very small, and littered with Nazi’s who want to kill you for no explainable reason.

Although I’m a little confused as to how they look at you and always know its you. B.J is obviously an American, because that’s the way these games work. Everyone is chizzled, rugged, has brown hair, and a stern chin, with leather. But there is a point in the game when you sneak into a compound and despite how simple street Nazi’s know that you are at least an American and an enemy, they let you into the facility without even a uniform change.

To me, its just the same old “samey” principle repeated Ad-nauseam.

Wolfenstien is a good game, at its core its still copied from a bunch of good games, so there is nothing to really fuck up in this situation. While the graphics are a bit shitty, and most of it is only a quarter enough interesting to keep you well interested, I didn’t feel much of a spark from Wolfenstien.

There is a multiplayer it goes good to note, but you wont play it. The guns are cool, some of the baddies are cheap, and I enjoyed the experience, but I probably won’t write it down as a endless classic which I’m forced to keep in the depths of my heart, because the creators themselves didn’t really seem to treat it as if they were working on a gold mine here anyways.

Play it, take a good break from CoD while still killing the Nazi’s which have become a permanent staple in every single first person shooter game.

Maybe next week we can play a Nazi game in space.

Dogma Game Reviews, Games Activision, First, First Person Shooters, Game r, Wolfenstein

I was chilling in Blockbuster the other day, and I asked myself “Do they sell anime here?”

A peculiar question I know, but you see I got this big screen downstairs and saw FMA and Bounen no Xam’d on my Xbox Marketplace, and started wondering what it would be like to watch anime on a big screen TV. Not that I don’t love my Hp 9500, but it doesn’t leave much to write home to the folks about, if you know what I mean.

So upon searching the store I found this Dvd, and it looked very much like a regular DVD but after reading “His Best work since Ghost in the Shell” and seeing such a riveting quote on the backside that read “Really interesting!” I was swayed enough to give it a shot.

The Sky Crawlers, is based off a novel about a never ending war with pilots too young to understand the meaning of their battles. For some reason, there are a group of individuals named “Kildren” and they possess bodies that never age, and strangely never die naturally. How they came into the world is uncertain, and how they will leave it has yet to be shown. But at the least, they are the pilots of supped up fighters in which they used to battle each other or… something like that.

The most I was able to gather, is that the Kildren don’t seem to give a shit about anything. Majority of them fight, drink, smoke, play around, and have sex until they get killed in combat. To make matters worse, they seem to have memory issues, as one of the slightly older Kildren said “I can’t distinguish yesterday, a month ago, a year ago, from today. It all seems like a dream that keeps on repeating itself over and over again.”

The name of the main character, or the character you follow around the most, is Yuichi Kannami, he is replacing a pilot at a Rockstock (I don’t know why its called that) who died but his plane was left untouched. The rest of the story follows him, and the other four pilots around the base around, all of which being Kildren.

The second main character, is Kusanagi, she has a first name but its easier to remember her by that name. She’s a superior officer around the base, and has a few secrets up her sleeve that you find out as the story progresses. I liked her almost as much as Kannami.

The movie is about two hours in length, and uses a very unorthodox style of first person storytelling. You only know what Kannami knows, hear what he hears, and typically only see what he’s currently seeing (except for maybe one or two moments in the movie) it uses very brief and to the point interactions from the characters to paint a picture, and from beginning to end the ride is very high written in level.

Which is why I have a problem with the flow.

Majority of the best written pieces have a lot of beautiful and well structured words but drag on sentences and actions much longer then need be. In fact, I was often left wondering why the beginning of the movie was so slow and boring yet the ending was much of the same pace but significantly more interesting. “Hurry the fuck up!” passed into my head a few times, but I can’t say it was because it was bad, just took forever to keep going.

Much like a lot of anime, the unanswered questions really get frustrating toward the end of the movie. It brings up a lot of great points, and is enough to keep a moderately intelligent individual entertained for the whole two hours, but it’s a bit strange that they stop going right after it started getting good.

The messages are beautiful, and the writing is something I have to applaud once more.

The artwork is also pretty top notch, gunfights look ripped fresh from PS3+ level graphics and the CGI is professional and beautiful. It doesn’t look exactly like a real plane, but I never once complained about it, because it looked really cool. The hand-drawn animation is also very pretty, and well done. Probably on par if not better then this seasons Bakemonogatari, which is the best looking anime I’ve ever watched.

The eyes of every character are piercing, and beautiful. Kusanagi leaves me wondering even now how they were so sharp, and alluring.

