[Review] AMY (PS3)

When AMY publisher Lexis Numerique surveyed gamers to find out how muchthey wanted the game to cost, I initially applauded their efforts. It wasrefreshing, though perhaps a bit suspect and odd, to see a publisher pricetheir game based on consumer demand rather than an amount to maximize profits. Asthe reviews trickled in and I had tried AMYmyself though, I realized it wasn’t so much an attempt to democratize pricingas much as it was an attempt to get the few extra bucks the game could netthem.

The story starts off on a trainwhere players control Lana, who has just helped Amy escape from some sort oflab. Suddenly, the train’s attendant knocks Lana out and by the time sherecovers, she finds that they have crashed into a train station and Amy ismissing. With that, players begin their quest to find and keep Amy safe. Formuch of the game, the narrative focuses on this goal rather than any realmotivation to find her. Even if the game were more exciting to play, I wouldhave felt little drive to look for the girl. But I suppose the fact that shewas a young girl was reason enough for the writer.

Conceptually, AMY had a lot going for it. Instead oflimiting players to the usual healing items or automatic regeneration found inmost games, Lana could cure her infection level through being close with Amy,who is immune to the monsters’ disease. In addition, Amy could be commanded tocomplete certain tasks that Lana couldn’t do. However, the execution of it allis shoddy at best. Amy, along with other NPCs, are prone to walking into walls,disobeying the occasional order, or simply being a hindrance as players walk.At least the collision detection works fine.

Most frustrating of all in thisgame are the combat mechanics and controls. Understandably, Lana isn’t trainedfor combat and could only wield the occasional wooden stick, but her limitationto either swing or dodge only makes for repetition. Even the protagonists in Silent Hill know how to pull a trigger. Theuncooperative camera hinders players even moreso than Lana’s own inability tofight, often placing enemies in blindspots and a prime location to ambushplayers or perhaps eluding players as to whether the monster has died yet. Othergames that feature a powerless protagonist feel challenging; AMY challenges players to not destroytheir controllers in rage. Sparse checkpoints will annoy players even further, forcing them to replay large segments from untimely, accidental deaths.

Upon first impression, the gamelooks like a treat, especially at the $15 pricetag. As players spend more timewith AMY though, the blemishes willsoon become noticeable. Once players take control of Lana and command her torun out of the train, they will notice the game’s extremely choppy frame rate.It’s as though the game decides to skip a beat with every couple of steps Lanatakes, a problem that is only exacerbated during fights. Design-wise, the gameis so dark that it actually affects gameplay. Without any reliable radar and onlyvague visual cues to go on, I frequently ran into invisible walls that shouldhave never existed – wide gaps that couldn’t be crossed and sizeable crevassesthat Lana just seemed too elegant to crawl through. Any spaciousness that thesevisual elements create quickly disappears.

AMY is everything that an indie title shouldn’t be – it’s marred bylazy design decisions, clunky controls, and wasted potential. Gamers who wantto test the legitimacy of reviewers’ scores or are drawn into the title by itspremise and graphics are highly discouraged from even touching the title. Thegame’s problems are simply too numerous and rooted in design for them to everbe patched up, making it hardly worth a purchase. 

Available on: PC, PS3, Xbox 360; Publisher: Lexis Numerique; Developer: VectorCell; Players: 1; Released: January 17, 2012; ESRB: Mature; Official Site

Note: A promotional code was provided to Denkiphile for review purposes by the publisher.

[Demo Spotlight] Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

This is an anticipated single-player action role-playing game that may actually please many role playing gaming fans for 2012. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning seems to have all the traits of a great RPG, such as a gripping story line, beautiful environments and incredibly liberating gameplay with interesting customizable sets of talent trees that will make for interesting combat.

The demo begins by explaining that the world is at war with a race called the Tuatha, who are trying to gain control Amalur. Your character was a victim of the Tuatha, but is brought back to life by the gnomes’ secret weapon known as The Well of Souls. Without revealing too much about the story, this is where your journey begins. The demo gives hints that your decisions in the game may affect the course of the story, very much like Dragon Age: Origins.

