Thoughts on the Playstation 4 Reveal.

As you all likely know, Sony held a conference on the 20th revealing their next generation console. The PS4.

Well, lets start with the bad. There was no new Crash Bandicoot game announced. Not even a HD remake. If it doesn't turn up at E3, I'm out.

Now then. The good.

First off, I was simply flabbergasted at the live stream capabilities  It takes an idea like OnLive to a whole new level. They were saying that you can see a game you like, ANY game, and jump straight into a demo or preview of it. Then and there. No downloads, no waiting. Search, click, boom you're in. It blew me away. They also talked about how games in the past may not have had demos, but now even games that don't  will give you a limited time to play it, or some kind of interactive preview. They put a massive emphasis on try before you buy, which is a massive step for Sony.

They also showed the fact that the new friends hub is more like a social network. You can post status updates, share your accomplishments  and even record a video to show off your skills (Enter: 10 second CoD videos everywhere). They also showed that you can watch what your friends are doing in real time on their page, even while you are playing yourself. That already impressed me, but my jaw hit the floor when they said you can be invited to take control of your friends game. So if your friend is stuck, and you know what to do, you can simply take over for a but, get the job done, then they carry on. It's an amazing idea, and I really hope it's as full on as they promise.

Along with the theme of this live streaming everything idea comes backwards compatibility with games. They talked about how you can stream PS4 games on the Vita, and that in the future, they plan on allowing you to stream PS1, 2 AND 3 games, all on the Ps4 AND Vita. That's insane. They have confirmed that there is no CD backwards compatibility, and no download compatibility though, so any old downloads of games won't work. Emulation in the future is an option though.

The announcement games were an interesting bunch. I was almost annoyed that some games like Watchdogs and Destiny showed up, because they aren't new games. We've known about them for a while now. Although granted the Watchdogs gameplay was pretty epic, minus the fact that lots of the GUI and effects are lifted straight out of Assassins Creed. They had a new Infamous game on the list, which I thought looked pretty cool. I almost missed it because my stream crashed, and I'll admit I got my hopes up as soon as I heard SuckerPunch followed by Superpowers. They also showed this odd looking racing game, based around an active world of clubs, and it's all first person based. The graphics in it were insane, and I'm really interested in seeing what Gran Turismo 6 will end up looking like when it has to stand up against that.

I'm not sure why Square Enix even showed up. All they did was show the tech demo they showed last year at E3, and then say they'll announce games at E3 this year. Pointless. Here I was hoping to see Final Fantasy Versus XIII as a launch title. Mostly so that Team Kingdom Hearts can get to work with Kingdom Hearts 3.

The only game they announced that was on my list of expected announcements was a new Killzone. It's a far cry from the older games, with a whole new dynamic on things. The graphics were amazing, and I almost couldn't tell that it was a live demo. I genuinely expected to see an Uncharted title pop up, and I was waiting for a trailer for it all the way though. Perhaps at E3 instead.

The power of the system is great. 2 terraflops of computing power with the GPU, and 8GB of ram is awesome. They have a game suspend feature so you can hit the off button, then jump right back into the game later. They showed a cool demo where they summoned one million random object shards on a map. They all looked like glass, and it ran incredibly smoothly. The lighting engines look good, and the part effects in games like Killzone looked epic. They also showed a tech demo of some dudes head, saying it had the same amount of polygons as a full human model in a game like Beyond: 2 Souls, but only used a fraction of the power of the PS4. They said that now you can have such strong detail, that you can show tiny flickers of emotion on a face, and games in general will become far more emotional.

There is also a new focus on helping developers develop. While they didn't really say much about it, I'm assuming that they have made it far simpler to make games for the PS4 than it was for the PS3. The Xbox 360 has a massive Indie scene because of XNA. It lets you code for the console, and publish your games with ease. This lead to it being a hub for wannabe developers looking to out simple yet fun games. The PS3 was the opposite. It's near impossible to get any kind of indie game to the PS3. You need to have specific kinds of code they don't tell you how to write, then send it to them, and if they don't like it, you get rejected and put back in the massive queue. With the PS4, it's looking like they will take a leaf from Microsoft and have a simmilar system to XNA. That's great news, especaily for people like me who are trying to become developers, as it widens the market for us.

