Over the course of time, the game had many adjustments, improvements, to suit different market regions and systems it was released for. Originally released on the PC-8801 and MSX2 in 1988 Japan, the game was re-released on systems as late as 1996. Which raises questions such as…

• ​The developers must have really loved the game to release it in all these systems.
• The game should have been really good for having been supported by publishers many times.

and many other questions surrounding its multiple releases and its cult-classic status.​ I played the Sega CD version, which is probably the most popular version of the game. It had “High Quality” written all over it.

The game starts off with an intro that pretty much sets the tone for the whole game. It introduces you to the premise, “Great Disaster”, “Neo Kobe” (melting pot of Japan)​, “Body Snatching Cyborgs”, are the main points to note. But more than that, the way it is presented, with a really good voice over (narration) and BGM, really makes the whole intro worth watching, again and again. ​Once the initial premise is set, you are then introduced to Neo Kobe. With the Jazzy saxophones of “One Night in Neo Kobe” playing in background, the sprawling city of Neo Kobe is given life in what is arguably one of the most memorable intros I’ve seen in my 18 years of playing games.

​For a moment you forget that the visuals of the game are in low-res 2D graphics, the combination of music and visuals excites the players’ imagination, creating an immersive and believable world. Once the intro credits finish rolling, you are introduced to the amnesic protagonist Gillian Seed and his wife Jamie. Having no clue of their past, the couple decide to separate and discover their past so that they can have a meaning to their relation and existence. Gillian decides to be a runner for the JUNKER organization which deals with the Snatcher menace.

​For a game made in Japan, the character art style suits the style of anime that were out during the late 80s. Which is not similar to the present day anime in the sense that the characters do not have the prominent “anime eye” or “moe” style of design to them that is found in modern day anime. Being a futuristic world, a time when artificially intelligent robots have become integral part of human life; it has many interesting characters, memorable conversations ​and interactions. The OST of the game, complements it completely. The oft-mechanical, sometimes weird, sounds accompanied by melodic/atmospheric BGMs speak just like the characters in the game.

​The game has you playing as Gillain Seed, it works like a detective story. You try to find clues that would help you in solving the mystery of fellow JUNKER “runner” Jean Jack Gibson’s death, eventually revealing the explanation for the Snatcher menace and your past.​ It is a Kojima game through and through. Every female character in the game is exceptionally beautiful​ and it plays like a dating-sim at parts. Whenever you talk to a female character you have a chance to ask them out on a date. At one point, when you are investigating Gibson’s apartment, you can try and ask his daughter Katrina out on a date, when done multiple times, she kicks you out of the house and you cannot enter the house until you knock on the door multiple times.

This is a point where the creator tried to test the player’s mind. After getting kicked out of the house, you do not gain the trust of Katrina immediately, you need to knock multiple times and talk to her to prove that you will behave yourself. After the first denial of entry, the player would usually try to think of some other way of getting in instead of knocking again. But if the game had effectively immersed the player into character, s/he would have tried to knock again and again in desperation just like as if in real life, which indeed does lead to the result. Gillian is a lover-boy who keeps flirting with every woman he comes across. The conversations between Gillian and the ladies, although mainly irrelevant to the progress of the game’s story, add a lot of depth to the characters. They are very well written and feel very human, no wonder Kojima-san contributed to Tokimeki Memorial games in the future, he seems to have a knack for such things.

The gameplay is like that of classic adventure games, but instead of making you pixel-hunt, the game gives you an exhaustive list of verbs and then a sub-menu that is your only option for the chosen verb. A player could just try each and every option one after the other when stuck to cheat out of the game. Even if the player doesn’t want to cheat, one will find themselves trying every option anyways, just to see what Gillian has to say about things. There are shooting sections in the game when the game shifts to first person mode and you fire the gun using the d-pad for a 3×3 square of possible targets (or an actual gun with the original peripherals). The later stages require you to have very quick reflexes for optimum performance.

The story is pretty long (~15h), it deals with many questions about a future world where humans and robots will (barely) co-exist.

• It deals with trust. (Are you talking to a human or a robot in disguise?)
• It shows a world which is handicapped by technology . (automated traffic systems)
• A world that would be controlled with information tracking. (Profiles of every citizen in database)
• How would you treat a sentient robot. (Will it just be a tool, or a fellow being?)

​In addition to all these and many other topics covered by the game, it most importantly shows (or at least that is how I perceived it to be) how love is the root cause of everything, be it of life-giving happiness or world-destroying agony. All these topics are very similar to those in other Kojima games, especially the Metal Gear Solid series. Everything shown in this game is in some breadth covered across the 4 main games of the MGS series.

Which brings us to one interesting tidbit. The Metal Gear Mk.ii which is the remote controlled assistant of Old Snake in MGS4, is one of the central characters in Snatcher, it is the assistant of Gillian. A talking R2D2, a really witty one at that. The conversations between Gillian and Metal Gear are some of the best buddy-comedy lines you can expect to see in a game. Everything feels so real, if there was a robot that could talk back to you and be funny at the same time, your best bet is that it would talk like Metal Gear.

The locations of Neo Kobe covered in Snatcher are just as diverse as the characters in the game. There is the black market area, a Times Square area, a club, among other places. The attention to detail for the things in the world is also amazing, you have pages of information about fictional characters that you hardly meet in the game. The Central database also has an interesting Easter Egg where you can type in “Hideo Kojima” and you get his info with a small message. You can also find out how the furniture of the future might be made, and probably how scary the future of centralized information control (SSN, Credit score etc) can get. The technical jargon in all the dialogues is not something that is only there to sound “cool”, all what the characters say make it all feel very real.

It asks a lot of important questions, shows us a world that our world might become.

• Would you want to live a world where you are a criminal if you refuse to tell everything about yourself to the government?
• Can you identify a person based on a decomposed body, in under a minute?
• Would you want to know if you are in love with a human or a robot?
• Does the world really need a toilet that gives instant stool analysis?