Character customization involves four playable races: the Ljosalfar, Varani, Dokkalfar, and Almain . During customization, you choose your deity which helps boost certain attributes such as critical hit or increase health and mana. You have a limited range of customization for your character’s facial features since you are only given five presets to choose from. You can change your character’s skin, eye color hair style, make up, tattoos and accessories. When it comes to the eyes, face and other features, there is no adjusting. Whatever preset you pick is what your character will look like, maybe with different tones and some design changes.

With most RPGs, class selection is done in the character customization screen, but that is not the case for this game. What makes Kingdoms of Amalur so interesting is that your character has no set class. In fact, the class is built as the game goes along. Your character starts off with a clean slate or as the game calls it, “Fateless.” Your class, or “Destiny,” also has a lot of liberty behind it. In most games, your class is set; you can only get certain abilities for that class. But in this game, your Destiny Points can be spread towards different categories, making your character a hybrid class. You can be a warrior with mage and rogue like abilities, which make the real time gameplay unbelievably enjoyable. The gameplay itself has an odd mix of God of War's action and Skyrim's customization with gamers having total control of the character’s action.

Kingdoms of Amalur will be released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on February 7. We can't wait to jump back into the role playing madness after the short post-holiday slumber.

[Demo Spotlight] Final Fantasy XIII-2

When I heard they were going to make Final Fantasy XIII-2 I thought “Oh no, not another X-2.” I was expecting a fan service filled experience, but I was pleasantly surprised. FFXIII-2 seems to be going in a good direction. I wasn’t exactly in the loop about the story line prior to playing the demo, but I found myself wanting to know more about what was going on. Where is Lightning? Why am I playing Serah and who is this Noel guy following me around?

I think the greatest change that I appreciated was that upon the death of the party leader, you do not instantly lose. Instead, the party leader shifted to the surviving character. It was a big pain to have to start the battle over when only one of my characters was dead in FFXIII, but that issue has been solved in the sequel.



It’s a nice throwback to the old Final Fantasy games that battles are randomly generated, but I missed seeing monsters roaming around the maps. Some of the bigger battles had quick time events that allowed for higher damage to enemies and made the battles less repetitive. I’m not a fan of gimmicky additions to games, but these instances were not overly done or annoying.

Since only Serah and Noel were in my party, I was given the option of adding a tamed monster into my party. Among these was the Cait Sith, who healed my characters while I focused on dealing damage. These monsters have a bar that fills up so you can unleash a new feature called “Feral Link,” but it did not seem to be a big deal. Maybe after you level these monsters up, they will do more damage, but from what I saw, I’d leave the damage dealing to the main characters instead.



Another system that had a huge change was the crystarium. Instead of each role having its own separate crystarium structure, every character had a single crystarium. At each point of the crystarium, I got to choose which role I wanted to level. This simplified the leveling system and made it simpler to deal with. Not that anything was really wrong with the old crystarium, but this one makes allotting AP points a lot easier.



Overall, I enjoyed what I saw from FFXIII-2. As expected with any Final Fantasy game, the graphics are already amazing and the musical score does not disappoint. It’s looking to be a nice addition to the Fabula Nova Crystallis stories and I already foresee horrifying midnight launch lines from January 31.

[Demo Spotlight] Asura's Wrath (PS3)

In the barren month of January, where game releases are few and far in between, a demo for a hyped up game is quite appreciated. With a little over a month before its release, Asura’s Wrath has appeared on both the Playstation Network store and Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace. Filled with over the top action and excitement that reminds us of noteworthy action anime like Dragon Ball and Naruto, this game has already caught our eyes.