The new controller is pretty cool. Though not as cool as it could be. It's got a touch pad on the front, like on the back of the Vita, but I think they could have made it more dynamic as an actual screen. There is also a light bar on the back, and a new Kinect like camera to replace the Eye. Apparently you can store your profiles on the controllers, and the camera will see your colour, and auto sign you in. Nice idea, and ties in with the whole instant action thing they have going.

Everything looks good so far, but they didn't give us the whole story. We don't even know what the console looks like yet. It's dated as a "Holiday 2013 release, but my sources say late November worldwide, in time for the Christmas rush. I think they might drag out the announcements over the year until then. We have Pax coming up soon, and E3 later on in the year, so hopefully we'll know more soon.

Microsoft have a lot to do to keep up with Sony now. I know they have brought a Cloud based company like Sony did, but i doubt they will have any better services for live streaming than Sony does with the PS4. There isn't much they can do past what Sony has already done, so I'm interested in seeing where they will stand on the innovations front.

Tell me what you guys thought of it. Good ot bad? And what do you think microsoft will pull out of the hat to match Sony.

Till next time.
~Awesomecake

Game Review: Eternal Sonata

Ay yo waddup?! Awesomecake in da heezee!!!11!!1!one!!

That's what the kids say nowaday, right?

Anyway, you’ll have to forgive me, as it’s been a while since I last played this game. I did try and get my hands on it again, but it’s surprisingly hard to get hold of around these parts. I’ve always loved the game since the first time I played the (limited) demo, and it’s always stuck with me as a hidden gem. I’m now awesome and blogging awesome things and stuff, I thought I’d start with this.

So, without further ado, here is my review of Eternal Sonata. The game is for both PS3 and Xbox 360. The PS3 version has some extended content, letting you play as a few additional characters at one point. I played the Xbox version. Shame really.

The First Hour

Probably the most boring thing I have ever done. It simply doesn’t give the game justice. The first two or so hours is part monologue, part tutorial and part introduction to the main characters. You get a good feel for the battle system, but not much else. The locations don’t show off the true face of the game too well, and if it was all I played, I probably wouldn’t recommend it. But, after you push though the long winded introduction, it becomes well worth it.

The Story

It’s not great. In fact, at times it’s downright creepy. Right at the start, you end up playing as a 14 year old girl following a random 40 year old man into a forest in the middle of the night. Seems legit.

But getting past that, it’s a very generic story. A rag tag group of people team up to stop the bad guy, and have a few hiccups along the way. Same stuff, different dev.

The story feels like it’s just there to compliment the rest of the game. It’s not great, but it works. There are a few things that weren’t really expanded on that should have, like the idea that Polka can use magic, and thus has a limited life span. They didn’t really show her using much magic, and the magic attacks you can use are so pathetic it’s a wonder they added them in. They could have made her a stronger character, making her use different kinds of magic and that in turn affecting her health, but beyond the idea that she can use it, and will die, it seems to have been overlooked.

Other characters, however, were really strong. People like Jazz, Falsetto and Claves had a great story, and it almost felt like a whole game in itself playing as them in their small chapter. It seems like they created the overall story before the characters, and when they made the characters, they gave them massive back stories that they couldn’t work on enough.

Although simple, it is still a good story. There are some interesting twists , some of which I expected, but not at the points they were at. There were also several points where I felt the conclusion was nearing, but they pressed on, which helped keep the interest up.

The Gameplay

The battle system is simply brilliant. But it seems like it was unrefined, and left unfinished, which is a sore disappointment.

It revolves around using time as a form of currency. You spend time making moves, and everything you do costs time (except using items). It adds a creative strategic edge to the battles. You can get a tiny bit more time by attacking an enemy, but it seems like a system that was only added to lengthen turn times while attacking, and doesn’t account for much. Later in the game, you also unlock a meter that charges as you attack. You can then spend these “Echos” on special attacks which cost loads of time, but have massive areas of effect and deal huge damage. The more Echos you charged up, the better the special you could use. There is a trick to it though. If you used a special right at the last second, even though they costed over 2 seconds, you could still use them. It’s not a very good idea in the long run though, as most simple combos became a string of normal attacks with a special finisher, and things became rather repetitive.

Another cool thing is the idea of light and dark attacks. Every battle stage/arena had light and dark areas, and each enemy casted a shadow. If you were in the light, you did light attacks, and in the dark, dark. Every enemy had an affiliation and a weakness, so you really had to plan where to stand before you attacked an enemy. This system also applied to the special attacks, and with some characters, you would have a light attack with low damage and massive range, or a dark attack with massive damage and low range. It’s a simple idea made into a very clever and engaging system.

