Hitman Absolution

This month, Playstation Plus fans are treated to the latest incarnation of the renowned Hitman series: Hitman Absolution, which sees everyone’s favourite killer Agent 47 on a quest for vengeance, once again leaving a bloody trail of bodies behind him.

Absolution is a slick and modern update to the renowned killer-simulator that manages to retain much of the quirks, humour and methodical killing Hitman is known for whilst adding some new and welcome features. For instance, a new point-shooting mode that makes time slow down allows players to line up the perfect shots and take out multiple enemies with satisfying headshots. A proper cover system makes both sneaking and shoot-outs easier and more natural. Hitman also has an ‘instinct’ bar now which he uses to briefly blend in with NPC’s in the same disguise as him, so they don’t get suspicious of seeing a new guy in their ranks. This instinct mode can also be used to see fiery trails which show Hitman the path enemies are treading, allowing players to methodically plan out their kills. For those fearing this makes the game too easy, thankfully it’s not as useful on higher difficulty levels for those looking for a purist experience (there are five difficulty levels for those who are true Silent Assassins).

As a Hitman game, Absolution is a lot more story-driven this time around. I don’t want to give away the plot too much, but gameplay-wise, levels are not always about killing a specific VIP target; sometimes it’s just about escaping or getting from A-to-B to the next level. It makes a change from previous titles, though true purists may prefer the classic titles in this respect. Sometimes it feels like a linear experience with less focus on the actual assassinations, but luckily Hitman doesn’t stray too far from its roots. You can still play through the game as a shooter, gunning down enemies on your way to the end of the level, but Hitman games have always shone in the stealth department and Absolution rewards silent assassins. As Absolution is heavily score-based, players are rewarded for their stealthiness with challenges to beat. As some levels are fairly linear, they do test the stealth-player’s abilities to sneak through undetected, whilst others (like the Chinatown level) feature large crowds that Hitman can blend in with. The visuals are impressive with lighting and textures making immersion easy. Plus there are still signature kills that Hitman can carry out which give huge score bonuses and add more challenge to the game.

A nice addition to the franchise is a ‘multiplayer’ mode, dubbed Contracts. Here, players stalk through levels at their leisure in a sandbox fashion, picking several targets to take care of in any fashion they like and escaping either unseen or all guns blazing. These custom hits are then sent to friends as a challenge to complete in the same manner. The catch is that other challengers have to take out the targets in the same way as the original assassin did, following the same methods; for instance hiding all the bodies, acquiring a specific disguise (or no disguise at all for a true challenge), escaping without being detected, eliminating targets with a specific weapon or tool… If the original challenger did it, then you must too.

Contracts is a nice touch and adds some replay value to the game once the campaign is over with, or some welcome relief from the story mode if getting a Silent Assassin rank is proving too difficult and/or stressful. Hitman Absolution is a nice addition to the Hitman series that doesn’t quite revolutionise the series, but it’s a welcome installment that certainly deserves attention.

Catherine

Catherine is one unique, messed up game. To actually describe Catherine, it’s best to start with the storyline, since this game is more like an interactive anime than anything else. The story is what drives the game, and the gameplay is more of a tool to advance the story or fill time between cutscenes. As bad as this might sound, it’s actually refreshing and because the plot is so interesting (and rather disturbing), it quickly draws you in.

The game follows the life of 32 year old Vincent, a guy stuck in a rut and hesitant of change. With his long term girlfriend, Katherine, pushing for marriage, Vincent spends most of his nights with his friends drinking and trying to forget his troubles at the local bar. One day he meets the mysterious Catherine, a young blonde who appears in his life suddenly. Almost unwillingly, Vincent finds himself cheating with Catherine. Around the same time, Vincent begins having horrifying nightmares. Each night he finds himself in a nightmare world where he must frantically race to the top of a crumbling wall that threatens to drop him into a dark abyss. And with all the strange deaths on the news and rumours of “the Woman’s Wrath”, Vincent has a strange feeling that if he dies in the dream, he will die in real life too.

