[Achievements that require no explanation will be branded as such]

A lot of people out there have been having issues obtaining a number of SoulCalibur V’s cryptic achievements, so I decided to share some tips.

There are a number of unlocks that can be obtained simply through completing the game’s single player modes and ranking up online, but a number of them are unlocked through in-game options and through your combat prowess — as well as your general knowledge of SoulCalibur V’s new mechanics.

Hit the jump to figure out how to get every achievement or trophy — if you’re new to the game, you might learn a few things too.

History Repeats

Battle in SOULCALIBUR V for the first time (excluding training and VS battle).

(Self Explanatory)

A Soul Coalesces

Edit a player license.

The easiest way to obtain this is to quickly create a character, then press Start on the main menu and change your license portrait to that character.

Beginning of Destiny

Register 3 rivals.

Every time you play someone online you have a chance to register them as a rival. After completing a match, win or lose, you can register them immediately into one of three slots.

Proof of a Fighter

Win consecutive matches on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Win two matches on Xbox Live/PSN in a row

Mercenary of War

Fight 30 times on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Simply compete in 30 matches on Xbox Live/PSN

Strategist of War

Fight 75 times on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Simply compete in 75 matches on Xbox Live/PSN

Hero Carved in History

Fight 100 times on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Simply complete 100 matches on Xbox Live/PSN

Carry Out Your Beliefs

Win 5 times in one style on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Use one character (or one created character) and win five times. “Style” = character.

Courageous Warrior

Win 20 times on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Simply win 20 times on Xbox Live/PSN

Conqueror of the Arena

Win 50 times on Xbox LIVE/PSN

Simply win 50 times on Xbox Live/PSN

Synchronize DNA

Use Ezio in a player match.

Use Ezio one time in a non-ranked online match

Awakened to Violence

Reach E4 rank in ranked match.

Play enough ranked games to get to rank E4.

Reason to Fight For

Reach E1 rank in ranked match.

Play enough ranked games to get Rank E1.

First Step of a Legend

Reach D1 rank in ranked match.

Play enough ranked games to get Rank D1.

Sings Own Praise

Upload a replay of your win.

This one is tricky. Right after a match, upload a video. Then, go to “replay” in the online play menu (not your player card). Go to the Battle Log section and save one of the uploads. Then, go to the “My Battles” section to complete the requirement.

Notes on Rivals

Play back another player’s replay.

The easiest way to do this is register a rival, press Start and view their player card, then view a replay.

Path to Glory

Quick Battle: defeat 50 warriors.

You must defeat 50 CPUs in the Quick Battle Single player mode. If you’ve already beaten a CPU it will display their name in white. If you haven’t, it will be green. Note that you can sort/flip the quick battle menu with the option at the bottom of the screen. The easiest way to gauge this is to view your “titles earned”, not “wins”.

Road to the Duel

Quick Battle: defeat 150 warriors.

You must defeat 150 CPUs in the Quick Battle Single player mode. If you’ve already beaten a CPU it will display their name in white. If you haven’t, it will be green. Note that you can sort/flip the quick battle menu with the option at the bottom of the screen. The easiest way to gauge this is to view your “titles earned”, not “wins”.

Sudden Temptation

Quick Battle: defeat all warriors.

Quick Battle has 240 total warriors. You must defeat all of them. This is easily the hardest achievement in the game. The easiest way to gauge this is to view your “titles earned”, not “wins”.

Perfect Trainee

Arcade: clear Asia route.

Go to the single player Arcade section. Select the Asia route. You can set this to easy, or if you choose hard, you can get two achievements in one (War Veteran).

Purge of the Holy

Story: clear episode 1.

Self Explanatory – story mode progress. By skipping cutscenes you can complete the story in 30 minutes.

Shields Come Together

Story: clear episode 8.

Self Explanatory – story mode progress. By skipping cutscenes you can complete the story in 30 minutes.

Resurrection of Order

Story: clear episode 16.

Self Explanatory – story mode progress. By skipping cutscenes you can complete the story in 30 minutes.

Home is Faraway

Story: clear final episode.

Self Explanatory – story mode progress. By skipping cutscenes you can complete the story in 30 minutes.

War Veteran

Arcade: clear any route with difficulty set on hard.

Choose any Arcade Mode path and beat it on Hard. All paths offer similar difficult levels.

Mask Another’s Memory

Arcade: clear a leaderboard route with a record better than your rival.

To make this easier on yourself, register all 3 rivals. Go to the Arcade section and select “Leaderboard route”. If your rivals have times, simply beat them to unlock this. If your rivals do not have times, register new ones online — the more rivals that have times, the better. Nightmare and Mitsurugi are particular good CPU bashers.

Usurped True Name

Quick Battle: win against 10 players with titles and use the obtained title on the player license.

Earn this in Quick Battle. After 10 wins, simply switch your title to the last CPU you beat (pay attention to their title). If you go over 10, you can simply switch to the next CPU you defeat’s title.

Pursuit of Obsession 

Quick Battle: defeat Harada TEKKEN.

To find Harada TEKKEN easily, switch the criteria for quick battle search to “Advanced”, “Japan”. Cycle through the list until you find him. He’s fairly hard to beat as he uses cheap tactics. I found Ezio’s crossbow attacks or Yoshimitsu’s spins to be the easiest way to defeat him, as well as constantly attacking low with most characters.

No-hitter 

Ranked Match: win 10 times with Ezio.

Simply win 10 times as Ezio ranked online. Do this sooner than later unless you plan on learning Ezio, because by the time you rank up, everyone else will be more skilled than you.

Skills for Duels 

Legendary Souls: win with brave edge.

After you beat the story, Legendary Souls mode will unlock. It is a boss rush mode. To obtain the achievement, win a match with a brave edge attack (these vary from character to character).

Passionate Artist 

Creation: create a character with full-on coordination (used everything except for height).

Create a throwaway character with every single equipment slot filled. Hats, armor, stickers; everything. To be sure you get it, fill your portrait up entirely and take a snapshot, then save the character. Your creation will look ridiculous, but at least you’ll unlock the requirement.

Colorful Illusion 

Creation: take a thumbnail by manually setting a decoration frame and background.

After creating a character to go the snapshot menu option. Create a full background and both frame options. Take a picture.

Fetal Soul

Player level reaches 5.

“Player Level” is earned through doing everything in the game — not just online ranked play. You can earn points by playing every mode.

Throbbing Soul

Player level reaches 50.

“Player Level” is earned through doing everything in the game — not just online ranked play. You can earn points by playing every mode.

Soul Fulfilled 

Player level reaches maximum.

“Player Level” is earned through doing everything in the game — not just online ranked play. You can earn points by playing every mode.

Stalwart Barbarian 

Perform a wall hit 50 times.

When you knock a player into a wall, whether it’s destructible or not, it’s considered a wall hit. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Adored by Heaven 

Perform 20 grapple breaks.

Press L2 or LT right as a player is going to grab you to break it. Eventually you will easily earn this achievement even by accident. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Like a Flowing Stream 

Successfully perform a just guard 5 times.

Press Guard the moment a player attacks and quickly release it to perform a Just Guard. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Momentary Pleasure 

Successfully perform an impact 100 times.

Impacts have been changed in Soul Calibur V — they are basically obsolete in SCV given how good Just Guarding is. But for the purposes of this achievement, press back or forward, and (A x B x G).

Black Sword of Death 

K.O. with critical edge 30 times.

Simply finish an enemy with a critical edge (super, in other games) 30 times. Press DF, DF A+B+K to execute it with all characters when the enemy has low health.

Hands of the Abyss 

Win by ring out 50 times.

Self Explanatory. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Parrier of Swords

Perfect win 50 times.

Win without taking a hit 50 times. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Wind of Battle 

Reach over 87,600 m in total movement distance in battle.

Self Explanatory. This one could take you a while.  You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Alluring Kaleidoscope 

Land a brave edge 100 times.

A Brave Edge differs from character to character, but is executed after certain moves with (A+B+K). Look up your character’s movesets to figure out each Brave Edge. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Gale Forces 

K.O. the opponent 25 times with an attack after a quick move.

Press Up or Down twice to quickly move, then press an attack — KO an enemy 25 times with this ability. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Never Ending Effort 

Land an attack 20,000 times.

Self Explanatory. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Footprints of Soldiers 

Defeat 100 male characters.

Self Explanatory. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend. This is probably easiest attained with defeating all 240 characters in Quick Mode.

Give in to Temptation 

Defeat 100 female characters.

Self Explanatory. You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend. This is probably easiest attained with defeating all 240 characters in Quick Mode.

Fancy of a Mad King 

Guard burst 30 times.

When your Life Gauge changes to red, you are suseptible to a guard burst, which means your guard will be broken and you will be stunned for a few seasons. Against turtling opponents, don’t let up when their meter is yellow, and break their guard 30 times to earn this achievement.  You cannot “cheat” this achievement/trophy by doing it in Versus against a dummy player, but you can boost this in online player matches with a friend.

