Castlevania: Harmony of Despair—Shallow, Addicting Online GrindingJanuary 28, 2012 by

I've spent about 30 hours playing through the levels of Castlevania: Harmony Despair and grinding my way to power and online prestige. Harmony of Despair compiles levels and characters from some of the most popular Castlevania games. It follows the same leveling structure introduced in Symphony of the Night, but lacks the metroid-like progression. Instead, you have 30 minutes to complete a level by slaying its boss.

The hook in Harmony of Despair is that you can play through the levels with friends. The PS3 version allows you to play with four players locally and six players online. There are generally two paths to take to a level's boss, and when playing online your, group will be split to the starting points of either of these paths. Each group can help the other by opening a shortcut or creating a quick path to the boss. Each level can be done alone, but it is much faster when you only have to do half of a level before reaching the boss.

You can completely avoid this mess if someone opens the shortcut for you.

Beyond providing the enjoyment of working with others to complete a goal, Harmony of Despair is full of character-enhancing loot. You get loot from monster drops, colored treasure boxes (which have better loot depending on the color), and bosses. Bosses, as you might imagine, hold the best items. This really adds to the replay value of the game. I played levels over and over just for the chance to find a stronger weapon. Each character also has its own way to "level up." For example, Soma can increase his spell damage by collecting more souls from defeated enemies, while Charlotte increases both her spell damage and base stats by absorbing enemy spells into her magical book. This gives the characters individuality and different strengths. While leveling isn't as fleshed out in the character's game of origin, it's refreshing to take different approaches to increasing your character's power.

Hey guys, let me absorb this spell from this gu... oh, he's dead.

Once you power up enough and start wiping the floor with the bosses, there's a hard mode to tackle. You'll need some of the most powerful items in the game to defeat some of these bosses, and that's where you can spend some serious time with the game.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is a lot of fun. If you enjoyed the RPG aspects of the recent Castlevania games and like to play games online cooperatively, you'll probably like Harmony of Despair. You don't have much to lose—download the demo and try it out for yourself.


Submit Blog
Don't Write Off Final Fantasy XIII-2!January 12, 2012 by

I booted up the Playstation Store last night and was excited to see a playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII-2. The last time I played a demo of a Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy 8, where you had to escape from a giant mechanical spider. That was a fun demo because the spider was meant to be more powerful than you, and you had to work hard if you wanted to defeat it rather than run from it like the game asked you to do.

When I started up FFXIII-2 I was happy to see that the game is still beautiful. I was worried that the aesthetics wouldn't be as impressive with the release of some truly amazing-looking PC games this past year, but I was happy to be wrong. The game also feels like it has more personality. As I watched how Noel, the lead character in the demo, moved around the environment, I was reminded of Kingdom Hearts.

The combat in the game is basically the same, which is good because that is one area where Final Fantasy XIII excelled. You still choose paradigms for your characters and switch them as circumstances change, and I still found it enjoyable to juggle the stagger mechanic by switching paradigms. There are also quick time events where you must push the analog stick in a required direction or push a button within a time limit. These only seem to occur during major battles with bosses. If you complete these sequences perfectly, you get a loot bonus at the end of the fight. There are also special events you can trigger for the monster in your party that seem to have different effects depending on your monster. My favorite monster caused debuffs on the enemy when I successfully pulled of its quick time event.

That brings me to my next point. You can recruit monsters in this game à la Dragon Quest 5. You have a chance to recruit a monster after you defeat it in battle. The monster gains levels by "eating" special items that you acquire from defeating other monsters of its type. You can also feed monsters to other monsters to give the second monster special attributes. This seems like a deep system that could be a lot of fun. In the demo, my monsters drastically outpaced my human characters, which created some imbalance. Hopefully this is only a problem for the early parts of the game.

Finally, Final Fantasy XIII-2 addresses the major downfall of Final Fantasy XIII -- the lack of exploration. Final Fantasy XIII has been described as one long hallway, and I don't really find fault with that criticism. You gained freedom to explore a single large area toward the end of XIII, but otherwise you just followed a very linear path to whatever boss was at the end. The demo of XIII-2 had an area with characters to talk to, people to buy from, secrets to be found, and, best of all, areas to explore. These areas had NPCs who you could talk to, and who would sometimes give you a mission to complete. Completing these missions gave money or experience. It really made me want to explore the area I was in.

Overall, I am very happy with Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's amazing that Square listened to their fans and gave them what they wanted. I feel like this could easily be the best JRPG on consoles this generation. If you haven't tried the demo, go download it now.

