Gaming Bros

This is the first game I jumped over 3 nerds to try. Asura’s Wrath is an over-the-top action game developed in collaboration between CyberConnect2 and Capcom. It tells the story of Asura, once a revered deity, he was betrayed by his fellow gods and stripped of all his powers and now vengeance  begins. I was really excited to try this Japanese craziness.

The demo I played was basically a huge boss fight. You are fighting a God 100 times your size. After a cutscene, Asura starts hurling towards the boss and the game becomes a rail shooter with fireballs thrown at marked ares on the god as you are dodging projectiles. Once you are close to the boss, the game switches to a series of quick time events (QTEs) and if executed successfully you move to another sequence of shooting but this time in mid-air. Afterwards, The god calls down a huge flying ship that you have to take down, and once you do, you go into an awesome fighting scene. Both you and the boss are be running side by side firing fireballs and missiles at each other in a side-scrolling mode. The amount of stuff happening in the screen is tremendous! Once you finish the next QTE sequence, the 1000 ton god knocks you to the ground and butt-stomps you. Asura is not pleased with this! Mashing buttons in anger will make Asura grow 4 extra limbs and with a series of punching by flaming limbs, Asura sends the god out of earth and into space. Now the god is not happy, so he summons one of the 7 deities to destroy you. And of course keeping up with the game’s over-the-top ridiculousness, the deity is about 5 times the size of the earth!! Yes indeed! The huge deity is floating in space surrounding earth and promises Asura’s death. With one holy finger going through earth’s atmosphere like a flaming meteor, Asura is pretty much screwed if this was normal game. But this is Asura’s Wrath of course, so what happens?  Why asura will smash the huge deity’s finger with his 6punching limbs and brings the deity’s end!

I was really impressed with the game. I’m a big fun of quirky games and gigantic boss fights. The graphics and music are not the best in this game but the action in the cut scenes are really beyond anything I’ve ever seen. The gameplay is fun but I can see myself getting bored with it if they did not throw in other mechanics. To be fair, I only played a boss fight so there must be some other parts in the game I haven’t tried. Controls are not as tight as I hoped they’d be, moving the curser during the shooting part feels too sensitive. I hope the game will be more polish when released and I’m looking forward for it.

Release: Early 2012

Tomb Raider is a well known series that started back in the 90′s. But with the years, the game stopped being original and fun. So Crystal Dynamics decided to take a different direction with the series. We were lucky enough to see this 25 mins demo of the new game. This title is a re-imagining of the tomb raider we all know. The demo was a portion of a vertical slice of the game that tells us where the game is headed.

The story of the game is a prequel to the previous titles. It take’s you through the first adventure Lara Croft ever took during which her plane crashes on a mysterious Island. When she wakes up, she finds herself  held captive by the natives of the island. In the new game, we see a smart and resourceful Lara but also afraid and vulnerable unlike the Lara we know. The experiences she will go through in this game will shape her into the Lara we all know.The first part of the demo is the same one that was shown in E3 2011. It was sort of a tutorial level teaching you the game mechanics as Lara makes her way out of captivity. We will focus more on the second demo.

The demo is set in a part of the island during a rain storm. In this part, Lara meets Roth who was with her on the airplane. Roth was badly injured during an attack by wolves and Lara needs to get a first aid kit to help him. This is where the gameplay begins. You make your way to a cave up on a mountain by climbing and traversing the world in a very similar fashion to Uncharted games. The objects in the levels are very dynamic and some platforms you get to can collapse and change your approach to the same place. You can use “Survival Instinct” view to see objects that can be manipulated in the environment highlighted much like the Eagle Vision in Assassin’s Creed series. This view will also show you a location beacon and foot tracks to where you are suppose to go. After you get the first aid kit, you make your way out of the cave and encounter some wolves and this is where the game switches to quick time events. After finishing the object, we saw a little bit of the UI. in each area there will be a basecamp  where you can access the UI. the UI is divided to 3 parts: Fast Track where you can travel from one basecamp to another, Survival Skills where you use experience points to upgrade skill, and finally the Salvage where you can craft new weapons and equipments.

Tomb Raider looks very promising and has a lot of potential. The sound design and music are both amazing and creates an astonishing atmosphere in this bleak island. The great graphics and lighting also adds to the great atmosphere.  Unfortunately, there was no playable demo and we did not see any combat. But we trust Crystal Dynamics to make this game everything we hope for and not just another Uncharted clone.

Release: Fall 2012

When a triquel comes to mind, you would think there would be improvements in all aspects, having experienced the complete opposite in many other gaming titles, I feared that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood would fall under the same fate, well I was wrong.

Starting off right where Assassin’s Creed 2 ended, you play as our all time favorite assassin Ezio roaming around Rome and completing memories. The single player is very much like the previous Assassin’s Creed games and to some, it is the best part of Brotherhood. The gameplay is very familiar and brings back the excitement that I felt when playing the previous Assassin’s Creed games. One thing I will say is that the story doesn’t advance too much and therefore doesn’t really feel like a sequel to me, I would call it Assassin’s Creed 2.5.

As always, Assassins Creed developers get better at what they do as the Assassin’s Creed series moves on. In Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood I can truly see how a series of games can be modified until perfected. An example of this is with the combat of Brotherhood, where the slight tweaks from Assassin’s Creed 2 makes it perfect. Another advancement is the sheer size of the game. With loads of sub-missions to complete to only have you distracted from completing the main mission of the story.

Now for the biggest addition to the Assassins Creed’s saga, Multiplayer. In multiplayer, you play as a wide variety of Templar’s that have been assigned a target which you have to kill. In this game mode, put simply, you run around looking for your target to assassinate while someone else is chasing to kill you at the same time. The multiplayer is very original, as many would agree that it is the most refreshing multiplayer of 2010. However after a couple of hours of playing, I experienced that it can get very repetitive and somewhat boring. Within 2 days I already had lost interest in the multiplayer and went back to player single player mode.

One issue that I felt regarding Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was the difficulty. To me, difficulty of a game is very important. As I sort of enjoy repeating a level or stage a couple of times before progressing. This is something that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood lacks, its just too easy. Because of the fact that now you can train other assassins by sending them on missions, and using them to help you fight is just not demanding enough. Memories become to simple and not in the least challenging and therefore I feel that this aspect of the game really brings the overall rating down.

All in all, if you are craving some more Ezio action then this is definitely worth the time. Being able to run around, climb towers and kill guards is always fun and  because  of this it will still be one of the favorites of 2010.

3.5 out of 5