The Fun Times

Surviving the action
There was a lot of good action in the game. Enemies come left and right, and there’s much more action than in the first game. After each wave of monsters that appear, and after you stomp on them, you get to feel pretty accomplished. And I like that. The challenge factor of the action was also more difficult in this game (e.g. guards that won’t die, and larger waves of enemies), and after having to die and figure things out (which ultimately I shouldn’t have to do and this game deserves much fail for that), I felt pretty accomplished.

Embedded UI
This was done well in the first game, and I’m glad they kept this in the sequel. All of the important UI elements (health, inventory, items, ammo) all appear as part of the natural interface of the game, and only appear when you “activate” them. The only thing to keep in mind is the game is not paused when you bring up these UI, so you will get hurt if you’re not looking (which is ultimately annoying and frustrating).

Horror tones like Silent Hill
The team who designed the mise-en-scene did a very good job. It made me think of how well Silent Hill does horror – through very subtle pieces in what the users sees (and hears). There’s echoes, music, silence, blood, interesting lighting, and little easter eggs that will make you keep saying “WTF” all the time. This was very well executed – the game designers placed the monsters and the puzzles in these areas to maximize the “horror” factor. They also did a good job of remediating the “Alien” series, as they mixed in the darkness, music, and monsters on a derelict spaceship.

The mystical blue/yellow/orange/purple line
Enough said. The best part of Dead Space returned and it actually curves around corners instead of being line segments. It’s still a great interaction that helps you to find where you’re supposed to go. They added other colors to help you know where the stores, benches, and save points are (in addition to the checkpoints).

Improvement Points

There is much to critique and hope for improvement in future Dead Space gaming:

Predictable Horror Movie Elements
I love watching bad horror movies, and horror/slasher movies in general. As such, I’ve picked up on some of their cues about what is going to happen: by watching the lighting, the framing, listening to the sounds, and just reflecting on the pacing of the movie, you can predict when the bad guys are going to strike. The same applies for Dead Space 2, except, that it is much more predictable than the first game. Silent Hill did a better job at true “horror” than this survival game – I wasn’t surprised too much at what was going to happen because of how I could “read” the game and figure out the next moves rather easily. While this is good for me the “gamer”, I would expect to find an improvement to the execution of the horror elements in the future to be much improved so I can enjoy the game as a “gamer” and as a “viewer”.

Can’t upgrade stuff you’re not carrying
This should have been very simple: if I’m carrying guns and equipment in my safe, I should be able to access them from the bench to upgrade them. Nope. I have to walk to the safe, drop my guns, pick up the guns I want to upgrade, then walk over back to the bench, upgrade them, and then put them back. Quite the hassle. I should be able to upgrade what I would like so that I can have fun using the guns that I want to take out those nasty monsters. My safe should be accessible anywhere. Period.

Pacing
The pacing can be much improved. Unlike a movie where there is constant “building” while the story moves forward to a natural conclusion, there is a constant “flip-flop” of pacing in this game. Everything starts off pretty quick, then goes pretty slow for a while, then back up again. This happens quite frequenly, and these peaks and valleys in the action are also dead giveaways to when monsters and “gobs of story” are about to be thrown at the user. I’d prefer a better pacing to keep me more engaged and motivated to get Isaac out of this mess.

Quite reminiscent of RE5 – and you know how I feel about that one
So as I was playing this, I couldn’t help but see RE5 in this game. The introduction of more action, interactive animated sequences (at least it was one button instead of randomly selected), and the feeling of being placed against many more guards than I should have to fight (for starters), all made me think that I was playing RE5. And the realization that apparently that the designers think that throngs of more guards makes for a more “engaging and horror” experience is not something I hope will continue. More guards does not mean more scary. Period.

Not really needing stasis
One important aspect of the first game, stasis, I kinda didn’t need to use in this version of the game. Most of the time the guards came out one-at-a-time, or in a giant row, which I could then take out quite easily. I very rarely used stasis (except for the Stalkers), which I then turned into cash to upgrade my guns. Stasis was pretty cool in the first game, and it was a little letdown to see that I didn’t pretty much have to bother with this.

Stalkers
These are enemies that hide and randomly come out of corners and attack you. Needless to say, they are the most annoying and hardest to kill monsters in the game. The “challenge” of them is where the improvement point needs to be noticed: it’s in the way they act and how the player has to change up things to defeat them. The player either has to die to figure out where they are, run around the room to figure out the “trigger point” to trigger the Stalkers to run at the player, or end up relying up luck and stasis to kill them (and they’ll keep running at you even without legs and still damage you – different from the other enemies in the game). The other thing that the player has going for them is that the designers stocked multiple of these enemies in areas where there are tall boxes in the room – a signifier that says that there’s a lot of enemies hiding (along with the fact that they use a signature scream when they are first spawned). Ultimately, I shouldn’t have to resort to death and retry or looking at the intricate locations of boxes in a room to realize what I need to do.

