Split Second vs. Blur

Blur and Split/Second are surely two of the great racing games of 2010. I bought them both the minute they released. I couldn’t wait longer. I love to race and to satisfy the innate joyous desire to smash stuff without causing actual damage.

The games are quite similar of course. Destroy, slow down and out drive your opponents to be the first on the podium is the only goal. The major difference between the two great games is the method by which you implement destruction. The Blur method is to use your car as a weapon; The Split/Second method is to utilize the environment itself as a weapon.
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Lost Planet 2 Review: Will we be leaving on a jet plane?

Lost Planet, Capcom’s little surprise game from 5 years ago, finally has a follow up title. This episode takes place on END3 (a planet) 10 years after the previous game; a lot has happened between number one and two, however. The planet has undergone some big climate changes, and that means big disasters.  Now, we’re not talking earthquakes and tornadoes; we’re talking Akrids: an alien race; the original inhabitants of EDN3.

So what’s it all about?

Lost Planet’s main story is all about the player cooperating with three fellow human warriors, sent out into the unknown to complete your mission. But you wont play only one person; every episode of the game introduces you to a new clan, from the military Nevec to the desert pirates and many more. The game has 6 episodes: every episode is made out of chapters, and sometimes, there are even sub-chapters. This makes the game quite expansive, and it takes an experienced Lost Planet player an estimated 8 hours to finish it in a perfect run. The co-op experience is meant to be played online, but you can play offline with a friend in split-screen as well. As you play through the game you will discover several things crucial to your survival in the game.

1. T-Energy. This is fuel for your life support system, Vital Suits that you enter and also fuels some weapons in the game.
2. Weapons. These are not always made for killing the bad guys that you encounter; they can also be used for supporting your team members in various ways.
3. Vital Suits Or in other words: VS’s. These are one of the things that makes Lost Planet so special. While some are small and slow while carrying a big gun, others are larger and can ever transform. Anything from subs to planes to transportation units and much more (some even say you can fuse them into one big VS).
4. Boxes. Loads of boxes. in the beginning you might just want to walk by them or grab them not knowing what they are or what they do, but in the end you will be hunting for these, because boxes contain valuable items, and sometimes more than that!

So those are some of the things that you will need, together with your trusty anchor hook (grapling hook) that you will need to get to some higher places very quickly. The weapons that you find or own can be upgraded; this is something you will have to do in a separate menu, meaning you have to go back out of the game and enter customization mode. This will make you able to use the “slot machine”: From the boxes that you have found and have converted into money, you gan give the slot machine a spin for 2000 credits per go (a box can hold an estimated 50 to 250 credits). You can get everything from war titles, emotions, and weapon upgrades to new abilities; some extremely useful for one player, some useful for others.

The War Titles are a bit useless but you will get them a lot. This is often a bit frustrating, especially when you see your hard earned money disappearing in to a War Title. A bit less frustrating is when you earn the emotion. It is still quite useless, but atleast it’s something you can use to interact with other people. More important is the ability upgrade that will fill up your ability slots. You have 2 ability slots so you can take 2 separate abilities or get one big one that fills up both slots. These abilities make you stronger in a specific area, anything from VS master to gun master and much more. For instance, VS master makes you ride in a VS with way less T-Energy requirement, and when your VS gets broken you can now fix it faster (yes you can fix the VS’s now) than a normal player. The most important aspect of the machine slot, however, is the weapon upgrade! You can get all kinds of new weaponry to fill your weapon of choice list, from powerful to more accurate to support and even new grenades.

The main storyline is satisfying enough to keep most people interested (but lets face it, we never really cared about it that much now did we? We just want to save the world, find out the princess is in an other castle, etc.) In short, without spoiling to much, Nevec is again throwing the planet you live on out of balance.  The Akrid’s become larger thanks to this unbalance, and you have to stop it. As I said before, you’re not just one hero, you are several heroes, and you will play them one by one. Each epesode has 4 heroes, 1 controlled by yourself and 3 controlled by friends, other payers or CPU players (computer controlled players).

The Impressions of the game:

Visuals: Lost Planet is a beautiful game and has you running through all kinds of environments: snow, jungles, mountains, deserts, oceans and more. The weather effects in the game are really nice, but sometimes it makes us feel that they were brought in to cover some textures up. The game is fast paced and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Explosions are extremely well done. The animations of the humans, akrid and VS’s look and feel really good, so in terms of visuals the game doesn’t fall short.

