God of War: Ascension PS3 Demo Review 3/10

    Even as a fan of the God of War series (the trilogy at least), I wasn’t terribly excited about this prequel; God of War: Ascension. Having played the demo, I am still not terribly excited about it. Here’s why.

Right off the bat this demo has me scratching my head. This demo was the first that I’ve ever seen that was “sponsored”. You start up the demo and you are first shown a commercial for The History Channel’s new show Vikings. Which beyond the fact that it’s very odd that a cable TV show is sponsoring a video game demo, Vikings is completely unrelated to God of War in general. I mean, come on, the Greek empire never even spread to the lands the Vikings called home. So after the sales pitch the actual game demo doesn’t even begin! You must choose to play it from the many options on the main menu including trailers for Vikings and God of War and “informative” videos about the real vikings and Norse mythology. And in History Channel tradition, these videos were pretty historically inaccurate at best. Putting that aside, it is still very strange to me to see a triple-A game such as God of War whoring itself out like this.

Wait, what? Also, Skyrim logo much?

The demo itself was fun enough once I finally got to it. The demo takes place with Kratos in the “Prison of the Damned” where the Furies themselves keep those who have broken oaths with the Gods. And in God of War tradition, Kratos immediately sets to eviscerating his way out of that damned place. On the plus side this is definitely a God of War game. On the other hand I could not tell this God of War apart from the last one. Like all the other entries in the series you’ve got to slog through a few waves of enemies before you get to the colossal boss of the level. You get to see a few new enemies though such as a small scarab-like bug that attacks in swarms. But later you see these bugs attach themselves headcrab-style to Kratos’ fellow prisoners and transform them into creatures basically identical to the jackal-looking enemies from the other entries. From this point on you see nothing new or exciting if you are at all familiar with the franchise. And to top it all off, the demo ends after an entirely too lengthy battle with one hand of the great creature when another comes and crushes Kratos into a wall. Yes, thats another hand, not a second hand, because it has 6 I think. I shudder to think how many times we’ll have to fight this bastard. And thats it. Roll credits. (There are no credits...) This kind of anticlimactic ending would be one thing if we were unsure of the character’s future in the series, but in a prequel? Like I said: thats it? 

He’s Kratos! God of Been-there-done that...

And then, I hope you watched all the pre-demo videos you wanted first because you’ll have to quit the demo and restart it if you want to get back to that initial menu. 

All in all I give this demo a 3/10. That’s a resounding: meh... This demo doesn’t offer anything new for fans of the series, nothing that I could see that would hook a newcomer, and it was all brought to you by The History Channel! The one new thing they added, multiplayer, is not even present in this demo. After playing the demo, I will not be buying the game at release and I probably won’t buy it for more than $30 pending how well it is reviewed. So here’s just one thoroughly unimpressive demo.  Yay? No, I think not.

- Skye, Resident God of War Expert

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus PS3 Demo Review 1/10

Street cred.

I love card games. Correction. I love card games that involve sweet looking monsters/characters. I also enjoy traditional card games like Euchre, Spades, and Poker, but never really got into them beyond a social thing.  Now let me get more specific. Over the years I’ve enjoyed playing these Trading Card Games (TCG’s): Pokémon, Digimon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh!. If I would’ve had access to friends that wanted to try Naruto or Dot Hack, then chances are I would have loved those as well. There’s just something about collecting rare cards and putting them together in a unique way. I used to think I loved playing TCG’s because of the competitive nature, and sure, that was one reason. However, I think the main reason I’ve always loved TCG’s is because it enables artistic expression. As you build your deck, you get to create! The rules are your boundary, and it’s up to you to figure out how to create something that can win. How you go about winning is completely up to you.

As soon as I saw the years listed, my Spider-Sense started tingling!

    You would think that the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus Demo and game would be a shoo-in for me. Sadly, that’s not the case. This demo is one of the most basic demos I’ve ever played. Literally the only redeemable factor for this demo is that you can try the card game from the comfort and convenience of your home.

XrossMediaBar. Oh, is that how you spell it? Stupid. Fucking. Name.