Snatcher is a game that anyone who is interested in an enticing experience will enjoy. If someone does not like reading and… not-shooting​ in a game, they might be turned off, but the possible thoughts of maybe going out on a date with your in-game wife might keep them hanging till the “good part” starts. You can end up spending hours just reading through all the information in the central computer about Snatcher’s world, or talking to random people by calling numbers you get off of flyers and bulletin boards. ​There are numerous ways to play and enjoy Snatcher, no matter what you do, you will end up having a very satisfying and memorable time.​

• SNATCHER -Investigation

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/SNATCHER-Investigation.bmp

• Snatcher: Date Wife

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-24.bmp

• Snatcher: Junker.

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-20.bmp

• Snatcher : The Oracle

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-19.bmp

• Snatcher: Kojima computer

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-16.bmp

• Snatcher: Mika

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-13.bmp

• Snatcher: Fix Up

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-12.bmp

• Snatcher: The Pose

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-10.bmp

• Snatcher: Buddy Cop

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-8.bmp

• Snatcher : Mkii

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-7.bmp

• Snatcher Computer Details

  http://www.weastfellows.com/wp-content/ULs/2012/03/Snatcher-4.bmp

Well, it has been almost three years since I last wrote here. I have been renewing the domain and keeping the hosting active just because, deep inside, I always knew I would start writing again. Many things happened in these past three years, I’ve moved to the US, graduated with a Masters’ degree in Computer Science – Artificial Intelligence and now am currently looking for employment here in the US. Some of my philosophies might have also changed, overall there has been some growth due to various experiences I’ve gained through all the travelling and course taking.  The West + East in WEAST has become quite West geographically, but I believe in spirit the content will be very WEast-y.

What have I been doing?

Due to my super busy schedule during the whole Masters period (thanks to projects, seminars etc) I wasn’t able to find much time to write, play Games, watch Anime or read Manga. However, I wasn’t completely devoid of the joys of these activities. I was playing games at the University’s Game Clubs, watching Anime in the Anime Club, Reading manga by renting them from Libraries, and writing 1000+ word articles for my courses on a regular basis. I could not find time, to actually sit and put my thoughts to words on the internet. I was busy mostly doing the same thing, in the offline world, in my head.

Now that my schedules look a bit different, I am planning to do things differently, with no restrictions, with no preset goals from someone that is not me. Giving me chance to put my thoughts to words, on any topic I can imagine.

What to expect?

However, I will start off  by posting articles that I wrote for my Game Studies Colloquium class, a course in Digital Media Studies department. The class allowed me to looking at games from a completely new perspective; the Academic side of games; where people actually write their PhD. dissertations on Video Game topics. The course exposed me to the deeper meaning of “game” and took me on a trip through time showing how the medium kept changing, ideas started forming. A really interesting course filled with great assignments and great seminars. Deconstruction of games like Silent Hill and Majora’s Mask were super fun, discussing with people who love games just as much as you do.

Maybe something unexpected?

One post from the Game Studies assignments will be posted every week and in between, I will try to keep writing new articles. I will not be able to continue the Endurance Run for Final Fantasy as the PS2 is back at home in India, that thing was cut short unexpectedly thanks to… well, life.  There a lot of things to talk about, hopefully I will cover as much as possible, in the coming posts. Also, thanks to 3 years of “mostly tweeting”, it will be interesting to see if my writing style has changed. Wonder if  this will bring some variety, of a different kind.

You get to have fun making things that will let you show people when have fun! Well.. I just sat and cooked up this Live blog thing, it will fetch the latest E3 Tweets that WEastFellows @Reetesh and @SM2099 will be tweeting whole E3 time.

Enjoy this post to see all the latest tweets that we’ve been making.. related to E3 No need to refresh the page or anything. Just leave it like that and it auto-updates

Its seems like “late night” is the best time to do anything now.. be it playing games or sitting and writing this thing.. everything else just doesnt seem to get finished by near mid-night now a days. So, lets get on to the juicy details!

The first DUNGEON!

Very useful they be!

My First marathon session (6h) ended with me getting back all my stuff at the Nalbina prison. I just saved and stopped at that point.. and it happened to be a good time to stop too! soon after continuing from that point I found that… BASCH IS ALIVE!!! Also.. someone who looks JUST LIKE.. BALTHIER.. is supposed to be Basch’s twin brother and impersonated him. The whole explanation of the events sounds crazy, but the fact that even I believed that it was actually Basch who killed the king makes the story feel much more immersive!

Later I escaped to the dungeon along with Basch as a guest in my part and started the “great escape”

*The Great Escape

I spent atleast 30minutes sitting and changing all my gambits and equips, getting licenses and buying stuff from the merchant at the entrance gate of the dungeon that leads to the exit.

After preparing well and everything, I found out there is this battery level and that things will reduce it. I thought I will have to open many gates but it turned out to be only TWO I found the flans and batteries quite hard to defeat.. they were quite large in number. But luckily all the “ally <30% = cure” gambits that everyone had helped in not dieing.

Although, the practically naked, flank punching Basch got KO’ed in the beginning and that was the first time in life I got to use… ‘Tuft of PHEONIX DOWN” ooh yeah! I only heard of it till now.. but finally got to use the thing

The only problem I had was during the opening of the last gate, when the power went down to 40% something and there were many skeletons, zombies running towards (makes no sense) Instead of wasting time and fighting everything I just Ran away.. rather FLED from the fights to safety. Which was the best decision IMO.

*The Second Boss Fight!

Late in the night… around 2 AM I came to the final boss fight.. I wasnt too sleepy, but it was apparent my brain was not at its best.. It took a LOT of time for me to BEAT the boss.. I succeeded to beat the boss, Queen MIMIC, in my First try itself.. but had to use 4 Phoenix Downs! That was too much I felt! also.. at the end there was only 1 alive.

So after beating the Boss.. I just shut the PS2 down, without saving, and left for bed.