Players take control of Vincent during his nightmare stages, which is essentially a score-based puzzler mode where players must push, pull and climb blocks in a mad dash to get Vincent to the top of an ever-falling wall. Vincent must avoid enemies, obstacles and traps along the way, as well as outpace horrific monsters that try and drag him down. Each nightmare is focused on his inner turmoil, with some twisted aspects of his psyche (like a giant demon in a wedding dress) that he must escape from. The other time players control Vincent is at the bar. This is where much of the plot is uncovered, with players talking to Vincent’s friends and patrons of the bar to uncover more of the strange happenings and discussing Vincent’s relationships.

While the gameplay is fun, it’s the overall plot that makes Catherine such a twisted, unique experience. The game explores Vincent’s inner turmoil as he interacts with both of the women in his life, but it’s more than a simple romance story. Catherine is a dark game at times, and always maintains a sense of trepidation. Whether it’s escaping from nightmare demons in his dreams or interacting with the mysterious Catherine, there is always a sense of unease and a strong urge to find out what happens next. If you take away the storyline, it’s essentially a puzzler game with a pseudo-relationship simulator thrown in, but the whole package makes Catherine a unique and unmissable experience.

With the animations done in anime cutscenes and the rest of the game transitioning into nice cel-shading, the game does a great job of immersing players in the plot and the gameplay itself. Plus, it’s the little things that make it interesting. Vincent can walk around the bar, playing an arcade game or chatting to people. Ordering drinks and getting Vincent drunk makes him move quicker during the night’s nightmare stage. When he receives a text from either Katherine or Catherine, players choose from various responses to form the reply, which affects their interaction with him as well as your own emotional response to the females. Will you invite Catherine over, or ask her to send you more pictures of herself? Or will you be cold to her, and loyal to Katherine? Your choices not only affect the story, but also Vincent’s morality meter which leads to different endings. Vincent’s responses to other characters, too, often affect his moral standing. These touches add some depth to the game, and leave you feeling as if you really are acting out Vincent’s life and juggling two relationships.

The blend of humour, horror, love, romance, relationships and psychology mix into an unmissable story that really is part game, part anime. If you come to Catherine for gameplay alone, it might disappoint. But to dismiss it because of it’s heavy focus on story over gameplay would be a mistake. It certainly makes a refreshing game to play, and is well worth a playthrough.

Malicious

This month PS Plus fans are treated to a second cel-shaded game to go alongside the gorgeous Catherine in the form of the artistic Malicious. It might not be quite as crisp and attractive as Catherine, but it’s a different game altogether. Whereas Catherine is a complete story-telling experience, Malicious is its complete opposite, a game with little story to focus on and much more action.

To begin with, Malicious isn’t the easiest game to jump into. This is because unfortunately, despite its visuals, it does a poor job of telling the story. This is because it is told through text, so there is a lot of reading to do if you want to learn either the story or the controls. In fact, you begin the game in a white realm with various artifacts dotted around that lead to various boss stages, but there isn’t much direction given. You know that you have to defeat certain enemies to gain some awesome power to defeat a great evil, but if you want to know more, you have to interact with an NPC to gain information such as learning basic skills and combos, and because it’s all text-based with a few images to demonstrate actions, it feels like a drag and it’s very tempting to quickly jump into a level and figure it out for yourself, which is exactly what I did.

After jumping into a random level, I was greeted with the sight of a huge golem boss and hordes of smaller enemies rushing towards me. I spent a while teaching myself the controls, and realising that I seemingly couldn’t really do much apart from block, dodge, and shoot purple beams of light at enemies. Soon after though, I figured out how to actually charge up attacks and enter a powered-up Aura mode. I knew the NPC in the white realm mentioned some of these skills and combos, but I really couldn’t be bothered to read through reams of text just to learn basic moves. However, after I got to grips with fighting, the game was a lot more fun, with my first boss battle taking over half an hour to finish.

