I haven’t read much about it because I am generally uninterested and refuse to spend 500 of my hard earned dollars on something I doubt I really need or want.

What what about you guys? Do you want an Ipad, or would you rather not bother? Clgamer is interested to hear why you would or would not purchase it. Looking forward to your feedback.

Need to look at the specs? Check them out on Apple’s website.

Want to submit your own topic for Open Discussion? Send your name and question to joy_goten@yahoo.com

My choice is Batman: Arkham Asylum. Best super hero game I have played thus far. Awesome combo system fun and challenging. Unique weaving of gameplay and story.

Great end game content such as the challenges as well as cool perks like the PS3 Batcave for Home and playing the game as the Joker. Lastly, great voice acting/character designs made the experience epic but enough about my favorite what is yours?

Want to submit your own topic for Open Discussion? Send your name and question to joy_goten@yahoo.com

Now on to this weeks topic: Is Sex in video games going too far? It seems like everyone is trying to see how far they can push it. Who can make the biggest prehaps prettiest breasts or who can make the most epic implied sex scene. How much nudity can be exposed, or the coolest upskirt. But do gamers really want or need this? When is it going to be enough?

Couldn’t Bayonetta still be a cool game without exposing skin? Do lead female characters really need to show skin to be cool?, Does anyone really care?, Wouldn’t it be more important that she is pretty rather then showing skin?, or what about the upcoming Dante’s Inferno where  in the first 2 seconds of the game breasts are exposed?  What about Saboteur’s redlight district?, or still to be released Heavy Rain’s strip tease?

Why is all of this necessary? Gamers will buy games regardless so now its just becoming too gimmicky in my opinion. If its a good game we can do without the nudity, especially if the character is interesting and the gameplay is amazing. Too much of this stuff is being used as a ploy to get more sales and its getting disgusting not only to me but to other gamers male and female.

I will still buy Bayonetta, and Dante’s Inferno because I like the gameplay not the boobs or slight nudity. What do you guys think? I have heard a lot of complaining about it recently so I am interested to hear more differing opinions. Looking forward to your feedback.

Have you heard of Trine? If you haven’t, its a puzzle/platformer game for the PS3 and PC. Similar to the graphics in Shadow Complex, Trine uses 3D characters and landscape but limits gameplay to a 2D plane. This can sometimes become confusing but you will quickly adjust to the format. Trine is absolutely beautiful, its lavish environments reminds me of the game Folklore sometimes.  The combination of very vivid and bright colors and expressive lighting makes the settings they choose very attractive to play in.

What also makes it so attractive to play is the ability to use 3 different characters as one. You are a wizard, thief and warrior all at time same time and can use each character’s ability to solve puzzles and progress through the level. You also use these same abilities to acquire green flasks that represent experience points allowing each character to get stronger/level up. As each character levels up they can hone their skills making them more effective when completing challenges. Throughout the levels there are checkpoints so if perhaps one or all your characters die you can go back to that spot to revive them. If your wondering how your characters could die, there are plenty of ways such as falling off cliffs, drowning, getting hit by objects, or killed by enemies. Don’t forget this is a platformer as well. Checkpoints also serve as a place to replenish some of your HP or your wizard’s MP if you run out.  There are other ways to do this such as killing enemies, they occasionally drop HP and MP flasks too as well as give you experience points.

There is no formula on how to use each characters abilities to solve the puzzle.  You can do whatever it takes to get the job done. The wizard has no fighting abilities but can levitate and summon objects to help solve platforming and weight-based challenges. The thief, a female character I might add, can shoot a bow and arrow and use a grappling hook. I like that they made the thief a woman because it helps break up the monotony of what would have otherwise been just an all male cast. I also like that she is fully clothed and not used as a sexual ploy to attract potential buyers. Lastly, the knight is just that: a warrior with a sword and shield to prove it.

Together these 3 make for a fun gaming experience but like everything there are always some flaws. My biggest pet peeve with the game are its controls. I feel that they are not intuitive enough. For example, on the PS3 you switch between characters with either L1 or R1. This can be a problem because usually the action buttons are also assigned to L1 or R1, and switching between characters is not important enough to share these buttons. Instead of using L1 or R1 I think switching characters should have been moved to L2 and R2. So then you can free up those buttons for critical actions, like when the wizard needs to draw to make an object you hold down L1 or R1 and draw with the right joystick. I found when in a rush to switch characters I always pressed L2 or R2 first, and when I wanted to perform an action I pressed L1 or R1 instead which was frustrating. What is also frustrating is holding down on the right stick to block when using the knight. Everyone should know you would use either back or R1 to simply block. The thief’s control scheme is fine but it would have been nice if I had more control while aiming her arrows. To shoot arrows, you hold the right stick in the opposite direction and let go to fire. I would have preferred to hold the right stick in the direction I wanted to aim at and using R1 to fire instead.