Lively Pub 

Change the BGM in options.

Go to the options menu, and change any stage’s default background music. You can earn this faster than any achievement/trophy in the game.

[These impressions are written from the perspective of a level 41 character (out of a possible level 50), with experience in Warzones, World PVP, Questing and Flashpoints - basically everything but Operations. A full scored review will not follow until we have explored and experienced the entire game. All screenshots are in-game.]

The Old Republic has a lot to live up to. After all the hype and all the budgeting, a game that is now known as “the most expensive MMO ever made”  is going up against a number of market leading MMOs, including the up and coming Guild Wars 2.

So is this “story driven MMO” worth $15 a month, or does it take the “Massive” out of MMO? Read on to find out.

Without hesitation, I have to state that TOR gets it’s hooks in you pretty deep pretty quickly. Almost every class has an incredibly intriguing setup, to the point where each intro could easily be the next Knights of the Old Republic game in their own right.

The Republic Trooper will find his transport ship shot down in the middle of a warzone, right at the beginning of the game; the slave-born Imperial Inquisitor will find himself vying for an apprenticeship against overwhelming odds – whatever your personal style is, there’s something here for everyone. Accompanying these gripping stories is a major selling point: full voice acting.

When I say “full”, I really mean “full” – even meaningless quests from lowly officers and beggars are voiced by a diverse array of individuals, and the acting itself is top shelf material (drawing from industry greats such as David Hayter and Nolan North as player characters).

The starting/early areas such as Hutta and Coruscant are sure to delight, and it’ll feel like you’re blazing through planets at 88 miles per hour. By the time you next check the clock, and realize you’re a human being again, you’ll be somewhere around level 15.

However, after that initial honeymoon, the big budget sheen starts to become just that; a sheen After you progress past the few first planets, the game starts to become more and more like a typical MMO. Quests will start to blend together into kill/fetch variations, and the worlds will become more barren/typical fare.

Initially, you were blazing through planets at what felt like a breakneck pace – now, you’re spending 4-5 levels per planet – and those levels are much harder to earn (incurring some grinding). Of course, you have the option to grind through Space Missions or PVP in addition to PVE content, but both of those aren’t exactly the most exciting options after doing them for the 50th time.

Space Missions will invoke some memories back of old on-rails Star Wars action; but keep in mind the key word here is “some”. These missions are completely guided, and feature your own personal ship, armed with missiles, lasers, and a few special abilities/weapons. At first, these missions were pretty enjoyable, and enough of them kept springing up to the point where the time spent playing them was worth the experience obtained.

Eventually, I realized that none of these missions are varied – they’re the same exact thing every time, down to the last enemy starship appearance. It had gotten to the point where I had memorized every nuance of enemy patterns and the ship’s heading and course – unless it was absolutely necessary, I avoided these missions after level 30. Hopefully, Bioware can patch in an AI system for these missions to keep things varied a bit.

Warzones are also similarly boring after repeated play. At the current moment, there are only 3 missions: Huttball (basketball/soccer), a Hoth-centric Capture the Point/Domination, and a Bombing Run variant set in a hangar. In my opinion, Huttball is a lost cause, as most players ignore the ball in favor of killing each other in the middle.

The Bombing Run is also not the most exciting gametype, as it’s incredibly easy to defend a door (any damage will stop an attacker from arming a bomb), and you need to bomb/hack 5 entry points to win the match. So, that leaves Hoth as the only fun PVP map, and even then, you have a 1/3 chance of getting it when you queue up. Because of this lack of ability to choose your gametype, I hardly play PVP anymore.

At level 41 (you get your “fast” mount at 40), I’ve only encountered World PVP a grand total of ten times, even on a High[ly] populated server – if you’re looking for a heavy world PVP game style like Aion or Dark Age of Camelot, I’d look elsewhere.

Diversions aside, at level 30, the game completes it’s transformation into a run-of-the-mill MMO. You’ll trek across planets slowly with your 90% speed increase mount you get at level 25, find flight paths, do typical quests, and hearth/take those flight paths to turn those quests in. Although you could find solace in Flashpoint based instance distractions, you’re going to want to do the bulk of your leveling through questing or PVP, and your mileage may vary on either account. Stories continue past level 30 (into a second Act), but they’re  not nearly as exciting as the first half, mainly because of all the grinding involved at later levels, and how sparse the actual story content is.

For the most part, I solo quested all the way to 41 – I only stopped a few times to do “heroic” missions (quests suggesting 2-4 players). The reason I only stopped a few times wasn’t out of boredom, however, as the XP rewards are pretty decent for heroics; but availability.

Simply put, in my experience, you have to spam general chat or keep your eye on general for heroic advertisements. At any given time, there are only around 30-50 people on my current planet, making it hard to find groups often, and showing a disadvantage of the fragmented “planet” system, and not one cohesive world, a la most MMOs. Another issue is if you’re in the hub section (The Fleet), getting someone to come to your planet and help with a quest is more of a pain than running over to your friend’s real life house across town.

You have to enter at least 4-5 different load screens before you can exit the Fleet, get to your ship, select the planet, leave the airlock, enter the planet, and get to the actual quest. Most MMOs have it figured out by now (ie portals in WoW’s hub worlds) – unfortunately for TOR, it further fragments the game.

However, despite my issues with it, I’d personally recommend that everyone give The Old Republic a chance. I truly think it’s as close as we’re going to get to KOTOR 3, and I’d go so far as to say that each individual story (all eight!) rivals the epic scale of KOTOR 1. At the very least, you’re going to want to pay the ~$50 to take the plunge for your trial month, and then decide from there; because end-game wise, there really isn’t a whole lot to get your feet wet with.

At the current moment, there are two Operations (raids), three total Warzones, and a level 50 PVP planet (Ilum). That’s about it. On my server (and many others), Guilds have already cleared out all of the Operation’s Hard Modes for days, and are hungry for more.

The true test of survival for TOR will be if they can pump out new Operations and Warzones at a faster rate than they bleed subscribers. From what I’ve seen on a personal level, a lot of people are already going back to World of Warcraft, or are planning to play Guild Wars 2 if TOR doesn’t get more updates.

Personally, I don’t think I’m going to do much with my main after I become 50, but that won’t stop me from making at least two to three more characters and experiencing their stories. As long as the prospect of a mostly solo journey doesn’t bum you out, I’d suggest doing the same.

It is chilling to think that ours may be the last generation to consider the term “social” as primarily being outgoing. With the deluge of so called social apps flooding the market, I can only expect, in somewhat hyperbole, that the definition of “social” will soon change. Maybe, it will become something like “the act of sharing your location, pictures, videos, thoughts and activities (in 140 characters or less) leveraging one of these apps”.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the emergence of a new generation of social games. This new generation is legion, climbing out of (the) Facebook  onto PCs and mobile devices independent of any one client. At its worst, this generation bears cookie cutter copies of the villes, Mafia Wars and even StarCraft. There is a glimmer of hope, however, as some developers are pushing the social platform forward through innovation and creativity.

Earlier this week, SweetLabs, Inc. and Kabam announced that they have brought the first line of “hardcore” social games to the PC. Leveraging SweetLabs’ Pokki platform, gamers can download four Kabam titles, namely Dragons of Atlantis, Edgeworld, The Godfather: Five Families and Thirst of Night. Despite the delivery being free from the totalitarian chains of Facebook, there isn’t much else innovative or exciting about this announcement.

“Innovative” and “exciting” can be subjective terms. However, if we focus objectively on the games themselves, they are no different than the ones on Facebook. Take The Godfather: Five Families for example. Look passed the trademark  and the flashy interface, it’s just MafiaWars in a new suit. Edgeworld is another example. The blue woman image alone indicates that the game borrows from iconic titles like Halo. The gameplay, it turns out, is a watered down version of StarCraft.

This sort of borrowing and copying is more prevalent in social games than one may think. Back in February, at the San Francisco Game Developer’s Workshop, John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite of Loot Drop explained that this is a go-to strategy for many social game developers. The reasoning behind it goes something like this — the average Facebook user plays x amount of games. They play, maybe, for five to ten minutes each game. If a game does not fit with the feel and gameplay of the other games, it will be skipped over. The idea is to copy other games in order to fit in the average Facebook-er’s library. For obvious reasons, while this may help gain an audience, it is not conducive to innovation.

It also explains Kabam’s mission to emulate, “Our goal? We are working to achieve in social gaming what Blizzard has achieved in PC games. We know that’s a high bar to clear, but we’re up for it. Besides, why would anyone want to aim to be mediocre?”. Ironically, mediocrity may be the end result if borrowing and copying is all a game company does. One may call this the reasoning behind the old generation of social games. Enter the new generation.

