Review: Castlevania Rondo Of Blood (Wii VC)

Most of you won’t be at all familiar with Castlevania Rondo Of Blood. The game was released overseas in Japan only, and was exclusive to NEC’s 16bit PC Engine, otherwise known as the TurboGrafx 16 in the USA, or just TurboGrafx for its unofficial and extremely limited release in Europe. A conversion of the game finally arrived in all territories in 1995 on the Super Nintendo. However it was a very different game than Rondo Of Blood despite sharing most of its aesthetics with that title. Levels had been redesigned, and many gameplay elements had been removed, due mainly because of the difficulty in Konami working with NEC in doing a direct conversion.

As a result the Super NES version, called Castlevania Vampire’s Kiss in Europe, had been cut down and simplified, featuring only two alternative routes to play through compared to the PC Engine’s four, as well as less frames of animation and simpler sprites for certain bosses and levels. Although the storyline and much of the graphics were in fact shared between the two games, making Castlevania VK an actual conversion as well as a reworking. Either way it was inferior in every way to the PC Engine CD-Rom original, which thankfully we have here in all its glory, available for the first time worldwide on Nintendo’s Virtual Console.

Rondo Of Blood is in many ways a traditional Castlevania game. It’s still the same side-scrolling action-adventure style platform game you’ve come to expect, which sees you running around as another Belmont, armed with his trusty whip, wading through various stages bringing death to the undead, all the while trying to save as many villagers and innocent citizens as you can. At one point in the game, saving a village maiden known as Maria allows her to become playable later on in the game, adding a slight change in gameplay for the title, which is pretty cool.


Though in Rondo there are no upgrades to your whip, various other weapons can be picked up and used through the game. These include axes, daggers and holy water, which are classed as sub-weapons and can be found by breaking open the torches and candelabra found through the levels whilst exploring. You can only carry one of these sub-weapons at a time, and have the ability to used them in something called an ‘Item Crash’, which basically allows a sub-weapon to be used in a super attack, either directing damage to all enemies on-screen or delivering concentrated blows to one specific area depending on which of the sub-weapons is used.

Like with previous Castlevania titles the game initially directs you down a linear path, allowing you to explore the route it has chosen for you at your leisure. However the middle of each stage is particularly open, allowing for plenty of exploration and some backtracking if need be, which is something not really seen in the series until later instalments. In fact, the overall style of gameplay to be found in Rondo is very similar to that of series favourite Symphony Of The Night, but featuring concentrated doses of multiple routes and branching paths, rather than a whole scrolling labyrinth full of them.

The levels generally start off in a linear fashion before opening up in the middle, and finally closing back up again near the end as you approach the obligatory boss battle. Somewhere in the middle of the stage, the route you go down dictates what the following stage will be. In Rondo there are eight stages in total, but you will only need to finish four of them in order to complete the game. In addition each of the stages also has more than one ‘end’ as it were, just to further expand upon the series growing beyond its original linearity.


In many ways Rondo acts as a bridge between the earlier Castlevania titles and the modern Symphony Of The Night with its non-linear progression and multiple paths. However the style apes Castlevania III on the NES the most, in which players also had a number of routes they could go down each being different linear path they could take. It’s quite interesting to see how the series progressed from straight up platform action, to a Metroid type platform adventure, later coming complete with RPG elements.

While I was playing through the game I also noticed that many of the enemies are the same one found in SOTN, as is the main character for a certain part of the game before taking on the role of Alucard (in SOTN). The visual style, from the sprite work to the overall art design contained within also match up, and act as a continuation of what began right here with Rondo. Most impressively, and this is something I didn’t know, is that Rondo is a direct prequel to SOTN. And when you eventually reach the end of the game, it sets itself up for its sequel, which plays out the same final battle against Dracula found right here. Sadly, I haven’t quite got to the end yet, instead finding my self repeatedly dying somewhere along in the third stage.


Taking all this into account, except the last part about dying, Rondo is not only one of the best games in the castlevania series, but also one of the best side-scrollers of the 16bit generation. It also happens to be, in my opinion the best Castlevania game of that particular era, with some nice sprite artwork, filled with smooth animation and intricate little details, whilst combining the series early flagship gameplay with a taste of the open-worldness yet to come. The game even uses parallax scrolling in the background plane, something not found in too many PC Engine titles.

At four levels long, you might also be inclined to think that the game is relatively short, but don’t count on it. Stages whilst being large, aren’t massively huge in size. They are however, pretty damn tough to clear, with high levels of enemy AI showing no mercy, and with Ritcher himself highly prone to taking damage. Perhaps the biggest thorn in your side comes at the expense of the game’s rather stiff jumping mechanics, which feel more like a throwback to the NES games than later instalments. In addition your attack range is somewhat limited, making combat feel pretty restrictive at times and death that little bit easier to bring upon yourself.


To be honest, this is only to be expected for a game of this age being nearly seventeen years old, and it isn’t something which breaks the game in any way, just something which shows how much of a cakewalk this series has become, and how stiff the series used to feel compared with later instalments. Although I’d like to call it ‘a respectable challenge’ rather than a cakewalk, but hey, frustrating as it can be, the challenge works rather well by providing a much needed sense of achievement.

In terms of music and effects, the soundtrack has been compressed down from its original CD format, although I couldn’t honestly say if it was of a lower quality as a result not having the original version to hand. All the effects however are accurate, and sound exactly like they did on the PC Engine version. That is to say they come across as sounding a little too much towards the 8bit side of things, despite the system being capable of vastly superior audio. Like with the gameplay issues, much less to be honest, they don’t really take a lot away from the experience. And there’s a certain charm to it all, which if taken away wouldn’t represent the game faithfully as intended.


Castlevania Rondo Of Blood in many ways could almost be talked about in the same way that SOTN is fondly remembered. This game was arguably the first to really consider branching paths and open-ended level design in a way that none of the NES titles ever could, providing gamers everywhere with a challenging, but tightly designed and extremely well animated 16bit adventure.

