Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Wow, what a crushingly-hard, patience testing, self-esteem erasing game. In most levels, death comes in less than a fraction of a second, and pixel-perfect performance is required to progress through tough spots over and over again. I’m trying to think of a game I’ve played that was harder, but I’m not sure anything was. The Extreme levels in Trials or some of the rough patches in Super Meat Boy come to mind, but it’s possible 1001 Spikes tops them. Either way, this was some hard shit.
Ultra Street Fighter IV. (PS3/360) It's an add-on to the core game that brings four new characters and a bunch of other stuff. It's been a long time since I played Street Fighter with any proficiency so it's hard for me to pick up on all of the nuances, but Poison and Elena have been added to the roster, and in my book that's a big plus.




Z-Run. (Vita) This is a small game made by a small team that’s an auto-runner similar to Temple Run or One Epic Knight on iOS, except that it feels a little richer thanks to having actual controls. Basically, you play as a survivor trying to hoof his way out of the apocalypse, so you're dodging obstacles and whacking the undead. Or jump-kicking. Jump taking the undead works too. This one is a great idea, but it seems like it needs a little more time in the oven. Still, enjoying it in short bursts.





Blue Estate. (PS4) This is an on-rails shooter based on a comic book I'm never heard of, but it's a pretty interesting -- not only does it work well with the PS4 controller’s motion functions,  it also looks great and it's got a lot more of a story than you might expect. Also, whoo boy, is this one for the grown-ups. It’s got loads of salty language and one of the main characters is a stripper named Cherry Popz, so I'll let you fill in the rest.

Besides those, there've been a few other things that I would’ve liked to get to -- Shovel Knight, Battle Princess of Arcadias, the State of Decay: Lifeline expansion and the X-Blaze: Code Embryo visual novel among others, but there are only so many hours in the day and I don't have enough time for what I’ve already got. Still, some of these might be worth looking into if you have availability on your own personal gaming agenda…

Of course, it's got downsides like anything else does. The biggest thing is that Squeenix was crazy to release this at full price. Everything about the game screams "mid-tier experimental”, and it should've never hit retail for more than $30. At that price, I think people would be more willing to take a chance on something so unconventional, but when asking for the big bucks, it's hard to make the case. I’m not saying it's a bad game at all (because it's not!) but when 60 bones are on the line, it just doesn't stack up.

Apart from that, the biggest problem I had is that the autosaves kick in far too infrequently, and there's no manual save. As such, I found it tough to find time when I knew I would not be interrupted because I never wanted to lose progress in case I got called away, and it's impossible to predict when the game registers something significant enough to save.

Besides those things, the usual caveats apply. It's not totally polished, there are some weird hiccups here and there, and so on… The usual stuff you'd expect from a mid-tier title, but nothing major. If you’re a person like me who puts a lot of importance on the narrative and characterizations in games, Soul Suspect is worth checking out. There are plenty of places where it could improve, but these developers are totally on the right track. I hope they get the chance to make another one.
I really dig the aesthetics and it seems like there are the beginnings of some cool things here, but my biggest takeaway is that it just doesn't feel finished or even very well-thought out. For instance, it seems like it's trying to tell some sort of a story, but there's nothing there apart from some extremely vague impressions. Likewise, the gameplay is incredibly simple and I got tired of it about halfway through -- and the game is only about 90 minutes long, if that!

I kept waiting for the play to get deeper, the story to get richer, or for something interesting to happen, but what you see in the first level is what you get for the whole game, and it really doesn't develop any further.  It looks great in a trailer, but does not seem like something ready for prime time at all.

Once my character was made, I was put into a mission in Russia, and the area was quite open and easy to navigate. The game controls just like you’d think a Sci-Fi FPS should, with everything being standard except for the "special ability" mapped to the L1 button. In my case, it was a sort of purple magic grenade. Also, my melee was an energy burst/push-back sort of thing, mapped to R1. After leveling up once, I also unlocked a super move triggered by L1+R1 -- sort of a super fireball, and it was neat to see the camera pull back to show me throwing it in third-person.

After messing around some more, I found that the controller’s touchpad brings up a little robotic buddy that comes with you (looks like the little Bits from Tron) and while it’s active,  you can leave the level and return to homebase, or you can summon a vehicle at any time. My ride looked a bit like a speederbike from Return of the Jedi, but there are slots in the menu for plenty of other types, it seems. Again, I was happy to see the camera go into third-person for the vehicle section. Also, the homebase sections are in third as well. I'm not the biggest fan of first-person viewpoints, so I appreciated multiple opportunities to see my character, and not just her hand holding a gun.


Towards the tail end of my playtime, I came across a few other real players who were in the same area that I was, and that was a neat occurrence. I’ve said this before and it still holds true now-- Destiny strikes me as a higher-octane version of Defiance, and that's a good thing. It's got the same open-world sort of philosophy, the same drop in/drop out co-op, similar use of vehicles, and other ideas that seem to be in the same ballpark. Of course, Destiny looks and feels about 42,000,000 times more polished than Defiance, but their cores are similar, and since I had a blast with Defiance, I’m expecting that’ll hold true here as well.

You had a good run, Defiance, but I'm pretty sure it's over now...

After the clearing the mission, I went back to base and chilled out for a bit… It's a standard sort of city-like hub, small in size with some merchants to get things from and a few people to talk to, but it seems like this place is still under construction. More to come here, I’m certain.

Overall, this was a super-positive first impression, essentially delivering exactly what I expected with a few extra surprises. I'm definitely looking forward to some co-op with friends and to get a taste for what the other missions are like. So far though, Destiny seems like a big thumbs up.

If you’re in the area and you’d like to pick up a physical copy and have it signed, come on down!
I believe it was my friend @DavidRobots who said that it struck him as something from the PS2 era, back when we were treated to all manner of strange things that took a lot of chances and rarely conformed to any one genre. That’s a smart observation, and one I agree with.

Since the player is a ghost, there's extremely little combat so far (you get chased by the occasional demon here and there, but it hardly comes up) so most of the time is spent walking around and looking for clues. Once you find a few, you have to string together semi-logical statements that progress the story, basically solving each step of the case as you go.

It's far from perfect and there’s all sorts of weird things happening in both the design and tech side, but it's really clicking with me. I like the main character, I like the idea of walking around as a ghost and just taking things in, and the developers do a pretty good job of crafting an interesting world. I'm not very far in (only the third or fourth major scene) but it's definitely keeping my interest and I like what I've seen so far.
To be fair, it's excellently made and there's a ton of content for people who want to dig into it, though it needs to be unlocked via a few different ways. For those who have the patience and the skill, it is a title worthy of respect.