Another small pet peeve of mine is the story.  It could have been 10 times more engrossing and its not. It feels like they banked a lot on the gameplay as the selling point of Trine (which it is), but supposedly there is a story in there too. I feel it could have been more interesting or told in a more engaging way where I might have actually cared. Overall, I like Trine a lot and if you have a PS3 then you should download it off the PSN store immediately. It is definitely not a waste of your time. A perfect game to pick up during your Modern Warfare downtime because if you didn’t know, just like the famous TV show said: Three’s Company too.

Chocolate (phire) :  has joined the ranks. With more free time he has been to a few events with New York-Tokyo. The most recent events were the Tekken 6 tournament at the White Rabbit and Emily Cook snowboarding event. There was the second Street Fighter Fight Club that was attended.  What has he been playing? Demon Souls, DJ Hero, the last few days of the Mag Beta, Tekken 6, and some Dragon Age.
Lemon (jwong) was in an issue of  Gamepro along with his rival  Daigo.  He also attended the SFFC, you can read his thoughts on it here. He fought in Seasons Beatings and lost only to Daigo for second place. What has he been playing?  The usual; Street Figher, Tekken, and some Dungeon Fighter Online.
Galarian: Due to all his retro reviews is currently caught in a time warp and is working on a way to get back to the present.
Megumi: is lost somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, was injured during a game of MAG.
Krismas: Is currently dressed up as Snake and behind you.
Wally: Is still in shock about reciving his first set of press passes for NYAF along with a reviewer’s copy of FairyTale Fights. He will be working with Jessness to cover that game.
Jessness: Avoiding her mob of fans and doing the school thing. Also maintaing high levels of Jessness. Working on the review for FTF.
Allowei: currently time travelling but still making time to write. Is working with Mircosoft to make sure you’re playing good games.
Beast: has been dealing with deleting data on his hard drive.
Expert Penguin: is in hiding due to the fact he made the switch from pad to stick after being so set in his pad player ways.
Everyone else has been off doing err something or the other in filler episodes obviously. That brings us up to date and that is (wait for it) the story thus far.

As I was one of those lucky human beings and I am here to tell you about the wonder that is MAG.  To begin for those who do not know, MAG is a PS3 exclusive first person shooter.  What makes this shooter unique is its boast that it will support up to 256 players.  This is an incredible feat and needless to say had many doubters but surprisingly Zipper Interactive has done it.

To start off there was a whooping 2G update to play the game, but once you got started you realized it was worth the wait.  Players can choose from 3 factions.  Valor, S.V.E.R, and Raven.

You can choose the look of your characters but as you might expect there are currently few character models, and disappointingly no female ones.  Valor wears your typical GI Joe looking clothes while S.V.E.R. and Raven are more uniquely styled.  S.V.E.R, integrating hoodies into their gear and Raven in all black clothing appearing very sleek.

After choosing your faction you can adjust your loadout as you see fit and even make various loadouts which can be equipped before you respawn in battle.  Players can also wear different types of armor; heavy, medium, or light. This armor determines your agility in battle and how much protection you will have.

Currently, whatever faction you choose, your friends need to choose the same in order to be your allies.  There is no way to switch factions unless you delete your character and start over.  Once you and your friends decide on a team, a player can start a party and invite everyone.  The party leader can then deploy the entire party into a game where they will become a part of an eight-man squad.  There is voice chat enabled which makes communicating easy.

So far the game has three modes; Acquisition, Sabotage and Domination.  Acquisition holds up to 128 players and the objective is to break in and steal enemy vehicles from deep inside their base.  Sabotage hold up to 64 players and is all about defending and attacking.  Lastly, Domination holds up to 256 players where they fight to secure and hold eight targets.

Players can earn exp. to level their character and also gain skill points to acquire new abilities or weapons such as the sniper rifle or faster reload times on a specific weapon.  Exp. is earned by kills and successfully completing in-game missions.  There is also a system called FRAGO which allows squad leaders to place a waypoint on various specific objective points and anyone getting kills or completing missions within the radius of the waypoint gets double exp.

During my play time I was in Acquisition with 128 players and experienced no lag.  It should also be noted that the maps were not barren waste lands or deserts. They included a lot of trees, buildings, props to use as cover, some water areas etc. These were very detailed maps and the game ran with no lag.

Vehicles are also available and can be spawned in by selecting them on the respawn screen minimap.  If the vehicles are destroyed players will have to wait for them to respawn again.

MAG also uses Medics; players can at first only heal themselves if the medic tool is equipped.  With additional skill points players can level up this ability and be able to revive bleeding out teammates.