For most of you, this Virtual Console release will be the first time any of you will have had a chance to play what is now a cult classic amongst fans, and one which I think is definitely well worth picking up. Fans of later games like SOTN and later games shall enjoy the combination of old and new elements, and although the difficulty is arguably a little too high, and the animations a little too stiff, that shouldn’t put anyone off from diving in and enjoying one of the most impressive forgotten games from the 16bit era.

VERDICT: 8/10

Like with most Virtual Console titles, Castlevania Rondo Of Blood can be played in its original 240p resolution via an RGB scart lead, or in 480i/480p via component.

Tech Report: Inside The iPad

I’ve been wanting to write a feature on the iPad for some time now, but I simply haven’t had the time to do so. What with so much to cover for the site already, in addition to working another job, well over a month has past since my initial thoughts on the subject. The other idea was to put together another a short tech feature for IQGamer revealing what makes Apple’s iPad work, and how this shiny handheld tablet compares graphically to the PSP and the last generation of home consoles. This also hasn’t been possible; as up until recently there has only been rumours and well-placed guesswork of just what is contained in Apple’s mysterious A4 chip in the heart of the device.

However, now that the machine is finally out, and has been stripped apart by everyone interested in doing so, I can finally bring you that hardware feature for IQGamer, revealing exactly what is the A4 chip, and how it makes the iPad compare to its siblings and Sony’s competent handheld.

The Apple A4 is a package on Package (POP), system-on-a-chip (SOC), designed by engineers at Apple and manufactured for them by Samsung. It is a combination of a CPU, GPU and video decoder all on a single chip. The design of the A4 is based partially on the ARM Processor architecture, and runs at 1GHz, containing a Cortex-A8 CPU core. The CPU is faster than the one used inside previous iPod Touch and iPhone models, thus giving the iPad a higher pixel fill-rate than its siblings, along with greater vertex processing power if developers perform this on the CPU instead of the GPU.

In terms of the GPU, which previously was speculated to be an Img Tech SGX core, but slightly higher up in the family, turns out to be pretty much bang on the money. The iPad uses an Imagination Technologies Power VR SGX535 GPU located on the SOC, and is the very same one found inside both the third-gen iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone 3GS still has the most available GPU power per pixel however, using a slightly more advanced version of the same part.

The SGX535 inside the iPad is clocked at 200MHz, and has a pixel fill-rate of 500 million pixels per-second, with a maximum memory bandwidth of 4.2 Gigabytes per-second. It can move up to 28 million polygons per-second, although that number is clearly a theoretical maximum, at best being only possibly obtainable in a direct to hardware customised approach with regards to software development. I don’t for one minute expect the iPad to perform anywhere near close to those numbers, especially with Apple’s software abstraction layer heavily covering direct access to the GPU architecture. Instead, something more along the lines of 6 million polygons per-second, perhaps matching the PSP but with extra visual effects is what is likely to be possible.

Impressively the SGX535 supports Shader Model 4 and Open GL 2.0 for the iPad, so it is capable of performing various graphical effects far above that of Sony’s PSP and the entire range of last-generation consoles. Memory size and bandwidth, along with a closed box development environment, and close to direct to metal access, is required for all these advanced graphical effects to be viable in high-end games. Certainly, with Apple’s incredibly restrictive heavy layer of API used to program and control the GPU, we don’t expect any Xbox 1 style visuals, or performance which exceeds that of last-gen machines. Although things like better bump-mapping and specular highlighting should be present, as we’ve already seen them on the existing iPhone, and iPod Touch software in limited quantities.

Also on board the A4 we find an enhanced/customised version of the VXD370 IMG video decoder chip, called the VXD375 (according to the video driver), and which is used for all video encoding and processing on the iPad. Though it isn’t known whether the GPU or CPU itself also helps out with such duties, I imagine that they would in certain instances. The chip sits right between the VXD370 and 380 in terms of capability, obviously customised by IMG Tech for the iPad, and is part of the VXD video encoder chip family consisting of the 370, 380 and 390, which are all public versions of the chip.

Lastly, the iPad features two 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM chips, and is connected to the processor using a 64bit wide data bus, compared to a 32bit bus used inside both the iPhone and iPod Touch, meaning that more memory bandwidth is available for the SGX535, which could lead to better performance over the other third-gen devices.

This was confirmed from the K4X2G643GE RAM part number on the A4. Although the RAM itself isn’t actually on the A4 chip, but rather sits on the top package of the POP.

Surprisingly the iPad itself isn’t really that much more powerful, if at all, than the current top end iPhone or iPod Touch, with simply an increase in memory bandwidth providing any potential graphical acceleration over the current models. Smoother framerates and an obvious increase in particle and shader effects is one benefit such an upgrade would provide. But it remains to be seen how much optimisation Apple’s latest OS for the task in hand, as better hardware can only go so far.


So how does the iPad compare to Sony’s PSP, a machine which has proven itself to be a little powerhouse in the handheld world despite lacking numerous hard-wired visual effects, and no programmable shaders to speak of?

Well, given the restrictions imposed by Apple’s dominating OS and API layer, actually very well. The PSP at best can be seen regularly pushing upwards of 4 to 6 million polys per-second, whilst from existing iPhone and iPad games like Resi 4 and Doom 3, you could roughly guess that Apple’s hardware is capable of pushing a good 8 million or so in a best case scenario, between 4 and 6 in others much like the PSP. In most cases the hardware is largely in the same bracket as the PSP, with only more advanced shader effects being demonstrated. However, this is likely as much to do with the iPad, iPhone, etc, not being overtly suitable for serious traditional games with it’s lack of regular control inputs, games which would require such a power increase, meaning that there isn’t much of a reason for developers to try and extract maximum performance from the hardware. Also there’s no direct access to the graphics chip, yet another bottleneck in the chain.


The PSP however, has two great advantages over the iPad. One being the ability to code directly to metal itself, extracting and optimising every last ounce of performance out of the machine; and the other, a greater amount of bandwidth available granted by the system’s 2MB of EDRAM.

