SOTRPG: Pickup

Oroku Saki  checking in, just picked up a 'new' game, "Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey" for the  Nintendo DS. (A major component of my personal game repertoire).  Knowing it's a SMT title, I'm already prepared for not only hard, but psychologically and physically draining game. I've gotten to the first boss twice, and had my ass handed to me the exact same amount of times. Will do a deeper report on the first chapter over the weekend. Peace out for now!

The 3rd Birthday...

Hey everyone this is C92cool here and I am here to bring you my viewpoint of a game that I feel has been overlooked by the gaming community. That game would have to be...The...3rd...Birthday. The 3rd Birthday is a action role playing game that was created by Hexa Drive and published by Square Enix. It was made for the PSP and was released back in December of 2010 for Japan and March of 2011 for North America. The 3rd Birthday is the 3rd installment in the Parasite Eve series and takes place roughly 10 years after the events of Parasite Eve 2.

Our main protagonist in The 3rd Birthday is Aya Brea who has been the protagonist for the last two Parasite Eve games. As for this game she is a 38 year old women, she was 25 in the first and 27 in the second, who suffers from a bad case of memory lose all while working as an agent of CTI in a desperate fight against the Twisted. In order to fight the Twisted, Aya travels back in time for the first half of the game and spends the second half of the game in current New York city that lays in ruins.

The Twisted is an enemy that the CTI doesn't really have to much information to go off of, which is why the prologue takes place when the invasion first happened in order to collect information on a certain future boss. These monsters come in a variety of forms from the basic floating and slasher type enemies to larger more bulky types enemies and ending with the massive size bosses that can range from easy as pie to annoyingly hard. 

Now The 3rd Birthday has for some reason been labeled as a bad game and doesn't live up to the name of the Parasite Eve series. Now I will admit that yes The 3rd Birthday is not quite like the previous Parasite Eve games, but that does not make it a bad game. Just like Resident Evil 4 and 5, who are different from the other Resident Evils that came before them, The 3rd Birthday is a good game that is just a bit different from the others in its series, but it's still good.
The Good

There are several factors that make The 3rd Birthday a good game.
Length: There is a total of seven missions to be completed in The 3rd Birthday, this includes episode 0 which is the prologue. It will take a fair amount of time to beat the game, but you also have replay to beat the game on higher difficulty levels and as an added boot all your items and levels transfer from one new game to the next.
Sound: The game sounds amazing. The music is broken up into two different categories: cutscene and in game. The cutscene music is overall a light sad like music, which is because you slowly learn about your past or the future dangers, or it can be the start to like a fight scene in a movie, which happens before most of the boss fights. The in game music is a little bit more constant and not to loud, but not to calm. It's something that you might hear in war scenes and that's because you are placed in a war zone for the most part. The music fits the game perfectly and changes when it needs to.
Visual: For a PSP the game looks good, especially when it comes to cutscenes. Now since it's on a handheld the graphics can only get so good, which is why i think people judge to harshly when it comes to handheld's since they like to compare them to console graphics and not other handheld's. I'm not going to stand here and say yes the graphics are something to call God like, but they are certainly some of the best Ive seen on a handheld.
Controls: Their are PSP games that have clumsy controls. The 3rd Birthday is not one of them. Yes every now and then you might accidentally switch to the wrong weapon/enemy/person, but it's not something major that will utterly screw you over.
Weapons/Powers/Upgrading: The 3rd Birthday has a leveling up system that effects both your health and guns. Obviously the health comes into play whenever you level up you gain more health, but the weapons level up based on how much you kill with a certain type of weapon. The more you use a certain type of weapon the more levels you'll gain with it and more upgrades with become available to buy. Aya also has the ability to splice DNA to her own DNA allow boost into several different aspects. Lastly you have certain powers that can of use. The first power Aya has is the ability to transfer from one body to another which helps for when you get low on health. The second ability is when you weaken an enemy enough, or concentrate enough gun fire on it, you can deliver a power blow that does damage based off your level. Overdive is Aya's last power and it allows Aya to become super powerful for a short period of time, it becomes very helpful later in the game against bosses and larger enemies.
The Bad

Every game has a few bad things about it and The 3rd Birthday does have a few.
Unlockables: Unlocking a new costume or cheat code or just art work can feel good because it means that the gamer has accomplished something. The 3rd Birthday has several unlockables, but some of them require things that just are not fair. Most of the unlockables require doing certain task during the missions to get medals and sometimes those medals that are require, and what difficulty they must be done on, is something that seems almost impossible to do at times. There's also an unlimited ammo code, but most people don't wanna beat the game ten times to unlock it.
Plot: The plot it self isn't bad. What makes the aspect of the plot bad for some people would be that you have to pay attention to understand what is going on and some parts of it are easy to guess/are predictable.
Difficulty Spikes: The 3rd Birthday starts off at a slow pace for the tutorial. It then starts off the next mission with a boss fight. Then a fair pacing of gameplay until a certain mission, note the picture of the Reaper. There's a mission, I do believe the second to last or so, that just throws monsters at you until you encounter the Reaper and are forced to fight it with only one weapon being able to hurt it, and it's slow to fire to boot and takes forever to kill the Reaper. The 3rd Birthday just doesn't always know how to balance out the difficulty when it comes to boss fights and monster encounters.
The Conclusion

The 3rd Birthday is overall a good game that will make most people happy, mainly those who wish to constantly compare it to the other Parasite Eve games might not like it as much. Just like any other game it has both It's ups and downs, but the ups clearly outweigh the downs. Seeing how you can find it for around $10 bucks brand new I would say anyone who has a PSP should buy it and enjoy the adventure that it offers.

Zero Hour!

Just Oroku Saki checking in.. just downloaded all the Megaman Zero's (1-4) for GBA. Definitely going to give a play by play for everyone, I hope you all enjoy when I start posting. I'll do an overview of each mission, with tips and storyline so everyone can get up to date when I get a copy of Megaman ZX for my DS. Alright Trifans, I'll catch you all later! Stay thirsty!