Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον AlucarD

This game is like the original GTA on drugs with a terrific soundtrack and Retro feel. A must play for PC gamers !

Great return to classic survival horror with a twist of Silent Hill thrown into it. This is a great game and as a longtime Resident Evil fan I really appreciate Shinji Mikamis The Evil Within as he pays a lot of homage not only to the Resident Evil series but also to a lot of cult horror movies like Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Thing.

The gameplay is similar to the one of Resident Evil 4 and you will feel right at home when you are familiar with that game. This is by far not an easy game and I believe a lot of people will struggle with some chapters on higher difficulties, nevertheless if you are a true survival horror fan or Resident Evil fan you probably should give this title a try.

Be aware that the PC version has some high system requirements and that you will need a decent quad core CPU and a decent 2-4 GB V-Ram graphics card to fully enjoy the PC version. It had some severe crashes on launch but they were removed with a recent patch.

This game is not for everyone but personally its up there as game of the year 2014 at least in my humble opinion.

Incredible fun !

This is one of the best shoot em ups ever created ! It even puts the Contra series to shame. The Sprite work is incredible and some of the best I ever saw in a side scroller, this is a port from the arcade version of Metal Slug 3 and unleast you ain't playing in Freeplay mode, using unlimited continues, get ready to die A LOT ! Buy this game and play it with a friend, I promise it will keep you glued till the end, true masterpiece in sidecrolling arcade shooters 10/10

Story:

As we are dealing with an arcade space shooter here there isn't much story implied in these kind of games but anyway I think Ikarugas background story is actually pretty good for a mere shooter. Basically the plot goes like this... The world was taken over by a powerful organization under the control of Hourai Tenrou a man who found an artifact on the small island nation of Hourai, the "Ubusunagami Okinokai" also known as the "Power of the Gods", buried deep under the earth. After acquiring this ultimate source of power, Hourai Tenrou decided to take over the world by waging war against the ones who would oppose, little by little the world was devoured by the power of gods and so mankind decided to build an resistance to counterfeit Tenrous army. You play as a guy called Shinra, a member of the freedom force who is shoot down with his plane after an excessive battle with the Tenrou forces, however Shinra survives the incident and crashes with his plane on a remote island called Ikaruga. The townspeople of Ikaruga save Shinra and nurse him back to life, after that the towns eldest hands him over their most powerful and advanced space craft called "the Ikaruga". So Shinra once again sets off to settle the score with Tenrous space armada and of course to save the world. 8/10

Gameplay:

Ikaruga is a 3D vertical space-shooter so you control your ship from one stage to another by pulling of very difficult and frenzy maneuvers. Your ship is equipped with a laser blaster as well as a missile launch device and whats the most important thing about Ikaruga is, its unique polarization system, means every enemy force you encounter will either be white or black. You can switch your ships appearance instantly by pressing the right trigger and this will turn your ship from black to white and reverse allowing you to absorb the enemies bullets to power up your missile attacks. Overall the gameplay is very decent and awesome even though most of the people wont like the switching between black and white, I thought it was a very good idea and supports the ideal this game is based on 9/10

Controls:

The controls work like a charm for this game, they are very simple and easy to learn but trust me it takes a hell of a time to master your maneuvering and switching between black/white skills. You can use your directional pad to move your spaceship freely and by pressing two buttons you can either fire your laser blaster or commence your missile attack and of course you can switch between black or white polarization by pressing your gamepads trigger. And thats it, you wont have to bother too much with complicated button combos like in other shooters this is also due to the fact that this game was designed for arcade gaming and was imported to the dreamcast. 9/10

Graphics:

The graphics may seem outdated for our next gen standards but nevertheless the stages and level designs are very well drawn and the 3D effects and bosses are very smooth and colorful, I think this game fits perfect into the category game with perfect visuals and graphics. 9/10

Sound:

The sound score is great as well and delivers what it should do also it is by far more memorable than other monotone tunes which are overused in most space shooters. You will notice a slight dramatical change in the sound when you advance from stage to stage, blasting your way through hordes of enemy spacecrafts. In short the sound is awesome and is perfectly implied in the whole game and delivers a very intense and thrilling feeling. 9/10

My Review:

Before we talk about the game itself and cover the review with my thoughts and regards lets clear some things about Ikaruga first. Ikaruga was originally designed for arcade gaming in japan and wasn't even released in europe or the USA, it was much later that this game actually appeared for the Dreamcast console and was later also released for the Nintendo Gamecube and the Xbox360 download section but I cover the Dreamcast release in my review so I cant tell for sure how enhanced the Gamecube version is, nevertheless it should be on par with the original Ikaruga arcade game.