This game makes Galaxy Quest a reality
Many of the rooms and challenges don’t really make a ton of sense in context with the setting. Let’s put in a random lazer puzzle here, or let’s make you fly through some smashers, or even let’s go out into the middle of space and throw some random rockets (which the designers didn’t do a good job of introducing how to use – they should have said or shown how to “place” and use them) for you to use and try to figure out the puzzle before you run out of air and get attacked. To quote Galaxy Quest – “This makes no sense! Why would a ship even have this — because the writers wanted it that way!” *Facepalm* Another pure example of this are the hacking puzzles, a new puzzle added for this game. Just simply rotate the control stick until you get to a blue section and press A. Except that you have a timed puzzle and many red areas that you have to steer away from. And a lot of times you’re chased by guards too while trying to do this. The only help from this annoying puzzle, which is used way, way too much, is that the controller vibrates when you get close.

And you have to succeed 3 times to move on before time runs out, or you’ll have to do everything all over again.

Controls
While it’s good that the kept the same controls from the first game, I feel the design is still running into some simple problems. Having to use both triggers to shoot my guns? Lame. Why can’t we use the controls from other FPS/TPS games out there. I have to remeber a different control scheme from other shooting games to play this right. Also, I end up using my extra health and stasis way too much, because the buttons to use them are close to each other (stasis:Y, health:B) and that ultimately I end up confusing them, as other games have them marked as the reverse that Dead Space has.

Ultimately

Dead Space 2 has some fun going for it. Decent challenges and action, coupled with a decent story will make for a fun experience. But there’s a lot of minor annoyances that snowball quickly at points that break the experience (e.g. the very first set of rooms, combat, puzzles, etc.) of what could be a superior horror and survival game. But if you’ve played the first game, there’s some good easter eggs in there for you to keep you playing.

Pics

• Ambiance
• The Church
• Crawling
• Cutscenes
• Small Details
• Eye Lasers
• Quick Cutscene
• Floating Puzzle
• Hacking Puzzle
• Health and Stasis
• Laser Puzzle
• Rotation Puzzle
• Embedded UI

I just finished reading Rocket Surgery Made Easy, from Steve Krug. This book is a practical book on how to start thinking about user testing and introducing it into a design process that doesn’t current perform testing (or as much as it should). I got this book to help me reflect on my current position at work and also some of the lessons learned from graduate school. It’s a book I recommend to start thinking again on getting user feedback and the pressures of designing in the “real world”.

Take-aways

There are a number of good design points to take away from this book, which I’ll quickly describe (if you get the book, you can get to the essence of these points too):
- Nothing is free from problems
- Testing and getting feedback is the only way to improve a design
- “A morning a sprint”: try to get as much feedback as possible in agile
- “Anybody is better than nobody” mentality
- Knowing who and what to test
- Always prepare your scenarios and every aspect of your test
- Get the team involved, and get action items the same day of testing
- Fix the big stuff first
- Try not to be so subtle: sometimes the best design is “in the face”
- The power of remote testing: handy when you can’t be in the same room

Critique Points…

There are a number of worthy items to take away from this book, but there’s also some points I want to mention to help draw out the nuances of this book:
- How do I test if the team has the “get it out the door” mentality?
If your organization or team has this type of mentality, they already are going to be resistant to putting their work in front of users, as it pretty much isn’t their concern any more. Trying to convince them to stay and try to improve the design means incurring more work, and possibly less profit.

- How do I get thick skin to fight against the above mentality?
There’s really not that much here in this book on this issue. There’s a couple mentions of that “your team and your stakeholders will find it interesting to watch and get involved in the process”. From what I’ve seen at my job so far, this is as far from the truth as possible. This is a cost that is seen as not justifiable, and as long as that is the mentality, there’ll have to be other “battles” to fight.

- What is the real purpose of user testing?
From my grad school experience, this is a fundamental question that we learn for the whole first year: why and what you test in your design. Do you want to test the experience, a part of the design, how people think of your design, etc. Knowing this is the essence of testing, and getting at the most fundamental question in the design process in regards to testing: what do you want to learn? I feel that only by doing design and the whole process can you end up learning how to answer this question, which makes a basis for your testing.

