Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Review

Introduction

Rockstar is really wanting to be the king of the open-world games, and they deserve to be. Red Dead Redemption is a game that bring GTA elements to the old-west, but it isn’t just GTA with horses and cowboys.

Story & Characters

The story is deep and keeps the player playing, to see what will happen to John Marston, an ex-outlaw, that has to capture members of his ex-gang and bring them to justice, so he can see his family again. John’ll  encounter many different people in the game, and most of them are very interesting and fun. John Marston is a character that most people will sympathize with, he had a hard life, make some mistakes and now wants to start a new life, but he lives the consequences of his past. Also the game has one of the best and unexpected ending.

Gameplay

The gameplay is very similar to GTA IV, but it’s better. Shoot a gang of criminals in this game is very rewarding, sometimes you’ll fell like John Marston is a one-man army, thanks to the lock-on system and the use of the Dead Eye, that allows you to see things in slow motion to take many enemies at once. Also there’s a good variety of weapons: pistols, revolvers, rifles and knifes. You’ll be ridding horses for a good time, and ride horses is as fun as drive cars in GTA, also in the game, you can hunt animals, play poker and fight in duels. The health works like in Call of Duty, if you’re hit, just get cover to recover your health, there are also items to recover health, but I don’t see necessary to use them, in the end. The controls are very good, it just takes a little time to get use to the controls on the horse.

Visuals

The game looks amazing! The environment feels alive and is full of details, having a good variety of vegetation, deserts and animals, in the deserts and forests. The weather works very well, the sun rising in the mountains is just beautiful, and the cities looks just like the ones in western movies. The characters are very well designed and the physics of the game is one of the best I ever seem.

Sound

All sounds makes you feel like you’re in a western movie. All effects were well-made, the musics are great and the voice acting is just superb.

Replay

RDR is a game with a lot of stuff to do, in both single player and multiplayer mode. In the single player, in the cities and on the way to certain locations, you’ll find a lot of people needing help and the Strangers missions. Also you can look for treasures and play many mini-games. And since the main missions are very cool and fun to play, even when you beat the game, you’ll probably go through the game all again, with no problem. The multiplayer mode is awesome, full of co-op missions and different matche modes, all online modes very fun, where you level up and them, you can change your character and your mount. It’s simply one of the best online multiplayer I ever played.

Good & Bad

The Good: Great story and main character, cool shoot outs , a lot of stuff to do in the single player, awesome online multiplayer and amazing environments, that feels alive.

The Bad: The game has some bugs.

Conclusion

Red Dead Redemption is simply one of the best games I ever played. Has a great story, great gameplay, full of extra missions, cool mini-games, incredible multiplayer mode and very good graphics. Definitely is a game that everybody, who has a PS3 or a X360, must check it out.

PSN is Back Online

For more than 3 weeks the PSN was off, due to an cyber atack on the PSN system. But nowthe PSN is back online.

Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s representative, announced, in May 14, that the PSN is back online, and apologize for the inconvenient incident. He wishes that the system could have been restored sooner, but they need to make tests, to make sure that the security has increased. Everybody, for security reasons, will have to change the password of the PSN account, this change can only be made on the console that the account was created.

He also announced a “Wellcome Package”, that’ll probably be given to the users after the PlayStation Store comes back online, so far is the only thing I miss, but it’ll come back soon (I hope that the “Wellcome Package” be something like U$:20.00 to spend on the PS Store). I played Red Dead Redemption online, to test the PSN, and the PSN is working in an excellent way, without lag, and the trophies and friends are all okay. I just hope that this new security hold the bastard hackers, So this incident doesn’t happen again.

Mortal Kombat (Movie) - Review

Introduction

In 1995 they decide to make a movie based on the game Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat The Mvie, because of the big success of the game series in both arcades and consoles. The game was full of blood and violence, and the fans and the gamers had a good expectative about this movie. But we already know that the movie won’t be as bloody and violent as the game, but even so, MK The Movie was as good on the big screen as it was on the arcades?

Adaptation

The movie follows well the story of the first game, with minor differences, like Liu Kang have a brother, that dies in the beginning of the movie and also Liu Kang is Kung Lao’s descendent in the movie. As in the game, the fighters fight in a “mystical” tournament called Mortal Kombat, and that was a good point of the movie: the fights, there’re many of them. Some are very cool, like Liu Kang X Sub-Zero and Johnny Cage X Scorpion, but others, like Sonya X Kano, were too simple and bad made. The characters, in the movie, looks very similar to their looks in the game, for example, the ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero were very cool, using an almost identical costume as of they had in the game, and they use their special moves from the game in the movie. Also the environments  looks just like of the ones in the game, making a really Mortal Kombat felling for the fans. In the other hand, all the blood of the game was highly reduced, because, let’s face, the movie was made for kids and teens, but that was acceptable for me.

