As per usual, I got home, got changed into my jammies, sat in front of my TV, popped in the game and played. Just as always, I set the difficultly to “Normal”. I do this until I get a feel for the game mechanics, so once I feel that I’ve got the flow of the game, I pop the difficulty up to Hard just for fun.

Now, the prologue of “Bayonetta” is a wee bit deceptive; you don’t have a health bar, so you think you’re amazing at the game, which leads you to believe that you’re totally indestructible. Happy days!

"Are you looking at my Big Guns?"

Then they introduce the health bar in chapter one, which is fair play to be honest. What’s the point in playing a game if you can’t die? So after the initial training and chapter one, I thought, “Yup. Got the hang of this, up to Hard we go!” Well, that was a big mistake. Not only did I well and truly get my arse handed to me, it wasn’t a one off either. Once I had died three times by the middle Chapter Two, I got the picture. I decided I didn’t actually have the hang of the game. Back to Normal I went!

That would normally be it but that’s not the end of it. By the end of Chapter Four I’d lost count of how many times I’d died. I’ve got my fingers, so means that I’d died at least ten times, but the problem was that after that I’d run out of fingers! I was mortified. I’d died too many times for it to be enjoyable.

Back to hell I go... again. Again. Again. Again.

I can’t remember the last time in a game I’ve put the difficulty to Easy. It’s almost embarrassing to admit. The problem that I had, was that I now walked through every stage with minimal damage and ergo, there was no challenge. I was in a real pickle. The game now bored me to tears because there was no challenge. I was the ultimate “Bullet Witch” but lets be honest, I was playing on Easy. So I cranked the difficulty up to Medium… and completed the chapter, with minimal casualties.

Chapter Five brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.’ I was really triumphant at dying but that didn’t help my cause. If I put the difficulty to Easy, I was going to be bored. At the time, though, I was getting pretty bored with dying.

There was a simple solution. Turn the Xbox off and walk away. Put Bayonetta under the bed in Northern Ireland and come back to Glasgow. Forget the whole ordeal. Problem sorted.

Crush3D isn’t boring. Crush3D isn’t predictable. Crush3D is not easy. And most importantly: Crush3D is fun.

The game starts with a humorous introduction scene between Dr. Doccerson, his best friend Danny, and the sentient computer C.R.U.S.H, which stands for Cognitive Regression Utilising pSychiatric Heuristics. The Doctor constructed C.R.U.S.H to allow people who use this machine to investigate their dreams and their fears. Danny, being the Doc’s best friend, willingly takes the position of Guinea Pig. However, not everything proceeds as planned. C.R.U.S.H. has started to develop her own opinions and feelings and she decides to take the test run to a whole new level, which can only spell trouble for Danny.

Much like the PSP version, the game revolves around moving about the environment, collecting marbles and progressing to the next level. Sounds easy? Think again. You need to manoeuvre Danny through the stages, manipulating the environment to achieve your goals.

What do I mean by manipulating? Initially you start off in a 3D stage, but you discover that Danny can “Crush” which squishes the screen from 3D to 2D. That doesn’t sound too bad, but, you crush in the direction of the camera. This means that you’ve got five different directions in which you can crush and alter the environment. You use the D-pad to change the camera direction, which rotates the view 90 degrees. In addition to being able to rotate the camera around Danny, you can also take a birds-eye view, looking down upon our protagonist. You can also Crush from this angle adding a whole new dimension to gameplay.

Don’t expect to Crush whenever you want – there are rules to Crushing! For instance, if you crush while you stand in front of a brick wall, expect to be pushed off the platform you’re standing on. Fear not; C.R.U.S.H. won’t let you die, you’ll reappear at the last checkpoint completely unharmed! There are many rules which you’ll be introduced to, and all of these rules add a new challenge to the game.