Malicious is essentially a boss-battle game mode, with the stages being various arenas that you enter in any order. As you defeat each boss, you unlock more weapons and skills to use against later enemies. Getting chain combos and killing enough enemies fills up your aura score meter, which you can ‘release’ to enter a powered-up mode which drains your score bar while active. However, this mode can be extended by maintaining combos so the fighting becomes quite intense. The hordes of enemies are limitless, with the boss being the main focus, so the combat really doesn’t let up until the boss is defeated. It’s fluid and fast action, despite some camera troubles and the feeling of a lack of depth to the experience, but I suppose Malicious doesn’t really pretend to be anything it’s not.

Malicious isn’t the most engrossing game out there, and can feel slightly empty with its heavy focus on textual storytelling and the gameplay constructed purely of boss battle arenas, but it’s fun nonetheless and its cel-shading does look pretty. The action can be frantic and intense so it’s fun to play whilst unwinding, but don’t expect a gripping story or a long campaign to sink into. It lacks the depth of story that Catherine has, but makes a nice filler for those looking for some cel-shaded action. For those who sink their teeth into Malicious, it does have score modes and other unlockables to reward players who put the effort in. Other players may find it a fun game to play only on occasion, but that’s not to say it isn’t worth a try.

The service is designed to allow gamers an early look at games and help developers by reporting bugs and leaving feedback. You can check out the service here.

All of the games on the service range in price and many have multiple amounts you can contribute to the game to obtain different premiums such as getting a digital deluxe edition or getting your name in the game somewhere.

And as always, here are the previous episodes in case you missed them:

If you pre-order the Arc System Works-made game you get the Limited Edition bonus content pack, which includes the Official Arranged Soundtrack with exclusive artwork and the Digital Fan Pack, which is a nice little bonus though not quite enough to appease most fans who thought the game would never actually come out.

Are you still interested in grabbing Persona 4 Arena after all these months, or have you moved on to other games? We certainly think it’ll be worth the wait.

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-18-finally-persona-4-arena-european-release-date-confirmed

And what a place to host it. The Mercedes Benz Arena in Shanghai holds a massive 18,000 strong, one of the biggest venues we’ve seen in e-sports. And that’s not counting the tens of thousands watching from home as we shall see if iG remains the godly team that they were back in 2012, or if the months of training with their Chinese counterparts has given LGD the opening to make one of the biggest headlines on Dota 2 history.

It would be a shame to not have a look at previous performances first:

Invictus Gaming

Current G-League record: 9-0

Featured game: iG vs LGD.Gaming – Game 1

One could argue that iG had a pretty good second half of 2012. TI2 champions, WCG China winners, ACE League winners and defending champions of this current G-League season. You would think that they could relax coming into this season, possibly try out some new strats. Instead, they decide to physically dismantle any team that’s come across them in the current season:

2-0 vs Vici Gaming

2-0 vs TongFun

2-0 vs MUFC

3-0 vs LGD Gaming

…yeah about that. On top of that, 8 of the 9 games were complete steamrolls, with the 9^th game involving iG winning despite having a kill disadvantage (and with a bit of luck.) However, the past is the past and 2 months of training should put iG back in the mood for another title. We know that Chuan’s been checking out replays almost constantly during the break, so expect some Western influences in their playstyle. But most likely, we’ll see a team with some of the best solo players ever, working together in a level that we haven’t seen. And aggression. Lots of aggression.

LGD.International

Current G-League record: 8-4

Featured game: LGD.Int vs LGD.Gaming – Game 2

On the flip side, LGD.Int has shown some truly great results in the G-League. Taking the top spot in arguably the harder of the two groups, which included an amazing series against their Chinese brothers, they went on to eat TongFu alive in the first of the semi-finals. Known in the league for their roaming style and heavy early pressure, LGD have literally bullied teams to victory. You could even consider them to be the Western equivalent of iG: three strong solo laners and 2 great supporters that are almost always active on the map. The major road bump will be if their momentum-style unravels, as on paper, they’re outmatched. They’re going to need some creativity that the western scene has shown throughout Dota 2, and use it successfully.

