Ain't No Rest For the Wicked - Killzone: Mercenary

The PlayStation Vita is a pretty powerful piece of technology capable of delivering console-quality gameplay. With its dual joysticks, large screen, and impressive graphics processor, the Vita seemed poised to become the first handheld to deliver a proper first-person shooter experience. And yet in the system's 20 months on the market there have been fairly few FPS games, most of which have been received by gamers with a decisive yawn of indifference. Enter: Killzone: Mercenary.

Killzone: Mercenary is the FPS that Vita owners have been waiting for ever since the system's launch back in February 2012. It's been a while since I played a console FPS and I've never played any of the other games in the Killzone series, so I can't vouch for how well it holds up to any current console shooters or the Killzone series, but Mercenary is leaps and bounds above any FPS I've ever played on a handheld. Even compared to what I've come to expect from "typical console shooters" (imagine me saying that as disdainfully as possible), Mercenary managed not to piss me off and actually impressed me a little bit.

Dazed and Confused: Gravity Rush

A young girl wakes up in the gutters of Hekseville, a towering city in the sky, with no memory of her past or her own identity. Accompanied by a black, star-speckled cat, she's immediately thrust into action to save the life of a young boy whose house is being ripped from the city structure by a gravity storm. It's then that she becomes aware of her powers -- or rather, those of the cat who follows her -- to shift gravity. With this ability she runs along walls and even flies through the sky, but despite rescuing the boy, she's unable to save the house, and is met with contempt by the townsfolk who still look down on her and her kind; gravity shifters.

Gravity Rush, a PlayStation Vita exclusive (and one of the most compelling reasons to own a Vita), tells the story of Kat and her gravity-shifting companion Dusty as she attempts to adjust to life in Hekseville while putting her superpowers to good use. Initially, this means finding a place to live and furnishing it, but she quickly becomes a key figure in fending off the monstrous "nevi" afflicting the city, and in restoring sections of the town lost to the gravity storms. It's basically a superhero origin story with lots of deep, subtle storytelling and tons of mind-bending, gravity-altering physics bent around platforming, combat, and exploration.

In a market saturated by sequels and franchise spin-offs, it's always refreshing to play a completely original game with its own unique identity. Gravity Rush is a solid new entry from Project Siren (makers of the Siren series), but as with basically all new games, there are a few kinks holding it back from reaching its full potential. It's a diamond in the rough -- fun to play and pretty to witness, but rough nonetheless.

It's a Jungle Out There: Tokyo Jungle

Tokyo Jungle has quite the unique premise -- after humankind has mysteriously gone extinct in Tokyo, the urban city has become a sprawling jungle for animal wildlife. You play as an animal attempting to survive in this jungle, scavenging for food, defending yourself against bigger and stronger animals, claiming territories, and reproducing. When I bought the game ($14.99 on PSN), I was expecting a slow-paced, realistic survival simulator with a unique twist -- that would've been such an awesome gameplay experience. But it turns out that Tokyo Jungle is a much faster-paced, arcade-style roguelike. Not what I was hoping for, but the game is still surprisingly addicting.

Tokyo Jungle consists of two gameplay modes -- "Story" and "Survival." In story mode, you play specific scenarios with certain objectives that tell a loose story arc for different animals. The story mode, however, is not the game's main emphasis; it's survival mode. The entire game is built around survival mode, with the story missions consisting of derivative survival mode mechanics forced into certain situations. In fact, you can't even play the story missions until you've unlocked them in survival mode. The story missions and unlockable story logs are a welcome component, offering a little more depth and insight to the backstory of what happened leading up to the current situation, but if you're looking for something more than a survival roguelike, you should probably look elsewhere.

PlayStation Vita Impressions

A week ago I made a bit of an impulse purchase on the PlayStation Vita, intending to get some quality mobile gaming done during downtime at work. Over the summer, I'd been using an old hand-me-down PSP-1000, but used it almost exclusively to play old downloadable PSOne classics, since hardly any of the actual PSP games interested me. The Vita seemed like an appealing option since it retains the same backlog of PSOne classics as well as various downloadable versions of PSP games, all on newer and better hardware with the expanded library of Vita exclusives. The recent price drop to $199.99 USD was also an appealing factor in the decision. 

I bought four Vita games with the device: Gravity Rush, Soul Sacrifice, Dragon's Crown, and Killzone: Mercenary. Of these games, the only one I've played thus far is Gravity Rush, which has proven to be a pretty fun experience. The Vita came bundled with the full first season of Telltale's The Walking Dead, which I've already played on PC. I was also able to download the Vita version of Playstation All-Stars for free, courtesy of Sony's cross-buy policy, since I'd already bought the game on PS3. Finally, I bought the updated PSN version of Spelunky, after having played the original version extensively on PC. These are the seven games I have to start my Vita library, and here are my thoughts on the system after one week of use.

The Dream Machine: Chapter 4 Review

Evidently it's been nearly 16 months since I reviewed the first three chapters of Cockroach Inc's The Dream Machine. When I played those three chapters, I was immediately hooked and couldn't sing enough praises for the game. An interesting story with great narrative pacing, intelligent brain-teasing puzzles that felt incredibly natural and plausible in context, and a fairly unique atmosphere and visual style had me anxiously awaiting the release of chapter four. And yet it's taken nearly two years since the release of chapter three for chapter four to finally become available.

Fortunately, chapter three didn't end on a major cliffhanger -- there was still obviously a lot of the story yet to be told, but it sufficiently resolved one prominent story arc before promising others. Chapter four picks up right where chapter three left off; after rescuing your wife Alicia from her own dream, you realize that you have to do the same with the other residents of your apartment building in order to shut down the landlord's haywire dream machine. Chapter four thus consists of a self-contained dream sequence as Victor goes into the dreamscape of his elderly neighbor Edie. 

Tiny Tina's Assault is Halfway Decent

The trend I've noticed with the Borderlands 2 DLC campaigns is that they're all kind of "meh." In each case, the three preceding BL2 DLCs offer mostly just "more of the same" and don't offer a whole lot of truly unique, interesting content. Speaking as someone who'd spent hundreds of hours in just the base game, playing across multiple characters with multiple friends, the DLC campaigns have all felt like fleeting sideshow distractions, rather than something new and fresh. 

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (hereafter referred to as "Tina's Ass") is the last of four originally planned DLC campaigns, and it's by far the best one. Boasting totally original landscapes to explore (no more boring desert wastelands) with a nice variety of aesthetic themes, entirely unique enemy types to fight (no more boring bandits), and a compelling narrative premise of being set inside a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing campaign, Tina's Ass feels like a proper expansion, and not just a bloated cash grab. 

Thoughts on Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VII is frequently lauded as one of the best games of all time, being the JRPG that introduced many-a-young gamer to the world of JRPGs. But there are those who believe firmly that its predecessor, the aptly-named Final Fantasy VI, is actually the better game. I played FF7 recently and didn't think too highly of it, but wanted to get some more perspective on the series, seeing as I had virtually no experience with Final Fantasy. So FF6 seemed like the natural place to start.

Approximately 35 hours later (spread out over the course of eight weeks), I've now finished FF6 and can confirm that it does in fact have better gameplay mechanics than FF7. The main things FF7 has over FF6 is its improved graphics and its more "epic," more dramatic presentation. What I'd really like to see if FF6-style gameplay with FF7-style presentation, and then I think we'd have the best of both worlds. As it is, it's difficult for me to say which I prefer as the overall better game, so here are just some of my thoughts on how Final Fantasy VI holds up on its own and how it compares to Final Fantasy VII.