*The Boss fight for the Second time!

This time I was ready, I knew how the Boss worked.. so I first sat for 5 minutes and adjusted all my Gambits accordingly. Now I went around beating the small mimic’s first, all the three were focusing on the Queen.

The whole boss fight was done in under 5 minutes! No Phoenix downs, no nothing.. the gambits helped me beat the thing flawlessly. was quite happy with my performance, felt 1337

The Great Eastersand Journey

*Finished in FIVE-TY minutes

Now I was left on the “Eastersand” Place and had to go back to Rabanaster. All those Orange Wolves were so easy to beat, they were dieing with just one shot from me and one from an Ally. So I took the liberty of killing EVERYONE of them, haha.. good for earning LPs and EXPs!

I then went to this Beach type place and there was this small village that thing had this “Teleporting stone” I saw that and I realized that I could just end the “huge journey” just now as I had 3 Teleport stones with me.

I used it and voila! *cutscene* However, I didnt feel I did the right thing.. it felt a bit like cheating.. also I thought that something interesting might happen if I walk and go via the “intended path”

So I saved in another file and then returned to the old teleport save stone and I took the advantage of my awesome party and traveled each and every small part of the Eastersand. I saw the Nalbina Fortress , Went through ALL the connecting paths, even t0 Giza plains

After exploring the whole Eastersand and NOT screwing around with the “friendly” dinosaur. I ended up reaching Rabanster in 50 minutes. This journey took me 10x longer than before.. BUT now I had LOTS of items gained a lot fo experience and had that inner peace feeling that I Explored EVERY corner possible

Hard Head Hunting

*Roaming and Talking..

When I was in Nalbina Fortress I saw the Hunting board and noticed the new hunt for “Thraxen” . When I returned to Rabanaster, instead of searching for Penelo I first went to the Tavern and talked to the person for the HUNT. Then I went and roamed all of the City SEARCHING for Penelo.. I even saw the whole Bazaar for the first time. I went to the Aerodrome and talked to each and everyone in there. All that was again about an HOUR or so… all that roaming and talking, I somehow do it like a bot.. no feelings that I am wasting time.

The Moogles with their teleporters and that dude asking me “Whats in it for them?” made me think the moogles have some kind of super secret plan where they steal all the brain data or get energy whenever someone teleports.. I mean, really What’s in it for them?

Where were we? yeah.. So, lastly, I went to Old man Creepy-face and followed his orders to the rebellion’s HQ and somehow, now I started TRUSTING Basch.. just because.. I dont know… because he said Sorry many times I guess.

Then I learnt what happened to Penelo and Now I had to go to the aerodrome to meet Balthier and life BURBURLand or whatever it was I thought it was a good time to finish the hunt because Westersand was just there right beside me.

*The Biiig Wolf

So I saved and went to westersand. this was the first time I entered the place so I got that Panning intro type thing, which reminds me of Zelda OOT. The Huge Wolf was there just beside me.. somehow I was the only one in the party (Basch and other were not being shown)”

But I easily managed to beat the thing.. I first cast a “Protect” on me and then a “Slow“on the huge wolf and the rest was a peace of cake. I was on top of the worrrld!

I had lots of monnies so I visited each and every shop and then went to the clan place and talked to the Clan leader and OMG he Showered Money and stuff at me. It was awesome.. one for beating each boss (even the FLANs were a boss? lol)

This big cock and its chicks!!!

*The Big COCK

I learnt of two new hunts realized one was in Burburland and the other was in Giza plains.. so decided I would do the giza plains one before I go to burburland. I went to Giza plains.. accepted the hunt and then saved and started to the North bank.

After getting the habit of killing all animals, due the eastersand journey, I killed everyone in the North bank expecting the cock to pop-up but it didnt. So, I went to the South bank and killed everything there too and when I returned.

I saw this huge Harvest moon type Cock running towards me and it had protect on it.. and before I knew it.. I WAS DEAD!! and then it asked me to “select party members” at this point I realised that I actually had to select the part members first to make them appear! (I was thinking they were not there because all were waiting at the aerodrome)

But soon.. GAME OVER! I was like I mean.. I was killing everything with ease and winning everything BUT died so easily with this cock.. I was not understanding AT ALL!

*The nth Encounter with Big Cocks

I then continued and went on trying again and again to kill the huge Cock and its progeny but even after 5 times of clearing north bank and then dieing I was NOT ABLE to beat the thing.. I dont get!

The thing is Immune to my spells, its really fast.. all chicks gang up on my party.. I cant run too far away either.

I did notice some of the chicks getting lowered in health sometimes though.. but NO IDEA. I was very disappointed and left the place totally demoralised.

Is there no way I can beat them??

I guess I will have to learn some new tricks or something.. or maybe they are weak when it rains? any tips?

Off to BurBurLand!

OMG thats an Indian Language!

All I know is that its Bursomething and its a SKY ISLAND! something like Skypea from One Piece? oooh yeah! As soon as I landed there.. I noticed someone say “Bhadra” it sounded very Indian to me.. and then later I talked to a guide and she said…

“SVAGATAM”

and then I was like “OMGOMGOMG that IS an indian language” Then I saw that soldiers were called “Sainkahs” which is the equivalent of soldiers in Telugu/kannada

*The Indian Language Comparator

Now I was frantically talking to people just so that I could get more Italicised words to observe and find out which Indian language they were using.

One kid says ‘Ambah and tatah” Amabah means “mother” but tatah means “Grand Father” either they made up their own mixutre of things or the kid was actually talking about his mom and grandpa being worried.

Also one lady said “kastam” which means “trouble”

Now the thing was I had to find out which language it actually was.. coz if it were only “sainik” it would be Hindi but its  “sainikah” so that means its either “Telugu” or “Kannada” ,Kastam also supports the aforementioned findings.

After seeing all this I just decided to turn the Ps2 off and sleep a happy sleep (it was 2 AM now anyways). The next day, the searching began.

