Ceidz did a review for Dragon Fantasy: Book I, a great retro-JRPG that is reminiscent of old NES games with its difficulty and game design. Muteki has been kind enough to provide me with two codes so that you can try to win a free copy of their game! You know the drill by now, so get started! Giveaway will end on May 27.

 
 
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Here are the most recent YouTube video entries for all giveaways on PS3Blog.net with the most recent ones displayed first.

Guacamelee! is a Metroid-vania style action-platformer set in a magical Mexican inspired world.

The game draws its inspiration from traditional Mexican culture and folklore, and features many interesting and unique characters. Guacamelee builds upon the classic open-world Metroid-vania style of games, by adding a strong melee combat component, a new dimension switching mechanic, and cooperative same-screen multiplayer for the entire story. The game also blurs the boundaries between combat and platforming by making many of the moves useful and necessary for both of these.

You start your story as Juan, a humble Agave farmer that has no idea about what is about to happen. He runs into El Presidente’s Daughter, a beautiful woman who Juan is in love with and, before you know it, all hell breaks loose. Calaca, an evil undead-Charro comes to town and kidnaps El Presidente’s Daughter since she is a key player in his dark ritual for merging the world of the living with the world of the dead. Juan, being the great guy that he is, tries to rescue El Presidente’s Daughter but is quickly killed by Calaca in a matter of seconds. Juan later wakes up, not dead but not alive, and is eventually given a magical Luchador mask that grants him the strength he needs to rescue the one he loves. And so, our journey begins.

Jumping, fighting, grabbing and dodging is what you’ll be doing in Guacamelee, and you will run into a LOT of enemies in this game. You will be asked fight them as you make your way from point A to point B, but you will also be required to complete small “arenas” in which the screen is locked by barriers on all sides that prevent you from escaping, and you must then defeat every enemy before you can carry on with your adventure. Also, you will be able to break a piñata after the last enemy falls, and piñatas are filled with several coins to help you in your quest!

Every enemy you defeat will reward you with coins that you can use to buy items, abilities and skills from the save points/stores in the game and, as always, the more money you have the easier your quest will be. Of special interest are two items: Heart pieces and Skill pieces. You can find several chests in Guacamelee, and they come in two varieties: regular ones that reward you with a lot of coins, and golden ones that contain either a heart piece or a skill piece. For every 3 you collect, you will be rewarded with an increase to your health bar (for hearts collected) and an extra activation for your special attacks (for skulls collected)

As a nod to the Metroid, you will run into statues that resemble those from Nintendo’s franchise, and breaking will reward you with a new ability or a new special attack that will help you explore more of the world. For example, there are red blocks that can only be broken by a red attack, and said attack (the rooster uppercut) can be triggered by pressing up and the circle button. Each time you use a special attack, a yellow-activation square will be used, and you must wait for it to refill before you can use it again. This helps balance the game so that you don’t spend your time just triggering the specials attack, but the game eventually goes one step further by giving enemies a protective aura that must be broken by the special attack with the matching color. As long as the barrier is up, no damage can be done upon said enemy, and this brings in a welcomed strategy element to the table since you could, for example, be fighting two enemies without a barrier, a flying enemy with a green barrier and a huge enemy with a red barrier, all at the same time, and you would be required to mix and match your regular attacks, your special attacks, your throws, and any other skill you have purchased or unlocked, in order to survive.

As you can probably guess by now, Guacamelee’s main mechanic is splitting the game into two different realms: the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. At first, you can only switch between them by finding special portals that instantly switch you back and forth, and this is used to give you time to get the hang of things while solving puzzles or fighting enemies in another dimension. In one room, you might need to make your way from the bottom left to the upper right section, but there won’t be enough platforms for it. But, what if you timed your jumps so that you could hit a portal mid-jump so that you would enter the world of the dead and thus land on a previously invisible platform? Once you’ve been doing this for a while, you will be granted the power to change between both realms at will, and the puzzles will get more complex and demand faster reflex. Things only get crazier after this, but I don’t want to spoil things for you.

You can even go out of your way to complete the sidequests presented by the NPCs you will run into during your adventure, and they range from moving some stubborn chicken into their pen, to helping a woman cook the best enchilada ever, and some crazy requests here and there in between. You will be properly rewarded for your help, and completing each sidequest will reward you with a trophy, and you even get an extra trophy when you’ve completed all sidequests, which is always a nice incentive for us trophy hunters.

