By the time this post is going out, the beta would’ve been open for several days already, so there has been enough time for people to have enough games to form a decent enough opinion on the game as a whole. Overall I think it is looking brilliant, it looks clean, it plays smoothly and from what I have played so far, it is just a great way to continue the multiplayer after Brotherhood. One thing about the Brotherhood multiplayer that really slowed my progress right from the start was the introductory session in that game and how it didn’t really show how to work with some of the more advanced techniques in the game, and overall it was quite simplistic. For me it didn’t really give me much of an idea of how I should be going about playing this game, which kind of left me aimless from the start. On the other hand, the introductory sessions for the Revelations beta seem to be a bit more welcoming into the world of Assassin’s Creed multiplayer and just felt a little more fleshed out.

I have seen a few couple of people on Youtube that have actually posted up their runs through the introductory sessions, if you want to get an idea of how the game works. The first person is EscoBlades who I’ve been subscribed to for some time now and who is an absolute beast when it comes to the AC Multiplayer xD. Another person who has posted up the intro sessions is MagnitudeX for Gamers Beverage on Youtube. I’ll put the links to the actual vids at the bottom of this post if you want to check them out. One thing I liked about these intro sessions was that it pretty much teaches you how to play the game as stealthily as possible, and also how to defend yourself from your pursuers, which I found wasn’t really shown much in the Brotherhood intro sessions.

Another aspect that I found had a really nice upgrade was all the menu screens, they seem to be a bit more polished than the ones in Brotherhood, and they seem to be design to suit the multiplayer experience even more, which I found quite nice (after not knowing how to work it for the first few minutes xD). In the active friends hub, you can see the scores that each of your friends has in each of the modes, so I found it was encouraging a bit of active competition between friends, which I found was spurring me on a fair bit. I knew that having Escoblades on my friends list would make things difficult for me, so I just had to keep on upping my game to try and overcome his scores (^.^)

Graphically the game looks great, as is to be expected from a game that is made at such a time, in this day and age good graphics in a game is just a must, so yeah, it’s to be expected. Compared to Brotherhood, the overall colour scheme to be appears to be a fair bit more gritty in the textures used, and just overall it has a bit more of a dusty feel which is most likely done to reflect the fact that the single player story is in such a different location. In Brotherhood, the colours seemed more vibrant in the Italian setting, which I find I preferred a bit more. That’s not to say that I don’t like the actual look of Revelations when it comes to colour scheme, it is just that I found the vibrant look of Brotherhood to be a bit more inviting. This I found also affected the way the personas look, as for me they seem to be a bit too similar to each other, but I guess that can also be a good thing when trying to blend into a crowd, but from what I am seeing so far, the personas in Brotherhood seemed to have more vibrancy and personality, but hopefully Ubisoft can work on that before releasing the full game in November.

Now I suppose it is about time that I got onto the gameplay and the changes Ubisoft have made from Brotherhood. First of all, in the beta there are the two new modes Deathmatch and Artifact Capture, as well as the regular Wanted and Manhunt modes which are also in Brotherhood. Artifact Capture was not released at the very start of the beta, and I haven’t had the chance to get onto it since it has been out, so I can’t really make an opinion on it based on experience, but I have seen some vids of it on youtube and to put it simply, it is just Capture the Flag under an Assassin’s Creed banner. The way it seemed to play out in the video that I saw seemed to be perfectly symmetrical to how CTF would be played in shooter, you end up having some of the team defending the flag, while the rest try to sneak or run the opponents flag back to base. I think this match is quite a nice addition, and hopefully I could get some matches on it so that I can get a better picture of how it runs.

The other new game type, Deathmatch, comes in the form of either with or without the use of abilities/perks/etc. The map size is a quarter of the usual map size, and there are no NPC’s who are the same persona as you, so there are crowds of NPC’s and only one of each of the used personas, which makes for some fast paced action and some interesting strategy uses. Also, in Deathmatch you don’t have a compass, just as portrait of your target which lights up as your target comes into your line of sight. As per usual, you do end up with those annoying people who are content with sticking to the roofs for the entire match which just takes most of the fun out of the game, but you can also find lobbies where people decide to actually play the game the way it is meant to, with skill, stealth and a lot more subtlety. Ability-less matches are interesting in the way that you need to rely on strategy and skill to get your higher earning kills and stuns, while the matches with abilities seem to be just like Wanted matches just in a much smaller map meaning a fairly quicker pace. So far I have really enjoyed Deathmatch, and I find that because the original map size is just way too big, the smaller map size along with the higher emphasis on stealth makes me like Deathmatch more than the other game types that I have played.

