The other day I downloaded the demos for Overlord and Dragonball Z Burst Limit. I also pulled out the PSP which I haven’t touched since I finished the oh-so-awesome Warhammer 40000: Squad Command to play the Harvey Birdman demo I downloaded ages ago. Overlord has been out for a while on Xbox 360, but it’s only just been thrown up on the PS online store. I was also a huge fan of the Dragonball Budokai series up until, I think it was Tenkachi, when the game turned into 3rd person view instead of the side on view that ALL fighting games should use. Am I being too old fashioned? Probably, but I can’t think of a decent fighter that’s gone against the grain. And I’m talking fighters, so Fight Night fans can back off.

After looking through the demos, I’m kinda looking forward to things. Overlord looks like a really simple game, and it plays that way. Summoning little gremlins, commanding them to kill things and bring you stuff. Hell, thats easy, its also pretty entertaining. Having not bothered to read anything about it on the 360, I don’t know much about it, I’m expecting it to be simplistic to the point I’d lose interest, but only time will tell. First thought after the demo - Awesome.

Dragonball Z games always appeal to me. I’m a huge fan of the cartoon, I have every DVD(bar the movies) from Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT. I also have a crapload of the toys. It’s very geeky but I love them. Re-enacting the scenes from the cartoon is always great. Looking at the demo it looks like they went back the the old Budokai games with the view, the struggles, and added in some really great looking cell shading. Unfortunately there is no real tutorial to speak of so I had to fudge my way through the Kamehameha’s and basic blasts. The game plays pretty fast, but without a tutorial it’s hard to get the hang of. First thought after the demo - Must Buy(fan reasons, the demo is pretty lame).

The last demo was a huge surprise. I haven’t really been a fan of the Harvey Birdman tv show, other than when I have seen it after South Park. Anything that follows South Park is usually neglected in my eyes, but it did get a few laughs. After discussing the basics of the demo with some mates, we decided the game plays very similar to Carmen Sandiego, and I’m a sucker for puzzle games. Searching areas for clues, building cases, and eventually prosecuting them. The demo played very much like an interactive episode, with hilarious dialogue, random characters and very light-hearted. These are the kinds of games I love to play on portable systems. As much as I like action games, if it has a level of complexity I tend to prefer to play it on a tv and big console, PSPs are much more casual so to see games like this come out makes me happy. The game itself had a breakthrough moment with me when I was interviewing Secret Squirrel and Magilla Gorilla in jail about a break in of my(Birdman’s) office, where I also saw Dhalsim in a gratuitous but somewhat relevant cameo. Thoughts after the demo - Depending on price, this could be a go-er. With only a limited amount of cases, I can’t see this being a game I will play forever, but if it’s around the cost of a DVD or Blu-ray, I might just do it.

And of course, it’s Thursday again today, so as the night goes on I will HOPEFULLY find a few more things to try before I buy.

When I think of crossover games, I think of Marvel vs Capcom. This game was pretty awesome. The cartoon-ness of the characters and the insanity of special moves worked really well together. When Capcom and SNK did games, damn they were sweet. Again, the King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Darkstalkers and Streetfighter worlds blended perfectly. In these were a great balance of good guys and bad guys.

When I heard of the next MK game coming out I was a little less than excited. The last time it was revealed that they would add new styles of fighting, they took out fatalities and replaced it with the kreate a fatality system. With Mortal Kombat 8, I don’t know what to think. Oh actually, pure disgust pretty much sums it up. Crossing over franchises can be a great thing if done well. Crossing over the harpoon wielding, flaming skull-having, vengence machine from hell, Scorpion with say The Dark Knight, is NOT a good crossover. DC is not a good match for MK. I will admit I have never read a lot of comics and always preferred cartoons, after all if a picture tells 1000 words, then 25 frames per second must tell 25000 words. In the cartoons and movies, Batman does kick ass, but relies on cars, building edges and bat-branded tools to win. Scorpion relies on pure violence. The fact that DC actually convinced Midway to take out the fatalities so no one can dismember or bloody up Batman or…. ech, “Aquaman”, just tells me that their characters weren’t made to deal with the MK brand of aggression. So, they are essentially making a 3d fighter, with random characters, that isn’t Mortal Kombat. *slow clap*

Midway staff are mentioning a ‘whole new fighting system’. Looking back, hey have changed it every game since MK2, and even then, there were subtle changes for example, crouching punches, air throws and adding more fatalities. MK3 played the same, added a run button and a pile of other finishing moves. MK4 was essentially a 2D fighter in a 3D world, kinda like that Streetfighter game. MK5 was the big change up adding styles, weapons and really bringing 3D into it. 6 and Armageddon, well they arent too far apart. The funny thing is, Armageddon’s main appeal was to be able to play 60+ characters and the Fatality system(which flopped badly). Instead of learning from their mistakes Midway are throwing in a bunch of other “famous” characters and taking out the only thing that set it apart from other games of its time.

Midway, harden the fuck up.

Late last night a mate showed me this. Some of you might know, the Smackdown vs Raw Series(starting as Smackdown: Just Bring It) is responsible for making me the Playstation fanboy I am now. When it came out it was only a couple of weeks till I threw down $500 for a PS2, and $80 for the game. Although there were games such as WWF: Warzone, WCW: Nitro and WWF: Attitude, Just Bring It was just in a league of its own. Where the previous games got their fans by increasing the amount of awesome things you could do and adding in more and more crazy matches and moves, the current games have been lagging. It has essentially been the same game, very pretty, but the same matches and limiting creativity.

In the PALGN announcement there is reference to creating your own finishing move. This excites and scares me. Having watched WWF since I was about 6, I have at least 8 finishing moves that I have thought of, not counting other moves that have since then been used. Having the ability to do this makes me feel warm inside. However, I got the same warm feeling when Midway announced the Kreate a Fatality mode. Although I did take that ball and run with it, I was extremely pissed off that they would do such a thing. If SVR09 plays their cards right, this could be every wrestling fans dream, but if they screw it up it will surely be the beginning of the end.

I was pretty excited when I read that there was another SF4 character being released. El Fuerte, means Fort in spanish. What ever this has to do with anything I am sure we will find out later. From his appearance and name it’s obvious he’s a luchadore, which will be pretty interesting. Not that we don’t see wrestler characters in fighting games, eg King from Tekken or El Blaze of Virtua Fighter 5, the interesting part is that Street Fighter games already have wrestling characters like Zangief and R Mika. Im looking forward to seeing how he will actually go as a character and if how he will go about executing the high flying moves of luchadores without the assistance of a ring.

Continuing with the trend of revamping older games such as Bionic Commando and Speedball, one of my old favourites is getting a makeover. The peeps over at IGN jumped straight on it and found and AWESOME trailer and I will happily admit it gets me a bit excited and stirs up moods of noisy arcades, fish and chip shops with stand up machines and video hire stores where I spent a lot of my gaming youth. As the Brainy Gamer so articulately puts it, the thrill endures. The game looks like it will stay true to its roots, using simple top down shooting, powerups, huge bosses and the ever useful area clearing bombs. Im happy to see that there looks to be a few tag-team type weapons(towards the end of the clip) which will add another awesome element to the game.

If someone ends up re-doing General Chaos I think I might cry. For now, I will be buying a PSP this weekend with Warhammer 4000: Squad Command. If you are familiar with General Chaos, you will understand.