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.

This could quite easily turn into a bitch, so I’ll try to stay on track here. I don’t think the game deserves at 10. I think anyone that does is blinded by hype. The game ‘is’ good, but its not without its problems. Camera angles and aiming issues are things that usually see games ripped apart in reviews from players and magazines alike. Repetition and samey stories also cost points to games. Keeping these few things in mind, let me start my quick review.

Of course, it’s still early days. I think I’m a grand total of between 3% and 7% through the game so I am yet to be wowed by later content, not that I’m intending on awarding bonus points to cover any problems….. I’m finding the camera isn’t behaving to my liking. I even had this issue in adventure games such as Conan and God Of War. Every game has it, but its not often that I see a racing/car based game that takes so long for the camera to follow cars rought a corner. I tend to use the handbrake a lot in unrealistic driving games, and let’s face it, if you are after realism, this game isn’t for you. Yet the simple idea of a quick handbrake turn throws the camera. Another thing I noticed, which may be my camera angle, is that you can’t see going up hills onto a flat area as the car covers anything in front of you, for example, a cop.

Arguably, if I was driving ‘nicely’ these things wouldn’t happen. But driving around obeying all the road rules is NOT the point here. I would get bored of this game quicker if I did that, but with the amount of trouble I cause with camera problems, I rarely end up at the mission start instead of the hospital anyway. I can put this down to noobish impatience, as I have never EVER wanted to take a game slow. To skip over other issues, I have cover, auto-aiming and side-games. The reasons for this: they suck. Try to shoot from a moving car driven by your friend in multiplayer. Seems okay? Now have him turn down random streets. You might notice that instead of moving your gun as the car turns, Niko does this for you. For a lot of this joyriding I was constantly overcorrecting, so I think, okay they want me to be lazy, but that’s hardly true. In one of the earlier missions, Niko decided to take cover in front of a dresser. Sure thats fine if they are behind it, not so much if they are in front with you. I then auto-aimed to the person shooting. Niko decided it would make more sense to try to shoot the guy behind the wall, THROUGH the wall, instead of locking on said guy. Then, when I left the hospital, I played some darts. The aiming is a LOT better and it works exactly as you would expect. The thing wrong? Darts are boring.

There storyline is different, yet, the game plays like every other one, SO FAR. I will admit, I’m losing interest already. The multiplayer is great, more on that another time, but the game is hardly 10/10. Fanboys, you suck.

This game is going to be good. How good? I don’t know. Apparrently 10/10 good. That’s right, this game will be better than Shaq-fu. Better than the live-action Street Fighter movie. I haven’t played it but I am almost not looking forward to it. I will admit, I tend to get very jaded with the volume of hype put into games. The amount of 10’s coming out with such a small amount of experience is pretty insane. I have never really found GTA to pass the lastability test, so after the inital shock of being able to do “everything”, I am expecting the novelty to wear off. I don’t think I know anyone that has actually played one through, start to finish. Actually, I can think of only 1 person that might have, but I’m not sure. I’m sure he will comment soon to let me know.

It makes me happy to know I’m not alone in my skepticism. Mitch over at Insult Swordfighting wrote a great post on game hype. It does raise the point, with so many 10’s within the first few days of release, could any game ever live up to that kind of score? Also keeping in mind the exclusive review issues. With everyone jumping blindly on the bandwagon with nothing but hearsay and a couple of clips, I am quite happy to watch it roll away.

I do have a few problems with the game already, mostly due to my sandbox hate, but Tycho at Penny Arcade sums things up unbelievably well. I tend to get tired of roaming around pointlessly. The fact that you “can” interact with anything and anyone, doesn’t really mean I will want to find everything out. The whole idea of extending this interactivity to everything in the city makes the task all the more daunting, and near impossible(logistically). In straight story games there are things to unlock, secret areas and it’s fun to find them, there is always an end in sight. Not having that there just takes away that drive to find things. Things to do, new weapons, and eventually I can see people getting tired of finding missions. Rumour has it there is around 30 hours of solid gameplay if you do the missions and only the missions, but it’s the in between time that is the killer.

People drop World of Warcraft because they get sick of running around. People in general don’t like to drive around aimlessly. Travel time is a big part of a lot of online and rpg games, but there is always the added bonus of having company. Sure, theres the novelty of going really fast, shooting things on the way, but how long can that really last? I guess we will find out in a few months.

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.