- What really is the role of the moderator?
From Krug’s perspective, he gives two different perspectives: a tour guide and a therapist. While these are meant to be metaphors for helping to keep people focused on their tasks and always talking, these terms imply there is a single destination to go. I think it’s a good thing during the testing if you get lead down a path that the user brings up, especially if it helps to spur new ideas for you and your team. But, like a therapist, this takes a judgment call on when to allow this.

- What really is at the foundation of user testing?
This book starts to tease out where the foundations of user testing really lie – from the deep desire to iterate on a desire and know what you want to learn. But there’s still another element that isn’t reflected on in this book, and it’s the power of human judgment (an essential double-edged sword of the design process). The ability to judge what to do, and how to do it, is a judgment call that is only refined through practice and years of experience.

- How do I advocate for testing and user feedback if I’m not “running” the show?
There’s really not that much here in this book if you’re in this situation (similar to my current position). This book is aimed more towards a person who wants to learn and has traction in their organization to advocate for testing and user feedback. The only recommendation I have is to keep trying to convince your organization that the only way to deliver better products is to stop designing for oneself and ask the people you are designing for their feedback as often as possible to avoid big fixes down the road.

Ultimately…

I’d recommend this book to you if you would like to start to get to know the essence of getting feedback from users if you have never done so before. It’s also really good at helping you see the need for testing, as it is a prime means of iterating on the design a team is working on. This book will also get your mind going, helping you to say “Why aren’t we doing this? It’s actually pretty easy and important”.

This book also gives a very good starting set and mentality for doing appropriate user testing. There are a few things, though, that it doesn’t help you with: helping your organization against the inertia of non-testing, helping to garner buy-in from the team of why you should be doing this to begin with, how to secure the means (financial, and people-related) to physically conduct the user testing, and helping to defend your results from scientific inquiry (or from skeptical members of the team). Since this is a layman’s book, it is great at getting you going – to help you get full merits of “scientific” testing, I’d recommend the book “Measuring the User Experience” by Kuniavsky. It’s bigger, but gives you more in-depth into the thinking of a designer that you’ll need to get the feedback and data you need to make your design better.

Overall, though, still a very good book, and a fun read. Because that’s important, too.

It was Great!

I loved the very simple story of DMC. DMC stars Negishi, a boy who left his home to Tokyo to make his dream come real. He wants to be a guitarist and singer for a trendy band that plays Swedish pop music. But, to his dismay, he ends up being the frontman for indie death metal band DMC, a band notorious for their commitment to everything demonic and metal. Negishi’s onstage persona, Krauser II, is supposed to be a demonic emperor who claims to have raped, killed, and done everything wrong in the world to anyone who has crossed his way (including his parents). Yeah, this is not for those who like cutesy stuff in their anime. Negishi ends up touring across the country, trying to show his love to Aikawa (his unrequited lover), showing his supremacy as a musician, and prmoting his band as the best thing since sliced bread (since the president/manager forces him to). What was great about much of the story was that Negishi really wants to escape his current life, but whenever he tries to do so, hilarity ends up ensuing that pulls him deeper and deeper into the metal world, earning him thousands of more fans daily. Examples of this include: hanging himself, pseudo-humping everything, screaming curses, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. These funny moments I apprecaited very much, especially since I have been exposed to mostly action-based anime with very little humor these past months.

I must say one of the best parts of DMC was Krauser II (aka Negishi’s stage persona). I loved the fact that he would viscerally scream on and off the stage and would say the most insulting things to people. But as soon as he would say something awful, for example, to his unrequited lover, he would immediately try to cover it by saying something else. This type of situation played itself over and over again and I didn’t stop laughing the whole time. I also loved how he would just scream and try to relate everything that he was doing to the fact that he was supposed to be a demonic king from the underworld. Krauser II was the embodiment of everything I love about metal, and I see myself definitely making his costume in the future. I’m attached to the persona duality of Negishi, and I haven’t really let out my inner metal beast in a long time. Besides, it’ll be fun to learn how to do his facepaint and try to create a metal costume. And if people recognize me, I think it’ll be funny to try to say some of the stuff Krauser does, not to mention shredding the guitar with my teeth.

Another great aspect of DMC was that it featured everything that I enjoy about the metal world. It inculded all of the wonderful language: face melting, shredding guitars, double-bass drumming, swearing, demons, blood, sex, gore – all of these I find quite entertaining as a listener of metal. With an anime twist on this culture, it was even better and made me appreciate my love for metal even more. DMC also had all of the fashion of metal: armor, face paint, gloves, and all of the musical equipment. I wanna go out and buy a whole bunch of metal and goth-like clothing now to celebrate my love for metal and DMC. I’ll put some of that on my Christmas list.

I Need Moar!

