Hands-on with Bayonetta

If there’s one popular genre that I’ve yet to fall for, it would be the third person action game.

Hideki Kamiya, creator of Devil May Cry, is certainly looking to change all that with his latest creation, Bayonetta.

Sexy and cool are two words that describe everything you need to know about this game. Completely shunning any sense of sanity in its artistic design, Bayonetta displays some of the most creative visuals ever to grace a screen. From the start of the demo I was thrown into a huge fray of ethereal angels, all of which wanted to split me in two.  The action is lightning fast, with enemies attacking from every direction; the tight controls will feel right at home to any fan of the Devil May Cry series.

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Photo tour of E3 ’09 — A story of Yoko Ono, Ninja Turtles, and girls who wear hair suits

Yoko Ono representin’

We’re reporting from beyond the grave with this post. Despite it seemingly being years old in Internet terms, E3 ’09 took place earlier this month – weird, I know. Our coverage of the event has pretty much come to a halt, but you might just see a couple of articles creep their way in from time to time, you know, like this post.

This time around, it’s less about words, and more about pictures. While in attendance, you only ever saw posts from me and Michael, but there was a third member who attended the show with us; Chris Guthrie. He wasn’t there to write, however, he was there to shoot fools – with a camera, of course. Naturally, courtesy goes to him on all of the following pictures. There are a ton more, but here’s just a sampling of our E3 ’09 experience, one of which sees me becoming the official fifth member of the Ninja Turtles — shit yeah.

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Hands-on with Trine

Post by: Michael

Trine seems to have gone relatively unnoticed amidst the crowds at E3 — I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it, had I not stumbled upon the rather small Atlus booth on the final day of E3.

Stepping up to the controller, I had absolutely no idea what to expect outside of a few small bits of information I picked up from Justin.

Trine is a self-proclaimed physics-based action game – with quite a bit of platforming — a style not so different from that of Sony’s star of 2008, LittleBigPlanet.

In Trine, you’ll take the role of three characters: The Knight, The Thief, and The Wizard, either by yourself, or with two friends. Each of these characters complements each other with different abilities. What sets Trine apart from other action platformers is the ability to switch between each of these characters on the fly.

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E3 ’09 Awards: Game(s) of the Show

Post by: Justin Sanchez

Let the drums roll because it’s time for the final E3 awards. That’s right, we’re still talking E3 over here and at the current rate, coverage isn’t set to stop until question marks. We’ve got two final badges to give out, one going to the best disc-based (you know, full retail) game of E3, and the other to the best downloadable title at E3, which covers XBLA, WiiWare and PSN.

For E3 Game of the Show, rules are a little bit different. No longer do exclusives get special treatment, this is a free for all at its finest. You bring a game to the show; you get your shot at the title, even if it was spread across 12 different consoles. On the disc-based front, there was extreme competition. Uncharted 2 is phenomenal, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a blast, the stupidly controversial Left 4 Dead 2 left a lasting impression and damnit, Forza 3 surprised me with just how good it really is. Will the quantity wasn’t there for downloadables, the quality certainly was. Cave Story, Shadow Complex, Icarian: Kindred Spirits, Fat Princess, Critter Crunch; yeah, they’re all good.

Like the Highlander, there can be only two, though. Or wait, was it one? In our case, it’s too – besides, who gives a damn about Highlander these days?

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E3 ’09 Awards: Some will win, some will lose

Post by: Justin Sanchez

It’s round three of the E3 awards and we’re just one away from the two biggest awards, Game of the Show and Downloadable Game of the Show. Before we get there though, we’re about to have a bit of an extravaganza. By that, I mean we’re giving random badges of honor to a host of games that were on the showfloor of E3.

Glance at all the wonderful winners, but don’t forget the losers, too. There’s a section of shame and dishonor at the bottom, which is sure to make the lucky developers of said games happy — or actually, probably sad. Either way, it’s on them for bringing shit to the ballroom floor.

Without further ado, I present to you the following list (queue applause):

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Post E3: Hands-on time with Sin & Punishment 2 leads to epic battle with the Cock Keeper

Post by: Justin Sanchez

North America wasn’t graced with Sin & Punishment until many years after its release when it finally hit the Virtual Console. Given the positive press, I never quite understood why Nintendo and Treasure never brought it over, but sometimes Nintendo is a hard company to get a read on. Even in today’s world of gaming, Sin & Punishment holds up strong as an enjoyable rail shooter akin to something like Star Fox, not light gun-like games such as House of the Dead. The graphics haven’t aged too well, but at its core there’s a great game to experience.

