I've always wanted to do something like this and I finally found the time to start it. For this blog series I'll review outdated games, underrated games, Japanese not-yet-released-in-US games, etc. These are games that relatively few people know or play but they are definitely worth checking out if you can get your hands on it(most of them at least).

Oh and by the way, these are not first impression reviews or first play through reviews. Most of these games I've played for quite a while and although I'm still a suck-ass noob, I still know what the game has to offer in full. So in my opinions, these games are definitely worth going pro for. Ok, enough introduction. The first review will be Ultimate Ninja 4: Naruto Shippuden + Naruto Shippuuden: Narutimate Accel 2.

Ok let's get started, the reason I decided to put these two games together is that they don't have much of a difference, Ultimate Ninja 4 is simply the US version of Naruto Shippuuden and Narutimate Accel 2 is the sequal to the Shippuuden. Now that we've got that confusion out of way, though the names are still awfully confusing, let's talk about the games. I first encountered the Naruto fighting game series when I was in grade 8 and eventually started playing Ultimate Ninja 3, you guys may not know, in China people will open shops with ps2s beside schools and kids would pay to play any games they want in there, kind of like an arcade. That was where I honed my ninja skill, I played through ultimate ninja 3, 4 and the not-yet-announced 5, and I played with friends for about 30-60 minutes every single day for 4 straight years.

Naruto Shippuuden(NS for short) and Narutimate Accel 2 (NS2 for short) are the two I played the most. And I'm happy to say that it's the best Naruto series ever made and Namco Bandai has done an amazing job with the fighting system. This game is the kind of game that you can play versus with a friend for a whole afternoon, and it never gets old.

I don't have much to say about the graphics so this is going to be short. The manga inspiredgraphics fits perfectly with the game. The characters have very smooth and detailed animations, the ninpos are very stylish, and the ougi attacks are downright awesome to watch. The graphics in NS didn't change a lot compared to its predecessors, but if you played NS2, you'll know everything got a whole lot prettier. The chakara gathering effect is much more detailed, the background has plenty of new added 3D effects, and the new characters are great as well.

When it comes to the plot of the Ultimate Ninja series, I usually ignore them. Because the game is not a story driven game by any means, the single player story mode is usually tedious, shallow and boring (and very annoying in Japanese). But please I beg of you all, don't judge the series by its single player and storyline, because the developers are just sticking this mode in so the games don't seem so unfinished(no offence). What you should do is play through the singleplayer ASAP, unlock the characters in versus, and NEVER EVER touch the single player again. Hell I didn't even play the single player of NS2, I just put in a code to unlock the characters. So I have absolutely nothing to comment on the plot itself, because I play the Japanese version so even if I wanted to understand the story I couldn't.

The core fighting mechanics of the ultimate ninja series hasn't changed through time. One button+D Pad direction combination, ougi, projectiles and air dash, for defensive manoeuvre you have block, Kawarimi no jutsu, backdash, and recovery. To master these techniques require pin point timing, fast reflex, and lots of practice. Backdash and recovery are two techniques that are very essential to surviving a battle, but recovery can be very hard to pull off and beginners may not even realized its existence at first. These seemingly shallow controls will make many people see this game as a mindless button-masher at first. But in fact, the mechanic's sophistication is no less impressive than the most famous of fighting games. The offensive techniques have a nice rock-paper-scissors nature to it, where combo>air dash>projectiles>combo, then adding air combo, shuriken cancel, air back dash cancel, back dash cancel, ougi combo etc adds a whole new dimension of gameplay to the mix. When the series reached Shippuuden, the combat became much more combo heavy, combos can easily smack enemies to walls, leaving them wide open for more combos or ougi attacks. That is when the defensive techniques come into play, when you're under attack by a combo streak, you must do all you can to minimise damage, block the incoming blows, if that fails try using Kawarimi no jutsu to get out, and if that still fails, execute a recovery to end the opponents combo streak. All of these require quick thinking, agile fingers, and very swift reflexes. When two skilled players meet, one wrong move may drain a huge chunk from your life bar, which makes the game breath-taking and satisfying.

Now that the fighting mechanic is covered, let's talk about the intensity of the battles themselves. The maps are big, with items hidden in different places and some even have cliffs. Players may choose to simply take the opponent out there and there, but when things go wrong, ninjas rely on tactics. Wall run, turtle, hunt for items, these activities are sometimes suicidal, but when used by a skilled player, they can change the course of battle. And of course one can always switch off items if they think the battle gets too luck oriented.

