25 Mar
I am quite fond of Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics’ latest effort, the rebooted Tomb Raider (You can read about just how fond of it I am in my review here). While playing through the game I came across quite a few memorable moments worth mentioning and thought they deserved their own post. If you haven’t played the game yet, I recommend that instead of reading this, you go and play it right now.
21 Mar
I actually finished this game around two weeks ago, but I’ve been so busy I couldn’t even capture screenshots, let alone write it up, until now. It released officially on March 5th.
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Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Rating: MA15+
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It’s a hard knock life.
.
It’s barely fifteen seconds after you select “New Game” in the new Tomb Raider that our heroine Lara Croft receives her first injury. After fifteen minutes she’s been burned, impaled through the side and has had disagreements with countless hard, jagged surfaces. An hour in, it’s a wonder she’s still alive. But she is, and this is the important thing, because Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have re-imagined the decades-old gaming icon as a desperate survivalist in a much grittier setting than the old version ever had to contend with.
19 Mar
Here are two more lists for you to disagree with at your leisure.
So just over a year ago year I got all excited about the pile of new movies and games that were coming out in 2012 and posted a pair of top ten lists to order my anticipation. As it turned out, I didn’t even end up watching some of the movies on the list and an embarrassing amount of the games I wrote about didn’t even come out in 2012. Here’s hoping I’ll be a little more accurate with this year’s equivalent.
For the sake of neatness, I’ll only count movies/games that are coming out after the month of March has run its course.
MOVIES
10. jOBS (Teaser)
I’m curious, OK? I don’t actually think Ashton Kutcher is the worst guy in the world and, even if his turn as the late great Steve Jobs sucks, this movie is still going to be talked about quite a bit and I want in on that conversation.
9. World War Z (Trailer)
Zombie movies can be great, they can be decent, or they can be so bad they’re good. In my lifetime I have never come across one that is just bad, and so I will happily watch the eerie World War Z when it hits.
8. The Great Gatsby (Trailer)
Baz Luhramann’s latest pulls out so many Moulin Rouge stops in its trailers that it kinda demands to be watched on style factor alone. Which I suppose is Luhrmann’s deal in the first place. Leo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams sweeten the deal.
7. Pacific Rim (Trailer)
On face value I can’t really believe that this movie is actually happening. It looks like Battleship meets Real Steel, and while the latter movie was surprisingly decent, the former, well, it kinda sucked. Everything changes, of course, when you realise that Guillermo del Toro is directing. Colour me hyped.
6. Despicable Me 2 (Teaser)
If there was ever a non-Disney, non-Dreamworks animated feature that surprised me enough for me to rate it among my favourite animated movies of all time, it’s the hilarious and heartfelt Despicable Me from Illumination Entertainment. Now a sequel is well on the way and while it will struggle to top the first one, you can bet I’ll be at the cinemas in week one to make that call for myself.
27 Feb
There is quite a lot that has changed in Persona 4 Golden since it was just Persona 4 on the Playstation 2. So much so, in fact, that I thought the changes deserved their own article. For those who have played some or all of the original game, this list may help you decide whether the revised game is worth getting at all. I’m going to try to be exhaustive here but may miss a few.
Indeed, kitten.
I’ve divided the list into three sections: the small changes, the medium-sized changes and the big changes.
27 Feb
This Vita gem was scheduled to be released in Australia today, but it has already been in stores for a couple of days. The Americans got it last November and I imported it back then so I could finish it by our release date. Easier said than done, but here we are.
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Platform: PSV
Developer: Atlus
Rating: M
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From the unhinged people who brought you Catherine!
High school life never slows down. My teachers are irritating and they keep picking on me to answer questions I have no idea about. I have to attend drama and soccer practice as regularly as I can, because they improve my expression and diligence. I should try to help out my classmates who need to find all manner of trinkets, but exams are coming up so I really should study. I should also make time to hang out with friends, but things don’t pay for themselves, so I have to work hard at a part time job. Oh, and I need to fuse a decent Persona so I can beat a grotesque shadow monster when I next go inside a TV at the local department store.
Such is the bizarre equation of Persona 4 Golden, a truly fantastic entry in one of gaming’s most unique RPG series.
23 Feb
Two posts today, methinks.
It’s hard to believe that it has already been one full year since the launch of Sony’s latest and greatest dedicated gaming handheld, the Playstation Vita. 366 days ago I was quivering with excitement at the thought of a shiny new piece of tech and, aside from hours worth of initial setup, I was not disappointed. You can read my day one impressions of the system here and my first month impressions here.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if I could write a lovely piece about all the ways the system has moved ahead in leaps and bounds since launch, building on its rather strong start to etch out an authoritative corner of the gaming space, in doing so announcing itself as a must-have piece of hardware?
Yes, yes it would. However, this simply isn’t the case.
Apt.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore my Playstation Vita and in the last two months, I haven’t played any other console nearly as much. This is mostly due to the excellent Persona 4 Golden, which I am very nearly finished and very nearly ready to review, but I digress. Aside from that Atlus gem, there has been precious little gaming content to write home about. To put things into perspective, though the Vita did have a very compelling launch lineup, in the space of a year the amount of Vita-specific games you can buy for your handheld has barely doubled. There are some worthwhile titles there, such as Gravity Rush, Assassin’s Creed Liberation and LittleBigPlanet, but outside of games you can also buy on your PS3 the list doesn’t go on much farther than that.
This isn’t the last you’ll hear from me about the Vita for the conceivable future, as I’m thinking of doing a comparison article with the 3DS for the benefit of people trying to toss up which system to get. But as for a standalone anniversary article, there just isn’t enough content to fill one out, sadly. Happy first birthday Vita. I hope by the time we get to your second there will be a lot more to celebrate.