My father knows a LOT of languages (Eng, french,Hindi,tel, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, marathi etc etc) so I got everything confirmed and filtered it down to Telugu or Kannada.

Telugu is my mother tongue so I felt a bit WOW seeing words from my language being used in a game that too something like FINAL FANTASY!!

I then talked to my Kannada speaking friend from karnataka and asked him the same questions.. I just had to check if “Bhadra” means something like “dude/pal/friend” because the game people were using it like that in the game.

But in kannada too.. just like in Telugu.. Bhadram is used when someone wants someone to “be careful”

Hence I clearly state here

“Obviously no Indian worked on this game”

anyhoo, Both me and my kannada friend were happy that our respective language was being used in the game! And with that I conclude this ER write-up.

E3 is coming and I guess everyone, like you.. is geared up for it! Have a nice day! Enjoy this song that has Bhadra and many other words that I heard in FF. One of my old time favourites. Listen the whole thing you will LOVE it i’m sure!

E3 2010 (June 14th – 17th) Live Broadcasts schedule can be found at the same links give below. The first one by MS starts on June 14th 10 AM PST, that’s 10:30 PM IST.

As all websites follow universal time preserved addressing for the E3 sites, all links still work and lead to the latest 2010 sites.

The Live Blogs will be updated with new links as they come.

UPDATE : Check out our Twlive Blog here for all E3 stuff! (No Refresh of page required )

June 1st- 4th 2009 Its just a few days from now!

WEastFellow's E3!

This year will be my 5th online E3, but this E3 is more pre planned than ever! I’ve got special Internet hooked up JUST for watching E3 live with no lag (unlike the last 4 years) among other things.

Just when I finished planning everything I thought why not give out all the details I gathered just so that it will help you, the gaming enthusiast, who is  sitting at home and planning to watch E3 live… VIRTUALLY!

Here I will list out places which will have Live coverage of the Pre-E3 Press conferences by the “Big Three”, also, I will list out some popular websites that you should check out to be keep track of all the E3 News overflow. (All site names Linked to their E3 sections for your convenience!)

The LIVE Video Coverage

*Gamespot

Gamespot's E3 Logo

Let me start off by mentioning the place that I’ve been visiting for the past 5 years for my Live E3 dosage. Gamespot might not be now, what it was about 2 years ago, but, it still has many people who are very experienced when it comes to E3 and proper management.

They are also the most experienced when it comes to doing E3 live broadcasts. Just a single look at their E3 page shows it. Everything is properly organized and you can filter things with easy clicks.

You can find the page for press confereces here.

Just bookmark that or set a reminder (they send you an email). They offer various qualities of streaming, because of which I, with my 256k internet was also able to enjoy a good E3 Live experience.

After the Main Press conferences are over, Gamespot has its own booth at the LA Convention center where they host live shows with users having the option to comment, live, and ask questions to the people being interviewed.

The schedule can be found here.

All you need is a free membership to access the streams. The only drawback is that sometimes the streams are like  a minute late. (comparing tweets to videos :P  There’s no saying till you actually see it though. This years might be on time!

*IGN

IGN's E3 logo (cropped)

Then comes IGN. The other BIG gaming site thats been in the business for a similar length. They too provide all the live streams for free, to their members. The thing with IGN is that I never liked their interface. Their design always gives me that, suffocating feeling. Also, their navigation is so serpentine that it will take you quite a few clicks to get where you want. Nevertheless, they deliver the goods, and watching E3 Live is what we want

You can find their E3 page here.

There is no exclusive page that you can keep track of , for the conferences, so be ready to go there and click!

*Gametrailers

GameTrailer's E3

From being “that site where you get HD trailer downloads for FREE!” (with resume support ) The site has now become one of the most active gamer communities on the internet. The site is quite young compared to others. But is A1 when it comes to providing great video service. They too dont have a specific page for the conferences so

Keep track of their E3 page for the link to the Live Coverage!

*G4Tv

G4TV's E3 Logo

The TV Channel for gamers! Well, I never got to see anything from it.. not being in the US and all.. but I am pretty sure they are a very experienced bunch of people, their site promises “22hours of live coverage”.It has Live stage Demos, Interviews just like all the others, but it will also stream the Record attempt by Steve Wiebe for Donkey Kong High score! That should be interesting to watch They will also have the fancy user controllable cameras  that Gamespot (and IGN?) have had before.

You can find their E3 Page here

The LIVE Blogs

There are many famous blog sites that have a live blog posted at their place when the conferences go on. The way how blogs work do not allow us to know of the link for the posts, so best we can do is look at their homepage which will obviously have the live blog post posted on top when its actually happening.

2010

• Kotaku – MS ,
• Joystiq – MS ,
• Giantbomb – MS ,

2009

• Kotaku – MS , EA , Ubi , Ninty , Sony
  
• Giantbomb – MS , EA , Ubi , Ninty , Sony
• Joystiq – MS , EA , Ubi , Ninty , Sony
  

( For your convenience,I will link the names their live blog post, as soon as they’re up)

EDIT: All major Live blogs are done.. wont be updating any more.. just keep track of whats happening now using the various links to sites provided here

are the “big three” when it comes to online blog sites.. they always have their live blog posts going on. Not only for the Press conferences but also for the small keynotes and meetings and other stuff that happen during the three days of E3.

Hey Listen!

The advantage here is that you will get the updates AS FAST AS possible and there is LOW BANDWIDTH requirement Always keep atleast one live blog open alongside your video feed to not miss anything!

The TWEETS

Last year was very different from all the other years, a new form for information passage had been widely accepted, namely twitter. I myself was tweeting everything as I saw the live conferences and blogs the last time. But thats not all! Not every editor, news person out there is going to be live blogging. Many of them.. just sit and tweet!

Well, now for your twitter dosage from game journalists, you can follow this list

Video Game JOURNALISM!

From what I saw last year here are a few you should be following, come E3 time, to get all the news, even on the go!