The demo offers two levels with vastly different playing styles, both of which exhibit the game’s changing controls and abilities rather well. The first has Asura fighting against a giant boss, a battle that will have players drawing up memories of the PS2 classic Shadow of the Colossus. Some parts of the battle work out like a generic action adventure title with Asura shooting plasma while avoiding incoming attacks. In the second stage, it’s a one-on-one duel, where plasma shots are put aside for fist fighting. Both of these showcase the game’s changing command list that is based on the stages and story rather than some tech tree. Once he has built up enough meter, burst will flash across the screen with a button prompt that will be the first of many more. Unlike traditional quick time event games, Asura’s Wrath flourishes on it and continually gives varying, appropriate commands. It manages to be cinematic without ever boring.

Everything about the game is sure to give anime fans chills. The designs look like they’re straight out of an episode of Naruto, mixing Asian mythology with machinery. Even better, a boss can have his starting monologue cut short with a single button press. It all contributes to Asura being nothing short of a badass and players a part of an anime episode with action packed battles. The biggest gripe with this so far is that the English voices also properly mirror a horribly dubbed anime, devoid of emotion and sounding just plain laughable at times. Hopefully a dual audio option will be available for the full release.

Asura’s Wrath seems to be Japan and Capcom’s answer for Sony’s own God of War, featuring both eastern mythical figures and a plethora of quick time events that deliver an exciting visual experience. It’s a shame the demo didn’t showcase anything other than boss fights, but it certainly has us hyped up for its release on February 21.

[Review] Batman Arkham City (PS3)

After creating a game that is heralded as game of the year, there must be a huge sense of satisfaction with all those involved. Soon after the champagne is gone and the confetti is cleaned up, everyone is left with the question: "What now?" How do the developers follow that up? How can they make a sequel that not only reaches the success of the prequel, but raises the bar to a new level? That was the challenge that Rocksteady Studios had in front of them after the glory that was Batman: Arkham Asylum. So as we start the new year, we take a look back to the best games of 2011 and check out Batman: Arkham City.


From the get go, Arkham City beautifully transitions from where Arkham Asylum left off. The former warden of Arkham Asylum is now the mayor of Gotham and has sent all the inmates of the asylum to a large gated area of Gotham that is Arkham City. Hugo Strange runs Arkham City and Bruce Wayne has been captured then sent into Arkham City in an epic, Hollywood worthy, cinematic intro.

The gameplay mirrors that of the original game and why not? If it's not broken, don't fix it. This is really a huge testament to the franchise's success; the core of the gameplay is very simple. You can fight all the thugs with a single button; if you want to add some counter attacks then you're now up to two buttons. Anything further than that is unnecessary, though the game will prompt you on how to perform certain combos and unlock the fighting potential of Batman. If you find this too easy, then you have the option of removing the prompts and left to learn and memorize these combos, but regardless of what you choose, you'll be in an action packed, and visually stunning battle every time. It can get redundant after awhile, especially in the regard of the random groups of thugs you encounter along the way. But most of the time you can spare yourself by just passing them along. Arkham City is quiet large, with many different buildings that you can interact with and free roaming the skies as Batman is really half the fun. In fact, gliding and grappling will quickly become the preferred mode of transportation; not only is it faster but walking and running with Batman is really rather cumbersome and not very smooth, which was something that unfortunately carried over from the original. Batman's place is in the skies anyway.

Without giving too much away, the plot is very intricate and packed with almost every Batman villain you can think of. They've even added a couple of missions where you can play as Catwoman that are behind the scenes but still relevant to the main plot. Another thing that I learned about Batman is that his life sucks. I say so because now, through this game, I feel as though I understand what it is to be Batman. Hear me out. You're gliding around the city on the hunt for Mr. Freeze, and when all the sudden your radio scanner tells you there are some thugs assaulting someone. Are you going to be that heartless guy that carries on with more important matters and let's this poor innocent man get mugged or worse? Okay; yeah you do sometimes, but a lot of the time you put your own mission aside to help out others. Believe me that this is no understatement. There will always be other side missions to accomplish, which really goes to show that there is always work to be done for Batman. These missions vary from random acts of kindness on the streets to full fledged missions with other bosses that show you how large and in-depth this game really is. There are even little trophies that the Riddlers has scattered around the city. This all makes for countless hours of content - relevant content. Everything about this game has a great attention to detail.