But with both teams having such similar styles, a position vs position look may well shed light into potential wins for each side:

Position 1: Zhou vs Pajkatt 

Mechanically speaking, there isn’t much separating these two. Pajkatt is one of the best last-hitters in the world, earning his “Farmkatt” nickname during his time in CLG. On the flip side, Zhou has the best average GPM in the G-League. Both have barely died in this entire tournament, averaging below 2 a game each. The deciding factor comes into the mid-to-late-game decision making, where Zhou really shines. Pajkatt has shown some questionable decisions in a number of games, but Zhou knows exactly when to hold, when to fold and when to go all in.

Position 2: Ferrari_430 vs God

I refuse to call this one, because frankly it’s impossible. On one side is a god from Dota 1, and on the other side is….God. Both players are the epitome of what we expect from a mid-solo player: aggressive playmakers that snowball out of control if they get a good start. The Pianist has earned his title through many years of top level, refined play. On the opposite side, God is just crazy, towerdiving and forcing issues in his favour across the map. I’m praying for a Ferrari Queen of Pain vs a God Storm Spirit. I can die happy after that

Position 3: YYF vs Brax

From the closest matchup to the one furthest apart. YYF somehow makes an offlane look like the safest place on the map, including his own fountain. Despite playing the position he does, he’s only died 1.8 times on average per game. That’s almost as good as Zhou, and he normally has Faith and Chaun helping keep him alive. Brax is a bit outclassed in this matchup. Compared to YYF’s stoic and calm way, Brax is quite wayward and indecisive at times. He’s getting better, but isn’t there yet

Position 4: Chaun vs Misery

The position 4 battle will be pivotal in the early game. Chaun’s always on point to set up a kill, or TP in to help a mate getting attacked. He somehow manages to find farm in places where he should not be allowed to, and his spell usage and position is amazing to watch. Misery has amazed us in other ways, playing jungle heroes to their full potential. Giving him a Chen or an Enchantress will cause havoc to an easy lane hero, or the enemy mid lane, and his ability to find advantages with hardly any farm shows how versatile this ex-carry/mid solo player is. We’re going to see a war between these two in every game, and people are going to die a lot.

Position 5: Faith vs 1437

Before TI2, 3 support players caught my eye before the main tournament; Ars-Art, Akke and Faith. While his Western counterparts have fallen from grace since then, Faith has consistently looked amazing . His ability to play the #5 role, and still have some level of farm, shows his ability to use his limited resources to the fullest. He’s there for almost every fight, and knows when to take a bullet for his team. And yet, he’s barely died this entire tournament, averaging under 4 deaths a game. 1437′s mostly been the ganking partner with Misery during the season, and hasn’t really had a chance to shine besides his consistent ward-buying. If there’s any time to have a big game, this is it.

Honestly, it looks like a mismatch, as iG should takes this easily; the real question is if LGD.Int can take a game off them. however, my heart says that if God can get a good start, if Misery can disrupt Zhou’s farm like he can, then there is a change, however small it is.

And then, believe in Farmkatt

And in case you missed it, here are the previous episodes:

Series hero Garrett returns to the Gothic, industrial metropolis known simply as the City to steal any and everything that will make him richer. Unfortunately, the City is broiling with social tension as it is ravaged by a plague and lorded over by a political tyrant known as the Baron. In order to survive his adventures, Garrett will have to pay attention to his environment and make use of the may possible paths through each of the game’s levels.

The game is being developed by Eidos Montreal known for creating the other excellent stealth action game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Below you can find a developer video for the title as part of Game Informer’s month of coverage.

I’m ashamed to say I’ve never played any of the games in the Thief series, so if you’ll excuse me, I better be getting to it.

And in case you missed them, here are our previous episodes:

At risk of being accused of copycatting, I will point out now that Forbes ran an article on a similar subject a short while ago but Erik only really scratches the surface of the emergence of ‘debate buzzwords’ (I do agree with him on the treatment of DmC’s detractors though and he’s not entirely unfair in his piece either, I recommend reading it). The usage of the world ‘entitled’ basically points to a more recent incarnation of the old chestnut, ‘fanboy’, a term still used today but to varying levels of accuracy.

