playstation 3

The Curious Case of Persona 4 Arena Reviews

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Currently, I’m in the midst of reviewing Persona 4 Arena for Splitkick. Yes, I did end up caving, which should a surprise to no one. Though I have a clear idea of where I want to go with my review, I wanted to see how others approached reviewing this RPG/fighting game mash-up.

While the general consensus is positive, reviewers are coming at this game from wildly different perspectives. Sites like Shoryuken, and 1Up are putting most of their emphasis on the fighting game aspect of it, while others like Giant Bomb, and Joystiq are focused on how this progresses the franchise’s lore.

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Bulletstorm Review

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Toting an electric whip, a mean “Sparta” kick, and a potty mouth that would make Howard Stern blush, style is the name of the game in Bulletstorm. Taking heavy cues from Devil May Cry, you’re constantly encouraged, and rewarded for creatively dispatching your foes. In one minute, you could be lassoing enemies towards you, kicking them in the air, and shooting them in slow motion as they fly away. In the next, you could be steering sniper bullets around obstacles to hit enemies in the butt – a 50-point feat that the game aptly calls “Rear Entry”.

Though style is at the forefront of the experience, there’s more to Bulletstorm than its overboard machismo. In fact, it’s this excess swagger that’s gotten everyone in this mess in the first place.

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Out Now: Persona 4 Arena

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Over the past few months, Persona 4 Arena has been building a lot of buzz in the hardcore fighting game community. Created by the same team that brought us Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, the early word-on-the-street has been very positive. I have no prior experience with the Persona franchise, but I’m always interested in trying out a good fighting game.

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The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day Review

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Zombies, as depicted in almost all forms of fiction, are simple creatures. Featuring great strength, limited intelligence, and (in most cases) limited mobility, their sole objective is to consume the flesh of the living. For this very reason, I don’t find zombies themselves all that interesting.

It’s what happens around the zombies that creates fictional magic. From The Night of the Living Dead, to Abraham Lincoln: Zombie Hunter, to Plants vs. Zombies, creators have found a number of different ways to leverage their simplistic traits into amazing experiences. For The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day, the zombies are a catalyst for a far more interesting tale of human survival under apocalyptic circumstances.

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The Long Road to Redemption for Street Fighter X Tekken

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I’ll never forget my first few hours at Toryuken, Toronto’s most recent major fighting game tournament. Scrambling for someone to partner with me for Street Fighter X Tekken, I was repeatedly rejected by dozens of players, all of whom claimed to not play the game. Inside the main room, not a single station was running the game. As the tournament was nearing its start time, one of the tournament organizers got on the mic and asked the community if it was alright if they set up a Street Fighter X Tekken station, and the crowd roared with boos. Though I’d seen a number of negative comments about the game by players in blogs, and message boards, seeing the hate manifest in that way made the sentiment really hit home for me.

Players have had no shortage of reasons to dislike this game, from its on-disc DLC, to the inclusion of the controversial gem system, to its garbled mess of gameplay systems, one game-breaking glitch, and then some. Starting now, however, Capcom is hoping to take steps to reinvigorate this under-performing title.

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Initial Ninja Gaiden II Impressions

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Save for the most recent installment, the modern-day Ninja Gaiden series has been held in high regard among critics and the gaming populous. Despite the positive word-of-mouth, I hadn’t played a Ninja Gaiden game since the Ninja Gaiden II on the NES. I’ll never forget how brutally hard the NES games were, and I heard the new games were equally challenging. As someone who isn’t much of a masochist when it comes to video games, this just didn’t sound like something up my alley.

However, when I came across Ninja Gaiden II for dirt cheap at a Blockbuster closing down sale, I decided to outside of my comfort zone to give this one a shot.

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Binary Domain Impressions

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Though you’ve probably never heard of it, Binary Domain was a landmark title for Sega (in a bad way). As Sega’s most recent boxed release, it’s failure at retail contributed to substantial worldwide layoffs and a major restructuring of its publishing strategy.

Was it a bad game? Not from what I’ve read from the reviews, and general discussion on the internet. Because I was looking for something to scratch my Vanquish itch, I had this on my list of games to pick up when it hit $20. Though the game isn’t very old, it didn’t take long for it to drop to that price in my area. Is it the Japanese Hamburger I was looking for?

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Max Payne 3 Review

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After the events of the second game, Max has hit rock bottom. With nothing more than a substance addiction, and a commitment to do his job properly, he begins anew in Brazil as a bodyguard for a wealthy family. It doesn’t take long before things go south, and it’s up to Max to save the day the only way he knows how: by shooting dudes in slow motion.

Though the events of the third game take place almost immediately after the second, there’s been an almost decade-long gap between the releases. Since 2003, the franchise has changed hands from Remedy to Rockstar, and the genre has evolved quite a bit. Is Max Payne 3 a return to form? Or washed up like its protagonist at the beginning of the game?

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Out Now: Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown

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Historically, I haven’t been one to get to get much out of the 3D fighting game genre. As early as the original Virtua Fighter, it didn’t feel like my style of fighter, and I moved on. However, as I’ve grown more interested in the genre as a whole, I’ve gotten a bit more interested in giving 3D fighters a bit more of an honest try.

I’m currently eying an on sale copy and Soulcalibur V and Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, the latter of which is out now as a $15 downloadable game on XBOX Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

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Qanba Q4 RAF Review

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Over the last few years, Mad Catz and Hori have done an excellent job of creating high-quality fightsticks. However, as officially licensed peripheral makers, neither company can provide a fightstick that supports all major platforms out of the box. It sucks to be in a situation where you’ve spent a large chunk of change on an XBOX 360 fightstick and your friends bought the latest fighting game on PlayStation 3. Or when you want to play in an XBOX 360 tournament when you only have a PlayStation 3 fightstick. To get around this, you can try your hand at modding your fightstick. Or you can try your out a sketchy adapter which could be obsolete with the next console patch. Or you could do what I’ve done to date, which is buy a high-quality fightstick for each system I play fighting games on. Regardless of the route you choose, the answer usually isn’t cheap or technically stable.

Aiming to address this need, the Qanba Q4 RAF is built to work on the XBOX 360, PlayStation 3 and PC right out of the box. For avid tournament goers or gamers who often play on different systems, having one fightstick that supports all platforms is truly a blessing. But does it work as advertised? And does the rest of this fightstick from an unknown manufacturer stack up with the best from Mad Catz and Hori?

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