KyotoJack's Blog

A few days ago we finnaly found out what the average user will require to run Modern Warfare 2 on their gaming PC's.

The minimum specs are


OS: Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 - Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported
 
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor or better supported
 
Memory: 1 GB RAM
 
Graphics: ATI Radeon 1600XT or better or 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce     6600GT or better                                                                 
 
DirectX: Microsoft DirectX(R) 9.0c
 
Hard Drive: 12GB of free hard drive space  

Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Internet: Broadband connection required for Multiplayer Connectivity. Internet Connection required for activation

In a recent interview with Evan Wells of Naughty Dog it was confirmed that they will be working on another Uncharted game sometime in the near future. No further details were given. In the mean time go and buy Uncharted 2 I hear its okay :D

So I was on youtube the other day and I came across the Ridge Racer Type 4 Intro which always sticks out in my mind for three reasons. One: the CG was absoulutley fantastic and is even better than some Playstation 2 games so to speak.
Two: Reiko Nagase who is pretty much the face of Ridge Racer, the intro was based around her walking around the track and funnily enough she seems to be walking in huge heels which okay Reiko its sexy but come on are you serious.
And three the music made the intro trully classic and always sticks out in my head whenever I think of Reiko Nagase.


Anyway here is the intro, enjoy



If your looking for sexy, then look no further.

Dig that crazy rhythm

Hey folks, good news our podcast has been approved by Apple so now you can go listen or download the podcast to your mp3 device.

The podcast will be indexed to the store in a few hours so the search might not work at the momment as we just got approved at 3pm today.


As always we will be back in a fortnight for the next podcast.


                                                                                      These girls tottaly line up for our podcast

Hey guys

As you know me any my friend Conor Brown have started our own gaming podcast called Load/Save Podcast. Well some good news last night I submitted the podcast to the iTunes music store and we are waiting for a reply back from Apple to see if we past their QA proccess.

So look out for our next podcast in the next few weeks and be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes (If we get in of course).


Thank You

P.S And since I always do this, Here is the one and sexy Reiko Nagase xD

Well folks if you enjoy reading this blog (which that must be what 4 people) well your in for a big treat.

Starting tommorow me and my friend Conor Brown are starting a gaming podcast called Load/Save which we will cover the world of Video games and all other crazy stuff.

Hopefully if we get some followers we will move onto posting on iTunes and get a fanbase, but for now check out our Youtube channel.


http://www.youtube.com/LoadSavePodcast

So I picked up a copy of Far Cry Instincts on the original Xbox very cheap the other day in my local Gamestation. I've played about an hour or so of the game and I thought I would write what I think about the game so far.

For starters this is probably one of the best, if not the best looking game on the xbox, the graphics look really crisp and the attention to detial on this tropical island is amazing. My favourite aspect of the graphics though were the glossy water effects which blew me away even today.
But sadly the graphics are the only aspect I like so far, the voice acting seems kinda flat and I have the feeling that the S word is going to become overused by the central character Jack Carver.

After playing about one hour of this game: man this game is really quite brutal in terms of difficulty, your encouraged to use stealth to your advantage but to be honest using it is a waste of time since the enemy can detect you even in the thickest of jungle. The gun fights get old really quickly aswell, most of the weapons you get at the start are a littile underpowered, but still it's the beginning of the game. One minor problem that pissed me off though about the weapons was the MP5, which in real life is a kick ass gun but for close quarters combat not at range which Far cry encourages you to do. Anyway enough about MP5's the game does look promising at least for now and the graphics make me want to play even more. Hopefully this will be a blast.

I recorded this a while back as a compression test for youtube but I forgot it was 20 minutes long so I uploaded it to Viddler.com and gave it some use. Now you guys can enjoy it here on the blog.

Well Enjoy

It has been confirmed that Crytek's UK branch are currently working on an "original IP". Crytek UK are formely known to be Free Radical who developed the groundbreaking Timesplitters series, untill November 2008 when the company went into administration along with Timesplitters 4.

Crytek UK's new IP is focused on a multiplayer and single player expereince. They
hope it will evolve into a series just like Timesplitters did. 

So does that mean no more Timesplitters 4, well we will have to wait and see.

After being shown at E3 2009 the time is drawing closer to the holiday season and in this case the launch of both Facebook and Twitter on Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

November 17th is what Microsoft are saying and a public beta has been confirmed for the around "the middile to the end of october".

Hey guys

Just to let you know that more text reviews will be coming to the blog very soon. Some games I want to review are the following:

• Resident Evil 2 
• Resident Evil 3
• Primal 
• Headhunter
• Persona 4
• Deus Ex: The Invisible War
• Haunting Ground
• Far Cry Instincts
  

Here we have a Asian man(Looks Japanese but I'am not sure)showing off his Neo Geo games by dancing to a sick beat. I don't know about you but this is an awesome way to present a collection: If you can dance that is..

Over the years I have played many console role playing games and it’s gotten to a point where these games are just becoming too similar for me. Persona 3 however was a game I jumped into having no prior knowledge of the Shin Megami Tensei series at all; I just expected it to be another clichéd console RPG. I was very wrong

It’s hard to talk about the story of Persona 3 without spoiling the plot itself however the basic plotline is that you are in the shoes of an average young teenager who recently transferred to Gekkoukan high school. But it seems that not everything is clear in this average Japanese town. Your character comes to awaken to his power known as ‘Persona’ which only a certain number of individuals can wield by pointing a gun like object at their head and pulling the trigger to call their Persona to aid.