While the game retains a similar feel to the original series, many fans feel the heart and soul are now too different.

What is it about disliking DmC that makes gamers ‘entitled’? Do they feel entitled to a fifth entry in the original series? Do they feel entitled to a continuation of the old Dante’s story? Perhaps a few do, but I can see clearly that for the majority it is less entitlement taking hold and more a case of wondering something simple, ‘why?’ While the original series may not have been on top of the world by the time Devil May Cry 4 rolled around, it was a solid experience and sold enough to warrant another sequel – maybe a continuation to the cliffhanger ending of DMC2, a game which was supposed to be the final chronological entry in the series. However, for whatever reason, Capcom decided not to continue with the story that fans had grown to love so much and instead opted to ‘restart’ the franchise.

Now, I’m not going to pick a side in the argument over which is ‘better’. I’m sure DmC is a fine hack-and-slash title and from what little I played at Eurogamer last year, it’s certainly enjoyable enough. I also won’t pretend I’m not a fan of the original series – you probably guessed from the previous paragraph. All I will say however, is that rather than being so quick to assume each other’s reasons, as a community we should be striving to understand those opinions and ask questions of each other. I’ve seen many DmC fans accusing series veterans of disliking the new game because of Dante’s hair, of all things – while I’m not a huge fan of NT’s choice in character design, I can’ t say that I’m bothered by it that much. It’s certainly not a reason to dismiss a game and I’m sure many realize this. I’ve seen fans of the older games pointing out glitches and exploits as if to say that the game fails because of this. It’s true that glitches are an unwelcome bedfellow in gaming, but they’re hardly a dealbreaker – if it was DMC5 and had these glitches, I’m sure people would be defending it in spite of them.

The end of Shepard's series was similarly controversial and, to some, alienating.

You can also look at the fairly recent unrest over the ending of Mass Effect 3. This topic saw much debate as well and neither side seemed to back down then, either. On one hand, fans were in an uproar over the illusion of choice they had been given up to that point, only to have it dashed away by a totally underwhelming finale and on the other, defenders of the game stated that it wasn’t the destination, but the journey that mattered. That the ending offered little choice for variety was a non-issue when you’d been given so many options throughout the course of the series. Eventually, Bioware caved into fan pressure and added a new ending through DLC – while this wasn’t done as badly as say, Asura’s Wrath, it still asks a lot about artistic licensing in video games and how fans impact the franchises they love. This doesn’t sound like entitlement to me though, it’s more like constructive criticism. If we’re ready to allow gaming into the ‘art’ or ‘expression’ fold, content creators carry the responsibility of accepting these complaints or standing by their finished product through think and thin. Was Ninja Theory’s adding of a ‘Classic Dante’ costume pandering to these fans without compromising the experience? I honestly don’t think so, but then again it’s only one of many things fans have shown disdain for.

So, why are we cherry-picking things to bitch about? Well, it is of course human nature – if you don’t like something, it’s always going to be hard to convince yourself otherwise and the best way for you to show your lack of appreciation is to pick out the flaws in the subject and express them. The problem with arguments like ‘entitled’ is that it boils an entire point down to one word – it doesn’t make you look better than the ‘other side’ and in fact, devalues your own opinions and arguments through your lack of respect for others.

In short, let’s cut with the buzzwords and start using actual words, rather than playground-level insults – we’re old enough and smart enough now.

The PSP suffered the same problem the Vita suffered at release. It was too expensive, it used a proprietary format for its memory cards, publishers weren’t releasing titles for it immediately and a large selection of games for it were just ports or remakes. Yet the PSP had this minefield of hidden gems and magnificently exploited the more niche markets. Potential that companies such as NIS or Atlus were all too happy to take advantage of, porting the Disgaea and Persona titles to the PSP being prime examples. In Japan the PSP was a great selling console due to the boon that Capcom gave it with the Monster Hunter series; one of Japan’s most popular games currently which Sony has now lost to Nintendo, with Monster Hunter being set for a fixed contract with Nintendo for the next few years.