Sony’s handheld can move up to 5.3 Gigabytes per-second over its 256bit bus, whilst the iPad moves 4.2 Gigabytes per-second over a 64bit bus. What this means is that even though the Apple’s system can push more geometry around, featuring some basic shader effects, the PSP can throw around far more transparency and particle effects, along with better lighting and dynamic shadowing.

In terms of having traditional games pumping out a good few million polygons per-second at 60fps, with reasonable lighting and texturing, the PSP wins outright. However the iPad’s strengths consists of having the ability of feature more accurate texturing with greater texture detail and image fidelity, whilst also providing developers with the option of using bump-mapping, specular, and other such effects by using the SGX’s shader capabilities. In essence it’s easier for Apple developers to push around more fancy texture effects than the PSP with potentially more geometry, but at the expense of performance, or framebuffer intensive effects.


Overall, on paper the iPad is a pretty impressive technical beast, in handheld terms at least, while in reality the software restrictions provided by Apple take away much of the real world potential locked inside the hardware. For developers it means that, like with Direct X and a Windows PC, or Mac, that anyone with knowledge of programming and the Apple API can create software without meticulously learning all the ins and outs of the hardware. At the same time Capcom and id software have shown that it is still possible to extract some impressive performance from the device, matching quite closely what we were seeing on the PS2, and to an extent the GameCube, exceeding both systems in some areas.

Ultimately, the iPad, along with the iPhone and iPod Touch is housing some serious handheld potential under the hood. And if unlocked, would more than certainly blow the PSP out of the water in the graphics department and provide us with some impressive Xbox 1 style visuals effects. Of course for a handheld in which playing games is just another feature amongst many, that isn’t really required, and perhaps that’s the point. It needs to be competitive, but it doesn’t need to really walk all over the competition.

Tech Anaysis: Splinter Cell Conviction Demo (360)

For a generation of consoles geared towards high definition content there has been many games which fail to hit this target, instead being rendered in sub-HD resolutions, or worse, in progressive scan standard definition.

Tekken 6, on both platforms, Halo 3 and Final Fantasy XIII on 360, are all recent examples of high profile titles which for whatever reason are given the decision to forgo a true 720p framebuffer, thus not being able to meet the basic HD requirements advertised for two of the three competing consoles. Today, IQGamer can add Sam Fisher’s latest exploits to the list, as Splinter Cell: Conviction becomes the latest casualty in the sub-HD generation.

Splinter Cell: Conviction, exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, is rendered in 1024x576 with 2xMSAA (multisample anti-aliasing), and marks the first time the franchise on 360 has rendered in anything but a true HD resolution. Double Agent, for those of you who must know, was 720p with no AA, instead using an edge blur technique to recreate the effect.


However, this not so shocking revelation isn’t actually as bad at it seems, though still not particularly great. In fact Ubisoft Montreal has made a number of cleaver technical choices, which help negate the slightly burry, and rough around the edges look the upscaled 576p buffer usually results in.

For one, the game has very few high contrasting edges, being set mainly in the dark or at night time. This means that most of the noticeable upscaling artefacts aren’t really as visible as they could be, and the ones that are, can mostly be clearly seen in brighter areas of the game not completely covered in darkness. Although, in the night time sections outside, there is a slight pixelation effect to most of the sprite and polygon edges in the game, along with plenty of texture shimmering, which disappointingly shows off the upsacled nature without restraint. These parts make the game look far worse than FFXIII or Tekken 6 with regards to the upscale and 576p rendering resolution.


Conviction’s tightly controlled use of specular effects however, prevents any unwanted shader aliasing, as does the inclusion of good texture filtering, which means that there are no shimmering textures to be found, inside at least - another cause of bad aliasing in games. The game uses a combination of anisoptropic/trilinear filtering for it’s textures, resulting in this cleaner look, along with having high quality shadowmaps, which are soft looking rather than the basic hard edge type more commonly used.

In addition, the game features an nice depth of field effect, which blurs objects in close range of the camera, helping reduce any poorly upscaled edges from becoming too noticeable, though you can still see them. This smoothing effect works reasonably well with the 2xMSAA, hiding away some of the jaggies and other upscaling artefacts. However, in various scenes where objects are not shrouded in the darkness of the game’s shadows, and in the night time out side sections, the soft looking nature of the upscaled framebuffer is all too obvious, and reveals its 576p origins.


Despite this, Splinter Cell: Conviction deserves some technical merit. The game features a completely dynamic shadows and lighting system. Every light source in the game is fully reactive with the environment and all objects, including characters, and can be disabled or enabled by the player in various ways. In terms of shadows, all shadows change and react to the player, guards and light sources on screen. So when lights are shot out shadows become wider and less directed, or move when characters do so around the environment.

Backing up this shadows system is a fully custom, completely dynamic ambient occlusion solution, developed in house at Ubisoft Montreal. Whilst we don’t know the exact details on how it works, or the advantages over using traditional SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion), we do know that according to Ubisoft, their system gives artists greater control and flexibility, whilst maintaining competitive performance wise.


Lastly, we can confirm that Conviction runs at 30fps with very little in the way of slow down. Instead, the game prefers to screen-tear whenever the engine comes under any kind of load. This happens fairly regularly, however it isn’t as bad as you might think, with much of the screen-tearing simply appearing for a brief split-second, and is very slight at best. At its worst, with lines splitting across the screen, it’s pretty harsh and a little distracting.

I’m not too sure that having a mostly solid 30fps is a good trade off for constant, subtle screen-tearing, although saying that, a drop in framerate is more detrimental to image quality than some slight lines appearing over the screen.


Overall, Splinter Cell: Conviction compares with most other upscaled 576p games in the image quality stakes, and exceeds them in certain scenarios. The use of dark environments and minimal contrasting edges helps hide the more obvious of artefacts when indoors, whilst the depth of field effects and MSAA smooth over others still noticeable in the shadows. The use of dynamic lighting and AO is pretty impressive, and combined with the soft shadowmapping, takes your vision away from the upscaled nature of the edges. However, despite this, there are times in which the game just can’t hide its sub-HD resolution, and it never looks particularly sharp as a result. Certainly, compared with true 720p titles, and the 600p Call Of Duty games, it looks somewhat poor in comparison, although it is one of the better upscaled 576p framebuffer games so far.

