GameShark - Previews

Throughout 2008, I was able to make it out to a handful of press events for GameShark and get a little hands-on time with some of the year's hottest games. Even though I missed out on the Mirrors Edge press event, most games were awesome enough to write about. Well, save for Damnation, but that was more the fault of the awful venue. Ho-hum.

• Saints Row 2 - Multiplayer Hands-On (360/PS3)
• Damnation - Multiplayer Hands-On (360)
• Animal Crossing: Wild World (Wii)
• StarCraft II - BlizzCon Impressions (PC)
• Prince of Persia (360/PS3)
• Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP)
• Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero (PSP)

That about wraps it up. Feel free to leave comments; I get none via GameShark. :(

And now, onto the reviews!

RPGamer Update - Nintendo Fall Media Summit & BlizzCon Impressions

Back in October, I had the privilege of attending Nintendo's Fall Media Summit and getting some much-needed hands-on time with some upcoming RPGs for RPGamer. I dutifully wrote up my impressions of the games, which can be found below:

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon DS
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia DS
Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia DS

All games were great fun to play, and Nintendo was more than accommodating during the entirety of the event. This was where the DSi was first premiered to the US, which generated relatively mixed reviews from those who had a peek at it, but I remain optimistic until I get it in my hands. I'll miss the GBA slot, though! I was also able to make it down to BlizzCon, which netted the following impression:

Diablo 3 - BlizzCon Impression

Woohoo!

RPGamer – 2008 NIS Press Event Impressions

Almost a month ago (!) I had the privilege of heading up to San Francisco to cover the 2008 NIS press event for RPGamer. I bumped elbows with some internet friends and rivals, enjoyed some delicious food on the house, hosted an interview, and was lucky enough to get my hands on a few new RPGs from NIS that are coming stateside this year. I wish I could have broken this into a few separate updates to make myself seem more productive, but since this event occurred three days before my last final and graduation, I obviously had no time for that.

Anyways! Take a look at the impressions below. It's always fun actually playing something before writing about them and I think they turned out rather well. Especially A Witches Tale, considering I saw no actual footage of the game. Enjoy.

• Disgaea DS - Hands-On Impression
• Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (DS) - Hands-On Impression
• A Witches Tale (DS) - Hands-On Impression

(I also covered Disgaea 3 again, but I wanted to save those impressions for the big preview of the game I'm writing this month. Now that I can go in-depth into the storyline, churning out another "I walked here and threw this" impression would be absurdly redundant.)

RPGamer - Disgaea 3 Impressions

The second half of the Run to the Sun meetings I was able to attend consisted of a trip to NIS America to meet up with a few staff members and play an early build of Disgaea 3. While embargoes forbid me from going into too much detail at this time, things are certainly shaping up well for fans of outlandish Tactical RPGs. Disgaea 3 was rough around the edges, but left many of us happy with NIS's progress so far. While it didn't score too high in our overall rankings, a lot of that can be chalked up to the early build we played and the ways that D3 can't really be picked up and enjoyed like a good shooter or fighter can be. I have high hopes for August.

Here's my impressions. A in-depth preview will be going up sometime during the first week of June, and I'll be attending a press event for NIS to spend some more time with their upcoming lineup and do an interview. Things are looking up!

Read: Disgaea 3 Impressions

RPGamer - Summon Night: Twin Age Impression

Yikes!

In one of my more memorable strokes of luck, I had the chance to meet up with a few other fun fellows from RPGamer down in Southern California to talk videogames with two huge RPG publishers - Atlus and Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) America. The latter was a complete stroke of luck, as I was only originally planning to meet up, talk with Atlus, and help relieve some of the coverage pressure from the publisher's eight+ games. Luckily I was able to tag along and go to dinner, and even get asked to go to a press event in SF next month. Exciting!

Here's the first game Atlus let us get our hands on, Summon Night: Twin Age. It's an Action RPG through and through, but looks to be surprisingly fun and fresh, allowing for neat exploration, item conjuring, and other interesting things to do in comparison to your usual hack-'n-slash. I wrote up more of my impressions over at RPGamer, so go take a look over there.

Read: Summon Night: Twin Age Impression

MyWiiNews - Opoona Impression

It's a busy week, and it's only going to get busier!

Knowing that I probably wouldn't be able to finish Opoona by the time the game was released (I got it this past Friday evening), I wanted to put up a little something to spark interest for the game, as well as for my future review. I chose to do a working "impression" of my six hours with the game to share my initial thoughts of the quirky intergalactic adventure.

The impresion is rather charitable to Opoona, as I only had a few hours with it and didn't feel it would be right for me to rip into it for whatever shortcomings it had. MyWiiNews has a different fanbase than say, RPGamer, so I had to alter my RPG writing style a little bit. I'll be a bit more critical of the game come review time, but the impression definitely lets people know what the game is about, and how the copy they might pick up should treat them in the first few hours. Take a peek, if you like.

Read: Opoona - Impression