Now let's talk about the characters, and there are a lot of them. They are generous enough to include all the Naruto characters from the old series as well as new grown up versions of them. At first, they may seem to be just the same character with different sprites and moves, but in fact every character has hidden stats that may hugely affect the outcome of the battle. For example, Guy and Lee has very fast recovery time when they are blocking enemy attacks, which makes them less easy to pin down and more capable of counterattack. Naruto has evidently more chakara and fasters chakara gathering speed, which implies a whole different strategy. And with so many moves for a single character, there're always great combinations and tactics that will ensure victory.

However, with its battalion of characters, balancing problem comes along as well. There are quite a few poorly balanced characters that have over-powered moves, godly stats, or just down right cheap tactics. Some can be countered by understanding the character or superior skill, but a few are just impossible to beat if the tactics are right. In response to this, local tournaments usually ban these characters. And I already have quite a few of these cheap characters in my mind. And NS2 included this new support character system, which every skilled player in my country abandoned 1 week after the game's release, the support characters are horribly balanced, they can dish out huge amount of damage with absolutely no penalties, and they generally ruins the entire match. Some people still argue that support characters are balanced and having 2 characters on screen quickens the pace of the battle. If you guys ever hear somebody say this, use Orochimaru with his healing-ninja sidekick as support character, and you'll be having that noob begging for mercy in minutes. It's a failed attempt to add a twist to the game, and to be honest, we don't need it. All in all, balancing is the biggest flaw within the series' gameplay, but it's rather understandable considering the number of characters involved. Once you get past this flaw, the gameplay is almost perfect.

The sound in the game is also something I failed to notice, the original voice acting is excellent, the sound effects are loud and satisfying with multiple sound for explosions, shuriken, and ninpos. And I have said this in all of my Japanese game reviews, please for the love of god, DON'T JUDGE BY ENGLISH VOICE ACTING!!! The English dub for the naruto anime was bad enough, it wouldn't be much different if the guys performed for the game either. The background music, like I said before, was one thing I failed to acknowledge for a long time. But in fact, there're quite a few good music pieces.

So what else can I say about this series. It's by far the best anime-related game I have ever played, I don't know if the developers were going for such an interesting and unique fighting mechanics but they sure did it. It's a very fun, fast paced game with a very deep fighting system, and if you can find a player who knows what he's doing, you can play this game for a whole afternoon without even realizing it. My thanks to this series, it granted me more than of 400 hours of exhilarating experience during my toughest time, and I hope this wonderful series will go on and on.

It's been 3 years since my last visit to gamespot, for study reasons I lost general interest in video games. I'm currently living in Canada, school work is very easy, there're basically no pressure from school what so ever. So it's probably time to pick up a game console controller again.

Sadly this is not gonna happen for at least the next 6 months, family's got some financial difficulties, and I'm lucky I can still get a laptop. But this laptop sucks balls, CPU is weak, and video card is terrible. And I don't think I'll be getting anything better until I go to university. So the only option I have now is...none! I can't play any decent current-gen pc games, I have no game console. I'm pretty much completely isolated from gaming. All I have now is a whole bunch of emulators, NES, SNES, Genesis, NDS, GBA, Playstation...it's good to play some old clasics, but I still can't wait to get my hands on some of the new games.

And yes I'm a person who is personally incapable of getting the minimum attention, no matter what I do, I get ignored. Online, offline, I slowly got used to that and decided to just do things I like. And if anyone hasn't noticed, I'm a very outdated person. Everything I do is usually more delayed than everyone else, I sometimes call myself the outdated gamer. Because I play games that have left their peak of popularity and moved on, or games that are good and old but not old enough to be considered all time clasic. A good example will be the ps2 Shinobi game, Shinobi is an amazing game, I won't go into the depth to explain it but those who had sat through and played it know it's an awesome game and a worthy masterpiece, but the thing is, pretty much nobody plays shinobi anymore, when I ask people have you played shinobi, they would go "oh yeah a few years ago", same goes to super robot wars, devil may cry 3, marvel vs capcom, etc. Why is that the case? Because everything is delayed, I played metal gear solid 3 four years after its release, I played halo fours years after it came out, I played doom 3 five years after I saw it on the shelf. This constant "outdatedness" muffles all the surprises I could have encountered throughout gaming. Oh so you'll meet the flood in halo, oh so Atlus was the final bad guy in bioshock, oh so Jill was the mysterious person in RE5, some of the biggest twists in gaming is nothing but a short blandstatement in the monitor of my computer.Considering that I care about games and I can't restrain myself from gaining more knowledge about them, I'll always be looking at spoilers, game guides, game endings even before I have the console to play the game with. Hell I actually knew the ending in mgs 4 earlier than my friend who had a ps3 to play it. It's just the way it is, I'm bound to be the odd one, the one who has lost track of his position in the video game timeline. The one who lives in the past not because the past was sweet, but because he has no otherchoice.

The battle continues...after a long delay....

