Cam's Eye View: 3 Year Special Part 4: Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King for the PS2 review

Welcome to the next part of the 3-year RPG special. I remember reading a pretty harsh statement from Bioware stating that Japanese-style RPG’s lacked innovation. While that may be true in some areas, I don’t think they should say that when Bioware’s Dragon Age 2 was not as good as the original, with a not-so-well-developed story, bland characters, and still had what critics called an identity crisis of wanting to know what kind of game it wants to be. It also doesn’t help with the whole controversy about that Bioware employee giving the game a perfect 10 out of 10 and calling any other reviewer biased and stupid. Even though RPG’s from Japan still use common gameplay elements like turn-based combat and have fairly simple melodramatic stories, it works out for some series since sometimes we don’t need a fully complex story with underlying political or religious themes. Sometimes, we just need a simple story with enjoyable characters and a sense of adventure and excitement without having to pay close attention to the story’s many underlying themes. This is where the very popular Dragon Quest series comes in. This is probably the most popular series back in Japan and for good reason. The franchise has had very simple, but entertaining plots (it differs from game to game since Dragon Quest 4 and 5 have great stories) and great characters with a combat system that hasn’t changed in about 20 or more years. While I have admittingly stayed far away from this franchise due to extreme levels of difficulty that does turn some people off, if you stay with the games you will learn to love them and be hooked on them for the rest of your life. This is where Dragon Quest 8 comes in for the PS2! A game that I think is far better than Final Fantasy 12 and 13 entirely, Dragon Quest 8 with its simple yet entertaining story, great characters, simple combat, and of course the artwork of Akira Toriyama added for some flare is a great RPG. Any RPG fan that likes old traditional turn-based RPG’s should get this game immediately! It’s one of if not the best RPG on the PS2 and one of my favorite RPGs. Let’s dive into the wonderful world of Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King.

The story tells us of a kingdom that was cursed by a jester turned evil wizard named Dhoulmagus. This event doesn’t end well with the results being the king turned into a sort of frog-like man, and his daughter turned into a horse. The king is accompanied by a hefty thief named Yangus, and of course the main character named Hero (I called him Alan). It is their quest to save the king’s land and stop Dhoulmagus in his tracks before he rules the world. Along their journey they will meet two more characters, Jessica a hot vixen with a headstrong attitude, and Angelo a suave yet clever swordsman. The story might not be original, with a pretty simple plot, but if you look at a lot of Japanese styled RPG’s of today, their stories aren’t that original or unique either. Dragon Quest 8 fixes this by having only 4 main characters and the story being well told with some touching scenes, funny scenes, and some pretty dark areas. It all results in a wonderfully told story and one that you will be sticking with for awhile.

The gameplay is very simplistic in design, but like I said in so many other reviews about RPG’s, there are some tweaks done that makes this franchise so charming. Battles take place in a first person perspective, kind of like if you were playing a turn-based version of the Elder Scroll games. You take turns smacking around monsters and leveling up. Surprisingly, all of the characters can excel in specific weapons, like the Hero, who has no name of course, is actually really good with boomerangs since they can hit all enemies on the screen, Yangus can do heavy damage with an Axe, Jessica can use a whip, and Angelo is great with a sword or bow and arrow. This gives the game a lot of variety since having a hero who can hit all the enemies on the screen with one normal attack is a great thing to have since the battles can sometimes have up to EIGHT enemies on screen. Heck, I even ran into a battle with TEN enemies. Battles can be tough depending on what monsters you are fighting in that exact battle. Sometimes, they can be pushovers and sometimes they can be even harder than the boss! I kid you not, I got killed at least twice by normal enemies that happened to be in big groups, and then I blazed through the boss like melted butter. Each time you level up each character, they get skill points that you can use on different attributes that can help you. For example, Jessica has an attribute called Sex Appeal. If you focus on that specific attribute, monsters in battle will be swayed by her and not attack your party. Or if you level up Yangus’s humanity, he can have an attack later where he has a bunch of old people run over the monsters. There is a deep strategy here since the encounter rate is high, which require you to be a few levels stronger than you already are to defeat the bosses that will hit you hard if you don’t level up enough. You can also increase your attack power by doing a sort of buffing move called psyche up where your tension rises and you do more damage. About half way through the game or so, you can fight visible monsters in the overworld and recruit them to make a sort of backup army, and if you group certain monsters together, they can do special attacks and moves, kind of like in Dragon Quest 5. As you travel across the world from a third person perspective, you can find items to mix together in an alchemy pot to make new, rare, or normal items for your party, but you will have to wait awhile for the alchemy pot to finish the first item before moving onto the next. This is a smart idea since you don’t get a lot of money in the game, and items cost a lot. Sometimes, it’s better to find ingredients for one weapon instead of buying the current weapon you see at a store.

