Launch Station: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Released just under a year ago, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings quickly became the best PC exclusive of 2011 with an incredible amont of critical success as the game went on to win 50 Game of the Year awards.  Now close to a year later, CD Projekt RED has brought their 2011 fantasy RPG epic to the Xbox 360.  For the Xbox 360 release, CD Projekt RED has added more content to deem adding it the Enhanced Edition to the name.  For those who has already bought The Witcher 2 for PC, do not worry that you are going to be missing out as you can download the Enhanced Edition update for free.

You control Geralt of Rivia, one of the few remaining Witchers (monster hunters in this fantasy world).  Caught in the political struggles of the kingdom of Terneria, Geralt has to pick his sides and make hard moral decisions in order to find King Foltest's assassin and clear his name.  The Witcher 2 for the 360 is not just a straight port of the PC version.  CD Projekt RED has worked hard to tailor the whole Witcher experience for the console.  The controls, targeting, camera and interface have been re-designed to best use the 360 controller.  Being the Enhanced Edition of Witcher 2, CD Projekt RED has added a lot of additional content to the game's console debut.  New adventures, new locations, new characters, new monsters and new mysteries, which add more hours of gameplay and expand the Witcher 2's rich story.  The Enhanced Edition of Witcher 2 also features a whole new opening cinematic that depicts the the events which sets-up the story for Witcher 2.

For those hardcore gamers such as yours truly that does not own an extremely powerful PC, the Enhanced Edition of Witcher 2 is the only way you are going to get your hands-on this critically acclaimed fantasy RPG.  If it was not for how much money I spent on video games in this past month and the fact I cannot play two huge RPGs at the same time (focusing on Xenoblade Chronicles at the moment), I would be picking up The Witcher 2 tomorrow.  Having heard great things about it and having tried the PC demo through Screwattack's streaming demo service, I have been looking forward to this game for a while now.  Before the end of this year, I will most likely pick up The Witcher 2 for my family's 360.  If you missed out on The Witcher 2 when it released a year ago and you own a Xbox 360, there is no better game that releases this week.  If you already have The Witcher 2 for PC, you are better off downloading the new update than picking it up for the 360.

Bit by Bit: April 8-14

Another week, another recap.  Been another busy week for me with everything going on.  Did not get as much gaming as I wanted to.  Also my rechargeable battery for my Wii lost all of its charge before I even got a chance to use it tonight when I wanted to play my Wii, so I am a little annoyed to say the least.  If everything works out, I will hopefully spend more time playing this coming week.

Game of the Week
With Kid Icarus: Uprising finished (check out the review posted earlier today), I have now moved from my 3DS to my Wii to play Nintendo and Monolith Soft's epic RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles.  While I have been working on the game for a week now, I am only eight hours in.  Like I said, I have been busy.  Most of my time with Xenoblade so far has been completing the game's incredible amount of side quests.  Ranging from kill a certain enemy to collect a certain item to simple fetch quests, these quests are not as extravagant as those found in a Western RPG like Mass Effect 3 or Skyrim, but I find them just as fun.  It always feels like you are accomplishing something in the game no matter how small.  Also the Xenoblade's world is awe-inspiringly huge.  From the very outset of the game, you can explore as much of the opening area as you want.  In a smart move, you receive experience points for completing side quests and discovering new areas and landmarks, which will gives players the incentive to explore every corner of Bionis.  I have not even gotten to the combat and the story yet, which are both great.  The story  is really good and the opening offers one twist that left me in utter disbelief.  The real-time combat does take a bit to get used to all its intricacies.  Once you get the hang of it, the combat becomes almost second nature.  I have to thank Nintendo for bringing Xenoblade Chronicles to North America.  Now Wii owners need to do their part and pick buy this game immediately, it is that damn good.

Most Anticipated Game of the Week
When Pokemon Black and White 2 were announced earlier this year, some thought it would be a rehash of Black and White with a few additions much like every third entry in a Pokemon Generation.  The first trailer and screenshots went live today and Nintendo and GameFreak look to be making two Pokemon games worthy of being the sequels to possibly the best Pokemon games out there.  Black and White 2 take place in the Unova region, but is set two years after the events of the originals.  Thanks to the legendary ice Pokemon Kyurem, a good chuck of the Unova region is frozen in ice, while other areas have been altered as well.  You will play as one of two new protagonists with a whole new rival to battle and a new professor to set you on your way.  Black and White 2 also features new cities and new gym leaders.  So far Black and White 2 look to be full-on sequels to the excellent Pokemon Black and White, which is making me excited.  I still want to see more from these games.  If it is more like what Nintendo and Game Freak have already shown, I will be getting this game when it releases this fall.


