TwiddleGeek

By way of Kotaku I came across this interesting little demo of Noitu Love 2. It’s not terribly long honestly, but it’s worth at least one quick run through just to try the hyper combat and see the incredible design.

I like how the combat flows fast and feels fun using a combo of mouse and keyboard controls, and the unusual moves like shields and nearly screen length attack dashes. Picture a really hyper version of Mega-Man and you might be close. The graphics aren’t very high res, but they have plenty of old-school appeal. The full version is a whopping $20 (no way), but I had fun with the demo. I’ll have to give Noitu Love 1 a shot someday soon.

I have to admit, there wasn’t a lot here to judge with. Sure, I can tell you the game looks beautiful, has nice music, and feels like a traditional JRPG, but little else. These scarce details alone will sell it to many though, as we’ve seen far too few next-gen JRPGs thus far into Next Gen. The battle system feels fast and friendly, I rather like how you can use basically any combination of attacks and special moves within your turn’s time allotment, but at least in the demo it was terribly easy. I’m certainly hoping for more challenge in the full title.

The game seems to have heart, and a rather unique story to boot. The cell shading is easily some of the best seen in an RPG to date, developers finally seem to be getting a handle on the style. We’ve come a long way from the rather awkward looking early days. Transition from map to battle is perfectly seamless with no perceivable loading times, the screen dissolves straight into the fight and gets right down to business. When you’ve got a lot of encounters to deal with, it’s always nice to not be stuck waiting before every battle. We’ll see how this one pans out.

If this demo is any indication, and I believe it is, BioShock is going to be a FPS to remember. Dark, atmospheric, and absolutely beautiful, the development team has obviously taken their time in crafting this one to perfection. The key here is that BioShock is more than a run and gun shooter, it’s more of a story heavy adventure. Think Half Life 1/2 but much darker and in a underwater, 1960’s retro-future setting.

I rather enjoyed the Plasmid abilities. The first one you’ll find is electricity, giving you the power to shoot bolts from your fingers to stun your enemies. It works well even though your “mana” of sorts seems to run out fairly quickly. Booster shots of sorts are found rather plentifully on corpses, though I had to wish it recharged automatically over time instead. The weapon combat had a nice, in your face, visceral feel to it. It feels grittier most FPS titles, something like Condemned’s combat for example.

No holy hand grenade and no super sheep? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s bad enough Team 17 can’t be bothered to actually do something NEW, but taking out the best weapons from the previous games? Screw that. I love Worms, and I was excited to see it come to the 360, but this is just terribly bare bones. Unfortunately, even the demo is stingy with just one repeating landscape and worm layout via Quick Play.