The problem is that it all changes later in the game. You have a system of levels called “Party Levels”, and you level up at certain parts in the story. Each time you level up, you gain one thing, and lose another. But the problem I had, was it never felt like I wasn't gaining anything past Level 2. You earned 1 more second on your timer, and the Echo system for special attacks, but from then on, as soon as you made your first move, your timer would start going down. You lost the ability to stop and think, and instead had to start rushing in. It made the game become far more hack/slash than it needed to be. On another party level, you lost time, dropping it to just 4 seconds, and the timer started as soon as you turn did. It felt like I was being punished for working my way though the game and it outright ruined the battle system for me by the end of the game. I feel like the system could have been one of the best out there if it had had a little more love and attention.

All of the characters feel different. Each has their own weapon, and each weapon has its own style of play. I found myself constantly mixing and matching characters to suit the situation, which is a great thing, as in most games you end up sticking with the favourites and dumping the rest.

Grinding was almost a challenge. The enemies in the field feel very well balanced with the level of your characters. In most battles I found myself actually trying to win. It wasn’t a case of simple button bashing to get the job done. Every enemy was tough, and while the AI wasn’t the best, it did feel well made.

The menu system is abysmal. Everything is all over the place, and it seems that the only thing worth getting is equipment from the shops. The system for stacking items both in and out of battle is a mess, and overall it feels like the entire menu system was an afterthought. The only time I ever really used it was to save, which took forever to find the right tab and option, or to change my skills, which was a chore in itself.

The field gameplay is rather standard. There are a few trivial puzzles here and there that aren’t worth mentioning, and there is more than enough collect and return missions around. The side missions aren’t too interesting, but some are worth playing.

The Graphics

They aren’t great. But they don’t need to be. The graphics have a sort of western animation meets Japanese kawaii anime feel. They didn’t try once to make anything even slightly realistic. Instead, it feels like the music makes it feel. You walk around, and everything is bright, beautiful and magical. Everything also has a theme of music. Sometimes its instrument shaped plants. Sometimes it’s animals with little bells on them. Everything around you makes a sound, and the creators have taken that idea and pushed it as far as possible.

The animations are pretty smooth, and each character has a completely unique look. The style of the characters also keeps in tune with the musical theme (pun intended). All of the characters have music related names, and each carries an instrument of some kind as a weapon (besides a few characters). Overall they are well placed and well designed.

As I said, the graphics aren’t great. It’s seems too bright, and almost looks like a failed cell shading engine. But when it all comes together, with the effects, and the music, it’s simply amazing to watch.

The Sound

The music is the absolute first thing that hits you in the game. It’s simply magical how the music seems to work with everything around you. As the music gets higher, flowers bloom, lights shimmer, and birds sing. When the tone turns gloomy, everything slows down, the wind stops, and the birds are silent. It’s a wonderful tiny thing that makes the game feel so pleasant to be in. Almost every song is a huge classical symphony, with each note matching every moment ingame. I remember being completely mesmerised by one part where you are simply walking up a long path in an open field. As you start, you see some wind blow, and the music is very calm. As you progress, the music picks up, and near the end of the path, it’s like you’re sat in a grand hall listening to a magnificent piece of music. There are gusts of wind carrying petals, birds flying around, and everything just felt so magical.

The story is based around a man by the name of Frédéric François Chopin, who was a brilliant composer and musician  The music draws inspiration from his works, and if you compare the two, you can get a true sense of the love and thought that went into every piece of music.

They made a game based around music, and they pulled it off flawlessly. They nailed the key idea, and that’s something hard to find nowadays. Many companies will spend lots of time telling people about the key idea, but never really refine it to its maximum potential.

The Experience

For me, the game was a breathtaking experience. If you separated everything, save the music , and put them in other games, they would be subpar at best. But they didn’t, and everything works together flawlessly. Alone, everything feels like it would be a small part of a far more grand design, but when they all mesh together, it feels like you’re watching the grandest of undertakings unfold.

I’ve played games that made me smile, and I’ve played truly immersive games. But no game can compare to mesmerisation Eternal Sonata created for me. I just wanted to sit back and watch everything unfold. You need to look past the things like the unfinished battle system, and the terrible menus, and see the game as a whole to fully appreciate it.