Video of the Week
This past Tuesday saw a whole lot of media coverage on Capcom's Captivate event go live.  One of the pieces of media coverage was the updated release date for Resident Evil 6, now October 2nd, along with a new trailer.  The newest trailer is just as epic as the first.  It documents the new C-Virus, reveals the new protagonist along with Chris and Leon to be Wesker's son, Jack Muller, has a woman that highly resembles Ada Wong and ends with a standoff between Leon and Chris.  Man, the more Capcom shows of Resident Evil 6 the better.  This games looks to shaping up to be one of the biggest releases of the year.

Kid Icarus: Uprising Review

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”  The first line of dialogue in Kid Icarus: Uprising is an apology to fans that have been waiting close to 20 years for a new Kid Icarus game.  Uprising serves as one hell of an apology from Nintendo.  The fast-paced action, witty banter, fun story and solid multi-player far outweigh Uprising’s few shortcomings to create one of the best games available for the Nintendo 3DS.

Medusa is back and it is up to Pit and the Goddess of Light, Palutena to stop her and the Underworld Army.  Kid Icarus: Uprising’s story mode is one hell of a ride containing some great twists and turns that keep things fresh and exciting.  When you think Uprising is over, Nintendo and Project Sora throws an amazing twist that has to be seen to understand how great it is.  Every character in Uprising is completely voiced and unlike Nintendo’s other attempts of adding voice acting to their games, the voice acting in Uprising is superb.  The almost constant banter each of Uprising’s levels, which may be a turnoff for some, is highly enjoyable as it breaks the fourth wall early and often, which makes for some truly hilarious and memorable lines.

As an aid to fight Medusa and her Underworld Army, Palutena grants Pit the “Power of Flight”, which allows Pit to fly for five minutes at a time.  This story element plays right into the gameplay as each level is broken into sections, air battle and land battle.  Air Battle plays much like an on-rails shooter such as Sin & Punishment as you control Pit’s projectiles and position on the screen while he flies through the environment.  Land Battle is fairly linear, but offers Pit more freedom to move around the environment and battle enemies.  This simple formula might get tedious in lesser games, but Uprising’s levels are so diverse and unique that it keeps things from getting repetitive.  Plus playing on higher intensities, which can be adjusted by offering hearts (Uprising’s currency) to the Fiend Cauldron, opens up new rooms to explore and better items to collect thus creating many reasons to replay Uprising. 

Aside from the story mode, Kid Icarus: Uprising includes a full-on multi-player that is much more than tacked on.  You can play locally with friends or online over the Nintendo Network in either Free for All or Light vs. Dark.  Each multi-player mode plays out much like the Land Battles in the single-player, but in a big non-linear arena.  Out of the two modes, Light vs. Dark is the most compelling.  In Light vs. Dark, you are split into two teams, the aforementioned Light and Dark.  Each time a person dies on either team, you lose a portion of the team life bar.  Once a team’s life bar is completely gone, one member of said team becomes either Pit or Dark Pit, depending on if the team is Light or Dark.  Once Pit or Dark Pit loses their entire life bar, the match is over.  Overall, the multi-player is just as fun and frantic as the single-player and ran without any hitches for this writer.  Like some have said, you initially buy Uprising for the story mode, but stay for the multi-player.

The biggest polarizing feature of Kid Icarus: Uprising is the game’s controls.  You either love them or hate them.  For veteran handheld gamers, Uprising’s controls are very similar to those of Metroid Prime Hunters for the original DS.  You control Pit’s movements with the Circle Pad, the camera and aiming reticle with the stylus and attack and/or fire projectiles with the L Shoulder Button.  It takes a bit of getting used to and might cause a few hand cramps if you play for long periods of time.  The key point is that you can play Kid Icarus: Uprising, even in 3D, without the stand that comes packaged with the game.  After a little time with the game, I adjusted to the controls and found them very intuitive even if the few instances they do make things a little more complicated.  Other than a few shortcomings with the game’s controls, the game’s Augmented Reality features feel tacked on and more or less completely useless.

