Resident Evil 5 updates - Box Covers, etc.

Official Resident Evil 5 Cover Art

The official Resident Evil 5 North American cover art has now been released:

(Click pics for full images)

Full Story at Capcom Blog

The European covers for both releases of Resident Evil 5 can be viewed over at The Horror is Alive.

PlayStation 3 Europe Cover Art
Xbox 360 Europe Cover Art

Demo Release

In other news, the North American demo for the Resident Evil 5 now has a confirmed release date of "early 2009". Full story at Joystiq.com. Actually, there is a second article up now.

Major Spoilers for Resident Evil 5 on the net?

Apparently, someone has extracted information from one of the Biohazard 5 demo releases and there are plenty of potential spoilers on the various message boards of the internet now. If you want to see them then go to either one of the GameFAQs RE5 boards and search for "hack" or "spoilers". From what I have heard, these are possibly major spoilers for the full game of RE5. Just by catching a glimpse of one, I was already unhappy with what I was reading. Whether or not these are true spoilers remains to be seen and we obviously won't know until the game is released, so be on guard with what you read.

I intend to keep all major spoilers off this blog until the game's release, so don't post up these possible spoilers here please. The only reason why I mention these in this post is to give a word of warning to those that might not want the game ruined for them.

Out With the Old and In With the New

For about the past 12+ years I have had the same gaming setup you see below.

Kev's Old TV

The TV you see there was a 27" Sanyo SDTV. It's so old that it only had an RF input, so I had to play all my gaming systems through a VCR. For the past two months, the screen had started to get wavy after a few hours of play and I had to leave it off for a few minutes to make the wavyness stop.

Anyway, I wanted my next TV to be an HDTV, so I could actually make out my games on it without having to squint at times. If you've ever tried to play Infinite Undiscovery on an SDTV or tried to write a game script for Dead Rising while playing on one, then you know how blurry some text can get while playing a High Definition game on an SDTV.

After much asking around from friends and in-store employees, I finally settled on this 42" Panasonic VIERA Plasma 1080p HDTV. A Circuit City employee and a Best Buy employee recommended it to me after I mentioned that I want a TV for gaming, so I went ahead and went with it. Mind you, it was bought for $999 at Best Buy then I found it later at Circuit City for $899 and managed to get a price match.

Here's a few pics:

Kev's New TV 1
Kev's New TV 2

My dad helped me set it up last Saturday. My first game to experience on it was the RE5 demo. I played it the day before on my SDTV then I played it the next night on my new HDTV. In the matter of a day, I had gone from extreme fanboy excitement (playing RE5 on... anything) to pure unadulterated bliss (playing RE5 in 1080i HD). There's no way I could have timed that better!

Dead Space looks fantastic on it too, and I still have yet to try many of my older games. Need to break out Dead Rising soon also. Wii doesn't look that hot, nor do any of the older systems, but at least there's no lag associated with them like I've read about with some HDTV's.

If you look at the pics, I've also got a new 5.1 surround setup (silver speakers in new pics) in place of my old 2.1 surround setup (black speakers in old pic). It's got a lot more bass than my previous speakers... well, that's what my parents have told me anyway, haha.

Dead Space Featured Guide

Same great text, less white background... with some pretty colors, pictures and nice extras tossed in by the talented group at Cheat Happens!

Cheat Happens Dead Space Featured Guide by Berserker

Cheat Happens always does a wonderous job with the layout of their Feature Guides, which is why I continue to write for them from time to time. Big thanks to Chris and Peter from Cheat Happens for making my Dead Space guide seem whole again.

I've still got some Impossible Mode tips to add to the main guide while on my journey through Impossible Mode then I'll lay this guide to rest and get back to more important things... like the RE5 demo - more about this in an upcoming post.

Review Update - November 2008

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (Xbox 360)

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I really had my doubts about this game, especially with the new Teen rating. For an MK fan though, it really isn't that bad at all. There is more of focus on the core fighting game this time instead of adding in some lame minigames or a long drawn out story mode. They got rid of the different styles and most of the weapon combat has been taken out so each character feels more simplified now and the entire game feels more old-school with this approach if you ask me.

