Tag Archives: PlayStation 3

Racer Essentials: Split/Second

With my Sunday Driving playthrough of Black Rock Studio’s excellent Split/Second now at an end, it’s time to take a final, summative look back at one of my favourite racers of all time.

Split/Second, like its contemporary and rival Blur, was a victim of a combination of factors: poor marketing, arrogant publishers and an overall gaming landscape that was somewhat in flux. As such, while those who took a chance on it back in the day tend to look back on it rather fondly now, it doesn’t get nearly the recognition it deserves.

Let’s change all that, shall we?

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New Game Plus: Ghosts Don’t Have Feet – Atelier Rorona DX #8

It’s time for our weekly visit to the kingdom of Arland, as our New Game Plus runthrough of Atelier Rorona DX on Nintendo Switch continues!

We’re well into the game’s second year now, and all sorts of interesting things are happening. Rorona is still devastatingly overpowered, however; can no-one provide her with a decent fight? She’s the Lu Bu of the Atelier world at this point.

Hit the jump to see how today’s crafting, gathering and Puni-splattering went.

Continue reading New Game Plus: Ghosts Don’t Have Feet – Atelier Rorona DX #8

New Game Plus: Medicine for a Verdant Land – Atelier Rorona DX #7

Thus far our playthrough of Atelier Rorona DX’s New Game Plus mode has been going swimmingly, with one out of the three years down without breaking a sweat.

From here, things start to get more interesting and challenging… or, well, at least they might if you didn’t have all your nice upgrades from first time around. Instead, on a second playthrough and beyond the main challenge comes from getting all the playable characters up to standard, grinding friendship levels and triggering the events necessary for the endings you’d like to see.

Hit the jump to see how our first tentative steps into the second year of Rorona’s career went…

Continue reading New Game Plus: Medicine for a Verdant Land – Atelier Rorona DX #7

New Game Plus: Cabbage Girl – Atelier Rorona DX #6

“It’ll be a short episode,” he says, then proceeding to play for an hour and a half. I was having fun, though!

Yes, this week’s episode of New Game Plus runs a little longer than intended, but, well, there were important things to do. Very important things. Like the cabbage competition in the annual festival!

Hit the jump to see just why everyone is calling Rorona “Cabbage Girl”…

Continue reading New Game Plus: Cabbage Girl – Atelier Rorona DX #6

Sunday Driving: Scorching Rubber – Split/Second #9

Well over the halfway point through Split/Second now, and we’re starting to unlock some of the top-notch cars.

There are still some significant challenges ahead of us, but today’s installment goes strangely smoothly… perhaps it’s down to the amount of gas I fill myself with before getting underway properly.

Whatever the reason, hit the jump to see how things went… and beware of the flatulence.

Continue reading Sunday Driving: Scorching Rubber – Split/Second #9

Sunday Driving: Sunset Fire – Split/Second #4

Split/Second’s explosive run on BRTV (or, rather, its repeat on MoeGamerTV, the Dave of YouTube) continues with some challenging races that keep our contestants on their toes.

Still, at least no-one is shooting missiles at me or attempting to drop explosive barrels directly through my windscreen today, so there’s that, I guess.

Hit the jump to see the chaos unfold as it happened!

Continue reading Sunday Driving: Sunset Fire – Split/Second #4

Atelier Totori: Arland’s Middle Child

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Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland, the second installment in Atelier’s Arland trilogy, is in that unenviable position that all “middle children” end up in — perhaps more so than most.

Originally offering considerable improvements over Atelier Rorona’s first incarnation — particularly in the graphical and mechanical departments — Gust’s tendency to put out “Plus” versions for its Atelier games means that Totori has ended up, in some respects, now being the most dated of the Arland trilogy even once it, in turn, got its own “Plus” and “DX” rereleases, the most recent of which is on PlayStation 4, Switch and PC.

This isn’t to say Totori is a bad game, mind you — far from it. Just… don’t take anything for granted! Let’s have a closer look.

Continue reading Atelier Totori: Arland’s Middle Child

Atelier Rorona: Arland’s New Beginning

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As we’ve previously explored, the Atelier series is no stranger to rereleases and remakes — and at the time of writing, Arland trilogy debut Atelier Rorona has had more than most.

Initially releasing in Japan in 2009 as Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland before being localised by NIS America for North America, Europe and Australasia in 2010, the game was subsequently completely rebuilt in 2013 under its new worldwide publisher Koei Tecmo as Atelier Rorona Plus in an attempt to bring it more in line with the subsequent releases in the series. In 2015, Japan got a unique 3DS version of the game. And in 2018, Gust and Koei Tecmo brought Atelier Rorona DX — pretty much a port of Atelier Rorona Plus — to Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Windows PC.

Keeping one game relevant for nine full years and counting is no mean feat. So let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons this game might have stuck around for quite as long as it has!

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Sunday Driving: Rigged to Blow – Split/Second #1

I fancied a bit of a change from OutRun this week, so I present to you one of my all-time favourite arcade racers: Split/Second, developed by Black Rock and published by Disney.

Split/Second is a tragic tale, really; it was a spectacularly good game that came out at a bad time, had no marketing whatsoever and consequently flopped so badly that Black Rock had to close down and Disney stopped doing anything interesting like unusual cinematic arcade racers ever again. Booo.

Still, at least Split/Second still exists, and we can still enjoy it for ourselves, so let’s do just that!

Continue reading Sunday Driving: Rigged to Blow – Split/Second #1

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best Common Architecture

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by spaktukal.

Environmental design in gaming is a funny old beast; you only tend to really actively notice it if it’s really good or really bad — most of the rest of the time, it’s just sort of there, indicating that it’s doing its job. That job being, of course, to immerse the player in the game world and give that game world a bit of “character” of its own.

There were a number of games that had particularly striking world design this year, but today we’re focusing specifically on the idea of “common architecture” — the way just regular ol’ normal buildings look, rather than palaces, temples and ruins of an ancient civilisation.

And the winner is…

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