The first thing when you hear of the word "Ikaruga" and the game itself, there should be exactly three thoughts about this game... One, incredibly hard ! Two, addictive ! And three, very fun !
As you are about to start the first stage you can and should try practice mode before even attempting to clear the first level of this tense shooter. Practice mode is a small tutorial which introduces you to the controls and helps you maneuvering the Ikaruga, after that you can choose either easy, normal or hard mode (don't even think about hard mode for now lol) and start your epic flight to the sky. Its very simple and straight forward, you have a space-ship, you have lots of enemies in front of you and of course you have kickass background sound to motivate you shooting your way through them. What do you need more you may ask ?! Well... the magic words here are actually practice (a lot) and of course pure skill which will come handy if you wanna time your laser blasts or want to perform chain combos. One of the best and worse things about Ikaruga is actually the very high difficulty which makes this game a pain in the arse or one of the most challenging games ever, suit yourself. The difficulty is very punishing because one hit and your space-ship will explode to pieces and of course your replay credits are very limited which makes it nearly impossible for casual gamers even to reach Stage 4, at least with little skill there is.

The game uses a unique polarity system which is really easy to use but will put your reactions into a very heavy challenge. Everything in Ikaruga is based on black or white, means you can switch your space-ship from one state to another also the enemies themselves and the bullets they fire can be absorbed by your space-ship if you can synchronize your polarity with theirs. White enemies will receive more damage by black laser-shots than the white ones, your space-ship can absorb enemy-fire if is the same color an retaliate with missiles and so on. The key is to switch between black and white to either destroy your enemies fast or to absorb their bullets to power up your ship for some powerful missile blast. It will take you time and patience to learn how to react to the enemies attacks and this is why this game is so hard. Another cool thing about this game are the chain combos you can perform by blasting a repetitive amount of enemies without just shooting wild, again ... it requires lots of skill and lots of practice to reach very high chain combos (my personal record was 50 chains and it was very hardcore, I don't think I 'll be able to ever reach more). After completing one stage you are given grades from S++ (the best) to C (the worst), depending on how many enemies you have killed or for completing a high amount of chain combos and so on (my best try was an A grade and wow thats pretty bad lol).

The game itself offers only 5 stages and can be completed under 30 minutes if you are some hardcore shooter pro gamer which wasn't my type to begin with. As I said Ikaruga was designed for arcade gaming and has a lot of arcade features in it so therefore you will either get hooked up by the intense and flashy gameplay or you will swing your gamepad against your TV screen because of its difficulty. The main reason for people to play this game is in my opinion the soundtrack and the high amount of "try and fail" value this game offers, of course you will lose and of course you will try again to see how far you can get and thats all the charm about this game ^^.

Final Words:

Ikaruga is a very unique and tense experience if you are in for some insane and difficult space-shooter or arcade gaming, it offers all there is to offer for its genre and can be easily described as one of the best space-shooters up to date. Final Score 9/10

This game is "almost" perfect !

It has everything, epic soundtrack, check ! Epic cutscenes, check ! Epic fast paced gameplay, check ! Epic, story.... well not so much but come on Ninja Gaiden Black also has a cheesy story and that game is a masterpiece.

So whats wrong with this game then ? Well... for once the overall length of the game, its pretty short and some of its sections feel way too automated and scripted which isn't a bad thing at all but it just drags after you are used to it and you feel very much like skipping the whole cutscenes and just jump straight into the fast gameplay.

I just wish this game would have been at least 6 hours longer lets say have around 20 missions like a Devil May Cry game and I would score this game as high up there with Ninja Gaiden Black and the awesome Devil May Cry 3.

What I absolutely love about it thou is its overall presentation, I think Platinum never delivered a bad game so far because none of their previous games were bad and with that I mean Bayonetta and Vanquish of course.

Please Platinum keep up the very good work you do because those guys can honestly make a solid hack and slash game as proven before, but I hope they will add a lil bit more depth to their stories and cut back on the over the top cheese xD but I am fine with this game except for the gamelength this gets a very solid 9/10

Let's have a look on one of Capcons most action loaded games Devil May Cry 3 : Dantes Awakening Special Edition for the PC.