It is now nearly ten years after the release of the Playstation Portable with the original model dropping in Japan in December of 2004. The launch titles available were fairly fun despite there being so few. The small amount of AAA titles made the launch look empty, Sony didn’t roll out any major titles from their catalogue apart from delving into their past and re-releasing MediEvil and attempting to create new IPs, such as the short lived Death Jr. Yet such surprises as Lumines the fun music based puzzler sneaked up and captured the hearts of few – a sequel out on the Vita now titled “Electronic Symphony” is now available – and despite being one of the weaker entries in the series a fully fledged Tony Hawk title, Underground 2 was available which kept me entertained for a good few hundred hours. By the time it came around, the European launch had the biggest list of titles with around 30 titles available at launch including the aforementioned and other games such as the black sheep of the family, Metal Gear Ac!d – a card game set in the Metal Gear universe.

All things aside, the PSP did pretty well in most territories at launch; even going so far as to break the DS’s sales launch record selling 185,000 units in Europe. Considering the handheld market is held predominantly by Nintendo this is an impressive feat, the DS and Game Boy being household names by this this point. Yet Sony suffered since there was no real install base for the PSP and in the future there was no real point in releasing games for the PSP because of this.

So why did I buy my PSP? The honest truth is that I bought it for homebrew. The PSP was great for emulators and extra applications. Before Sony started adding in more and more functionality there were already, albeit it text only, web browsers in the works and superior media players available that allowed me to use formats other than the encoding that Sony required at the time. The scene has evolved considerably then, with the departure of Dark_Alex it slowed down a bit but it’s currently plodding along at a fairly normal pace. Although I am out of touch with it these days it is my understanding that firmware modifications no longer need to be permanent, allowing you to run both an official firmware and a custom firmware at the same time.

Obviously easy piracy and third party applications aren’t the best reasons to love a console; in fact this is one major reason why the console failed to sell games since the PSP was at most an emulation machine for most, but I found it certainly contributed to the longevity of the platform for me and convinced me to turn the unit on every day. As time went on and this became less and less prominent I had to find reasons to actually play games on my games console. Shocker. Loco Roco was the first title that was a surprise for me, rolling around in this game was just charming and really kept my spirits high. There is nothing to hate about this game whatsoever I found and the PSP had plenty more surprise titles too. The last thing that kept me on my PSP for a whole day was Persona 3 Portable, I mentioned my love for Persona 4 in my recent review of Persona 4 Golden.

P3P was the first game in the series that I played before going back and playing the rest. Whilst it is by no means a perfect game – grinding, lack of story with a rush of exposition at the end, awful clichés and tropes – but it was fun enough, it has even acted as a platform for the resurrection of lesser titles. Square Enix even tried to help the consoles popularity by pushing out titles like Dissidia, the quirky battle royale game featuring Final Fantasy character and a sequel to Final Fantasy VII titled ‘Crisis Core’, s as well as a Kingdom Hearts game, expanding the already convoluted story. Whilst the PSP may have done better in Japan it is a shame that the North American and European markets were still fairly untapped in later years, with the console taking a distinct back seat to Sony’s other priorities and issues.

The one thing I regret above all else is sitting on my original PSP and breaking it. The screen shattered thanks to my then boney posterior. But luckily most of the PSP back library that I am interested in is now available on Vita through the PSN. Although the Vita isn’t backwards compatible (much like the PS4) immediately, it is still pleasing that a large number of titles are available.

We’re moving into the next generation of Sony consoles now, the PSPs time has passed and the focus will now be on the Vita. Hopefully Sony will not keep making the same mistakes as they did previously by not establishing a real install base, an issue that is present currently with the distinct lack of killer apps to draw people in. However with the large back library of the PSP available on the Playstation network and playable on the Vita there’s no reason not to go back and try some of the games you could have missed.