• @leighalexander
• @jeffgerstmann
• @taswell

I know there are many more on there at twitter, but last year, they were the ones that were tweeting something or the other about every noticeable thing that was happening at the confereces

I think @ncroal, @TraceyJohn and @exxy should also be tweeting interesting stuff during the conferences.

The Bloggers/Pressers

After the live conferences are over, you can expect an overload of information pouring out of various game blogsites. Most of them will be what you saw in the conferences, ofcourse, till the ACTUAL E3 starts. Which is after all the three finish their conferences. (June 2)

All things like neatly organised videos and news can be found in the sites mentioned above. But there are many other great news portals out there each reporting the news you want, with their unique flavour.

Be sure to check out

• Giantbomb.comThey are personal favourite when it comes to video features ( they should be yours too! ) Expect crazy videos at the end of each day and fun reports al-throughout. They even have BOMBCASTS (podcasts) everyday too. You already know most of what they’ll talk. But just hearing them say is worth it Another plus is that they always get many special guests in their shows, so its good to have a variety of people talking.
• 1up.comSimilar to Gamespot, its not what it was. But still, expect to find good coverage from them during the 3 days. The link above leads to their E3 section.
• Kotaku.comThe Kotaku towers.. the single place where you are sure to get EVERYTHING. They donot hesitate when it comes to posting NEWS (Linked to E3 section)
• Joystiq.comThey have their fanboy sections where they have dedicated people covering everything you need for your favourite platform. A simple tag search for these sites will be great to filter news to your liking
• Destructoid.comThe commentary and reporting done by the people here at destructoid (and its community)  is something you will want to keep a track of. Be sure to check the place out too!

Mii Too!

Ofcourse, where would I be without plugging myself here in the post somewhere I will obviously be keeping track of everything thats going on. I will be posting everything I see on my twitter feed( @Reetesh) which you can keep track of if you dont mind getting your timeline filled with your post.

Check out our Twlive Blog here (No refresh required just sit and stare )

*Finally

Ofcourse, there might be many other places giving live feeds and live blogging, which might also be quite respectable. The ones I mentioned here are what I feel are more than enough for a person to keep track of the news, if you want to mention something, be free to keep it in the comments :

Also remember! #e3 is the  official tag for all things E3 at twitter, not E309.

First let me tell you the reason for my poorly drawn images I was actually looking for some wallapers and screens so that I could use them in the blog posts so that things would be more colourful and interesting for people to read, but rather than finding correct images, I found a lot of.. SPOILERs. So I decided that rather than using my PS skills I would use my (long forgotten) drawing skills and try and make the things interesting. Hope these things dont have a negative effect Thats the best I can do right now

*Lets get it started!

I started the game and there was this like HEAVENLY harp music and pegions flying.. first time I saw pegions like that in a non John Woo thing.. or did he some hand in this? I dont know, it wasnt a buildup for a fight so I guess not   After seeing the nice intro I started the game and it started with another.. cutscene! Good thing I am a MGS type of person.. these things are no problem for me and I acutally like cutscenes building up the story.

War.. has not changed!

After all the Happiness to sadness thing and with the young dude dieing (the first scene where the couple is parading itself implied that someone is going to die ) there was now a text based narrated thing going on.

I could make no sense at first, “Dalmasca” “Archadia” “Rabanester” etc etc.. so many names and everything was greek and latin (literally too I guess ). After readign through the thing slowly and carefully I was read the last line “The Lady killed herself” I was like “Whaaaa?!?” I didnt see that coming.. I never saw such a character (beautiful young female character) commit suicide before.. its usually “She suffered torcher after the death” etc etc and she is like this really sad character… well, I guess they’ve done that in one of those other 11 FFs

*The Sword slashing begins!

Basch: “How old are you boy?”
Reks:  “Seventeen Sir”

Well, that was pretty young for someone fighting a war, and the way Basch says “Huh… so YOUNG” felt kinda creepy

This part turned out to be a tutorial level, I didnt quite get the system at first, because I was under the impression that it is turn based type and not live action type.. but it seems it added some movement freedom to the combat.

I dont get it though.. I mean, when I know someone is “readying an attack” I try to run away but even from a long distance, something like “ram” and other which dont actually CONNECT , damage me. I wonder whats the use of allowing me to run around when I am going to get hit anyways. Can someone clarify? Does it reduce the HP taken out when we are far away?

Also, the character randomly blocks the attack, there is no technique to it, not like Mario RPG style button timing.(btw my bro played that not me ) From my observations I am able to tell that it only blocks if the other attacks when your attack meter is full? Not sure though.

*The REAL Story beings

In a somewhat KH2 way (but not 6hours long) the thing ended with it being nothing but a training level. Some new characters were introduced. Obviously VAAN is the hero of the story (now he is also 17! I guess 17 is the new 18 or something), there are a bunch of other kids also introduced, most of them with very confusing voice and names which dont tell if its a he or a she.

Also, the character is not “Teenage EMO Dude with a huge sword” I was like So.. all those people in the comments(of various news blogs)  actually EXXAGERATE the fact when they show hate on something? Wow!

I spent most of the time in the first 2hours just talking to all those NPCs. I have this crazy stupid habit of tallking to EACH and EVERYBODY I can talk to and exhausting all dialogue options ,if they exist. Thats why most of the time was just randomly walking around talking to people, giving a KID 1 gil for some random info (who I guess, if the story spans N years will turn out to have some important role in some not so important part of the game)

Then I get out of the place to do some Rogue tomato hunting (reference to some other FF?) I see that I FORGOT to talk to somedude that actually mattered! There was this person asking me someone from the inside gave me something.. but I was like Whaaaa??

All this talking and one small miss to make it all.. worthless I cant go back or anything either, as the first save was after coming out, and even if I started the game again, I would take care that I talk to EVERYONE, because theres a small thing inside me that tells “Something super secret will happen if you talk to everyone!”

