Muramasa: The Demon Blade

I was a big fan of the Odin Sphere title developed by Vanillaware and published by Atlus games for the PS2. Actually, I shouldn't lie. I hadn't even heard of Odin Sphere until my friend Brent randomly told me about it when I was over at his place one day, and even then I refused to play it until he spent half and hour convincing me that the fun gameplay and gorgeous graphics added up to quite a game. He should have just showed me the graphics from the start...it would have taken less time to convince me.




That being said, I'm very happy to hear that Vanillaware is once again developing a game using the same gorgeous and creative art style employed in Odin Sphere. Muramasa: The Demon Blade promises to be a fast-paced, ultra stylistic ninja-fest, and from what I've seen of the gameplay footage released so far, it looks to be a blast to play and watch. Check it out for yourself if you don't believe me:

Valkyria "art" Chronicles

I must have completely missed the fact that Valkyria Chronicles was just released for the PS3. Yep, I did completely miss that fact.

With all of the major titles out in October and November, this title completely slipped under my gaming radar. So it was with quite some surprise that I noticed it on Metacritic the other day, and was pleased to see so many favorable reviews. Needless to say, I’m tickled.

More than that, I absolutely love the art style of this game, which, I have since learned, resulted in the development team winning the "Best Artistic Graphics of 2008" award from GameSpot (the most prestigious art house on the planet of course).

So, before even picking up the title, I have already spent several hours surfing the web looking for pictures of the artwork from the game. In my artistic wanderings, I have stumbled upon an art book that was given away as a limited edition freebie for those who pre-ordered the game. While I don’t have a physical copy (yet), I did find a great blog where you can download high quality scans of the entire book. If you are like me and enjoy this sort of thing, feel free to check it out.

Deus Ex 3

While I have played a ton of games throughout the years, the list of games that I have actually finished, is by comparison quite small. I just get bored easily. Unfortunately, most of the games out there get bogged down by poor story, play mechanics or level design somewhere in the middle of the experience, and are just not worth finishing. Few games have managed to hold my attention all the way through to the end, and they have ultimately made it to my top 10 list. Yes, I think I have only ever finished like 10 games. That being said, I didn't finish the original Deus Ex...but i did get pretty darn close to the end, which is a major achievement in my book and serves to qualify the game as officially awesome; and at least in my top 20.

In contrast, I could barely get through the first few levels of Deus Ex 2: Invisible War, a horrible excuse for a sequel that succeeded in doing little more than alienating the majority of the game's original fan base.

The sequel was just awful! And I even made my friends watch me play...until I threw down the controller in disgust and backed away from the TV in horror. I had gotten stuck in an area with no way out. I had also somehow let loose a miserable alien creature that proceeded to walk around mumbling and crying and generally stumbling into walls due to the poor pathfiniding mechanics. Come to think of it, the creature was a startlingly realistic portrayal of just how I felt at that exact moment. How profound!

That horrible memory, now 4 years in the past, still lingers in my mind. I'm sure that similar nightmares haunt the minds of many a Deus Ex fan that had the misfortune to pick up and play Invisible War.

It's these same fans that Eidos Interactive is hoping to win over with their latest installment in the series, Deus Ex 3. The game has been in development at the Montreal studios of Eidos for quite some time, and has a long way to go still. Currently I'm being cautiously optimistic, but at the same time preparing myself for complete disappointment and utter horror.

If you are brave and still want to learn more, check out this post on the official game forum. And here's a look at the teaser trailer as well:

Machinarium

So I stumbled upon this article today, 5 Unorthodox PC Games to Watch in 2009.

A fun read, and they pointed out a game that I had never hear of, Machinarium. A beautiful looking game about robots. Enough said!

Apparently, a group called Amanita Design has been working on this title, and it's due for release sometime in the first half of 2009. Amanita Design is an independent game development studio founded in 2003 by Jakub Dvorsky. They are also responsible for the delightful games Samorost 1 and Samorost 2 which won many an accolade a few years back.

Zero Punctuation

If you love video games (and you are manly enough to laugh at the fact that you do) then you owe it to yourself to check out the weekly video game reviews put out by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

There's a new clip every Wednesday, and i'll try to link them here, but to make sure you don't miss one (and to have a hilarous time looking through the archives) head over to the Escapist Website.

Here's a video review of Dead Space, to give you a taste for what's in store:

Dawn of War II

I was (and still am) a huge fan of Dawn of War, the RTS developed by THQ based on the oh so popular Warhammer 40k franchise. The Warhammer 40k universe (as opposed to the regular Warhammer universe) is one of the best, most developed and most engrosaing settings for fantasy, in my opinion. Perhaps soon, I'll write a longer article about it, which will sadly have to include all of marketing missteps and ways in which the parent company Games Workshop missed opportunity after opportunity to make this world into a mainstream success, not just an obscure world loved by the more hardcore among the geek crowd.

But this post is just to highlight Dawn of War II, a game that I hope will live up to the high expectations set by the original. Here are a few videos from the Dawn of War Blog, showing off some of the latest gameplay elements. By the way, the idea of starting a blog to chronicle the development of a game, is a great way to engage the community. It's not novel, but I'm glad that THQ is doing it:

Seasons Greetings from WoW

I woke up this morning to find so many mystical presents under the WoW tree. Yes, the WoW tree...

There's nothing like celebrating a real holiday in a virtual world with lots of other virtual people (and presents)!

Happy Holidays from SoulCalibur IV

Just in time for the holiday season, SoulCalibur IV delivers a shameless money making scheme for all the nerdy boys and girls. Downloadable Content (DLC) was available ever since the game came out several months back, and this year for both Halloween and Christmas we're treated to a paltry overly expensive costume pieces. If you're curious about whether or not these are worth the money, the short answer is no. But since I bought them anyway, I might as well show off what they are:











Oh, and just in time for Christams, we finally get Darth Vader for the Xbox 360. This DLC pack was actual worth it in my opinion, if only so I could go back and get a kick out of reading all of the articles where Katsutoshi Sasaki, the games director, denied this would ever happen.