If you can, I urge you to try the demo. It doesn’t give the best feel for the game, but it gives you a nice feel for the battle system, and lets you understand what i mean by saying everything works together beautifully.

The Cake

The game is well a baked mix (lol i’m so punny) of great visuals, a grand story, and epic music, that all combines into one amazing game. It’s often overlooked because of the small studio it comes from, and the fact that the game is based around music more than anything else, but I think it’s well deserving of its pedestal.

If the battle system had been refined just a bit more, and the visuals made slightly better, the game would get top marks. But, all things considered, it still gets a great score.

I’m going to award Eternal Sonata 6 slices of cake.

Don’t eat it all at once.

The Future

There isn’t really anything I can put here. The game wasn’t really open ended, and I feel like it ended in a nice, peaceful note, which is hard to come by in today’s AAA game dominated market.

The only real thing I see going anywhere is the brilliant battle system. If it was refined a bit more, it could certainly become one of the greats. Saying that, it already is in my heart, and it’s inspired a battle system you’ll end up seeing in one of my own games.

All in all, it’s a great game, and well worth a play. Thanks for reading. Until next time.

~Awesomecake

The game review format

Below is what we will be using as our game review format.

Most reviews will likely contain spoilers of some sort. We'll do our best to hide them from you, by using this wonderful little button:

SUPER SECRET SPOILER STUFF LOL

Although that button may be useful, it could become a slight problem at some points. Sometimes key spoilers are part of the whole point of the game, and so not reading them may take away from the review and not give you the clearest picture.

The reviews will be broken up into several parts. Below is a list of the sections that will appear, and what will be talked about within them.

The First Hour
The first hour of a game is essentially it's first impression. While it lets you get a good idea for the game, it's not the whole story. Things could go either way, but normally you'll know if you like a game or not from the first hour of gameplay. I'll be talking about pretty much everything here, from the visuals, to the music, and what story we can get in the short space of time. Gameplay elements are key this early. They can make or break a game for me, and if the controls can't be mastered within that time, the game goes downhill quickly.

The Story
Some games don't need a good story. Some do. Some have terrible stories with great gameplay. It's a mixed bag of tricks that demands careful attention.  Here will will give a broard, spoiler-less overview. After that, we will include a detailed analysis of the whole story (or at least what we know of it.) Inside you can expect to see our reactions to events, and what we thought could have happened. we may even go into conspiracy-level-over-analysis mode. Who knows.

The Gameplay
The gameplay is the meat of the game. If the gameplay doesn't  match the story, you've got yourself a flawed game. Equally, if you've got great gameplay but not story to complement it, it can ruin the whole thing. Here will will cover most everything, from how easy the menus were to navigate, to the combat mechanics and minigames. Everything that you do, we will look at and analyse.

The Graphics and The Sound
Sometimes a game demands good graphics, based off the presentation of the story or gameplay. Sometimes, it doesn't need anything to make it work. Sometimes you need an epic soundtrack to compliment the game, and sometimes it can work just as well silent. Here we will talk about everything. From the design of the characters to the narrative of the story. Anything that is heard or seen.

The Experience
This is how the game as a whole felt. If there was anything stood out, or felt special. Everything adds to the experience, from the tiniest detail to the biggest plot twist. we will write how the game truly made us feel while playing it, and what it was like to play. Some things can add, and some things can take away from a truly immersive gaming experience. This is where the games biggest strengths and flaws will show, and should help give you the best impression we can for the game.

The Cake
The Cake is our rating of the game. When normal people rate things, it's usually out of 10. But we are not normal. Or people. Or normal people. We use a rating system out of 7.
We like to think of our rating system as a fair one. It's an odd number on all accounts, but hear us out. When you rate out of 10, there is no actual middle number, unless you start using decimals. But, when using one out of 7, there is a middle. Having the smaller amount of numbers also leads to a more critical rating system. If you pick a 6 out of 10 on a conventional rating scale, it's almost the same as picking a 5. But if you pick 7, that's suddenly a really high number.
From what we see, it's a fundamentally flawed system. With a system out of 7, there are no values meaning the same, like with 5 and 6 out of 10. Having the fewer options also leads to a far more solid rating, rather than one that can be perceived to be good by some people, and bad by others, like 6 out of 10.
The cake is there just because we're cool like that. Stars are too mainstream. /dealwithit

The Future
Here we will talk about what we would like to see in the games future. Some games don't need a sequel, and some do. We will talk about what things could work in the future, and what would best be avoided.

