Dark Void

One day I was talking to a classmate about games when he mentioned a "vertical shooter...with jet packs!". It took him a few moments then he recalled the name of Dark Void. I started to look into this game to see that it's release date is January 19, 2010, and stated to wonder why I hadn't heard of it yet. The story is a cargo pilot named William Grey crashes in the Bermuda Triangle and is teleported to a parallel universe where he meets other humans, called Survivors. The Survivors are battling an alien race known as the Watchers to get back to Earth. The Watchers are creatures that came to Earth and started making humans do their bidding. Eventually people called Adepts emerged and banished the Watchers to the realm that William gets sent to. What draws me in is the introduction of vertical cover. This story seems interesting, but usually in shooters stories are just kind of there to give you a reason to blow stuff up (not always, but usually) so I'm not necessarily excited about the story that sounds interesting. Although what does interest me is the combat. When in combat, you can climb up walls with your jetpack, which brings in new ways to defend yourself and attack the enemy. Also, the developers seem to be trying their best to make the flying of the UFOs and jetpack as responsive as possible to avoid the annoyances of some flying games where you try to turn and just hit a wall. I'm looking forward to this game, but I'm going to wait until the reviews are out because when you're dealing with something that has physics like jumping up cliffs and flying around with jetpacks, it could be easy to make the game hard to control, therefore not fun.

Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno is another hack and slash game that is set to come out February 9, 2010 (assuming there's no pushbacks). The game is supposed to be loosley based on Inferno, the first book of Dante Alighieri's poem The Divine Comedy. You will play as Dante, a veteran of the Crusades, who pursues his lover Beatrice to try and free her soul from Lucifer, who needs to wed a heaven-bound soul to break free of Hell and make another attempt to take over the Throne of God. On his way through the nine circles of hell to Lucifer, Dante must face his past sins and war crimes. This story is definately a change from the norm which makes me interested. Instead of trying to save the world or something from being destroyed, you're just trying to save a person you love from being damed to Hell for an eternity. Although when you bring in the fact that the only way to save you loved one is by helping Lucifer try to retake the Throne of God, it makes the story even more intriguing. In the end will Dante realize he could be damning the world just to save his loved one? Even if he does succeed and save her, will they live in the world that Lucifer has taken over and probably just turned into hell? It makes you curious about what the ending will be, and whether or not you'll be able to decide what Dante does or if it's a set story. Either way, I'm fine with it because I think that the whole "choose your way - good or evil" is starting to be overused in video games. It seems like a good concept, but when every game starts using a form of it, it gets old quick. Either way, I'm looking forward to the reviews of this game.

Brutal Legend

Brutal Legend is a action/adventure game AKA hack and slash. I played the demo and got a good feeling about the game, but other than the demo I've seen nothing for it. The only reason I really knew about it in the first place was because I heard Jack Black was in it. Technically it's a character voiced by and modeled after Jack Black named Eddie Riggs, but since Jack Black has something to do with it will probably be funny nonetheless. The story is Eddie Riggs is a roadie who is transported to a fantasy world after an accident where he gets killed that is inspired by the music genre of metal. In this world the human race is enslaved by a demon, and Eddie is trying to save them. Being a fan of Jack Black and metal, this game looks pretty good to me. I also found that the game incorporates real-time strategy which is pretty much the last thing you would expect in a hack and slash game, so I'm interested to see what that turns out to be like. Also, the game features 107 heavy metal tracks from 75 different bands which means the chances of me liking the soundtrack are pretty high. This is yet another game I hope to get and play through soon.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Now this game I actually know pretty much nothing about. The only thing I've heard is that it's Sonic and it's an RPG. Which, to me, makes it look pretty good already. Not to mention it was made by Bioware who also made Mass Effect and the new Dragon Age: Origins game, so they know their way around an RPG. The story is split into two acts, that are divided further into chapters. The first act is Sonic and company keeping the Master Emerald from being taken, and the second act is them travelling to a new dimension called the Twilight Cage to stop a threat to their world. The game opens with details on Sonic defeating Dr. Robotnik by destroying the Egg Carrier. Robotnik is presumed dead, but anyone that has played more than one Sonic game knows that he isn't since he's usually the main bad guy in every game (or is behind the main bad guy). Although this looks like it may be different since Sonic has to go to a different dimension. I'm not sure if Robotnik could pull off threatening the world from another dimension. Not having Dr. Robotnik be the bad guy could be a good change of pace for Sonic since after seeing Robotnik's plans get foiled is only amusing for so long before you just want a break from the same villain.