Screenplay

There’s a tournament to decide the fate of the Earth, them the Earth fighters has to defeat the Outworld fighters to end Outworld’s menace. The three main characters are Liu Kang, that enters the tournament for revenge, Johnny Cage, to help in his career as an actor of fighting movies and Sonya Blade, to kill her partner’s killer. And on their side is Raiden, God of Thunder, that gives them advice through the tournament. The story is simple, but effective for a movie based on a fighting game.

Actors

The actors that played Raiden, Christopher Lambert, and Shang Tsung, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa , did a great job, the other ones were okay. Most fights were well done, but Sonya, as showed in the movie, wasn’t  able to make good fight scene, so much that she has just one 1X1 fight. And the Johnny Cage’s jokes were very fun. And Liu Kang as the main character was acceptable, but sometimes don’t convince me, maybe because of the way the movie was directed or because of the screenplay.

Production

The movie has some CG effects, that today looks just terrible, but it was okay for the time. The environments looks good and remember the MK world.  And Goro could fight a little better, because he is too slow, but the other fights were well choreographed .As for the music, the MK movie has one of the most memorable fighting musics ever, the theme music that can’t get out of our heads, when we listen it, it’s simply amazing.

Good & Bad

The Good:Great theme music, follows well the story of the game, the characters looks like in the game and the special moves of the game are used in the movie.

The Bad: Liu Kang feels a little forced to be the main character, Goro is too slow and it has very few blood.

Conclusion

MK was very good on the big screen, but not as good as in the consoles and arcades. But, even without all the fans liking this movie, definitely it is a must seem movie, for everyone that likes fighting games, and it is one of the best adaptations, from game to movie, so far.

Tekken Blood Vengeance, The New 3D Tekken Movie

In a Namco Bandai event, in Dubai, Namco Bandai showed a teaser trailer of Tekken Blood Vengeance, and different from what fans expected, it wasn’t a game trailer, it was a movie trailer, a 3D animated movie (CG).

The producer of the Tekken games, Katsuhiro Harada, asked to the fans to forget that Tekken 2010 movie existed, because no fan and not even him was happy about  what they have done with the way that they made that movie.

The movie will have about 90 mins. of duration, and will be directed by: Youichi Mouri, director of the intros of Tekken 5 and 6. The movie will take place between Tekken 5 and 6, probably showing a battle between Jin and Kazuya.

The animation looks pretty good, but we’ll have to wait a little more to confirm more details about Tekken Blood Vengeance’s plot. But I can say that Tekken fans (that includes me^^) are gonna be very satisfied with this movie, and we will forget the 2010’s Tekken live action movie forever.

PSN is Off For More Than 10 Days

Since April 21, 2011, the PSN is not in the air, the cause were the hackers who invaded the system and stolen personal information from the users, such as the number of the credit cards and the users’s adress.

Seeing this, Sony decided to close the PSN for awhile, so they can see the damage caused by the hackers (Bastards!) and increasse the security of the PSN.. Meanwhile, the players are not gonna be albe to buy games or add-ons on the PSN and not even play online. Sony says that they’ll need sometime to repair the system and reinforce the system, so these things deson’t happen again. There’re rumors that Sony’ll give U$:20.00 to each user, after the PSN come back, as a way to reward the users (that’s not confirmed, but it’ll be nice if Sony gives us a little reward^^).

It would be nice to see those hackers going to jail (^^). Anyway, I miss playing Metal Gear Online and Tekken6 online, but while I wait, I’m playing games like: Red Dead Redemption and Sonic Unleashed, because playing online is cool, but I still having fun without the online games, because I saw many people complaining about this situation, but I know that everything’ll be back to normal soon, so let’s enjoy a little of offline games for a while (^^).

 

Tekken 6 (PS3) - Review

Introduction

After some changes of the release date, because of the Scenario Campaign mode, Tekken 6 hit the consoles. And it was worth waiting. Tekken is a 3D fighting game, similar to Virtua Fighter, that focus in a more “realistic” fight system (if compared to Street Fighter, MK and KOF) having a big variety of moves for each character, addictive gameplay and some really cool characters, and this version comes with the Scenario Campaign (SC), a mode that is similar to Tekken Force, but with a storyline and more than 30 stages.

