Dead Rising

It’s been a long time coming but I finally put some time into playing Dead Rising. And, well, I can now say that it’s… a video game. It would be fairly fun if not for a quite annoying part of the game: the save system.

Whenever you die you have a choice: you can reincarnate — keep your progress but restart the game — or reload at your last save, losing all progress made. I made the choice again and again to restart. I leveled up my character over a couple of hours of play but only made it about a hour into the story each time. I finally got tired of my two steps forward, one step back progress and stopped playing. I won’t be playing it again any time soon.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad

I know. I know. Any game that has both of words “bikini” and “samurai” is probably not the best of games. And, as it turns out, that is completely true.

The most basic premise is that main character — a nubile girl just out of the shower and thus only wearing a bikini — must face off against the zombie hoard. Using high heels, swords and a complete lack of clothing, the player must face wave after wave of the undead.

The game mechanic is styled like the Devil May Cry series. You fight enemies through a level while collecting various things in the process. Each enemy killed drops a yellow ball while occasionally dropping health as well. After finishing the level, points are calculated on how many combos preformed, yellow balls collected and total time taken. These points are used to slowly upgrade the character after each level.

There were though a few things that I thought were interesting.

During each load scene is a minigame with pixilized versions of the character and zombies, allowing you kill during the down time. At first I thought this was neat but after sitting through a loading scene after each little area, this grew quite annoying.

As you kill zombies, blood goes everywhere, including on the screen itself. Eradicating long strings of zombies leaves blood dripping on the screen often obscuring the onscreen action. Again a neat but annoying thing after seeing it a couple of times.

The last thing is that you can change the color of blood. Ever wanted green or even yellow blood going everywhere? Now you can have it.

Rez HD

I like this game. The reason I like it is very simple, I can beat the game. Just recently I did just that.

After finally getting through Area 4, after several tries, I got my chance at Area 5. This is remarkable because I’d heard several different people say that this level was not only the best but the single level that sells the game. After playing it, I believe them.

Not only is Area 5 a great deal longer but also features nearly triple the number of enemies as well as moments of narrative between sections. The entire level is topped off with a prolonged boss section pitting the player against all of the previous bosses one after another before the final multi-part last battle. Long, difficult and utterly surreal.

LEGO: Indiana Jones

Isn’t this a kid game? Yes.

Isn’t it impossible to actually fail in any real way? Yes, just like Too Human

Isn’t the game rather easy? Absolutely.

It’s a podcast-listening game. I’m playing through it mostly for the points but also because I’m a fan of the Indiana Jones movies. Humorous but simple.