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We were able to play through an entire competitive race in the upcoming LittleBigPlanet Karting (LBPK) at E3, placing first (of course) and winning a small Sackboy plush identical to those found in the Collector’s Edition of LBP2.  The demo started off with everyone in a kind of practice mode where you could zoom about the track getting used to the controls while all of the other players connected.  I mixed up my L1 and R1 and ended up in the bottom of the track — a place where you would normally fall and just be respawned onto the track, but since it was practice mode I was allowed to drive around there.  This is when I ran into the only bugs I experienced with LBPK, as I accidentally bumped into a giant soda can and was immediately swallowed into it while my screen glitched out (you can check it out in the video of our time with the game above).  This area obviously wasn’t meant to be raced upon, I guess they should have just turned on the spawn warping in practice mode too.  The only other glitch I encountered was a hallway that I went down on every lap and always instantly died for no apparent reason, you respawn quickly when this happens by jumping out of one of the classic LBP spawn gates in the ground (plus I ended up winning), so it wasn’t as big of a hindrance as it might have been.

I was so busy concentrating on winning the race that I never figured out which button allows you to drift around corners, but I was otherwise in command of the fairly standard kart-racing controls in LBPK.  The race we played covered three laps around a winding track with pleasant if somewhat pedestrian LBP style.  Interesting spins on the classic kart-racing formula introduced in this LBPK demo included: using the LBP grappling hook to go across large expanses, the ability to melee nearby drivers, and a “speed-up” item that overlays a VHS-like fast-forwarding effect while catching you up.  Pretty much every other item I encountered had a direct equivalent in most other kart-racing games including the standard blue/green/red shell Mario Kart equivalents and standard speed boost items.  Speaking of items, item-balance felt quite a bit off during my play session with the game, and this imbalance is one of the main things I have to thank for my racing victory.  The items are available in standard places like in many kart games (Mario Kart, Joy Ride), but unlike those two games, you can see which item you’re going to get before you get it (like in Blur) instead of activating a roulette.  These pre-defined item locations make it impossible for the developers to balance the items, like giving speed boosts and blue shell equivalents only to those further back, and make it so that people in third (as I was) can get blue shell equivalents (as I did) and essentially destroy the people right in front of them to steal the lead.  Opting for the roulette-like random item assignments would go a long way to making LBPK feel more fair and balanced than it does in its current state.

Overall, I had not a bad time with LBPK, but just the racing mode alone can’t really hold a candle in its current form even to more generic kart racers like Joy Ride Turbo.  Luckily for everyone, there are a ton of other modes announced for the game including a Battle Mode, Waypoint Races, Treasure Hunts, Score Attacks and more in addition to the adoption of the traditional LBP motto “Play, Create, Share” allowing players to customize/share their characters, weapons, and levels.  Even if the racing mode were to be included in the final game in its current form, most gamers will probably be to busy fooling around on custom tracks with custom weapons/karts to notice anyways. With so much content announced for the game and a while before its release, things are overall looking positive for the future of LBPK.

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Here’s a gameplay video from our second round of beating the opposing team in the upcoming God of War: Ascension for PS3. For our overall impressions of the game, read the post here.

The Game Usagi Krew was able to play a round of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (PSABR) on the PS3 with two human players and two CPUs at E3.  Sir Shiggy opted for Kratos and I chose the newly announced Big Daddy while the CPUs played as Nathan Drake and Sweet Tooth.  The game mode that we played was the same one showcased during the Sony press conference where you can only get points by killing other players using special attacks that are built-up during the general brawling.  Each character has three levels of specials, but it takes so long to build up a level 3 special that no one used one during our play session.