While MAG was awesome, there were some obnoxious bugs such as dying only to get trapped in a respawning loop, spawning in geometry and as a result getting trapped there, or walking around invisible after death (never bleeding out) to name a few.

There are also small gameplay issues. With the Sniper Rifle, a target that appears to be in range sometimes isn’t.  There is no indication that this target is too far away which becomes very frustrating.  Also even with the long range scope targets are still hard to hit at far distances and in close distances the scope will zoom past the target.

Another issue I had was with the name tags of enemies. The tags were unable to be seen at distances making it hard to determine who is an enemy or friendly at times.  I do understand that this was possibly done to prevent too much screen clutter, but for snipers it can be painful.

Lastly, so far RPG rockets are useless, they don’t seem to do any damage to anything especially vehicles which is very disappointing.

In conclusion, my experience playing MAG was extremely fun and felt very rewarding.  I believe once the bugs and minor issues found in the Beta are resolved it will easily be one of the best selling FPS’s for the PS3.  I am looking forward to playing and buy the final product which is set to release January 26, 2010.

I loved his special…… Then there was many other great past titles like X-Men vs Streetfighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs StreetFighter, Capcom vs Snk, Capcom vs Snk 2, SNK vs Capcom:Chaos (my favorite game) and Marvel vs Capcom 2. I have played a little of each of these games, it’s exciting to play the versus series because you get to see many of your favorite characters all together, going head to head.

As time went by and fighting games gained less popularity main stream you didn’t see much from the Versus Series. In the present the Versus Series that has a monopoly on the market is Marvel vs Capcom 2. Some of the best players in the world still play that game at Chinatown Fair and pull some of the most ridiculous combos I have ever seen in a game. After 9 years that game still has a horde of fans, enough to be getting revamped a bit and re-release for the Xbox and PS3 July 29.

There are still fans of Capcom  vs Snk 2 but far and few. There are also a few that still play SNK vs Capcom because of complaints that the game is broken( ALL LIES I SAY), to me it feels better to play than its successor. One new versus games we have had hit the scene was Mortal Kombat vs DC which had a interesting concept but did not gain a large following, we can only assume that it sucked.

So what do we want or what are we expecting for the future. I really wish there was more exploration in the Versus Series. Like Tatsunoko vs Capcom which looks hella sweet although I wish it was coming out for the PS3 or Xbox 360 and not just the Wii. Why don’t we go more over the top. What about something ridiculous like Smash Brothers vs Final Fantasy. With the release of Dissidia I am sure it could happen the layout for the fighting portion of Dissida is very similar to Smash.

Also how about a remake of some Killer Instinct characters in Killer Instinct vs Mortal Kombat. I am personally not a Mortal Kombat fan anymore but Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat also had a similar pacing or style of battle and a combination of both seems doable.  Of course everyone is waiting for another remake of Marvel vs Capcom, Marvel vs Capcom 3. What about you? What are you waiting for? We at CL Gamer would love to know? Leave us a comment or 2.

-Special thanks to my best bud Mike for helping me come up with this article topic he is anxiously awaiting the re-release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 on PS3. So as in his words  “He can Rape all Day!”

PROS:

Lavish Environments:

• Not too big, not too small
• Beautiful, extremely detailed
• Multi-tiered levels (a lot of places to climb and hide)

Female Characters (sexy but not in an overly revealing way)

Easy to Melee people

Tea Bag animation ….yea I know…its pretty cool though

Quick and Easy Match up system

Quick and easy snap to cover and crouch positions (Gears of War style)

Super Easy Control scheme ( Assigns the Aim and Shoot buttons to the L1 and R1 buttons not the L1 and R2 buttons still has its awkward moments but feels better)

CONS:

Cursor Deviates too much: (Even if you are standing completely still and adjust your aim slightly your cursor will spread too wide. When its wide you might as well stand still and die because your bullets are barely doing any damage.

Head shots are muy fail sauce: Seems to be no real head shots in this game. I had my cursor on peoples heads way before they started shooting me and pumped more than 1 or 2 bullets and they did not die. Matter of fact they killed me.

Damage too unpredictable: There is no clear idea of how much damage you need to do to a player to kill them or where you need to shoot to get a faster kill. I remember walking up to a character point blank range and shooting them more than 5 times and they barely took any damage. I was so confused I walked away thinking they were perhaps a team mate I mistook for an enemy….they were not.

Stand still to shoot, run to find or get away: This doesn’t seem to work in this game. I stood still and shot to get accurate shots and still got ridiculous deviation or it seemed like my bullets did just as much damage as if I was running and gunning.

So my overall rating for this beta issssss aaaa C !

I can see how this could eventually be fun, but right now the experience still needs a lot of tweaking and work. I hope the beta players give them some really good feedback, because if this was to launch as is, I would say be prepared for a very frustrating experience.