Story & Characters

As in most fighting games, the story is not the best aspect of Tekken 6, actually it can be a little confusing at times, but it’s still enjoyable. After taking control of the Mishima Zaibatsu, on the end of Tekken 5, Jin declared war against the world, and Kazuya come as a savior, to oppose his son, controlling the G Corporation, them Jin announces The King of Iron Fist Tournament 6.This Tekken focus a lot on story on the SC mode, where you play as Lars, the hero of this game. Lars loses his memories and together with Alisa, a cute female robot, that helps him to try to accomplish his secret mission. The characters of Tekken always catch my attention, they’re very cool and fun, some have really fun endings.

Gameplay

The roster is amazing, from the beginning, you get all 40 characters to play on all modes, except on the SC mode, where you have to unlock the characters to play. Not only you have a great variety of characters, but also each one has an amazing variety of moves, most have more than 60 different moves. The controls are very responsive and it’s easy to new players learn how to play, but it takes time to master. On the SC  you use the same moves from the fights, but the controls for this mode are imprecise and you may have a few problems to control the character, but it doesn’t ruin the mode at all. In the normal fight, now you have the “rage” mode, which increases the strength of the fighter, this is triggered when the fighter’s health bar get under 10%.

Visuals

Tekken 6 hit the arcades 3 years before come to the consoles, for this reason the graphics can look a little outdate , specially in the cut scenes on the SC, in the other hand the CG’s are superb! But most environments looks really nice and has a lot of things happening, like jets flying by and thunders falling. Also the characters has cool details, but some of them looks not that good when the camera zooms in.

Sound

The sound effects are classic Tekken’s sounds, great musics, but not the best on the series, and the voice acting is very good, the only strange thing is the fact that some characters speak English, others Japanese, and others Chinese and also Korean, that’s ok on the fights, but in the cut scenes one character asks in English and the other answers in Japanese, that was a little weird.(^^)

Replay

The game has tons of modes, the classics ones: Arcade, Time Atack, Survival, Versus, Pratice and also the Online mode, where you fight people all over the world, while you do some ranking up and gain battle points. The SC mode adds a lot on the game, since it’s almost a game for it’s own. The SC mode is like a “Beat them up” game, using the Tekken 6 fight system, where you fight tons of enemies on each stage, with a help of a partner, also there’s possible to play SC online with a friend. The customization is phenomenal, each character has dozen of different options for each part of their body, that was really a nice touch to the game.

Good & Bad

The Good: 40 characters available, big variety of moves, tons of modes, fun and interesting characters, deep customization mode and a solid online mode.

The Bad: Graphics a little outdate for some characters and SC mode does’t let you play together with a friend in the same console.

Conclusion

Tekken 6 is a amazing fighting game, has many modes, addictive gameplay, a superb story (for a fighting game, of course), a fun and solid online mode, and a great variety of fighters and moves. If that’s not enough for a fighting game, I don’t know what is.

Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (PS2) - Review

Introduction

Devil May Cry is an action-adventure-horror game franchise (just a little of horror^^) that focus on Dante, the main character, kicking the asses of demons and monsters, from beginning to the end. After the disappointing Devil May Cry 2, Capcom releases DMC3: Dante’s Awakening to do justice to the series, bringing back Dante’s personality (that was reduced almost to nothing on DMC2) and the bizarre environments, also the action and boss fights  are better than ever!

 Story & Characters

DMC3 is a prequel , is the first on the DMC timeline. It begins with Vergil, Dante’s twin brother, sending an “invitation” to Dante come to the evil tower, that he has just revived, with the help of his advisor Arkham, so he can get their mother amulet back, to  open the gates to the Demon World. On the way to face Vergil, Dante will encounter a mysterious girl, that he calls Lady, and an annoying creature called Jester. All this characters has a very important role on the story and they get very interesting while the game goes on. The story and the characters are good reasons to make me go until the end of the game, it really caught my attention.

Gameplay

The game is hard as hell! The boss of the mission 3 probably’ll give you some trouble for a while, but after replaying the firsts stages you’ll be able to buy itens to recover health and get use to the gameplay. Dante can use 4 different styles (in total are 6, you unlock 2 on the lately stages), that you select before starting a mission, each one focus on something: swords, guns, agility and guard. Also Dante gets a good variety of weapons on his way, while fighting a lot of demons. This is a type of game that you have to evade the attacks of the enemies, so you can survive, because every attack you take’ll drop precious health, specially on harder dificulty. After the first fight against Vergil, Dante can use the Devil Trigger, that recovers health and increases Dante’s attacks for a short period (you can increasse the period buying items). The combat is very good, you can combine different attacks to make a cool combo to increasse your style.