While Kid Icarus: Uprising has a couple of shortcomings with the controls and the useless AR Card Battles, the fast-paced action, witty fourth wall breaking banter, exciting story and solid multi-player sure make up for those shortcomings.  It is one of the best games you can find for the 3DS and one incredible apology to those who have been waiting for a new Kid Icarus since Game Boy days.  Hopefully Nintendo won’t make us wait another 20 years for the next entry in the Kid Icarus series.

On the Download: April 8-14

Finally got quite a bit to talk about this week for On the Download.  It seemed things have picked up yet again in the downloadable space with quite a few big releases this week.  Got a full order of games to talk about today, so let us dive right into the biggest downloadable games of the week.

When I first opened up the Nintendo eShop today, I was upset that Nintendo had yet again not add anything to the 3DS Virtual Console.  I turned off my 3DS disappointed only catching a glimpse at this week's biggest edition, Ketzal's Corridors, scrolling through the eShop's main menu.  I would soon see that to be a mistake after watching the trailer and reading a few things on Ketzal's Corridors as it looks to another unique original title for the Nintendo eShop.  Ketzal's Corridors is action-packed puzzler which sees the player quickly rearranging their guardian in order to pass through the hole in each wall.  It looks like an ancient version of Hole in the Wall mixed with Tetris as the guardians are shaped like Tetriminos.  Ketzal's Corridors features a story mode, which contains over a hundred levels, and a couple multi-player modes.  You can play multi-player by sharing one 3DS or through local wireless connection.  The two multi-player modes offered are Tower Trial, which can be played either with one or two 3DS's and has you battling your friend to see who can match their silhouettes to ten holes sooner than your opponent, and Ruin Run, which has players compete to see who gets the most hearts in a head-to-head run through the ruins.  If you looking for some high speed puzzle action, Ketzal's Corridors looks to be the 3DS downloadable title for you and it costs only 7 dollars.

The last couple of years have seen fighting game genre rise from the ashes of obscurity to new heights.  Following the big wave of interest in fighting games is a 2D fighter you can download on XBLA or PSN called Skullgirls.  Skullgirls allows players to face off with a different amounts of characters per team up to three fighter limit.  Teams are balanced by numbers, so single-player teams are stronger and possess more health, but larger teams can perform character assists and tag in and out on the fly.  Skullgirls has various features that makes it standout from other fighting games.  These features are infinite detection, which allows players a chance to break out of a loop combo, easier inputs for complex actions and protection against unblockable attacks.  Skullgirls has 8 fighters for you to play as with more coming in the future as DLC.  Done with Street Fighter, Tekken or another fighter, give Skullgirls a chance it will run you 15 dollars or 1200 Microsoft Points.

Coming to XBLA this Friday the 13th is this year's Grand Prize winner at the Independent Game Festival that took place at the Game Developer's Conference early last month, Fez.  Fez is a platformer developed by Polytron, which features 2D to 3D perspective shifts very similar to Super Paper Mario and Crush.  A catastrophic event changes Gomez's, the main fez-wearing protagonist, 2D world forever and it is up to our hero to set things right.  You will have to flip levels from 2D to 3D and back again in order to traverse each beautifully realized level.  It is hard to describe Fez into words it is a game that you have to see in motion to really get how great a concept and how beautiful the graphics are.  Fez looks to be a one-in-a-kind game that Xbox owners should go out and download.  You will be able to pick it up tomorrow for 800 Microsoft Points.

Hump Day Music: Bits of Me

Well it is a good thing I delayed Hump Day Music to today.  This morning Brentalfloss, a musician famous for adding lyrics to beloved video game music, announced his second album is available for pre-order.  This album is called Bits of Me and contains 18 tracks of video game music parodies, 14 classic tracks with new instruments and vocals and 4 brand new tracks just available on the album.  If you are interested, you can pre-order Bits of Me at levelupstudios.com/bitsofme for 13 dollars plus shipping and handling.  Also as an added bonus for those who pre-order, Brentalfloss will autograph each pre-ordered copy.  Personally as a fan of Brentalfloss' work I would love to pre-order Bits of Me, but I spent a lot of money the past month and I am going to limit my spending for the time being and start saving a lot of money for school, which I starts this fall.  If you have some cash to spare and enjoy Brentalfloss' music, go and pick Bits of Me up.  If you are still on the fence, you can find the track list at the website listed above and I have the announcement trailer below for everybody to enjoy.