The only complaint I have with DMC was that the episodes were very short and quick. Each episode was only around 12-14 minutes in length, much shorter than I am used to (but it did feel great to watch 4-6 episodes per night!). Every time I felt like I was getting into the flow of each episode, it would be over, and that made me sad. But I’ll definitely be going back to this anime – as, if you couldn’t tell – is now one of my favorites.

Overall, though, if you want some great laughs, comedy, and a heaping dose of metal in your anime, I’d definitely recommend this for your viewing time. Even if you aren’t into metal that much, I’d still say give it a time if you’re a fan of randomness helping the main character get through many of his troubles.

What I really enjoyed

In Gungrave, there’s a lot of action. And when I say action, I mean violence and fighting. Almost every episode, there’s people beating up each other (in a similar fashion to Fight Club), shooting tons of bullets, blood over the place, supernatural events, or gangs of mafia looting and killing vast amounts of people. If you like a lot of action, this will be your cup of tea (but be forewarned that you’ll have to wait to get satisfied – see below).

I also thoroughly enjoyed the main character, Grave/Brandon Heat. Brandon is a tough and physically fit man who is only motivated by a couple of simple stimuli: love for his girlfriend and the ability to protect his friends and the ones he loves (e.g. his girlfriend and Big Daddy). He also has the ability to completely decimate any enemy that comes his way with his fists and his pinpoint accuracy with any type of gun – whether that be his modified pistol/shotguns or a minigun. He completely rocks, and since I like to protect the ones I love and care for as much as I can, I have placed Grave on my list to make a costume for when I go to a con in the near future.

There were many elements of the main story and its theme that I also enjoyed a lot, too. I enjoyed how Brandon and many of the characters he met ended up changing their lives for the better through the power of protecting the ones you love and the friendship that is created through tight bonds and adversity. Just graduating from grad school and trying to pick up new friends here in Kentucky, and trying to maintain all of my friendships, this theme touched me on a very personal level. I’ll always have a place in my heart for friendship and anime that touch on these powerful themes. I also enjoyed how this anime blended mafia movies, action movies, gunslinging, and a love story (Brandon and Maria, his girlfriend). It was a unique combination that created a new experience every episode, and was interesting to watch and cheer on the main characters.

What I didn’t like as much

As much as loved this anime, which was a lot, there were some parts of this experience that I didn’t enjoy. For me, the biggest part of the anime that I didn’t like was the pacing. The frist episode featured a lot of great action, explosions, destruction, gunfire, and a whole bunch of epic epicness. Then the story did a very long backstory, which I understand why the writers did that, but there wasn’t much action during the revealing of the relationship between Brandon and his friend that would rise to power. At many times, it felt like going through mud, and I didn’t watch as much until the action picked back up within the last 10 episodes.

For me, I didn’t really end up enjoying the music in Gungrave as I thought I would. With a great mafia theme, I would have expected some great 1930s-style jazz or Italian music, but this wasn’t the case. There was mostly down-tempo ambient music with some bass and drums. Occassionally, they’ll slip in some fast drum beats during some of the action scenes, but mostly the music reflected the current flow of the anime: slow and steady, just like the revelation of the backstory. It kept me wanting more from the soundtrack.

Have a great one!

What was Win

The animation and humor also kept me watching the anime. The anime was vivid, and contained tons of color. They also transitioned from traditional drawing to the humorous type of drawing multiple times, which helped to reinforce the humorous aspects of the anime (like the tacos one of the main characters liked to eat, or how they always made the one dude in the club grab all the food). Not only was the animation done well, but they also included special effects like lightning and angel wings, which related to the type of player each character was (e.g. stealthy, attacking, defensive, demonic, etc.). This was pretty darn cool. Oh, and they also did some cool 3D animation of all of the Mahjong tiles when critical times in the game and the story took place.

I could have used less of…

Fanservice. Apparently I’m not the targeted type of viewer for this anime. There was a lot of jiggling. And there were many, many shots of legs and short skirts. Whenever a person was scared, a camera would instantly cut to legs, short skirts, and sweat. Or, when some of the girls would start running, the camera would cut to their short skirts or their anatomy jiggling. Some of the girls would also try to heckle the most endowed character by making her feel bad about her “fat”-ness. Yeah – not needed, in my opinion. There was all of the above to make the anime really fun to watch. But then again, like my friends at work say, I’m not 13, or watching anime for this type of pleasure.

So if you like that type of action as well, then this anime will have everything you’ll ever want. Even still – I’d say go grab this one and enjoy the epic Mahjong action. I’m waiting for season 2 to come out as see what happens next.

