What I REALLY Thought of Demon's Souls

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately, I haven't had time this week to put together a Follow Friday, but I still wanted to get an article out; since I seem to be getting asked all the time about what my opinion on Demon'sSouls was, I thought this would make a good topic for a post. Warning: this post contains a lot of MAN in it, simply because he's the reason I'm even aware this game exists.

So... What is Demon's Souls?  According to Wikipedia (the source of all truth on the internet *snicker*) Demon Soul's is "an action role-playing game video game developed primarily by From Software (with assistance from SCE Japan Studio) exclusively for the PlayStation 3. It was released in Japan on February 5, 2009 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment."  It has received much praise for it's dark fantasy style art, and challenging gameplay.  Hordes of gamers (including one close to my heart) salivate at the very mention of this game, drooling over the prospect of once again diving into the world of Bolitaria and bringing peace back to this troubled world.  So.. where's the controversy?

Do you think MAN's a little excited to be playing Demon's Souls again?

First, some history.  MANvsGAME LOVES Demon's Souls, if he could, he would have Demon's Souls' babies I'm sure.. which leads me to some very awkward imagery... ANYWAY, MAN plays Demon's Souls a lot, and it was through his channel that I was introduced to Demon's Souls.  I have to admit, I've never been impressed.  I found the environments dull, uninteresting and lifeless.  The gameplay seemed okay, very challenging of course, but just okay.  There really didn't seem to be much of a story either.  It wasn't until I started voicing these opinions in MAN's chat that I came to realize just how LOVED this game is.. I didn't get it. 

So begins the controversy; back and forth MAN and I go about the game.. and always MAN's comeback was "how can you talk badly about a game you've never played?"  Well, you all know how much I hate to lose an argument (especially to MAN), so what did I do? I bought the damn game!  Now some of you are thinking.. why would she buy a game she was sure she wouldn't like?  I bought the game for a couple reasons: 1) I trust MAN's taste, he knows his games, and in general I agree with him about most games (JRPGs excluded, but that's for another post, and 2) I wanted to give myself as MUCH incentive as possible to like the game, so I could say for sure that I wasn't hating it just to win the argument.. so what was the verdict?

All in all, I found the game to be a below average action RPG, or, as I've been saying in chat "Meh at best".  I understand that the game developers were making a world that is basically dead, where the souls have been stripped of it, however, I didn't really get an eerie feeling.. I just found it BORING.  Never in my life have I seen a game with all of three colours on the palette.. brown, grey and brown-grey.  The environments which COULD have given more diversity, are shrouded in darkness, so that you can only see a couple feet in front of you, thus totally deadening everything.  Also, I find the armour to be incredibly boring, it is possible to have realistic armour without it being completely dull and unimaginative.  

The game that I compare Demon's Souls to most is Oblivion, as they both have the sort of realistic-esque worlds.. lets take a look at a visual comparison of the two..

Gee.. hmm.. which one do I wanna play.. I mean.. Demon's Souls could have come out on the original Game Boy as far as colour palette choices!

Okay, enough about environments.. what about gameplay?  Quite frankly, the game is incredibly unbalanced.  As MAN laments constantly, the only way to be a melee character is to wear no/light armour and roll like a mofo.  He attempted to play the game as a heavy armour wielding knight, and it's just too hard.  Also, magic is INCREDIBLY powerful, and can take the game from very hard, to hard difficulty.  Overall the mechanics are alright, and once you get past the learning curve, the combat is satisfying.  I found the enemies to be quite repetitive, especially since you are going to be running through the same levels again and again and again.  

The story in Demon's Souls is very basic, you are a hero, you are there to save Boletaria.  That's about as in depth as the story gets in game, apparently there is a lot of literature to be found outside the game, but I want the story in the game, not to have to go read a book!

All in all, Demon's Souls is meh, I pop it in every now and then to give it a go, but I still don't get the intense love of it. The only thing that distinguishes it at all is the difficulty level.  It is a hard game.  For those of you that are thinking "well that's why she doesn't like it, its too hard for her", I LOVE Super Meatboy, difficulty doesn't scare me, the reason I don't like it is that this game gives me NO reason to keep playing it to overcome the difficulty. I'm really glad I didn't pay more than $20 for this game, and frankly, it's on the "to trade in" pile of my games.  I really believe a lot of people are jumping on the "it's cool to love difficult games so this game is the best ever cause it's hard" bandwagon, and I'm sorry, but to people who say it's better than Dragon Age or Mass Effect.. I say "you should be committed".  I admit, I don't get it guys, but everyone is entitled to their opinions...

I don't get why people like it either MAN.

Flame shields are to max, come at me!

BTW if you DO like Demon's Souls, I have two channels to recommend to you, of course the wonderful MANvsGAME, but also Benderofx.  Bender does challenge runs of Demon's Souls, such as "crossbow only" and whatnot.

(This post dedicated to Boomzies, GQ and Duffmana)

Some of my Favourite VGM cover singers: Kate Covington

Hello again all!