Platform: PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Capcom
Genre: Fantasy Action Adventure
Release Date: Oct 16, 2006

Story: The story so far plays earlier than the orginal Devil May Cry game for the PS2. Its's about the half devil Dante Sparda who tries once again to save the world from the influence of the devil possesed Arkham
and his horde of undead creatures from hell. In this game there is also some very cool new character introduced named Vergil Sparda who is actually Dantes evil twinbrother and most fearsome foe.
Virgil works together with Arkham in order to open the gate of hell which was closed long years ago by Dantes father the legandary Devil Knight Sparda. So Dante starts his journey to climb up the unholy tower of evil called "The Temen-Ni-Gru" which is summoned by Arkham in order to connect the human world to the demon world. On his way up he crosses lines with a strange woman called Lady who tries to shoot him on sight.
The whereabouts of the Temen-Ni-Gru as well as the identity of lady seem very dark and unclear. What the end offers... i can't tell, just play to find out :D 8/10

Gameplay: DMC3-Se is a third perspective fantasy action adventure which combines very fast gameplay with lots of combos and various puzzles throughout the game. The fighting system is devided in "styles" which
Dante can switch between Missions and also level them up to perform even greater combos. There are also special obiects called orbs to collect as well as a very great varaety of fire and melee weapons throughout the game. 8/10

Controls: This is one of the main problems with the PC version of DMC3-Se because its totally bugged and you need a patch in order to convert the right keyboard comands to some gamepad. 4/10

Graphic: This is unfortunately another minus for the PC port as you will see some graphics in ingame arent drawn very correctly as the PS2 version and also some parts of the game seem pretty greyscale due to the direct X output of your PC, nevertheless the FMV movies are really great. 7/10

Sound: I have to mention that the sound is absoluty awesome. DMC3-Se brings some very good soundtrack and very nice soundsamples combined with very thrilling metal music. 9/10
My Review: First of all I have to say that I have played only the PC version of DMC3-Se hench I am writting this review for the PC version of that great game.
The game starts right of in Dantes office with one of the most impressive and action loaded FMV movies I saw so far. After the nice introducing of the control tutorial you are directly thrown into action to kick some demon butts. You will learn very fast the combos and special attacks if you play the first time through this game. Actually you can change between 4 styles called Trickster, Gunslinger, Royal Guard and Swordmaster. As the names describe, each style is bound to some very cool and unique special attack and combos. For example if you like using long range weapons than you can choose Gunslinger for improving your shoot abillities but if you prefer short range you can go along with Swordmaster. All in one I really liked the style system and the idea of combining different styles. So after you have killed tons of demons and alot of other evil guys you will be introduced step by step through very cool FMV movies to the story of this game which is in my opinion really great. The game is divided in 20 Missions, and you will come across some very cool and though bosses, one remarcable of them will be Dantes twinbrother Virgil who actually seems to interfere with Dante on purpose. The boss fights are one big plus in this game because they really deliever some thrilling and decent difficulty (at least if you play on very hard or Dante must die mode). What I really liked about this game is the character developement its really different from DMC2 which was... to put it bluntly "it sucked". I would generally say that the difficulty in this game is fair and really depends on what scale you play. I beat this game on hard mode in 9 hours but some other guys sure need between 15 - 20 hours. Also after beating the entire game you can unlock Vergil as a playable character, and this is included in the Special edition only as well as some other nice feature I will mention beneath.

So what are the differences between the original Devil May Cry 3 : Dantes Awakening and Devil May Cry 3 : Dantes Awakening Special Edition you may ask ?

Well here they are:
Difficulties:

- Easy mode
- Hard mode
- Very Hard mode
- Dante Must Die mode
- Heaven or Hell mode

Playable Character:

- "Vergil" is playable after beating the game once with Dante. He brings his own uniqe styles as well as flying swords as his long range weapons.

Extra Mode:

- "Bloody Palace" is available after beating the game once with Dante, its some kind of battle arena where you are thrown in with a limited supply of orbs and must fight random enemies and bosses.

Extra Outfits:

- 4 new costumes for Vergil unlockable
- 6 new outfits for Dante unlockable

Gallery:

-you can unlock diverse Artwork and CGI work form DMC3 here

Demo Digest:

- You can preview all Ingame Movies from here
- There is also some timelimit in the end of the game where you can beat 100 enemies in order to unlock a hidden ending

Miscellaneous:

- There are different locations in the game where you know can fight Jester (its that annoying clown BTW)
- Lady wears some fency new suit depending on the outfit you choose in Ingame
- There is a yellow and gold option at the beginning of the game which allows to use the yellow orbs as restore point after dieing.
These are the differences available in the Special Edition of DMC3 as well for the PS2 version as for the PC version which was only released as the Special edition by the way.

FInal Words: DMC3 SE sure is some special game for fans of the Devil May Cry series as well as for action fans who like fast and flashy gamplay combined with metal music and gothic ambience. I was very pleased about the importation of this game to the PC and really forgot fast about the undeveloped control settings which is a pain in the arse indeed for people who wants to play the PC version on a gamepad. All I can say is that you should stick with the PS2 version if you are a die hard fan of DMC as for me I also liked the PC version therefore I give this game a 7 out of 10.

Endrating: 7/10