A Great Story and Epic Epicness

The Mixed Feelings of the Paradigms and Battle System

Here’s what I didn’t like about the battle system: I didn’t appreciate having to have my characters “locked in” to the different roles (commando, ravager, sentinel, medic, saboteur, synergist) and having to devote time to switching roles with paradigms. There were many times in this game where many of my characters would die because they would get hit during the paradigm switches or right when they were about to save themselves. The last part is sort of expected with gaming, but, at least on the 360, pressing the left-bumper, along with the directional pad, wasn’t very responsive, so I would lose even more time pressing the same buttons over and over again trying to get my team to switch to healing or back to attacking. That is totally aggravating. I also didn’t like how, for every battle, that the first switch of paradigms took forever, but all the rest were quick. This is a classic “cool” thing we get taught in design school: it may be cool to put in for an effect that’ll be used a couple of times, but it quickly loses its charm when it’s repeated thousands of times. And it was repeated at least a thousand times. And then another thousand. While it fits in the realm of Final Fantasy, it does pretty much nothing to help the player, and that’s what I don’t like.

A smaller, yet just as annoying aspect of the battle system, is that you couldn’t tell the characters where to stand during battle. You can help tell them what they should be doing, but pretty much they are glued to the same spot the whole time. And, conveniently for the player, all the characters happen to stand in the same location, making it super-easy for all the enemies to unleash seas of AOE (area or effect) attacks on you, without pretty much any way to defend against them. That causes a lot of unnessecary deaths and a lot of frustration.

A Lot More of the Same

While I do enjoy the ability to jump into a game and the battle system, I have to say there’s a lot of the same. The same grinding experience. Over. And over. And over again. I was able to clear the game in a little over 70 hours, which is about par for a long RPG (it’s 3 discs, after all). But, for more than half of them, I was sitting in the same parts of the world, whether on Grand Pulse, in the mountains, on flying ships, or in fantastical realities just walking around and waiting for monsters to respawn. That’s because the characters I control didn’t have enough abilities/HP/attack to be able to take down a good proportion of the monsters. I got killed – a lot – because either they would 1-shot me, debuff me completely, or just have too much HP and outlast me. And I take care to max out my characters whenever I can, and when this happens, I know that the balance is tipped against the player; this is especially true when most of the monsters have 6 and 7 digits worth of HP. And don’t get me started about the final boss run – it was the first Final Fantasy bosses that actually gave me trouble, even when I was as maxed out as I could be; the designers did a very, very good job at knowing how to make the end as tough and as infuriating as possible.

I also am still contemplating about trying to 100% the game. Evaluating how much I have left to do – maxing out the crystarium (which is about 30 million or so points left to go for me), getting the best weapons and leveling them up to maximum level, and going after all of the hunts on Grand Pulse – will take me, at a conservative estimate, around 70 or so more hours. Before grad school and being at work for most of the day, I could be able to do this in around 2 weeks. Now, with the ability to play about an hour or so a day, and wanting to invest my time in other activities, I’ll probably get to this in about half a year when I’m really bored. Sorry, Square, but that is just a huge wall to complete, and the experience of the battles in this game and the extras is compelling enough for me to come back. I’d come back to make Hope’s costume, but that’s about it.

And this game used the typical bad guy motivation I’ve seen over and over again in many RPGs to destroy the world. While not writing this down to spoil the game for you, I’m really getting tired of this same motivation. Whatever happened to psycho bad guys, homocidal maniacs, or just the most evil people that we have ever seen? I’m hoping those return soon, as I don’t want to be able to guess how the story ends from the moment the final bad guy appears one-third through the game. I think this is one of the elements of many games that pulls me out of the experience of being absorbed in a great game and story and into just a regular game with different characters in it.

I may be a tough gamer, but I really want to help push the medium and the design of games forward. They rely upon building and delivering great experiences, but many times fail to deliver. I would hope they try and use more human-centric means to help build these experiences, and not what technology and sales say games should be.

Even with this in mind, the overall experience of FF13 was quite enjoyable, and I’d recommend it to you. Just make sure you have the time to put into the game, as I’d say you should be able to devote at least 2 hrs per session to get the most out of this game. That’s both its greatest power and weakness. And how to make this game even better? I’ve put hints at what I would have liked to do to help the player: take advantage of how the player wants to play through the battle system, help the player utilize their time better in a game full of grinding, and provide more cues to the player to help him/her not die as much.

So who/what is Bayonetta?

