Mini Ninjas Demo Impressions

Mini Ninjas is an action platformer being developed by IO Interactive. The company is well known for making the Hitman series, but they have also worked on stuff like Kane & Lynch, and Freedom Fighters. So why would they suddenly make a cartoony action game? who knows, but it's a welcome change of pace, in my opinion. There aren't enough good action platformers nowadays.

The first thing I noticed about Mini Ninjas when I started up the demo is how smooth the framerate was. Everything seemed to be chucking along at 60fps, and I didn't experience any slowdown at all. The graphics, while not technically superior, have a really nice art style to them, and everything looks very clean-cut. There's a sort of LittleBigPlanet style to the graphics, except maybe less crisp and more smooth. Much like LittleBigPlanet, the character designs, and the voice acting are all super-cute, as well. There's a certain amount of charm to everything in the game, and the animations are also nice and fluid.

Lets talk about the actual gameplay, though. Mini Ninjas is your standard beat em' up. The game plays like a simplified version of Ninja Gaiden, you swing your sword at dudes on screen, as well as shirukens and caltrops, and there's even various Ninjutsu you can use, including a fire technique, as well as a replacement technique, where you can pretty much possess an animal and use it to fight, or to find various collectibles.

Ah yes, what platformer wouldn't be complete without collectibles? The demo had a few different types. Tiny Statues (which didn't seem to do anything), Flowers (which you could use as an offering at various hidden shrines, as well as combining them to make potions), coins (for buying stuff, duh), and I suppose you could conciser the caged animals as a collectable, since it keeps track of how many you free.

There's a lot of variation in the gameplay as well, at one point you might be fighting a bunch of guys, at another point you might be wandering around enjoying the landscapes, or you could be fishing, you can level up your ninja and get new abilities, and since you're a ninja, there's even a stealth mechanic thrown in there. The three characters they give you in the demo all have different strengths and weaknesses, however, it isn't quite as dramatic as something like Trine or The Lost Vikings. All of this variation keeps the game interesting, so much so that I even went back and played through the demo a second time.

So far there's only 2 big problems that I have with the game. First, it seems too linear. The level I played in the demo had a few side paths you could take, and there's plenty of space that you can move between, but you're still just moving forward through the stage. I was hoping for an open world game, but so far it seems like this isn't one. The second problem is the difficulty. I played through the demo on the default difficulty first, Normal, and it turned out to be really easy. Then I turned the difficulty up to Hard, and it seemed more like what normal should have been. I understand the game is being made for kids, but I kind of wished they would make the game a little more challenging.

Overall, I really enjoyed the demo, and might give this a rental when it comes out. Be sure to look out for Mini Ninjas on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, and DS when it's released in September.

Section 8 Demo Impressions

Section 8 is an upcoming first-person sci-fi shooter being developed by Timegate Studios and published by Southpeak Interactive. I got my hands on the demo earlier, and I must say I was quite impressed.

The demo is multiplayer-only, however, there is an offline mode with bots, if you're into that kind of thing. I couldn't find any way to adjust the bots' difficulty, so that part seemed way too easy, and pretty pointless. The main focus of the demo is the online play, and it's surprisingly good. When you join a match, you select a spawnpoint on the map, much like the Battlefield games, except, instead of spawning there, you drop into the zone through the atmosphere. It's a pretty awesome looking sequence, and through my time with the demo it never got old. This also allows the teams to use some strategy. You're able to drop anywhere on the map when spawning, but the enemy can set up Anti-air guns to take you down before you even hit the ground.

The game plays mostly like a game of battlefield, you spend your time going to different computers and hacking them... which is pretty much just like capturing a control point in Battlefield. They also thrown in a few other objectives after a while, such as protecting a VIP, or protecting a convoy. It reminds me a bit of how the multiplayer in Killzone 2 was structured, except not quite as rock-solid.

The controls in the game are sufficient, and unique. Now, the thing about unique controls is they normally don't work, but here I found the learning curve to be quite low. The most interesting part of the game is that it has a lock on feature, letting you lock on to your opponents, provided you're at a close enough range. I feel kind of torn about it... while it doesn't take as much skill to take down an enemy, it also takes more skill to avoid being locked on to. If an enemy goes out of your sights, then you lose the lock on, and it takes a couple second to re-charge. Granted, they can still shoot at you manually, without being locked on, but this seems to add a bit more depth and strategy to the combat that isn't seen in many other multiplayer shooters.

The biggest problem with Section 8 is that it feels like a low-budget game. I had some framerate issues multiple times in the demo, and the graphics are just okay. I definitely don't think this game will replace any of our other beloved first-person shooters, but I definitely think people should give it a chance. Check out the demo, and keep a look out for the game when it's released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC this September.

WET Demo Impressions

WET is a game I've been interested in for a while now, and when I heard there was a demo released on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, I just had to check it out. The game is published by Bethesda and developed by Artificial Mind & Movement, which has mostly done licensed titles in the past, such as Spiderman: Friend or Foe, and the Iron Man video game. While they might not have the best track record, WET still brings a lot of promise to table.

The demo starts off with a pretty cool, yet pretty cheesy cutscene of a negotiation gone wrong. The game's voice acting, while not particularly spectacular, is exactly what you'd want out of a game like this. The style in the game is reminiscent of a few different things, but the majority of it seems to be based on Grindhouse (mostly the first half, "Planet Terror"). Much like Grindhouse as well, the game isn't afraid to throw f-bombs all over the place. The whole game has a nice look and feel to it that isn't seen often, except maybe in something like No More Heroes.