Sure, Idle Games’ upcoming Idle Worship picks up on the already explored theme of player-as-god. A key difference is that it’s not trying to be anything like the recent From Dust or the more dated Black & White. They are treading new ground in the social gaming space, given the player-as-god concept has not been tried to any avail with social channels built in. Indeed, Idle Worship can be seen as innovative as it takes a new look at what it means to be a social game.

Take your pick of any existing social game out there, and the main thing that makes it social is the ability to share gifts/resources or contribute to someone else’s iteration of the game. It’s a gameplay element that exists even though the game itself does not tie it in logically. For example, you may share some wood with a friend on Frontierville or tend to a friend’s lot in Ravenwood Fair, letting them know on their feed. After all is said and done, nothing is gained. It is just a cunning dynamic that encourages your friends to log on and do the same somewhat mindlessly, like pulling a slot machine lever.

Instead, Idle Worship takes special care to incorporate social in a way that makes sense for the gameplay, rather than conforming to what is in the player’s comfort zone. Case in point is the vast amount of things you can do to affect a friend’s game. Each player gets an island where they are tasked to build and rule over a civilization of mudlings. With faith as the game’s currency, you must make sure they are properly worshiping you. This is done by benevolently showering them with gifts like fluffy, pink bunnies, or malevolently striking them down with lighting and tossing them into volcanoes. It is in this way you get more power and more opportunity rule over your realm the way you please.

Friends can wreak havoc as they visit your island to turn your mudlings into theirs. This sparks friendly competition as to who is the better god. The game then takes a surprising turn as one power allows you to flick a mudling into the stratosphere, only to have it land on a random person’s island. This makes a social connection with a gamer you  potentially haven’t even met before, expanding your network and opening up new avenues to flex your god power. Idle Worship essentially introduces a new type of contextual social competition that has never been seen before.

Notice not once has there been a description of the game pausing to ask you if you want to share resources with a friend, or so you can broadcast your accomplishments.The game would instead let you know that someone messed with your island so you can log in to do damage control and maybe exact revenge. This definitely has more meaning as something you built, something you care about, is being threatened. It starts to sound more like game design 101, rather than the slot machine, k-factor mess of the older generation of social games.

Idle Worship offers a sensible goal, namely building your faith base while protecting it from others. This is vastly different from the villes — and in fact almost all other social games out there — where there is no clear goal, but only an endless amount of vapid mini-quests aimed at getting you to pull that proverbial slot machine lever.

Bear in mind that bucking the old trends has it’s inherent risks for the new generation of social games. As mentioned before, the Facebook gamer has a short supply of attention while logged onto the social network. Call it Social Network Onset ADD (my made up term). This is why those meaningless mini-quests have been recycled game after game — they are quick enough to make the player feel like there was something accomplished in that short amount of time. Idle Worship exposes that these are mostly empty accomplishments. At the same time, it introduces an alternative that may try to slow the player down, spend some more time on building something with more meaning.

Yes, it’s a risk. But, if the game is high in quality, it bears a much sweeter reward, namely more players playing for longer periods of time. Indeed, high quality is what this new generation of social game is bringing to the table. Many a Facebook gamer will see this quality once Idle Worship is released; and hopefully it is the start of a positive new trend.

Spoiler alert: This article contains some details about Skyrim’s Imperial-Stormcloak civil war quest line.

The other day I read an article on Motherboard, “Skyrim Should be a Game About Nothing”, where Joshua Kopstein claims that Skyrim should’ve been a game about nothing: “Of course I mean ‘nothing’ in the tabula rasa sense; a kind of videogaming zen that coaxes enlightenment from simplicity.” After admitting to being “spoiled” by games like Minecraft, he also says that Skyrim breaks his flow with “the fact that there is some grand quest I should be embarking on, some dragon I should be slaying or village I should be saving.”

I have to refute these claims. Skyrim shouldn’t be game about nothing for multiple reasons. The biggest reason comes from generic constraints and expectations inherent in the epic fantasy genre. Secondly, I have to say that Skyrim offers far fewer choices and consequences than it initially appears. These things make Skyrim (as it is now) a terrible candidate to be game without plot.

Let’s address the genre question first. I think we can all agree without a doubt that Skyrim is an epic fantasy game. It has all the hallmarks of the genre: adventurers, a quasi-feudal society, orcs, witches, magic, and of course dragons. And epic fantasy is nothing without plot. In fact, most epic fantasy stories tend to rely on stock characters and plots—many of them based on the classic Hero’s Journey. That’s the draw of these kinds of stories. You want to be part of that fantasy world. You want to be the person who goes on an epic quest to slay the: demons, dragons, orcs, bad things, whatever and save the: princess, prince, kingdom, realm, universe, what have you.

Kopstein says that “If it weren’t for the whole needing to save the world thing, you could simulate a pretty nice life for yourself in a game like Skyrim.” Think about it: would you really want to just live in a fantasy world as a regular schmo? Not as a Dragonborn, royalty, landowner, or even a knight, but as a peasant. It would be like Harvest Moon minus all the adorableness. If the real medieval period wasn’t too nice for the lower classes, what makes you think that a peasant in a fictional setting would have it that much better? Sure you don’t have to be a farmer, but if you try to be an adventurer chances are you’ll take an arrow in the knee.

Epic fantasy lends itself well to larger than life settings, characters, and plots. Imagine if the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings decided to stay home. Sure they wouldn’t have missed Elevensies, but it sure would’ve made for a boring book. Besides, are lost ruins, looming fortresses, magical colleges, dank caves, really things that lend themselves to relaxation and a zen state of mind? Not really.

Now maybe Kopstein means he wants more of Skyrim’s open-world and less of its narrative trying to tell him where to go and what to explore. The problem with this is that Skyrim’s exploration tends to end up with the player finding quest upon quest. Many of these quests and those for the different factions all contain their own narratives and plotlines: the Companions, the Mage’s College, the Dark Brotherhood, etc. All of them have their stories. If Skyrim was a game about “nothing” then all those quests would have to disappear too because they also tell you where to go and what villages to save.

While Skyrim definitely wouldn’t work as a game like Myst, Journey, Fl0w, or Flower–games with “little or no emphasis on combat and other high-stress tasks”, it also doesn’t go far enough in creating a living, breathing world with consequences.

For example one of Skyrim’s more interesting quest lines involves a civil war between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks. Depending on which side you choose to support (if any at all) you end up capturing different cities for your faction. These battles lead up to you capturing either Windhelm or Solitude, thus supposedly ending the civil war. However once the quest line is done, nothing changes. Sure the guards in those cities swap color palettes, and the people in the city have a couple of new dialogue options, but that’s about it.

Imagine how amazing it would be if the civil war actually changed who lived or died in those cities. Was the shop owner an Imperial supporter? Well now he’s dead because the Stormcloaks executed him because he was a collaborator. Or let’s say you spy a dragon attacking an outlying village. As it is, Skyrim’s freedom lets you say, “Eh. I don’t really feel like fighting that dragon right now.” But nothing happens from that choice. The town doesn’t get destroyed or anything. Skyrim doesn’t need to have more or less story/plot/impetus for adventuring. It needs consequences to go with all that open-world freedom.

Kopstein finishes with the admission that “[he’ll] accept that [the] above may just be another type of game entirely, or perhaps even a non-game. But this wish to revert Skyrim to a form of virtual minimalism is born of […] delight that games like it still exist.” I whole heartedly agree. The fact that Skyrim exists–with or without the extra heft of extended consequences–is amazing in this crowded year of sequels. I’m all for experimenting and playing with the constraints of what constitutes a game, but Skyrim–an epic fantasy, adventure, roleplaying game–is not the right vehicle for that experimentation.

Free-to-play games have a stigma that they are not free at all. Of course, you can play unencumbered up to a point; but, just when things are getting good, a horrible and unwelcome window pops up. The gist is if you want more content, if you want more leveling, if you want more of anything, you have to start emptying your wallet. This sad model has left the free-to-play (F2P) space practically a wasteland.

This all changes with the December U.S. release of SD Gundam Capsule Fighter. In a big way, Softmax and OGPlanet aim to turn the F2P stigma on its head with a free game that plays just like a paid title. In other words, every gameplay element, every mode of play, all progressions are available to the player without the solicitation of money. And, to be honest, it has shaped up to be a rather entertaining game to boot. AND it’s Gundam. What more can you ask for?

I had a chance to put the game through its paces and then some, whilst nestled in a corner suite on the 12th floor of the Serrano Hotel, just west of Union Square, San Francisco, Calif. A fairly comfortable setting, two representatives from OGPlanet accompanied my deep dive as we enjoyed the nondescript hotel furniture, each with his own laptop. There were no punches pulled, no holds barred. We went through all the gameplay elements a typical, non-paying user would go through — which means just about everything.