Of course, much like the flow, the animation often doesn’t have very much going on. Motions are realistic but somewhat slim in nature. Thinking back on it, I don’t think they ever had more then one character do too much on screen. Even then there are moments when nothing is going on, and nothing is being said, and they still just stand aimlessly, looking as if they’d awkwardly forgotten what was to come next.

I also didn’t get why the Japanese voice actors only used English in the planes. I mean America and Japan still have the occasional dick measuring contests with each other, and have plenty of young individuals who lie awake at night wishing really hard that they were born in Japan and not America before bowing underneath their Suzumiya Haruhi posters, but I still don’t get the fucking point.

The setting is never properly established, and none of the characters who fly in the planes look like anything other then Japanese. At first I assumed they were in England or maybe a more Swedish kind of area, and moved to Germany a little later on. With the main armies being named Rocstock and Lautern, I figured there was something European in nature about it. But all of the characters seem to be able to distinguish between both Japanese and English when they mix it up on the fly so I’m just kind of shrugging.

Could it have been better? Yes.

Was it highly flawed? Yes.

Did it make sense at the ending? No, but only because it seemed to piss on everything it was doing up to that point.

But I whole heartedly recommend it to most anime fans for one reason, and that’s because the ending itself is a moving piece of work. That is how the best of movies end, there is no halfhearted drama, there is no lack of effort, and there is no cheap sense of satisfaction. The gritty sense of realism, and the beautiful movements of the entire cast on screen left me looking at the box at the end of the movie, wondering and praying that it wasn’t the end of the movie, because it was that good. In fact, I wikied it the second I was done just to double check whether or not it was the end, and it was.

The Sky Crawlers is good, you should go watch it, worth five bucks without a doubt. Because despite its flaws, I was greatly impressed with how they handled that last hour, if not the entire movie when it wasn’t dragging.

Or doing nothing on some random ass pasture somewhere.

Dogma Anime Reviews, Series Reviews Animated Full-Movie, Anime Reviews, Dubbed, The Sky Crawlers

You know, I can’t help but wonder what it’s like to look at how many people play Street Fighter, or how many other fighting game fans play something like Marvel vs. Capcom, or other close games of the sort and have to make a game just like that, only not as good.

It’s like playing Tekken one weekend, then someone told you that Virtua Fighter is out and you should play it, despite the fact that its clearly not as good. And probably never will be.

I mean, there are only a few ways you can go with a review that begins with “Do you remember that really similar game, that sucked?” but fuck it, I’m going to at least try.

King of Fighters XII is the twelfth installment into the King of Fighters series, which I guess incorporates SNK, and Fatal Fury, and King of Fighting, and etc. It doesn’t really tell you that, and being a Capcom fan for years its hard to just kind of switch up gears and look at this one and understand.

Still.

The worlds best fighters have gathered together, in a way that’s totally not like Street Fighter, and decided that they would fight as representatives of their countries and… win.

Now I remember playing Street Fighter four and complaining quite a bit because the storylines were all incoherent, idiotic and didn’t make a lot of sense, but I have to tip my hat off to King of Fighters storyline, because there isn’t one.

The game is a straight from Arcade rendition of a very simple fighting game. So there are no bonus modes, there is no story, and all the characters have no boosted stats, dynamics, are really much of anything when you combine teams.

In a way that’s very much unlike street fighter, there are no rounds but instead you choose three characters from the 15 character roster and fight in a sudden death style for time. Time seems to be the most important thing, and after all your characters get eliminated  you lose. You can also only use one at a time, and even if you made a bad matchup you cannot switch them out until they die. This means that despite your best efforts in the previous round, you can just have characters put in ridiculous one on one situations where on has 25% and the other has 100% HP and watch the first character just try to whittle away what the second one has until they get killed and the next one comes out.

The characters are well rounded, and majority of them are interesting, a few coming in a variety of “set” ideal teams that you can see just by outfit and style, but all of them have enough variety to work rather well if mixed up.

I used Elizabeth, Shen Woo, and Terry Bogard, and when I played online it didn’t seem to matter who I used because I was not very good at the game whatsoever.

In fact, much unlike Street fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom, I really sucked at King of Fighters, to the point where I kind of wondered why the styles were so much different.

The way the game works is similar to other fighting games, but time and countering seem to be the key points. At least, that’s what I’d like to say, but the computer is so slow and retarded that I never really got stopped by them long enough to know just what was going on. Even on the hardest difficulty, they weren’t very challenging at all. When I played online, which the game seemed to want to show off very well, I can’t shake the feeling that the robust and an at least impressive looking online mode seemed to miss the point.