As if that’s not enough, you also need to collect marbles in order to proceed through the game. There are three colours of marbles and each colour is worth a different number of points. A Blue marble is worth one point, a Purple marble is worth three points, and the Red marbles are worth ten points. Blue marbles are dotted about the stage, generally speaking so are the Purple ones, but you need to search in both 3D and 2D to find the Red marbles. The catch? You can only proceed to the next level if you collect half of the total number of points available on the current stage. If character customisation is a must for your gaming, you should aim to collect every marble in the stage, as doing so enables you to unlock a new dressing gown for Danny to wear.

Marbles aren’t the only thing you collect in this game; you also can collect Memories (in the form of a floating photo album) and Trophies (which are… trophy shaped!). There is one Memory and one Trophy to be found in every level, except the tutorial stages, and you need to apply everything you learn to collect them! If you’re like me and you don’t like playing puzzle games, I urge you to try playing Crush3D; it takes puzzle games to a whole new dimension!

Dungeon Defenders is a Tower Strategy action game, with the idea being that you have to protect your ‘Eternia Crystal’ by erecting defences unique to the character who you are  playing as. There are four playable characters you can choose from, with each character providing their own difficulty level. For instance, should you choose the Apprentice, you play the game on the ‘novice’ difficulty. The other characters are; Squire – with a ‘medium’ difficulty, Huntress – with a ‘veteran’ difficulty and a Monk – with the ‘master’ difficulty.

Each level starts with a “Defensive Phase” which allows you to construct preliminary defences before the first wave commences. After you sucessfully complete each wave, you return to the defensive phase to construct more defences to cope with the ever increasing number of enemies.

In order to install these defences, you need a certain amount of “Mana” and as you’d expect, the better the defence, the higher the Mana requirement. Defences range from simple barricades to Missile Towers.

A unique feature about this Tower Defence game is that your character is not a simple avatar that runs about constructing defences then hides away during battle. Your character, should you choose to do so, can run into the fray and participate in the battle, which in some circumstances can significantly turn the tide of the battle.

In order to unlock more defences, you need to increase the level of your chosen character.  In order to do this you need to kill a few enemies. As your character levels up as the game progresses, you receive a fixed number of “points”  to increase the stats of your character… or your defences. The choices you make at this point can alter the course of the battle. So what’s in a few points? Well, a point in your character’s stats increases the stats of your character (obviously!) but put a stat point into the constructed Defences column, and you increase the stats of all your weapons. The choice, is yours.

Unlike many other Tower Defence games I’ve played, enemies take a set path through the stage and you need to organise your defences accordingly. Not in Dungeon Defenders. The stage where the battle takes place is huge and the baddies take any route possible to get to your Eternia Crystal. So in order to play this game you need to have a good head for strategy. Luckily, you can plan ahead and place your defences accordingly as the game developers have very kindly indicated what kind and how many enemies will be coming through each entrance to the stage.

All in all, this is a fun game but if you’re playing by yourself it can get boring. Luckily, the developers thought about that too! Not only is there a local co-op option and online co-op option, but the game is co-op cross compatible from the Playstation 3 to the PC. How awesome is that!?

EXAMS

We all know it...

Two weeks ago I had three exams. Three Chemistry exams to make the dreaded word sound worse than it already is. And my head has gone completely do-dally because of them.

Yet, in those rare moments when revision stopped and insanity commenced, it wasn’t my beloved RPGs that saved the day – it was mindless Hack and Slash. I normally swear by RPGs and don’t normally play or buy games like “Dynasty Warriors” or “Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll” but over the last month or so, I’m glad that I had them in my gaming library.

There’s something very therapeutic about mindlessly mashing every button on the controller to totally and entirelly obliterate thousands of enemies. And the best part of it is… it’s not complicated. You can give your brain a well deserved break. If you don’t fancy picking up a new game and trying to understand the new game mechanics, or if you can’t be arsed to understand the storyline, play a Hack and Slash. Whether you’re chopping enemies up as Cao Cao, or flinging enemies to Timbuktu as Zhuge Liang, nothing beats the feeling of satisfaction you get when you reach 1000 KOs.