I don’t think that I need to go into the other game types, as they are fairly straightforward, and play pretty much identical to how they did in Brotherhood. Although in Wanted, because of the massive map sizes, especially in the map Knight’s Hospital, you will find that a lot of people end up spending most of their time on the rooftops most likely to get around the map quicker, but all it ends up doing is just drag everyone up to the rooftops, and those matches just become annoying as all hell.

One gameplay mechanic that I have liked is that the detection meter now starts at the Discreet bonus(+150) and you need to need to use a stealthy approach to get either a Silent(+200(?)) or Incognito kill(+350) or if your kill gets contested or are even less stealthy, it drops back down to Reckless(+50). I like that this change has been made so that players are forced to work more stealthily to get the higher point bonuses, because it becomes quite frustrating to round a corner for someone who didn’t know you were there to get a surprise incognito kill that they didn’t really deserve. I also heard that there is/was going to be a roofing penalty, but I have not seen anything of the sort as of yet. I think that that sort of penalty should be introduced for all the modes, as it would most likely be the most effective way of bringing people down off the roofs and start trying to play with a little bit of stealth.

From what I have played so far of the beta, the game looks a fair bit better than the multiplayer for Brotherhood. Ubisoft seems to have addressed some of the problems that people found were quite obvious with Brotherhood, for instance the roofing problem seems to be a fair bit less of a problem, but is still apparent. Of the abilities, perks and streaks that have been available in the beta, they seem to be fairly well balanced, and I got the feeling that I could use pretty much any of the abilities to help for both offence and defence, which seemed to open up a fair amount of strategies to try out. The fact that streaks can now be attained through stuns makes playing defensive a legitimate way of working for streak bonuses. In Revelations, which wasn’t in Brotherhood, if you attempt to stun your pursuer as they are trying to kill you, you get a bonus +100 points for an “honourable death” which I find to be a bit more incentive to stick around and try to get a stun and also a reward for being able to spot pursuers. All these new additions and changes I found to be implemented into the gameplay quite well, and I think that they can help improve the quality of the way the game is played.

Overall, I find the game to be really quite well done so far, and can’t wait for the full release. Sure there are a few problems here and there that need to be addressed, like the auto select for team modes, but of course for a beta there are bound to be some problems here and there, it’s just a matter of addressing the problems before the full release. For those who haven’t really gotten into the series and is looking for a different kind of multiplayer to play, this is a good game, and the intro sessions should be able to ease new players into the experience so they should at least give it a try. I will pretty much definitely be getting the full game when it comes out, but until the then, I will continue to play the beta until it closes on Sunday.

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Okay, that should do it… didn’t really expect myself to be writing as much as I did, but I guess I just wanted to cover pretty much anything that would come to mind (^.^) Hope you enjoy it.

EscoBlades Links

- Introductory Session #1 - >Link<

- Introductory Session #2 – >Link<

MagnitudeX Links

-Introductory Session #2 – >Link<

Well… first of all, just seeing that my last post was a Dynasty Warriors Online related post, I just wanted to say that I have just given up on that. It was fun at first, but I just got over it and now it just really doesn’t interest me all that much. Sorry to anyone who still plays it and still likes it, but I just don’t really care about it anymore. Anyway… moving on, now that I spend most of my week at uni, and when I’m not at uni I’m usually sleeping, or at least trying to sleep, I don’t really have as much time for console gaming anymore, but I still do try to find time for it. Lately, I’ve mainly been playing Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PS3(not right now thanks to PSN being down), and pretty much only going on the online multiplayer.