Majority of my opponents turtled, and zoned, which seemed ironic in a game about King of Fighting as in a brawl, instead of a decision/distance kind of style but its not my place to mention that. Online mode can be a lot of fun, but personal experience means very little because you never know what you’re going to get with it. At first I thought it was a few bad gamertags in a row, but when almost everyone I played against immediately fled into the nears corer, I suppose I was at a loss for understanding.

It’s at least functional, but as a bottom line, I’d say it felt rather slow. The punishment for a false move or being too eager seems to be death, and as much as I dislike turtling or waiting patiently in the corner for someone to move or pushing them away shoto style, which I guess is the best way to play this fighter.

I could say “Like Street Fighter but…” again, but that’s rude and disrespectful to fans of the series as a whole. And just because I necessarily didn’t like it, doesn’t make it bad. But it doesn’t make it good either.

Slow, yet functional. Simple, yet playable. I wasn’t wowed by this fighting game, and only played it for a day or two, whereas with others I nearly shit bricks with. If you’re into slower more watchful, more careful games with punishing stakes and plenty of gambles then I can honestly recommend it. But what I cannot recommend this game for is the online mode because a lot of the time even on top dollar connections its incredibly slow, and laggy.

I’m glad I got to play with people in Japan, I’m not glad that by the time any of us realized what the fuck was up, the match was over.

Anyways, that’s it for fighting games for awhile. It’s not that I don’t love them to the core, and was not going to do a review on Marvel vs. Capcom 2, its just that, once you’ve played one, you can understand them all.

But at least Joe Higashi is the highest tier.

Dogma Game Reviews Action, Fighting games, Game Reviews, King of Fighters

There is a very peculiar kind of genre out there designed just for anime. Normal television watches would usually call it a “sitcom” but for some reason “slice of life” seemed to fit the bill for terminology, even though it’s minor changes its ultimately the same deal anyway. Where you, the viewer, sit down and watch small sized slices of day to day life for these characters in how they cope, deal and process the world around them. A more skeptical me would refer to my K-ON review, and Haruhi and point at more about this particular type of series, but just recently I bumped into a few that made me think a bit different.

NANA, for starters, Beck for second, and finally Welcome to the NHK for third.

Now, I’ve known about this series for awhile now. When it came out I avoided it like I do most overhyped or widely talked about things as I’ve got a thing against riding happily on the bandwagon others set up for me and their typical failing at recognizing  good entertainment from a few hours of rubbish. However, when I sat down and watched it I was rather impressed.

Welcome to the NHK follows the life of Satou Tatsuhiro, a twenty-four year old “hikkikomori” who dropped out of school, lives off his parents, has no job, and is afraid to go outside of his home. Apparently the term hikkikomori is a step below that of otaku, but for the sake of this review I’m going to refer to him as a loser as its essentially the same thing, its just easier not to write hikkikomori more then a few times.

Within the twenty-three episodes that take place, you follow Satou and his friends around and watch the way he handles breaking out of his pathetic, self-obsessed lifestyle with the help of a young girl named Misaki, whom he met by chance, who promised to help him change his ways if she’d be his project.

Now it didn’t really sound all that bombastic on paper, I figured it’d be a standard ordeal in which you just watch episode to episode enjoy a few moments of twenty-two minutes and call it a day, but that isn’t really what I got.

Welcome to the NHK is actually rather good, in fact I’d even say its great.

The music (Particularly the song with the harmonica) is atmospheric, and the storytelling helps you empathize with Satou as a character in ways that even the best of series cannot hope to imagine. From the first episode onward, the whole thing has this very worldly charm about it, this awkward sense of quality that you can’t help but marvel at for just a few minutes or so until the next scene takes place.

The magnificence comes from Satou himself, as a character he’s rather pathetic, and lonesome but at the same time seems much larger then the screen that contains him. His portrayal as a character goes beyond the way that you’d see most lead characters because he never establishes himself as a dominant lead character  but instead a prominent and well elaborated one. Its hard to feel longing for more knowledge about how the character is going to react, but more about the true nature of the character before he went down this spiral. Even if very little is understood about.the events in the past, you never feel as if you need to ask too much about Satou, because he’s always present and entertaining enough to capture most wandering thoughts off the subject matter.

