Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale: My Want List

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale is scheduled to ship to stores on November 20th here in the United States. Even though it faces a tough release schedule falling in the same month that Black Ops 2, Hitman: Absolution, Halo 4 and Resident Evil 6 all hit; I have been eagerly anticipating this game to play as some of my favorite characters in gaming. While it is clearly a rip-off of that Nintendo game that comes to every one's mind, it's the character list that seems to attract the most talk and attention of gamers.

While the roster list has more than likely been finalized, the following is a list of characters I think could be worthy additions to the game.

1. Raziel (Legacy of Kain)

 
 The Legacy of Kain series has been ignored and almost forgotten by most people, despite having one of the best looking video game character designs in Raziel. His overall moves are simple hack and slash, but being able to use the Soul Reaver and telekinetic blasts are other pluses that could be added to his move list. Also, being able to suck the soul out of Fat Princess would be quite satisfying.


2. Dart (Legend of Dragoon)

Legend of Dragoon came out to what felt like positive reviews, but over the years has received quite a bit of harsh criticism. One of which was the battle system that, like a rhythm game, relied on precise button presses at the right times to have the move extended. Take out the button combos, leave in the Dragoon transformation, and you have a great character ready for this game.


3. Vincent (Final Fantasy VII)

That's right, Vincent. Not Cloud, not Sephiroth, hell, not even Tifa. Vincent. The coolest looking character in Final Fantasy VII that I feel would suit the game best. He would have both ranged and close combat attacks, but the best reason for his inclusion would be his Limit Break transformations. Hard to deny that they would work well for the Super attacks in the game. Plus, I'm tired of Cloud and Sephiroth.


4. Spyro (The Legend of Spyro)

When you think of Playstation characters, two should come to mind immediately. Spyro should be one of those two. With the resurgence of Spyro in the Skylanders game, it feels like not only the right addition to the game, but an almost necessary one at that. While older gamers are familiar with the character, the younger Skylanders crowd would possibly help boost sales with this lovable purple dragon on the cover. Anyway, how do you not love Spyro?


5. Crash Bandicoot

Speaking of characters that should be synonymous with Playstation, Crash Bandicoot should (and rumored to) be included in Battle Royale. But I don't want the Naughty Dog version of Crash. They already have one character in the game. No, I want commercial Crash Bandicoot. Have him skydive, use a megaphone, whatever is necessary to make his character fun and interesting. If they include game Crash, I want commercial Crash as an alternate costume. Let me see that human face!


6. Nemesis (Resident Evil 3)

Nemesis is sort of the Cloud/Sephiroth of Resident Evil. He may not be the best character the series has, but he's quite well known and I feel would fit better than other villains. He has a sort of distinctive look that isn't pure mutation, plus...rocket launcher. I would much rather see Nemesis in the game not only because he was my first Resident Evil experience, but also because I don't know how a character like Chris or Jill would be fun in a game like Battle Royale.


7. Vahn (Legend of Legaia)

Yet another character from a game that has "Legend" in the title. Vahn isn't the most well known character, however he would have specific button combos that would make some fighting gamers blush. Include Super moves that feature the monsters he could summon using Meta and he could turn into one of the more different, and fun, characters in the game.


8. Ezio (Assassins Creed 2)

 I believe it's just a matter of time, but thanks to the minor exclusivity agreements Ubisoft has with Sony, Ezio from Assassins Creed would seem like a shoe-in for this game. Despite not being able to easily counter attacks in this game, having the assassin use his various arsenal in the game and call for help would make him a viable threat to other characters.


9. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

When the roster announcements came out, I don't think Lara Croft crossed anyone's mind. But she had a huge role in Sony's success thanks to her numerous games. I don't recall her being an amazing fighter in the game (as I could never finish them), she does have other items to inflict damage. As long as she doesn't moan in pain that would cause fanboy hatred to flood the Internet, she should be okay.