Playability: There are several control schemes you can choose from; you can control the sensitivity of the controller and you can shut the auto aim off if you are getting good enough in the game. Some things can be a bit frustrating though. Not everyone gets the hang of switching from the grenades to the T-Energy support gun (pressing 2 buttons at the same time), for example. You can run now, but it will limit your vision and controllability. The anchor hook (grappling hook) is less accurate now, and sometimes even kills you instead of saving you, so dont be surprised when you’re in battle and you want to get from one end to another by grappling and there’s a 10 centimeter high ledge that you will get stuck behind; the grabbling hook will de-attach halfway through the jump. The VS’s also take a bit of getting used to since the controls have been changed from the old version. Why? We really don’t know. But, globally, the game is fun, easy, and exciting to play without too many control or playability frustrations.

Replayability: The game offers not only the co-op mode, but it also offers a multiplayer mode that has types such as elimination, team elimination, post grabbing, counter post (king of the hill), team egg battle (capture the flag), and more. So if the co-op isn’t enough to keep you busy together with your friends, then that will. Although our team has varying opinions about the multiplayer ranging from “it’s great to play” to “it’s unbalanced”. We all think that the multiplayer games could and should have been done better. 10 maps to pick from isn’t much, and the high amount of menus together with the impression that the game is unbalanced gives us the feeling Capcom changed the winning team of the old Lost Planet a bit too much. They even removed the highly popular game of akrid hunter! But, this all might sound really bad, but rest assured the co-op really makes up for it all.

All in all: Lost Planet 2 is a great game with a great cooperative mode that will keep you coming back for more along with all your friends. The game could have been better in more ways than one, but I suppose that leaves the door open for Lost Planet 2 Colonies?

To buy or not to buy: The game is really worth playing, especially if you have a preference for cooperative play. You might, however, get a bit disappointed by the multi player. The game is well made and fun to play, but truth be told, you do have to have a little preference for this genre to begin with.

What’s the score?

NiSuTe’s Value System: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Quality: 8/10
Replay: 7/10

Overall score: 8.2

Tatsunoko vs Capcom at Gamescom

Tatsunoko vs Capcom… Capcom’s been known for taking on some pretty big franchises, such as Marvel and SNK, but Tatsunoko? Now, I’m not one for anime, so excuse my ignorance when I heard of this title and had no clue who Capcom’s new challengers were. After some research, however, I realized that, since Tatsunoko is only the most influential anime producer in Japan, I should be ashamed of myself.

Tatsonoko and Capcom does sound like a match made in heaven for fighting games, and seeing the brilliant control and combo systems in the game, it’s not only a great matchup, but brilliant execution. Unlike the other Capcom vs games, this one is in full-fledged 3D, and with its cell shading, it looks and feels like the previous titles, only brought into the here-and-now.

The game has been released a while ago in Japan, but due to licensing issues it has taken a year to make it to the West. This downtime has also led to some improvements and additions to the original release of the game, and it is very likely that it will be re-released in Japan with the cool new content. Due to the licensing problems, one character from Tatsunoko, Hakushon Daimaō, had to be removed, but five new characters have been added from the original roster of the Japanese release.

Tatsunoko vs Capcom will feature online play, though we are uncertain of whether or not it will be region based. The creators speculate that this is the case, but because the Wifi is what’s keeping them busy on the title for another half year, they weren’t able to say with any certainty. There will be latency either way, as always, so be prepared for a slightly rough ride.

One thing that’s quite disappointing about the game is the fact that the roster consists of about 20 characters, in comparison to Marvel vs Capcom 2’s 56 character roster. There are however two extremely large mechanical characters to choose from, which really pack a punch. They aren’t as fun to play as the normal-sized combo-machines like Ryu, Ken the Eagle, and Megaman, but it provides a funny contrast to the core mechanics of the game; and Lost Planet 2 fan boys (Maikel) are definitely going to love fighting in a PTX-40A (the Super VS).

It is meant to be played with the arcade joystick peripheral, but unfortunately they are quite hard to come by. The control on the Wii remote can be  semi-random, so you’re definitely gonna want to play it with a Joystick. There are also no plans to package the game with this peripheral, so you’ll have to find one on Play-Asia, ebay or Amazon. Good luck.