I really can't express enough how great of an experience it is to play this game. It is like you are living the character of the major motion film, with great graphics, cinematic movie score, and a great plot to go along with it. Though it obviously is a sequel Arkham Asylum, Arkham City delivers in its own right and can be a stand alone game with the hours upon hours of content. Though it is not in my nature to give anything the title of a perfect game, this game does come close. The franchise has created a great environment that can be enjoyed from the noobs to the veterans without detracting from the gameplay experience, allowing the player to engulf themselves into the world of Batman.

Available on: 360, PC, PS3; Publisher: Rocksteady Studios; Developer: Warner Bros. Interactive; Players: 1; Released: October 18, 2011; ESRB: Teen; Official Site

[Review] Trine 2 (PS3)

A relatively unknown game, Trine had caught the eyes of both critics and players who cameacross it. Ultimately, it failed to be published by Atllus on the Xbox LiveArcade and never quite reached the masses. With its sequel, Trine 2 being published by Atlus, thegame received some much needed hype to usher it into gamers’ eyes. With arelease that came just before Christmas, it seems to make the perfect unexpected,yet pleasing Christmas gift.

Trine 2 starts offsometime after the first, with the Trine summoning the wizard, knight, andthief to go on a quest once again. Along the way, they will traverse to avariety of beautifully rendered and fantastically designed locales – spiderweb-filled caverns, lush green forests filled with goblins and giant creatures –that are the stuff kids’ imaginations are made of. Gamers who have followed thefirst game will be happy to know that the trio’s characteristics and game’ssense of humor is intact, periodically highlighting the thief’s mischievousnature or the wizard’s age.

The bulk of the game includes puzzles and platformingaction, but what makes Trine 2 shineis the multitude of ways that players can solve a puzzle. On my thirdplaythrough of a level, I still found another way of getting across an abyssfilled with enemy fire. I could have either been ballsy and dodged every singleprojectile, summoned the wizard’s magical boxes as shields, or simply swungacross using the thief’s grappling hook. Though the game’s intermittentcheckpoints will heal and restore any lost members of the team, the open endednature of a puzzle ensure that with determination and an open mind, gamers canzoom through the game with minimal back tracking.

When another player is thrown into the mix, the puzzlesbecome infinitely easier. Unreachable ledges become a short magical box’s liftaway and overwhelming odds from packs of goblins become easily outmatched. Thebattles themselves could have a variety of solutions too; the whole cast is capableof holding their own. Other than the occasional bossfight, the battles feel insignificantand are only a slight impediment to reaching puzzles, which make up the bulk ofthe game both in play time and challenge. The game’s tech tree, which containsmany new skills that are essential to solving future puzzles, can actually bemodified on the fly to suit any situation’s needs.

Fortunately, unlike DungeonSiege 3, multiplayer saves carry over to players’ own games with Trine 2 allowing players to saveprogress from any multiplayer game they join. It no longer feels like purealtruistic charity when helping others complete a level. It can be a bitfrustrating when playing with others because the game doesn’t include a micoption, often making for countless fumbles during puzzles and confusion. Thankfully,there’s an offline multiplayer option that includes all the benefits of onlinemultiplayer without any of the confusion.

Fans of the first Trinewould have undoubtedly already picked this title up. Those who have only heardof it and are on the fence should do the same. The game’s design that leads tomultiple outcomes for any puzzle, whether it be in single or multiplayer, leadsto countless replay value. The gameplay coupled with the game’s both varied andgorgeous environments, gamers aren’t only in for a visual treat, but a journeyinto a fantasy world that they only dreamed of as kids. 