But enough about story and style, let's get into the gameplay. The demo is broken up into three different parts, all showcasing different gameplay mechanics. In the first part of the demo, it's your standard 3rd person action game. My first impression was that they pretty much took the Stranglehold engine and used that to power the game and it wouldn't surprise me at all if that turned out to be true. That may not be the best game to compare your game to, since Stranglehold was kind of bland at points, and a bit underwhelming overall, but WET manages to change things up a bit. You still have the same ol' dive and shoot in slow motion mechanics as stranglehold, and there's also a wall run in there where time will slow down, but the best move by far is the slide move, which I like to call the powerslide. Your character basically slides across the floor, shooting tons of dudes in slow-mo, and it looks pretty fucking awesome. You also get a katana, and some pole swinging, which reminds me a lot of Prince of Persia.

The second part of the demo focused on a crazy super-stylized mode (Pictured to the left) where the only colors on the screen were shades of red, black, and white. instead of your dual pistols you had in the first part, you now have dual uzis, and you seem to pretty much be invincible. This mode is pretty awesome, and reminds me a lot of the art style from Killer 7.

The final part of the demo, and my personal favorite, had you riding on top of cars down the freeway, chasing these shady looking characters and shooting them in the head. Every now and then, you reach a scripted point where you have to do a QTE command to jump to another car or avoid some explosion or something. The whole sequence looks really good, and makes you feel like you're in some sort of crazy action movie.

The biggest problem I had with WET so far is the controls. The game doesn't quite feel as fluid as you'd hope it'd be. I don't know if it's the character's animations, or just the control method, but it feels like lost potential when you look at all of the other great stuff in the game. Another thing that bugged me was the difficulty of the game, the whole thing seemed too easy. I'm hoping there will be a difficulty option in the full game, but if there isn't, I'm going to be severely disappointed.

One more thing I should mention before I wrap this up is the excellent soundtrack in the game. The game has a lot of kickass tunes that sound exactly like they came out of a Quinten Tarrentino movie, and the game benefits from it. The soundtrack is not heavily dramatic with any sort of orchestral score, but it's wholly original, and provides the right amount of intensity to the situations you find yourself in, in the game.

If you guys haven't checked out the demo yet, I suggest you go download it, it's definitely worth your time. You guys can look forward to the full game when it's released September 15th, 2009 on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Retro/Grade Demo Impressions

Retro/Grade is a game with a pretty cool concept. You play a side-scrolling space shooter, but instead of things moving forward and you shooting them, something got messed up with the space/time continuum and everything is moving in reverse. This changes the entire game from a Shooter into a Rhythm game, and the developers are aware of this, too. They even have what they call a "Rhythm Mode" that will let you play the game using a guitar controller. You can still play this mode with a keyboard or controller, however.

I personally like playing what they call the "Shooter Mode" better, and it's at it's best when using a controller. The keyboard controls work fine, but this game seems like it was made for use with a controller, I actually hooked up my 360 controller to my PC to play it.

The way you play the game is by collecting your shots that you had previously fired, while you travel backwards through time. You do this with the Spacebar, or A button on the controller. Each level has a simple beat track playing on top of it. The songs in the levels so far are kind of floaty and slow. While they only gave us two levels in the demo, I imagine it's not much different for the rest of them, although I would like to get some faster songs in there, just for the challenge.

Speaking of challenge, the game has 5 difficulty modes... newb, casual, mediumcore, pro, and l33t. Needless to say, those are some pretty awesome names, and the rest of the presentation in the game doesn't suffer either. Like I said before, we get Two levels in the demo, Level 10 and Level 9... since you unlock Level 9 after beating 10, this makes me think that the full game will have you traveling backwards through levels, which is a pretty cool concept. Not only that, but the names of the two levels are hilarious. We've got "Rick Rollin'" and "All your bass are belong to us".

Overall, Retro/Grade seems like a fun little indie game which is definitely worth checking out. If you haven't yet, you can download the demo from Steam. Be sure to look forward to the full game, coming out later this year.

Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite Demo Impressions

Some of you may not know this about me, but I'm pretty big into imported games from Japan. While Monster Hunter may not technically be an import title, since they have been releasing some of the games in the states for a while now, it's always had a very Japanese feel to the gameplay, and I mean that in a good way. Now, they've released a demo of the newest game, Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite on the Playstation Store. Definitely a good idea if they want to get a larger amount of Americans interested in the game, which is definitely what it seems like they're doing with their advertising campaign.

Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite is the US version of what's known as Monster Hunter Portable 2G in Japan. The game takes a lot of elements from Monster Hunter Freedom 2 and expands on them. While I never got a chance to play Monster Hunter Freedom 2, I have played the first one, and it's occupied a lot of time in my PSP.

Comparing what I've played of this game to the first one, there's been a lot of improvements. the first most noticeable one is the map system. In the first game, your map would be limited to the section you were in, and you'd have to blindly wander around trying to find your target. Now, you can see the entire map, and your target is clearly marked, I'm a much bigger fan of this system than the previous one.

Also, I'm not sure if they're only doing this for the demo or not, but there's a class system now. Before, you would simply make a character and buy different equipment, and have a lot of customization options, but it seems now that you can choose different classes, and customize from there. However, it could just be for the demo so you can get right into the action.

The graphics, for a PSP game are excellent. Strong, crisp, detailed textures. Fluid animation. The poly count doesn't seem very high, but the PSP can only do so much. I think the game really pushes the PSP to it's limits, while still maintaining a rock-solid framerate.

Overall, I'm really impressed with the demo, and I'm anticipating the full game. One thing that's pretty nice is the amount of content they give you in the demo. Seeing as how the Monster Hunter games have so much stuff in them usually, it's not a huge surprise, but it's definitely welcome. For anybody who's a big Monster Hunter fan, or anybody who likes a good action game, definitely download the demo and check it out, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. Also, don't forget to look for the game, hitting shelves in the next few days.