While majority of the series takes part in his apartment, and the apartment of a friend he meets later on in the show, its just the way its handled that leaves me still looking fondly of the time I spent watching it.

Social situations, day to day lifestyles, psychological behaviors and reactions to stress and society all done very high in level. Coupled with good voice-acting (Despite how ridiculous that sounds as all I did was read the subs) and good music make it a memorable experience. Conspiracy theories, and fanatical assumptions, the shortcomings of life, and of people in general. Even paranoia is here for me to marvel at, and with psychology as my minor this is enough for me to fag about uncharacteristically for a few hours on.

To sum it up, I’d recommend Welcome to the NHK to a young adult type of crowd, my complaints with it are few in number, maybe pacing or lack of significant interest in a particular topic might slow you down, but if you’re interested in a small snippet of Japanese culture or are just looking for another slice of something interesting then look here.

I find it ironic that things like “slice of life” exist in this  method of storytelling, because you have to remember that the characters being seen are all imaginary, never existed and are based off the dreams and visions of the writers experiences. Its hard to say that it constitutes as a slice of life, but perhaps of an imaginary life, or figure.

But the idea that they call it a slice can remain the same. Because when slice comes to mind, its typically paired with cake. When cake comes to mind, its usually a plus. When Welcome to the NHK is concerned, it was a good slice.

Dogma Series Reviews Anime Reviews, Gonzo, Welcome to the NHK

I�ve been looking forward to this.

Finally it comes out, the only sports game that gets released outside of Madden that I�m really itching to get my hands on. The sequel to one of the best EA (Well, EA�s very few consistently good games) on the Xbox, and a decently accurate portrayal of the sweet science.

Yes, Fight Night Round 4 hit shelves this past week and much to my liking its actually rather good.

Very recently I did a review of UFC Unleashed 2009, a game I was pretty sure could give Fight Night a run for its money while keeping me busy until it came out, but immediately I was wrong because not actually being a UFC fan made it nearly impossible to even think about that game when playing this one.

All boxing, all the time. You can jab, punch, hook, straight, upper, body, headbut, etc with relative ease this time around and its done so well and impressively that I found myself forgetting the smack until he gets knocked down mentality from UFC and embracing this one.

The control system is built off a very ingenious but at the same time, pain in the ass type of right control stick style. As it became apparent that using the buttons wouldn�t work in most models, almost everything you do is controlled by how well you can use your right thumb and if you suck at that, you surely suck at this game.

I�m probably never going to celebrate the idea behind this particular method of control, because while fairly intuitive and polished from its predecessor where I felt like I actually needed to use the buttons to do well, this one still has some of the same mistakes. The biggest is that you cannot always predict what the game is going to give you. You can be sure a hook was to be thrown but instead an uppercut, or a low body blow, while the control reception has been tweaked its still an uphill battle in more precision based style of boxing.

Which is ironic because precision is what they were aiming for.

Styles make fights, should be underlined on the back of the box because depending on how much you know about boxing this becomes true. Outboxers who are smarter and more careful win on points or speed knockdowns, Infighters who are good at taking and giving hits will almost always win by knockdown. A lot has been done to make the fights authentic, so much so that I�m impressed by the level of detail given to make a regular fight between two decently matched opponents go about six or seven three minute rounds until one of them falls at least once.

KO�s are on display here, but getting one could never be harder or easier depending on your opponent. Strategy has become a lot more effective and a basic aspect of any one players repertoire. Picking your shots, and planning your way to victory has similarly never been more crucial or realistic in a boxing game.

Counter punching is my favorite aspect, honestly. Nothing in the game can compare to carefully gambling your own chances at the fight to return a shot with double the power and practically end the fight before it begins.

However, after about a page of nice things, the flaws really start to bleed through.

As I said before, the control scheme can be tricky, and learning how to counter punch with two sticks and a shoulder button is a bitch and a half, especially when sometimes the punch you wanted to deliver doesn�t even go off correctly. Similarly the game has very lopsided ideals upon fairness where you can go out and win an entire six or seven rounds, only to immediately get knocked down by one punch from the loser, even if your boxer has a cast iron jaw.

The mechanics for dodging and blocking are a lot less intuitive then the striking game, and crisp clean technical boxing is replaced by hitting competitions by the boxer who has more stamina and happened to pop a five hour energy in his corner at the end of the round, so unless you�ve got a brain you might dislike the new system.