Stress – Gone

Anger – Gone

All that remains is a very contented and stress-free gamer

Now that my exams are over, and Christmas is upon me, I can once again look forward to playing my RPGs, and put the Hack and Slash games back where they belong… in the revision box, for when I need them most.

Seeming as my exams have now finished I did let my credit card take a beating and I bought “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” which I was really looking forward to playing – but I can’t play it because I don’t have a Wii Motion Sensor Plus. I’m begrudging spending more money to buy this new fangled accessory just to “enhance the sensitivity of the remote” to play the game. Be grateful if you aren’t on my Facebook – my friends got quite a few status rants about it!

Anyway. I’m going to end it with just how crazy my exams made me: I made my flatmate a cup of tea yesterday… and I didn’t put the water in the mug. Exams make me go totally Do-Dally.

So to students everywhere – if you had exams recently, I hope you all did really well! If you have exams coming up, I wish you the best of luck!

If you do have to do my trick and step away from the console – it’ll be lonely without you, so don’t forget to step back to it!

These are just a few of the hopes that spring to mind when you pick up any new game.

Tales of the Abyss is all of these and more.

The game was originally released for the PlayStation 2 back in 2005 for Japan and 2006 for North America. Unfortunately, Europe never received it. It’s an anime-style RPG that leaves you hungry for more.

Tales of the Abyss is set on a world called Auldrant, which has been created by elements called Fonons which are present in everything in the world. There are seven known Fonons: shadow, light, fire, wind, water, earth and sound. Anybody who can use Fonons to cast spells are called Fonists, however, a Fonist who uses the Fonon of sound (or Seventh Fonist) are rarely found, but are very powerful as they can use it to read the future. One such Seventh Fonist, Yulia Jue, foresaw the future of Auldrant, and this future is now recorded on Fonstones. The future Yulia Jue foresaw is called The Score.

The story begins with Yulia giving us an excerpt from The Score related to our protagonist, Luke, and how the world has been prophesied to have unlimited prosperity. Our protagonist was kidnapped seven years ago by the enemy empire and as such robbed him of his childhood memory. Due to his kidnapping, he has been confined to his manor until he reaches the age of 20. However, events are in motion which sees him travel the world before this age, and in doing so this allows him to makes new friends, enemies and inadvertently oppose The Score which Auldrant has come to rely on. Due to this, Luke could potentially rob the world of the promised unlimited prosperity…

You control the difficulty the of the game, much like all RPGs – if you see an enemy on the screen, you run into it, initiate a battle, win the battle, get experience, then beat the game. So in other words, you could potentially avoid every enemy to make the game really difficult – just fight the bosses in the storyline, avoid every other enemy and beat the game while you’re at level five. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you could do it.

The battle system itself starts off fairly easy but new gameplay elements are added periodically which increase the difficulty and enjoyment of the game:

1) Overdrive System: each character obtains the use of Overdrive when they reach level 15, which when activated makes them more resilient to staggering, increases their defence slightly and overall battle skills.

2) Mystic Artes: when your characters reach level 30, they obtain the ability to execute an Ultra-Cool-Super-Strong-Uber-Amazing Arte when they are in Overlimit.

3) Field of Fonons: my personal favourite, when you (or an enemy) uses an elemental spell, a ring will appear on the floor of the battle screen. When a second spell of the same element is cast in the same battle, the ring becomes imbued with that element. If your character stands in that ring, and uses an Arte which is compatible with that element – the special ability will change, and become imbued with that element which will then increase the damage, healing-capability or support characteristic of that Arte. For example, if Anise uses ‘Eagle Dive’ while she is inside a Water-imbued Field of Fonons – she will then unleash ‘Frigid Raptor’ instead of the original Arte.

Anise using an Arte altered by the "Field of Fonons"

Once you finish the game – as with all Tales games – it doesn’t stop there! As you battle throughout Auldrant, you obtain Grade. At the end of every battle you will receive an amount of Grade proportional to how well you battle. For instance, if you don’t get hit and complete the battle in under five seconds, you will receive more “Grade” than you would if you got the stuffing beat out of you, nearly died and took twelve minutes to finish.

