Namco Bandai

An Iron Fist... in a Newbie's Face

HIGH Finally starting to master characters and kick some ass.

LOW Losing to the final boss over and over and over again.

WTF Who approved the Easy difficulty level?

So I've been thinking a lot about this Steam Greenlight thing for a couple of days, trying to come at it from a few different angles. I had originally written up a blog post about it, but after discussing it a little further with some (very smart) friends of mine, I decided to do something else.

So, the Mass Effect 3 "extended cut" DLC amending the old endings came out. It's a free add-on and I'm pretty sure it provides an auto-save right near the end of the game for those who may not have a file at the appropriate point—I was positive that I didn't, but when I booted the game up, there it was. It could be my imagination, but I'm guessing the developers included this save as part of the DLC to avoid further outcry.

It's been quite a while since I spent any time with the Soul Calibur series... I think the last one that I really got into was probably the original SoulCal on Dreamcast. The series kind of dropped in terms of quality (for my taste, anyway) and it fell off of my radar until today when GameFly sent me Soul Calibur V.

Go Vacation

HIGH Playing the quick draw mini-game reawakened my love for another Namco arcade title, Quick N Crash.

LOW The balance board makes games harder to control without making them more fun.

WTF Why can't I swordfight without Motion Plus?

Smaller. Faster. Better?

HIGH The rapid-switching gun/shield/sword/mouth mechanic is brilliant.

LOW All clothing in the game is only cosmetic; there are no effects or bonuses.

WTF Why is it called "Gods"? Every character in the game says it without the S.

I'm still working my way through Gods Eater Burst on PlayStation Portable. I haven't mentioned it here at the blog yet, but it's basically a "lite" version of Monster Hunter with a strong anime slant and combat that runs a hell of a lot faster than it does in Capcom's game—not that the speed itself is necessarily a good thing. (Spazzy alert: GO!!!)

Bloody as Hell

HIGH Revving the chainsaw and delivering a long string of one-hit-kills.

LOW The 2D segments desperately need tuning.

WTF Penetrating an enemy's neck hole with its own head, over and over again.

Namco Bandai's updating the classic horror-themed side-scroller Splatterhouse hits retailers later this week (the 26th, to be exact, and available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), and just in case you weren't up to speed on what the new version was going to be like, they've decided to release one more trailer.