Kanye's Coachella 2011 Concert

In case you missed it, here's Kanye West's Coachella 2011 concert, which was truly an once in a lifetime experience if you were there in person. Here's my favorite performance from the show, which is "Lost in the World." One of the best tracks from MBDTF finally gets the live treatment and it is as amazing just like the song itself.

Will Sega Finally Get It Right with Sonic Generations?

As the teaser a couple weeks back indicated, Sonic Generations is indeed about modern and classic Sonic. Now we know the differences between the two and it might be the perspective alone that matters. Classic Sonic is straight up 2D gameplay while modern puts the camera behind Sonic as seen in his recent games. Its easy to get excited for this game that Sega might finally get it right, but if the Sonic Cycle is any indication, don't get your hopes up as they will find a way to screw it up. Let's hope I'm wrong though as Sonic Generations looks pretty good right now.

Uncharted 3 Gets Into Dubstep Mode...

Looks like the Uncharted 3 multiplayer previews are starting to roll out today as this trailer shows off what's new and improved. Naughty Dog is not joking when they want to make this multiplayer the one to beat on PS3 this November as they're going "H.A.M." now. From the plane map (imagine that in the campaign!), zipline kills, customized weapons and characters, and so on, Uncharted 3's multiplayer is already looking better than all of 2 as they seem to learn their lessons from that game. Now, they're able to separate themselves from the rest of the 3rd person shooter crowd as if they already are putting what makes Uncharted the franchise it is on multuplayer. The beta is coming out on June 28 for select Infamous 2 owners and Playstation Plus peeps while everyone else gets it a week later on PSN, so I better get on that. Plus, shoutouts to dubstep in gaming trailers now!

Old School Friday - Star Fox 64!!!

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In honor of a recent announcement regarding the 3DS version coming out at Japan in July, I decided to bring this little game back for a stream last night. As you can see, I'm pretty rusty since of course I haven't played it in forever. I used to be pretty good at the game back in the day when I was young consistently nailing out medal runs on the various levels and getting the hard ending. Let's just say luck wasn't on my side in this playthrough I had and stopped at Venom trying to beat it again with no deaths.

The Full "Fault Line" Trailer for Battlefield 3 is up

The last three trailers for Battlefield have been put together now as there's also some new footage involving these sequences. At the end of this clip, they show glimpses of what is yet to come for the game from nighttime levels, aircraft sequences, and the COD-like mountain jump. EA is not joking when they want to beat Call of Duty with this game, but stooping down to their level is somewhat taking away from what Battlefield was in the first place. Then again, if you have to beat your biggest competition, sometimes you just have to go bigger than they are and that's what EA and DICE are hoping for with Battlefield 3. However, as mentioned already, the COD influences are just getting old these days and honestly, I'm more excited for Gears of War 3 even though its a completely different game than this just by seeing the multiplayer beta that is now out there for some. We'll see what EA and DICE will show off at E3 in June.

Hands-On with El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

A demo for Ignition's El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron came out today for the Japanese Playstation Store as well as the Japanese XBL Marketplace since its coming out at the end of the month over there with a U.S. release slated for sometime this summer. You probably have not heard much about this game, but some known Japanese developers worked on this game. You may have also noticed the visual style being very colorful and artsy to the point its straight out of Okami. Turns out that some of the art guys that worked on El Shaddai did work on the Capcom/Clover critical hit. The story for this game seems crazy with the religious themes and such, but it is still interesting especially being something that has not really been touched on in today's games.

