Legion of Heroes
Usually, people would go about saving best for last. That hardly applies for this instance, since you guys already expect something really cool. So here goes:
It’s me, as Travis Touchdown! I did this little cosplay because we recently had our batch graduation pictures. There was this part called creative shot wherein you dress up however you want. I chose Travis Touchdown because he’s one of the coolest video game characters I’ve seen. Here are a couple of more pictures:
These three pictures so far were taken at home, the night before the graduation picture-taking. As you can see, the sword isn’t really pretty to look at and it doesn’t even light up that well. If I may say so myself, the real thing I was after when making the sword was the frame. If you look at it closely, I think it looks pretty neat. Besides that, I think I covered most of his attire properly. The shades weren’t the exact thing but it looks cool either way. The jacket and the shirt were the most accurate though. You can see his favorite anime ironed on the shirt (Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly). I don’t know if I got the hair right, but it ain’t bad.
Besides my solo pictures, I was also able to get some pictures with some of my classmates. Hell, we even had this “Watchmen” picture with all the good poses and stuff. That’s the main reason I named this post “Legion of Heroes”. That’s basically what we looked like.
(From left to right) Travis Touchdown, Cho Hakkai, Tony Stark, "Good Boy", Vincent Valentine, Gambit
Basically, what a lot of people did during our graduation picture was cosplay some interesting characters. Our class was the second-to-the-last to take the picture which meant that we had one of the longest time periods to prepare. As you can see from the pictures, some of us really worked hard for to make the creative shot awesome.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
We now move to the second part of this post which deals on the games I promised to talk about a week ago. First off, there’s Metroid Prime Trilogy. Since I only became interested in the franchise recently, I totally missed the hype surrounding Metroid Prime 1 and 2. Sure, I heard whispers of the game back then, but it didn’t really matter since I had no GameCube. When I got the Wii, Metroid Prime 3 was one of the first games I bought and it was also the first game to introduce me to the adventure genre. So far, I’ve only played about 30% of Metroid Prime 1. Even so, I can already say a lot of good things about this game. If you were watching me from a month or so ago, you probably know that I had a little obsession over adventure games for a while. I remember I was really hyped for Metroid Prime Trilogy because I like Super Metroid a lot. Well, I’m glad to say Metroid Prime 1 was the realization of Super Metroid in 3D. It’s like an exact clone when it comes to level design and non-linear style. The sad thing though is that over that course of waiting for MPT’s release, my love for the adventure genre has taken quite a dip. I remember the last thing I played was Cave Story and I didn’t even finish it. I believe a couple of other games were responsible for that, but in any case, that isn’t the topic of discussion for this post. Rest assured, I’d say Metroid Prime 1 is a really good game and there’s plenty of reason to explore every room since you have equipped a neat scanning visor. For impressions on Metroid Prime 2 and it’s packed-in multiplayer, you guys have to wait a while until I finished Metroid Prime 1.
Next topic is about a little game called Cursed Mountain. It’s, as you can tell, a horror game. And as far as I can say, this game is halfway decent. I’d say there are a lot of things worth nothing whent it comes to this game. It’s a pretty interesting scenario for a horror game: a mountaineer named Eric Simmons is on a journey up the mountain to find out what happened to his brother Frank Simmons and along the way, Eric meets a number of crazy happenings and apparitions. For all intents and purposes, this story is pulled off quite nicely. The atmosphere is nice and scary in this game and the appearance of the ghosts are enough to give you the creeps. What this game suffers from though is the slightly unbearable controls. There were a number of instances wherein the motion-based part of the game doesn’t work at all and you would have to result to random waggle until you get it right. What’s worse, in an attempt to pull off realistic mountain hiking, the developer Deep Silver implemented a slow-moving character. At his fastest, Eric still moves pretty slowly which especially becomes evident when climbing up or going down slopes. It might look realistic and it’s probably like that in real life but for a game, this is just no excuse. I think I’m glad I’m not too picky about this and my love for horror games completely undermines these issues. The game works on a level-by-level basis, very unlike Resident Evil or Silent Hill. In other words, the game is divided into segments and each segment represents Eric’s advance to the summit. When I look at this design choice, I think this could’ve been the best one because having him climb that whole mountain at the speed that I mentioned just earlier would be one hell of a chore. Most of the game’s plot is revealed through comic style cutscenes. Apparently, the game’s engine can’t handle in-game movies. One more thing which the game suffers from is the sometimes awkward and startling camera angles. I’ve seen it do this a few times to emphasize certain key locations in the landscape but even so, I’m not such a fan of such needless stuff. Overall, Cursed Mountain ain’t too good nor ain’t it too bad. What it all comes down to for me is the fact that it’s another interesting horror game made for the Wii. Not bad…
The next one’s the game I was so eager to talk about last Friday. Of course, this one’s called Batman: Arkham Asylum. Before I begin with my impressions, I’d like to say that according to aggregated reviews, this game has now been rated as the best superhero game ever made, besting the previous title holder: Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. With that fact in mind, playing this game felt like I was handling something majestic and glorious. Simply, this game did everything right when putting you in the shoes of the Dark Knight. You literally feel like Batman during your whole playthrough, from that perspective-changing Detective Mode of his to the flawless FreeFlow Combat System that compliments Batman’s fight style pretty nicely. It’s a complete Batman package fit with a nice balance of gadgets, stealth and combat. To top it off, it follows a pretty intriguing tale of the Joker’s attempt in taking over Arkham Asylum. I believe it’s a complete fan service to all those who love Batman. Lots of those important villains make an appearance in this game. Since I’m not really that much of a Batman fan, I can’t really appreciate all of developer Rocksteady’s efforts in making the story 100% Batman. Despite this however, the most amazing thing that I can say about this game is its ability to entice any gamer even if they aren’t into Batman at all. Batman: Arkham Asylum formed the perfect balance between being a game and being something worth the “Batman” in its title. Rocksteady really nailed it right and that has awarded them pretty nicely.
That’s probably all for now. To add a little tidbit of information, I’ve just finished playing my first playthrough No More Heroes. My return was most probably triggered by my recent cosplay and researching the various stuff which I never knew about No More Heroes. Now, I’m replaying the whole game on Bitter mode and it’s kicking me hard. This is just a little something while waiting for next year’s release of No More Heroes 2, which reminds me. This newest trailer from TGS 09 is hardcore awesome:
TGS ‘09 No More Heroes 2 Shinobu Trailer
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
P.S. I promised this to be posted on Saturday, but the endless downpour of rain yesterday caused us our electricity. So I’m posting this on Sunday instead. In addition to this, I have more than 1000 views already in my Counter-Strike-Counter. 
Leave a Reply