Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour Trailer.

Maybe this'll be the thing to get me to dust off the Kinect?
I have hope it'll turn out well at least.

Assassins Creed 3 Trailer

I know a lot of folk aren't a fan of the new setting and are highly sceptical about how they'll make it work or fit, but it doesn't look bad. Not that a pretty CG trailer is indicative of the quality of the game, but I like what they're going for. I think people are flipping out over nothing.

Tricky

My PS3 copy of SSX that I'm not ever going to play arrived today as I expected it would.
That's put to the side until I can trade it in or something.

Been playing the 360 version and am enjoying that just fine.
Dislike the avalanche event. It always pisses me off when a game decides to mess with the established camera and control schemes. I'm not good at adapting to that kind of thing.
I feel like the avalanche stuff would've worked just as well, better even with the default camera angle and control. I know a number of people actually enjoy it so I guess I'm in the minority though.

In fact I feel like all that deadly descent stuff is kind of unnecessary.
I enjoy the wing suit enough but outside of that I'm pretty content just racing and doing tricks.

Kind of a pity no one on my friends list is playing the game, so the competitive aspect of the game is kind of nullified, but it's still fun doing it for the sake of doing it.

The Haul

So I went and bought SSX.
I saw it on a shelf. For the 360. And I bought it.
And this is in spite of knowing that I've got a PS3 copy on the way.

Hell it's BECAUSE I've got a PS3 copy on the way. But it's too late to change that.
Maybe I can give it away or trade it in or something. As much of an annoyance as it is, I'm just glad to have a 360 copy. I really didn't want to play that game on the PS3.

I also pre-ordered Ninja Gaiden 3: Collector's Edition.

Mostly for my bro, cause I'm a generous son of a bitch.

Also pre-ordered a Mass Effect 3 wallet.
Mostly because I really need a new wallet.
And if I'm going to blow money on a wallet, it might as well be a bad ass wallet.

And I also ordered in a joystick.

A Logitech Attack 3 to be more precise. If that does anything for you.
If you follow Giant Bomb you'll have noticed a lot of stick-related content as of late.

Between MechWarrior 4 and the various flight sims and space games, well it sparked my interested. I got this particular stick because it was the cheapest I could find. I don't want to waste a lot of money on what'll likely be a passing fancy.

When I have the stick I'll certainly be giving MechWarrior a whirl and I'll probably look into some flight sims, though I'll probably go with the least simmy of them. I appreciate the level of detail they can cram into these things but I know I haven't a hope in hell of remembering all the switches, levers and buttons that need pressing to get up in the air.

Asura's Wrath Review

I played the demo for Asura's Wrath and while I can appreciate the spectacle, I found it entirely too... QTE heavy. There was no way I was going to buy this. So I guess it's somewhat fortunate that my bro had more interest in it than I and picked it up for himself. With nothing else on my agenda I figured I'd give it a whirl.

And the full game is still entirely too QTE heavy.
Frankly I wish the QTE's weren't there at all, because I enjoyed watching it well enough.
I just didn't enjoy having to mash the B button a whole lot whenever engaged in whatever power struggle he Asura was currently in the middle of.

Between the QTE heavy cinematics there is some amount of actual gameplay to pad things out.

There's a rather simplistic beat-em up here. You mash B a whole lot to peform simple combos and then occasionally your heavy attack with the Y button which works on a cool down, but there's a meter that if you fill it you can enter "unlimited mode" and heavy attack to your hearts content.

You can lock on in the middle of combat but I found it entirely unnecessary. Stupidly enough the lock on doesn't stay engaged when you attempt to fight at range with your energy blasts, which kind of renders them useless in these encounters.

Though shooting becomes more important in other sections where you're flying about and you get an auto-lock via painting targets with your reticle. It's then a simple press of the Y button to send homing shots there way or you can just hold X to shoot rapid fire blasts.

Whether engaged on combat on the ground or in the air, encounters only last as long as it takes you to fill up your "burst" meter. When full you can activate your burst which triggers the next heavy QTE cinematic in which no doubt something bad ass will happen.

The beat-em up and shooting portions of the game are about as easy as they come, I didn't die once in the games 6-7 hour run time. Except to get the achievement for restarting from a check point after dying!

It's a decent looking game with an aesthetic that cribs from Asian mythology and sci-fi.
The game is over-the-top in all regards in typical Anime fashion, whether it's the characters being melodramatic in their kind of hokey dialogue or a planet sized dude trying to crush you with his thumb.

The voice acting is similarly over-the-top, but not in an intolerable fashion.

I quite liked the sound track.

To wrap things up whether you look it up on Youtube or just rent it I feel it's at least worth seeing for how ludicrous it is. It's the spectacle everyone says it is. I just don't feel there's much of a game here, especially not one I'd pay full price for.

3/5

Assassins Creed 3

A Best Buy employee has snapped a shot or two from their employee news section and...

"If this is legitimate, and remember, this is completely unconfirmed, it appears that the chatter placing the third game in the series in the American Revolution is spot-on. In the background is the original Continental flag, the Assassin is wearing an 18th-century military jacket and from his weaponry, jewellery and resemblance to actor Wes Studi he appears to be Native American."

A lot of people seem to be up in arms over the idea, but I think it has the potential to be interesting. I don't know enough about the time period or place to know one way or another myself but if there is a lack of the tall buildings that would make it difficult to pull off the series trademark climbing about kind of gameplay, then I view that as a chance for them to try something a bit different.

People have also complained that the yearly turn-around for this series has caused it to grow somewhat stagnant, so this seem's like it'd be a good opportunity to shake up both the gameplay and the setting.

Seem's screwed up that in one breath people complain about the setting, but in the next complain about how the gameplay has grown stale when the new setting might well allow for a different style of game.

That said I think there'd be enough buildings of reasonable height, church towers and such that if they wanted to just slap the old gameplay in the new setting they totally could.

MWO

As someone who in retrospect didn't get anywhere near as much time with Chromehounds as I'd like, I look forward to MechWarrior Online and the half-dozen or so other mech games on the horizon.