30 Jan
That’s definitely something to get excited about even at the worst of times, as there’s nothing like a new annum when it comes to entertaining speculative dreams of potential. However, this particular year will see things get interesting a lot more quickly than, well, arguably any year before it. Not even considering the fact that we will probably find out about Sony and Microsoft’s new home consoles this year, or that online services like Steam are odds-on to keep churning out fantastic indie titles, just take a look at this line-up of games set for the first quarter of 2013 alone:
How long can 24 hours be?
DMC, reboot of the beloved Devil May Cry series, is already out, I’m playing it, and it’s awesome. Tomorrow sees the long-awaited release of Japanese developer Level 5’s collaboration with one of the most beloved anime studios ever, Studio Ghibli, in the form of Ni No Kuni. A week later, Dead Space 3 will chill millions of players to their core, and I won’t be one of them. No thank you. Slightly less scary but no less atmospheric is Aliens: Colonial Marines, an ultra-polished canon sequel to James Cameron’s famous Aliens movie, which hits less than a week later. The 21st of Feb then sees a blockbuster double release: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Crysis 3, both of which will stun with their visuals and intense commitment to action. The normally quiet month rounds out with the exceptional-looking platformer Rayman Legends.
For all February’s power, March positively dwarfs it. Its first week will no doubt be dominated by one of the most anticipated series reboots in recent memory: the new, grittier Tomb Raider. The same time period will also see the release of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, which fans of the anime will lap up, and the new Sim City, which will doubtless send millions of players into fits of obsessive micromanagement. Mid-month features a sequel to one of this generation’s real sleeper hits, Sniper Ghost Warrior 2, but it’s expected to be overshadowed by a gargantuan “exclusives battle” between Sony and Microsoft. In the red corner, God of War Ascension. In the green corner, Gears of War Judgment. Sporting similar-sounding names, both titles are prequels set before their respective trilogies and both are expected to make lots of money. For all the late-month intrigue of co-op fest Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel and the cloud save-enabled Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, The last week of March really belongs to only one game: Bioshock Infinite. Delay after delay has kept gamers from playing the viciously hyped juggernaut, but we will have it for real… very soon…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stacked non-holiday period. It seems my wallet is headed for some more discomfort.
28 Dec
This is where things get serious. It’s the home stretch of my top ten lists covering 2012’s finest entertainment media.
Of all the lists I put together in my head for posting on Vagrant Rant, this one was the least clear-cut. Partially due to the motivation of having a blog to write, I finished more games in 2012 than I have in any calendar year before, which gave me a pretty sizeable pool of experiences from which to draw. Ordering them was a real headache. Seriously, I adore every one of the games in the “Honorable Mentions” section at the bottom of this page and it’s hard to believe I had to cut any of them. Of course, there were some critical and commercial gems I didn’t play at all in 2012, which is a bit of a shame. Sorry, Farcry 3, Mass Effect 3 and Journey.
Unlike when I review a game, I decided not to let the fact that I haven’t finished a certain title stop me from including it on the list. This is ultimately a list of games I enjoyed playing this year, after all. However, to make the list a little fairer, at least in theory, I decided to disqualify any game I haven’t played for at least five hours of game time. That gets rid of some truly high-quality 2012 titles, most notably Uncharted: Golden Abyss, New Super Mario Bros U, Dishonored, Paper Mario Sticker Star and, yes, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Regardless, it does mean that I’ve had at least a half-decent look at everything you’re about to read about.
Uprising was fighting it out with Mario Tennis Open for this spot on the list, but despite all the multiplayer fun I had with the latter, it was just too hard to discount the entire package that the latest Kid Icarus title offered 3DS owners in 2012. Combining some of the best graphics and craziest stereocopic 3D available on the portable with a clever difficulty system, addictive multiplayer and a host of content aproaching Smash Bros levels of ridiculousness, Kid Icarus: Uprising is a marvelous game, even if its controls take some getting used to.
26 Dec
Just as there were plenty of segments within movies that stood out in the memory throughout 2012, the videogames of the year provided their own set of unforgettable moments. Many of these were related to the experience of playing around with game mechanics, and thus are both personal to me and by nature spoiler-free. However, there were also plenty of story-related moments that shook me much like a film scene might, so read this list with care.
The first Gym in Pokemon White Version 2 is deliberately pretty vanilla and the music is identical to that of all the Gyms in White 1. The second Gym shows you in no uncertain terms that the music will not be staying the same from Gym to Gym this time around, but it isn’t until the third that the potential of such an idea really hits home. A string of creepy malformed chords greet your ears, sounding like cicadas dipped in LSD, and the visuals match the audio perfectly. Stringy cocoons litter the dusty building interior, leading up to a mega cocoon housing a psychedelic rainbow paint pool and the Gym leader. Trippy and awesome.
23 Dec
For all the gaming highlights of 2012, there were quite a few moments of frustration, at least for me. They came in many irritating forms. Some were due to glitches in games, some were caused by basic design flaws and/or oversights on the part of developers, some were directly related to my own stupidity or incompetence. All sucked.
There isn’t too much more to say about this list; really, I just want to get it out of the way. It’s not bringing back very pleasant memories.
Barely seconds into my first opportunity to explore Hong Kong during Sleeping Dogs, I ended up at the docks. It wasn’t something I intentionally aimed for, but my open-world gaming habits, honed during hours of fun with Just Cause 2, dictated that I should explore as much of the game world as possible. Assuming the region was my oyster, I jumped gleefully into the sea, before discovering that ten minutes of aimless swimming were ahead of me. There was no place from which I could get back onto dry land, at least anywhere I could catch a glimpse of. The docks themselves weren’t much better, as I discovered when I finally did get back on land. There weren’t even any people out there; just a maze of crates and a jumping glitch that froze me in midair.
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