Most of the time I will be trying to play with friends when they are online, because that seems to be the matches that are the most fun, but even when noone else is online for me, I just play Team Deathmatches mainly just to try and boost my KDR (^.^) and every now and then try for some awesome kills or streaks that I can upload to my youtube account xD when the PSN shit sorts itself out, I will most likely be playing so you should be able to find God-Like-Phoenix around if you look for me (^.^) Here are some of the clips that I’ve uploaded that I really liked:

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Another result of me being at uni for most of my time is that I usually have more time for portable gaming, and with the release of the new Pokemon games… yeah, I’ve been playing Pokemon a hell of a lot xD Pokemon White to be more specific, because I’m a supremist like that, lol… nah its just because my brother bought them both and that was the one that was sitting on my desk when I got home from uni one day (^.^) doesn’t bother me which one I got really, its the same game really, just a few different Pokemon here and there, most of which I don’t really care about, seeing how my favourite type is Dark. I am currently trying to build a strong Dark-only team for a Pokemon League that a group of us at uni are creating, with me being the Elite Four member #2 using Dark-types(surprise surprise!)

My Dark team as it stands currently

My team is progressing fairly well so far, I have the Pokemon that I will be using, as well as got their moveset/strategy/etc all set up, just need to finish levelling them up which isn’t really a problem for me (^.^) After that I will most likely be making another team to try and go through the pokemon league myself, while also helping out the other members get their teams ready, which is really quite fun to be honest (^.^)

Ok, enough about the gaming, there’s another importing thing going on that I should mention in this post. As of a month or so ago, I started to work alongside leady247 with his blog with things like editing and stuff like that, and sometime soon I will be doing a post of my own there. The progress of that post has been very slow due to my negligence of all things blog-related, but it will be about the “musou community” down here in Australia, I have yet to post the questions all through my social networks and to the people that I will be ‘interviewing’ for this, so I should get that done so at least some progress is made. It will be interesting to see some of the responses that I would get, but in order to get those, I need to get off my ass and actually start doing something

That’s enough from me, hopefully the time until my next post here wont be as long as the previous one xD  Just a final note, don’t take yourself too seriously =D

Yeah, they say that you are only allowed to have one character per profile, but I guess it’s handy that I have my old email address to make another profile, and therefore another character =D My main character is from Wu: GLPhoenix.WU1 currently a Support General(think that’s the right one) and main weapon being the cudgel. He serves Ling Tong of course, and if I could be bothered continuing to play it, his main weapon would be his nunchucks (^.^)

My main character GLPhoenix.WU1, damn restriction on name length

Then there is my alternate account that I made in Wei, and just because I felt like doing something different, I made this one a female =D anyway, character name being PvtHunter.GL1 either Colonel or Lt.Colonel, can’t remember which one, uses I think a cudgel as well, since I tried to get one just like that one that I use for my Wu main, but I think I also went for the nunchucks and it was around that point when I just stopped playing really. Serves Zhang He, one of my favourites for Wei (^.^)

My Wei character PvtHunter.GL1

Anyway, onto some of those other reasons why I don’t really play anymore. Sure I have friends who play as well, and it is fun playing alongside them, and sometimes against them, but there have been several instances when you come across people who you know are taking the game overly seriously, or are just there to make the game miserable for other players, which is just frustrating. So yeah, the community within the game has its ups and downs, but I just don’t really have the patience to put up with some of the shit that you see around.

A major reason why I don’t really play as much another, and I mentioned it before, is getting disconnected mid-match. Now I know that at times my connection can be fairly sub-par, but I know when it is working fine, and there are times when I am playing with a good connection, but all it takes is for me to come across someone in battle with a bad connection and it just lags me so much that I just get disconnected from the game . . . again, lack of patience to even bother continuing. So yeah, frustration, lack of patience and a fairly shoddy internet connection seem to the cause of me not really bothering to play any more xD

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That’s them, hope you enjoy them, they come courtesy of Koei Warriors (^.^) well… that’s where I got them at least =D

Dragon of the Three Kingdoms

This game first came to my attention when a friend mentioned it through Twitter, just off-handedly about the 3K reference. I didn’t think all too much of it at first, but when I looked at it, thought I might as well get it and try it out, after finding out that it is a 2D side-scroller sort of game, which sounded interesting enough (^.^) an just because I suck at describing things, here’s screenshot just to show you:

Sure the graphics aren’t all that much to look at, and music is kind of tacky, but the game itself isn’t really all that bad. It’s just one of those games where all you do is bash a button, kill whatever is near you and move on to the next area. A simple formula, one that I guess has sort of worked for the Dynasty Warriors series xD but I just don’t think that this is anywhere near as good. The controls and fighting system is worse than DW6′s Renbu system(for those who haven’t played it… one button, that’s all that was needed), the movement is quite blotchy and really needed something different to break the monotony of spears and bows.