Guacamelee is a game that you have to play, and it should be bought ASAP. It features a colorful, rich and unique world to explore, and you will spend 7-9 hours playing from start to finish. I had so much fun with the game that, as soon as I completed it and the main menu appeared on my TV, I dived right back into the game in Hard mode. It is THAT good. As a nice bonus, the game also has drop-in co-op that can easily be activated by pressing Start on a second controller. Lucha Libre is always more fun when you tag-team with a friend!

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS3 copy of Guacamelee provided by Brinkbox Studios.

Capcom’s pedigree arcade games are back! Take on players from around the world in ‘score attack’ and even play together with online co-op! (Only for titles that support this feature.) Check out these classic games, now loaded with a ‘casual mode’ geared towards newcomers and other new features. Play the full game of ‘Black Dragon’ for free!

Remember all the fun you used to have at the Arcades when you were young? All the great games such as Ghost and Goblins, 1943 or Gunsmoke? Well, CAPCOM definitely remembers, and they’ve decided to give us a chance to enjoy their Arcade releases from the comfort of your homes! CAPCOM Arcade Cabinet is a platform with an idea similar to Zen Pinball 2: download the free demo of the game to have access to trial versions of the games before you decide to buy them.

The platform has been created with great care to detail, and you’ll be able to play the games just the way you want to. You can change the aspect ratio, add scanlines, apply a smooth filter to blend pixels, and even flip the display so that you can move your TV to a vertical position to enjoy an experience that is as close to a real arcade as you can get without buying one! You can also access a virtual Dip Switch set to change the difficulty, life count and several other settings, just like arcade operators used to do back in the day to suck down your quarters. To make it even more interesting, you can enjoy either local or online multiplayer to make the most of your purchase, and you can upload your highscores to the online leaderboards to show everyone how good you really are. And for those of you that had a hard time beating the games at the arcades, there is now a casual mode for ALL games in the collection and this mode adds new tweaks and twists that allow even the most inexperienced player to have a good time.

But wait, there is more! All games in this collection feature unlockable bonuses that you can trigger by completing specific levels or even the full game, playing for a long time, or by unlocking the PSN trophies for each game. These rewards go from the original arcade flyers or the art used in the actual arcade cabinet to the audio tracks for each game or even a special piece of bonus art created for this collection. If you think your really THAT good at a game, you can even upload replays directly to YouTube (which is a PS3 exclusive feature) so that others can comment on your skills.

Each game will be priced at $3.99 by itself, or at a special price in a bundle. The bundle lets you save $2 for every 3 game pack, and $3 for the first pack that includes 1943 and Avengers and unlocks the Black Tiger trophies. Here is a list of the packs and their tentative release dates:

Game Pack 1 – Available February 19/20 for $4.99
-Black Tiger
-1943: Battle of Midway
-Avenger

Game Pack 2 – Available March 5/6 for $9.99
-Ghosts ‘n Goblins
-Gun.Smoke
-Section Z

Game Pack 3 – Available March 19/20 for $9.99
-Side Arms
-Legendary Wings
-Trojan

Game Pack 4 – Available April 2/3 for $9.99
-Commando
-The Speed Rumbler
-Exed Exes (Savage Bees)

Game Pack 5 – Available April 16/17 for $9.99
-1942
-SonSon
-Pirate Ship Higemaru

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The final Game Pack for CAPCOM Arcade Cabinet has finally been released, and now those of you that bought all other games can enjoy a complete collection. The 1984 Pack includes 1942, SonSon and Pirate Ship Higemaru, each one with its own quirks, highs and lows.

1942 is the prequel to 1943, a game I talked about when I reviewed the 1987 Pack, and it puts you in the shoes of a World War II pilot that is tasked with destroying the entire Japanese air fleet. Unlike 1943, there aren’t many power ups you can pick during your flight, and a single hit will put a stop to your aspirations. That’s right, one hit, and you’re dead. This is how it used to be in 1984, and it is the rule that is constant in all 3 games in the 1984 Pack. You will travel through 32 levels in total before you come face to face with Ayako: a bad, bad plane modeled after the Nakajima G8N, a heavy bomber used in World War II (for you history buffs out there).