So, I just left it like that and then went on with my business.

*The Parade and Underground

A nice turn of events when that Vayne dude talked like an awesome person, I too was surprised hearing it.. but how Penelo was talking really made me feel how much hatred the kids have in their head.

So many of the questions all the kids were asking in the underground location felt so obvious to me but they were going on thinking in the negative direction.. well, I guess thats a good representation of war orphans.

I spent another two or so hours just roaming around and talking to everyone I found and then purposefully NOT going to the old dudes house so that I could see and find a secret before leaving that will help me maybe.

Nope.. there was none.. none that I remember.. but one thing is for sure.. They’ve got a lot of “Tresure” just lying around everywhere in the underground location. Wonder how no one before me even thought of opening those baskets

The old dude was NOT what I thought he would look like..I thought he would be a cuddly…. rotund, talking creature or something (seeing that he is a hit among kids) but he turned out to some really creepy old dude, with creepy expressions and spoken in YODISH (the language of YODAH)

He told me to go throught South Gate, but soemone told me to get the map from the Clan Moogle in central plaza. So I searched for the nearest staris, went to the southern plaza, found the dude and took the map.. and then went back down the stairs and THEN took the south gate.. only to realize IT’S A FRIGGIN SHORTCUT!!

Ahh.. when will I learn

*This is NOT MGS!

There was this part where I had to sneak past guard and holla at them so that I can do this small puzzle thing.. I spent around 15 minutes before even trying to holla at them, thinking that I would get a game over if something was done wrong and had to start all over again.

I felt like being in MGS again and was trying to be as careful as possible.. but WOW, the guards are so stupid that some of them dont even move if I am two feet away from them and shout like a madman I dont know how those people didnt see me running around like a 9 year old, shouting at guards all the while making this really crazy tappity tap sound when I walk (crazy armours!)

I will still play like this though.. dont know when it will turn into MGS and have to be extra careful..

*GAMBIT!! (Cards not included)

Yes he's cool!

Fast forward a bit and then I meet one of the awesomest character I’ve seen in recent times! its BALTHIER! His dialogues and voice are just awesome.. it makes you play with a relaxed mind when he is ar0und (same effects that changing from Nero to Dante has in DMC4)

Oh, and then I was introduced to the Gambit system, which I felt was really nice and was very detailed! Those stupid people even added a dimension of difficulty by making those ACTIONS as collectibles.. talking about “breaking the fourth wall“. The game does a lot of it actually. “Dont forget to press X to do that!”  “We will keep attacking unless you say otherwise!” lol.

The best thing I learnt in my 80 hours of Kingdom hearts experience is that “Curaga Aeraga combo is the answer to life” I practically NEVER died in the game just because I had shortcuts for them. Similarly, the first thing I did was give that Rabbit Lady (Fran?) the first priority action to “cure <70%” and “attack leader target” She was basically running around curing everyone  and shooting with her almost useless bow and arrow when everyone was fine (When her MP was low, I would cure anyone thats critical, manually, then her MP comes back.. its like… MAGIC!)

This came in really hany, because I completed the whole dungeon thing, till the FireHorse thing without using a single potion! (or an elixir for magic or any item as a matter of fact, other than eye drops (that I got for free ))

The License Points thing is also pretty good, I went out to the easterland and killed lots of cactus just so that I could have LP to use cure and a better sword.. which came in VERY VERY handy. Talk about being prepared I feel  like I’ve already done this

Also, the Gambit system made me say to myself

“This is going from a turn based thing to something like a dungeon crawler with some added features”

Gameplay wise, I dont see much difference between this japanese RPG and the Western RPGs/ Dungeon crawlers.. although I am VERY thankful  that it doesnt have some nonsense like “item carrying limit” and other things  that… Fallout 3 has. (just played a few hours of that thing) I mean if you want to be cool and all by saying “I limit things because its REALISTIC” first see that you are being quite unrealistic with me having to carry these many guns, armour the size of a machine and all this huge amount of monnies and still be a walking talking man. Stupid hypocrytics xP But yeah, I do get how some people like being realistic atleast to SOME degree rather than no degree (OMGz How can you carry more than 2 guns?! thats so unrealisticz)

*Pirates! Bounty Hunters? JUDGES?…. ONE PIECE?

I literally pooped in my pants seeing all these similarities to One piece in the thing.. I mean first of all.. I LOVE pirates (MI, one piece and what not) and seeing that this game just doesnt use pirates as a throw off, really got me excited. I mean it has the same structure as one piece!

You’ve got your Pirates, the Marines (Imperials), the Shichibukai/high order marines (Judges?), the Bounty hunters and everything! I didnt get to see anything more though.. I wonder how the main conflict of Pirates and Imperials is handled… Hope its as exciting and deep as One piece is! (You dont know it if you thinks its only superficial!)

Also, this thing has Archadia and that other place which are fighting for supremacy.. so this is going have more complications in it.. rather than just Marines and Pirates. Also, it feels a bit like “Nausicca and the Valley of the Wind” you know.. with the “A peaceful nation trapped between two waring super powers”

Ah..thats a lot of expectations! I wonder how this turns out.

Whats the "one piece" for the pirates in FF12 I wonder..

End of.. ENTRY 1!

Phew! That was really something eh? the word count says its crossed 2000.. I wonder how huge it actually is when you read it.. Haha…I told you have this habit of writing without knowing how huge things are… well I wonder if anyone actually read the whole thing.. or maybe skims through it If  try harder, maybe I can throw in a few easter eggs in between, in the next entry.

Anywhooo… What kinda kept echoing in my mind were the lines Kratos spoke during the trailer, yeah I know he doesn’t speak much but that’s kinda Kratos thing when he speaks you listen cause its probably a life or death deal involved in whatever 30 seconds speech he decides to give out; he also almost whispers them, you know why? “To make you listen”. So I’m gonna try to brake it down as I see things going on with K’s words and what it could mean to the future of the game and why I think he could try to pull a One Winged Angel trick in this final instalment as this blog goes along.