The game plays like the other 3-D MK's (Deadly Alliance - Armageddon) but there is much more of a focus on juggling this time instead of learning a long dial combo sequence. It feels kind of like MK3 once again. Now if Midway could evolve beyond the stiff character animations and plastic doll look, we would have one impressive MK. The fighting is quite awesome in this one though. Be sure to try it out if you're an MK fan. The lack of violence really isn't that noticeable since the developers maneuvered around it pretty well. The DC characters are really the best part of the character roster since they all feel completely new for the most part - speaking of which, all MK characters are remade for this installment, none of them are simply copy and pasted from Armageddon.

The King of Fighters The Orochi Saga Collection (PS2)

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KOF 94 - 98 all on one disc and emulated just about perfectly. What more could a KOF fan ask for. KOF '98 is still one of my personal favorites in the KOF series, so it was a pleasure to play it once again. Sasyu Kusanagi FTW!

The King of Fighters The Orochi Saga Collection (PSP)

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Oh, dear god, what happened during the porting process here? The PSP version has some bad problems loading and reading the disc as each round starts, so you're looking at near 30 second load times before a match and a bit of pausing to load thereafter. Sounds are sometimes delayed at the beginning or just about anywhere in a fight. The PSP D-pad worked pretty horrible for this game for me also. Avoid this KOF Collection version unless it is your only option.

Spider-man: Web of Shadows (PS3)

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This Spider-man really captures the way that combat should be in a Spider-man game with its impressive aerial, building (while climbing) and ground combat. It's really cool how fun an aerial fight can be with the help of the /\ button, which makes Spider-man shoot out his web at the closest enemy and pull himself toward them to hit them - you can keep repeating this while he falls in mid-air.

Have you ever played The Incredible Hulk for Xbox 360 and seen how bad that game freezes though? Web of Shadows on PS3 is just about as bad. The game froze on me five times and it has a bunch of random glitches and overall doesn't run as well as it could. Still, this title is a worthy rental for those interested in a fun combat system for a Spider-man game.

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (X360)

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I came off playing Silent Hill Homecoming and Dead Space then switched over to Spyro; what a change of direction! Dawn of the Dragon was my first Spyro game out of all the ones released so far. It has some really impressive and engaging cutscenes and voice acting. The overall combat isn't too bad either though the targeting can throw you off here and there along with some slight hit detection issues. It allows you to take control of two characters and switch between them at any time, or you can play the entire game two-player. It was a little on the short side but overall it was pretty good.

Resident Evil 5 Demo and Other RE5 News

Famitsu magazing recently announced the following:

a) An RE5 (Biohazard 5) demo which covers two stages in the African town of Kijuju and has co-op play will be released on Xbox LIVE on December 5th in Japan available to gold members only. The Capcom Blog makes mention of a PSN demo for PS3 and that the North Amercian demos will arrive at a later date sometimes after the JPN demo.
b) The Japan release for RE5 has been moved up to March 5, 2009 and the rest will still remain at March 13, 2009.
c) Capcom's e-Capcom sales site in Japan will be selling a LE version of RE which includes:

- a 32-page all color art book
- a complete with exclusive staff commentary
- a BSAA waist pouch that's meant to look like an item Chris wears in the game
- a 2 gigabyte USB memory card shaped like an anti virus item from the game

Pics of LE

Source: IGN (UK), 1up

Here's hoping we'll hear more on this (such as worldwide mentions of at least the demo) in the coming weeks.

Oh, and also, click here for a new Chris Redfield character rendering.

PS3 and Xbox 360 Friend Requests

I've been wanting to make this post for a while but I keep forgetting about it.

I've been getting a lot of random friend requests lately on both PSN and Xbox LIVE. Most people simply send a friend request without any sort of message or anything. A pet peeve of mine on Yahoo messenger is when a person adds me without any sort of message of introduction and I feel the same way with PSN and Xbox LIVE, so I'd like to say right now...

If you add me to your PSN or Xbox LIVE friends list then please send me a message along with the add or I'll decline you.

I like to have an idea of who I am adding. It wouldn't hurt to ask either. Some of my best friends on Xbox LIVE asked before I added them or either I knew them before they added me. If you're someone that I know, then remind me of who you are; usernames don't always show your identity. It wouldn't hurt if we had the same interests also besides just one game.