Introduction to bojjenclon

'Sup, name's Cornell. I'm kind of a weird dude who's into programming, gaming, and the guitar. I consider myself a bit of a romantic, but that doesn't really matter to fans of this blog so I won't get into that. :P People online usually know me as bojjenclon, or boj for short. I've never met anyone else with that username, so if you think I might be an old friend there's a good chance I am.

The three things I value most in life are love, music, and programming. I can't really make a career out of the first one, and as much as I love music I just don't want the musician's life, so that leaves programming. I really have a passion for programming (AKA coding) and I want to make a career out of it.

When it comes to gaming, I'm somewhere between casual and hardcore. I'm definitely not a casual gamer, as things like Farmville don't entertain me in the slightest. However, most "hardcore" gamers are the type of people who think a game has to be 100% flawless (meaning the graphics, story, and gameplay all have to be top notch), the game has to innovate in some way, there needs to be loads of achievements/easter eggs, etc. They also tend to be very competitive. I don't necessarily agree with all of those things. I love innovation, and I definitely like a game to look good, have a good story, and have great gameplay mechanics. But that isn't everything. For me gaming is a fun experience. It's a chance to enjoy yourself in a way you can't with other mediums. That's why I don't focus on any one particular part of a game. It's also the reason for me not being incredibly competitive, as I feel it subtracts from the overall experience.

My favorite game genre is the RPG, or Role Playing Game. I love the immersion and freedom in games like that. My favorite game of all time is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. My second favorite game would probably be Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube. I'm a huge fan of games that give freedom without becoming overtly complicated. This is a difficult thing to balance, and as such not many games have accomplished it, but the few that have are very high on my favorites list. My least favorite genre would probably be sports games. I don't get a whole lot of enjoyment out of them.

Well, that about sums me up. Watch out for more posts by me in the future.

Introduction to the Awesomecake

Hi there. I'm Liam, but on the intermernets I go by the name of Awesomecake. I like long walks on the beach, and killing virtual woodland creatures. I was born and live in the United Great Britianland.

I'm a bit of a strange fella. But that's not really a bad thing. I like to speak my mind, and if my mind can only speak in profanities, fuck it, why not. I don't really care about an age rating, or censorship  or anything like that. I say what I want to say how I want to say it.

I've always been a gamer. Not overly hardcore, but enough to know what's what. I can't say I'm someone who doesn't care about graphics or sound. Lots of "retro" gamers say that that kind of thing doesn't influence their thoughts of a game, but for me it does. Nowadays,n graphics and presentation need to be coupled with story and the overall execution of the game. And you can't really say that past games didn't rely on that, because they did. If you look at the earliest Final Fantasy games, for example, you'll see that they payed an incredible amount of attention to the detail of the graphics, even if they were tiny 8bit sprites.

I like playing pretty much all kinds of games. My favourite genre is probably Action RPG games or JRPGs, and my least favourite would be Sports and Simulation games. My favourite game of all time (So far) is Kingdom Hearts 2, and it's almost tied for the place with Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep. I love the Pokémon series of games, but would hesitate to say it's my favourite over Kingdom Hearts. Did I mention I love Kingdom Hearts? I love to play whichever is the newest Call of Duty. Mostly because it's easy to play ad provides a nice amount of progression and action, and because I'm not half bad at it. Don't get me wrong though. I'm not one of those hardcore fanboys that annoy everyone. And I'm not one of those stupid people that preach about it being the best CoD game to date for a week, and then switch to the last iteration saying that it was better and the new one is shit. With every new game. I mean really, just go back to CoD 1 and be happy already. /rant

Enough about me. I'm sure you'll learn more about me as I post more of my inane ramblings. See ya around. My next post will be explaining my odd format for game reviews.

Introduction to the Brofist Blog

This is the official blog for Brofist Games, which is a thing that makes other things that other consume with their minds. We are just a couple of guys, who are making a couple of indie games. This blog is mostly about the progress of Brofists game development, but will also have a few game reviews, both old and new, and occasional posts about what we want to see in the future of games, or with sequels/prequels of games.

Did I mention the blog is about video games?