Ubisoft Montreal has shown, that with the right art design and technical choices, how 576p is not necessarily a no go area for developers, much like with Namco and their home conversions of Tekken 6. However, they still have a lot of work to do before we can say their 576p achievement matches PS3 Tekken 6 (with motion blur turned off) for clarity and sharpness. Saying that, Conviction looks better than Double Agent, a title which rendered in 720p, but used a heavy edge blur effect for an anti aliasing, and in turn better than a lot of other sub-HD games in general. Sadly, the game also has moments in which it looks truly awful, and it’s in these sections, mostly set outside during the night, which bring the whole image quality right down.

For a flagship AAA title, Splinter Cell: Conviction is rather disappointing in the IQ department, with the mixed success of having an upscaled 576p framebuffer combined with some well thought out graphical effects. Had the outdoor areas of the game fared better then it would have made a tangible difference, putting the title visually above most other 576p releases.

Review: BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (PS3)

Can you believe that it’s been nearly six months since BlazBlue first hit stores in the United States? And in that time we’ve had a string of high profile, hardcore fighting game releases. On the list is a failed attempt to recapture the pure hand-drawn 2D market; a haggard old 3D fighter trying to carve out a new path in a ever increasing landscape of FPS’s and Western RPG’s; and lastly, a 2D fighter with authentic gameplay, wrapped up in lavish polygon graphics in a 3D visualised return to greatness.

I imagine any connoisseurs familiar with the genre will be able to name all three, but only one of which was worthy of your unrivalled attention. The rest you could leave bleeding out on the side of the street, or better still, decline the challenge altogether, as they represented a failure to not only capture, but also understand their audience. A shame if you ask me, since the genre needs more one-two-punch strikes of greatness to really bring it back solidly into the limelight. BlazBlue is one of those titles, and despite the fact that it lacks any recognised characters or fighting styles, does well to prop up the rising one-on-one beat’em up once again.

BlazBlue (BB) for the uninitiated is the latest glossy, hand-drawn 2D fighting extravaganza by ARC System Works, the creators of the Guilty Gear franchise and its long line of sequels (I’m looking at you X2). It feels very much like a spiritual successor to that franchise, with over-the-top combos, fast-paced aerial strikes, and a range of impressive counter moves, supers, and no less than three ways of guarding against attack. In short, BlazBlue has pretty much everything that Guilty Gear had, topped off with an increased simplicity whilst actually being deeper at the same time. There’s no doubt in my mind that giving Guilty Gear a rest, and instead starting a whole new saga with BlazBlue was the right thing to do.


The basic fighting engine is pretty straightforward, easy to learn but with loads to master and sink your teeth into. Essentially there are only four basic attacks to learn, A B C and D, which are light medium and heavy respectively, with D standing for a ‘Drive’ attack, which is specific to whoever character you are playing as. Most of the light and medium attacks correspond to either a punch or kick for most characters, whilst heavy is usually reserved for weapons, and drive, for a combination of all three – depending on the character - in a form of special move.

Basic moves can all be used to chain into combination attacks, or combos if you will. Done by pushing a series of light, medium and heavy attacks, along with the drive attack to build up a long and impressive offensive of moves. However, the larger the combo, the lesser the damage it will do, giving the opponent a fair chance at retaliation. Holds can be integrated into combos by pressing the B and C buttons together, then followed up, or finished off with either normal attacks, specials or even Distortion Drives, BlazBlue’s equivalent of Supers.

Using a combination of these moves, along with the obligatory SFII-esque quarter-circle special moves will only get you so far though. You would be missing a whole part of the game without at least stumbling into some of the advanced techniques that ARC have based the game around. The various Cancels, Drives and Finishers all use something called the Heat Gauge, which is basically the BB version of SF’s Super bar. Each of the different techniques use different amounts of the bar, labelled in percentages to make things easier, but also to allow a greater range of option.

Hitting A, B and C together during a move unleashes a Rapid Cancel, which stops the animation of your current attack returning your character to his or her neutral stance, and allows them to immediately execute another move to integrate into an existing combo. Useful if you know that the move you were doing would effectively end a combo. Alternatively, whilst the heat Gauge is filled to certain levels it is also possible to perform Distortion Drives (character specific Super moves) or something called an Astral Finisher, which is move that results in a single one hit kill if it connects.

Pushing back on the d-pad whilst holding A + B together performs a Barrier, a stronger version of your regular guard. A Barrier cannot be broken, but can only be held for a limited amount of time indicated by the Barrier gauge. If it empties whilst blocking the player will receive 150% damage until the gauge becomes at least half full during regeneration. You might also consider performing a Barrier burst if you’re being hammered constantly by your opponent in a corner of the screen. It’s a move which repels the opposing player across the screen, giving you some room to compose yourself and then retaliate. However the penalty for such a bail out is pretty severe, requiring you to not only forego the use of your Barrier Block, but also making you take 150% damage for the rest of the round. So you’d better know what you are doing when you use it.


Lastly, it is also possible to counter your opponent’s attacks by striking them at the same time as they attack, cancelling them out and opening them up for a combo.

Of course, you don’t actually have to use any of these techniques, instead sticking to basic attacks and specials. However the game is more difficult as a result, especially online, in which the rather niche nature of such a title quickly breeds experienced players. Thankfully the inclusion of the character specific Drive attacks negates this to some extent. Drive attacks are basically one button special moves which can be factored into any basic combo, or used on their own, giving inexperienced players or button mashers a chance to have fun with the game.

There are a total of 12 unique characters in BlazBlue, each with their own strange design and set of moves. Everyone of the fighters in BB is pretty different to most of the fighting games I’ve played before, being more off the wall, or bizarre than even the ones in Guilty Gear. Some of the characters even have specific attacks or functions, which are completely absent for others, and fit outside the standard range of moves. For example, Rachel has a separate gauge which controls how many times she can control the blowing wind in each stage, which is pretty cool, but also provides a greater level of depth than most fighters. Many of these individual nuances are tied into character specific Drive attacks, but not all, giving players much to learn.