10. Kevin Butler

Easily the best character this game could include. He could be the man who "only does everything" by copying the moves of other characters in the game. Or if that wasn't enough, use Sony branded products at his disposal like the PS Eye or PS Move. The utter ridiculousness and the possibilities that could stem from his character being in the game are unfathomable, and for that, I hope to god Superbot adds him at least as DLC. But, I doubt it would ever be as good as what we envision him to be...




As of now, the roster looks like this (after leaked information):

• Big Daddy (Bioshock)
• Colonel Radec (Killzone)
• Dante (DMC)
• Evil Cole (Infamous)
• Fat Princess (Fat Princess
• Good Cole (Infamous)
• Heihachi (Tekken)
• Jak (Jak & Daxter)
• Nariko (Heavenly Sword)
• Nathan Drake (Uncharted)
• Parappa the Rapper (Parappa the Rapper)
• Raiden (Metal Gear Solid)
• Ratchet (Ratchet and Clank)
• Sackboy (LittleBigPlanet)
• Sir Daniel Fortesque (Medievil)
• Sly Cooper (Sly Cooper)
• Spike (Ape Escape)
• Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal)
• Toro (Sony Macot)

Two characters have still not been shown, but there's no reason to believe at this point that the list isn't accurate. However, with the characters I have stated above, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale could be the game to give Super Smash Bro's a run for it's money. But it has to take itself less seriously, inject more fun and crazy into the formula, and add more characters that has helped define the Playstation brand in the past 18 years.

Video Game Easter Eggs

While this list would be better suited come April, a podcast brought the idea of video game Easter eggs up in my head to do this before it would escape my memory. Easter eggs are common in both video games and TV/film, and upon seeing them can either be groan inducing or something that causes you to point at the screen and applaud the inclusion of said Easter egg. Here is a list of Easter eggs that I, although not having experienced them all, was the most interested in hearing about:




Adventure - Warren Robinett

While it's nothing spectacular, it gets nods as the original video game Easter egg. Now whether or not this is true, this secret room that says "Created by: Warren Robinett" is credited as the first. In a game where you play as a dot escaping from a duck looking dragon (the original Pokemon?), I guess this could have been seen as a cool bonus. But at this point in gaming, its kind of...well...whatever?





Portal - The Cake May Not Have Been A Lie

We all know the meme. The cake is a lie. Thanks to the amazing experience of Portal, that has been hammered into the heads of gamers since it's release. However, after escaping from the test chambers, there's a screen with scrolling yellow text. Upon looking at it carefully and overlooking the computer gibberish, you can find a recipe for a Black Forest cake with ingredients hidden in it.

Super Mario Bros - Minus World

While I'm not sure if it should be considered an Easter egg instead of a glitch, it's something I would slap myself for not including as the mythical Minus World in the original Super Mario Bros. Many strive to see this level in which you swim, and swim, and swim but only few would actually see. At least, until later on when it became common knowledge of getting there in World 1-2 after jumping backwards while crouched and going down a pipe. Not the greatest Easter egg, because games where you swim are rarely fun.





Grand Theft Auto: No Easter Egg

The people at Rockstar do love their Easter eggs. So much so that they will actually include an Easter egg...as an Easter egg. This however is probably my favorite. The image says it all.





Halo: Combat Evolved - MEGG

Some people try to immortalize their love for one another by taking pictures, recording videos, writing poems, etc. In the case of Jamie Griesemer, a level designer for Halo: Combat Evolved, he decided to add the love of his life, Meg Pallor, into the game. In doing so, it caused frustration to Halo players as a damn near impossible Easter egg to reach. But in doing so, you get to see a bloody heart with a bullet-hole letter M in the middle of it. Unfortunately, after seeing this, you are treated to a gruesome death at the hands of some Invulnerable Marines. Was it worth it?





Super Mario RPG - Link, Samus, and F-Zero

Super Mario RPG broke away from the normal platforming that made the Mario games great and went a different route in an RPG game. It worked, and worked well. While the Final Fantasy influence from Culex will usually be mentioned first, Nintendo also wanted to include some of their own franchises to the mix with nice nods. Thus, you can find both Samus and Link taking naps in the game (Samus in Peach's castle and Link in Rose Town) and F-Zero model cars in Hinopio's shop. Some may say Smash Bros was the game to bring it all together, but...