Once you finish the game, you gain access to the Grade Shop, which allows you to alter a new game slightly. For instance, if you have enough Grade you can increase (or decrease) the amount of experience you receive from battles, carry over the contents of your wallet, etc.

The Tales series wouldn’t be the same series it is today if it wasn’t for the Titles you can get throughout the game. You can get them for accomplishing various feats, getting them during main story line or any of the side quests. Some can even change the outfits which your characters wear.

The only bad thing about this game isn’t really a problem with the game itself. The only issue that I have is that it lacks in the 3D department. I’ve noticed that only the speech bubbles become 3D, even if I push the setting up to the maximum… then I just get an eye ache, so I have to turn it back down.

Anyway! Tales of the Abyss is an amazing game, and if you want to try a new style of RPG, I encourage you to try any of the “Tales” series. (Except Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World for the Wii). They are all incredible in their own way,  and if gaming isn’t your thing… then I have two things to say to you:

1) Go watch the Anime!

And

2) Why are you on a gaming website?

I’m not one for looking at the little bits and bobs  inside a console, nor do I know how they work. But does anybody truly appreciate the time and effort that goes into making a game look as good as does? I certainly don’t! Well, didn’t until quite recently. The game that has made me start to think about this, is actually “Star Ocean: The Last Hope.” I started replaying it (again) and it’s never actually crossed my mind as to how much detail Graphic Designers actually go to, to make a game so beautiful.

Just look at the quality of that!

I understand that that is their job, and they have to do it well to stay in the business.  Yet, have you ever stopped running from town to town in your newest RPG, or stood over your latest victim in your new FPS and thought “that’s a pretty sweet shot” or “that’s a beautiful… corpse?”  Well maybe not that far.

I’m starting to appreciate the scenery and detail to characters in games more and more. Especially if you consider at one time, the games that we used to play had characters with blocks for hands… well… they still do have blocks for hands…

Anyway, it’s pretty amazing to think just how far graphics themselves have come in the last 10 years. When the one (or maybe two) minute CGI animations were the height of graphic technology, that kind of technology, or more advanced tech,  is used pretty much in our day to day gaming world. It’s almost unreal to think just how far things have come.

For instance, just compare the graphics between these two Metal Gear games;

Metal Gear Solid - 1998

Metal Gear 4 - 2008

Ten years isn’t that  long a time, but I wonder how long is ten years in ‘techo-time?’ Somebody once said to me, that if I had bought a brand new state of the art PC, by the time I got it home, the computer would be out of date. Do you think that that if we bought a new game, the same rule applies? By the time we get a new game home, would the graphics be out of date?

It’s pretty interesting — well to me anyway. I’d love to get a day trip to Microsoft, Square Enix, Bethesda, Silicon Knights — anywhere really — and find out just how everything works.

The next time you pop in your brand new game, take a look at the world around your character. And before you dash off on your new adventure, spare a thought for the talented people behind the scenes. Albeit a very quick thought; wouldn’t want to keep you from your game!

We can’t mention Tintin and ignore his faithful sidekick, Snowy. His exceptionally intelligent white fox-terrier. Or dog, to put it plainly, who accompanies Tintin on many, if not all of his adventures.

As Tintin reaches his 83rd birthday, it seems fit for him to début on the big screens in 3D and on our consoles. The story begins with Tintin purchasing a model ship at a bazaar, and just in the nick of time, as a collector appears shortly after the purchase who desperately wants to buy the model boat from our young hero. Tintin declines the offer, informing the collector that it is his boat.  The collector then walks off, but not before imparting some chilling threat. Snowy then barks indicating that the boat is not all as it seems, which leads the journalist to then find a secret compartment which contains a mysterious piece of parchment that ignites Tintin’s interest, and ultimately, his sense of adventure.

Moving onto the actual game itself. The graphics are of a very high quality, as you’d expect. The attention to detail is second to none, whether it’s the detail to the motorbikes, aeroplanes, boats, characters or buildings, I can guarantee, you will not be disappointed.

