Out of the 6 initial classes, 5 will have the ability to be upgraded when you gather enough resources, sort of like an RTS. It is the foundation that each player will work together like many team based CTF games to not only get the princess but also to understand the advantages of the current map and the macro RTS elements for upgrade priorities. With these slight nuances this simplistic game turns into something that even the most hardened of hardcore gamers can get behind. Not every map is the same for environmental hazards, this change adds even more strategy and depth, if whether the team should upgrade the fire mage first or perhaps there is a bomb in the middle of a resource spawn, taking out the immediate need for a worker upgrade, for harvesting the resources.

With 4 game modes, there is a ton of different appeal to the same game. Each mode is entirely different than the last. Team deathmatch is the most basic, with each team having a set amount of lives equal to to the total players. With 32 players, a score of 250 will last about 30 minutes, unless it is a ferocious battlefield. Invasion is a mode that is sort of like multi-KOTH, where you capture command points scattered around the map and hold them. The team that has the most command outposts will decrease a counter on the opposite team until it reaches 0. Rescue the princess is the standard mode most people play, it is based on CTF. Snatch and grab is the last mode and is similar but your princess is already rescued, and you capture the other teams princess and put her in the dungeon, rather than the throne like RTP. This essentially flips the spawn from where the player places the princess and where they capture the princess from.

Both uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are great additions to any ps3 owner’s collection. If you are a fan of linear platforming in 3d with lush jungle environments, exploring broken ruins, killing pirates and other traits of Indiana Jones you might find yourself in love with Uncharted’s universe.

Main character is Nathan Drake, a direct ancestor to the legendary Sir Francis Drake of the English armada back in the new world ages. Well Nathan is always on the trail of some suppose treasure with some super natural curse behind it. First seeking the gold of El Dorado in the adventures of “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” with his buddy Victor “El goddamn Dorado” Sullivan and financial overseer and journalist, Elane Fisher. In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves we See Nathan team up with Flynn and an old “friend” Chloe to go after the Cintimani stone of Shangra-li.

Demon’s Souls is a unique exploration through 5 mysterious worlds where death awaits around every corner.

Dying happens, all day ever day in the land of Boletaria. This RPG has the brutality of one hit kills, deaths that amount to copious souls lost and a rewarding system of unique loot enticing players to come back for more bigger and better treasures.

Souls are the life blood of this game, in order for your gear to be repaired, level up, buy new weapons, and to forge weapons requires collecting souls, many many souls. Everything gives souls and with that the player must depend on a risk/reward system for what enemies they try to tackle when traveling. One wrong attack may force the player to retreat or even die, while one right attack could prove pivotal to killing a monster much faster– Riposte.

The game runs quite well on ps3 and is an exclusive. It supports 720p and 480p naively and runs at 30fps, but might drop dramatically while interacting with some havok based items. Developed by “From Software”. from Japan, published by Atlus in the NA.

While an older title, released back in ’04. I felt I had to review this, as it is one of my favorite games on the story alone.

Environments and exploration I feel is presented good in this game. You travel through environments; room 302, Henry’s apartment, Ashfield’s subway, a forest on the outskirts of Silent Hill, a prison that is in the middle of Taluca Lake, South Ashfield Heights apartment complex, the disjointed alley ways of Ashfield. The connection to all these locations is that Walter has been there before as a child. The worlds are entirely linear, though there is some exploration but nothing like Silent Hill 1-3 had, with an open town ripe for exploring corner drug stores or gas station for extra ammo or health potions.

Combat has been improved a little with various types of swings, most seem rather weak, but if you press attack enough or hold down on it, you will have a charge attack that is quite viscous, which allows the player to be temporarily invulnerable. I am not sure if that was suppose to happen from a design aspect, but it does make some fights easier when surrounded on all sides. I must say I used melee far more than guns in this game, far more than the other Silent Hill games before it, since there is a limited inventory. Oh, and ghosts suck, they don’t die, Henry has headaches when near them which will harm him.

Puzzles this time around are much more like fetch quests rather than intricate Shakespeare or hangman puzzles. Is this good? I wouldn’t say it is, but I don’t really want to be stumped on a puzzle for hours on end either, so I’ve learned just to accept it, saves me time for the most part.