Just Cause 2 - Lost

Remember Just Cause 2? That game you ran around and blew things up because the story was completely forgettable? Well, this is one of those reasons it's such a great game. While I could have posted the mechanical shark or the beached whale, instead the game gets it's due with the island from Lost. Approach it with a plane and watch it get shot down. Escape before it blows and witness the weather change and see strange stuff on the island. Besides a plane wreckage with an SOS type message, there is also a chance to run into a monster of sorts...





Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - The End

Hideo Kojima thinks outside the box. That was evident enough in Metal Gear Solid especially during the Psycho Mantis fight. He does a similar thing here with the villain The End in Snake Eater but in a slightly different way. See, The End is a pain in the ass. For an old man, he is fast and sneaky and caused much more frustration with me than I thought possible. Had I known there were two other methods to beat him, I would have been fine. One included sniping him from afar when you see him at the warehouse, or the more Kojima way, save during the battle and turning the system off. When you come back a week later or move your date settings forward a week, The End will have died of old age during battle. I applaud you Kojima.





Batman: Arkham Asylum - Arkham City

Rocksteady sure knows how to hide them. Before Arkham City was ever announced, they had an Easter egg hidden in Arkham Asylum hinting at what a sequel would entail. While most collapsible walls were shown in detective vision, one room in particular didn't. This is a secret room in the Mansion that Batman has to use the explosive gel on three times before it will be discovered. On the wall is a poster showing a Arkham stamp over part of Gotham City. With Rocksteady saying the biggest secret in Arkham City hasn't been discovered yet, it makes me wonder what that could possibly be and when we will find it...





Saints Row 2 - I don't want to see those Easter eggs...

The craziness in Saints Row 3 isn't completely out of nowhere. If you want to put a little effort getting to a specific location, you can see a giant bunny rise out of the water. I'm not sure exactly what it's purpose is, but Saints Row 3 did follow up on it as they have the captured bunny on a boat in the game as well.




There are a ton of Easter eggs in games, some somewhat lame, others really cool and interesting. I've always had an interest in these as they are fun to find especially if they are more off-the-wall once you see them. I hope developers continue to add these to their game, because they are nice to find and talk about with other players not to mention extend the longevity of the game trying to discover them.

REVIEW: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

I love Final Fantasy. My first experience was with Final Fantasy 7 for the Playstation shortly after it's release. No game prior to that, for the most part, blended in cinematics with storytelling that well in a graphically stunning way that it had. While most of it doesn't particularly hold up well to today's standards, it holds the soft spot in my heart as my favorite Final Fantasy game. And with the much criticized XIII and XIII-2, every game that has Final Fantasy in the title causes people to pause before jumping to any potential conclusions.

Theatrhythm, a title I have to slowly type out and proofread, brought Final Fantasy into the rhythm genre while mixing in the familiar RPG elements in a surprisingly pleasant way. It has the same elements most rhythm games on the DS have as you use the bottom screen of the DS to do the tapping to the music while actions occur on the top screen. It adds more to the gameplay by including many characters from the Final Fantasy franchise along with songs from said Final Fantasy's and allows players to level up the characters making them stronger. Equipping items and moves can change the outcome of the sequence getting further into it and rewarding you with items.

The end goal of the game is to collect as much Rhythmia as possible, which acts as a kind of currency in the game. You don't buy anything, but the amount of Rhythmia you receive also dictates the unlockable characters and songs you can receive. It's not difficult to to accumulate, but it's a grind to have enough to unlock everything.