One thing that I guess makes it a bit more of a pain would be the somewhat steep difficulty curve. Stage 1 is fairly simple, fight your way through some simple bow and spear soldiers, take out a few elephants, and make your way to the fairly easy boss Chu Rong(for all you DW fans, that is not a typo, that is her name in the game xD). Stage 2 becomes a bit of a challenge, but still fairly routine, but when you get to Stage 3, shit starts getting rough, and fast! The screen from above is at the start of Stage 3, and as you can see, there are averagely armoured soldiers(shitload more to come), who bounce all over the place and do quite a bit of damage. I was not ready for this, so I ended up going back and re-doing some of the earlier stages to level up more. Don’t get me wrong, I like the challenge, but bloody hell… at least a warning would be nice xD Now for a screen of the title screen because I like putting pics in my posts (^.^)

Overall, I quite like the game and if they were to continue with it and try to improve upon it, I might actually consider continue playing it. Sure the game is a little shoddy by the standards that most people might be used to these days, but it does have some fairly alright redeeming qualities. Although for those who are avid Dynasty Warriors version Zhao Yun fans, be wary… HE HAS A SWORD!!!

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2

I saw the first RTK in the app store quite some time ago, and I contemplated getting it, but thought against it mainly because at the time I already had enough games lined up to play, and I didn’t really need anymore. But seeing that this was released only recently, and that I was looking for a game to play, as well as the fact that I always wanted to try one of these games, I went ahead and got it (^.^) The game is of the strategy genre, and you have to take care of pretty much all aspects of your force and the lands you control in order to succeed and eventually take over the whole of China. You can either start with a tutorial scenario or just go ahead with one of the three preset scenarios available. Which ever you end up choosing, this is the main screen which you will end up seeing a lot of:

From here you take care of your force, and decide on whether or not to go to battle. I would have a shot of the battle screen, but when I was going to take one, the enemy force retreated before I had the chance to take a pic (-.-). Anyway, in both the map screen and the in battles, things are explained fairly plain and simple while covering most aspects of what will be needed as you go through the game. The graphics are nice a clean, with a lot of very nice portraits for all the officers that you will see, and the BGM is also quite nice also… but if it isn’t really your thing, you are able to listen to your own music just by enabling the “ipod music” in the options menu, I think that is quite a nice touch, as there are a lot of games where you are unable to listen to your own music when you go to play them (^.^) The controls are fairly simple, but if you are quite new to the series, like I am, it tends to get a little bit confusing trying to get used to the flow of the game, especially in the domestic phase. The battles are a lot more simple, which is nice, but still very strategic in the way that they are fought. The battlefield is set out in a hexagonal field, and you have your officers with the troops that you have given them during the domestic phase. Only when an officer’s troop count hits 0 are they removed from the field, or if they retreat for some reason or another… I’m still very to learn all there is to do with the whole thing xD Another title screen pic, just because I can (^.^)

Well I haven’t really played the game as extensively as I would’ve wanted so far, but I look forward to over the next few months, and hopefully learning all that there is to learn in the game (^.^) For those wondering if it is a game worth getting, I would say yes, but not so much if you are looking for a game with a lot of quick action. It is one of those games that require a fair bit of thinking and planning, but if that is indeed your thing, then yes… buy it right away (^.^)

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Well, that seems to be it, back to the gaming for me… if there are any questions that you might have about either game, or anything else related to this post, just leave a comment (^.^)

Background Storyline:

Bladestorm, is the first in the new line of games by KOEI based around the long scale war between the French and the English, around the 14th century. The game gives you the opportunity to play as a mercenary, and play through the story, meeting the actual people, with real battles and situations.

Gameplay

Using the mercenary, customised to personal preference, you choose one from a selection of contracts, offered by the barkeep. These contracts take you all over to the historic regions of France, including Normandy, Champagne and Brittany, where fierce battles continually take place throughout the entire course of the game. The style of fighting is different to the usual hack-and-slash game offered by KOEI games, but has got a more strategic feel to it. With the ability to use and control various typed of units, like swords, spears horses, and many more, more exotic and rare unit types, it gives you the chance to find a specific unit that would suit your style of attack, or defence.

