Gotta spot them ALL!
An amazing trailer that speaks for itself, I’m still trying to spot the characters hidden all over the place.
FIFA12…Not a rehash in Disguise
The weekend of a new FIFA release for me and my friends is something of a celebration. Usually we all converge in one location with a console, tv, sofa, booze and the new FIFA. The matches we play are usually one of two extremes, goals galore as we get to grips with the change in pacing or boring no goal draws as nobody has nailed how to shoot yet.
This didn’t occur last year with FIFA 11. The matches played were pretty much standard affairs without much excitement or epic flops in 1 on 1 situations with keepers. What i’m trying to explain (badly) here is that FIFA 11 felt like simply a glorified squad and kit update for FIFA 10. There wasn’t any notable features apart from the whole player personality thing which nobody really cared for.
FIFA 12 on the other hand is a revelation, precision control, updated career modes, online clubs, friend notifications and the quite controversial addition of tactical defending.
Who would have thought that losing to West Brom while playing as Manchester United could feel so good! It just proves that this is a new game and one which needs hours of practice in order to master (Or a least become good at).
The presentation in this is also stunning, the menu, notifications, pre match graphics and commentating are all top notch and put that “other” football franchise to shame.
The new Impact Engine is hot or miss but for the most part creates life like animations which add much needed realism to the game.
As you can tell I am incredibly happy with FIFA 12 and intend to spend hours on-line trying to dominate fools who stand against me.
Sure im pretty much going to be facing Barcelona and Man City teams on-line all the time and have people disconnect when losing, but hey that’s FIFA BABY!!
PS – Tactical defending is here to stay, get used to it or go play Pokemon Dash or something.
Eurogamer Expo….the aftermath
Last week was the Eurogamer Expo in London town. I was supposed to cover a few days but due to a manly injury (whatever that is) I could only attend the final day. Not a lot came out of this expo in terms of gaming news. However what did come out was the release date of Star Wars: The Old Republic being mid December. As someone looking forward to this game I was pretty excited about this and it looks like I will be glued to my PC come Christmas.
The show seemed a lot bigger this year with all the major publishers and the smaller ones having a good showing of their latests titles.
Even on the last days the line to play some games was immense especially for the aforementioned Star Wars title. I got to play a few titles such as FF13-2, Counter Strike, Dark Souls and Ghost Recon.
The major highlight for me was getting to play the PS Vita (and skipping that long queue) . IM SOLD on that console. The screen needs to be seen to be believed it puts my 3DS to shame. Photos make the console look huge but it felt just right and I was surprised as to how light it feels.
I got to play Wipeout and Uncharted on the Vita and both titles played and looked amazing. I love handhelds maybe more so than consoles so this is defiantly on my list. Too bad I broke my PS Vita though, it got a black screen during play and refused to turn on. The poor thing must have been played for 4 days straight so it was probably knackered.
Another highlight was Battlefield 3. I played the PS3 version and gleefully it was multi-player. The game played great, I had no idea what was going on in the match though and was simply exploring how huge the map was. Me and my friends experienced a fair few glitches though and once again I broke something as my play through consisted mainly of staring at a blue screen and had to restart the console. But we still have sometime for the game to come out so these should be ironed out.
On another note the line for MW3 wasn’t anywhere near as long as the one for Battlefield, say what you will about that.
Overall the vibe was great, there were gamers of all ages in the show and there were titles for pretty much everybody from Mario Kart 7 to Rage. I had a great time and wish I could have gone to more days to play more titles
PS – Maybe it’s due to the fact that it was in an air conditioned arena but the smells were tolerable. The BO police didn’t need to turn up to this one.
Hell its about time…
For various reasons over the past few years I have neglected my Xbox360 in favour for my PS3. I have been waiting for the right title to seduce me to turn it back on. Fable? Nope. Halo Reach? Nope. Gears of War 3? HELL YES!
I loved the last two game in the series so this was a game I was waiting for. I had my doubts about it though and stayed away from the beta. However when I saw reviews for this game claiming it was almost perfect, I knew it was time to dust off my 360.
Iv’e played it for an hour or two and just WOW. The graphics are amazing, its crazy to see that the unreal3 engine can still pull its weight even today. And the game-play is simply stunning its easy to see a not broke don’t fix approach was taken, with just a few tweaks here and there to refine some of its weaker elements from the previous games.
Horde-mode is simply stellar, Gears2 started the trend and it paved the way for copycats down the years. But Gears3 has made horde-mode quite frankly perfect and the addition of getting cash for kills to spend on weapons and defences is a sweet touch which adds more to an already great mode.
Anyway I shall get out of Epic Game’s ass now
Anyroad back to Horde Mode!!
Resurrect my bank account
Another post, another game I forgot was being released soon and its another Anime game. This time its Bleach: Soul Resurrection. Yet another obscure/niche game that in the UK will probably only sell about 3 (or maybe 4) copies.
The game is based on an anime called Bleach about a human boy getting to grips with been chosen to be a death god. It has huge battles, boobs and other anime stuff which would take too much time writing about it.
The game plays basically like Dynasty Warriors. Cutting down legions of goons with your over powered character along with a few light RPG elements. I don’t usually like that sort of game, however I love this anime. Have been reading it for 10 years now.
Bleach games are HUGE in Japan but rarely come out over here for obvious reasons. We have had a Bleach Wii title and a few DS games released. But none of the popular PS2 fighters ever came to our shores. So its quite surprising the first bleach PS3 game is being released here, I’m not complaining though!
Luckily I have had the chance to play this at a few events and enjoyed it. I doubt I will put down the money to buy this on day one I might wait till it goes on sale or give it a rental. Simply because games like these don’t offer that much depth and are basically button bashers.
NIS are one of my favourite game publishers and it’s great that they are bringing this to the UK along with Disgaea 4 which I blogged about last post.
PS- The gaming tsunami is almost upon us people. Get those Pre-orders sorted!
