3D Dot Game Heroes

3D Dot Game Heroes is a game that will be coming out on the PS3 and will be taking an old graphic style, 8-bit, and popping it up into 3D. It brings up nostalgia for the old days in a new way. The play style will be based on The Legend of Zelda in the way it's designed gameplay wise. The story is that the king of Dotnia decided that things were to boring in 8-bit land and decided to make everything 3D. This caused demon's to come out and steal the 6 magical orbs that were keeping the place safe. The game seems to have a good new concept of trying to merge the old and the new graphics and bring in the old dungeon delving concept. It also seems to have a good variety of items to use such as different swords and boomerangs. It is set to come out May 11, 2010 and will cost $40, so I might wait for the price to drop. It looks like fun and everything, but a game I would buy just for nostalgia doesn't seem worth $40.

Xbox Live Arcade

The Xbox live arcade is an online place where you can download smaller games for about $10-$20. It used to be when I think Xbox Live Arcade, I thought about a waste of people's time and money since they're wasting small amounts of cash of many games, which adds up. I also thought that this would probably make bigger game companies stop making good games and start making tons of little games with half the effort. After looking into some of the games I found that many of them are made by just little companies or single people that are just looking for a way to make money doing what they like. Also since I actually got live at college, I've seen some of the games and have become interested in some of them myself. Now I've only bought one, but I wouldn't be ashamed of buying more because they actually can make fun games in the arcade. Now I actually think the Xbox Live Arcade is a great idea because it provides little time waster games for when you only have 10 or 20 minutes to play, which isn't enough time for a fully immersive game on a disk, so you can just play a little arcade game to take up some time. Along with being easy to pick up and put down, it's also providing business for the little people out there.

Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Origins is yet another game that I have bought, but have had no time to play. This game is supposed to be one of the greatest RPGs ever released, and it's from Bioware so the chances are that's a pretty good possibility. From what I've seen, the reason it's going to be such a good RPG is because there's so many different stories you can have. The three races have different origins such as noble or commoner as well as different classes like mage and rogue. Each combonation has a different story, which makes quite a few to play through. The battle system is just a click and attack thing and you can use skills, kind of like a standard MMO. Which is a thing I kind of wish they could've put in the game. Multiplayer. It kind of makes the game less RPG-like, but I think that if you had the option to play with another person in your party, it would be more fun. Although I think they made it single-player just to complete the entire RPG experience. There is only you in there story, and no one else in most RPGs and it's kind of what makes them better. So I kind of hate myself when I want to play with another person when I'm playing a great RPG, but the feeling is there, nonetheless.

As for the ratings of the game, it got great reviews. Most of the reviews were around 9 out of 10 and some things even said it was "the RPG of the decade". I hope I get the time to play this soon and see for myself just how good it is.

Magna Carta: Tears of Blood

Magna Carta: Tears of Blood is a game that I randomly decided to buy on a trip to Gamestop because I saw somewhere an advertisement for Magna Carta 2, so I just figured if it was good enough for a second one, it would probably be safe to buy the first one. Unfortunately, due to an overload of homework, I haven't even gotten to start the game yet, so I decided to look up information about it. It came out November 16, 2005 and is an RPG.

The story takes place in a land called Efferia, where a war is taking place between it's two species of human and Yason. The protagonist, named Calintz, is the leader of a mercenary group named the Tears of Blood hired by the humans to deal with problems that they can't touch. After a battle where the humans try to use forbidden magic and fail, Calintz finds himself being healed in a cavern by a woman named Reith who has amnesia. Calintz offers to take her to a city of powerful priestesses as thanks and because he thinks she is one of them. As the story progresses, The Tears of Blood realize that Reith is more important than anyone thinks.

The battle system seems rather complicated. Three characters move around the battlefield in real-time (you being one of them) and can only attack when a thing called the leadership meter is filled. When it is full enough to attack, you must have a series of three button presses for an attack to succeed. If you fail, the meter empties and you have to wait for it to refill. I'm hoping there's more to the battle system overall than just that, because that seems like it would get pretty boring.

The reviews were mostly 6-7 out of 10, so unless the battle system is a lot more fun to play than it is to explain, that means the story pretty much saved the game from being terrible. Which if the story is good enough, I can stand bad gameplay. Hopefully I won't be to let down by this game.

Bayonetta

Bayonetta has been on the front page of gamespot.com pretty often for the past few weeks, so I finally decided to look into it. The game's release date is sometime in January 2010 and looks like it will be a hack and slash game. It is being made by the same person that made the Devil May Cry games, which are extremely popular. It takes place in a fictional city in Europe named Vigrid. The main character is a witch that who shapeshifts and uses various guns, as well as magic attacks she performs with her hair. She initially wields four handguns, two in her hands and two in the heels of her shoes, but can wield other weapons such as shotguns, rocket launchers, and two-handed katanas. The story is wakes up after a 500 year sleep and can't remember anything about who she is or where she's at. As the game goes on, she starts to remember what caused her predicament that she's in, which is not mentioned.

Gameplay video

After watching that video, I think that the story has more depth than I thought there would be, although the battle system looks pretty much like a carbon copy of Devil May Cry's battle system. If I hear it has a great story after it comes out, I'll consider buying it, but if the story is weak, I'd rather just try to finish the Devil May Cry series that I can never seem to get around to beating.

Monster Hunter Freedom 2

I haven't heard anything about Monster Hunter games, good or bad, although I have played Monster Hunter Freedom (the first one) on PSP and was kind of skeptical about it. The only thing that seemed like it would've been fun on it would have been the multiplayer, and I didn't have anyone to play with. I mentioned that to my friend and he let handed me one of his copies of Monster Hunter Freedom 2 and said "This game has way more content and we can play multiplayer!" He says it's better, but I'm still skeptical. There really isn't a story, which can actually work for this game since it's just set in a town that needs to kill monsters for their materials to make random stuff, just like in any villlage. The combat system is hack and slash, which is usually boring alone when there's barely a story if at all. So I'm hoping playing with someone else will fix my problems with the game. The ratings the second one got ranged from 5-8.3 out of 10 and the first one got about the same. My rating for the first one when I played it would probably have been around the 5.5 range, but I'm thinking with multiplayer and some new content, the second one could be in the 8 range. Of course I suppose I'll only find out when I get around to playing it with my friend.

Darksiders

This game caught my eye one day while I was browsing gamespot.com so I decided to look further into it just because the name "Darksiders" piqued my curiosity. It turns out the story is rather different than most. The Apocalypse has started prematurely so on of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, War (you), has been sent to Earth in response to the final battle between Hevaen and Hell. After Hell wins, War is accused of being the one that started Armageddon early and is stripped of his powers and is banished to the desolate Earth forever as punishment. War sees this banishment as an opportunity to clear his name and find the real culprit that preemptively started the Apocalypse.

I don't really believe in all the religious prophecies such as the Apocalypse and the four horsemen, but I do think that this is a great idea for a game. It is basically the plot of a person wrongly accused of a crime and they have to find the real criminal, but in this setting it seems more interesting. It is said to be an action adventure game with puzzles, and is compared to The Legend of Zelda games. If it's any way like The Legend of Zelda games, that makes it even better in my opinion. I'm hoping that when this game comes out on January 5, 2010, it lives up to my expectations.