At its core, El Shaddai is a combat action game with some platforming elements spread throughout the journey. The Okami influences not only are seen in the art design, but in the combat sequences being arena-based with waves of enemies that pose a threat out of the gate and can kill you if you're not careful. The way it controls is not what you expect if you played other Japanese action games like Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and Ninja Gaiden as it is an one-button attack system. Attacks being centered on one button seems questionable at first as you can be mashy right away, but if you want to do other fancy moves, you have to time your button presses carefully. The weapons have some rock, paper, scissors type of feel to it as mentioned in the Giant Bomb Quick Look I put two or three weeks ago. However, you do start the demo with nothing in which you have to steal enemies' weapons in order to use them. The one you'll use a lot will be the some blade looking thing that glows blue, but glows red after hitting enemies a certain number of times. There's the whole light/dark mechanic to the combat with the blade as it seems that you will do more damage to enemies when lit up. Later on the demo, you can use a projectile-like weapon tossing DMC3 Vergil-like knives at enemies. If you saw the video, you probably noticed there's no HUD and that's true since your character's look is his health and the less clothes you have, you'll probably going to die in a hit or two. However if you die, you can mash some buttons and revive yourself back to the action, but I think you can do it a certain number of times. Its a nice touch considering the checkpoint system is not as generous as seen in most games, but this is a Japanese action game and these type of games love to challenge and frustrate you at times. The core combat system as a whole works fine, but you can't reckless as you can lose health right away if you're not blocking or evading opposing attacks.

Then there's the platforming elements that break up the action up a bit especially in this demo. You can double jump in the game, but the various camera angles can be a little problem trying to judge how far the gap as holding the jump button does increase the floatiness of it, but you don't want to drop down to a bottomless pit as it will result in a loss of health or even death if you're flashing red as seen in shooters. Other than that, these platforming sections do their part especially when jumping on moving clouds in the day/night cycle sequence, which is probably the coolest looking thing you'll see in the demo.

I was pretty impressed with my brief time with El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. Its definitely one of those sleeper hit games that can creep up on you when it comes out here this summer. I might have to spend some more time getting better at the combat encounters and such, but this is definitely worth paying attention to if you're in a mood to play something that is pretty crazy and different. If you have a Japanese PSN or XBL account, give this demo a shot and see if it fits your cup of tea for a crazy action game.

Also Today in the World of Games... (4/12/11)

Reviews started to roll out to the internets throughout the day for SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals as most of them seem to be in the 7 range, but some sites had lower scored reviews filled with disappointment. Honestly, I had a good time with the multiplayer beta, which is ending tomorrow despite its flaws of not getting into games and whatnot. It brought me back to the time before Call of Duty/Halo took over the online shooter world and SOCOM was the dominant shooter on the PS2. Some would say the franchise was the first console shooter that got things right from clan support, lobbies that were okay for the time till Halo 2 brought in matchmaking, fun maps, and more. It felt good to back in the groove again since I was pretty good at SOCOM 2 for a short period. I was disappointed with SOCOM 3 though distancing away from what made SOCOM 2 amazing being too big and vehicles weren't clearly designed to be in a SOCOM game. It seems to be that SOCOM 4 is getting back to what made the first two games great while keeping the 32 max player limit in SOCOM 3, but it looks it didn't offer anything new enough to make itself competition against the online shooter juggernauts. I'm pretty sure the SOCOM fanbase will still enjoy it for a while even though they're not fans at the same new changes especially the cover system. I don't think Sony & Zipper completely dropped the ball with SOCOM 4, but it looks it could of been way better than it should of been.

Nintendo also had some announcements today regarding their Q2 lineup as the headliners are the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the 3DS and Wii Play: Motion. Zelda OOT 3D is shaping up to be the major reason people are getting 3DSs around that time since that's out on June 19. It has Master Quest in as well, so this is pretty much the ultimate version of OOT Nintendo is finally releasing after its re-releases on Gamecube and the Wii Virtual Console. Wii Play Motion is just another mini-game collection and like the original game, it is bundled with a Wiimote (now the Wiimote Plus). I expect this is sell a million copies easily and arguably could of best selling game of the year if magic strikes again for Nintendo. Then again, a lot of people have fallen off the Wii bandwagon and waiting for Nintendo to announce something new because other than Zelda: Skyward Sword, I have no reason to play my Wii at all. Sometimes, I wonder if its worth keeping still, so who knows with that.