The Importance Of Being Thorough And My BlazBlue Video Review

By now you've no doubt read my "BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle" impressions article. In all honesty it didn't paint a very good picture of the new entry, and like the IGN review itself you were no doubt left with more questions than answers. Since that article posting I was given the opportunity by Aksys Games to play through, and review the game myself. To experience it for myself, and share with you what I experienced. In this instance I decided to do things differently though. I decided to do a raw hands-on review via Twitch to allow everyone to get my reactions as they happened in accordance to the features contained within the game in the most genuine fashion possible. That and to also disclose important need to know details in a manner that would be more beneficial to someone than having them to read through ten paragraphs of technical breakdowns regarding in-game features. I think I succeeded in doing so, but you will have to sit through nearly two hours of video, and commentary to get the most of it. Supposing you can you will get enough coverage of the game's inner workings to be able to decide for yourself if this is a worthy fighter to add to your collection. At least I think so.

BlazBlue Cross Tag Impressions Taken from Reviews And Gameplay Footage

So ... I spent part of the day watching gameplay, and reviews of the latest entry in the BlazBlue series. I saw IGN give it a beat around the bush passing review that pointed out both good, and bad things. The bad mostly attributed to a lackluster, and repetitive story mode element as well as some matchmaking quirks. Being the observant fighting game player that I am I paid attention to the roster. Those guys, and gals who transferred over from RWBY, BlazBlue, UNIEL, and Persona Arena Ultimax. What bothered me was the fact that the roster was made up mostly of the easy to use, and abuse characters. The projectile pests, and the ranged reachers. Even Iron Tager in all his abusive magnetic glory returned to my dismay. The only exceptions I noticed were Rachel Alucard who is a more technical BlazBlue character, and Chie from Persona Arena who is an up close melee martial artist. I had paid attention to the roster situation since the first announcement, and knew it was going to be the deciding factor as to whether or not I bought the game for myself, and as it turns out I did not end up buying the game for that very reason.

Gekido Kintaro's Revenge Proves Some Things Are Best Left Alone

I fondly recall, as an original Playstation gamer, my experience with "Gekido". It was a rocking 3D arcade style brawler that was unique for it's time. It dared to do something different. It had an amazing in-game soundtrack, a hidden song that could be played on a CD player, and gamplay that was overall fun. The art style was akin to something seen in comic books back when comic books were actually good. For whatever reason this tried and true formula was ditched for what best could be described as a blatant middle finger to fans of the first entry in the series. Gekido Kintaro's Revenge, in all of it's mediocre glory, puts players in control of two seemingly familiar characters (Tetsuo & Travis), and has them taking on the arduous task of finding out why the dead are rising in a nearby village. It feels, and plays out a lot like a plot inspired by the anime, "Ninja Scroll". While this could have been cool it falls short of being so through bad controls, poorly implemented combat, bad graphic design, and cheap sucker punches that happen way too often. It's almost as if the developer who made this game had a grudge against the gamers who bought what they were selling the first time around.

My Brief Impressions Of The "Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection"

For what it is offline Capcom's re-release of the various Street Fighter series entries is very much worth the asking price. If you value a proper offline experience over an online one. For $40 you get 12 full games that can all be enjoyed alone or in the company of local friends. Ports of games that can be tweaked to a decent widescreen HDTV presentation, and adjusted with different visual filters for added effect. The games from Street Fighter (original) to the Alphas, and on to the 3rd Strikes all play out as you'd expect them to. As you'd remember. Offline the games are a proper trip down memory lane with the addition of historical timeline info entries, newly introduced art galleries, and various other features that give you more for your money. Oddly enough though things aren't all perfect with this particular collection. While most of the problems are player induced in the online portion of the game the netcode Capcom chose to go with for their four online titles is truly a step down from their previous online releases of "Darkstalkers Resurrection", and "Street Fighter 3rd Strike" for the PS3. I'm fairly certain they did not pay for high end netcode this time around, and more than likely cut corners for cost efficiency. Not only is the netcode bad this time, but the matchmaking also suffers from a lack of much needed options like that of region selection, and ping/connection identifiers. This lack of needed features only serves to further hurt what could have been a good online competitive scene.