What games are you currently into?

[Nail Strafer]

You could actually hear that dialogue in Left 4 Dead? That game's always so frantic I can barely hear anything but lots of gunshots, snarls, screams, and "RELOADING!". Oh, and the theme music, which is quite good. It does a really good job at meshing yesteryear's zombie movie elements with today's elements.

Since I do like zombie games, I decided to buy Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop for the Wii, which is based after Dead Rising released two and a half years ago on the Xbox 360. The story's the same for both, pretty much. You're a freelance journalist named Frank West and you decide to investigate reports of a riot in a nowhere town called Willamette, Colorado. Frank decides to start out by investigating the local shopping mall, which is incredibly massive considering this is a town with only 53,934 people living in it.

Anyway, it doesn't take long before you realize zombies are wreaking havoc, so it's your job to survive the zombie outbreak while trying to discover the truth behind the outbreak. The 360 version was hailed as one of the first truly next gen titles, with how literally over 800 zombies can be on the screen at once...and with how anything you can find can be used as a weapon. Potted plants, swords, baseball bats, barrels, cooking oil...even cars and trucks in a few places.

What let the game down some was the fact that you only had one save file. And if you ever wanted to save, you'd have to overwrite the save you've already got. The game also moved on a strict timetable. You had to be in certain places at certain times to witness plot events...you had to be in certain places at certain times to find survivors...you had to contend with bosses too.

Now, combine that with having only one save file, and this makes the game extremely difficult to complete while doing everything on time. Supposedly this was a deliberate design decision by Capcom, so that the game becomes more tense with how you're always having to manage your time carefully. Everybody though pretty much hated it. If you want to finish the game properly you've got no free time to goof off. You have to always be on the move and keeping track of everything.

Fortunately, Dead Rising on the Wii completely does away with this. Time only moves forward as you complete your objectives, and NOT automatically. You also have twenty save slots, so if you do something wrong it's not the end of the world. Just go to a previous save. Although I will say this does kill more of Dead Rising's challenge than I would have liked...especially with how the Wii can only handle about 100 zombies on screen at once.

Capcom seems to have realized this, so they seem to have thrown down construction barricades and ropes all over the mall that make it a lot more claustrophobic than it was in the 360 version. This way you're forced through more narrow pathways and right into zombe packs. Which I suppose was a necessary decision, but it's really irritating that Frank can't just cut down these ropes and obstacles with his katana or whatever.

Oh, and if you don't like escort missions...take my word for it. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME. 70% of your time will be spent escorting survivors back to the security room, and the people you're trying to save are as dumb as stumps. The main problem is that they really like to fight zombies with their fists instead of running around them, so you're constantly to look back to make sure they haven't challenged 20 zombies to a fist fight instead of following you.

Although I will say survivor rescue is much more bearable than in the 360 version. In the 360 version you had the time management to worry about...you're expected to escort survivors through the mall while looking for EVEN MORE survivors...with up to eight following you at once. If you try to escort them back one at a time, you'll run out of time, so you pretty much have to do it that way.

And I'll write more but I have other things I need to do right now. See ya.

[Nail Strafer]

Double post, but I'd like to talk about Resident Evil 5, which came out last Friday.

I decided to go ahead and buy the Collectors Edition, considering I'm a giant fan of the Resident Evil series. You get a Tricell bag (the new corporation that replaces Umbrella), a Kijuju necklace, a BSAA patch (like the one Chris has on his uniform), and a Chris figurine...plus the requisite tin case and Making Of DVD. Figured it'd be worth the extra $30.

It is indeed a pure shooter, even more so than Resident Evil 4. It's still fun, but it just lacks the revolutionary feel that RE4 had. It doesn't help that a few scenarios are lifted directly from RE4. But there are some differences.

The main difference being that you now have a partner with you at all times...Sheva. It feels kind of like Resident Evil Zero again with Rebecca and Billy, but Sheva is very good at helping out. She's a great shot, she heals you when your health is running low, she hands over ammo if you have the right gun for it.... If there were one thing I'd change though...it's that I'd like to give her more commands besides attacking, covering me, or exchanging items. For example, she's got a bad habit of not healing until she's about to die. I'd like to be able to get her to use low-level healing items if she's got minor injuries, because it frees up inventory room and there's no reason NOT to heal.

See, RE5 does away with the case inventory screen that RE4 had. You're now down to nine inventory slots (kind of like older RE games), but at least key items don't take up any room. Still, forget trying to lug around about four or five different guns, plus their ammo and healing items on top of that. It's a better idea to just go into battle with one healing item, a primary weapon (like a shotgun), a handgun, their ammo, and then just locate anything else you need as you go along.

You find a lot of guns in this game anyway. In the first three chapters alone you get your hands on a shotgun, an MP5, two sniper rifles, a magnum, and an RPG. And it gets even better. You can repeat old chapters with the same equipment, and even find the guns again in the same spots. The catch is guns have really lousy resale value now. I mean...you can only sell a stock MP5 for 200 of the game's money, when you regularly find bags of money with 300.

So once you have two of the weapon in question (one for you and one for Sheva), you may as well not bother picking up the free guns anymore.

Combat is basically the same as RE4. A lot of the same animations and sound effects are used. So it'll be pretty easy to adjust. The catch is everything happens in realtime now. Enemies can attack you while you're switching guns or whatever. So make sure you find a quiet moment before you decide to pull out a grenade or whatever.

Fortunately, you can assign four items to the four directions of the D Pad...so you only need to press one button to switch to your handgun, or to a healing item, or whatever. I will say that it does make the game feel much faster, considering in RE4 you'd have to go to your inventory whenever you wanted to change guns, and it kind of interrupted things. I really like it.

One thing I REALLY like is that we finally find out how the healing herbs work. It turns out the characters grind them into a powder, put them in a tube, and then shake the powder onto wounds. That sure is going to end a lot of debates in this fandom, I'll say. Until now everyone kinda liked to joke they smoked them like weed XD

SPeaking of healing items, the eggs are back, and this time Chris actually cracks the egg open and EATS THE YOLK INSIDE RAW. It's hilarious. And when you ask for an egg from Sheva Chris actually says "Give me an egg!", which makes it even funnier XD

[Yolanda Riona]

=D Digging more skeletons out of the closet.

Ah-hahaha. I'm currently replaying Sonic Adventure to refresh my memory of the games, since I haven't touched either one of the Adventure series in years. I'm currently almost all the way through as Sonic. Still have to beat it as everyone else though. I am dying from the corny one liners, but holy crap. Breezing through Emerald Coast and Windy Valley was like cruising through the old games all over again. BD It by far has the easiest bosses known to mankind, but I could play EC over and over again because it's so fast paced and fun. Hope to beat it before college picks up again.

It would be sweet to keep tabs on times and have a score chart or something up on here~

[Saffron]

Halo 3, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Sonic Unleashed (to take the edge off from time to time), Combat Arms, NBA2K9 (because I'm a sports junkie and I play the sport in real life), annnndddd... I guess I've been back into Sonic Adventure DX lately since I got it on the PC.