The graphics are beautiful for the PS2. Level 5, the developers of the White Knight franchise, the Professor Layton series, Dark Cloud series, Rogue Galaxy, and Jeanne D’Arc knew how to make the next game in the Dragon Quest series. They tuned this series tightly so it isn’t as drawn out as Dragon Quest 6 or 7. The characters are memorable, and they are complex and 3 dimensional, and I say that even when Jessica wears a somewhat sultry outfit and an even sultrier outfit if you find the playboy bunny outfit and the Hero doesn’t talk. They both have so much character in them that you cannot find in games like Final Fantasy 13. The character and monster designs by famed manga artist Akira Toriyama look great in this cel-shaded 3D environment. One of the best things about the design of the monsters is the personality they give off that only Akira Toriyama’s designs can do. Even their personalities affect how they attack in battles, like the Jailcat and its many color-pallet-swapped cousins will sometimes just lick themselves, and there are enemies that will just stare off into space. Even if some of the names of the monsters are terrible puns, there is just a charm to them that just brings you more into the game. The voice acting is terrific! Yeah, you can say it sounds bad because of the hammy accents, but that is part of the charm. It is like if you were watching the love child of a Monty Python and Princess Bride film. I mean, sometimes in RPG’s, the voice actors aren’t given good direction and they sound silly pulling you out of the game in result. You hear the voice acting in this game, and you just get pulled even more into its unique world. For a while, I wanted to know who the voice actors were for this game, and after some research here is what I found. Ricky Grover voices Yangus, Emma Ferguson voices Jessica, Blake Riston voices Angelo, Jon Glover voices Trode, and there are some other great voices, just look up this game on IMDB. The music is heavenly, and I get the feeling of great adventure awaiting me when I pick up my controller and turn on the PS2. The composer for this series is Koichi Sugiyama. He is famous for making that great and awe inspiring theme song that again gives you the feeling of an awe inspiring adventure awaiting you. He is also famous for working on the entire Dragon Quest series, along with film and T.V like Cyborg 009, Gatchaman, and even Godzilla vs. Biollante. His music is great and is definitely I-pod worthy, so go find the soundtrack for this game right now!

Oh my goodness, this is such a perfect game! I mean, I might be fan boyish right now with this game, but there are some minor faults. The encounter rate can be high and a tad annoying at times when you are trying to get to place to place and are stopped by constant random encounters, but that’s really only if you’re traveling by night when certain enemies come out and the encounter rate is higher. For some reason, they decided to keep the gimmick of reviving your dead friends ONLY at the church. Granted, you can get out of areas faster by using specific spells to get to the church, but it’s just the fact that you can’t revive them on the spot, which is tedious, since fights get tougher and tougher. Before I move onto the conclusion, here are some tips for people who want to play this game. Have the Hero focus on boomerangs and lances, grind until you’re about level 6 before you fight the first boss, and don’t just flail away at the boss. Look at the situation, and when you get Angelo, make sure you use him as the main healer along with the Hero, and make sure you’re about 4 levels above your past level before you go onto each boss fight. It will make boss fights much easier.

