Demo: Batman, Arkham Asylam

I just got my copy of the 1.5GB demo on my X360 and was eager to get started. Although it was only a 15-30 mins demo, Arkham Asylum already got me hooked.

First you will be presented by the dark opening, of Batman delivering the Joker to Arkham. It was night and raining, a perfect sinister setting. Trailer looked very 'batman' like, if you actually watched the movies and the animated series, so off the bat, the game step on the right direction.

After a series of events, you will be immediately thrown into unarmed combat. The combat mechanics are very fluid; you can feel each punch or kick you deliver to the opponent. Every end of an attack chain will end in bullet time, creating a cinematic effect, although I personally feel they abused it. The targeting system is very much alike to Prince of Persia series: you can attack a target halfway, and continue the chain to another target.

Soon, we go into the puzzle part of the game. The demo introduces the "Detective Mode" mechanic. It is much like Assassin's Creed's Eagle vision, but it is littered with cool effects and information, like the target's heart rate and whether he is armed with firearms. Oh it even lets you look through walls. With so much information, I was afraid I would end up playing the whole game in detective mode.

And finally you have batman's stealth attacks. There are various ways of sneak attacking a target. One is the classic melee 'sneak up from behind' takedown. There are various ways of subduing an enemy like using the bat-a-rang (boomerang thing), (homing) glide kick from above, takedown throw a glass ceiling at the top, etc.

Oh before I forget, there are people online that gripe about the graphics. However most of the opinions are based on their own personal feelings. For me, the graphics are probably on the level of Gears of War 2, though I can't say it's 100% the same.

Anyway, that's all for the demo. Hopefully what I've tried here in the demo isn't 80% of the gameplay. If it is, then the rest of the game will end up being boring and repetitive (*cough* Assassin's Creed *cough* ).

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I'm officially dropping the bomb on my wordpress blog and finally shifted back here to blogger. Needless to say, I'm a bit surprised at how rough blogspot has become to work with.

I did some cleaning up of the blog. I have deleted most of those one-liner posts as well as stupid random posts that doesn't really mean anything to anyone who reads them, so right now, hopefully, we are looking at a much cleaner blog.  There are still more modifications to be done, espacially the skins, I begin to get tired of these colors. 

This blog has come a long way since 2005. It has evolved from a personal blog to a blog that reviews and rants about games, with otaku and programmer stuff at the sideline.  Because I am rather slow at obtaining up-to-date games, due to lack to financing on my side or ultimately not enough motivation to get them, I would be mostly blogging about games from the past, and making comparisions between games.  I usually like to explore non-mainstream games (again, partly due to lack of finance), like NetHack.

Hopefully, with that being said, I could get off with a flesh clean start with this blog, NeetGeek, where NEET meets GEEK.

Oh ya btw, feel free to comment and post any game you wish me to review/talk about. I promise to read the comments when I have time, but I cannot garauntee that I will review the game.

EDIT: a testblog for testing a new skin is currently underway. Nothing will be updated until the skin is more or less complete. Until then, please be patient and wait :) Lots of cleaning up to do.

EDIT2: Since blogspot is being such a b****, and since I would be busy until the weekend, progress will be delayed until next week.

Anime: "Hayate No Gotoku"

I finally decided to watch Hayate No Gotoku, after hearing about it several several times. I had no clue what is it about and I can't really bring myself to watch something which I have no clue about (aka I always have something else better to do).

So I watched. It's a Love/Comedy genre, with a fuckton of anime/game references. I always liked Love/Comedy genre, since it mostly involves two idiots trying to get together in some strange way. The latter reason obviously appeals to me; it's the reason I watched and liked Lucky Star. This kind of anime usually brings about randomness, calling the /b/tard in me.

So now it has, what, 52 episodes and already 18 episodes into the second season. Looks like I missed alot in the anime world. I haven't even watched Soul Eater, Beserk, and many others either.

If anyone got any of these anime, feel free to send me a message. Examples include Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh.

While I'm at the topic of anime, I can't seem to find (or rather, I'm lazy to find) good shonen animes (Naruto, Bleach, Gundam series, etc). Again, feel free to inform me about it.

Return to Full Metal Alchemist

I just realized one week ago that I haven't been following the FMA manga. So I went ahead to read it. What can I say? Now up til chapter 97, it hasn't disappointed me one bit. It could ever well be my favorite manga of all time...

On the side note, I need to start cleaning up the blog abit. The categories are either overused, or under utilized.

Review: "Hatsune Miku: Project Diva"

Finally, a Hatsune Miku game has been released (over a week ago) on the PSP. Although it is in japanese, everything on the main menu is relatively easy to navigate (just click and try). In other words, you don't need to know japanese to play the game.

Project Diva is yet another rhythm game (duh!). PSP buttons like triangle, circle, square or cross will fly from outside the screen to an allocated destination on the screen itself. It's pretty self explanatory. Press the corresponding button when it hits the destination. Like most rhythm game, such visuals are only meant to be a guide. What and how you press (ie the rhythm of pressing) will be mostly based on the song itself like most rhythm games.

But to me, that game itself is just a sidetrack from the real deal. When you play the music game itself, the background will actually be the PV of the song (think MTV). Unlike most rhythm games, in Project Diva, you actually want to see the background more than the game itself. To unlock the clean PV (without the notes flying all about), you must score rather high on the song itself, which a large portion comes from "Chance Time". While playing a song, you will come upon a "Chance Time" section of the song, where the more you chain, the score you get will exponentially increase. I repeat: Exponentially. So if you break your chain, especially in the middle, your Chance Time score will be crap. This makes the rest of the game rather redundant; olher than to survive the song, there's no real bonus for chains.

The PVs that were created were actually very good. Hatsune really feels alive in all the songs. Her dance moves are great, her flow is smooth, and they even got the detail down to her facial expressions. Just like the really good youtube.com Hatsune Miku videos.

Since this game is ALL about Hatsune (ultimately), you get to dress her up, customize her room, and alot of misc stuff I probably haven't explored yet (still busy unlocking PVs and songs lol). There are even popular Hatsune Miku songs like Melt.

This game is definitely for Hatsune Miku fans.

what's with Haruhi 2's Endless Eight?

Wtf Haruhi 2 got like 3 episodes basing on Endless Summer. They are all the same, will different angles and visuals. Are they on budget or something?

Piano and animes

I've finally dusted away the...dust (what's happening to my english) on my piano, finally finding myself the will to play every weekend. There's a lot of songs I really want to play atm, and I must admit I'm damn fucking rusty. I don't think I can even remember playing a complete song without mistakes (I take mistakes damn harshly).

I've been watching animes again. Haruhi 2, FMA: Brotherhood, and even old ones like Dokuro-chan, Gintama and Blood. K-On is a pretty nice show imo. It's like Macross Frontier; you only watch it for the insert songs.

On the side note, there are a bunch of games I haven't reviewed yet. I'll just briefly go through them:

GTA:Chinatown Wars - What GTA4 could've been. If Gamespot rate GTA4 as a 10/10 game (which is rubbish), I would rate it a 15/10. It's a solid game, with side missions which is not redundant to do. If you remember when I reviewed about GTA4, I mentioned that it has too much gimmicks and unnecessary side jobs that are not worth the money.

Soma Bringer - Think MMO. Actually, think D2.

Rock Band Unplugged - It's four buttons BUT has instrument switching. The mechanics is genius. And best of all, I'm playing expert and I don't feel it's a mashing game (unlike DJMAX series).



On the side note, Josh Anime Music website has K-on piano sheet musics. He uploaded himself playing and they all sound very good :)