The Good Parts

The Annoyances and Frustration

In simple terms, this game is not for those who want something that is fun and mostly doable from the get-go. Just like Devil May Cry, this game is very, very punishing. If you don’t learn how to put yourself in and out of danger, you’ll find yourself dying every 5 minutes (which happened to me a lot, for many of the reasons that follow). This comes to my first critique: the inconsistent cuing for Witch Time. The game teaches you how to do Witch Time relatively easily in the first few levels: they put guards that come right up to you and swing relatively slowly. Then the framerate will drop for about a half-second. It’s at this point the player needs to press right-trigger (I’m on a 360) to evade and activate Witch Time. As the game goes on, this doesn’t always happen: with large projectiles like buildings and meteors that get thrown at Bayonneta, this camera cuing will happen, but pretty much ceases to happen against most of the regular enemies that she has to kill. Later on, though, to obfuscate this issue even more, Bayonetta gets the ability to negate damage by pressing right-trigger at the exact moment of getting damaged. Why is this frustrating? Because normally before this point I’ve already pressed right-trigger to evade the attack, but can’t really see that I’ve already gotten damaged. So this basically turns into a controlled evade-spam on the controller, which isn’t the most of fun.

And on another note, there’s a lot of button spamming during these challenges, especially to get to the best rankings. I also really, really don’t like having to press a lot of buttons over and over again, especially when I have to repeat the same challenges multiple times over.

The other main critique that I have is that this game transitions to other types of games at the drop of the hat, for many times of no apparent reason other than the game designers wanted it to be difficult or what they think is cool. There are: motorcycle events, jumping challenges, gunning events, and Ikaruga-like challenges, all of which inherit the same annoyances and challenges of the main Bayonetta experience. There was even a rafting challenge, and out of all of these random challenges (it was a boss battle), it was the easiest and most naturally-controlled out of all of them. During motorcycle events, thousands of things keep coming at you from in front, all of which you must destroy and avoid at the same time (all the while, to get the best rating, you should evade right at the point where it is about to hit you, which the game makes hard to time). This wouldn’t be too hard, except that Bayonetta’s awesome hat and hair covers everything in front of her: so by the time you see something you need to avoid, it’s already too late. I had to drive like a drunkard while holding down the shooting button to get any idea as to where I was supposed to be going. This was the same for the Ikaruga-like challenges, except throwing in the fact that the game doesn’t auto-invert the axes for you, so you’ll probably die or get hurt many times before actually getting adjusted to the new control set. The same also goes for the Angel Attack gunning challenges, but those weren’t too bad, as I ended up getting slightly used to having normal axes for this FPS challenge. There were also a couple of challenges were the designers had Bayonetta in a turret, where she has to kill not only the giant boss in front of her, but the thousands of missiles that the boss throws at her. Miss one, which happens a lot because the turret covers some of them (and also the explosions do too), and your life will pretty much instantly go down to zero. And no idea on how to activate Witch Time during this, even though sometimes it would randomly turn on as I would leave the turret. Good job, designers – more like fail.

Basically what this boils down to is that the gameplay especially reinforces the character design: what many male players might deem as complete perfection in a woman. And that type of play style leads to a game that is utterly compelling in its story, but leaves the player utterly destroyed if they don’t know how to understand what the game is telling them. At the end of the day, I had a good time with this game, but it left me shaking my head in frustration at how I can be able to play this game on any of the harder levels.

I’d recommend this if you loved Devil May Cry, or want a really, really powerful story involving the themes of love and protection. If you’re in it for the story, I’d recommend playing it on the easier levels unless you’re wanting to get punished, like I did. It’s not just a fanservice game like I originally thought, but a game about a protective mother who is fast and can take out legions of enemy angels.

The Premise

You get to play Isaac, a space commander sent out into the depths of space when reports of a planet-sized spaceship have gone awry. When Isaac and his crew get to the spaceship (more like a space station), his crew gets sucked into the spaceship, which is conveniently wrecked. Once you gain control of Isaac, you have to find out what has been happening on the ship, to the crew, and most importantly, get yourself off of the ship and back to safety.

Sounds pretty cool, right? You even get to see how this game takes on the dimensions of the Alien universe, bad B-rated horror movies, and how the occult in outer space merge together in this very fun and interesting third-person shooter.

The High-Points and Fun Aspects

There was a lot of really good stuff in Dead Space. From an interface and control aspect, the designers put in many tools to help the gamer get through the ordeals they set up for you. First, they gave you the “mystical blue line that tells me where to go”. By tapping on the right control stick, Isaac puts out his hand and a blue line appears, telling you the direction you have to go. This is very handy because the environments are quite large and dark, and can also help in preparation for many of the ambushes the designers have set up in advance. Another cool aspect is that all of the necessary information from a gaming standpoint (i.e. health, ammo, stasis (the ability to slow enemies down)) was all on the body of Isaac: his spine was his health, his stasis was on his back, and his ammo was displayed whenever one is readying the trigger. Isaac also had some pretty cool telekinetic powers, too.