Well then, what can I say that I haven’t said already about this game? I…LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE this game! This IS one of my favorite games of all time. It’s basically everything you want in an RPG, it’s almost perfect. Heck, it IS perfect. I declare Dragon Quest 8 to be the best RPG on the PS2. You can get this game for about 10 bucks and more. If you can find it, BUY IT! You will not regret it. You could say that Dragon Quest 8 is being stubborn with how traditional it’s staying, but really? Is that a bad thing? It’s like people complaining about how Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just more Super Mario galaxy? Again, is that REALLY a bad thing?!  Sometimes, it’s better if we don’t invest our time into some new-fangled game gimmick that in the end is unpleasant, like Fable 3 and Mindjack. You will probably see me review Dragon Quest 4, 5, and 9, so make sure to look for those in my 2012 reviews. Dragon Quest 8 is hands down one of my top 20 favorite RPG’s of all time and is one of my top 25 favorite games of all time. Now, go out and have yourself an amazing adventure through the land of Dragon Quest 8!

This game gets a 10 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Yakuza Retrospective Part 2: Yakuza 2 for the PS2 review

Hello everyone, and welcome to part 2 of Cam’s Eye View’s Yakuza Retrospective! So, as you all know, I liked the first game, yeah, it had its faults and demanded commitment, but it was a great game. I just wish I knew about this series sooner so I could find a good condition copy of the game, but I know some people would rather rent it to see why it was so great. So, let’s dive into the sequel and one of the better late-coming PS2 games from 2008, Yakuza 2. If you liked the first game and wanted to bash some more skulls in Japan, we’ve got a sequel that definitely brings in more Japanese crime syndicates to fill your prescription of skull bashing. Now, granted, nothing much has changed, but there are some pretty good improvements. So, let’s clean off your brass knuckles, whip out Rosetta Stone Japanese, and read on about Yakuza 2! Personally, I wouldn’t recommend going through the hassle of Rosetta Stone, but do what you want.

The game’s story takes place an entire year after the first game, with Kazuma Kiryu is living with young Haruka as basically father and daughter. While going to the cemetery to pray for some characters that were in the last game, the 5^th Chairman of the Tojo Clan meets Kazuma to discuss some business, but is then assassinated. Kazuma finds out that there are some more major clan wars going on and some foreign mafia groups from Korea are getting into the mix of things. A lot more twists happen, and we get to see what has happened to some characters from the past game. Now, this is a long game, so make some popcorn and get a few beers or whatever you drink, and get ready to go through a lot of text and cut scenes.

The gameplay is very similar to the last game with a huge city to run through, and people, who for some reason get mad by just looking at you, ready for your fists. There are some more mini-games, like a first person fighting game that is fun, but most of the game is the same as the last one, but with some minor changes. This time, the game takes place in Osaka and in the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. There are multiple missions to do, like help a guy get a specific doll from those crane games, catching a freeloader, and picking off Yakuza people. The fighting has been improved with a lock-on feature that you can implement, that makes you strafe from side to side when focusing on a single opponent. This means no more flailing around when enemies sneak up behind you to hit you. The rest is the same, a blue bar will fill up where you can execute special moves, and you get health from normal items and can buy disposable weapons like guns and swords. Kazuma can also help out in a host club as one of the side stories in the game. It’s like a dating simulator, so basically, say the right things and get more money. Another improvement they’ve added is that you can finally play on the easy mode from the beginning instead of the last game where you started out on normal and then if you died too much get switched to easy mode. The mini-games range from the crane games, slot machines, the first person fighting game, Mahjong, Shogi, batting cages, golf, and many others. Again, you get a lot of stuff to do, just like in the GTA series.