So today's post is a little different, I want to share with you one of my favourite artists out there.  Her name is Kate Covington.  Kate performs covers of various vgms (usually Final Fantasy's), writing and singing lyrics.  She performs all the instrumentation herself, and I just love her voice and style so much!  I will put links to my favourite songs done by her, but really, they are all good.  She also puts together the videos herself as well, she's just super talented, check her out!

This is my all time favourite cover of hers, enjoy! (It's from Xenogears)

Here's another on of my favourites (and my all time favourite video game song, from FFIX)

Kate Covington also is in charge of the "world's only online choir".  ( I put it in brackets because I haven't independantly verified this).  They don't tend to sing video game music, but their videos's are still video game based.  This is my favourite song from them, scarbourough fair.

So there you go, check out Kate Covington, she really is great I think!!

Follow Friday Featuring Jhnny Crwsh!

Hello everyone!

I know its been a couple weeks since I've done a follow Friday (blame the PS3), so I wanted to pick a great caster for my return! I'm actually very disappointed in myself for not profiling jhnnycrwsh before this! He is an amazing caster, and deserves WAY more followers than he has.  He plays both games you know and love (such as Mass Effect (Titty Shepard LOL), as well as some you may not be familiar with (Nimbus).  He's a genuinely great guy, and just super funny to watch.  I think its an absolute TRAVESTY that jhnny only has 400 followers, this wonderful guy should have WAY more than 9000! (c wut I did thar?)

Jhnny is a really funny guy, but probably what he is best known for is having chest hair.. which naturally grows into the shape of a Batman symbol.. and thus BATCHEST was born.

Jhnny is also known for having great reactions to stuff he does in game, which is one of the reasons he's super fun to watch.  Here he finally finishes a super trolly level in Super Meatboy, love dat reaction.

One more Jhnny highlight here of Jhnny's reaction to the end of Eversion, love it!

jhnnycrwsh is a great caster and a great person, so follow this wonderfully disenvoweled caster today for maximum fun!!!

Review: Alice Madness Returns

Welcome to a world of complete insanity.  Alice Madness Returns is a game which takes the well known story of Alice in Wonderland and turns it on its head.  In this sequel to American McGee's Alice, Alice is competely insane, and Wonderland is her mind.  Now Wonderland is being destroyed and Alice must recover her memories and piece together the mystery of the fire that killed her family.

First of all, this game was AMAZING.  I loved just about everything about it.  This game would have been my game of the year if Portal 2 (and most probably Skyrim) hadn't come out this year.  The atmosphere of Alice is what really sold me on the game. Every chapter has a different theme, from a colourful forest, to under the sea, to the Queen of Hearts Castle.  Complimenting these level themes are Alice's dresses.  Besides Alice's grey dress in England and the standard Alice in Wonderland blue dress, this game has Alice in bevy of beautiful dresses, which match the chapter's theme perfectly.

I also enjoyed the gameplay in Alice.  It is a 3D platformer, with plenty of puzzles to solve and enemies to kill along the way.  The level design is phenomenal and the immersion complete.  Although some people complained about invisible walls, I found that they were in logical places and it really didn't bother me at all.  I also found the combat incredibly satisfying.  For those that watched me do this playthrough, you know that "CHATIA SMASH" was one of my most common sayings.  Alice is given 4 weapons with which to deal death and destruction in Wonderland, the knife, a hobby horse, a teapot and a pepper grinder.  Each can be leveled up by collecting teeth (yes teeth).  The hobby horse was my personal favourite and was how I smashed things ^^.  The enemies in this game are also incredibly creepy and fit the worlds they inhabit perfectly!  Overall the design in this game was great!

Yup, stripping homicidal dolls naked and then killing them.. thats Alice!

All of your favourite Alice in Wonderland characters are present, though perhaps not as you would have imagined them (especially if your only experience with this franchise is Disney).  The Mad Hatter, Caterpillar, and my personal favourite, the Cheshire Cat are all here, and wanting to help (or hurt) Alice.  Also present is the well known "eat me" and "drink me" premises, with Alice shrinking being a key mechanic of the game.  I would include the highlight of me stomping on enemies after eating something labelled "eat me" but unfortunately TTV won't let me get to any of my highlights right now.. so check out my videos for that (I'll link it as soon as I am able).  I really cannot express how much this game messes with your mind.  Especially later on, the lines between reality and Wonderland totally blur, creating a sense of truly being lost, insane and confused, just like Alice.  One level in particular, the insane asylum, really creeped me out and had me very freaked. 

Overall this is a fantastic game and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves platforming or just a creepy game.

I give Alice: Madness Returns 5 naked homicidal dolls out of 5.

Review: Metroid Prime 2 Echoes

It's well known that I'm a lover of the Metroid franchise.  Samus is one of my favourite video game characters, and is near and dear to my heart.  Does Metroid Prime 2 live up to my expectations of the Metroid franchise? Read on!

The game starts as Samus is respoding to a distress signal from an unknown planet.  Her ship is damaged in the landing, so she begins to search for the people that sent the distress signal while her ship auto repairs.. and thus the adventure begins.