SD Gundam Capsule Fighter is a Massive Multiplayer Online Third Person Shooter (MMOTPS) reminiscent of Sega’s Virtual On series. Countless mechs descend upon each other in various modes of combat. On a high level, expect beam swords, gigantic machine guns, super powerful rail guns and other weapons that explode things. Key to making this game stand out visually amongst mech and Gundam titles, are the capsule based models. These are the Super Deformed (SD) Gundams, the cute toy-like mechs made famous in illustration and the snap-kit models fans can pick up at conventions. Complementing this visual style are the intuitive, simple controls and interfaces. Don’t mistake simple for lack of depth, however.

Players will be surprised by the choices and customizations available to them upon game start. At any given time, there can be 24 Gundam units in the stable or more, ranked C to SS depending on their stats and rarity. Each unit also has a particular combat alignment corresponding to rock, paper, scissor — rock for close combat units, paper for long range and scissor for balanced. Each unit is particularly disadvantaged against the opposite alignment. In other words, scissors beats paper beats rock beats scissors. Knowledge of this system definitely comes in handy as in the game lobby you can view your team members’ rank and alignment as well as your enemies’. Progression allows players to build the stats of their mech and assign various power ups.

SD Gundam Capsule Fighter also lets players customize the appearance of their units, assigning paint to various parts of the Gundam for both sleek and wacky schemes. On top of that, there is a plethora of decals to choose from for even deeper customization. This would be a place where a typical F2P game starts charging money. Heck, even simply building your stable of Gundam units is prime opportunity for charges. Players need not pay for any of it, however.

Playing through the game is enough to earn the right to buy Gundam units, raise stats and customize to the heart’s content. While you can definitely invest real money into buying and customizing units, you can just as well plow through several single player levels and PvP rounds, earning game points to do the exact same thing. In that sense, SD Gundam Capsule Fighter is blazing new trails in the F2P space. It acts as a traditional game where players progress and earn rewards by playing and leveling up. At the same time, those who pay up front get easy access.

Eugene Choi, marketing manager for OGPlanet assures that there is no tom foolery in this model. Players won’t have to worry that paying customers are getting special items and extra power ups unavailable to those who do not pay. It’s just a matter of time that non-paying gamers also get the same units and power ups through game points. It is just a matter of asking the question, “do I want all the good stuff now, or do I want to play for it?”

If there is going to be any real difference between a paying player and a non-paying player, it is the size of the unit stable. As mentioned before, players can have 24 Gundam units or more. Well, the max for a non-paying player is 24 initially, where coin can unlock additional slots. Now, 24 Gundam units in a game where you can only use one unit at a time seems like more than enough. But these are SD Gundams. There is indeed an element of collecting involved, as one tries to catch em’ all like another game full of cutesy yet violent characters.

SD Gundam Capsule Fighter balances the stable limit for non-paying players through an aspect called blueprints. Blueprints in the game allows specific units to be traded for higher ranked, more powerful and better looking Gundams. So even if paying players unlock the good stuff faster, there is virtually no difference in fire power or ranking against a savvy player who chooses to not pay and instead builds a Gundam fleet from the ground up with good, ‘ol fashioned play.

Another aspect in which this game is bound to shine is the wealth of gameplay modes. There are single player and co-op missions steeped in Gundam’s 30+ year history. There are also several team based and free for all PvP modes sure to satisfy every taste. During the preview,Choi, associate producer Andrew West and I first jumped into a co-op mission where we had to destroy several mini bosses before time ran out. This is where the multiple exclamations that this game brought back childhood memories of Virtual On spewed forth. All in a good way, because Virtual On was very fast paced, fluid and exciting, SD Gundam Capsule Fighter brought that same level of intensity while adding its own spin on mech battle.

Whether in single player, co-op or PvP, there are generally three weapons available — beam sword, gun, rail gun, etc. depending on the alignment. Also, there is a unique super attack for each unit that is charged up with every effective hit. Players essentially find themselves gliding from opponent to opponent slashing and blasting away in a flurry of beam sword trails and explosions trying to unlock that special attack. Then, all hell breaks loose. The result is candy for the eyes.

For all intents and purposes, SD Gundam Capsule Fighter is a rather unique game if only for the fact that it’s treating the F2P space quite differently than its contemporaries. While I had the pleasure of previewing this game for a good amount of time, it only took a short description of their model and several minutes of menus and battle to understand this. SD Gundam Capsule Fighter is essentially a free game, with substantial depth and visuals that rival any MMO and TPS game out there.

That bears repeating: this is a FREE game with surprising quality. You would be a rather savvy gamer to download this title upon release. Whether you want to spend some cash on the game or not, that’s entirely your choice. No matter your wallet’s alignment, there is a promise of good times ahead with this one.

[I completed the game at Soul Level 77, after 37 hours and 10 minutes of play - for reference, I beat Demon's Souls at Level 76, at 22 hours and 30 minutes of play. Dark Souls is a considerably longer, and harder game.]

That’s right, the supposed “too hard for school” action-RPG Dark Souls has officially hit retailers, and I have no doubt that many people will play it for a few hours, and promptly give up.

But that’s a shame. Despite how hard the game may seem, there’s always (repeat: always) a solution to your problem. Dark Souls was masterfully crafted to the point where once you figure it out: you become God, and engage in one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of all time. I’m going to provide some very brief tips for you, in hopes that you’ll have that eureka moment just like myself.

Here is a typical Dark Souls first session:

0:05 – Oh wow! Easy training monsters! Have at you, fiends!
0:15 – FFFFUUUUUUUU I died in a hit?!
0:20 – Ok…no town…where do I buy anything…
0:35 – FFFFUUUUUUUU this game is impossible I quit.

Tame non-story spoilers incoming. I’d recommend saving this article if you get stuck, and need a quick reference:

Basic Tips:

•  Your starting class doesn’t necessarily matter, unless you want the Thief’s Master Key without having to waste a gift, or you want to start as a Pyromancer to allocate as many stats as possible at an early level. After the first 6-8 hours all classes start to blend, and everyone can use anything they have the stats for. Every gift outside of the master key can be obtained in the game.
• I’ve heard a lot of things about the master key – about how it’s not good, because it will only confuse you after you unlock secret pathways to very late-game areas. This is partially true, but I still urge you to take it if you trust your instincts. You can get some pretty amazing suicide loot by way of the master key shorcuts (suicide loot, like Demon’s Souls, is obtained when you run, usually naked, through a really hard area in search of drops and items).
• If you beat the first tutorial boss without running through the door to the left, you’ll earn a special weapon (it takes a TON of strength to use however) – if you take the black firebombs gift, you can take him down pretty easily.
• The first merchant is right near the start of the Undead Burg – go up two flights of stairs – then look right – see the two lance skeletons? Break those boxes and head through the outside door there. You can most notably buy firebombs and arrows, which will help with the next two boss encounters.
• If you want to cheap-out the Tauros boss [the first real boss], grab around 10 Firebombs and just chuck them at him at a safe range – he’ll go down easy. You can also get him to jump off the area, or you can climb the ladder and do a falling strike.
• You will need to grind in Dark Souls. The first grind spot is above the Undead Burg bonfire, right where the dragon appears. Simply go up the ladder you kicked down after the Tauros boss, walk up the stairs, then quickly walk back down – repeat for an easy 300 souls per run.
• Once you make it to the Red Dragon, grab a bow and ~100 arrows – head to the bridge below him and aim for his tail – keep shooting – after some time, you’ll earn the Drake Sword – one of the best starting weapons in the entire game. Note that it doesn’t scale with your strength/dexterity statistics, so you will want a plan B.
• Your first order of business is to ring the two bells of awakening. One is in the Undead Parish, in the church past the iron boar mini-boss. The other is in Blighttown – a really hard area that you should tackle second – you can get into Blighttown from the Sewers, or the cave in the Valley of Drakes.
• If you get cursed, head to the top of the belltower at the Undead Parish – the NPC there will sell a cure for 3,000 souls each (post day one curse patch).
• Personally, I like to save my humanity pickups for special occasions. What I do is accumulate them, and when I’m at a bonfire with a boss fight I know I can beat, but need more Estus Flasks for, I use two humanity at the fire to kindle it and get that little extra boost.
• Press “Circle” (PS3) or “B” (360) to slide down ladders (shoutout to GameFAQs for that one).