Yakuza 2 definitely takes control of the PS2’s power, since the game looks amazing! It still has a lot of that Japanese film noir charm and is executed well. The language stays as Japanese with English subtitles, which is great since the voice acting in the last game seemed called in. The music is also very well done with calming music and rock and roll sounds. Four different people composed the soundtrack. The four people are Hidenori Shoji (F-Zero GX), Hideki Sakamoto (Echochrome and Shinobido), the third is Norihiko Hibino (Bayonetta, Ninja Blade, Zone of Enders, and Boktai), and Takahiro Izutani (also Bayonetta and Ninja Blade). It’s interesting since the Metal Gear Solid games often pop up between these 4 composers. Just a fun little fact I thought I would tell you all. Overall, Sega did a great job giving this game a great presentation.

However, it does fall flat on some areas that are kind of surprising to me. While I didn’t mind the length of the last game, for some reason I don’t like how long this game is. In my opinion, it is kind of boring. Maybe it’s just how long and tedious these chapters can be. It also doesn’t help when it comes to finding certain people, and then the map doesn’t show you where that person is. I also think that the game borrowed too much from the last game and is more like Yakuza 1.5.

All and all though, this is a good game. It’s very solid, and the story is quite captivating with love and betrayal everywhere you look. It is much more of a polished game, and it is better than the last game in a lot of ways. I would recommend picking this game up over the first one, but I think both games are very good. Now then, it’s time to get Yakuza 3 since we got Yakuza 4 this year, and a newly announced Yakuza game with zombies was announced, so it is a good time to be a Yakuza fan.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance for the PS2 review

What games do you think of when you look at the beat ‘em up genre? First, you got your 2D beat ‘em ups that took place on a 2-dimensional plane. When I think of those kinds of games, I think of games like Final Fight, Knights of the Round, King of Dragons, Streets of Rage, Ninja Warriors, Kung Fu, Splatterhouse, TMNT Turtles in Time, and many other classic beat ‘em up games. Sadly, the 3D beat ‘em up genre doesn’t really have a lot of good games in that genre. Of course, we have the awesome Yakuza series for this answer. However, we usually think about bad or just average (some slightly above average) games that really come to mind in this genre. The games I can think of are The Bouncer, Final Fight Streetwise, and you get the idea. The 3D beat ‘em up genre isn’t that good. It isn’t the genre’s fault. It’s just hard to make a good 3D beat ‘em up. I recently was watching a video about 200 PS2 games and I saw one that caught my eye and it happened to be a 3D beat ‘em up. I put it on my Gamefly.com list and I rented it. The game in question is what people consider to be an underrated gem known as Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance for the PS2 and Xbox. Made by our now defunct friends from Cavia, who made Nier, Beat Down is yet another attempt to try and make a 3D platformer, and from the big name reviews, I could see I was going down a bumpy road ahead. However, I only read the reviews to see what I was getting into. It is my turn to see what I think about the game. This is my review of Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance.

            The story is about 5 different characters. You can choose one of them, and mostly you will probably start out with the titular Irish character, Raven. You find out that one of the other 4 characters has betrayed you during a mission. It is up to you to find out who betrayed you and to take down the big mob boss that runs the city named Zanetti and beat him down to the ground with vengeance. Normally, I would save the bad stuff for later in the review, but man, when I turned on the game and played through it for a few hours, the story is utter crap and is ultimately pointless, with bland characters and voice acting that is just awful. I will go into deeper detail later in the review. All you need to know is that the game starts out bad, and it just gets worse story wise. Just a heads up, I might trickle bad thoughts about this game throughout the review so don’t be surprised by me bashing the game even before I talk about the bad.

