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.

Batman A. Asylum Demo Impressions

I have been on and off about this game, but I had to play the demo regardless of how many hours it took for Xbox Live to let me download it. It's a hefty download at 1.5 gigs for maybe 20 minutes of gameplay, but it was worth the wait.

Arkham Asylum has never been a heavily defined area in the Batman franchise in the batman films and probably not in the TV series, regardless the story signifies that Arkham has become technologically fortified to the point that even the joker quips over how hard it is to break out. But the Joker also hints in the demo that why would you want to escape such a fortress when you could control it instead, that is established quite a bit in the story.

I have to say, hearing the TV series batman who doesn't have throat cancer like Bale's makes you really enjoy playing batman. Batman looks pretty cool, as well as the art style of the game even though it does a lot of gray and black. There is also a lot of interacting in the game in terms of talking with A.I.'s in the game, and oh man detective mode. I like the idea of detective mode for two reasons, the first is because it lets you see around the corner and see how your enemies and friends are reacting. That is helpful if you are trying to be stealth oriented, it also helps when attacking enemies because the demo only allows the glide kick. Say the detective feature lets you know that one of the enemies is nervous, you'd think its just anecdotal information but no, I attacked someone nervous and I ended up taking damage. The Detective mode helps you be inventive of your surroundings but also allows the psychological element of the game to help you predict enemy behavior. Attacking a nervous guy has him on edge, so when I attacked him he panicked and shot me a bit. The first guy in the room was calm, and when I attacked him it was a silent covert operation and nobody noticed till they found his unconscious body.

Thats all good but, as you could see from earlier walk through videos this is also a beat 'em up game. I had played Turtles in Time reshelled earlier today and stressed how boring and bland the combat was, Batman only had a little bit of straight on combat in the demo. It was satisfying in slow motion finishing movies, it has silent takedown moves and the glide kick as well as your bat-a-rang working good as a cudgel. But the end of the demo, the terribly short demo as far as i'm concerned, hinted that there is much more beat 'em up variety than the demo demonstrates. How do I know this, well first of all the next enemy the joker throws at you knows your there and the Joker is there too. So we know batman isn't going to run and hide after trying to chase down the joker since the beginning of the demo. But at the end of the demo you are shown this guy (or something like him):



YOU KNOW THERES ALOT MORE VARIETY IN THE COMBAT!

Seriously, that is a guy you take head on. So there is some serious head on combat with art in the combat as well as batman's gadgets. And the demo for the little it showed presented so well I was damn near at tears when the demo was over. Well I gotta say, this game is on my list again. Someday I will have it, but try this demo and decide for yourself. As for me, i'm sold on it.