Massive Spoilers incoming – only read if you need help completing the game

Advanced Tips: 

• Need to grind even further than 300 souls per run? How about 7000? First you need to purchase the forest key from the blacksmith below the Undead Parish for 20,000 souls (it’s a good idea to buy this after a boss fight). Then, head to the forest using the entrance next to him; keep going straight until you pass 4 tree monsters, and get to the magically sealed door. Open it, and note the very small pathway near the cliff. Run over to the left and gather the four male enemies (the sorceror, the templar, the clear thief, and the warrior) – corral those enemies back to the entrance, and head to the utmost point of that path near the cliff – all the enemies will run up the ledge, and dive over you to their doom. You may need to bait them a bit, but it works.
• After you ring the two bells, if you’re lost, keep reading: head over to Sen’s Fortress – it’s the place where the Onion Knight was sitting at, near the Undead Parish blacksmith. Complete the fortress and kill the Iron Golem. That will lead you to Anor Londo – the next area.
• Once you’re in Anor Londo, head to the middle area, and take the first beam on the bottom floor into the cracked window. Make your way around the building catwalks to the main castle, and enter in from the right side. Once you’re there, you can open up a few shorcuts, grab some amazing loot, then head in for one of the most challenging boss fights in the game.
• After completing Anor Londo’s main castle, you will obtain the Soul Vessel – this is a story item that will allow you to complete the game by stealing four Lord souls, which unlocks the final boss fight. The location of the four Lords (un-named, to prevent spoilers) are as follows:
• One is on the side path of Anor Londo – go straight as soon as you head into the area by way of the gargoyles, and head all the way down that path.
• One is in the Tomb of Giants – past the Catacombs, after Pinwheel.
• One is in the Old Londo Ruins, after you drain the water (you need the abyss ring from the Wolf Sif to fight this boss).
• One is past the Demon Ruins, after Queelag in Blighttown – beat the Ceasless Discharge and two more bosses, then fight it.
• Another special enemy is in the painting, in the Anor Londo building with the white ninjas – to enter the painting you need the peculiar doll – obtain the doll by re-visiting the tutorial area using the crow’s nest in Firelink Shrine.

My last week steeped in gore, I offer up to you Project Zomboid. It is an isometric zombie survival RPG. These last words may not whet your appetite, especially with last month’s release of Dead Island and the (re)release of Resident Evil CODE: Veronica X. You can say the world is pretty much zombie’d out.

There are just so many things to love about this title, however; and considering that it’s still in alpha development gives cause for excitement. Not only for zombie aficionados, but also for fans of well crafted games in general, PZ is already a polished gem that is bound to have an uncanny luster by the time it’s considered a full fledged game.

For all the aficionados who are sold by the mere mention of zombies and a single lead image, you don’t have to wait biting your nails for an official release date. The alpha complete with ongoing updates is already available for the low price of $7.99 on Desura or Google Checkout (Steam is intended for the official release). So feel free to take on the zombie horde immediately. On the other hand, for those of you who are on the fence, here’s where my most recent hours went.

Standing Out Amongst The Horde

Project Zomboid is not trying to be unique. If you remember the original X-COM titles in the early nineties, you’ll see where PZ gets a good bit of gameplay inspiration. And, obviously, zombies have been done to (un)death. Traditional RPG elements like quests, crafting and good ‘ol role playing make the entire experience feel like a pair of shoe pulled out years after being stored in the closet. Yet, one cannot stress enough that these shoes are clean, they’re superbly comfortable and they have timeless style.

Note I say PZ is not trying to be unique. Uniqueness is just inherent to their approach. Developer Chris Simpson describes what can be the main element that sets this title apart, “you are inside the confines of a quarantine, squeezed in with a million zombies, and there’s no getting out. You’re fucked, if you pardon the language” (sic). Deconstruct any zombie game, movie, book and this is truly the end result — the inhabitants of this apocalypic world are indeed fucked.

While tellers of zombie stories like to focus on that epic moment when the main character(s) escape the city, save the endangered children and so on, fastforward for an undefined amount of time and those same heroes are always zombie fodder. (Recall the home style video during the credits of the most recent Dawn of the Dead film). PZ elegantly shifts focus from that epic win to that messy loss. The effect, even in alpha, is rather refreshing.

This essentially changes the way you engage the RPG.  You’re no longer striving to beat the game in a traditional sense, nor complete the game in the more modern achievement/badge happy sense. Instead, players will interact with the world as they really see fit, getting the most out of one life, truly striving. “The goal here is purely to have the most unique and remarkable adventure leading up to your eventual and inevitable demise,” Simpson says.

The Story, The Sandbox

Project Zomboid does not mince words. From the beginning, you know what’s going to happen, “[t]his is how you died” the game says amidst an otherwise blank screen, before you take control of Mr. Smith. The game then opens on Smith’s wife, Kate, injured with a broken and bleeding leg. There are hints of an epic escape, but, that’s in the past.

Instead, the beginning of the alpha preview offers a few tutorial type quests meant to acquaint you with rest of your life: craft bandages out of bedsheets for Kate, find a hammer, wood and nails to barricade the bottom story of the house, for instance. The game opens up in short order, however, and you’re literally left to your own devices within the expansive quarantine zone. This is where the sandbox comes in.

PZ is bound to be a survivalist’s dream. From jump, there are many factors that are critical to making it in this expansive, zombie infested land; and they all compound upon each other for one grueling bout of survival. Things like hunger and fatigue will dictate the more basic interactions with the world. Couple that with the game’s internal clock and the propensity for more zombies to roam the streets at night, and the player can find her/himself following a strict schedule of  exploration, foraging and retreating to shelter as predictable as night and day.

Albeit, you and Kate are not the only survivors of this nightmare. After the first foraging quest, a shotgun toting NPC shows up with not-so-nice intentions. One misstep and Mr. Smith’s brains can wind up on the walls. There will be many more NPC’s to experience in the game, both benign and evil, that will throw you off. Other things can muck up your plans, such as fires sparked from a neglected oven, unexpected illness and of course sudden zombie hordes.

For those who like to play within a more structured environment, there will be a story that you can choose to follow. “We have some exciting ideas on how to provide a strong but optional narrative that the player can choose to follow, for as long as they survive, that will help a lot to tie together an otherwise completely sand boxy and story-less game,” says Simpson. While this story isn’t fully fleshed yet, it involves an ineffective government and a sudden, significant power outage. “No longer are you raiding fridges for fresh food, or using ovens to cook it. Plunged into darkness at night means torches and batteries become a prized commodity, and the value of different items suddenly change.”

For The Love Of Zombies

With how limited the gameplay was, I am truly surprised by how much Project Zomboid has going for it. I don’t label myself as a zombie aficionado. Although, it doesn’t take an aficionado to appreciate that in its essence, the zombie is representative of all which threatens to wholly consume us in real life, to a point where we’re facing insurmountable odds. (Let’s face it, we all die in the end because of this world). PZ captures that essence, just as well as any other medium, if not better, and is bound to be a fun and in-depth experience.

The game has great momentum and hopefully it gains. At the time of this writing, PZ has a high 9.6/10 on Desura from all those who’ve downloaded the alpha. There is a robust fan made wiki . Additionally, The Indie Stone enjoys a rather active forum.

Note, quotes taken from Chris Simpson’s blog.

For those of you that haven’t yet indulged in an EA Sports Ultimate Team mode — be it in FIFA, NHL, or Madden — it is basically a way for you to build up your own dream team. Play games with your team, earn some currency, buy packs for cards, buy cards from the auction house, or, new to Madden, trade your cards on the trade block. All of this goes towards the end goal of building that perfect team and playing games online against others.

Since its inception as free DLC in Madden NFL 10, Madden Ultimate Team (aka MUT) quickly became my mode of choice. I was that person in World of Warcraft that would reset the market on the auction house. That person you despised who bought low and made a ridiculous profit by reshaping and owning a piece of the market. This, for me, was like a mini-game that brought instant gratification and reward.

As you can imagine, this was a large part of the appeal for me in MUT. The mode in Madden NFL 10 and Madden NFL 11 provided a rewarding and challenging experience. While it was never perfect in the past, it still allowed for a somewhat healthy market and an experience that drove you to perfection. The future of MUT last year was bright and I looked forward to what Tiburon had in store for the mode.

There is a balance in MUT that needs to be struck. An extremely important balance. One that, in all honesty, can make or break the mode. Currently, MUT is broken. While I want to give the benefit of the doubt to Tiburon and why this is, it feels very much as if this mode is nothing more than a way to drive players towards microtransactions.

Keep in mind that I am more than able to take a step back and understand where Tiburon is coming from. This balance needs to allow for a challenging and rewarding experience for the hardcore, allow for the same thing for the casual without being frustrating, and also still make microtransactions appealing to the masses. But as many games before this have shown, that balance is something you slowly work towards.

The latest update released on Friday has proven that MUT is headed down a path that not only completely ignores this balance, but does nothing more than turn the mode into one that loses its appeal and forces the player down a path where the only way to progress is to spend their hard earned money. I completely understand that the underlying goal of this mode is for EA to make money. I am perfectly fine with that. But this is not the way you go about it. Gameplay should never take a back seat to microtransactions. This is a slap in the face to every Madden player out there. And it will be a serious disappointment to many if this mode isn’t turned around quickly.

As can be seen in the video below, Madden Ultimate Team released an update that completely worsened an already bad situation. The primary issue that existed even prior to the update is the fact that all cards rated 75 and above have the same value. That means that a 75 rated player is apparently worth the same as a 99 rated player. Logically, this doesn’t make any sense.

