The division between American-style role-playing game fans and Japanese-style RPGers is almost as deep as the split between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter fans. While American RPG games such as Diablo and the Elder Scrolls series have focused on more real-time action oriented combat and deep character customization, Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have focused on character development, turn-based combat, and semi-linear storylines. For years, it has been a back and forth battle, with both American and Japanese RPGs gaining popularity amongst fans at certain periods. When Final Fantasy VII changed the face of the genre, many American gamers flocked over to the works of Square-Enix, and its contemporaries. Fast forward to a decade later. Japanese RPG developers have been going as strong as ever, and even new ones such as Mistwalker have emerged. However, the problem with the current JRPG scene is that these developers have mostly relied on the same old formulas that they have implemented since the late 90s. The failures of games such as The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery (as well as the cult status of games such as Persona, The World Ends With You, and Valkyrie Profile) have demonstrated that the public wants to see something different. Moreover, throughout the last decade, the American RPG market has been bolstered by excellent games such as Diablo, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire. This brings me to this week’s feature, Mass Effect. Mass Effect was created by BioWare, the camp behind hits such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Baldur’s Gate, and the forthcoming Dragon Age. As in the past, BioWare has taken the RPG genre to new heights by not sticking by the genre’s norms. Square-Enix, Tri-Ace, Mistwalker, and other RPG developers, both American and Japanese, would do well to study this game (especially if they plan on doing any more work with the Unreal 3 engine).
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Majel Barret-Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry has passed at the age of 76.
While she had a recurring role as nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, as well as Ambassador Lwaxana Troi on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, perhaps her most vital contribution to the series was off camera. For nearly 700 episodes and 10 movies, she provided the voice of the computer on Federation ships.
Her final professional work was recording voice work for the next chapter in Star Trek, the highly anticipated new movie (Star Trek Trailer here). Her work was completed just a few weeks ago, thus bringing closure to an era and bridging the gap toward a new one.
I certainly hope there is a dedication in this new film, though it can scarcely match the dedication Majel had shown Star Trek for most of her life.

Majel Barrett on Wikipedia
Majel Barrett on IMDB

Ending Music: “Unholy Vespers”

The first of my two reviews for the recent Castlevania games. Like what you see? Be sure to check out my Staff Pick for the month. (last month too!) Make sure to check back here at Powet.tv for the other Castlevania review you won’t want to miss!

Marvel.com has released 8 new stills from the upcoming movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine, Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed, and Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. Each of these actor/characters are pictured below. The movie is scheduled to be released on May 1, 2009.

  

Marvel.com has premiered a new trailer for the upcoming animated DVD release of Hulk Vs, a compilation of two major showdowns; Hulk vs Wolverine and Hulk vs Thor. The trailer shows us a much deeper story than expected from the previous action only trailer. We even get to see a couple Weapon X characters including Sabretooth, Deadpool and Omega Red.

Thanks to BumbleBeeZ3 for the news.

Mortal Kombat caused a huge shakeup in the fighting game genre. MK stood in direct opposition to Capcom and SNK with its button tap friendly, yet accessible special moves and combos in contrast to the complicated joystick motions of Fatal Fury and Street Fighter. Although the character designs were simple, they had well developed backgrounds, making the game’s backstory more fleshed out than the usual “some guy wants to know who the world’s strongest fighter is so he holds a tournament” story we see in 90% of fighting games at the time. The game also featured digitized actors with motion capturing. While it looks incredibly cheesy by today’s standards, it gave the game an unprecedented level of realism for its time. Oh, and there was one other big thing about it…oh yeah, that’s right, the blood. Punches and kicks drew blood, bodies were decapitated, hearts were pulled from chests as they were still beating, spines were ripped out, parents everywhere had fits, and politicians sensed opportunity.

Like many big gaming movements before and after MK, many games sought to imitate what made it special. Rather than presenting gamers with an equally accessible play control scheme or fully fleshed out characters, the companies decided to concentrate on the gore. As a result, we got games such as Incredible Technologies/Strata’s (keep these names in mind as they will come up again later on in the article) Time Killers and the 3DO ‘classic’, Way of the Warrior. While the latter game at least went the extra mile to use digitized actors, the play control and character designs of both games were so bad, that they actually rank among the greatest games of all time (albeit for all the wrong reasons). There were good games that used blood as a selling point as well. Eternal Champions, or rather its Sega CD iteration contained lots of hidden secrets, as well as a fighting game based on real-life styles that was more akin to Street Fighter than Mortal Kombat. Primal Rage set itself apart by not only featuring Dinosaurs and prehistoric apes as its characters, but by having a unique style of control motions that had players holding down the attack buttons while entering the motions. One game that stands in the middle is Strata/IT/Chun Soft’s Bloodstorm. While the play control and character designs leave a bit to be desired, it featured some unique gameplay mechanics which would have made it a classic had they been developed further.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

TV Guide brings word that the second half of Battlestar Galactica Season 4 will begin December 12, 2008 (tomorrow!) on the web with two 3-4 minute webisodes per week leading into the January 16th debut with the first of the remaining ten episodes in the series. That will give us a total of 10 webisodes in all.

Here is a brief description of one webisode from TV Guide:

The webisodes titled, “The Face of the Enemy,” follow the story of a stranded Raptor ship carrying a group of passengers, including Gaeta (Alessandro Juliani) and a Number 8 Cylon (Grace Park). When some of the people aboard suddenly start dying, chaos ensues as they realize a killer is among them. Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh) and Brad Dryborough (Lieutenant Hoshi) also star.