Rocket Knight Review

Note:  As I am participating in a math contest tomorrow, I am going to be very busy studying today.  So I have dig up an old review I wrote back in 2010 for Rocket Knight.  Hope everybody enjoys.

After sixteen long years, Sparkster dons his rocket pack once again to protect the kingdom of Zephyrus from the evil wolf army.  Today I am reviewing Rocket Knight for the PC, which you can get through Steam, but it is also out for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. 

Playing Rocket Knight brought back memories of the first time I got my hands on Rocket Knight Adventures back on the Sega Genesis as they both share the same game mechanics.  The best feature of Rocket Knight is the use of the rocket pack.  By pressing the Z key on the computer, Sparkster launches himself into the direction in which he is looking.  You can do so many things with the rocket pack such as bounce off of walls at 45 degree angles, dash at enemies or combine it with other moves to launch Sparkster to some hard to reach places and power-ups.

    

Like Rocket Knight Adventures, Rocket Knight has phenomenal level design.  Each level has different unique challenges and events.  No level is alike in any way; there is always some new fun challenge that keeps things feeling new and fresh.   The game is broken up into four worlds each with three to four levels.  Each world consists of the standard platformer level, side-scrolling shooter level and a boss fight.  One of the most enjoyable levels in Rocket Knight had to be the Cyberswine Lab.  The level puts all your platforming skills to the test as you dodge energy barriers, clear certain sections before a timer runs out and much more.  Then when you think you beat the level by destroying the labs’ main generator, you have to escape the oncoming explosion.  It was a very exhilarating level. 

Even though the game has great level designs, it is over before you know it.  Rocket Knight is just too short.  You can breeze through Rocket Knight in three to four hours.  There are online leaderboards, unlockables and free play mode to extend your time with the game, but in the end you are just left wanting more. 

If you are playing Rocket Knight with a controller, you will be in heaven as the controls work perfectly.  If you are using a keyboard like me, you will have quite a bit of a learning curve and some frustration while getting use to controls.  Some of the keys are not mapped that well to the keyboard.  For example, I would accidently hit other keys on the keyboard that would either minimize the game window or perform some action that I did not intend to do when trying to play the game.

With Rocket Knight, Sparkster has truly been reborn in the 21^st century.  Konami has brought everything you loved about the previous Sparkster games and integrated it into Rocket Knight.  If you are willing to pay the 15 dollars for the game, you will not be disappointed.  As Rocket Knight is a great downloadable game for anybody who loves any kind of platformer in the vein of the 2D Mario and Sonic games.

Launch Station: Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir

Each year there is a Friday the 13th and each year something be it a movie, CD, book or even video game tries to capitalize on this superstitious date.  This year only one game is capitalizing on such a fantasized date, Nintendo and Tecmo Koei's Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the Nintendo 3DS.

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is a portable spinoff of Tecmo Koei's popular survival horror series Fatal Frame.  Spirit Camera uses the Nintendo 3DS's augmented reality features to create a survival horror game like no other.  Spirit Camera comes packaged with a notebook known as the Diary of Faces.  Players use the notebook in junction with the 3DS camera, which serves as the in-game item known as the Camera Obscura.  Spirit Camera has three main modes that use the 3DS camera and the Diary of Faces in different ways.  The first mode is the Story Mode, which has the players exploring the interactive pages of the Diary of Faces finding hints and fighting spirits transposed on the environment around them.  Your main goal in Story Mode is to fight off the Woman in Black and other spirits before they steal your face.  The second mode is Haunted Visions.  Haunted Visions contains three different camera challenges that test your skills with the camera.  The third and final mode is Cursed Pages.  Cursed Pages has you participating in four minigames that use characters and settings from the main mode such as a game of hide-and-seek with a ghost you meet in the Story Mode.

The 3DS's augmented reality features have more or less been used as a gimmick up to this point in the handheld's life.  So it is refreshing to see a game finally come out that utilizes this unique feature of the 3DS.  While I personally am not that excited to pick up Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir as I am not a huge fan of survival horror games outside Resident Evil, I can see other gamers looking for a good scare gravitating to this game.