Lets get one thing out of the way up front. “Awesome” means something that’s completely retarded, but appeals to that twelve year old boy in all of us. We can’t help loving it, even if thinking even the slightest amount detracts from its quality. Lightsabers are awesome. Metal is awesome. Dinosaurs are awesome. NanoBreaker is awesome.

NanoBreaker was released on the Playstation 2 a few years ago by Konami. It failed miserably. At least I think it did. Mostly because I got it for five dollars. The awful thing is, this game is easily worth ten dollars.

The main gimmicks of NanoBreaker are the truly excessive, downright silly blood splatter and the titular weapon, an fancy energy beatstick with the ability to shift into different weapons during special attacks.

The mechanics are solid, though far from impressive. It’s a generic action beat-em-up deal. Throw combos at monsters, advance. Luckily, a couple of interesting things are thrown in to keep you from having Streets of Rage flashbacks.
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The view doesn't change much, but at least it isn't gunmetal gray.

Without a doubt, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of the best PS2 games I’ve ever played. This isn’t very impressive, considering I have played a grand total of eight games for the PS2.

With all the controversy over Metal Gear Solid 4:Guns of the Patriots in the Game of the Year race, and remembering that I actually do have a PS2 now, as well as once playing through Metal Gear Solid:The Twin Snakes for GameCube, I thought I might as well give the third installment of the series a try. I understood it as a successful game that used stealth gameplay well, as well as having a plot that didn’t involve arms containing souls of dead people possessing whoever got it for a transplant.
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Now something for you well rounded Atlus fans, a First Person Fighter/Slasher/Melee, Maken X for the Sega Dreamcast. Maken X is about a weapon, as the protagonist; that’s right, you’re playing as a sword that takes control of people. As a sword you can’t really talk but everyone person around you will talk to you and for you, and at some points at the game give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ choice like “do you want to save the world or not?” To simply describe the story, you are made to defeat an evil entity because of some virus or something. It becomes really hard to pay attention to any of the story when the cut scenes are completely horrendous to watch. The voice acting is absolutely terrible and it doesn’t help that in the cut scenes, the dolls don’t move their lips to go with their bad voices – at least half the time, they tend to lip-sync when they feel like it.

The real appeal to play this game would not be the story but rather the gameplay. The gameplay is indeed unique, as you do not use a gun at all. Instead you get to hack and slash your way through enemies in first person perspective. For someone like me who plays every FPS ever just to go around meleeing everything I see, this was indeed a game for me. The melee is simple, move around, jump and attack – nothing much to it. Of course there is variety in weapon choices, or rather people choices. Can’t switch weapons, since you are the weapon, but you can take control of different people who have different styles of fighting and abilities. Every person you can ‘brainjack’ in the game has their own unique way of fighting, traits and abilities. But, before you can go taking people’s brains, you have to defeat them, which can be very fun.
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Dwarf Fortress is an independently made game by Bay 12 Games, and is currently in Alpha. Because of this, please take the graphics, UI, and sound reviews with a grain of salt. However, it is unlikely this game will ever be finished, which is why this may also be considered a review.

Review done during v0.28.181.40d.

Dwarf Fortress

What do you get when you mix ASCII graphics, short, angry people, a complex system that allows you to construct entire towers made completely out of fat, and a user interface so unintuitive it’s like pushing the fat kid into a pool of molasses? You get the sadistically awesome game known as Dwarf Fortress.

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Given disappointment of the year by many people I decided to check it out, see if it really is what they claim it is. A pile of miserable promises.

Still have New Order in my head.

What’s next? I’m thinkin’ World of Goo, maybe revisit Fable TLC, or maybe something from the older consoles.

Continuing with my vaguely vitriolic rantings that might interest perhaps a handful of people: Xenosaga.

For some reason I was incredibly excited when Xenosaga was announced. I was in high school at that time, going through that phase where yes, bizarre esoteric philosophy really is the bomb (I was a nerd if you couldn’t already tell). Looking back on this I’ll be damned if I can figure out why, because the spiritual forebearer to this game, Xenogears, was arguably the most convoluted game I have ever played, both game play- and story-wise.