Each of the character designs are typical ARC System Works creations. From silver haired, gothic-inspired ‘Ragna The Blood Edge’, to the giant red Hellboy look-alike ‘Iron Tager’. The style can be described as post-apocalyptic neo-punk, meets Victorian-gothic, steam-punk influences. It’s pretty weird to say the least, but will be familiar to anyone whose played Guilty Gear before. The mixture of darkly, eclectic character designs, cute and psychotic personalities are incredibly well designed, and bring an altogether different feel to most recently released 2D beat’em ups. Though Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom is the exception to that rule.

Visually, BlazBlue is a lavishly designed mixture of hand drawn 2D sprite work and 3D backgrounds, with painted textures. All the game’s sprites are drawn in 720p, unlike in KOFXII, and have been intricately detailed. Shadows are cast on characters when moves are performed; clothing sways to and fro during battle; and lots of subtle details are visible on all aspects of the characters, from facial animation, to the small pins located on a character’s belt buckle. The backgrounds are proper 3D creations, complete with dynamic lighting effects and painted textures, which match the art style used for the characters and interlude artwork.

There’s no doubt that BB is the best looking 2D sprite-based fighting game available. It’s a truly beautiful game to behold. Sure it doesn’t feature the Disney quality animation of KOFXII, or the precision mapped, pixel perfect shadowing and shading on its characters. But then again, it doesn’t really need them, showcasing a lovely mixture of both 2D and 3D graphics; all polished in high definition with a finished and succinct art style. If anything, SNK could learn a thing or two from theses guys.

In terms of modes, BlazBlue provides you with the usual, Arcade, Versus, Training, Replay, Gallery and Online. There is also a ‘Story Mode’, which fleshes out each of the characters, and contains quite a well thought out, albeit confusing narrative. Playing through this mode with all the characters unlocks more of each character’s story, and slowly fills in all the gaps, explaining what the hell is going on. Short animated cut-scenes, and hand-drawn stills, break up the battles, complete with voice acting and text dialogue.

The Online Mode, touted on the back of the box as being ‘lag free’, comes dangerously close to doing just that. Even on my 1 Meg broadband connection (I still haven’t been upgraded yet) there was virtually no lag in most of the matches I played. Quite often I would encounter some slight lag at the beginning of a match, for only the game to seem to catch up with itself providing a responsive environment in which to fight. Occasionally I did encounter some laggy matches, but nothing to the extent of what I’m getting in SFIV at the moment, in which there is hardly any players with a good connection available. BlazBlue seems different in this regard, and is a welcome proposition considering the disappointments with other profile fighters in this area (yes, I’m talking about you Tekken 6).

One thing that is disappointing about the game though, is that after waiting for the best part of half a year for it to arrive on UK shores, we haven’t received any of the extra characters than we were promised. Instead ARC SW is including them in a sequel of sorts with the release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, which I guess is the updated game we were expecting to get in the first place. Continuum Shift will be available on import this summer in Japan and the United States. Expect us Brits to be waiting a lot longer for it to arrive over here.


As you can tell, I rather liked BlazBlue. The mixture of gothic, neo-punk art styles, the in-depth combo-based gameplay, steeped in simplicity, and beautifully created 2D/3D combination of visuals. Really, it is one of the most refreshing beat’em ups I have played in a while, adding TvC to that list from back in February, and one which any self respecting hardcore fighting fan should at least check out.

Granted the game isn’t quite as accessible as the likes of Guilty Gear, featuring more bizarre fighting styles, and unusual characters. However there is plenty to play through and master, and once you get acquainted with a character you like, then your enjoyment of the title will really pick up. Getting to that point however, will take a few hours of well-versed gameplay. Learning some of the advanced techniques - which aren’t that hard to pick up at all - whilst coming to terms with the fact that with BB ARC have purposely created designs and play styles which are meant to be different from those of regular weapon-based 2D fighters.


BlazBlue is a great addition to the 2D fighting game roster, and despite its initially unfamiliarity and somewhat bizarre nature, is well worth picking up for any hardcore fighting fan. Not everyone will like the off-the-wall fighting styles, and I for one, found it much harder to get into than Guilty Gear, Last Blade or TvC. However that shouldn’t deter the die-hards out there, who like to get lost in learning the ins and outs of whichever character they choose. Certainly, as a hardcore player myself, I did enjoy what the game had to offer, especially online against a range of players, both ones mediocre in their delivery, and some which are arguably so much higher in their game than me.

VERDICT: 8/10

A Limited Edition of BlazBlue is available in small quantities at launch for the same price as the standard edition. It contains a two-hour long combo training DVD, with character specific strategies, showcasing many high level moves and specials; a 96 page full colour booklet, with art and illustrations from the designers at ARC System Works; and the regular version of the game. This is the version we picked up at IQGamer, however our review and score is based solely on the standard game, and not the extra content contained within the Limited Edition.

Review: Perfect Dark (XBLA)

I was pretty excited to find that Microsoft were releasing the original N64 version of Perfect Dark for XBLA. Having played Golden Eye relentlessly for the best part of a year back in 1999, the chance to finally have a playable version of its spiritual successor was too much to pass up, and an opportunity Rare should have taken advantage of a long time ago. Not least of all because the first Perfect Dark was a superior game to the 2005 sequel and 360 launch title - a game which felt barely like PD or Golden Eye at all - but also because it had so much potential, simply marred by an uncontrollable framerate held back by the constrains of the humble 64bit hardware it was running on.

You, know. I never actually played Perfect Dark when it first came out on the N64, instead sampling it’s flawed delights a few years later, after the Dreamcast had died and during a period in which I was hell bent on expanding my ‘retro’ collection, picking up titles I’d missed along the way. I first played PD around a friend’s house, and was left with distinct flavour of distaste in my mouth afterwards.

Although the game featured much larger level designs and more involving mission objectives, it was also almost completely unplayable for the most part. Slowdown seemed to occur within the slightest hint of more than two enemies appearing on screen, whilst at the same time, the developers though that it would be a great idea to include all kinds of nifty transparency and reflective effects, all to the determent of having a remotely smooth experience.

