Well, devoting that much time to a YouTube video may be a little steep, especially when the whole thing is in Japanese. I get it; everyone’s busy. We have jobs to work, families to care for, and games to actually, you know, play. But, trust me, it’s worth a few minutes skipping around to various points in the video to catch glimpses of the party fighting off giant monsters in the wilds. The livestream covers a lot of what you will be doing in the demo that will release alongside Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, and, at the end of the video, teases a superboss that the more intrepid players can fight. You too can see the same sights and take part in the same fights when Final Fantasy Type-0 HD releases March 17, 2015.
The Friday Collective is your weekly home for a host of videos, news, and the like that we found entertaining, informative, and downright funny for that particular week. Keep in mind that there are probably tons of stuff that we missed out on (guaranteed), and if you didn’t see something you would’ve liked to, be sure to let us know.
This is a fine example of the art of Foley.
I didn’t think it was possible, but they finally did it. They mashed together the music from the sitcom Seinfeld and the lyrcis of rap/rock giants Limp Bizkit. (Warning: Language, Fred Durst’s Face)
Traditionally, Brutalities were long combos that required memorizing eleven button combinations that resulted in the opponent exploding into a shower of blood and bones (biology be damned). They were very unpopular when first introduced in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and quickly dropped from the series after several failed attempts to popularize them. Enter 2015 and the latest in the series, Mortal Kombat X. The Brutality is back, but much simpler and actually brutal. Think of them as mini-Fatalities.
The video above not only shows off the new finishing move, it goes into great detail about stance changes. Your choice of stance can greatly impact how you play a character during a match. For instance, Cassie Cage can deal damage from afar using air strikes or grapple with her opponents. One stance may not be better than another, but that’s really up to the fighting game community to figure out, right?
Mortal Kombat X is coming to the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on April 14, 2015.
The Friday Collective is your weekly home for a host of videos, news, and the like that we found entertaining, informative, and downright funny for that particular week. Keep in mind that there are probably tons of stuff that we missed out on (guaranteed), and if you didn’t see something you would’ve liked to, be sure to let us know.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory has been in operation for five years this month. To celebrate, NASA has released a four and a half minute long video of the sun doing sun things. It’s awesome!
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) was our favorite movie of 2014. Can Big Birdman steal the Oscar nomination?
According to Bloodborne‘s official story trailer, the hunt for blood is on, but it will more than likely claim your life or your humanity. Either way, the story seems to be just as strange and obtuse as Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls before it. You’ll be browsing item descriptions for some semblance of a coherent story when Bloodborne is released exclusively for the PlayStation 4 on March 24, 2015.
By the way, we were originally led to believe that the game would not have any sort of defensive options as far as shields are concerned, but SCE Japan has confirmed they will be included in the final game. They will not, however, be used to the same effect as they were in Dark Souls as continuously blocking will only lead to your death. Being overwhelmed by foes will happen often as From Software has created a very specific pace to the combat. It prioritizes speed and aggressiveness in keeping with the wild beast theme, so staying put behind a shield for too long will only do more harm than keep you alive.
Update: Thanks to IGN, we now have a featurette of the nefarious creatures patrolling Yharnam. There is one thing you can always count on from the fine folks at From Software and that is creature design. They’re big, they’re mean, they’re scary, and they will kill you. You will read the words “You Died” a lot this spring. You may as well accept it now.
The team behind Strafe, Pixel Titans, remembers the past well. They’re creating the type of game that if your parents ever caught you playing it, they would think you were turning into a sociopath. Thankfully, those of us who would actually enjoy the hectic gameplay of Strafe have grown up to be perfectly normal adults. Right?
Anyway, Strafe is on the home stretch of its Kickstarter campaign and has already exceeded its goal. However, there is still time to fund the game, and some of the pledge rewards are absolutely hilarious. You can have the lead programmer of the game come to your house and kiss your ring (seriously!). That same reward also nets you a Strafe themed casket and tombstone for, you know, when you die.
The game is still in development, and will be until the intended release window of 2016, but you can play a pre-alpha demo right now. Just be aware that the demo level does not represent the quality of the final product. We can also confirm that actually playing the game won’t make your head explode. We know it’s only a commercial, but we remained cautious all the same.
I’ve been having trouble formulating a proper review of Bungie’s Destiny. I’m of two minds concerning this big budget spectacle. I don’t know whether I should review the game that is, or review the game with Bungie’s future promises in mind. If the former, then I would have to say Destiny is a disappointing mess that I can’t stop playing. However, thinking on the latter (Destiny‘s ten year plan) has left me in rapt attention for what the company has next. I’m not enjoying the game that I’m playing now, but I continue to play in hopes of being on the ground floor of Destiny‘s next big content leap.