SonSon is loosely based on the classic “Journey to the West” tale, and it brings a bit of culture into a fun co-op game. You control either SonSon or Tonton in their quest to save their friends after they were kidnapped by evil forces. Oh, and SonSon is a monkey and TonTon is a pig. The main premise is a classic, and it is still used as a storytelling tool in many recent games. The game itself is a 2D sidescroller in which the screen automatically moves forward, and you must quickly react and evade or destroy the huge number of enemies thrown your way. There are six platforms on screen, and you can quickly jump from one to another to escape from enemies or to grab food which increases your score and brings you closer to obtaining extra lives. If you collect a lot of small food, bigger food that is worth more points will start to appear all over the screen and, if you grab enough pieces of said big food, you will unlock a Pow that turns every enemy on screen into more big food!

In Pirate Ship Higemaru, we control Momotaro, a poor sailor that must get rid of all the pirates that are out to plunder the ship. Surely this intrepid sailor has something to defend himself and attack the pirates, right? Why, of course he does… Momotaro has barrels! No, no, you read that right. You lift barrels and then throw them to run over the pirates, and that is what you do in every single level in the game. Once you defeat all pirates, you’ll move into a harder level with faster enemies and a different layout for the barrels, and things are mixed up a bit by introducing levels with a huge potential for increasing your score since they feature only pirate captains instead of regular pirates. You see, every normal level has one pirate captain that is smarter and faster than the regular pirates, and defeating said captain will only work for a set amount of time since he will recover and once again roam the screen until you can defeat his crew.

The last Game Pack for CAPCOM Arcade Cabinet brings us the first set of games that the company released for arcades in the US back in 1984, and it serves as a nice way to bookend the whole package by coming full circle. Hopefully we get a CAPCOM Arcade Cabinet 2 because there are dozens of their releases that I’d love to see get the same treatment.

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS3 copy of the 1984 Pack for CAPCOM Arcade Cabinet provided by CAPCOM.

Terraria is a side-scrolling, action-adventure sandbox game with an emphasis on crafting and exploration set in vast and vibrant worlds. Terraria has received universal, critical acclaim and 1.6 million “Terrarians” have struck out on their own adventures since release.

With a vast array of materials and items to collect, Terraria is far more than a mere block building game, players’ experience is limited only by their own imaginations, the world is theirs to shape and explore.

You’ve probably heard it before: Terraria is what would happen if Minecraft was a 2D game. Sure, there are some similarities, but Terraria is a different kind of monster… out to devour all of your free time with promises of more and more things to build and monsters to slay the higher (or lower) you go.

The game features a tutorial that you definitely should play before you get into the game itself since it provides you with important information and tips that will allow you to get started right away with the basic actions that make a difference in the world of Terraria. For example, skipping the tutorial might mean you don’t know how to build and protect your home base, and when the night is upon you and you have no place to rest or hide, monster will rush for you without mercy.

You can dig as low as you want, chop down trees or kill monsters… the most classic and basic of actions. But once you do this you will be rewarded with materials, and it is then that the game opens up. You can use the materials to level the terrain so that you have a great spot to create your home base, or you can combine them into new items, which can then be combined with other items to unlock new materials for building and crafting. It is here that the tutorial comes back to haunt you if you skipped it since you wouldn’t know that you need to create a workbench to be able to create new items that are needed to unlock advanced options such as a smelter to melt copper, silver or other metals (and rare metals) you find during your adventure, which allows you to create better weapons an armor.

The more you explore and the lower you go, the higher your chances of meeting extremely powerful monsters that can destroy you in a matter of seconds if you’re not properly prepared. Sure, at first you only run into poor slimes that are no match for your wooden sword, but digging deeper will make you face slimes of other colors of the rainbow, and each new color is harder, better, faster, stronger. And, sometimes, you’ll run into groups of monsters that demand you plan accordingly. A great way to take on several monsters is digging a spot that is only big enough for one of them to make its way towards you so that you can hit them over and over without worrying about being overwhelmed. Sure, it will take you a while, but you either live by this strategy, or die for being reckless.

Digging is a must, but digging in the wrong spot can kill you in the blink of an eye. There are some places that have what at first seems like a decorative boulder in the background and, before you can realize your mistake, you dig over it and are instantly crushed by it. Another problem is water since you’re not half frog and can’t breathe underwater. You can build terrain around underground lakes, or even create a bridge of dirt that goes over the offending liquid, but sometimes you’re quickly digging to escape from monsters that move in the background layer of the world (but who can still hit you when they pass close to you) and you don’t see the big mass of water above, below or in front of you. Once you crack open the wall, water will react and start pouring in and, depending on how much water you’ve unleashed, it could be the end of you.