For the 2010 XBLA release, Perfect Dark has been given a full HD make over with a number of small graphical tweaks and upgrades. The game is rendered in 1080p and now runs at a solid 60fps, without incurring any slowdown or damaging framerate drops at all. It does this in all modes, including the rarely seen 4-player split-screen multiplayer mode lacking from most FPS’s of today.


Some of the game’s textures have seen a resolution upgrade, looking cleaner and clearer as a result, but not so much so as to take away from the slightly blurry look associated with N64 titles in general. The visual effects have also been given a small dose of polish, using more accurate shader effects for all the game’s reflective surfaces – real-time reflections and specualr highlights, rather than just the moving textures seen on the N64 game – whilst also adding in a few other subtle graphical touches. Like in the N64 original, lights can be shot out, gunfire and explosions illuminate areas dynamically, and lights can be shot out to create darkened areas.

What you have here is a fully authentic conversion of the original game, but with all the graphical improvements necessary to make it a completely playable experience – for the most part anyway. The framerate in particular, makes running around and gunning down baddies really good fun for the first time, whilst also bringing to your attention the sometimes dated game design, which has a real tendency to grate on you at various points through the game. This sometimes ruins all the hard work Rare have put into the title in creating a larger and more complex design, fearuring more thought provoking mission objectives, which require a greater degree of planning to overcome compared to those in their previous N64 FPS.


Perfect Dark’s gameplay is comfortably versed in the old-school nature of game design. There is a slightly open-end feel to the whole thing, leaving you free to roam around the levels making your own way to mission objectives, whilst at the same time, the game stubbornly refuses to tell you how they might be accomplished. You won’t find any hand-holding, instead often finding yourself meandering along various rooms and corridors either trying to find the item or person required to trigger the next objective, or just trying to actually find out how to complete said objective without mercilessly killing everyone who gets in your way – which leads to failure many a time I can assure you. Locked doors and dead ends are a plenty, which might leave anyone unfamiliar with the mechanics of decade old first-person-shooters rather lost and confused.

It’s not unusual for the game to require you to keep certain enemies alive in order to make progress through certain stages. However they are never pointed out to you, and in many cases you will probably kill one of the few people required to open a select door to progress, or who holds the item or information you might be after. Most of PD’s mission design is largely trial and error, requiring lots of repeat playthroughs in order to sometimes figure out what is going wrong, or how you should be approaching a certain situation. It is unforgiving and frustrating at the same time, but also slightly refreshing in the sense that it feels more realistic to be dropped inside a foreign complex without any sense of direction, having to track down you intended target based on pretty meagre intel.


Sometimes though, the game will fail your mission due to you accidentally blowing up an item needed to complete it, or because you failed to defend the right target from being assassinated, despite the fact that the target in question, nine times out of ten, is barely recognisable from all the other civilians.

It’s these things which frustrate, showing you how old and creaky the game’s tired and worn design has become. However when these sections are played through again, perhaps for the second or third times, it becomes a wholly more enjoyable experience. Like to a lesser extent with Golden Eye, once you know what to do, and how to do it, you can spend more time in having fun completing mission objectives than instead wondering around working out what they are and why you just failed them again for the third or forth time.

A lack of a directed nature hurts the game badly, but that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a lot of fun to be had from it. It just means that you are going to need a much greater amount of perseverance to get to that point. At the same time the varied mission structure – which changes the level significantly depending on what difficulty setting you choose – keeps things interesting, especially when an empty room on the ‘Agent’ setting becomes a secret laboratory on ‘Perfect Agent’, which you are then tasked with destroying.


The physics and overall gameplay mechanics whilst dated are still pretty cool to look at for the most part. When shooting enemies in the leg, they will limp around the level until you decide to pop them off; shooting someone in their arm will make them drop their weapon, sometimes putting their arms up and allowing you to give them a good smack around the head; shoulder hits will disable enemies, whilst a shot to the head yields an instant kill. They can also get staggered from being hit, clutching their wounds, or simply kneeling over and dying right in front of you.

In terms of Multiplayer options. Perfect Dark is loaded with modes for both Online and local action. Every mode that supports more than one player is also fully playable online, making the deal so much sweeter. In total there are 6 different game modes, 16 maps, and 43 weapons, with the option to include bots to make up additional players if there aren’t any around. This can be done for both online and local matches keeping things interesting and upping the intensity by having more players on the scene. Split-screen makes a triumphant comeback in XBLA PD, with up to four players battling it out on a single console and TV screen, all the while the framerate doesn’t drop from it’s original 60fps update.


Now if that sounded good, PD also goes further than most FPS’s today with its range of multiplayer options. Along you the campaign and a competitive modes, you also have a Counter-Op mode, which sees one person take control of the enemy characters as the other player attempts to complete the game. You also can play through the standard Campaign mode in two players co-operatively, which can make working out what to do in the missions easier, but also thinks harder at the same time, as if one of you makes a mistake it’s mission over for both of you.

Disappointingly online play comes with a hitch. In all game modes and matches I played online there was noticeable lag. Sometimes this wasn’t particularly bad, and in these cases it worked really well for the most part. However, I was unable to find a single match that didn’t have some form of lag attached to it, which is a bit of a let down considering that it’s by far the biggest draw with this updated version of perfect Dark.

For the most part, Perfect Dark is an antiquated shooter with some particularly clever level design, hindered by the trial and error nature of many of its objectives. Having said that, it is still a highly playable fast and frenetic shooter, tense and particularly involving, it just requires you to adjust and adapt to its decade old gameplay to properly enjoy what it has to offer. Still, this is the first time that the game has been in any kind of playable state – outside of emulation of course – and whilst it isn’t as solidly constructed a game as Golden Eye, particularly with regards to the single player campaign, it is a pretty competent shooter which excels greatly in the multiplayer stakes.