Submit Blog
What One Game Can Sell The Vita?January 9, 2012 by

Sony's press conference at CES is coming up at 5 p.m. PST, and I started thinking about what Vita games they will talk about. As you might have read on IGN, the Vita isn't selling all that well in Japan. I thought it would be fun to talk about one game and one game only that would sell millions of Vitas. Back in the old days, gaming press would talk about "system sellers." Systems would have decent content, but they needed that one game in order to catch fire. This game was Halo for Xbox, Grand Theft Auto 3 for PS2, and Mario 64 for N64. What would Vita's system seller be?

Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

People have been asking for this game ever since the PS2 came out. Final Fantasy 7 was an amazing game. It did things that no other game did before and was beautiful for the time. The truth is, it's not so beautiful nowadays.

No, it's not Lego FF7, this is the original game

Now, this is something people have been predicting for years, and rumors pop up constantly. Why would it come out now for Vita and not PS3, PS4, Xbox 720, etc? Well, I thought the same thing about Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7. This is a game that many people wanted. A prequel to FF7, one of the most beloved RPGs of all time? Amazing. Imagine how many people would buy the Vita to play a full-blown remake of Final Fantasy 7.

What do you think Vita's system seller could be?

Submit Blog
Wild Vita Speculation - Gamescom 2011August 15, 2011 by

I'm excited about the Vita. I am more excited than I have been since the Gamecube (I'm a big Smash Bros. fan.). Gamescom is coming tomorrow, and you can watch Sony's announcements on their Facebook page. The event starts in less than 24 hours. Anyway, time to speculate about Vita announcements! Here are my PSV predictions for Gamescom:

  1. Release date - OK, this one isn't exactly wild, but it's still exciting. The Playstation Vita is coming out in Japan before the end of the year, so there is little opportunity to announce release dates before then. Prediction: April in the USA.
  2. Launch games - The 3DS has been plagued by a terrible launch. Let's hope Sony learned from their competitor's mistakes. Bumping the launch back to next year should help them quite a bit. Prediction: Uncharted, Wipeout, Little Deviants, Hot Shots Golf, and LittleBigPlanet, among others. 
  3. Surprise price drop/pack in - Nintendo recently dropped the price of their 3DS down to $169. The Vita is still a very good value at $250, but there's no denying that Sony is pressured to respond. Prediction: $25 Playstation Store gift card included with each launch Vita.
  4.  "FaceTime" - The Vita has a forward-facing camera. The PSP has Skype. Prepare for Sony's version of FaceTime on PSV!
  5. PS2 games on the Playstation Store - This is happening eventually, but announcing that PS2 games will also work on the Vita would be amazing.
  6. HD remakes can be played on Vita - I talked about this in an earlier blog. This is something I want desperately. I want so bad to play MGS2 with trophies on my Vita!
  7. Trophy details - The trophies you earn on the Vita will combine with your PS3 trophies. Games that are only on Vita will combine with PS3 trophies, but you will be able to separate them to see what trophies were earned where. Prediction: Combined rather than separate trophies.
  8. Android Apps on Vita - PlayStation Suite goes both ways! Android phones will get PlayStation products, but Vita will also get Android games, and not for 4x the price, either. Prediction: This isn't happening :( .
  9. Surprise! - Monster Hunter Portable 4th is coming to Vita next summer. Prediction: Awesome.

In reality, this is way too much for Sony to talk about in their conference. It would dilute the main points they want to make:

  • the release date
  • the value of the system

If I was realistically speculating about what will be anounced tomorrow, I would predict to hear about the release date and a surprise like Monster Hunter or pack-in. Something like that gives the Vita more perceived value. That would help fill up the rift between their price and the 3DS price. All (but realistically, not very much) will be revealed in less than 24 hours!

Submit Blog
A Letter to NintendoJuly 28, 2011 by

Dear Nintendo,

I noticed that you are dropping the 3DS price down from $250 to $170. Thank you! Charging $250 was too much for a system that causes me to have headaches, has one analog stick (after 6 years of people begging Sony for 2 on the PSP), and has inferior graphics to Infinity Blade, a game that came out a year ago on iOS. $170 is much closer to the value of your system. I also noticed that you will be supporting NES games on the 3DS virtual console. This is the most exciting announcement I have heard in regards to the 3DS. I assume that NES games will continue to come out for the system. I'm writing you because I want to help you to persuade me to buy your 3DS system. Dropping the price to $170 really helps me to consider buying the 3DS over the Vita. There is a very easy way to guarantee that I buy the 3DS. I love your Virtual Console service for Wii. In fact, it is my favorite thing about the Wii. Since you are releasing NES games for the 3DS, why don't you implement all of the systems available for the Wii Virtual Console to be playable on the 3DS. After doing this, let me transfer my Wii Virtual Console to the 3DS much like I can transfer my Playstation One games to my Playstation Portable. This should be easy to implement and I promise I will buy your new portable system.

Thank you, and I hope we can continue our relationship in the future,


Submit Blog