Monsters that are referred to as shadows are threatening the world with a strange disease known as Apathy Syndrome: these shadows appear at a time known only to some as the dark hour: an hour which occurs between midnight and one o’clock. Most of the public are absent from the dark hour and transmogrified in coffins, however certain individuals in the game that the player can interact with have set up a organisation known as SEES or the Specialised Extracurricular Execution Squad and are determined to free the Earth of all shadows and the dark hour.

However saving the world is only one slice of Persona 3, when you are not fighting you are at school attending class, boosting social links or playing sports. You have the chance to make friends at school and develop a relationship with them; all friends have their own story in which you will be involved with whatever problem he or she has. The way you spend your time at school also has an impact on how well you perform during the dark hour.

That’s not to say that the player is restricted to the school though, Players have the advantage of exploring the town of Iwatodai whether it be going to mall, shrine, weapons store or even going for a bite to eat with your friends. Persona 3 definitely has alot of options for exploration and doing so is very enjoyable.

When not fooling around in the town or attending school, the player is encouraged to fight shadows during the dark hour, in which you explore the massive tower known as Tarturus. The tower consists of over 200 floors of shadows and boss fights and progressing higher up Tarturus also increases difficulty level: where shadows around the first floors are pretty easy compared to the ones higher up which in some cases I had to think tactically how not to get myself killed. Although optional the dark hour it strongly encouraged in order to beat the monthly boss battles which occur every on full moon of every month.

Gameplay in Tarturus comes with both its pros and it cons. On the pros side exploration isn’t like your typical turn based RPG where at any moment a random battle could pop from nowhere. Persona 3 however gives the player the ability to give the upper hand in a battle in which you will ambush the enemy by running up to its back and surprising it from behind with your sword. Dungeons are also full of a number of goodies to collect: mainly treasure chests but there are other random things for you to find in their too. A few cons I found in the dungeon exploration though was the fact that in order to keep a steady pace on the tower you had to activate certain portals along the way which was really frustrating when you have to repeat going up 15 floors every night which made fighting progression alot longer.

But that’s not to say that the combat in Persona 3 is frustrating, in fact in some ways it is very good. Combat in Persona 3 uses an Active battle system with some minor changes to the mechanics which really had me liking the combat. You have a basic series of commands with the obvious one in mind being ‘Attack’. However there is one command which you may be using more than often, this command is ‘Skill’.

Using skill is basically like the magic command in many RPG’s however your Persona will be able to perform a hefty number of these skills such as Agi which is your basic fire spell, or Bufu which is ice. You will find yourself using your Persona more than your weapon which in turn is saved for ‘All out attacks’ which take place when the player stuns all the enemies on screen and then continues on to unleash a powerful attack, this is very useful when it comes to boss fights however you first must identify it’s weakness before it can be stunned, some enemies cannot be stunned at all but of course there’s always its weakness which you can use to your advantage.

Fighting can be tough and this is definitely not your button masher RPG, Persona 3 requires you in many cases to strategically think of your next move. Of course there’s your obvious strategies such as fire beats ice and such but at times you may have to think deeper, at one case my opponent had no magical weakness or attacking weakness, the only way to defeat him was to fire air propelled weapons at it like the bow for example. Battles of course can be tough especially towards the end of the game but with enough levelling up it is very rewarding.

One unique aspect of Persona 3 is character development with both major and minor characters. Early on you will come to notice that every character that you can have a social link with all have a reason or story for being with the protagonist. This aspect was very interesting and was probably one of the main points of the game that I loved over other role playing games.

Over time you will become attached to your team and your friends, a classic example was the female classmate social link where in the beginning you hang out with her and over time you start to develop a romantic relationship and eventually sustain an unbreakable bond which will actually benefit you when levelling up your Persona’s.

The graphics in Persona 3 are some of the best I have seen on the Playstation 2. Probably the glossiest of Persona’s graphics are indeed its character artwork which looks absolutely stunning from the menu’s to the character artwork everything is perfect in this area. Character models are also well designed as well as the characters themselves which all have fantastic costumes and the attention to detail is phenomenal, in which I think this is one of the first games where I have had a video game crush: ok I said it but I have never seen such a beautiful redheaded Japanese girl. CG also makes an appearance which also has a admirable artistic style and implements into certain scenes well.

The one con with Persona’s graphics though are the Dungeons which after a very short period of time the repetitive environment just gets old very quickly, what stops this from being a major problem though is that each block in Tarturus has a unique design but as I said it gets old after about 5 floors.

Atlus has been known to create games with breathtaking artistic musical scores which of course in Persona 3 meet all of the expectations needed. Some of the music is more memorable than others but in whole the soundtrack is a joy to listen to and never gets old. If only they played Persona music at school.

The pinnacle of the audio development though is the voice acting which is some of the best I have heard since Final Fantasy X.

Atlus did a great job of getting onboard a team of devoted professionals that all play their characters very well and one classic example of this is when an emotional scene pops up and you actually feel immersed into these characters and their personalities.

On the time scale this is not your average eight to ten hours you would normally get in an action game, instead Persona 3 will take anywhere from up to 60 to 100 hours depending on how you play to finish the game. And to add even more replay value the side story FES will add around another 30 to 40 hours more game time with also increased difficulty for those players looking for some challenge.

If I had to tell you right now my favourite role playing game of all time it would be Persona 3 on many levels due to that the game’s plot is just a joy from start to finish. The character development is just mind blowing and I actually feel like I have a part in these people’s lives. But, most of all Persona 3 compared to other RPG’s is very unpredictable which now every RPG with a dumb story is so damn predictable but oh no Persona 3 is a total contrast and it stands out as being one of a kind. Get out and buy Persona 3 FES now.

Written by Jack Gordon

08/10/2009 00:51:05