If you’ve been longing for some repeat action in the same vain as that N64 classic, Golden Eye, than look no further. But be warned. Parts of the game have aged badly, and the confusing nature of the level design and mission structure will seem off-putting at first, certainly to those with a rose tinted view on what these games were like. Despite this, Perfect Dark manages to be a better all round package than its 2005 sequel, with original mechanics which feel like they should do with the reworked dual analogue controls, and a still fantastic multiplayer mode. Whilst not perfect, it is perhaps one of the last flagship titles, along with Banjo Tooie, in which Rare still showcases some glimmer of greatness, before sliding down into mediocrity.

Overall, Perfect Dark is worth picking up for fans of the original N64 outing and their other FPS success story Golden Eye. However anyone without prior experience of those titles and their stubbornly old-style method of trial and error progression, should probably avoid as they are unlikely to enjoy what they find. Multiplayer aside, which for a great offline experience, is worth every one of those 800 Microsoft points.

VERDICT: 7/10

Review: God Of War 3 (PS3)

Very rarely am I sucked into the hype machine, often remaining sceptical or decidedly unimpressed unless something awe-inspiring happens. Be that extraordinary visuals, a captivating story, or simply, a game in which through sheer polish and exemplary development becomes something much greater than it ever was before.

With God Of War 3 I was unimpressed from the very beginning. The initial teaser trailers didn’t look particularly great from a graphical point of view, and the gameplay seemed to be more of the same, something I never really took to when playing the first game some five years ago. My hands-on with the E3 demo both at the Eurogamer Expo and on PSN, completely failed to change my mind.

The final game, however, is a different beast altogether, delivered with such finesse and a sense of grandeur that it can only be described as one of the most intense, and visually alluring games yet to come out of a Western development studio. GoW3 is not only one of the most graphically impressive videogames I have ever seen, blending in both great art and benchmark technology. But it’s also the first time I have thoroughly enjoyed a God Of War title, being one of the most epic thrill-rides to grace the current generation of videogames consoles. It isn’t a perfect game however, and suffers from at least one gameplay quirk that threatens to break an otherwise awesomely fun, massively epic adventure.

This particular issue has to do with the control scheme, or more specifically, with how the game has you double jumping into a glide when leaping of the edge of a platform or ledge. More on this later on in the review but suffice to say that it isn’t enough to bring down the game, especially after a few hours of play in which you should have the mechanic mostly oiled down to a tee.

Other than that reasonably minor issue - seeing as you spend most of your time fighting hordes of Zeus’s minions rather than attempting to become the Greek equivalent of Lara Croft - the rest of God Of War 3 provides players with a solid and absolutely epic experience. One which presents you with more enemies and larger than life set pieces. If you thought the scenery destroying, screen-filling bosses of Bayonetta were impressive, think again, as God OF War 3 ups the ante even further along into chaos.


The beginning of the game alone is focused purely on a huge boss battle between a giant stone Titan (Gaia) and the ocean god Poseidon, with Ktatos having to jump back and forth between Mount Olympus, which the Titan is climbing, and Gaia, where the main battle takes place. All through this encounter you have to fend off waves of Zeus’s minions, before having to scale up the giant Titan to begin the final assault against the ravenous ocean god. All of this plays out like a blood soaked version of Shadow Of The Colossus, featuring huge characters making up what can only be described as an actual level itself, along with some of the most intense and downright impressive QTE action sequences in the entire game.

It’s a pretty incredible opening, which not only showcases the enormous sense of scale and epic gravitas the game provides, but also its insanely good looking graphical prowess, which stands right up there against both Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 for one of the best looking games this generation. Indeed GoW3’s recipe for success is not only making things look great, but also making every large encounter feeling very much like one giant endgame.


In terms of actual gameplay, not much has changed from the demo we played both at Eurogamer last year and the PSN download we locked horns with last month. However, the execution is far slicker, and the visual upgrade creates a smoother more responsive game outshining the demo in every single way. Whereas the demo ran mostly at 30fps during any combat or action scenes, the final game hits 60fps for the majority of its encounters, and only drops down to the 30fpos mark in the biggest of battles. In most heavy scenes through the game, 45fps is commonplace, and is still smooth enough to keep the controls responsive and the visuals suitably polished.

Like in the first two GoW games, the combat still hinges on you mixing various moves and specials together, changing weapons to deal with different enemy types and varying boss encounters, whilst having to dodge and counter numerous attacks and obstacles. But you now have the ability to change weapons on the fly, integrating different moves from different weapons all into the same combination attack. In addition a few new moves have been added making it easier and more enjoyable to take on the increased amount of enemies at any one time.

Whereas before there would have been a dozen or so enemies, now comes two or three times that, followed up with some of the largest bosses to feature in the series so far. At the same time the game gives you all the tools you need to deal with such adversaries. Which is a good thing too; as there are bloody loads of them to deal with, many of which are twice your size and capable of slicing you to pieces given the chance.


Thankfully, having the ability to change weapons mid-combo effectively allows you to take down larger foes without taking a massively long time to do so. For example, Kratos can use the Cestus Gauntlets to break through an enemies shield, before switching back to his trademark Blades of Chaos to finish them off with some prolonged combos and special attacks. You can of course, simply, just continue to use the Gauntlets for the entire battle, seeing as they are so powerful, but you then run the risk of being overwhelmed by many weaker enemies as a result.

This change makes the game feel far more varied as a result, especially when it throws at you bosses or creatures, which require specific weapons in order to defeat them. You will find that the game transcends its initial button bashing nature by making you think about what you’re doing, and how you go about doing it. It makes a great change from the grating nature of continuously pounding the ‘square’ and ‘triangle’ buttons in the hope of success, whilst also allowing you to experiment beyond using basic magic or shooting the odd arrow here and there.

Special weapons also have regenerative abilities now. Whereas in GoW 2 they would expire after a certain amount of usage, they now occupy the yellow bar below your health meter, which refills itself within a few seconds or so of you not using a special weapon. This means that weapons such as the Bow of Apollo, can be used continuously through the game, and can always be counted on for additional support knowing that it will regenerate a few seconds after being used. Occasionally you will find that it is pretty easy to exploit this trait by simply firing off ten shots or so, dodging any attacks while the yellow bar fills up for a few seconds, before once again repeating the process. This even works on bosses, though not all, and attempting to kill them this way takes ages compared to using the multitude of weapons at your disposal. However, it does make things easier for less confident players without compromising the challenge and integrity of the game.