Available on: Mac, PC, PS3, Xbox 360; Publisher: Atlus; Developer: Frozenbyte; Players: 1 - 3; Released: December 20, 2011; ESRB: Everyone; Official Site

Note: A promotional code was provided to Denkiphile for review purposes by the publisher.

[Review] Tekken Hybrid (PS3)

It’s quite evident that fighters are making quite therevival as of late. Even before Street Fighter IV though, the Tekken serieshad never gave up on the genre and only continued to push out titles throughoutthe years. As fighters have become part of the mainstream, it’s only expectedthat it would bleed into other entertainment forms as well, such as movies;likewise, Tekken would be one of thefrontrunners in coming out with a  CGmovie, which is sure to satisfy fans more than the live action failures ofother franchises. Tekken Hybridthrows the past along with the fruits of its labors together, giving fans Tekken Tag 2 Prologue, Tekken Tag Tournament HD, and CG movie Tekken Blood Vengeance all in onepackage.

More than a decade since its original release, Tekken Tag Tournament still manages tobe a fun game. While it lacks the extended combos of recent outings, the solidtag-based is intact. Harking to a more simple time, TTT’s lack of walls and bound-based combos offer solace for gamerswho are tired of being pounded to death upon a single combo that will carry himto the wall. On top of that, it has all the modes that its previous consolecounterpart did, including the mysteriously addicting Tekken Bowl mode. Thoughthe gameplay has kept up, the graphics’ age definitely shows. Like a veteranactress, the game is expected to show some age; it’s an excusable, yetundeniable facet of TTT HD.

It’s hard to look at this package and pick out any one partthat’s the headliner. However, with TekkenTag 2 Prologue’s character selection being heavily influenced by the maincast in Tekken Blood Vengrance, itwould seem that these two go hand in hand in promoting each other. As thefuture of the Tekken franchise, TTT2 Prologue should certainly be thecenterpiece that has gamers’ appetite whetting the most. In addition to the tagpossibilities presented in TTT, TTT2 Prologue includes Tag Assault,which allows two characters bombarding an opponent with attacks, and Tag Crash,which allows one to safely tag out during an attack as another comes in. Bothof these only strengthen the tagging mechanics, making it a crucial aspect to implementduring games. With only Jin, Kazuya, Alisa, and Xiaoyu available, the game ismerely a demo that will leave players wanting.

Graphically, the game already looks better than Tekken 6, with more detailed charactersand stages alike. This is only made all the more impressive by the game’sability to have multiple characters on screen at the same time, pummeling away.The musical stylings established in Tekken6 stay strong, giving players a variety of electronic music, including thetoken dubstep noise.

Film loving gamers may be reluctant to load up Tekken Blood Vengeance, they will bepleasantly surprised if they go against their first instincts. While Blood Vengeance is by no means AcademyAward material, it’s a jump in quality from other fighting game based movies –certainly better than most adaptations of the Street Fighter series. The writing does become confusing and hardto follow at times, but bears the series’ signature combination of serious scenesinvolving the Mishima family and humor with Xiaoyu and Panda. Visually, it isstunning. Avid Tekken followers willundoubtedly draw similarities between the movie’s CG quality and those of thegames’ cutscenes.

For just one aspect of this bundle, Tekken Hybrid may be a hard sell. However, Tekken fans will surely beat themselves over the head foroverlooking an opportunity to replay one of the most iconic games in the series(without the guaranteed three frames of lag on a backwards compatible PS3), watcha visually stunning CG movie that is true to the series, and get a taste of thefuture of the series a full year before it hits (without dropping a dollar pergame at the arcade). General fighting game fans will likely want to take acrack at the title, but they’re advised to wait as the bundle as a whole maynot be as enticing. 

Available on: PS3; Publisher: Namco Bandai Games; Developer: Namco Bandai Games; Players: 1-2; Released: November 22, 2011; ESRB: Teen; Official Site

Note: A retail copy was provided to Denkiphile for review purposes by the publisher.