The battle ground is littered with bases of different strength, all based on historical locations, like Domremy, the home village of Joan of Arc, and the place of her demise, Rouen. These bases may be the subject of the contract, or may be an important strategic position, but taking them requires you to deplete all of the base points, and defeating the base commander, using your mercenary, and your unit, thats if you chose to control a unit. This routine is repeated for all other bases and contracts, occasionally being able to participate in a historically significant battle, like the battle at Crecy, or Orleans.

This style of play can be exciting and refreshing at first, and untill you unlock all units, but can eventually get overly repetative, as well as the missions, so that would take my scoring down to 8/10

Graphics

The graphics are great, really give you a feel to what everything looked like in that period in time. The cutscenes are very well done, with the characters and surroundings looking very clear and precise, but the overall look of the game could be better, especially for the now generation of gaming. 8/10

Difficulty

The game has a balance of difficulties, depending on the star level of the particular contract, with easiest having one star, but gradually getting higher over the course of the game, untill it reaches 14 star, which is very late in the game. This is good for the when you get the new books, and need some way of training them without getting defeated. Also, how difficult the game iscan depend on the units you are using, and who your versing, so there is many different ways to make the game easier or harder. 9/10

Sound

The sounds throughout the battling is nice, and so are the voices, but some of the characters accents can get quite annoying. The music is brillient and suits the period well, and works as a nice background sound for the game. (even if it does sound like its from halo)7/10

Summery

A great game with great replay value, sound, characters, storyline, and graphics. Its also a nice alternatie from the usual hack-n-slash Dynasty and Samurai warriors games were used to getting from Koei. The games side-stories will keep you playing the game for at least 100 hours+. But if you ever get bored of your first sotry, you can always start again, with a completely new character, and play through the story in a completely different way. With the scores of the gameplay, graphics, difficulty and sound added together, this gives this game an overall rating of:

8/10

Yeah, looking back at the two reviews now, I still say that Bladestorm was much better game than Warriors Orochi, but for some reason I ended up giving WO a better score at the time xD ahh well . . . I was young ;D

Musou Orochi(Warriors Orochi in the English version) is a cross-over of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series, brought together by a mythical creature, the serpent king, Orochi, who, using his powers, merged the two timelines, in order to test his own strength.

Gameplay
the game play of Orochi is the usual hack-and-slash type that is consistent throughout the two series, but has had several changes. One of those changes has been the introduction of using three characters at one time, where you can just press a button and change to the next character. This gives more of a team type game, which is a change from the usual solo fights evident in most games. Another change is the character classes, where each fighter would be categorised into either Speed, Technique, or Power, each having there own unique abilities. These abilities affects the new special attacks everyone has, which can be used to deal direct damage, increase stats, lower stats of the enemy, or just some miscellaneous abilities. With all this aside, the DW characters kept there combo style, with the 6 charges and the unique air charge, while the SW characters kept there Normal/Charge/Special movesets. So with all these put together, i creates a great gameplay environment for the people who love the classic hack and slash games, but it still slightly lacks originality.
Score: 8/10

Graphics
The graphics in Orochi are pretty much the same as they are in SW2 and DW5, the fluent models, with the bright vibrent colours, and the design of the new characters of Orochi and his strategist Da Ji is well done, they kept Da Ji looking slightly devilish, while being attractive and alluring, while they went all out in showing Orochis demonic type side, with the tattoos all over the face, so overall, the characters look good, with the same models as they did in DW5 and SW2. The levels look detailed, and colourful, with the only difference being that some of the levels have been manipulated with those from the other game, so there would be a castle in a level where there wasnt one in the previous game, and at the joins, lava, and destruction can be seen. The only flaw i can find in these is the fact that sometimes you can see the part where one section of a level meets another, and the line between the two is visible, and it just looks kinda off.
Score: 8.5/10

Sound
In Orochi, the music from both games have been put in, for every level in the game, and they all sound very good, the voice actors are good, with some being improved, but also, some of them have just been butchered eg. Kenshin, Hideyoshi. The voices of the new characters, Orochi and Da Ji, reflect their personality really well: Orochi, having the echoy voice making him sound mystical and creepy, and Da Ji, sounding innocent, yet evil and devious at the same time. The voices of the enemy soldiers dieing is the usual high-pitched cry, and the NPC’s havent really been changed, but still fairly good. The basic voices and original lines are a good side of the game, but could be improved
Score: 7/10