End notes. I remember buying the game for $50 at launch, and being really excited. I really hated the changes from previous Silent Hills initially, yet it seems the story is undying as I seem to come back for more. While I haven’t beaten this game some 14 times like Silent Hill 2, I have done it 7 times, this review making it the 8th. And that, I think speaks louder than any of my words. A powerful narrative about some psycho who wants to create heaven in Henry’s apartment. Really, my only suggestion is play it on easy for the story, I wouldn’t want someone to get stuck and really have to use the “survival” aspect of survival horror, since you can run out of health items and not be able to heal in your “safe zone” the apartment. Harder difficulties will add tension and fear, but mostly just frustration because of ghosts.

Here is a youtube to show off the first 5 minutes of the game, if only to give a presentable atmosphere. I’ll amend the post with a snipit of each world, I think.

The first review I’ve wanted to do for a while now has been a really good, $20 PSN title on the Playstation 3.  Wipeout has been a product of Psygnosis since the original Sony Playstation 1. Psygnosis wiki entry has more information.    Wipeout HD is a remake more or less of the two PSP titles that were released, Wipeout Pulse and Wipeout Pure.  Wipeout HD has redone the visuals to maximize the PS3′s power with stunning 1280x1080p60fps.  While not quite true 1920×1080, rarely do games output that resolution in this current generation of  consoles.  It is great to have a fast paced racing game that meets some of the brutality of the Twisted Metal series with weapon addons that let you destroy or hamper the advancement of the other racers and the difficulty of Nintendo’s F-Zero franchise.

The game starts off with all units unlocked (with the Fury DLC) and allows you to unlock more skins for the ships, and while the skins don’t have any differences in stats is it nice to see 7 skins total, even if 1 is sort of repeated for a new ship model.  Each of the twelve teams have a different style ship which varying stats to try and create a balanced gameplay experience while still not forcing the player to choose the “best” ship.  As you play through online races or the campaign, you gain loyalty towards the team you were playing as allowing you to unlock those extra skins. At 4000, and 8000 loyalty for a team you basically have unlocked all the skins for normal Wipeout HD gameplay.  The DLC pack of Fury requires the player to play through some, if not most of the campaign to unlock the other skins.  I think when I was around 60/80 medals in my Fury run and I had unlocked everything, though it is entirely possible the extra skin unlocks happen when you beat a certain race or event.

The models and shaders used in the game are phenomenal.  A lot of people claim that some of the bigger AAA budget titles out there have some of the best graphics but I disagree, sure 720p30fps isn’t bad and completely acceptable but until 60fps becomes a main stay I hold any game that can run at higher resolution and higher framerate to be better graphically.  From my understanding it takes a lot more horsepower or optimization to run games that high and keep a stable framerate.  With Wipeout HD the game will dynamically render at 1280x1080p all the way up to full 1920×1080, only reducing the render output of the horizontal pixels to maintain that silky smooth 60fps.

Some of the really amazing features of this game is the ability to play custom music from the PS3′s HDD and the ability to take photos while paused, to set up some amazing shots.  I’d almost say there is a mini-game in just how robust the photography is, allowing more or less saturation, motion blur, aperture adjustments, shutterspeed, brightness, and contrast.

I want to also point out, if you like old school arcade games were the goal isn’t exactly a linear story or anything but rather just trying to get the top score and have your friends or others try and beat that, then you’ll probably love Zone mode and Detonator mode, which I feel is almost worth $20 by itself.  Zone mode while isn’t the most entertaining to everyone, especially with the more casual crowd, I feel that you really get a good idea of how beautiful the game can be.  Zone mode is an unlimited lap mode that is set on whatever course, forward and reverse (though not available reverse on the 4 zone courses from the Fury DLC).  If you manage to like zone but wanted just a bit more action and an ending that doesn’t involve blowing up, detonator might be up your alley, as you get 14 laps to try and destroy 1 bomb and several mines per lap.  The player has to navigate their ship with auto-assist off and to destroy the mines and bombs before running into them.  This adds a lot of chaos to a possible already rather hard mode for some.

Bottom line, with $20 some may wonder; “how far can my dollar go?” Well, quite a ways, though it might be best to expect to spend $30 here as the Fury DLC brings A LOT to the table in terms of only being $10 more.  There should be a demo available on the PSN but if you can’t find it on the NA store you might need to make a PAL/Euro PSN to get the demo.  Honestly I wouldn’t bother with the demo, it should be a pretty easy decision as to if you’re going to buy this game, either you like racers or you don’t.  A couple youtubes should give a better representation than a limited demo experience.

Here are some screenshots from the photo mode while I was playing detonator mode;