Prior to Friday’s update, each card also came with a tiered cost of posting to the auction house. For example, a 99 rated player cost roughly 10,000 coins just to post to the auction house while a 85 rated player cost 1,000 coins. But this wasn’t really a big issue. Yes it cost a bit too much to post, but by tying a price like this to high rated players, you allow for the economy to be filtered and make certain cards somewhat rare to see on the auction house. That is a very important part about any economy. The market has to be brought into a state of many different worthy, appealing purchases.

Instead of just lowering and scaling the cost of posting auctions, Tiburon took a different direction. All auctions can now be posted for 50 coins — regardless of card rating. Many seemed happy at first but what they didn’t realize was the consequences that this comes with. As you can imagine, the market is now completely oversaturated because there is absolutely no risk of posting a card to the auction house. And now, what you see in the auction house is every single card 75+ at a cost of 10,000 coins. In turn, cards roughly 75-89 are now rendered completely impossible to sell and have become absolutely worthless.

Add all of this to the fact that gold cards are extremely easy to obtain in packs and you are left with a majority of players with teams rated 90+. This no longer makes MUT rewarding in any sense. The appeal is almost lost entirely because it takes only a couple of hours to build your team up to 90+.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxNdd_xoA-g

Now that your team is 90+ rating, you still might want to build it up even more. But what options do you have? How about the trade block? Well, this highly requested feature has also been rendered completely worthless due to the above issues. Why post a trade to the trade block when you can post a 90+ rated card to the auction house for next to no cost to you, obtain 10,000 coins from it and turn around and purchase the exact card or perhaps better from the auction house?

Since trade block is out of the question, you are left with two options without spending real money. One is to just play some games, build up your bank, and buy the cards you want off of the auction house. But as I noted earlier, cards rated 90+ are extremely easy to obtain from packs. So the majority of players will simply play a couple of games, purchase a gold premium pack, take the one or two cards that might improve their team and sell the rest on the auction house or simply vendor them for an average cost of roughly 50% of the cost of the pack itself.

After this is done a couple of times you more than likely have a team rated around 95 without any legendary cards. Legendary cards are now the only way to improve your team in any way. So, what options are you left with now to improve your team without spending real money? Well, how about the auction house? Nope, not the auction house. The cost of legendaries is at the least 100,000 coins. That is the cost of 10 90+ rated cards. So odds are this is out of the question.

If not the auction house, how about the trade block? Well, legendaries can only be traded for other legendaries. So that is out of the question as well. Awesome, our options our thinning by the second.

You are now left with one last option before being forced to spend real money as there are a few collections that reward a legendary. There are currently only 11 collections in MUT. Three of these collections — none of which are hard to complete — reward a legendary. But conveniently enough, each one of these three collections rewards a halfback. Which means you can fill only one position before being forced to spend real money on a legendary pack. A pack in which just saw an update on Friday that almost guarantees you to get a legendary.

So, congratulations on your easily acquired 90-95 rated team. You can now either spend that hard earned money or play games with your team against every other 90+ rated team out there. Either way, you are now left with a mode that is no longer challenging, rewarding, or fun.

Tiburon has a long road ahead of them with MUT. There are a lot of things that could bring this mode back into the state it was in years prior. Be sure to check back as the suggestions I have as to how to fix this mode will be coming next week. Until then, hit up the comments and let us know what you think about MUT thus far.

Sony announced the the first annual PSN PLAY event Friday, vying to replicate the success Microsoft has had with its annual The Summer of Arcade sale. PSN will offer four games at retail, with a fifth game free to players who purchase all four. Pre-orders start Tuesday, August 9; and the event will last until Monday, September 19.

Sony goes further, giving players a free PS3 theme along with an unannounced “special gift” with each pre-order. Playstation Plus members will also get a 20% discount off every purchase during the event. This sounds like a good deal on the surface. But, I tell you, my wallet is terrified. Let’s break it down and do the math.

The first thing I noticed was the language surrounding these campaigns. I liken it to a croupier’s smile. It’s meant to be inviting, friendly. Yet, it’s only a facade and behind it lies the coldest, most calculating mind.

Notice that to Microsoft, The Summer of Arcade is a “party” and to Sony, PLAY is an “event“. Who doesn’t love parties or going to events? They’re fun! At the same time, respectively, it’s not a party and it’s not an event. They are both sales. They’re aimed at your wallet; and one would deduce it’s only festive and eventful when you’re the one receiving the dollars in said wallet, instead of liquidating them.

I trust that I’m stating the obvious. You’re a discerning reader who visits sites like Gamer Limit because you’re interested in more than just mindlessly buying and playing games. Through your practiced reading, you have gained the valuable skill of sniffing out the proverbial BS. Albeit, it’s a clever play on language. Hats off to the marketers.

With all the pomp and circumstance surrounding these festivities, however, someone is bound to take the bait. Both Microsoft and Sony have levers built into these sales that will then influence the behavior of more than one gamer out there. Call it Gamification 101.

A short re-cap — Gamification is the act of introducing game mechanics into things that are not games, i.e. a business process or transaction. That’s what Microsoft and Sony have done with their respective sales. To be specific, they’ve introduced achievements. When you buy all four The Summer of Arcade games, your achievement is a free copy of Crimson Alliance. Similarly, PLAY offers mini achievements in the form of PS3 themes and “special gifts”, along with the ultimate prize, PAYDAY: The Heist.

While I’d go for a free game myself, especially the Gauntlet Legends-eque Crimson Alliance, it’s not reaching a special checkpoint or completing a side-quest that gets me that achievement. It’s spending my hard earned money. Both Microsoft and Sony are exploiting our gaming sensibilities with their campaigns — the one thing they know will get the masses hooked into giving up the cash. It’s one thing to throw a bunch of flashy advertising at you for mere enticement, it’s another thing to get into your brain and play with your psyche.

So, how much money does one have to spend and on what?

The Summer of Arcade

• Bastion – 1200 microsoft points*
• From Dust – 1200 microsoft points*
• Fruit Ninja Kinect – 800 microsoft points*
• Toy Soldiers: Cold War – 1200 microsoft points*

* The lowest level of microsoft points once can buy is 1600 points, at approximately $20 a pop. This means, one is spending $60 on this “party”.

PSN PLAY

• Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition – $14.99*
• The Baconing – $14.99*
• BloodRayne: Betrayal – $14.99*
• Renegade Ops – $14.99*

* The total comes out to a little under $60. They sweeten the pot with PS3 themes and unnanounced gifts, as well as a 20% discount for Plus members. In total, with a 3 month Plus membership and the discount, one is paying nearly $66.

After all the semantics, theory and math comes a question: “Am I willing to spend $60 on these titles?” Of course, the answer is based on taste. As far as this year’s The Summer of Arcade is concerned, it is also based on hardware with Fruit Ninja Kinect. Albeit, it’s equivalent to a retail game with value in the eyes of the beholder.

Remember, there are many other games coming out this year, including but not limited to Dead Island, Batman: Arkham City and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Herein lies a greater dilemma and another question to ask: “With all the other anticipated games coming out this year, does this make sense?”

In the end, Gamer Limit cannot answer these questions for you. Neither can any other of the media outlets. It’s just that sometimes, I feel, that these media outlets should provide you with a deeper look at the mechanisms behind what we call news.

MORPG Rusty Hearts (RH for short) made a big splash at E3 this year. Captivating hardcore MO and traditional hack-and-slash fans alike, RH has been compared to such titles as Guardian Heroes and Devil May Cry. This has been on account of its stylized presentation, fast paced dungeon crawling action and deep, yet accessible RPG elements. Add in PvP and the fact that RH is free to play, it has people clamoring for access to the closed beta, which began Wednesday morning.

Gamer Limit sat down with Perfect World product manager Mark Hill to get an in-depth look at what makes RH a stand out game. We toured the streets of fictional Slatina, braved its lower canals and decimated waves of skeleton warriors. Judging from what we saw, gamers won’t want to miss this gem from Perfect World and Stairway Games.

The Economics Of Beauty

One of the first things you notice when you get dropped into the world of Rusty Hearts is the anime inspired, cell shade art direction. It is quite impressive, with a wide color palate and vivid detail. Battles transpire through rapid combo chains and flashy spell casting, all with seamless animation. It’s reminiscent of an anime that serves generous helpings of sword play and magic. Bleach anyone?

The style, it turns out, isn’t there just to turn heads.  “There’s a lot of action on the screen,” Hill explains, “especially when you’re [in] a party full of people. The cell shaded style keeps everything really tight.” It also enables RH to keep relatively low system requirements. Cell shade animation does not tax a system as much as its 3D counterpart. “We want to lower the barrier of entry into the game but still offer a really high quality triple-A look.”

No matter how seamless the art and action is, though, too much too fast can cause a sensory overload for beginners. Stairway Games found a way over that hurdle as well. While running from battle to battle, our progression through the early dungeons was controlled by large sternum-looking gateways that retract only when all the enemies were cleared.