Back when Sin & Punishment 2 was announced, I was rather elated. Not only was a sequel to an import classic happening, but it’s actually coming to North America this time around. The unfortunate part is that it won’t be hitting until early 2010, so there’s still quite a wait until it releases. Nintendo still had it in playable form at E3 and, of course, I gave the game a spin (or two).

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E3 ’09 Awards: Best of console exclusives

Post by: Justin Sanchez

Before we begin our lovely E3 awards show, there are a few things to make note of. Although I’ll be doing all the writing, a majority of the winners were discussed at length between myself and Michael so as to not be based solely off of one persons judgment. The other thing is, being a small fry in a sea of larger media, we weren’t treated to the same luxuries as most others. By and large, we patiently sat our asses at the back of a line with the rest of the attendees, waiting to finally get our hands on a game. What this means is that we didn’t get to play every game we wanted to, nor did we get any time with many of the biggest behind-closed-doors games, such as Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed II. We would have loved to, but we just didn’t.

With that in mind, I’ll now be rolling out the red carpet and introducing to you the first portion of our E3 awards winners. Have patience, dear readers, as we’ll be piecing the awards into numerous posts.

The first set of awards goes to the best exclusive for each respective system. This year’s E3 was big on “only on PS3, 360, Wii” type announcements, so while the overall Game of the Show is open to all contestants, individual console awards are solely based on exclusives.

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Post-E3: Hands-on with Icarian: Kindred Spirits

Post by: Justin Sanchez

Although there weren’t as many downloadable titles at E3 as I would’ve liked, what was on display for XBLA, WiiWare and PSN seemed to be of particularly high quality. One of those high quality titles was Icarian: Kindred Spirits for WiiWare.

Admittedly, I was under the impression that the game was sort of trying to imitate Kid Icarus, but with a female lead. It’s a sidescrolling game in a Greek mythological setting with a winged human named Nyx (in search of Icarus) and a heavy emphasis on platforming, so maybe you can understand where I’m coming from. Nevertheless, I was way off base and have no shame in admitting how wrong I was.

In the 15 minutes or so I got to play, Icarian made great use of the Wii’s IR functionality. It seems that more often than not, you’re manipulating the environment to allow Nyx to cross, rather than her actually traversing it in its original state. For instance, if you need to hop Nyx from one low column to another that’s high and out of reach, hover the pointer over the high one, hold A, and drag it down low.

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Was E3 ’09 a return to form, or another disappointment?

Post by: Justin Sanchez

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but E3 is over. Big shocker, right? This year’s show was an important one for the industry though. With so much fussing and hollering about the glorious “return of E3,” no doubt the ESA is going to have a vested interest in hearing the reaction of all in attendance. Going into it, we were certainly told to expect big things, but saying and doing or two totally different things.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I didn’t attend the previous two years of the now “old new E3,” which are considered to be some of the worst years ever. I have been to three others prior to it, however, when the Los Angeles Convention Center was a mess of folks jumbled into crowded halls with booth babes around every corner.

Having been to those, it’s understandable that people with a legitimate reason to be at E3 wanted a more personal event. The problem is that they pissed and moaned so much that E3 ’07 and ’08 happened. The pissing and moaning continued until we eventually got what has been dubbed as the rebirth of E3.

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Post E3 09: Dark Void hands-on leaves me disappointed, underwhelmed

Post by: Justin Sanchez

So far, it ain't as cool as it looks.

I’ve been pumped about Capcom’s Dark Void for some time now. Mixing its flight mechanic and vertical nature into the third person shooter formula, I assumed the action would deviate enough off the beaten path to truly grab my attention and breathe a breath of life into the played out genre.

I was finally able to get my hands on the game at E3, and I walked away in utter disappointment.

Yes, it’s just a demo and there’s still some time to tighten up the experience, but time is running thin and Dark Void has a long way to go. For starters, the game is based on the Unreal Engine and the portion of the demo played was plagued with tell tale signs of the engine, including nasty pop-in textures.

Capcom games are some of the best in the industry, but the company isn’t exactly know for it’s quality story telling. I suppose it was foolish of me then to expect a character I give damn about, or that I thought might actually be properly voiced, at the very least. No; instead of what I had thought might be a mysterious character, I was given a look at a cliché, cocky bastard with some poorly done voice work. It doesn’t help that the character’s face looks poorly designed with textures seemingly stretched thin.To be sure, Dark Void actually looks worse in person than it does in video form – it was quite jarring.

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