Replayability
With 8 main story levels, and 7 extra levels for each story, there’s quite a few levels before all of them can be claimed as finished, also, the introduction of the proficiency and the unlockable skills means people will be spending most of their time aiming to complete all of these, and in the gallery, each warrior has 4 artwork to be unlocked, ensuring an extra amount of time, trying to get all of those artworks. Each character having a maximum level of 99 will make sure that it will take time getting every one of those 79 legendary warriors to that height
Score: 9/10

Storyline
A good storyline, and I unique storyline for each of the kingdoms, with them only sharing the final fight against Orochi, but not everyone is included as much in the main story, so some of the characters just have brief cameos in one gaiden stage, creating disappointment for some of the characters more diehard fans
Score: 8.5/10

Rent or Buy?
Well, if you want a good hack and slash game with lots a replay value, this game is for you, if you want to get away from the regular hack and slash the original titles provide, you wont get away from it here, but if you’re a diehard fan of either series, this game is certainly a must buy game

Overall Score: 8.5/10

So yeah, that was it . . . and I can tell now, just from reading the first paragraph, that it was shoddy as all hell xD funny what I few years can do to you (^.^)

Sure I haven’t been around in ages, but thats mainly because I have been both too busy with uni and too lazy to be bothered to keep up with things here, but since the uni year for me is kinda over, might as well do something here while I still have a little bit of motivation (^.^) Recently the open beta for Aeria Games’ Dynasty Warriors Online (english) was opened, and since I had downloaded it because it seemed like a good idea, I started to play it over the weekend in which I had an assignment due. I managed to get a fair amount of progress throughout the weekend, and have played enough for now to put in a few impressions of what of think of the game so far (^.^)

Just as a start, for anyone who might be currently playing and want to find me, my username is GLPhoenix.WU1 (damn 10 character limit -.- ) and yes . . . currently fighting for the Wu forces. I have finally been getting enough promotions to make it to the position of guard, which has allowed me to chose which character I would like to serve under ;D and thanks to my fanboyisms, it of course has to be Ling Tong (^.^)

There he is!! Ling Tong!!

Ok, enough of my own progress and onto the actual gameplay and everything else of that sort (^.^) So you start off just doing basic missions just to get you into the game and used to the controls and pretty much anything else that you usually get in a game, just you standard tutorial start. Then you keep on getting sent to the courtyard to do a hell of a lot of seemingly unnecessary training fights and simple quests. Things for me seem to run fluidly, without all that many problems, except for the occasional failure of my net connection (-.-) It was only until I started to get battles with and against actual people where most of the lag seemed to kick in. Not in battle things still seemed to go alright, but sometimes things were a little bit slow, but again, might just be my cconnection (-,-)

Sitting around at the courtyard

Overlooking people swarming the instructor xD

Yeah, these pics I just took while in the game, just bludging around seeing if there was anyone else around who I might know. So yeah, as I was saying, these parts are loading just fine for me, its just in battles that it starts to screw up a bit. Im quite happy with the way in which you can customise your character, but annoyed that I’m only allowed to have just four weapons in my armory at one time . . . I want to horde! xD but anyway, enough senseless rambling, onto the gameplay. The controls are quite easy to use, movement just being the WASD format, and attacks can be either done using the mouse, or the JKL buttons (normal, charge and musou attacks respectively). One thing that does annoy me though is an apparent lack of camera control. During battle it seems the only way I can effectively move the camera into the right path is to use block (U) to center the camera. (taken away from laptop to play a game of pool . . . returns victorious) Ok . . . what was I on about? or yes, the controls and just the game in general . . . one thing I quite liked was the power-up system, with the flasks that you are able to pick up from defeating enemies. There are seven levels of power up, the 7th always being a combo increase to your moveset, and 4th being a Lieutenant upgrade, but the rest are just temporary ingame stat boosts, which you use by hitting I when you’re at the level you want to use. This is quite a nice feature, and seems to work well enough with the style of the game.