To top off the game’s already polished combat system, GoW3 also speeds up the previously slow heavy attacks, now allowing them to be used in combos as a starter, or even mid way through. Using them in all situations is no longer a death sentence, but now becomes just another way of dealing with the increasing amounts of enemies being thrown your way. The result is that the overall game is far more fluid than any of the previous instalments, something more akin in some ways to Japanese style hack’n’slash titles like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry without loosing its trademark feel in the process.

Of course, GoW3 isn’t about all the gut wrenching and killing that comes with being a fallen god with a taste for revenge. There are a number of slower, more sedate parts throughout the game, with lesser amounts of enemies and more controlled aggression directed your way. These sections are home to the series trademark puzzle solving elements in addition to upgrading your skills through finding abilities, as well as gaining new weapons and magic.

Unlike GoW2, the puzzles in GoW3 are smaller in size and are altogether much simpler. They rely on the same box-pushing, lever pulling scenarios present in the last game, but are at the same time slightly easier to figure out, with solutions being down to common sense logic rather than anything cryptic or obscure. They also seem to span across one or two large rooms at the most compared to the long and sprawling puzzles laid out in the second game.


I didn’t find any of these to be problematic, instead feeling that they made the whole experience a far more interesting one. You could say that they made the sense of adventure surrounding the Greek mythology and architecture quite captivating at times, whilst also breaking up the button mashing nature inherent in other parts of the game. For once, during an action-based game, I actually really enjoyed and appreciated these thinking man’s moments, with only a few times in which I remained stumped – even then it was only for a few short minutes.

In addition to throwing a puzzle or two at you, the game also features some rather frustrating platforming sections, let down by the overly picky jumping system. Basically, most of the jumps in these platform sections need almost complete precision in order to be tackled successfully, relying on both your timing of the glide and double jump moves, while also giving you no leeway for any mistakes.

Jumping and gliding in itself isn’t particularly difficult. However, in GoW3 you seemingly can only perform the higher jump when there is solid ground below you, and not as you are throwing yourself off a ledge in order to leap across any pitfalls below. At the same time, having you glide by holding down the ‘cross’ button in the same button press required for the double jump feels particularly unnatural, being different from pretty much every game released that relied on such a technique.

This aspect of the game does much to potentially spoil the experience, and I often found myself frustrated at my repeated failed attempts to progress in these sections. Had the jumping and gliding mechanics been a little easier or more conventional in their execution then I wouldn’t have has many problems, and these parts of the game would have been another highlight. As it stands, they serve only to disappoint and take away some of the finely polished nature of the rest of the game.


The rest of the game doesn’t suffer from these problems, and is of course pretty awesome as a result. In my humble opinion it could well be described as the western equivalent to Platinum Games Bayonetta. GoW3 has all the tried and tested gameplay of its prequels down to a fine art, an art made even finer by the changes to the combat system and the epic scale of pretty much most things in the game. Everything from the boss encounters to the puzzles are extremely well done. And if it weren’t for that stupid jumping mechanic, there wouldn’t be much left to criticise at all, except for the fact that Kratos, as a lead character, is nothing more than a rancid, vile jock, who is in desperate need to be put out of his misery.

Even though I haven’t played through all of God of War 1&2, I would have at least expected his character to have developed from the mindless rage he displayed in the last two games. Instead, we simply see more of the same, with only a small glimmer of redemption later in the game. Even then, his anger and rage still shine through more than any other trait, making it hard to feel anything for him, except maybe disgust or distain.


Visually, God of War 3 succeeds on two levels, both artistically and technically. The art design whilst being a mixture of dark and uninviting colours, is never drab or unappealing, and in some scenes has a distinctly hand painted look residing over it. The backgrounds are a perfect example of this, in which the lush, hand-painted sky and distant horizon blends in perfectly with the painted textures of the environments and characters.

Technically, God of War 3 stops short of perfection, but still manages to define just what we should be expecting from these current-gen gaming consoles. Textures are incredibly detailed, clean, and extremely clear. And whilst they aren’t all as detailed as the ones found in Uncharted 2, they represent the art style chosen for the game almost perfectly. The lighting and showing system is another showstopper. It’s all completely dynamic, reacting with everything from the characters and the environments. Shadows move and lighting is cut off when something passes through it; Kratos’s weapons, when used, casts a short lasting glow which lights up the surrounding environments and enemies, with metallic objects reflecting the light back out into their surroundings.

The Anti-Aliasing on show is also something which needs to be seen to be believed. There’s no doubt in my mind that Santa Monica Studio’s implementation is the most accomplished form of AA in any console game to date. Much of GoW3 has very little, to next to no jaggies whatsoever, sans on a few distant background objects and scenery. Everything remains nice and sharp despite the high levels of AA on offer, and the areas which do suffer from jaggies, have much smoother edges than in other games which have little in the way of AA.


For me though, the real triumph isn’t the glossy visuals, the epic scale, or even the gameplay, but how they all come together to form a complete package which in the face of a few small flaws, easily stands up there with Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 as one of the defining titles on Sony’s machine. From the moment I laid eyes on that opening battle scene between the Titan and the giant God fighting it out over Mount Olympus, I was convinced. Then, just a few hours later, most of the things that I was unsure about from playing the last two games had been alleviated. Almost completely, with the exception of the game’s platform sections being the only blemish on an otherwise superbly crafted experience.

God Of War 3 might not be wholly original, or particularly different from previous instalments, but it is a far more polished affair, and one which does enough to rise above from being just a great game, becoming instead a genre defining one. It is a title which I was expecting nothing more than a rehash of previous games, and although arguably that is exactly what it is, it’s done with so much flair and attention to detail that it certainly doesn’t always feel that way. In that respect, God Of War 3 is exemplary, blending an established formula with some new found refinement and polish, both of which go a long way to making this pinnacle of the genre.

VERDICT: 9/10