Disgaea 3 is a Bundle of Fun

Quick Synopsis – Defeat your father, the Overlord, who broke your Slaystation Portable which had millions upon millions of save game hours.

This is probably one of the most obsurdly awesome games of the disgaea series and the genre itself. The plot is completely off the wall and allows the player to laugh at almost every single character in the game due to their wacky jokes, puns, 4th wall breaking and references to pop culture/gaming/anime (approx over 40 references). Some of the weapons make a homage to movies, tv shows, and games. There’s even a character that acts like “The Rock” who calls people Jabronis.

Although the 2D sprites have not changed very much from the previous games, they still retain that dangerously fuzzy cuteness (sort of). Both the english and japanese voice actors have done an excellent job in portraying the characters to the point where either choice is equally good. Personally, Mao’s voice is plain awesome just because of his hilariously evil laughs and the “I’ll mess you up” quote.

Most fortunately, gamers can beat the main storyline in about 15 hours or so without much grinding (repeating levels to upgrade your platoon of doom). Of course, the main temptation to any SRPG like this game is make your characters awesomely strong through the use of item worlds (upgrading items/equipment) and class world (upgrading characters directly). However, beating the main story mode is only the beginning for fun. There are about 8 endings total in this game along with 7 side missions for unlocking new guest characters. Nonetheless, there are 19 unlockable generic classes in case one does not like the standard generic classes. On top of that, each class has 6 tiers, each better than the last. And for those perfectionists, one can try to beat the last superboss on the hardest difficulty, Baal in the form of a shroom.  Before I forget, there are also legendary skills that can be unlocked for each weapon class.

There is an immense amount of playability and customization, since just about every class is pretty much equal (sorry, there is no class that rules them all).

As of now in Japan, there are 13 Downloadable characters for about 200 yen each.

For those who loved Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea itself, give this a run and it will probably be your money best spent. Do not let the graphics put you off, cause you would be missing the point of the game itself. What would normally be a 15 hour game can be easily expanded to 100+hrs. New Game+ option is a very nice feature too.

Although I have beaten the main story, chances are that this is one of those games I will always fall back to when I’m bored, or simply want to conquer hordes of demons who are 20+ levels above my party.

Farcry 2 is Pretty Damn Good

Quick Synopsis: This game takes place in Africa between two warring factions armed by one infamous arms dealer, The Jackal. Your mission is simple, kill the Jackal.

Despite all the FPS shooters available for almost any console, this game is worth about a month’s worth of gamer time. The gameplay and storyline are top notch without forcing the gamer to adapt to the game by force. In fact, the game is very lax where one can probably run down a good number of mercenaries with his jeep while drinking a cup of tea. Also, the game allows the player to play at his or her own pace so there is no need to feel rushed at all. There is plenty of customization since there is a wide variety of weapons ranging from assault rifles and uzis to rocket launchers and sniper rifles. In addition, all the sound effects feel and sound real. Heck, the jeep revving its engine or the whistling sound of a mortar can scare the crap out of the player, cause that means imminent doom.

The amount of time to beat this game is an average of 30-40 hrs depending on the number of side missions and diamond hunting the player does.

One of the most entertaining and satisfying activity in this game is doing the side-missions and unlocking safe houses. For example, there was one side-mission where one of the buddies wants you to whack this one guy for giving him a crappy car. As far as side missions are concerned, most of them are hilariously awesome and fun when one has down time to spare.

On the other hand, there were a few flaws that dock this game down from incredibly awesome to only great. One of the major flaws is online gameplay. For some odd reason, the multiplayer just feels broken. Almost everyone snipes, and sometimes the players simply do not want to die in one shot. Then, there are maps that are obscenely huge and invite players to become campers.

Another minor flaw was the glitch where one could not advance the game at the boatyard in Act 2. Whatever the reason might be, the game fixes itself if the player loads a previous save game file right before the end of Act 1.

Also, some might complain about the commuting. Frankly, just ignore those chumps because most of the fun comes from gunning down people while commuting and the fact that the bus routes save the player craploads of time when he or she does not want to commute. However, having a car nearby is almost a necessity, but that is easily resolved by sniping the nearby outpost or the circulating patrols.

Other than that, I greatly enjoyed the storyline and 60km of free terrain. There is plenty of fun to be had in this game. Frankly, just buy or rent this game for a week or so just for the single player, cause it is worth your money. The headshots and the screams of agony are the most satisfying sound effects in Farcry 2 besides the mortar and the flamethrower. Also, there is a good number of surprising twists and turns in the game plot.

Therefore, get it for whatever console you want, but the sixaxis is a very nice feature for this game on the PS3 (Just tilt the controller to change direction when driving just like a wheel). Nothing really beats playing a game at your own pace.

[PS3] Soul Calibur 4 – Good, but not Great

Cassandra still Kicks Ass

After playing this game for atleast a month, I am rather bored and unentertained with the game.  Whereas the gameplay is very well polished, the online gameplay is flawed.  Frankly, there are too many people who try to obtain the best win ratio through many devious and cowardly deeds.  Although this is most common in numerous fighting games, one cannot escape those conveniently induced lag-spikes or have the opponent purposely lose connection (resulting in a draw for online purposes).  On the other hand, there are plenty of good-elite online players who play purely for fun or competition.  One just has to suffer a few hold-up matches until the SC4 server actually finds a good opponent by random (it doesn’t take that long).

For the most part, stick to playing with your friends locally for good time fun, and use online play for laughs (colonel sanders custom creation).

The game will certainly praise your gaming collection, but the replayability is rather limited.  At most, SC4 probably has the shelf life of possibly a month to a few months for the truly dedicated.  Nonetheless, I would have to say that this is probably the best Soul Calibur game I have played as of yet.  Think of SC3 without all the fluff and that is exactly what SC4 is, except with online capabilities.

Overall – 8.5
Rent the game first, before buying it.

Disgaea 3 Meets my Expections

Having just bought the game yesterday and playing it for a few hours, I am thoroughly surprised and satisfied with the game.  All the controls have been remastered with the new interface to make finding information extremely convenient.  Also, the music and extensive voice-overs are very much top notch.  In fact, the music is so good, that I am tempted to find the original soundtrack.

Ironically, the english dubbed voices sound better than the japanese counterpart, making the game feel wholesome.  Hearing the funky orcs with hispanic voices talking like mexicans really made my day.  Also the one-liners for all the characters are very comedic and fitting.

I guess the only disappointment that will come to mind are just the low-quality sprites, but they don’t really matter after an hour into the game.  For those who already have the game, I recommend changing the art portrait from smooth to sharp to reduce strain on the eyes (making the sprites pixelicious).  In addition to changed gameplay mechanics, the fast forward/skip button is possibly the best addition to this SRPG genre as of now.

I will upload a pdf version of the game manual later to clarify the new features of this game and to save myself the trouble from ruining a really nice manual.  This is also because the paint on the manual cover comes off very easily on the fingers, leaving nasty prints on the cover.