The usual pre-game screen, adapted to the online format

These simple melee battles with random participants are good ways to get some experience under your belt, and also to try and find new items, weapons, etc. I quite like the idea of just starting up random battles against random people, if only my net connection would stop being a pain when trying to fight them 1vs1 (-.-) Lagging out seems to be my major problem, even when the connection was seemingly working fine, but ahh well . . . that happens (-.-) anyway, things seem to be working quite well overall, but as there usually is, there are just a few things that need a bit of fixing.

GAME ON!!!!

There are enough types of battles and different maps and so on to keep most people busy, but im still waiting for a bit more of a progressive story . . . but might need to walk around and check out a few more of the quests though for that xD and so far it seems that most people are joining Wei . . . bah, what noobs! xD Ha !! an idea! a Rival system!! that could work with ‘friends’ from other forces to create a bit of friendly competition xD Anyway, time from some screens that I took mid-game, unfortunately we lost due to losing all our bases, but I managed to top the KO count and took out an enemy commander (Lucifer from the above pic).

The way you find Lieutenants in battle.

A very narrow victory xD

Anyway, thats enough from me, I will most likely be playing this for most of the summer, seeing how I haven’t really got anything else to do and I want to get more into to see what else is in store. If anyone wants to find me, or sees me around, say hi, or get in touch . . . might need some help with the quests needing more than one person xD

Also, for those who dont have it, and thinking of, but dont know if it is good enough, or if you might have to pay for it . . . first of all, you dont have to pay for it, and it is a good game if you have some spare time . . . get into it!! (^.^)

Yeah, the template for the reader submitted reviews to the kot_au site is a bit simplified, which meant I had to cut out quite a bit of what I would’ve put in, and had to pull it back to a word limit of 500 or so words, which doesn’t usually work well for me xD. Anyway… enjoy (^.^)

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)

Peace Walker continues to follow the story of Snake as he makes his way through life under the clever disguise of a cardboard box. This time the game is set in Costa Rica, with a nice little military struggle around to attract the attention of the new “Big Boss”. You will see some new and old faces throughout the story, and the missions that crossover with Monster Hunter means that Snake will never be short of work.

Loved

Controls: Now to be honest, I haven’t played all that many MGS games, but the controls used for this game are really easy to pick up, so it really doesn’t matter if you are an MGS veteran or new to the series, the simple control layout is just that, simple and easy to pick up. Mastering the controls doesn’t take all that much effort, but being able to utilise them to their devastating best takes a bit of time.

Customisability & Development: Very early in the game you are gifted a nice little offshore oilrig which you end up turning into your home and base. This place, as you progress through to game, develops and grows as you recruit more staff to one of the five units which take care of different aspects of the base (Combat, R&D, Food, Medical, Intel). Being able to choose which areas you want to focus on, and what kind of weaponry you want to develop through R&D, is really quite a nice way of making sure that you are able to go into each mission knowing that you have the items and weapons that you feel are going to suit your style the best.

Story & Characters: As you take Snake through Costa Rica, completing missions and hopefully developing you base and armoury, you will get to see the detailed and carefully constructed storyline and characters unfold in front of you. You will get to see how they interact with one another, and how they all seem to fit into the overall scheme of things, and end up piecing together the puzzle that is made up of revolution, nuclear war, capture and a hell of a lot of lies.

Hated

Lack of Difficulty Setting: This isn’t such a major issue, but when you aren’t able to do co-op with a friend or at least drop the difficulty to a tame level when it comes to some of the major bosses, it can become quite frustrating and involves a hell of a lot of healing and supply drops, and sometimes over half a bloody hour to take out just one enemy.

Not Being Given a Direction! There were several points in the game where you must go into some non-relevant missions to progress the story, which you wouldn’t really pick up on unless you got bored trying to find it and accidentally stumble into the right mission. I only managed to get through them because I consulted a friend.

Overall, whether you are able to play co-op with a friend or not, a seasoned Metal Gear veteran or just someone with a PSP looking for a good game, Peace Walker is a great game that can easily get you through quite a few hours while on the run. With the amount of quality content within this game, it’s no real surprise that Famitsu ended up giving it a perfect review score. Kojima has produced another ripper of a game, and he even ends up being quite helpful while in the game…

Any questions? Also, thanks to Kotaku Australia for actually publishing this, quite nice actually (^.^)

Source: IGN(au) Article