Compared to the genre-defining all-star fighting game Super Smash Bros. Brawl, what we played of PSABR didn’t stack up too favourably.  The combat in PSABR is generally slower-paced than that in Brawl (which was in turn slower than Melee), and this can make it feel unresponsive at times.  Having the game-type focused on special moves basically eliminated defensive gameplay and any worry Character balancing, which is always a very contentious issue in any fighting game, also felt off.  Playing as the lumbering Big Daddy, I spent most of my time being juggled around in the air by Kratos and Drake.  When Sir Shiggy’s Kratos was focusing his attention on me, my Big Daddy could hardly touch him without being sent flying.  It may have been due to the fact that the game isn’t due out until Q4 this year, but keeping track of your progress during the game was also an issue.  All that each player had along the bottom of the screen was their special bar showing their progress to earning the varying levels of special attacks — at no point were you aware of the score.  This may have been a developmental choice rather than an omission, but either way I felt that it really hampers gameplay when you have no idea who is winning.  The winner is even more thoroughly obscured through the fact that it’s pretty hard to tell at a glance what characters have specials stored or even whether or not they are currently using a special.  Reviewing the footage we took of the game, I was able to see that players with Level 1 specials stored have a mild white glow, but when we were actually playing the game it may as well have not been there at all.  In Smash Bros. and other fighting games, the screen actually zooms in on a player when they activate a special to make sure everyone knows what’s going on, a mechanic like this in PSABR would go a long way to streamlining the gameplay.  Items were much more rare in PSABR than they are in Smash Bros. games and had some interesting effects.  There was one blue glowing orb item that changed our Hades level background to that of Patapon, adding an arrow-dodging mechanic to the Hades-monster-avoiding mechanic already in play as well as a yellow forcefield item that protected the player and an RPG gun that did what they do best, shoot RPGs.

Our first taste of PSABR didn’t leave a terribly good impression and this could be either a warning of worse things to come or just a circumstantial occurrence in a gameplay mode that is still rough around the edges.  If the combo-centric mode in its current form ends up being the primary game mode in PSABR, then its hard to imagine people not comparing it unfavourably to the percentage and ring-out based gameplay in the Smash Bros. series.  Hopefully, SuperBot Entertainment will take to heart all of the issues experienced with the demo at E3 and use them to make the game more robust and more favourable in comparison to the other games in the genre.  As the game’s release date draws near and more characters/maps/items/modes are announced, you’ll be able to see for yourself if you think the game is worth a purchase.  The CrossPlay features including save-file transferability between the PS3 and PS Vita versions of the game are indeed compelling, but if the core gameplay mechanics don’t measure up being able to take the game on the go will basically become a moot point. We hope to play PSABR again as its release draws nearer to see if it can pull its metaphorical socks up or if it’s doomed to dwell in the realm of fighting game mediocrity.

We were able to play two rounds of the multiplayer mode for the upcoming God of War game at E3.  It was essentially a 4-vs-4 capture the points mode where players for Sparta and Troy are trying to capture various points around the map that when captured pull the cyclops Polyphemus toward either faction’s side of the map.  Once enough points have been captured long enough, the gods grant a spear to the side that “won” the point capturing, but the catch is that the spear has to be more or less captured itself before it can be used on Polyphemus to end the match.  So, not only could the team that captured less points still steal the spear and win, they can also make the spear disappear by capturing other points and dragging Polyphemus away.  During our play time, neither of those eventualities occurred, though, as the Game Usagi Krew managed to best the opposite team both times in both capturing the points and the game-winning spear itself.  Combat is kept fresh and strategic by the placement of special items around the map like boots that increase your speed and time-limited super weapons, as well as the ability to set or activate traps near the capture points to keep enemies on their toes.

For a game that isn’t due out until March 2013, the God of War: Ascension (GoWA) multiplayer felt very robust and complete.  There were no mechanical or graphical glitches to be found and everything looked great (not really better than God of War III, but about the same).  The best part, though, is that it was quite fun to play.  I normally steer clear of the God of War games because I’ve never been able to conquer it’s more complicated 3D platforming sections and I just don’t have fun playing games that repeatedly drop me off the same cliff no matter what I do for an entire afternoon; the multiplayer in God of War: Ascension, on the other hand, was platforming-free and allowed the players to experience the raw PvP combat potential that is inherent in the GoW battle system.  I never mastered the controls entirely, so there were some very cheap moves of which I was constantly on the receiving end that I think could translate into balance issues in the release version of the game.  Balance issues aside, I was pleasantly surprised with the multiplayer in GoWA, and even if what we’ve seen so far of the single player campaign currently smacks of Sony just trying to turn GoW into more of a cash cow, the multiplayer seems fresh enough that this game shouldn’t be too far off any PS3 owner’s radar.