But that’s not my point. My point is Xenosaga. Going into it I probably knew immediately something was amiss. Why is that? Well, allow me to answer my own question with a question. Successful stories tend to make sense, don’t they? Because it’s about two hours in and I STILL HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IS HAPPENING. All I know is people are saying words (most are made up, I later checked) about… Something. I guess it was supposed to sound like a bunch of scientists in the future talking about future-stuff, but all it accomplished was confusing the hell out of me.

That’s pretty much par for the course of the entire game, though. Lots and lots of references to the Zohar and stuff like that, which even one glance of the associated Wikipedia page can tell that it’s definitely not something I want to even hear from, really.
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Ah, the Fallout series. An iconic post-apocalyptic RPG set after a nuclear war that forces humanity to live in underground Vaults for years as radiation dies down. The series was originally developed by Black Isle, before Bethesda took the reigns for the game. Bethesda, as you may know, developed the popular Elder Scrolls series of games, the latest of which being Oblivion.

Although Oblivion is a great game, as are the other Elder Scrolls games, their gameplay mechanics are completely different compared to Fallout 1 and 2’s, so this aroused much concern from fans as to whether Bethesda could faithfully reconstruct the much loved series or if they would just make Oblivion with guns. Well, judging on face value alone, it’s easy to say they went with the “Oblivion with guns” option, but how true is this? Read the review to find out.

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It’s already apparent by now that I’m a big Space Invaders fan, but despite the glut of sweet, sweet Invader merchandise created to commemorate the franchise’s 30th Anniversary, its still hard to procure many of these items – Space Invaders alarm clock, pillow, Kitkat , etc – solely because I don’t live in Japan.

But we make do.

In any case, I was able to sniff out and pre-order the Space Invaders 30th Anniversary commemorative headset and Raglan shirt months ago in Play-Asia, and after a long wait (thanks to pushed back release dates), the Space Invaders care package was finally delivered to my doorstep by a FedEx guy wannabe.

Another plus is that the headset can be folded to let you stow it without taking up too much space. However the hinges are too loose, giving a floppy feel to the headset.

Cons: The white adjustable stems are made of plastic commonly used in cheap toys, and may not appeal to those prefer only high-quality material on their stuff. While the whole thing is sturdy and doesn’t look like it’ll break under moderate usage, the choice of material for the stems look somewhat flimsy. Also, what doesn’t appeal to me is the white-colored cord, which is dirt-prone and will never fail to turn grayish after weeks of usage despite proper handling and care.

Floating amidst a sea of triple-A titles comes the small ship ”Valkryia Chronicles”. Sega’s ambitious JSRPG has been ultimately overlooked during the flood of games that saw games like Resistance 2, Prince of Persia, LittleBigPlanet and Mirror’s Edge make big splashes in the gaming market. That being said, you would be remiss to pass this game up, regardless of whether or not your proclivities steer you towards more dark and gritty shooters. With a mix of wonderfully crafted visuals, intuitive game mechanics and tumultous combat, Valkyria Chronicles is the perfect fix for those looking for a defining JRPG on the playstation 3, or any other console for that matter.

Valkyria Chronicles takes place within a reimagining of World War 2 called The Second Europan war. The small prinicipality of Gallia is caught within the crossfire between The prototypical Empire and the Atlantic Federation. Due to high amounts of a miracle resource known as Ragnite, Gallia gets invaded. Of course, this inevitably pulls the story’s protagonist, Welkin Gunther, into the fray. With his father’s tank and a bit of blind courage, he quickly rises up the rank’s in squad 7. While the plot and its devices may not be awe-inspiring in and of themselves, the superb writing and timing easily make up for any short comings. The care that went into creating such  likeable characters truly becomes appreciable in the tear-jerking scenes which I dare not spoil here.

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