The designers also did a very good job setting up the mise-en-scene for the game. The lush environments are very reminiscent of the Alien movies, and all of the setups that come from that universe (e.g. scariness and cheap scares). The sounds and the music made me feel like I was actually in the derelict spaceship and I felt a little tense, even though I knew I was playing a game with many cheap B-horror movie scares in it (it got close to the feel of playing Silent Hill, but didn’t get all the way there in terms of scary/creepy). Each chapter (read “level”) was also a convenient section of the spaceship, which you had to explore because new things would go wrong with the ship and Isaac was in the convenient section of the ship to take care of the problems.

All of these great aspects of the game, including relatively simple and straightforward puzzles, kept me interested in this game and I rarely put it down. These great aspects covered some of the parts of the game that ruined many parts of the game for me and turned a great movie/game into utter frustration and horror.

The Let-Downs

While these may be an equal amount of let-downs to the greater aspects of this game, these flaws are pretty obvious and should be brought forward to help other games improve upon them. Isaac’s controls weren’t the best. I found myself fumbling through their controls (but thank goodness I was able to invert the y-axis) and using up my stasis power at times where I wanted to use the telekinesis (pressing left-trigger and X was stasis, and left-trigger and B was telekinesis – their locations were so close and not expected that I would fumble through them and take damage often from this confusion). Isaac was also ridiculously slow – he can stomp enemies and swing at them, but would take an eternity for him to wind up and swing. This was horrible, because there would be many times I would run out of ammo, and the game mentioned to use these tactics if necessary (they mentioned to save ammo, which also means it’s a valuable means to deal damage as well). Also, the mechanism to hold the gun and shoot was horrible as well: using left trigger to aim and the right trigger to fire. Yeah, you read that right – double trigger. If anything, since this game looks like Resident Evil 4 and 5, except that Isaac is on the other side of the camera, I should be able to use the right-trigger to aim and then A to fire, which is certainly more natural and responsive in desperate situations than the double trigger approach (there are A LOT of ambushes in this game where quick timing is necessary for survival).

So, it may look like I may be ranting more about some small details about the game, they are indeed quite large ones that I feel are still prevalent in the gaming industry. Maybe I’m just blowing things out of proportion, but these small things are the things I look for in the gaming experiences to make me enjoy them even more.

I’ll have more thoughts on Bayonetta, which I just finished, too. And that game has a large reflection waiting for it too.

I just finished watching an anime which gave me a really powerful viewing experience. Elfen Lied was the anime I just finished and would like to share my thoughts on the experience.

An Interesting Story

This anime had a really cool premise. There’s this girl, Nyuu (also named Lucy), who escapes from a government facility after being experimented on. In the process of escaping, she uses her natural powers (called vectors, which look like a ton of hands) to rip apart anyone who came along her way. Almost free, she gets taken out by a sniper and finds herself on a beach where our main hero, Kouta, and heroine, Yuka, find Nyuu naked and take her back to their home. Kouta and Yuka then spend their time caring for Nyuu, all the while slowly becoming entangled in the search to find Nyuu, as she is a special type of “mutant” (called a Diclonius) destined to destroy the current human race through genetic superiority. Kouta and Yuka also find a little homeless girl and take her in, after learning about the horrible abuse she has endured through her whole life. The story also features many flashbacks to when Nyuu, Yuka, and Kouta were little and the festival that ended up having a large impact on their current relationship. The search to find Nyuu also embroils another Diclonius, Nana, who tries to bring Nyuu back to those who originally experimented on her, but ends up nearly dying – her arms and legs get ripped off. Nana also ends up finding her way to Kouta’s home as well and even more interesting situations tend to happen there as well. There are many, many battles that end up ensuing to bring Nyuu back, and I’ll leave it there for you to watch if you’re intrigued and want to see for yourself.

Fun and Some Not-So-Fun Aspects of the Anime

This anime is definitely geared towards those who like destruction, blood, and fanservice (I really, liked the story, destruction, and blood). For me, the fanservice kept getting in the way of the main story and its progression. There were times where Nyuu would do sketchy things, like make Kouta grab her, or there would be times where important information for the story would happen while she and other characters would be taking a bath. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’re in luck. I liked the sound design and the pure and utter destruction that happened. The sounds of the violence and the results of it reminded me of the many video games I like to play that have funny sound effects linked to death (e.g. squishing sounds or screaming). This was one aspect that kept me watching – to see what other acts of destruction and insanity Nyuu would be doing next. And there was no sparing of blood. Lots and lots of it. I also did enjoy the relationship that evolved between Kouta and Nyuu, as it was born out of respect and friendship. But on the flip side, the relationship between Yuka (who ended becoming the most insecure person I have ever seen – every 5 minutes she was contemplating her status in life as a function of her unrequited love of Kouta) and Kouta. I also appreciated how Nana and the homeless girl ended up bonding and becoming close friends throughout all of the rough experiences they’ve had.