    I’m going to start off by talking about a problem that’s exclusive to the PS3 version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus. On PS3, when you scroll through the demos or games you’ve downloaded on your XrossMediaBar, sometimes when you stop on a game icon, it will change your background to some graphic that represents the game you’re about to play. I like this. It’s very unique and most of the time it adds a nice touch right before you select it. On the other hand, there’s games like the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus Demo. When you move the cursor over this game, you’re immediately hit with a hyper electronic instrumental that takes your XrossMediaBar experience from 1-17 even with the volume turned down. I haven’t even selected the game yet and already it’s trying to pump me full of adrenaline. Not to mention I’m trying to play at night and people are sleeping. Thanks for the surprise Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus. And fuck you too.

    That takes me to the atrocious audio in the game. The only good thing about the audio for the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus Demo is that you can mute it and put on something else without effecting your gameplay experience. The only music present in the demo were obnoxious instrumentals. There is no voice over. I turned the volume way down and listened to the CheapAssGamer Podcast while playing through the single player.

    The demo, limited as it is, arguably does what it’s supposed to do very well! It is a great simulation of playing the actual card game. Gone are the days of games with Yu-Gi-Oh! in the title that obviously didn’t understand all the rules and decided to fill the holes with bad ideas (I’m looking at you Duelist of the Roses). In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus you’re given the actual card game with access to over 23,000 cards, though the demo limits you to a 40 card deck. Duels play out just as if you were playing the TCG. Of course, you’re losing the social interaction and everything that comes with playing a person in real life with your real cards, but you’re gaining the comfort and ease of playing any time you want at the click of a button.

    In the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus Demo you start out with a basic deck, and by basic, I mean it sucks. I’m an above average TCG player, and I was having trouble winning 50% of my matches. A couple of times I lost due to a misunderstanding or wrong button press, but generally it was because I just didn’t have a good enough deck. In the demo you are rewarded even if you lose, but Konami did a pretty terrible job with balancing the difficulty level. After playing two tournaments, I could tell which opponents the developers never wanted me to beat and which ones they did. If I’m playing a balanced TCG and I have decent cards, I should never feel as if I’m automatically going to lose, and that’s how I felt. This goes tenfold in a video game. This goes one-hundredfold for a demo trying to convince me to buy the full game after I’m done.

    I have no idea why Konami can’t make a Yu-Gi-Oh! game with a cool story mode and cast of characters. If you watch the anime, it’s quite entertaining! I believe it was originally intended to be an add-on to the TCG experience, but the anime for the most part can stand on it’s own. It wouldn’t be hard to just pull specific segments out of the anime or create a generic story about how your character is playing the TCG in his own neighborhood! Instead, it’s obvious Konami wanted to cash this Yu-Gi-Oh! game in because, among other problems, the story in the demo is soulless. In the demo, the single player attraction is nothing more than a three round tournament with side characters. Even the dialogue that happens in between matches means nothing. Some of the text I read could have been put between rounds of any competitive game and still made sense. They didn’t try at all.

Am I being too harsh?

    The graphics are about the same. They’re uninspired and seem to only be there to do the trick. They don’t move. All you see is a slideshow of anime stills. The graphics during the duels could only be called functional. You don’t get to see your opponent. There are no special graphics or cutscenes for attacks or special summons. You’re opponent doesn’t even talk during the match. Worst of all, what I’m about to tell you next may cause me to punch those who developed this game if we ever cross paths. While I was playing I lagged. This is the most technically unimpressive game I’ve played in a while and it lagged. Why?

Yeah... this got me excited for what’s to come.

    Let me now briefly mention the tutorial. They took the rulebook and walked you through it.

    The Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus PS3 Demo receives a 1/10. I obviously had very high hopes for this game. Looking back, I don’t know why. I’ve almost always been let down by TCG video games in the past, especially when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh!. This demo follows that trend and is only worth playing if you’re seriously thinking about purchasing it or you’re wanting to learn how to play. It’s the same Yu-Gi-Oh! game we’ve been playing minus the heart of the cards.
    I would never buy this game. If Konami gave me this game for free I still wouldn’t play it.

- lvl 99