Apparently, it’s not just Satan who is solving crimes…
Look, I’ll just be absolutely honest here. I know next to little about Pokemon. I neither speak nor read Japanese. I don’t have the slightest damn idea what is actually going on in the video below but it sure is cute!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9j9RWkPstc
Apparently, Great Detective Pikachu will be released on Nintendo 3DS in Japan on February 3rd, 2016. There’s no set date for a Western release.
I’ve never been a big fan of Ubisoft’s tactical shooter franchise series. I know many who absolutely love the Ghost Recon franchise and I’m sure this latest entry in the series will be a hit with them as well. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was first announced at last year’s E3 and some of the advanced tactical gameplay shown by Ubisoft were interesting enough that I was intrigued.
I’m not sure if I’ll be buying this title on it’s release date, but the gameplay demo shown during Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference really built on some of what interested me in the first place. The game looks to make use of the Xbox 360’s Kinect motion controller and it’s voice recognition capability. The important thing is that the player doesn’t have to stop using the regular controller, but just use the Kinect as a nice option and complement to the regular 360 game controller.
With the game still months from being released there’s still ample time for Ubisoft to continue to try and win over non-fans of this series such as myself and from the past year since they first announced this title they’ve done a good job. The only problem this title may run into is the glut of war shooters (first-person, third-person and tactical) that will be flooding the market from now til early next year that it may not find a place for itself. There’s only so much money a gamer has to spend at any given time and with the economy the way it is even gamers like myself with jobs may still have to forgo titles like this to get those were more fans of.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has a tentative release date around the Q1 2012.
So while I was happily killing an afternoon liking things over at Get Glue [http://www.getglue.com] and while I was ‘liking’ the zillions of RPG’s that I’ve played, a recommendation came back to me for a game called Sands of Destruction. Made by Sega, it was originally released in Japan in the summer of 2008 and brought Stateside in early 2010. Immediately I got my grubby little hands on a copy and away I went.
This game starts with a good premise: Completely innocent rural lad goes off on a seemingly innocent mission only to discover that he’s the key to the destruction of the whole world. And the girl that he’s destined to fall in love with wishes to accomplish just that because the beastmen that rule the humans are vile and, pardon the pun, inhumane.
A good premise, however, can’t always save how that premise is executed. The story is slow paced in the beginning, and you’re lead around by the nose and unable to travel freely or explore for a good 2/3 of the game. In a way it’s a lot like playing through a movie. There is a plot twist in the middle, though, that speeds up the pace of the game and once you’re able to travel freely, then it’s pretty much on like Donkey Kong. It’s only a shame that the game and its storytelling waits quite so long to be that good. I’m happy that I stuck it out until the end, but I know a lot of gamers that aren’t quite so patient.
There’s also a bit of a learning curve with the mechanics of the game. You can customize your equipment in smithy shops located in the towns you visit. You can customize your character’s skills, although that isn’t explained fully either [I’m a student of the in-game tutorials, yeah, call me spoiled if you want to]. The game itself makes it too easy because once you’ve customized a certain style of attack, you can just use that one style of attack for the rest of the game, final boss included. Outside of this, it is your standard wait-time RPG battles.
In all honesty, the good points and the bad points of this RPG balances the whole thing out. I loved the story, and the different twists and turns that this story took. But I’m not a fan of the learning curve, and the inability to freely explore during much of the game. The game itself is a good idea, but I wish it had been better executed. Still, if you’re looking for something to play until the next Kingdom Hearts / Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest arrives on your DS, then I can recommend this as a pretty good time-waster. [3.5 out of 5 muffins – not as fresh as it could be, but it’s good if you’re hungry.]
Through the Shattered Lens 