You start the game selecting the four characters you want to take with you in the series. There are two characters per Final Fantasy game, including the FFXI MMO (but shockingly, not XIV....) They appear as doll-like Chibi models that make me think the kid from Limbo would look like this if that game had light. You can equip them with items such as potions or gear to boost stats, but everything is a one-time use item. It's not a big deal as you gain more of the same quite easily during your playthroughs. As the characters level up, you will notice the normal stats like HP, speed, attack, defense, etc all rise. A stat like Agility speeds up the character allowing you to witness more in a level and HP allows for more mistakes before it's game over. The next question is what Final Fantasy game you want to journey through. Each features music from that game (1-13) and a boost in Rhythmia is given if you have a member in your party from that game. Not something to concern yourself over.

The game has three different type of sequences you play through. The first is a Field Sequence which shows your character traversing the landscape of the selected Final Fantasy. During this, the character will move from left to right as notes approach the right side of the screen. The notes indicate how the player should react by either swiping a specific direction, tapping on the screen, or holding the stylus down and move based on the connected dots on the top screen. At the end of the level, if you reach it, a different character will give you a gift.

The second sequence is an Event sequence, which plays out part of the story (usually cut scenes in later Final Fantasy games) and like the Field sequence, you either tap the screen, hold it down, or swipe. You don't really do anything different here, and instead of seeing your character on the top screen, you are treated to a nice little "movie" consisting of scenes from the Final Fantasy game you selected.

The third, and my favorite, sequence is Battle. Like the name implies, your party of four sit on one side of the screen in classic Final Fantasy battle setup and fight enemies. You deal damage based on your timed accuracy of the previous methods. While the gameplay itself is still the same, I enjoy seeing my characters deal damage based on how well I do. The enemies you fight will occasionally die and be replaced by a new enemy. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to them as they appear to be randomized. My first time playing FF7's Battle sequence, I fought the One-Winged Angel Sephiroth himself as the third or fourth enemy. Hadn't seen him on later playthroughs.

Each sequence also has what is called a "Feature Zone" which causes different actions on the screen to occur. In the Field sequence, you will jump on a Chocobo and the notes will turn gold. The Event sequence will extend the length of the song and change a different color as well, and finally the Battle sequence summons a monster. I've only seen Ifrit, Shiva, and Odin, but Ramuh and Bahamut are summons as well. Each Feature Zone provides more points which ultimately lead to increased Rhythmia.

There is also a introduction and ending screen in which music notes circle around and touch a crystal. You gain Rhythmia here by tapping the stylus as the notes hit the crystal. It's a simple way to receive Rhythmia, but I simply didn't care enough to sit there and do it. These screens also do a poor job explaining the story of the selected Final Fantasy game, but since this is a game that the devout Final Fantasy player would play, there's a good chance they already know the story.

Sadly, that's the gist of what the game is. You can increase the difficulty of it in the Challenge mode and select what songs you want to play, but what you do in them is the exact same thing. The other mode is the Chaos Shrine which has a field sequence followed by a battle sequence with 99 possible level formations. It poses more difficulty and has the possibility for different boss characters in the battle sequence which yields better and rarer rewards, and is something you can streetpass other Theatrhythm players.

The song selection in the game is nothing to scoff at with over 70 songs playable and more downloadable songs coming. The DLC songs provide the biggest laugh with Type-0 and Versus, two games that haven't been released yet, each having one song while the MMO Final Fantasy XIV is nowhere to be seen. But you can expect to find many fan favorites on here such as "One-Winged Angel", "Battle with the Four Fiends", and many main themes.

Overall, it's hard to recommend this game to just anybody. I'm not the biggest rhythm game fan as I find them quick to please, but hard to retain. Speeding up the game and adding more notes doesn't make me want to go back and replay them, and that's the only thing the game really does. The RPG elements are there, but don't sustain my interest as I don't want to slog through yet another field sequence for Final Fantasy X to level up my characters to get 5 seconds further into a song and grind for hours on end to unlock Kain from Final Fantasy IV. It's hard not to love the song selection, especially as a Final Fantasy fan, but you need to ask whether or not rhythm games are for you. If you don't particularly enjoy them, a Final Fantasy one isn't going to engulf you for more than a few hours. But if you love them, then Final Fantasy adds enough to keep you wanting more.