Similarly, the game modes really never differentiate from fight right now, or fight someone else right now, or make a boxer, have him train, to fight right now. The World Championship mode is the most promising because it allows players everywhere to make their own boxer and have them fight their way to the top. However the customiszation and the bells and whistles on this addon game mode really make it nothing more then a ranked lobby with stats on display. The matchmaking just puts you up against people who are available and ultimately lacks the sufficient structure to be based off skill instead of matches played.

As even the guy with the belt, who has a Skill level in the forties,averages his opponents out with skill levels in the single digits (meaning that they could completely suck and probably don�t know much about the game online.)

Your boxer himself is a mute prick who you choose from a cast of pricks, or happen to use a picture of yourself to emulate. This isn�t a system I�ve tried out in particular but when it came time to share boxers and majority of them either looked like Rocky, Jack Dempsey or Evander Holyfield who didn�t make an appearance in this game, I lost some patience in copypasta.

Similarly, the boxers never talk even if they have actual voices. The victorious cries of a job well done are just the announcers, who have a very limited sheet of comments that you�ll hear majority of in the course of a full length fight. It gets a bit disappointing that you can never hear a victory speech or even a shudder in defeat when you leave the ring.

Pre-ring ceremonies are much better then last game, and the mechanics around Ali and Tyson are sparkling but as usual the boxers are based off popularity contests and not accuracy as there is only one Bantam weight fighter for the whole game vs. 7 Heavyweight boxers. Sound effects are sharp, but the music itself is only about average. They�ve got a Mos Def cut on there so I�m going to give it an approval.

Ultimately, I�m pretty sure I love FNR4, in fact I was playing it during the course of this review. But I�m a boxer/ boxing fan so naturally there is going to be a big <3 sign when it comes to things like this. So I�m really only left to the conclusion that FNR4 loves me back but only because I was the first one to send it a message about how much I like it, and boxing.

Sports game fanatics, casual gamers, and non-boxers might be a bit alienated by the steep learning curse, raw mindset and random capability, and just the sheer amount of skill it takes to excel marvelously in this game, to the point where its hard to recommend if you don�t like boxing because boxing is really all you do.

In the same vein that you wouldn�t buy a FIFA fan a Madden game, I can�t say you should buy a Fight Night game simply because its good, because its only good if your into that kind of thing and lacks the universal pulling power that the third installment had, where just mashing buttons like a fighting game still made you get the knockout in slowmo.

Everything looks nice, sounds nice, and plays nice, but its really your preferences that make or break this game because I don�t know who else would actually play such a well put together game, for boxers only.

Dogma Game Reviews, Games EA, Fight Night Round 4, Fighting games, Sports

A hot new title? Allright!

Yes, it seems that luck finally was on my side, this particular week, when I stopped sulking because I�m playing something other then inFamous, and I managed to get my hands on a copy of Prototype. A game that�s kinda sorta like inFamous in the same way that a Spiderman game is similar to a Batman game because you�re in a big city, and the word �hero� is used several times in a row.

Of course, in Prototypes case it pretty clear the whole �Good� side of the hero/villain spectrum got told to go eat a dick sandwich as majority of the time its just all evil, all destruction, all the time.

Set in the city of Manhattan, Prototype has you assume the role of Alex Mercer. An unlikable, often unamusing prick who could only be less likable if he walked around crashing parties and bar mitzvahs and making dead baby jokes before crying about his amnesia again. If you didn�t figure it out from that last sentence, Alex Mercer has lost his memories and woke up imbued with the power to kill everything and consume it for lunch.

Least, that�s what I want to try to spell out but the �Lol just run to shit and watch a jumbled cutscene� style of story telling this game uses doesn�t work well with the fact that at the very beginning of the game it puts you at the end of the game. Naturally, you play flashbacks for awhile, and the main character often spoils what is going to happen next seeing as he�s got all that time on his hands and apparently found himself a buddy. Not to mention its got a GTA style free roamable city, so things didn�t start off well because unlike GTA you can�t drive a car or just do anything you can only run around and kill.

See, you�ve got this virus. Originally you don�t know what the virus is, and toward the end of the game you don�t know much about it or how it came to be only how it got there. While at the beginning the game tries really really hard to pull you in without giving shit away about the actual story it often under compensates and just leaves a lot of unanswered questions, done in a dark and moody fashion.

About 90% through you got though what is undoubtedly a final boss fight, its long brooding and depressing and it took me about half an hour to complete on normal difficultly so I cursed at it the whole fucking time. But it seems the game forgot to wrap up the storyline where the final boss fight should be because you keep going for about another hour only to fight a much weaker final boss, for no explainable reason. It doesn�t really make the story tie together any better so I�m not quite sure what the fuck is the reason behind it.

