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Game Design Talk – BlazBlue: Continuum Shift’s Tutorial Mode

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Over the weekend, I thought a bit more about whether or not to buy BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. After more deliberation and talking about it with my brother, I totally caved and picked it up. I did get it at way less than retail price though. I gathered up a bunch of the free games I got during my Blockbuster raids that I had no intention of playing and traded those in. On top of that, my brother agreed to pay for half of the remaining cost. Sweet!

Unlike 99% of the games we’ve ever played, we started out our experience by jumping into tutorial mode. Knowing the difficulties we had with the first game and hearing that Continuum Shift supposedly has an awesome tutorial mode, it made sense to start at ground level rather than button mash and wonder why this game doesn’t play more like Street Fighter. If you’ve had any reservations about learning BlazBlue, then I have (mostly) good news for you.
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Game Music I Love: Street Fighter II Soundtrack

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Back in the early 90s, you couldn’t walk by an arcade without hearing that intro theme music to Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II was revolutionary for a number of reasons. It became the blueprint that every 2D fighting game has followed ever since. It introduced a new layer of video game controls and complexity. It had what would become some of the most iconic sounds in all of video games (hadoken!). What it doesn’t get as much credit for is that it was one of the first games to introduce a new level of complexity in music while being as catchy and timeless as any of the best video game soundtracks ever.

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Early Impressions on the Hori Tekken 6 Stick

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Hori has been known as a top name in the arcade fight stick scene for a while now. Unfortunately, my first experience with Hori products was awful. My Hori EX 2 broke within an hour of owning it, which I fully documented on this very blog.

So it was fair that I was a bit hesitant in picking up this limited edition Tekken 6 bundle that comes with a Hori stick. If I wasn’t able to buy this for 60% off the original price, I probably wouldn’t have given this a shot.

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Girlfriend Gaming: What We’ve Been Playing August Edition

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Ever since she got a Wii for Christmas, my girlfriend has amassed quite the game collection for herself. I haven’t actually taken the time to count our respective game stashes, but if she doesn’t already have more Wii games than me, she’s on pace to surpass me very soon.

We haven’t had too much time to play games together of late, since we’ve been out of town together for a number of reasons. In spite of that, we have spent some quality time with the Wii fired up. Hit the cut to see what we’ve been playing together. Maybe you and your significant other may enjoy together as well.

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Halo Apathy

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Over the last decade of gaming, probably the biggest hole in my gaming knowledge and experience is the Halo series. Not to say that I have zero experience with the series: I’ve regularly heard a lot of Halo discussion on the podcasts I listen to, and have played some Halo 1 multiplayer, Halo 2 single player and Halo 3: ODST co-op and online multiplayer. But each time I’ve played a Halo game, I’ve walked away with a general sense of apathy.

Pick Up Post: Tekken 6 Limited Edition

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Up until the rumored announcement of a Namco and Capcom, I didn’t think I would ever own Tekken anything. From my few times playing Tekken games, the gameplay just didn’t appeal to me.

With that said, I now have the limited edition Tekken 6 bundle with fight stick in my house. Huh?
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Street Fighter Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 3: Resource Management

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This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing, Part 2: Punishing Mistakes

Resource Management

The goal of Street Fighter is to completely drain your opponent’s health meter before they can do the same to you. You achieve this by attacking your opponent. How you attack your opponent or defend yourself can vary wildly depending on what the health situation is. The easiest health situation to discuss resource management I can think of is when your opponent has a major life lead over you. When your opponent can finish you with one or two hits, you need to play much more conservatively in order to stand a chance of winning. Conversely, if you have a major life lead on your opponent, you may be able to win by “chipping them out” on wake-up with a projectile attack to avoid the risk of eating a last-ditch super move that could turn the tide.

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To Buy or Not To Buy – BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

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I really wanted to like BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, and based on what I knew of the game going in, I thought I would eat it up. Instead, it sat on my shelf because I couldn’t grasp the gameplay. The pacing was a bit slower than I expected. I had a hard time understanding the game’s mechanics. It also didn’t help that every character played completely differently from each other, which meant there wasn’t much in the way of transferable skills. Some of this wasn’t the fault of the game; part of it was a fault in the user. I realized that my Street Fighter knowledge wasn’t as applicable with this game, and that the amount of investment it would take for me to be good at BlazBlue I would rather dedicate to Street Fighter IV instead.

This week, BlazBlue hit store shelves. I have a lot of reasons for just leaving it there. However, a couple of things are tugging at my heart strings (and wallet) to give the series one more shot.
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Risk for iPhone Review

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I’ve been waiting a long time for Risk to hit the iPhone. During my childhood, one of my best friends used to always get board games from garage sales, which we would then play on his picnic table throughout the summer. One of those games was Risk. For weeks, we were generals, battling over control of the world through the strategic placement and movement of troops as well as a few lucky dice rolls.

This latest release may be a bit late on the iPhone, especially for those who have dabbled in other, arguably better, dice-rolling strategy games. I can’t speak to its competitors, as I haven’t tried any of them. However, I have put in a number of hours into Risk since it came out a few days ago, and I’m more than happy to share my thoughts on the game with you.

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Impressions on Limbo

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There seems to be a lot of artsy/high-concept games hitting  of late. Games like Braid, Flower, Echochrome and P.B. Winterbottom have really pushed the boundaries of what a game can look and play like. I have nothing but respect for those developers who are actively trying to move the medium forward. However, none of these games have personally appealed to me. I’d much rather watch these games for a few minutes than actually play them, mostly because the gameplay elements don’t appeal to me.

Limbo was just released on XBOX Live Arcade and is the latest in artsy-high concept games. The black-and-white aesthetic is amazing and is matched by equally awesome atmospheric sound. But will it turn me away with gameplay that doesn’t appeal to me? I tried the demo and I’m here to relay my thoughts to you.

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