Round 6:Enemy (Including bosses)-DMC>NG>GOW

Note here that DMC refers to the entire Devil May Cry series, so if count them one by one, that's a lot of enemies. All very well designed with quite a bit of creativities, from Marionets to the 7 hells, from Nelo to Vergil. Grunts and bosses all look great and original (though the 7 hell idea's pretty dumb). Ninja Gaiden also has a large amount of enemies, BUT many of them are just upgraded lesser grunts, they still has the same moves but just hurt more. Still being a ninja could havemeant just fighting bunch ofother ninjas, but in NG it means fighting commandos with guns and rockets launchers, fiends from the depth of hell, and zombies(what?!). Fightings these enemies with a katana is just pure fun, the bosses aren't all that original, but seriously, ninjas don't go fighting tanks, choppers, cyborg, worms, and fire dragons in the old days. So the great thing about the enemies in NG is not its originality, it's just that...it's hard to imagine a ninja fighting those things, and been able to fight them is just pure fun. God of War has some great enemydesigns, but due to the game's background (ancient Greece), the enemies really don't have that much space to further develope, so we end up seeing generic and classic enemies from Greece mythologylike minotures, harpies, gorgans and such. Only in this game they look more violent and bloody, it is true that the bosses in the game are just awesome to see, why? Cause they are huge! But size doesn't mean much, for they are pretty similar to what I've imagine they would look. Can't blame them, the enemy designs are seriously great, and we really can't expect Zeus coming out in a cyber suit now can we?

Round 7ifficulty-NG>DMC>GOW

I used to call Ninja Gaiden a game where the health slot is no more then a decoration, why? Simple, people hurt you and they hurt you good. Aggressiveness is the key word here, if there are four or more enemies in the room, you'll know what's good for you and never let go of the block button, Ha! Then I'll been safe right? HELL NO, try blockinga Lava Dragon's bite. Pretty much EVERY enemy in the game has a unblockable grab attack (except bats) and they hurt as hell, same to the bosses, no matter what they do, if you get hit, it hurts. Not mentioning on harder difficulties, there will grunts helping the boss out. So after dodging and dodging and you finally see the boss' opening, you lunge forward to attack only to be knocked down by a worthless grunt(Can kick your A$$ though), how frustrating is that!Now to Devil May Cry, hell the third one is just hard, listen to me, DMC 3 is very hard! It's not like NG where it's just hard all round, DMC 3 tends to get incredibly hard on higher difficulties. For a DMC veteran, the DMD difficulty is just a hardcore mad stylish party (but I said nothing about easy...), but your first time through DMD will be grueling, bosses' attack patterns change, grunts become super aggressive, in many levels enemies change into the most annoying combination possible (Hell Vanguard+Soul Eater=Dead Dante), and of course, enemies can now devil-triggered, meaning higher attack, higher defence, and harder to be launch in to the air. All these are made solely to made your life harder playing DMC. As for God of War, because it sort of lack the replay value needed for people to try out higher difficulties, the difficulty design is quite simple, more enemies, higher damage, higher defence, less power ups. That's it.

School is starting again so I'm not sure if I'll ever finish the fight (where did thatphrase come from I wonder), but bye for now.

Sorry for the delay, I was busyplaying Ninja Gaiden to get a better idea for the game. Now let's continue shall we?

Round 4:Combat-DMC>NG>GOW

The word combat here means many things, I did plan to give DMC and NG a draw, but I thought "no". Why? DMC games are famous for their fluid and responsive controlls, you want to do a combo, as long as your fingers are fast enough, you can. And the fact that DMC abandoned much realism, mean Dante can switch between weapons instantly and do stuffs that don't make much sense (Jump Cancel for instance). And the thing that makes DMC different for the other two is that pretty much every move can be cancelled into another move, how to explain this? For example, tap square 3 times to use a Rebelion combo, but you can tap it twice and immediately use a high time, or maybe a stinger, all even which a weapon to continue the attack. With 5 different weapons and 5 different guns, plus 7 different styles, the possibilities here are countless. So why isn't NG better? Well, because this is my opinions only, I'll say it. NG also has responsive controll, and all the accesible skills of a ninja(wall run for example) can make a battle really fun a play,absorbing essence to use ultimate attack is fun and quite stratiegic, much is the same if not better than DMC. So why do I think DMC is better, NG falls behind, but only by a very very small margin. NG has a really complex combat system yes. But every move is fixed, when you fight, you don't connect move but you choose moves to use, so you see, sometimes things are not good if they're complicated. God of War, I belive, also suffers the fixed-movelist problem, and the action gets quite button-mashy, not to mention many moves are pretty useless, you use it, watch kratos go nuts with the blade of chaos(or Athena),but you don't kill many dudes.But I do believe GOW is a great leap for the western action games, Japanese seems have a clear idea of how to make combat feels so good.

