@ Text Adventure

Its kinda funny how we get into things sometimes. Your either a fan of the book, movie, TV show or even the game. Enter Afro Samurai. Here's a piece of entertainment that almost passed me by. I originally had no interest in Afro Samurai till I played the Demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I even foolishly wrote off the game and anime series before giving it a shot just out of pure ignorance.

What is Afro Samurai all about ? Well in short, he's the number 2 Samurai in the world and he's looking to kill the Number One. Not for fame or fortune, not even for the title of being a God. Simply put , Revenge. You see along time ago Afro’s Father was the number one, and as a little boy Afro’s father was slain right in front of him. From there his training begun.

Immediately after playing the demo I was hooked. Now in the real world cross media doesn't always mix to well. We seen many movie and TV shows become just awful games and vise versa. So what makes Afro’s game so appealing ? First is the beautiful cell-shaded art style. It gives the characters from the show a new more vibrant life.

Once you find yourself done being mesmerized by the games beauty, it wont be hard take notice of the hip hop sound track produced by the RZA from the Wu Tang Clan. Speaking of audio, Afro himself isn't a man of many words, but he has a sidekick Ninja Ninja that wont shut up. Both of them happened to be voiced by none other the Samuel L. Jackson.

Now for the most part the hack-n-slash gameplay is sound. Of course like many games of this genre the camera tends to hamper the fun a bit (think Ninja Gaiden). Now I haven't purchased the full game yet . I need to find a time were this game will fit into my heavy gaming schedule.

For now I fulfilled my needed for Afro Samurai by watching the 5 episode mini series and I look forward to watching the movie next. I still find myself playing the demo every other night or so as well. If you haven't already then I say give the demo a spin, if you have any appreciation for art or music you should at least take notice to what's got me all hyped to play the game. I also strongly suggest trying episode one of the mini series. Its rare that I'm wrong about this stuff , you’ll love it for sure !

-TX

Also posted @ Text Adventure

Yesterday I decided to go out and pick up Street Fighter IV. I've never been a huge fan of the series but with all the hype over the new game along with its beautiful new art style it made hard for me to resist. I do like the game, but found it to bee a bit of a challenge being a noob to the series. I tend to be more of a 3D fighter fan and find them to be easier to play Now a week before the game was released I purchased the Chun-Li version of the new Mad Catz line of SF IV fighting pads just because I'm an accessory whore and though it looked simply stunning. With the game now in hand it only made sense to open the controller and test out it out on the game it was made for. For a Mad Catz product its not bad at all. I find the D-pad and the button lay out to be perfect, but after a while it was feeling stiff and kind of doing a number on my thumb.

So I looked over on my shelf and said hey lets try out the good old Dead or Alive 4 arcade fighting stick I have. Makes sense right ….. of course it does. So I busted out this bad boy and found that this is the way to play Street Fight. Now I don't feel it made me a better player at all but it definitely felt better to use over all. After all the trial and error I gave the standard Xbox 360 wireless remote a shot and for all the flak it takes for having a bad D-pad I must say it wasn't all that bad. Its way better though using the fighting stick or Mad Catz pad just for the button layout. As for the game itself I find to be really difficult to play and trying to pull off these crazy 3/4 circle -> –> k+p combos are a pain. I did find some time to get online with SUPERGHOST for a few fights and had a good time. For now its all about practice and ..uh ..um choosing the right tool of the trade !

-TX