The first thing I noticed about this game is the atmosphere.  You land in a creepy cavern, with vines hanging from the roof, its dark and kinda eerie.  Then undead soldiers start coming alive, and it just feels so right.  The great atmosphere continues throughout the game as you explore the Agon Wastes, the Bog, and the Tower (can't remember the real names, sorry).  Another twist that this game has is that there is a light world and a dark world to each area.  The light world acts just like areas in Prime did, but in the dark world, the atmosphere damages Samus, and so it is necessary to stay in light "bubbles" in order to stay alive.  I've heard some people say they don't like this mechanic, but personally I didn't mind it.  The bubbles were close enough together that it wasn't inconvenient to use them.  With one exception: the boost ball guardian.  This is a tough fight, and you have to do it with no light bubbles, which makes it even tougher.  I would argue that this is the toughest boss in the game by far!  Here's a Youtube link as my cast of this part has unfortunately been deleted ><.

Another difference in this game from normal Metroid games is the amount of usage the morph ball gets.  In most Metroid games the morph ball is just one more tool Samus uses to get through small areas, but in Prime 2, the morph ball is used for platforming and boss fights.  I thought this was really great, as I enjoy the morph ball a lot, so it was nice to finally get to use it (see the final boss fight, phase 2 for an example).  I enjoyed the ammo system in this game as well, the light and dark beams were a nice change from the normal Ice beam, wave beam etc.

I also enjoyed the boss fights in this game a lot more than Metroid Prime 1.  I found a lot of the bosses in Prime 1 to be very gimmicky.  However in Prime 2 the bosses require you to use all the tools available to you at the time, and often have very interesting mechanics (for instance Quadraxis which uses spider ball, sound visor and all your ammo)

Here's the vid of me defeating the final boss, it showcases some of the different mechanics in the game (note, I have a suit that stops me from taking damage in the dark world)

Overall I truly enjoyed this game, and would definitely rate it above Prime 1.  This was one of my favourite Metroids, I would rate it second only to Super Metroid.  Thanks a lot to Drakeonk for donating it, I had a blast!

Rating- 4 spider ball boosts out of 5

Follow Friday Featuring Guns Are Toys!

Hello again everyone, it's Friday so once more it's time for Follow Friday, this time featuring Guns Are Toys (Guns).

Guns has been an active member of my community for some time, and I've been really happy to have him in my chats.  Guns has a great sense of humour and has a lot of fun whether he's in a chat or playing the games himself.  One of the things I like about Guns' casts is that he plays games a lot of other people don't play.  Guns loves Magic, and has casted himself play Magic on multiple occasions.  Other games which he has played include Killing Floor, Oblivion and Magicka.  Lately Guns has been playing through Monster Hunter Tri (A game I am completely unfamiliar with).  He's been having a tough time getting some viewers in his room, and I really believe it's because people just don't know about him! I highly recommend him if you're looking for a caster that doesn't just play the games everyone else is.   His cast looks and sounds great, and there's no reason y'all shouldn't be watching him, especially if you're into the Magic.

Here's a highlight of Guns' playthrough of Oblivion, where he enjoys a random glitch ^^

So please give Guns_are_toys a follow, expand your gaming horizons people!

Follow Friday Featuring EddieRuckus!

Hello again everyone, it's time again for Follow Friday, today featuring EddieRuckus!!!  Now I know I said Follow Fridays would generally be for new people, but I'm making an exception today.  Eddie is less than 100 followers to 1000!  At 1000 followers he is doing a run of Dead Space 2 on the hardest mode possible, so lets get the word out and get him to 1000 followers!!

My husband Solidbeef first introduced me to Eddie's casts.  The first night I watched Eddie, he was playing Rock Band, and wow, was he good.  Eddie can play most songs on hard mode to a tee, while still managing to read chat during the song.  One of Eddie's weekly features is Rock Band request night, which is exactly as it sounds!  Eddie plays the songs requested from his viewers, who pick from the list of all songs he has (and he has a lot).  Rock Band request night is one of my favourite casts, it's usually a fun time all around, and really has the feel of hanging out with your friends while someone rocks out your favourite songs.  Besides Rock Band, Eddie tends to play newer games such as Dead Space and Mass Effect.  Though... he did do a stint with Hello Kitty Party Adventure.. but he probably doesn't want me mentioning that.  Here is a highlight from one of Eddie's casts where he shows his prowess at driving a boat!

Eddie was also the brains behind the Chatiatank and Beefboomer pictures, which came about from our L4D sessions.  We play L4D versus on his cast quite a bit, and it's a really fun time, always enjoy killing Eddie in front of as many people as possible.  Here's one of the banners from his channel for our L4D casts (and don't worry he has a watermark to match.

Eddie loves him some L4D

Eddie is involved in the community and is really supportive to his friends; he was the brains behind Meat Aid, the event to get Meat_Jesus to 1000 followers. He can also be a troll of most epic proportions (see banner above), and (most importantly to me Kappa) Eddie is a mod in my channel and a great one at that!  So follow EddieRuckus, lets get him to 1000 Followers!!