            The gameplay is like a weak version of Yakuza or God Hand. That is saying something since the last time I played it, I didn’t like it, but that game is for another review. The gameplay is basically a free roaming beat ‘em up with some interesting things thrown in that that were poorly executed. The main meat of the game is, of course, beating random thugs into the ground, and after the fight, stealing from them. However, you can do multiple things besides beating thugs into the ground. One thing you can do is recruit the thugs into joining you, or putting them on call just in case your other teammates get their pants knocked off. You can also rob from them, and get information from them, though the information is pretty useless. There is one thing you do actually have to be careful about. Above your health bar, you have two meters that stand for your awareness by gangs and the police. This means that you have to be careful how many times you beat people up, and well, that just seems really stupid. To get around this however, you can also buy different clothes, and oddly enough, plastic surgery, and make yourself unnoticeable. If you are however noticeable by both groups of enemies, you will automatically get into fights. There are also one-on-one fights that I guess are supposed to be boss fights, but they play like broken versions of Virtual Fighter. In the end, this game does try to break things up a bit with a beat ‘em up style gameplay that makes you level up and gain more combos with stealth, and squad-based fighting, but they ultimately fail in multiple areas.

            This is a hard area to go through in this review since I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say about the presentation of the game. The graphics are muddy, grainy, and way too dark. Before even playing the game, I tried to make the game brighter, but in the end I couldn’t. The really only good thing I could say is, well, the main character is original with his accent…he is Irish…. for some reason…Anyway, back to the review. The voice acting is terrible. I will say my reason in the next paragraph. The music is standard and not very memorable in the least.

            I probably should have left all my complaints here, but I will explain in better detail what is horribly wrong with this game! Since I already talked about the graphics, I’ll move on. The voice acting is BAD! Everyone, especially the guys, sound the same, and they sound like Steve Blum voices them all. This is kind of like two of the main characters in Vanquish. The AI is simply and utterly stupid. I mean, they are really dumb, both ally and enemy AI! Yeah, the AI will throw a few punches here and there, but they will mostly stand still and not help at all, and the same with the enemies. The camera is awkward! It is way too close to your character and this ends up hiding hidden enemies. The hiding system with the thugs and police is utter garbage! It is only for the sake of buying new clothes and plastic surgery. At the end of the day, you look like Tim Curry from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I mean, it’s like Cavia took the bare basics of all of the gameplay mechanics above, and well, didn’t really improve on them. Even after playing this game for a few minutes, I didn’t care about the story. I said to myself that I should play further, and I did, and boy, am I sorry that I did.

            This game is garbage, plain and simple. There is nothing properly polished about this game, and anyone who considers this an underrated gem is probably in denial at how bad this game is. I mean this is one of the worst! Bland characters, bland story, awful gameplay, and all a complete mess. If you want to play a good 3D beat ‘em up, go play the Yakuza series and God Hand. That is weird since, like I said, God Hand isn’t my game, but after this game I would prefer God Hand to this. As with most games I think are just awful, it will end up on my black list of just overall poor games.

This game gets a 2 out of 10.

A First Look at the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

Today killatia takes a look at the recently released Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and see if it really is a gamer's phone.

Cam's Eye View: Bujingai: the Forsaken City for the PS2 review

Here is a question. What other kind of game genre dominates the home console market besides the shooter? Research and sales results have shown that for a while, action games have dominated the market. I mean, for example, when the PS1 came out, there was a huge amount of rpgs released for the console from Square Enix and Game Arts. Another good example of this is the huge explosion of action games coming out for the PS2, when a little-known title known as Devil May Cry came out. Seriously, there were so many action games. There were games like Blood Will Tell, Nanobreaker, Gladiator Sword of Vengeance, Shinobi, Genji, Blood Rayne, Devil Kings, Onimusha, and even modern games today like Conan and Bayonetta. Yes, some of these were made by the same people, like Bayonetta had the same person from Devil May Cry, but my point is that even today the action genre is still very popular. One of these games is today’s review known as Bujingai: The Forsaken City! Now, this game has a lot going for it. You have a pretty good developer who made a personal underrated series of mine, Gungrave, and the lead character is based on one of the most popular glam rock stars in Japan, Gackt. One other thing that makes this game interesting is that it’s based on fast paced action films from China known as Wuxia. However, this game might have some flaws that keep this fast-paced game under the radar for most people.  Let’s take a look at this game and see what’s inside! This is Bujingai: The Forsaken City for the PS2.

