The Blue Bomber will always be one of gaming’s most iconic characters. It’s hard not to be when your legacy includes over 50 games across 8 different series’ and when one of those games is Mega Man 2, which is one of my all-time favourites. However, the outlook for Mega Man has looked grim since the release of Mega Man 10 last March. Is it possible that Mega Man is dead? I hope not, but here’s a few indications that it might already be too late.
Earlier this week, Capcom released its first update to Street Fighter IV: Volt. While the most obvious change to the game is the addition of Sakura and Makoto to the roster, Capcom has also taken measures to curb the rampant rage quitting problem that is ruining the current online experience. On one hand, it boggles my mind to see how childish the community has handled the online experience. On the other hand, it boggles my mind to know that Capcom did not build in any measures to punish rage quitters in the first place.
Catherine is a really hard game to judge at face value. Unless you’ve tried the game for yourself, it’s very easy to misinterpret Catherine as some sort of perverse porno game. Even by watching the recently-released Catherine gameplay trailer, it may only confuse you further. You might then be asking yourself even more questions, such as:
“Is this a puzzle game?”
“Is this a dating simulator?”
“How does this all even work?”
“How do you play out the sex parts?”
Before I continue with this review, I’ll answer the last question for you: No, you do not play out the sex parts. This is not a porno game and the act of sex itself is not as big of a factor to the game as you may have been lead to expect. What it is though, is likely a gaming experience you’ve never had before.
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Normally, I don’t like to use In Third Person as a means of perpetuating a company’s PR cycle. Not to say that I’m anti-establishment or anything like that, but every professional or amateur video games enthusiast writer is going to write the same stories about the same press releases. Adding my own spin to a public relations piece that has been spun a million times before generally doesn’t excite me one bit.
However, this one is a bit different. The Catherine demo won me over in a big way, and I’m really loving the final product. Expect to see a review for Catherine tomorrow. I had some concerns that this game would fall on deaf ears for looking like a perverse Japanese porno game (which the game is not). Had it flopped and discouraged Atlus or others from releasing more unique products, I would have been a very sad panda. Thank goodness then for the announcement from Atlus that Catherine set an Atlus sales record, having shipped more units at launch than any other Atlus game in the publisher’s 20-year history.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about fightsticks on my blog. Most of the conversation revolves around the Mad Catz TE (which I love) and the Hori line of fightsticks (which I’ve had mediocre experiences with outside of the V3-SA). However, there’s one particular brand of fighstick I haven’t talked about, which is Qanba. I don’t really know much about the brand, but I’ve seen a number of positive things about their Q4 RAF. What makes it so special?
One of the reasons I pre-ordered Catherine once I decided to buy it (besides the ability to avoid the embarrassment of purchasing it in person) was to get the CD soundtrack and the art book for free with what Atlus positioned as the pre-order edition. However, due to Amazon failing to ship my order in a timely manner, I just went out to my local retailer and bought a copy. To my surprise, every launch copy of the game is the pre-order edition, which means if you buy a launch copy of the game, you’ll get the bonus art book and CD soundtrack regardless of whether you pre-ordered it.
As of writing, I haven’t played the game yet. However, I thought I’d at least post my impressions on the launch package in case you were interested in what the art book and soundtrack are like.
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition has been a huge disappointment for me. While most casual players won’t notice much of a difference to the core game from what’s found in the previous two iterations of Street Fighter IV, competitive players have been crying foul about Arcade Edition’s character balance since its launch in late 2010. I didn’t get my hands on it until early June, but it didn’t take me long to notice that their vision to intentionally unbalance Arcade Edition did not jive with what I wanted out of the game. Because of my bitterness around Capcom breaking what I felt wasn’t broken, I lost interest in playing Street Fighter IV competitively.
It looks like I wasn’t alone in this view, as Capcom has recently announced that they’re going to do something about it.
The next game up on my list of pick-ups from Blockbuster’s epic closing down sales is Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. As with Split/Second and Vanquish before it, Enslaved is another one of those games that was critically acclaimed but a commercial flop. To be honest, I had little interest in this game until the positive word-of-mouth hit, though only enough to buy it on the cheap.
As I work my way through this stash of games in this category, it kind of makes me feel bad to know that I could have made a difference if I bought these brand new when they first came out, as the odds of any of these games getting a sequel are slim-to-none. To be fair, I’m not made of money, and it’s unreasonable to expect me to pay full price for everything. Anyway, this is quickly going into a tangent. Let’s talk about Enslaved based on its own merits.
One of the cool side-effects of the growth of the fighting game community is that the personalities within the community have in their own way, reached pro-wrestler status. There’s good guys and bad guys, as well as story lines around the games themselves that fans intently follow. One of those players that has reached that level is Mike Ross, who is one of the best Street Fighter players on the planet. It also doesn’t hurt that he and Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez have been supporting the community with their Cross Counter content and that Mike Ross seems like a genuinely good guy.
Just days before EVO, G4TV decided to do the community a solid and release the Mike Ross documentary entitled “Focus” for our viewing pleasure for free.
I love Double Dragon II on the NES as a kid. I played the heck out of that game, as it was one of the best beat-em-ups on the NES at the time. Seeing the headlines of a Double Dragon II remake called “Wander of the Dragons” yesterday got me excited for about…10 seconds. That’s when I saw the screen shots and video of the game in action.
In Third Person 