But lets just start at the basics: You have powers, they are cool, go kill stuff.

That�s the high notes in the game in a nutshell. From the very beginning toward the very end of the game, you�ll often find yourself remembering those three things, and for the most part its enjoyable.

If you�ve ever played a game such a Rampage or Hulk Ultimate Destruction (moreso the latter) then you�ll feel at home here. You have the ability to scale buildings, climb just about everything, use a wide variety of powers, and kill anything within the tri-county area that so much as looks at you the wrong way.

Combat is smooth, and visceral, often very graphic and mutilating but it doesn�t get particularly old in the slightest bit. I enjoyed running from the start to finish, exploring the city (Which is all you get to roam around in) and destroying and consuming whatever got in my path till I reached the objective of the day and did that for awhile.

You have several weapons to choose from, such as conventional weaponry you can use off random grunts you kill, you can use your bare hands in a very basic H2H style of fightings, claws and hammerfists, a blade arm, a whip arm, and my favorite the strong man style which makes you just good at chucking shit at the enemy until they die.

Or at least you can pose off them guns if you get bored of throwing crap.

Upgrades are plentiful, and increase the efficiency at which you�re able to scale up a building with a car in your hands, jump off the side of it and hurl an SUV at a chopper before landing from the fall unharmed.

Similarly, there is the option to steal a tank, disguise yourself as a member of the crowd or military, and later on steal a helicopter if you reach it out of the sky, and these provide equally entertaining moments and change ups that make the game fun and open to different methods of victory, on certain missions.

It goes well to note, that getting around from rooftop to rooftop, gliding in the middle of the air and dashing is a lot of fun. A giant city coupled with a good way to get around is a thumbs up, along with the useless collectables available for just having a good travel sense. It also goes well to note that there are literally hundreds of side quests and options, moves and abilities that you can miss trying to play through even just once. Though they aren�t really that differentiating in nature (Kill shit when you can, in this time limit) they are worth taking breaks from the bullshit storyline to complete. There is the option to comb over the city and look for persons of interest who are tied to the story and when you consume them you get a short cutscene that outlines their involvement in the actual virus which is consuming the entire city.

These short movies are usually somewhat interesting and add a bit more depth to the story, which otherwise sucks. Of course, the disappointing aspect of it is that there can only be a limited amount of information in these cutscenes based on the actual plot so you will find them to be repeating themselves very often.

Sometimes the games you have to complete, �War� in particular , become little side quests that you look forward too everytime they pop up.

Usually the challenge is a waypoint race with a time limit, or a gliding competition, but War is fun because it lets you assume the role as an infected or a human and fight the other side off as quickly as possible rewarding your performance with a lot of exp. There is also the option to consume a group of scientists for there memories, or sabotage a base because you�re bored and the occasional mix ups from just simply killing everything make the game better.

Though, it goes well to note that the AI in this game is incredibly stupid. So stupid in fact that you can never shake the feeling that you are overpowered and that this became Stupid Town USA overnight. The pedestrians are often worthless groups of either walking or running characters which you can pick up and eat for health, and the military units only know how to shoot you with the biggest gun they have and unless it�s a tank or a chopper its never really going to hurt you all that much.

The stealth aspects of the game really make their thickness come to light as you can fully assimilate a character right in front of several marines and be close enough that they can hear their comrades jumbled screams before you kill them and still not quite point the gun at you.

I applaud the idea behind the consume function and think its rather cool that you can become just about anyone but its disappointing that the AI is too thick to bring this to light.

Prototype is a bit of a rushed final product, from the disappointing graphics to the disappointing storyline nothing seems like it got a final check. The characters are often forgettable, there are more and more loose strings as you go along. Though the environment is pretty wide and expansive the game sacrifices looks for framerate as while the game will never lag, it will never impress you graphically.

At the end of the day, I�m impressed with Prototype. It had the potential to be a great game, and while it isn�t its still rather good. The gameplay is probably some of the best we�ve seen from this generation of consoles, and the difficultly curve is just a few steps short of fantastic.

You�ll probably never shake the feeling that you are a comic book hero, and while Prototype probably has some strong comic book like origins, it�s a few pages short of a whole series. However, if you are in the mood for something fun, fast paced, and a good killer of time then I recommend this game.

Dogma Game Reviews Action, Activision, Game Reviews, Hack n' Slash gameplay, Playstation 3, Prototype, Xbox