Shadows of the Damned -- All-In-One.

I have finished Shadows of the Damned after three playthroughs and roughly twenty-one hours. Shadows of the Damned was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Electronic Arts. Shadows of the Damned is a collaboration between Goichi Suda, Shinji Mikami, and Akira Yamaoka. Suda is the man behind Michigan, Killer 7, No More Heroes 1 and 2, and others. Mikami is the man behind Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, God Hand, Vanquish, and others. Yamaoka is best known as the composer for the Silent Hill series. So you have Suda's brand of insanity, Mikami's pedigree of action titles, and Yamaoka's brilliant horror soundtrack skills. Sounds like you have all the ingredients for greatness in place so Shadows of the Damned has to be a great experience, right? Well, not so fast. Shadows of the Damned is an all around average title. The story is surprisingly straightforward and coherent from Suda. The game has a couple of great one-liners here and there but it also seems to be trying hard so when things fall flat they really fall flat. Your mileage will vary of course based on your appreciation of juvenile humor. I don't think any of the game's characters are up to Suda's usual standard. Mikami's gameplay comes off as Resident Evil 4 lite in spite of having a few technical improvements like being able to move while aiming. The game shares a lot of concepts and enemy behavior with Resident Evil 4. The gameplay doesn't feel as polished as most of Mikami's previous titles. The game also suffers from extreme linearity. The bosses however are all of the epic variety. They're all interesting and fun. Yamaoka's score sounds a bit too much like later era Silent Hill to me but otherwise is an interesting score befitting a Suda title. There are some issues about difficulty achievements not stacking requiring three full playthroughs of the game for the 1,000. Which wouldn't be so bad if you could skip dialog and cutscenes. Especially the third time through the rather restrictive early tutorial stages. I liked Shadows of the Damned, it's just that with such a lineup of talent it's that you're sort of expecting much more than you're getting. What you are getting with Shadows of the Damned is a competent little game. I'm giving Shadows of the Damned a 7.

General Update - Nintendo 3DS Edition.

My 3DS is finally seeing a little action. A little less than two weeks ago Nintendo finally got around to activating the other half of the online aspects for the 3DS. We can now browse the Internet and spend money in Nintendo's eShop. Yay? I guess if you don't have one of the other seventeen ways of accessing the Internet on you being able to do so with your 3DS would be cool. The eShop is potentially important of course. You'll be able to access all the DSiWare and 3DSWare as well as the Virtual Console and 3D Classics titles. They have a bit of free 3DSWare up there in the form of Pokédex 3D. It allows you to keep track of your Pokémon from the Black and White titles. It tracks all the data one could possibly want to know about Pokémon and allows you to view each Pokémon in full 3D. It allows for you to trade Pokémon entries for the Pokédex. If I were eleven years old and gave a rat's ass about Pokémon Black or White then this might be the coolest freebie in existence. They also have for a limited time 3D Classics Excitebike for free. The 3D Classics line are NES titles that have been reworked to have 3D functionality. I was genuinely surprised by how 3D Classics Excitebike works in practice. I was expecting the background and the motorbikes to stand out from each other. And that's what happens. Those bikes really pop off that background in 3D. What surprised me is in doing that Nintendo has actually increased the viewing angle. In the original Excitebike, or with the 3D turned off, the view is three-quarters top-down from the side of the track. You can see the track and the bikes and the grandstand as background. When you turn on the 3D you'll literally see the view stretch further into the background where you'll now see the grandstand has a cover and there is a horizon and sky in the background. It's quite like watching a movie in pan & scan and then switching to letterbox on the fly only the increased view is vertically instead of horizontially. It's actually quite a cool effect and one that was wholly unexpected. The Virtual Console section has already proven itself worthwhile for me. I didn't jump in with the GameBoy until the GameBoy Advance. Having played the Game Gear, Lynx, and the Turbo Express back in the day I just couldn't ever bring myself to get a GameBoy. It seemed already outdated. I knew I was missing a handful of great titles but still never pulled the trigger. So twenty-three years later I'm finally getting my chance to experience those few good to great GameBoy titles. As well as the ones that have some sort of historical merit or place. In the two updates the eShop has had I've grabbed two GameBoy titles and one GameBoy Color. Super Mario Land from 1988, Donkey Kong from 1994, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX from 1998. I've played through Super Mario Land for the first time and I've replayed Link's Awakening DX. It really feels as though that Nintendo through a bit of both hardware limitation and GameBoy brand identification wanted a distinct feel for its GameBoy software. This to me can best be discribed as Bizarro World. It looks like Mario, but something's just a tad off. It looks like Zelda but again something's just a bit bizarre. Donkey Kong on the other hand is just one of the coolest concepts and presentations I've seen. You play through the original four levels of the Donkey Kong arcade game and instead of repeating the cycle Donkey Kong grabs Pauline and exits the side of the screen and Mario pursues them into a whole new world of puzzle based action platforming. Being able to grab some missing classics for my collection is a real boon in my opinion. Especially once they start offering up some GameGear games like Shinobi. And eventually the retail software will come. It's just going to take its usual sweet time. Hell, we're getting Luigi's Mansion 2, that's a surprise and a half. It feels good to, you know, actually use the system. And of course this entry is on the eve of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Arguably the first real game for the system...

Hunted: The Demon's Forge -- All-In-One.

I've completed Hunted: The Demon's Forge for the Xbox 360 earning the full thousand points. Hunted: The Demon's Forge was developed by InXile Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game is an online co-op enabled hack and slash action game. Think Gears of War with swords and spells. It should be noted that I played the game fully in co-op and I have no bearing on how the single-player experience rates. I imagine it's much like the Resident Evil 5 experience where the game is clearly designed with co-op as the primary mode and single-player as the secondary mode. Hunted: The Demon's Forge will clearly not set the world on fire. It's not a triple A title. However it is an entirely solid and decently fun game. The graphics get the job done. The story is standard fantasy and wholly irrelevant. The controls are workhorse and won't get in the way. The music is much like the graphics is just there. The score won't offend you. But you're not likely to find yourself humming any tracks. The gameplay has a few technical hiccups like snapping into cover from mid run when you don't mean to do so and some dodgy hit detection with projectiles like arrows sometimes clearly going right through enemies without registering hits. The game does feature some decent voice work and the two primary characters are really well done. They have great banter between them. On the whole pretty much everything about Hunted: The Demon's Forge is squarely average. The game is fun though. I'd recommend it to people when it hits clearance prices, especially if they have a co-op partner to play it with. I'm giving Hunted: The Demon's Forge a 7.