“DEATH… IS IN MY BLOOD”

Kratos just before dropping some fools

Obviously this is no new statement for a badass anti-hero like  K, but this is usually a statement brought on by someone who, in many cases, has had all of those close to him die because of actions directly linked to them. I’m guessing being someone of Kratos’ life experience is not such a good thing, you know with the wanting power and selling your soul to the thing closest to the devil in Greek mythology, being betrayed and murdered multiple times (Kratos might literally be referring to the murder in the “Death” statement), etc.

Of course, there are people unaware of Kratos’ history, as to why he thinks death flows within him, as well as the innocent people caught in the line of fire of Kratos’ personal vendetta… So, here is a small list of people closest to Kratos, who were murdered or basically wiped-off the face off the land because of their connection to the fallen God:

• His Wife and Daughter. These two people were special enough to subdue, with just kindness, and love a very angry and power hungry guy. Then some evil jerk tricks Kratos into killing them with his own hands in a blind and murderous rage… I think you can start seeing where Kratos is coming from. I mean Calliope (daughter) must have been very very very special to Kratos to have him sit under a tree, carve a wooden flute and hear her play it in the middle of an open field! You know, Kratos, he is a very hard dude to get to stay still (not even several deaths could do the trick ).

Why daddy?! Why?!

• Athena. Yes, she rolls with the Olympus entourage and yes, she kinda slipped the old “Well, technically I said…” trick on Kratos (lame )… but you forget that she was doing it on orders of Zeus and because of his twisted father-son issue with Kratos and actually wanted better for Kratos before her death by trying to free him from that sad destiny. She was also kinda like Kratos’ mentor and sponsor, she kept him in line, advised him, recommended him for the open God of War job position, took compassion of him even after he slaughtered her villages, saved his life twice, she was the only god to try to change Kratos’ power hungry ways after he became a god and gave a good word of him to some gods (maybe to persuade them to take away the nightmares after finishing his services and rightfully compensating him).
  

Dude, I like war as much as the next god, but your taking it too far.

I think those few points above would kinda get her on Kratos’ goodside. So it must have really hurt to put a huge sword through her and see how see gave her life to prevent him from killing his new found true enemy.

• The people and kingdom of Sparta. Well I think this could be a bit more ambiguous point to defend Kratos’ statement with, but lets remember that there was a time, before he became the lone wolf we all know and love, where he bled and fought for this kingdom. His family was from there, maybe some friends and towards the non official end of his reign as God of War the people of Sparta fought in his honour and glory. He was a good god to them by leading them to victory in battle and taking care of them as a good ruler would do for his people. So this an O.G.-street rule back in the days of Zeus: “You take something from me and you can be damn sure I’m taking something from you”. I mean we all saw his reaction when the gods/The Fates tricked him (again!) by making him kill the last survivor of Sparta who was looking for a way to apeace Zeus after his genocidal spree on the kingdom and it’s people just for being close to Kratos.

I think these 3 points could kinda make me see why Kratos is pissed and why he would declare such a bold statement as to link himself so deeply to death itself.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot, I still gotta kick dad's ass.

Another thing that came to my mind when I heard Kratos making his statement is how basically he could be at the end of his rope. Not that he could kill himself as in the first game but I could see him going on very, almost wanting it, careless/suicidal path. Point in case, in the trailer he didn’t even try to fight off the undead soldiers but just went towards them and even let them pile up on him… which I guess he got out of because his third statement woke him up to remember why he has gotten this far. He now basically doesn’t even think twice, he will just charge toward his enemies no matter how big or small, strong or weak, a huge centaur or zombie soldier they could be.

With death in his blood (to paraphrase) he could also be trying to act as an agent of Death… something like the Grim Reaper but the only Grim Reaper capable of taking down the gods definitively because, I’m guessing, normal death couldn’t take down immortals and around that mythology the action of death was ruled by another god (Thanatos) who abided by Olympus’ rules.

So, I´m guessing just his [Kratos] mere presence will soon signify the end of existence for Zeus and his allies.

What I’ll do here is, point out what all I didn’t like about the thing, and try to think of a reason WHY it was put in such a way.. i.e how the devs possibly justified their decision

So lets get to the dark side!

The Class system!

No choices till you do the other things you dont want to.

First thing you’ll hear about Killzone2 MP is that its “Class based” well.. class based is when the player is allowed to choose which type of weapons to use during the matches.

BUT, in the beginning,  the game limits the weapon to only the Assault rifles. At first, I was thinking that it was because of the server side settings, but later found out that it was because everything else is “locked” till you level up.

You don’t get a new weapon ability even till the 3rd rank, and the sniper is unlocked when the highest rank is achieved. Its quite absurd actually, if you’re supposed to have a class based gameplay, why not allow the player to choose the class from the beginning itself?

*How it should have been

Once the basic classes are chosen, the levelling up of character should unlock more powerful weapons of the same class, or just allow access to other general weapons and abilities. If the game was of that kind, then everything would have been lot better.

Right now..a person like me, who is itching to get his hands on the rifles, will not get the hands on the weapon till many hours of gameplay. There’s a good chance, that I, after playing for so long with only the assault rifle, will find it to be the best choice. Which will be the case with many other people too.

*Why did they choose this?

Having invested so much on the MP experience, I was wondering why they made this different choice.. the only reason could be that they thought its better to let the player progressively experience every class as he reaches the top rank, and then choose his/her own path. As opposed to having the player choose his/her own path from the beginning itself.

That reason is.. quite good I think, but I think most of the players now a days already know what kind of player they are, assist, attack, defend etc.. so why make them all go through the same thing again? The part with sniper being the last rank is quite sad.. because only a few will want to be a sniper and they have to rank up, using weapons which they dont have fun with.

If only the rankings had nothing to do with classes..

No Assist points!