There is very little story in this game, and is sadly more flash than substance. What I could get is that you play as Lau, an ancient warrior with two huge swords and J-pop-style red hair. After coming back to the forsaken city riding on a comet for some reason, stuff goes through the drain and demons are everywhere. Another thing is that the main girl lead gets kidnapped by Lei, who I think is your brother or used to be your brother. Lei is the one responsible for doing all this, and halfway through the game, kidnaps the main girl. It is up to you to save the world and destroy all the demons. There is very little story here, and later in the review, I will explain why this is bad. Yeah, as you can tell I am somewhat not happy about this game. Oh well, let’s continue. Taito published this game. The game was created by Red Entertainment who made games like Gates and Lords of Thunder, Thousand Arms, and the two Gungrave games. 

The gameplay takes the form of a linear action game with some minor platforming elements. Since this game is based on Wuxia style films, the combat is very flashy and combo-oriented. You can pull off huge combos to whittle down the opponents health bar. You can do spin moves, uppercuts, and jump kick your opponent. This hero has also taken some notes from Prince of Persia and can wall jump. He can also glide through the air to get to other platforms. You also have an upgradeable magic system where you can pull off super powerful spells, like a giant tornado and shooting energy arrows, to doing a drill spin attack. You can upgrade everything about you from how well you defend, to how strong your magic is, increasing your health and magic bar, and well, that’s pretty much it. The only other thing I could talk about here is the interesting counter system. If you are in front of an enemy and you block an attack at the right time, you can do a very cool counter attack and take out the smaller enemies faster. The boss fights are big, but they usually end up being only pattern-related bosses, like in the Ghouls and Ghost series of games.

Graphically, it’s pretty cool looking. Everything looks gritty, and the areas do have a charm to them if you can get past the major faults in the game. The monster designs are all pretty detailed and the normal soldiers are kind of creepy-looking. The animations on everything also look wonderful, and you can tell Taito put a lot of money into the animation besides putting it all on Gackt. The flashy moves and all the ridiculous looking martial art moves are very cool, and make you feel like you’re in movies like Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I also like that at the very beginning of the game, you make your own cut scene when you’re chopping down on the villains for a few minutes. It’s just kind of a nice little treat.

However, like all games, Bujingai has some pretty major flaws in its design. The first is the camera control. It is very limited and can leave you in some awkward positions when you are fighting enemies and there are enemies behind you. This game can also get very tedious since mini-bosses later in the game get tougher and harder to hit, and you can’t cancel out of a combo so easily since you’re stuck in that animation until the combo is done. This has led to some unneeded damage taken and deaths. While there are some cool looking bosses, they are pretty boring, since like I said above, there are patterns you need to follow. This game is also awkwardly linear, like there is no deviation from the path. No, it isn’t as linear as games like Kung Fu, but still there isn’t a lot of variation in the levels. Then, when something different does come around, it’s too late in the game and feels like it was just tacked on. While this is a game that proudly shows that they got Gackt, they don’t really use him besides the design of the character and voice. Yes, he does do the intro song, but he has NO LINES in the game. It’s annoying. It’s like they used a lot of their budget to pay Gackt and advertise that they have him. The English voice acting sucks. It’s like it was done on a shoestring budget. There also isn’t much to get back into the groove of the game after finishing it once. Kind of a shame, it could be amazing if they just added more stuff besides GACKT!

Overall this is a horribly flawed game, but it has its fun moments, and I would only recommend renting it for everyone else, unless if you are a hardcore action gamer and are looking for something that’s different or like the PS2 Shinobi. Action games come and go, and sadly, this one came with more flash than substance and just went as soon as it came. Shame, too, because it is almost an underrated gem. Good thing we have games like God of War.

This game gets a 6 out of 10