Hill promises that once players get a hang of things, battles won’t be as stop and go. “These areas are pretty small as you can see . . . but in later dungeons, the rooms get much bigger, there are much more enemies, and they are a lot more difficult.”

Dungeon Crawler Unlimited

‘Dungeon’ is a loose term in Rusty Hearts. The preview focused on the canals of the fictional town of Slatina, which are the closest things to dungeons visually. Stone walls rise from a zig zag causeway, soiled with fungus and detritus. Once the game gets out of closed beta, however, RH aims to deliver more environments like Gothic castles, expansive cellars, sewers, etc. For the sake of naming convention, however, let’s call them all dungeons.

Each dungeon is preceded by a staging area. “This is where there are NPC [who] can give you skills,” Hill explained. Some of them will also dole out story quests.

We were also directed to a nearby wanted board where players can accept quests unrelated to the storyline. These unrelated quests offer a way for players to jump out of the plot and engage in more than just random grinding. Players can partake in straight-up gaming oriented challenges, like kill x number of enemies or finish this dungeon within five minutes.

Story focused gamers shouldn’t ignore the chance to play hero-for-hire, however. Hill says these unrelated quests “help you progress. They help you level up, give you xp. They [will] have some really cool items, too.”

Once in the dungeons, expect loads of hack-and-slash. We didn’t preview anything that made RH stand out in this regard. At the same time, we didn’t see anything wrong with it either. Hack-and-slash is, and should be, a straightforward endeavor. And in RH, there was plenty of it to be had, with droves of skeleton warriors and a fleshy, obese butcher boss to be taken down. Once the game is ready for the public, expect flying demons, sadistic maids, exoskeleton giants and other baddies.

Each playable character has a unique style of fighting and range. I played as Angela, who has an extravagant black scythe which makes for long range sweeps and slashes. Her magic was powerful, with an especially gratifying combo that included tossing an enemy in the air, a few quick scythe strikes and a pillar of purple and pink magical energy. Purple and pink never looked so good.

Players can also take advantage of Frantz, a rapier wielding nobleman who reminded me of a dark haired Alucard of Castlevania fame. He has more of a medium range with controlled sword swipes. Finally Tude, with a bitching gauntlet claw for a weapon, is for players who enjoy getting up close and personal and who aren’t too enthused about magic. I’d like to say that RH has something for everyone.

We Can Do This The Easy Way, Or The Hard Way

Both the wanted board quests and dungeons will be available in multiple levels of difficulty. As players complete each one, a higher difficulty is unlocked. For dungeons in particular, there are four: Normal, Hard, Very Hard and (my favorite) Blood Mode.

“There are some in game quests you have to complete before you have access to [Blood Mode].” Hill let us know that players will not be ready for this mode until their characters are significantly leveled up. “Enemies that were bosses before become normal mobs in Blood Mode. It’s super intense, but it’s really, really cool.” Really cool as in more xp, more loot and special items.

To make sure the people you play with are ready for the same kind of intensity you are, Rusty Hearts makes creating parties really easy. With just a few clicks, you can give your party a name, establish how many players are allowed and what level they need to have. Jumping in and out of a party is even easier. You can literally create, join and leave parties on the fly without having to exit to a menu screen, making it possible to maintain the high levels of action promised by RH.

Since the game is played across multiple servers and channels, the developers implemented a system where players choose a server to play in (ours was called Ruska) as well as a numbered channel. Players can switch between servers and channels at their discretion just like they do parties. In fact, they can join parties on other channels through the same interface and instantly be transported.

Like the art style and dungeon design, the server-channel system also lends to the economy of play. When a server gets too crowded with characters running all over the place, a player can easily switch to a new one and everything carries over seamlessly – location, character, party, etc. – without missing a beat.

Making The Grade

So you’ve killed a bunch of monsters, racked countless combos and pummeled the dungeon boss into a pulp. Do you get any special prizes? The answer is yes.

Similar to other hack-and-slash, beat-em-up games, Rusty Hearts gives you a grade at the end of each dungeon. The grade in this case is based on style (# of skills used, combos, etc.) and the amount of damage taken. Getting a triple S is always gratifying if just for the simple fact that the computer approves of your gaming skills. Well, it’s not that gratifying.

Thankfully, RH goes further than that with the loot card system. While in battle, felled enemies sometimes drop special cards. Then, at the end of the dungeon, any cards picked up get put into a shuffle giving players a chance to gain extra money or gear.

Hill explained the dynamics of this loot card system. “If you’re playing on your own, you can choose, pick one and pay a certain amount of in-game gold to re-select. But if you’re in a party, everyone chooses from the same deck.”

So, sometimes it pays to do things alone if only to raise the chances of getting valuable items. Then again, higher difficulty levels yield better loot cards. Therefore, one has to be cautious when going solo, especially when trying to score loot from harder dungeons.

Putting The RPG In MORPG

During the preview, Angela had two base skills – fire and dark magic, which amounted to small blasts of yellow and purple light respectively. As your character progresses, these blasts will turn into massive conflagrations, and you can add new skills for a total of 12, based on a simple skill point system.

“Each skill and each new level of skill has a certain skill point cost associated with them.” Hill remarked. “You can concentrate on leveling up your current skills, or spend your points on a wider range of skills.” This forces the player to really think about how s/he plays the game, strategizing gameplay as well as parties.

Functional customization doesn’t stop there, according to Hill. “You’re constantly finding gear. And you can gear up your character based on the direction you want him to go.” Just like skill, donning gear will be a strategic decision, based on whether you want your character to be magic heavy, a powerful tank, etc.

One must not confuse gear with costume, however. In Rusty Hearts, these are two separate elements. While the former is focused purely on augmenting stats, the latter is almost completely cosmetic. We weren’t able to play around with costumes, but judging from the screen shots we’ve seen, it seems you can get pretty creative.

Equipment durability, crafting and item auction are also present in the game. Returning to the staging area, we visited what was called the Unmanned Store. This is a place where players can sell and re-purchase items, as well as spend coin to repair their gear. We didn’t get to test out crafting or the item auction, but, these will be available through a number of shops and the in-game menu respectively.

Now, About That PvP

Rusty Hearts offers five PvP modes: Solo Survival, Team Survival, Leader Match, Tag Team and Team Deathmatch. Both survival modes give players one life; the last man/team standing wins. The leader match plays out a bit like traditional warfare in the sense that once the team leader is killed in action, that team loses. Tag team pits one player from each team against each other, with a new team member jumping in once someone falls. Then there’s good ol’ team deathmatch.

When asked about it, Hill started glowing. “A lot of players are really going to love PvP. It’s really exciting, kind of a Smash Brothers style arena where everyone gets in and starts fighting.”

Unlike Smash Bros., RH guarantees no two players is going to have the same set of abilities. This is because players will use the same character in PvP as they use in the campaign. So, set your heart on taking advantage of your fully customized character when in the arena.

This isn’t without a set of checks and balances, however. A level 30 Tude won’t be able to go on a rampage choking out level 10’s willy nilly. “There are different rooms [in PvP]. There’s beginner, intermediate, advanced and free,” explains Hill. “Beginner is level ten to fifteen, and so on. So [the game] groups people together based on their levels. And eventually there will be a ladder system that will automatically group people together based on their stats.”

One of the best parts of PvP is the fact that the rewards you earn smacking other players around carry over into the campaign. There’s no leveling up in PvP, but having at least one benefit that helps you progress through the greater part of RH is comforting.

Controller or Keyboard, That Is The Question

Rusty Hearts let’s players choose between playing with the keyboard or the controller. It seems that Stairway Games recognized that RH carried with it influences from the old console based hack-and-slash, beat-em-up games. This was a way to make the game more accessible to fans of these games, even to those who have never touch a PC for gaming before.

Albeit, core PC players need not worry that the controls will have been dumbed down. “One of the things that the development studio made sure of is that [the game] was balanced between both control schemes so one doesn’t have an advantage over the other,” says Hill.

That said, the main challenge Stairway Games faced on the controller side was the obvious physical limitations. For example, there are twenty keys which I use heavily for RH. There are eight buttons on the Xbox 360 controller minus select, start and home. In order to compensate, Stairway mapped the default attacks to the face buttons, the spells to the shoulders, and implemented button combinations that players can customize.

Hill remarked, “we did a lot of testing to make sure that it was balanced and people were able to deploy the same amount of attacks, to make sure that characters were the same speed, could cast spells, take potions.”

This may not be the ultimate factor that decides whether the game gains a large following, but, it definitely helps. At the recent expos, the Perfect World booth was always full with people playing RH and they had many console gamers stopping and telling them that this will be their first core PC game. The effort, it seems, is paying off.

The Beta And Beyond

All this talk of Rusty Hearts is making me want to play some more Rusty Hearts. Truth be told, I’m not a traditional PC gamer myself. I actually just a few months ago purchased my first true gaming laptop which now sits on my desk like a supersized stealth jet waiting to be booted. I’m not a big fan of Multiplayer Online games either.