No points for assisting men

Another big thing that you notice while playing the game is that.. there’s no assist point in the game! Assist points are those points that a player gets if s/he does a good amount of damage to someone else’s kill. Its not the question of kill stealing, many people are assist type who move around behind people and give backup.. most of the times they spot the enemy first and shoot him so that the one in front doesn’t get hurt, and the one in front kills the wounded enemy.

Its a good tactic used by many when in a good team.. also theres the sniper which people just call “Assist class”.

*So, what’s the problem?

Well, not only does the game requires you to reach a high level to first get access to weapons like rifles and snipers, but then you’re ranking up is slowed down, IF you’re a rifle/sniper user, because of the fact that there is no assist points. Once again.. degrading the whole gameplay experience, alienating a huge piece of player pie.

*Why did they choose this?

Most probably they couldn’t find a way to properly decide when to give an assist and when to not.. or maybe the devs thought that people should be rewarded in non uniform ways.. no matter how you look at this.. it feels like its because of their laziness.

Take Cover!

One of the best things about the Single player campaign of KZ2 was its really nice and unique cover system. I don’t think any other FPS ever implemented the cover system in such an intuitive way. If you want to play with thought, then cover comes into play very much.

But oh noes! The cover mechanics are totally disabled in the multiplayer modes. I couldn’t think WHY one would remove such a good part of the game.. the only reason that could justify this decision was that..

Maybe they thought it’ll allow people to perform some weird wall sticking or other things to glitch and cheat.  Don’t think they would have removed the Cover Mechanism.. just coz, that would be lame.

Super Low ammo, No packs

When you start a match, with the assault rifles, you’re given only 64 bullets for what people usually tend to use like a machine gun. The game has no concept of ammo packs and such, therefore, making the player to learn how to frugally use ammo. You can run and pickup ammo from the downed players however. The problem arrives only during stand-offs and last man each team type situations. You’ll have to think a lot and only then shoot, and if you’ve lived for a longer time then you’ll have to keep moving in search of others dead bodies for ammo.

On Second thought, if you think hard enough.. it feels like this decision was made so that many situations can be created where the tension is high.  Not only will it teach people to use ammo properly, but it will also make the player want to move from one location to another, because staying in one location and shooting will deplete the ammo and then you cant do anything but move out of there in search for more ammo.

What’s my Ping?

I dont understand why many console games just don’t show ping while selecting server? With many of the servers being player created ones.. ping should be an important factor for deciding which match to join.. BUT they don’t show it.. in any form.. not even those traffic light type signals.

I mean, Warhawk has a really neat match selection area, where it shows and allows us to sort things by ping.  I don’t know if there’s an internal mechanism which auto sorts everything by ping or whatever. It just isn’t nice to not show the ping while selecting matches!

The other Stuff

Halt, Who goes there?

There are some more smaller things that bother me a lot.. like that fact that you die too easily in CQC conditions, You need to press X to respawn, and then in the menu that comes after that, pressing X takes you out, but pressing O re spawns you.. you if you press X twice (of which there are LOTS of chances) then you will be taken to the quit option.. and if you’re really in the heat of the battle.. you will immediately press “Oh no, its O” and then quit the match.

A very irritating irritation indeed!

All in all.. the game is quite enjoyable, but its sad to see that many easy to do things were taken out of the game and many features are not implemented well.. Its hard to think that its been under 5years of development, and still have such simple problems. Oh well.. I guess after a few months, when EVERYONE is top level.. that’s when the real games start, because that’s when all will be free to choose their own class of interest and play how they like.

The single player was short and sweet.. it had its WoW and pft moments. After playing trough it, I was left with greater expectations for the MP. The selection of weapons available in the game was pretty good. It had a good single shot rifle,something that many games lack now a days, and a sniper rifle that actually depended on the stability of the player’s hands. With me being a huge single shot- head shot guy, this was good news, as there have been very few games with rifling MP matches.

Let the Games begin!

Finally the servers were made live, and as soon as I got the time, I sat and started playing the MP. After the first day of playing, “Sinusoidal” was the only word that I could think of,  It had some really great features (like Sin0 – Sin90) then had things that basically killed the joy of the MP(Sin90 – Sin180). Well, enough of the geek chatter,  let us first see what the good things were.

*Seamless structure

The most interesting part about the killzone2′s multiplayer (warzone) is the seamless way in which modes change from one to another. Instead of the traditional “one match one type”, it has a “One match, many rounds, each of different type”  approach. The varied match types it provides, make the whole experience really enjoyable and meaningful.

*Announcements

The first thing you notice as soon as you join a match is a authoritative voice that shouts at you and tells you what you have to do in the present round. Every mode has a specific voice over from the commander, unique for each of the two factions. This complements the structure of the matches very well, as you are told what is to be done, rather than being given the name of the mode. There is a different comment/compliment from the commander at the end of every round, which adds a lot to the immersion factor.

*InterComm.

The game allows for max 32 player to play simultaneously in a match. Immediately, this brings up the question of “nonsense jibber jabber” and other common irritations, but the game has a neat “squad” feature which is pretty easy to use. Anyone above the 2nd rank can start their own squad, people in a single squad have their own channel for chat, so.. if you have a lot of people who are to be muted.. rather than taking any troubles, just join one of the proper squads in the match on create your own. A nice workaround.

The Squad feature adds a lot more functionality as it allows you to monitor your team-mates’ location and statistics. In addition to it, the squad members will spawn just beside the squad leader!

Best of all, I, with my 256k connection, was able to get head shots using Assualt rifles! Which is quite fascinating because there has always been a considerable lag in MP games when the action gets serious. Not in this game.

*Side dishes

There are many other small features in the game which are pretty good, like the map voting feature at the end which is, once again, pretty seamless and very easy to use. Joining friends’ matches is pretty easy too.

These features are available elsewhere too, but the way how everything is nicely integrated makes it all a good experience. This is a small lowdown of the good things in the multiplayer, then comes the disappointing stuff. We’ll have a look at those in the coming post.