I just got through deleting my gamertags from all my guides yesterday and adding a note under my gamertags to the side, so there is really no excuse not to read this message.

I'm not trying to rant here at all, I just don't want my friends list filling up too fast with people that I don't know. I'm not trying to scare people off from adding me here either, just trying to share my preferences.

Thanks for understanding.

Dead Space Guide

Don't cha just love that smile for the camera ^there. Such a good picture! Ah, I love Dead Space. Surprisingly, this if my fourth horror guide in a row. No other gaming genre has really amused me that much this year, except for the stylish action in Devil May Cry 4 and the dinosaur shooting in Turok... oh, and a bit of retro gameplay in Soul Calibur and god yelling on PSP.

Dead Space FAQ/Walkthrough by Berserker

How do the ASCII stars look? Realistic? Messy? That's the only type of design I could think of really. How does the item location format look? This was a new type of format that I decided on a few days ago and I think it looks great. You can scroll through the guide and look off to the right to search for item pickups in each chapter by watching for "Item List".

In the coming weeks, I'm going to try to get this one on par with my Resident Evil 4 FAQ. The thing about RE4 is that I had already been playing for the past two years it was out before finally writing a guide for it, so I knew the game exremely well, unlike Dead Space, which I'm just now starting my third playthrough in.

This one covers both the PS3 and Xbox 360 version. I've gone through both of them and can confirm the slight differences listed in the guide (controller configuration and extra accomplishment [trophy] on PS3). Both button inputs are listed whenever a button command is mentioned. I listed it as PS3 up on GameFAQ since that was the first version that I played through.

This might be my last FAQ for this year. I'm really looking forward to Rygar: The Battle of Argus, Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, Bionic Commando, Street Fighter IV, and of course, Resident Evil 5, so I'll probably do something with one or two of those. I don't really think I'd have enough skill to write a fighting game guide (the way I'd want to), so I'll most likely leave Street Fighter alone.

Update (11/10) - Added the rest of the files for Chapter 12. Few minor errors were corrected. A tip was added to the room with boulders in Chapter 7. Proofreading process starts next - what fun! :\

Update (11/11) - Proofread Chapters 1, 2 and 3! A few other minor little extras were added here and there and the weapons section in Basics has been filled out more.

Update (11/14) - Proofread Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. A few item pickups were added here and there and I finally added an objective description in Chapter 11 that I had been lacking.

Update (11/17) - Proofread the remainder of the document! The "Tentacle" was added under the enemy section under Basics and some tips were added for the "Don't get cocky, kid" accomplishment that can be obtained in Chapter 4. A few item pickups were added here and there as well. This might be the last update for a while.

Update (12/15) -

Added:

a) a very well hidden random credit pickup in the Mining Hallway of Chapter 7
b) a random ammo pickup for the Mess Hall area of Chapter 10
c) a better Line Gun strategy for the Spawner
d) a mention of the Force Gun when Isaac first enters the Mining Administration Hallway in Chapter 4
e) some additional tips for shooting the asteroids in the ADS Cannon Room of Chapter 4
f) an additional tip for fighting the Leviathan
g) a new Text File Transcripts section under the Lists section
h) a new Impossible Mode Tips section under the Lists section
i) a mention of my Cheat Happens Featured Guide for Dead Space at the top of the guide and bottom of the guide

Update (12/24)

a) Added a Random Ammo pickup to the Machine Shop area in Chapter 3.
b) Added a Random Credit pickup in the Refueling Chamber after the gondola
ride, near the part where a Slasher busts through a vent to retreat into the
nearby wall in Chapter 3.
c) Added an extra tip about zero-g jumping up to the walls of the Outside
Access Walkway of Chapter 4 (before the cannon room) was added.
d) Added a random ammo pickup in the East Grow Chamber of Chapter 6.
e) Corrected the tip for the Mineral Processing Room in Chapter 7.
f) Added an extra tip to the Mining Bay room of Chapter 7 that deals with the
asteroid beacon placement.
g) Added a random ammo pickup to the Repair Room in Chapter 7.
h) Added an Armor Glitch mention below the Cheats section of the Extra section.