Destiny, like the Halo series before it, is set in a familiar universe with unfamiliar events threatening the safety of all its inhabitants. Once humanity made contact with a strange sphere known as The Traveler, we experienced a golden age of technology and expansion across our solar system. This golden age wouldn’t last, unfortunately, as The Traveler’s ancient enemy eventually caught up to it and began the systematic destruction of the human race. Now all that is left of our species is a single city filled with those willing to fight for an injured Traveler. You will join the ranks of the warriors known as Guardians to revive the Traveler and reclaim what is rightfully man’s.
Unfortunately, that is all the story, or rather, backstory, you are going to get. The moment-to-moment storytelling is either abysmal, irrelevant, or nonexistent. There will be several moments where you will come across something interesting to the universe of Destiny, but if you desire to learn more about it, you’ll have to download the Destiny companion app. It’s baffling to play a game that forces a floating encyclopedia to accompany you, yet he never answers your burning questions about this (seemingly) interesting universe. Speaking of your Ghost (i.e. Cortana), this companion is voiced by Peter Dinklage who delivers his lines like a floating hunk of metal would, monotone and disinterested. And it’s not just Dinklage at fault here; the content of his and every other voice actor’s lines are either filled with sci-fi nonsense. What brings your Guardian to the various locales on offer should be understood as irrelevant by the player from the beginning. It’s all about the core gameplay that should keep you coming back for more, not the mediocre narrative.
The basic gameplay loop is as follows: shoot, loot, decode, repeat. This is the extent of your activities until all of the story missions are completed and you are left with the cooperative strikes and Raids. This is fine, for a while, but once a majority of the content has been completed, the rest of the game devolves into repeating content to grind for hours to gain enough of any one of the game’s many currency types to purchase a single gun or armor upgrade. In short, the amount of grinding Bungie expects of its players is steep, and it’s a real deterrent from any feelings of elation as the loot system prioritizes upgrading already claimed loot instead of new pieces of loot as upgrades. Even when you snag that new piece of loot, you’re only really going from one auto rifle to another with slightly higher stats. Nothing changes except how quickly you can kill the game’s enemies. This severe lack of meaningful loot is disappointing to say the least and a major oversight of what makes a loot game a good loot game.
This lack of loot is indicative of the entire game’s lack of, well, everything. The missions include objectives like reach this area, defend this area, kill this boss. Your quest will take you to only four different planets — Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mars — and only within a very small portion of that planet. You will be pressing the activate button on your respective console’s controller a lot, and you will kill dozens of any one of four enemy factions in each mission. Even with a friend the whole thing becomes rote as each member devotes half-an-hour to a single mission only to end up with one or two pieces of loot, of which only one is actually valuable to the player. The insane amount of time you will spend hunting for better gear is far too much to ask when playing the same few missions over and again for so little payoff. How does a game with such a massive budget accomplish something this meandering? Is it a lack of creativity? Time? Did Bungie bite off more than they could chew? It could be any combination of those things, or none of them. The latter is the scarier of the two prospects, of course.
“Well,” you may be asking, “what of the PVP mode called The Crucible? Surely that is a dynamic piece of content that scratches the itch for something unique?” Well, in one sense you’re right, but I (Donovan) was never a fan of multiplayer shooters, and this one certainly won’t engage me in the future. The mode, like the rest of the game, lacks anything interesting, especially the multiplayer game-types a la Halo. I would have loved to see some sort of Oddball mode or Sparrow (your trusty hoverbike) races, but all we get are deathmatch variants and a capture-the-zone type that we’ve seen copied and pasted a hundred times over. However, it is interesting to note that Bungie does a great job at leveling the playing field by allowing a level two character take on a level thirty character in a match of pure skill instead of a myriad of stats dictating each character. It’s also nice to see your Guardian gain experience and loot through the Crucible.
This review may seem like a long diatribe against Destiny which was one of my most anticipated games of 2014, but please don’t misunderstand me; I harshly criticize because I care, and I know Bungie is listening and slowly adjusting the game to hit the bar they set so many years ago when they announced the new title. The additional content that is slated to release promises to add just enough (even though the price for said content is egregious) to satisfy fans and extend an olive branch to detractors. Let’s hope it does just that. Also, if I had to say just one nice thing about the game, it would be the look of the game. The artistry here is top notch as each planet looks like it would in my imagination, only with the ruins of human colonies littered throughout each environment.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m being entirely too harsh on a game that has still retained a large portion of its player-base (including me). Destiny is serviceable as a social shooter, but falls flat on every other front. If every other front, however, were to receive a major content boost then maybe, just maybe, Destiny would become the multi-planet spanning epic I wanted in the first place. It’s just too bad this initial impression soured me against investing any more money into the series.
Verdict: 2.5 out of 5
This review is based on a retail version of Destiny for the PlayStation 4.
Read about our rating system to see if Destiny is worth your time and money.