The game got mixed reviews ranging from 6.5/10 to 93% and an A rating. I think that even though some reviews were in the 6.5-7 out of 10 range, I'd still feel safe picking this game up since I'm a major sonic fan and I'm extremely curious to see him in an RPG game.

Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is yet another game I've heard about from a friend that has said nothing but good things about it. He got me interested in it with two sentences which was "I summoned Cthulhu and God and they fought. Cthulhu won." Now I'm not saying God losing is good or bad, but just the fact that you can make those two things in the game is impressive. I looked it up and saw that the game is pretty much just a sandbox game to screw around in, but the point of the game is to collect "Starites". You get these starites by bringing up a text entry table, writing what you want to appear, then using it in some way to get the starite. There's one level where a starite is up in a tree and I've seen three solutions. One is making a ladder, another is making a beaver gnaw down the tree, and the last one was making a lumberjack and an axe and watching him chop down the tree. I'm sure there's tons of ways to do just that simple action of getting something out of a tree. I want to get this game not to play for a story, but just to see what kind of wacky things I can do with a Cthulhu and God and say....a skateboard and a shotgun! Oh wait...it has been done...

Skateboarding God vs Cthulhu in Scribblenauts

Chrono Trigger

I was told about this game about 5 years ago by my friend who had played it on an emulator and said it was a good game. I thought nothing of it at the time since I didn't have a way to play it (back then I didn't even know what an emulator was...dial up will do that to you). Although now they have re-released it for the DS and my friend here at college got it and has been playing it non-stop. It is also my other friend's favorite game, and both of these friend's love RPG's so I knew it couldn't be bad. I decided to look into it's story, since I already know it has a turn-based RPG battle system. The gist of it is a group of adventurers travel through time to stop a global catastrophe. This seems to be a concept that isn't used very much, and since the fabric of time interests me, it seems like it would be an intriguing story. The DS version also included a New Game+ concept where you start a new game after beating it with the same stats you ended the game with. This seems pretty useful since the game has multiple endings and it makes it easier to see them when you start out really powerful and can speed through the game instead of going back to the beginning when you were inexperienced. I'm guessing I'll either try to borrow this game when I get the time, or just purchase it myself sooner or later.

Rogue Galaxy

Rogue Galaxy is a RPG that released in North America in 2007 for the PS2. I've heard nothing but good things about it (basically summed up as "that game is awesome!" but I've never had the money to buy it since all my funds are going into the new 360 and PS3 games (and Wii if you really want to include that in there). I found out it's basically about a guy named Jaster Rogue that dreams about becoming a space pirate then one day a beast appears and attacks his town. Jaster chases the beast and get's ambushed by smaller beasts, then gets saved by a man known as the Desert Claw. After that the Desert Claw gives Jaster his sword and some pirates mistake Jaster for the Desert Claw. Those pirates help Jaster defeat the beast and their captain asks Jaster to join their crew. That's all I read into the story because I didn't want to read any spoilers, but it sounds a bit like Disney's Treasure Planet to me.

The game was developed by Level-5, which are the creators of Dark Cloud 1 and 2 (which I loved) and it also uses the cel-shaded style graphics. The battle system works pretty much like Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII's did where enemies appear and there's no transition between exploring and battle. Game sites rated it in the 8-9 out of 10 range, so I'm guessing that since game sites and user reviews are both high, the chances of me liking this game are pretty good. I hope that soon I'll have the money and the time to get this game and explore space as Jaster Rogue.