Round 5:Boss Fights:GOW>NG=DMC

The boss fights in god of war 1 are disappointing, I mean....there are only 2 or 3 in the whole game. But in God of War 2, things changes, there are cool bosses everywhere, and they are all ready to stomp you into pieces. "Grand" is the word for the bosses in God of War 2, possibily "bloody" too, but definitely fun. The ways to defeat the bosses are always different, but always fun to play and breath-taking to watch.The boss fights in NG and DMC have their own good and bad, fighting bosses in NG usually means dodge dodge and dodge some more before the boss leaves an opening for you to quickly go in and strike. While in DMC, it means attack attack and attack some more before the boss lays a strike on you(some can be different, Nevan and Doppleganger). What I don't like about NG boss fights is that sometimes the boss tends to just purposely pock its head outand literaly says "Hit me I'm open!"and let you chop it for a while before sticking it back it (Fire Dragon is a good example),in DMC chopping the boss can be unsatisfying because many occasions, you attack them so hard but they don't even flinch (Cerberus, Beowulf.....). This round doesn't talk about the boss designs btw, only the gameplay during fights.

Man that was long, the battle will soon continue, for now, I'm tired...

Three familiar faces. Three games that stand at the very top of all 3D action games. Kratos the Spartan, Ryu the Ninja, and Dante the devil-hunter.So who truely is the greatest of all action games, I made a comparison of the 3 games in different catageries, I have played all 3 games, I've finished God of War and played a bit of God of War 2, I've played devil may cry 3 for more than50 hours, and I've finished Ninja Gaiden and played several missions, and I've pretty much got a basic idea about all 3 games,but I'll still need more info for the comparison to be fair, so I collected information from websites, and other friends. These comparisons are my opinions only, if anyone begs it differ, I'm happy to listen. So, let the battle commence!

Round 1:Graphics-GOW=NG>DMC

At first it's clear that Ninja Gaiden comes up at the top, with really smooth frame rate, detailed textures, and great animations. But then I realized that NG is on the Xbox while the other 2 games are on the ps2. By default, the xbox is more powerful than ps2 when it comes to engine. Then look at GOW, man, it truely is the best ps2 graphics I've ever seen (except Okami), especially when you stand below tall buildings or looking down upon city of Athen. So considering the console difference, GOW and NG is drawed on the graphics round.Well...DMC is not a BAD looking game, it's done pretty well, but clearly not as good as the other two. Occasional clippings here and there, and the texture is not as detailed. Maybe Capcom should do an Okami style action game sometime...

Round 2:Sound-GOW>NG>DMC

No arguements here right? Cinematic action with one of the best orchestral background music I've ever heard, that's what god of war offers, sometimes you in the middle of a puzzle and everything is quiet, when puzzle is solved and the gate opens suddenly this really grand orchestral music starts playing and feels so satisfying. It's always good to hear the god of war soundtrack occasionally.Ninja Gaiden has a great variety of music. from traditional japanese music to heavy metal, of course a bit of orchestrals,so the music changes as the story progresses.Well, devil may cry's music is usually just hardcore heavy-metal mixed with some chantings here and there and crazy sound effects, still good to hear when performing crazy combos to kick demons' asses, but because the action gets a bit too wild andsword slashing effects goes so loudsometimes, it's easy to ignore the music all together. and the battle song is pretty repetitive.

Round 3:Story-GOW>DMC>NG

Com'on, we all know how good god of war's plot is, it's got twists here and there, secrets about Kratos past, about the Gods.How Kratos escapes from death...twice! About Zeus' betrayal,the Titan's history,I was shouting "God that's just awesome!" when I see Kratos pick up the huge sword that he used as a bridge before to fight Ares in the first game, and meeting with all those cool Greece gods is also great. the game also quite long, so getting to know Kratos is a big thing about the god of war, no doubt, not many action games really cared so much about the story-line, but god of war did, and it worked. Devil May Cry series tend to have a theme for each of the games' story-line, the first game is "Love" and the third one is "Family"(never cared for the second), works pretty well, gives you an excuse to beat up tons of demons, and because the charactors are quite connected, not too repetetive, a few not-so-surprising surprises, generally it's nice. Ninja Gaiden on the other hand, is just abusing the old revenge plot over and over and over. The original game's about revenge(I believe....), and now in the 21st century,ninjas arestill going on revenge. It's just not funny...can't Team Ninja think of any other possible ways to get Ryu to go out and cut dudes??

The first stage of the battle is over now, I have to go to bed, the second stage will come out within a week for I shall be going travelling for the next few days. Bye now!