Nathan Blades looks at the polarising RPG for PS3 & 360.
Jason Rose brings us a buyers' guide to smartphones available this Christmas.
Nathan Blades covers some console and industry-defining titles for the Sony PlayStation
Nathan Blades burns rubber in Mario kart 7.
October expo fell upon the Halloween weekend and, perhaps more importantly, at the start of the run up to Christmas. As such, the big publishers are getting their biggest guns out and applying one last polish before unleashing them upon the world.
Batman: Arkham City - PS3, 360, WiiU, PC - Rocksteady’s follow up to Arkham Asylum had the most coherent demo section, simply rolling straight into the first twenty minutes of the story. Despite having almost no prior knowledge Arkham City and having never played Arkham Asylum, I found it fairly easy to grasp what was happening. It quickly showed off a succession of Batman’s old friends and enemies - mostly enemies - and effectively dangled as many aspects of gameplay in front of my eyes as possible.
Having no experience with the first game, I thoroughly enjoyed my sojourn into the city-prison of Arkham. There was some jumping and climbing- my favourite thing to do in video games - and the game didn’t just give you everything. The combat was fun, slowing and speeding up with your attacks and creating a very visceral, bone-crunching feel to every strike while keeping things flowing. I did find that I fell into the classic combat pattern- block, counter, strike - but the counters and even some of the strikes were crowd-pleasing enough that it just didn’t matter.
Heroes of Ruin - 3DS - My encounter with Heroes of Ruin was very short. I found the scenario confusing and the dialogue impenetrable, which seems standard for publisher Square Enix. So I went out and found some things to fight. The combat was heavy and slow, unless you were the enemy. While this does add challenge to an otherwise overly simple system, I did find that the enemies never seemed to stop spawning, so I didn’t really get anywhere and eventually, I died. At this point, I put the game down, having seen nothing to keep me playing it.
Final Fantasy XIII-2- PS3, 360 - The big showing from Square Enix this season was, of course, Final Fantasy XIII-2. The first thing I noticed, upon taking up the controller, was the appearance of a Moogle as a companion to Serah. Other notable additions shown in the brief demo included additional dialogue during exploration with nearby people and, to my surprise, cinematic quick-time events during combat.
You read that correctly. They added more cinematics to Final Fantasy XIII-2. And quick-time events. Right. They seem to work in a similar fashion to the staggering system, so that successfully pressing the right buttons at the right time leads to dealing massive amounts of damage to the enemy and staggering them basically for free. These events only seem to happen in larger battles, however. If you enjoyed XIII, XIII-2 looks like a safe bet.
The Nintendo Stand - Wii, 3DS - Nintendo’s lineup included Kirby’s return to Dreamland for the Wii, Go Vacation - a new rendition of Wii Sports which features jet skiing and other such holiday activities, Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS and an interesting game called Super Pokémon Rumble. SPR is a RPG in which you play as a Pokémon who fights in gladiatorial combat. The concept intrigued me, but I found that the fact that Nintendo still hadn’t moved away from it’s 2-D model from the other Pokémon games for the actual combat to be slightly jarring when moving into the more hack’n’slash style. In addition to the combat, there is an exploration and friend making mechanic, and towns to buy supplies and enter competitions from.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Wii - I felt this deserved a little section of its own. Whilst it seemed the game was ever so slightly let down by graphic limitations on the Wii, environments were still incredible, and the gameplay remains at it’s silly-controller-waggling best. I found myself in a boxer’s stance as I fought of the demo boss, using the nunchuck to shield-bash and wildly waving the Wiimote to strike when he was weak. It might have felt a little silly, but it was well worth it. Link travels, of course, with his seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, and the gadgets were as much fun as ever, including a wonderful Hook Beetle that the Link controls to grab or cut things he can’t reach.
Written by Philip Baxter.
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