Visuals

The environments looks awesome, and some are very bizarre , and the characters looks great. The cut scenes are very well-made and fun to watch, having some really cool effects and motion capture.

Sound

The musics on the game gives it a nice feeling of a horror environment and Dante’s personality. When you are exploring you just hear some bizarre low noises, but when the action begins comes a heavy metal music, what is very cool. The voice acting are amazing, a really good work of the actors, specially the actor who plays Dante.

Replay

The challenge of the game can be a little frustrating, but after some hours you get used to it. The boss fights are also pretty cool and challenging  There are  a lot of different levels of difficulty, but believe me, the easy mode is not easy at all. But the challenge mixed with a adctive gamelay and a nice story is enough to keep me coming back for this game.

Good & Bad

The Good: Adictive gameplay, cool story and cut scenes, challenging game, Dante is cool and funny and the boss fights are memorable.

The Bad: it is too hard from the beginning and you can’t fight Jester in his normal form.

Conclusion

IF you like a good story, a cool and fun main character, a deep gameplay, amazing boss fights and a big challenge, them Devil May Cry 3 definitely is a game worth of you take a look, specially if you like a challenge. A really great game on the PS2.

Price of Games in Brazil

Sometimes I see people on the internet , that lives in the US or Europe that complains about the price of U$:60.00 for new game releases, very well, but what these people think about the price of U$:120.00 (R$180.00) of new game releases here in Brazil? That’s because of the high rates of importation, estabilished by the brazilian government.

 For this reason, in Brazil most gamers buy “pirate games” (games copied without permission) or download them via internet to make their own copy. These “pirate games” coasts something like U$:5.00 or U$:6.00, a more fair price by the way, compared with the original ones here. But they weren’t able  to hack the PS3 system to make these pirate games on the PS3, because it uses Blu-Ray disc (at least not yet), as they did with every other console, them the gamers that were used to buy games by low prices, now faces high prices on the PS3. And since they were able to hack the Xbox360, many brazilian gamers turned to the Microssoft’s console.

But what is really crazy are the pirate patchs they made from games like GTA, there’s: GTA Batman, GTA Sonic, GTA Dragon Ball and GTA Spiderman, these are very bad made patchs  for the GTA San Andreas, where you play with the appearance of the characters of those franchises, but the game itself is the same.

 I buy PS3 games, but lately, I wait sometime before buying, so the price drops, because if I don’t wait and buy every new release that I want, soon I wom’t have money to buy food(^^). So gamers on the US and Europe be happy to pay U$:60.00 on a new game, while we Brazilians struggle with our prices.

Sonic The Hedgehog (Genesis) - Review

Introduction

Two years after the Sega Genesis’s release, Sega releases: Sonic The Hedgehog, and at that time, little do they know that Sonic would become one of the most famous characters in the world of games. And finally Nintendo’s Mario got a real “rival”.

Story & Characters

As most platform games, at that time, the story is very simple and acceptable for this type of game. The evil D.r Robotnyk is capturing animals and transforming them into robots, and that’s when the blue hedgehog, Sonic, comes to the rescue. The game could has more characters, because the only ones are Sonic and Dr. Robotnyk  (Now called Eggman), besides the robot enemies.

Gameplay

Sonic The Hedgehog had one major difference between other platform games: Speed! Sonic runs really fast, do some looping, and that was really “hardcore” for the time, although you have to break down the speed to evade obstacles and enemies. To defeat his enemies Sonic can do a “spin jump” and can roll, after a run. On the stages you can find some items like the rings, that prevents Sonic from dying as long you have at least 1 ring, a protective bubble and the “shining stars” that makes you invincible for a little period of time. The controls are very responsive and intuitive, and the “bosses” are challeging but they have a pattern that is easy to memorize.

Visuals

The graphics are well done and very colorful, but what really impress me is how well Sonic runs through the stages, without the screen slow down.. The animations for Sonic and his enemies are also good.

Sound

Some of the music are very fun to listen while playing, the Green Zone theme is just epic! The sound effects is what you expect for this type of game, with those “happy” sounds.

Replay

The game is very addictive, the stages are fun to go through, also some stages have different routes, you can try to get all Chaos Emeralds, on the bonus stages. The stages themes are interesting, but the firsts ones are a lot more fun.

Good & Bad

The Good: Sonic is fast, addictive gameplay, different routes, colorful visuals and fun musics.

The Bad: Getting the Emeralds can be a little annoying and all bosses are Robotnyk.

Conclusion

Sega made a really good work on this game, because it isn’t just another platfoming game, it add a new element, the speed, that was never seen before like this on any Video Game. After this big hit, Snoic became the Sega’s mascot and will became one great game franchise.