I also really enjoyed the music in this anime. It featured many different Roman and Germanic influences. The opening theme was sung in Latin, which was great (since I took Latin in high school), and was also used as a vital element of the story that tightened the relationship between Yuka and Kouta and Nyuu and Kouta. Something that I have grown to learn in watching anime is that when there is Latin and German involved, crazy and occult things will surely be going down. I haven’t watched enough to prove this yet, but I’ll certainly be keeping this theory developing.

If the Anime Were to Continue…

I was pretty let down by the conclusion of the anime. Without spoiling the ending for those who haven’t seen it, there was a screeching halt in the last episode, where some of the main questions were answered (e.g. which characters were saved and which were dead), but there was still an opening for more of the story to be written. For example, they showed the motivation for the bad guy (the typical destroying the world to save it excuse used in many games and anime), but the writers didn’t really do anything with it. They just left that out there and chose to end it on the battle of the different Diclonii.

I would want to know more about Nyuu/Lucy and Nana and how they would rebuild their lives after the battles they have endured, and also would like to see them stop the ultimate bad guy (sorry, forgot the name), because I don’t want to see madmen running companies that try to learn how to harness the powers of biology for evil. I would also just like to see Lucy fight some more, as bodies start to fly whenever she’s around, and the anime did a very good job at showcasing her ability to leave carnage wherever she went. I would also want to see Nana develop more as a character who could stand up for herself, and also take care of the friends she ended up having at the end of the anime.

Here’s hoping for a continuation of the story. Ultimately, though, I would recommend this to you if you don’t mind blood and fanservice.

I just finished watching another cool anime. This was one of the better ones I have seen in a while and I hope my thoughts will suggest that its worth watching for you as well. This time, I finished a series I randomly picked from my anime hard drive, Scryed.

A Cool Story

This may be one long paragraph – just letting you know in advance. Scryed is a story set in a world where there are people born with special powers that can manipulate matter and bend it/recreate in specific ways. This type of special person is called an alter. Alters are born naturally in a special area of Japan separated from the mainland after an incident 20 years ago. Now, the world is in chaos, as a special group of “policemen” in a group called HOLY are specially trained to control the “native alters” to make sure they don’t cause any trouble to those on the mainland. Our hero, Kazuma, is a native alter who is trying to work to make money to feed himself and the little girl whom he protects, Kanami. One day, after finishing a job, Kazuma gets roped into a battle where HOLY is rounding up some of the native alters. Kazuma wipes out a whole bunch of them until one of the toughest members of HOLY (who are all alter users), Rouhou, showcases his power and completely defeats Kazuma. After this point, Kazuma is taken to HOLY but completely destroys most of the place and escapes. After this point, without too many spoilers, many of the episodes feature the ongoing and escalating rivalry between Kazuma and Rouhou, with every landscape and building being destroyed in their path. The series also gets interesting when they reveal another person interested in the powers of alter users and starts to round them up to perform experiments on them. Rouhou and Kazuma then form a temporary alliance and do some major damage on him and his henchmen, for a wonderful viewing experience. I also thoroughly enjoyed the parallels between this story and the events that happened after 9/11, especially in how HOLY and the big bad guy round up people (for no reason reported to them) and the discrimination that happened in the story against the alters from the people in the mainland. It’s either irony or a pure coincidence, especially since the anime was released in late 2001 and ran through 2002. Or it could be that my mind formed a pure coincidence, but it was a good analogy that kept me interested on top of the action and characters in the story.

This is one I recommend watching for its epic characters, action, and story.

Kazuma and Cosplay

I have added Kazuma on to my list of characters I would love to make a costume and cosplay for. I deeply loved his persistence, strength, and commitment to protect Kanami and those who have been attacked by HOLY. I also liked that he wasn’t the perfect type of hero who has his own weaknesses, making him much more of a human and lovable kind of guy. In choosing Kazuma, I’ll have to stick to my exercise regimen I have picked up from a colleague of mine, which is already starting to show results. Also, when I get my Lilypad Arduino skills up even more, I can think about making the back rotator part of the costume actually work when I pose for the camera. I would also like to see, while at the con, if there any others who have seen this anime and strum up a conversation with them in a ridiculously cool Kazuma cosplay. I’m already looking forward to it.