But wait, there is more! You can also make your way high into the sky, and the higher you go, the better things get. You can run into one (or more) floating islands with unique treasures and deadly monsters that protect their territory. Be sure to prepare accordingly or you will be torn to pieces before you can even get to the chest. And if you keep going up, the stars might be within your reach!

All that I’ve mentioned before barely scratches the surface of everything that Terraria has to offer. Since every time you start a new game you get to select the size of the world you’ll play in, and since said world is randomly generated from a huge number of possibilities, you can have a new experience every time you drop back at the beginning. The only problem is the user interface which makes sense since this is a port of a PC game and the PS3 (and Vita) don’t feature a mouse and keyboard to mimic the PC controls. It is not a deal breaker (as there is the option of making your cursor automatically perform an action towards the nearest possible option), but it is something to consider.

Terraria provides you with an endless adventure that feel fresh and interesting every time you start a new game. The randomly generated content, the variety of items and weapons you can create, and the army of monsters out to get you (aaaaaall day long) will constantly keep you on guard. Before you know it, you will have spent hundreds of hours in this world, and you’ll still keep coming back for more. Add multiplayer for up to 4 people, and you have a great game that you don’t want to miss.

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS3 copy of Terraria provided by 505 Games

Darkstalkers Resurrection updates to two games for the price of one – Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge and Darkstalkers 3. These feature classic gameplay and unique characters as well as a host of new features, including a variety of HD visual modes, online play with 8-player lobbies, YouTube replay sharing, improved challenge modes, dynamic awards, and unlockable extras. Embrace the dark!

CAPCOM has finally decided to give the Darkstalkers a new chance 16 years after the last game for the series was released, and it is doing it right. Darkstalkers: Resurrection is a digital collection of the second and third games in the series and it brings them into the 21st century with HD filters, trophies, youtube integration, online multiplayer and the challenge and award system we have seen before in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online Edition, CAPCOM’s other HD re-release.

Let’s start with Night Warriors: Dalkstalkers’ Revenge, second game in the series and first one in this collection. Darkstalkers’ Revenge improves on the formula from the first release by fine-tuning the way combos are triggered and by allowing each character to store more than one super attack bar to be ready to strike as they please. On top of that, the two bosses from the first game are now playable characters, and we also got two new characters that join the fight: Hsien-Ko and Donovan Baine. Fights are fast paced, and super attacks are instantly executed without a break or pause from the regular action, and this separated Darkstalkers from the famous Street Fighter series we all know and love. Colorful characters with exaggerated and unique animations round up a great game that is one of the best fighting games of all time.

Darkstalkers 3 moves the series forward by bringing in four new characters to the mix (Lilith, Jedah, B. B. Hood and Q-Bee) but also removing Pyron, Donovan and the great Huitzil while also making some changes here and there to change how matches play out. Instead of fights being won on a “per round” basis, each fighter now has a single double bar that is drained from every hit, in a system similar to how The King of Fighter series handles their fights. The third entry also added a “Dark Force” system that is similar to the V-ism combos you can trigger in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and, if you play things right, you can link regular, special and Ex attacks in a short period of time (as long as you have enough special energy stocked) thus destroying your opponent in a few seconds.

GGPO (Good Game Peace Out) is used for the online multiplayer side of things, and this allows you to find online matches that are enjoyable and practically lag free, but you do have to remember that most of those playing online eat, sleep and dream this game so be sure to take things slowly as you dive into the arena with modest expectations for your performance.

You can either play the game with the original graphics (in all their pixelated glory), add scan lines or a curve to mimic old TV sets, or even make the game widescreen with a smoothing filter on top that makes the graphics shine with an HD sparkle like never before. Playing in regular 4:3 does have its advantage since the left side of the screen will display your progress for each of the individual challenges you are taking care of as you fight in each game, and believe me when I say that both games have a LOT of challenges for you! You can be asked to perform hundreds of projectile attacks, cut your enemies in half, complete dozens of fights or completely regenerate the white meter from your energy bar, to name a few.

Darkstalkers: Resurrection is a great collection that all fighting game fans should own. You get two terrific games for a low price, online Multiplayer, trophies and extra modes, all digitally available in your HDD. Remember, the more sales we can get for this collection, the better our chances of getting Darkstalkers 4!

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS3 copy of Darkstalkers: Resurrection provided by CAPCOM.