There was just something caught my eye with RH ever since my first experience with it at E3 and now, after this preview, I understand why. The game is combining the best elements of hack-and-slash and RPG, PC and console, and shaking things up until you get a truly immersive, fast paced and fun game.

Shall I see you in the closed beta? For those who don’t have a key, hit me up on Twitter. I might still have a few lying around. *smile*

Originally landing on the Wii in early 2008, No More Heroes was met with critical acclaim and has since become something of a cult hit for punk rock game visionary Suda 51 and his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. The game has since spawned a sequel, a first for the studio, in 2010’s Desperate Struggle. Now there’s talk of a mobile game in the works, but first, Konami will be bringing Travis Touchdown to the PS3 later this summer with Heroes’ Paradise.

While I managed to get my hands on the game last month at E3, playing games in overcrowded rooms for hours on end doesn’t always make for ideal conditions. Now having played the demo in the comfort of my home today, I have some concerns for the impeding PlayStation 3 release of Grasshopper Manufacture’s celebrated Wii title.

If you’re familiar with the original game, merely being the game’s opening and Death Metal boss fight seen in the original No More Heroes, the demo won’t provide much new for you to experience. While the full game sports a variety of added features such as five boss fights from Desperate Struggle, new side missions, and a boss rush mode, you’ll just have to settle for new controls and high definition graphics.

Amidst a sea of gorgeous graphical powerhouses, No More Heroes certainly wasn’t the prettiest game on the market back in 2008 – even for a Wii game. If you’ve been hoping for a release on the high-definition consoles, developer feelplus and AQ Interactive have remedied this by improving the graphical quality considerably for the PlayStation 3 release.

Also new to Heroes’ Paradise are Dual-Shock and PlayStation Move controls. Unfortunately, neither set up feels quite as comfortable as the Wii remote and Nunchuck setup — at least to me. While the PlayStation Move will do little to persuade you if you weren’t a fan of the occasional waggle in the original, you very well may dig the new gamepad set up.

When attacking enemies with his beam-katana Travis has the ability to perform a finishing move that eviscerates his target, creating an incredibly gory fountain of blood. In the Wii original this was controlled by a simple directional swipe of the Wii remote. This has been replaced by a click down on the R3 button and a directional movement of the right analog stick. I found it uncomfortable to say the least.

Something else I found disappointing about playing with a Dual-Shock was the lack of a speaker on the controller. Before boss fights the head of the United Assassins Association, Sylvia Christel, calls Travis by phone. During these short sequences the French fox delivers hilarious monologues to both prepare Travis and amp the player up before the coming battle.

In the Wii original players would hold their controller up to their ears like a phone for what was something of an immersive, smile-inducing moment as you attempted to listen to the French woman’s crazed ramblings through the Wii remote’s tinny speaker. While new players won’t be missing anything, hearing it through a high-quality sound system just wasn’t quite as magical.

By the time I was starting to get used to the controls the demo was over. It’s unfortunate too because No More Heroes is a game that only gets better the further you get into it. Perhaps Konami is painfully aware of the title’s almost universally panned open-world and only wanted to give players a taste of the game’s most enjoyable aspects – the crazy narrative and awesome combat.

Regardless of any control issues the game may have, at its core Heroes’ Paradise is still the same fantastic game it’s always been. If you’ve yet to try the series out, now is your chance. The graphical updates, added features and budget price I’m already sold on the title and will be eagerly awaiting it’s launch on August 16^th.

From cult hits like Grasshopper Manufacture’s No More Heroes to first-party million sellers, the Wii has amassed a large library of superb titles over the past five years. Unfortunately, that long list of great games no longer seems to be growing. In the past few months the Wii has stagnated, showing little sign of impressive software heading toward the launch of the Wii U. Luckily, Gamer Limit has dug up a dozen great-looking Wii titles that have yet to see releases in the United States.

Join us after the break for a naïve wish list of games that will probably never see US releases, but could help the Wii go out in a bang rather than die with a lonely whimper.

Captain Rainbow

Having been in the business for over thirty years now, Nintendo has introduced the world to videogame characters so iconic that they have become household names. But for every Mario out there, there are dozens of supporting characters just waiting to have their chance in the spotlight. Enter Captain Rainbow. D-list Nintendo characters ranging from Punch-Out’s Little Mac to Tracy of Link’s Awakening make appearances in hilariously strange action-adventure game. The game is unique amongst Nintendo’s catalogue for being extremely vulgar, and covering rarely discussed topics in the medium of videogames, such as Birdo’s sexual and gender identity issues.

Zangeki no Reginleiv

Anyone who’s played an Earth Defense Force game will be able to appreciate the series’ stupidly fun gameplay. It just doesn’t get much better than shotgunning a giant alien ant in the face, then taking out a skyscraper with  a rocket launcher. With Zangeki no Reginleiv, Sandlot takes the premise behind EDF and inserts it into the Norse mythos, reimagining the tale of Ragnarök. Swap the guns and bugs for swords and giants, and the Dualshock for a Motion-Plus Wii-Remote and get ready to see buckets of blood fly across the screen as you chop off limbs and sever the heads of mythical beasts in this incredibly gory hack and slash title.

Another Code: R

Fans of Trace Memory have been tragically deprived of the Wii sequel to the fantastic DS original. Boasting a wonderful visual style and mystery novel-inspired adventure/puzzle gameplay, the Trace Memory / Another Code series was something new and unique for Nintendo, that was tragically cut down before it had a chance to blossom. The development studio’s recent bankruptcy might not bode well for additional sequels, but Nintendo could actually use its publishing rights to bring Another Code: R to the Americas and let us experience what the Europeans and Japanese have been able to for years now.

Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

Fatal Frame IV is the most recent installment in one of the most acclaimed survival horror series in the industry. Moreover, the title was developed, in-part, by the acclaimed studio Grasshopper Manufacture. In light of Nintendo’s decision not to bring the game to American shores, fans took matters into their own hands, localizing the game themselves for anyone willing to import a copy and mod their system.

Sukeban Shachou Rena

I love weird Japanese games, and they don’t get much stranger than this one. Affectionately known as “President Cat”, Sukeban Shachou Rena is a hilarious minigame collection about, yes you guessed it, cats. As an entry level cat at Cat Queen Inc., you must perform a variety of tasks to earn your feline CEO’s respect and climb the corporate ladder. It’s a rare thing for me to be salivating over a minigame collection, but this title looks too absurd to pass up.

Earth Seeker

With a plot that sounds vaguely similar to Titan A.E., humanity leaves the post-apocalyptic Earth in hopes of creating a new home. Unfortunately the terraforming device malfunctions when the ship crash-lands, creating monsters and problems for what remains of the human race. Having only just launched in Japan last month, Earth Seeker is the youngest title in this list. Let’s hope that a publisher steps up to the plate to get this one localized.

Takt of Magic

The spiritual successor to DS title Lost Magic, Square Enix subsidiary Taito’s Takt of Magic was never given a chance with American audiences. It’s a shame too, because the title had a pretty interesting user-interface. Similar to Deep Silver’s Cursed Mountain, in Takt of Magic players used the Wii-remote to draw hundreds of spells to cast in battle. Oh well, yet another good-looking strategy role-playing game that never made it out of Japan.

Eyeshield 21: The Field’s Greatest Warrior

Unless you’re a fan of obscure anime, you’ve probably never heard of Eyeshield 21. The series follows a terrible Japanese high school football team with a secret weapon, the incredibly fast running back Eyeshield21. As a fan of arcade sports, I’m always looking for something to put on my shelf next to NFL Blitz. Not only would The Field’s Greatest Warrior be a nice arcade sports game to have localized in the United States, but it would be a great opportunity to reflect on something ingrained in our culture, given new life through a Japanese perspective.

Disaster Day of Crisis

There are plenty of minigame collections out there: Carnival Games: Game of the Year Edition, Rayman & the Bunnies, Mario Party 38, That Other Crap Party Game, but few that appeal to hardcore gamers. Well if playing beach volleyball with mom isn’t exactly your idea of a good time, how about surviving earthquakes, terrorist attacks, car chases, volcanic eruptions and attacks from wild animals? Enter the unintentionally hilarious string of minigames that makes up action-adventure romp Disaster Day of Crisis…unless you’re American.

The Last Story, Xenoblade, and Pandora’s Tower

Having deprived North American Wii owners from some of the most compelling first-party software the system has to offer, a movement was born out of the IGN message boards. Just last month, Operation Rainfall set out to convince Nintendo of America to localize three good-looking Japanese role-playing games. While not a huge fan of role-playing games myself, I truly admire what the people behind Operation Rainfall are doing. Enough so that I’d be willing to reach out of my comfort zone and support Miswalker, Monolith Soft or Ganbarion, should any of their games see US releases.