The game itself is very straight forward. There are two types of areas. There is the three-dimensional free roam and the the linear platform areas, which are very… linear. These areas consist of moving up and down onto various platforms, moving left, right, and jumping over holes in the ground to proceed onto the next area. To proceed in some areas, you need to K.O. a certain amount of bad guys. Some of which are easier to knock out than others. Some need a simple three-hit combo, but some enemies require you to use the environment and various objects lying about to knock those bad boys out. The ones in a scuba diving suit are particularly annoying, but fear not! No enemy is safe from the deadly banana weapon!

One point to note about the free roaming area is that you can’t control the camera. It remains fixed behind Tintin (or Snowy). But don’t worry, I’ve not actually come across any bad guys lurking around the corner of some building… yet.

As you continue through the story, Tintin, with the Captain in tow, has to escape torrents of water, being chased by bad guys  and other such terrible events, which you’d expect could only happen to Tintin. The camera angle at these points remains fixed, where you are looking towards Tintin, and you can see what’s behind him, but not in front: the SnorriCam technique. This ensures that you’re kept on your toes when you have about a second to bash the jump button to hurtle over a barrier or some other obstacle when it comes into your field of view. The guys and gals at Ubisoft got the length of the these chase scenes absolutely spot on. They aren’t too short, and they aren’t long enough for you to get bored, or frustrated enough to stop playing should something bad happen.

The game also boasts a variety of mini games, from throwing a grappling hook to manoeuvre across the sides of ships, to grabbing a parrot to fly you about the stage. The driving and shooting mini-games are pretty fun. I have to mention the remarkable talent of Tintin and the Captain, who are able to effortlessly move from the passenger seat of a motor bike to the driving seat without crashing!

My name is Ben, and this is my first blog for Ready Up and I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, but none of my friends particularly care! So I thought that it would be fun to put my thoughts up here.

For a game to become a classic, does it necessarily  have anything to do with the age of the game? Can a game instantly become a classic when you play it?

For instance, look at the original “Final Fantasy”. It was originally made in 1987, the playable characters had (and still have!) no personality, the graphics and music were amazing for that time, considering what we have now, and let’s not forget to mention how many remakes it has had! Yet, just because it’s ‘old’ and had a few face-lifts in our time, does that make it a classic? Would it have still been a classic without the subsequent releases of the title? Would it be a classic, without the release of “Final Fantasy 7″?

If you look at “Prince of Persia” next, it was released in 1989 and it has also become a series. With an impressive eight main titles under it’s belt, not forgetting the blockbuster film as well, that’s pretty good going.  But lets face it, the games are pretty repetitive: jump over ditches, switch… switches, beat the bad guy, save the girl (except for Forgotten Sands).  The game itself is well loved, despite the repetitive gameplay. Yet, it is still a classic.

So should a game ever be deemed “a classic” by the media?

There seems to be many different categories of classics if you ask me;

The Golden Oldie classic like “Tetris.”

The Contemporary Classic like “The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.”

The Modern Classic like “Red Dead Redemption.”

It seems silly to have so many categories of classics, but the category that is most important, is Your Classic.

I’m going to leave you with my classics. I can’t decide between “Tales of Symphonia” for the Gamecube, or “Tales of Vesperia” for the Xbox 360, they are my favourite games of all time, by Bandai Namco. When I played them, they became instant classics to me.

As soon as I turned the console on, I fell in love with both  games. I don’t know how many times I’ve actually replayed them.

The landscape is beautiful, the story line second to none, don’t get me started on the plot twists? Who could have seen those coming?

We can’t forget to mention the characters, their interactions with every character in the game was significant in some way. Whether it was Colette naming the dogs to get a title, or Zelos talking to EVERY woman in the game — he got free stuff from them. Everybody you met in the game, had something to say or something to give.

So what makes a great game a classic? Who knows?

I can tell you though, it’s your games,

your choice

and your classics.