Bleeding Edge (Xbox One, 2020)

Bleeding Edge
Developed by Ninja Theory
Published by Microsoft
Released for Xbox One (3/24/2020)
Also on PC

Bleeding Edge was released in late March 2020, brought to us by Ninja Theory and is a class-based, team-centric online-multiplayer 4v4 brawler. I enjoyed the previous games from these developers, though I was bit skeptical coming into Bleeding Edge since multiplayer was never really something Ninja Theory had dipped into before. With Ninja Theory being purchased by Microsoft in June 2018, Bleeding Edge was featured on Game Pass from day one, making it easy to check it out if you're on the fence about it like I was, so let's take a look at the game and see if it's worth the download...

Bleeding Edge features a colorful art-style and characters with over-exaggerated traits that look a bit cartoony, similar to the styles of Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch. The levels themselves look nice and the game makes great use of bright colors. The music fits the theme well, though I can't say I found any of it particularly memorable. The sound design is about what you'd expect, with lots of appropriate hi impact sound effects and quips from the colorful roster. Menus are clean and easy to navigate, so overall Bleeding Edge does a nice job in the visual and sound presentation. Despite the fact that the word bleeding is in the title, those expecting buckets of blood will be disappointed that there really isn't much to speak of here and the depiction of violence is not graphical in nature.

There were a total of 12 characters to choose from as of April 2020. The fighters are broken up into classes, with 5 damage characters, 3 supports and 4 tanks. Each character have unique move sets, with a normal attack, 3 special attacks and 1 super move. The special attacks have a recharge after each use, so you can't just sit there and spam the best moves. The super moves can only be used every so often, featuring a longer recharge than the special attacks but inflicting more damage. Upon selecting a character, each has 2 different super moves to select from. Each fighter can be customized under the workshop, which can be accessed from the main menu. From here you can change up mods, boards, emotes and skins in addition to reading that fighter's bio. Mods will give little boosts to certain skills or stats and up to 3 of these can be applied at once, allowing you to customize to your playstyle a bit. Additional mods can be purchased or they will be slowly unlocked as you just keep playing. Boards, emotes and skins allow you to select between a couple variants in each category. Other than starting out with a handful of boards, you'll have to purchase all of these. Currency unlocks very slow, so only those in it for the long haul will get to see many of these. Overall it's an interesting character roster offering a good amount of options and a reasonable amount of customization. When I first started playing Bleeding Edge, there were only 3 tank characters available. By the time I was wrapping up my play for this review, an additional fourth tank character was released, so this looks to be a good indicator that the developers will continue to support this game as time goes on.

The classes are very important in Bleeding Edge and having the right composition of classes can make the difference between winning and losing. The most important thing is to make sure that there is at least 1 support class on the team and if there's not, do the team a favor and switch over to one since the game allows you to switch classes on the fly, so long as you're in the starting spawn point. The support class is without a doubt the most important class since they can specialize in keeping the team members alive. Tank and damage class players are focused primarily on killing the enemy, giving the game a decent variety of roles for players to take. Upon death you'll be sent back to the base spawn and will have to wait a few seconds before popping back in.

While the gameplay in Bleeding Edge will seem hectic for the first few rounds, once you get the hang of how all of the characters play it's manageable. Staying together as a team is key, as you'll quickly learn that trying to take on anything by yourself will almost always end in death. Matches with teams that stick together vs uncoordinated teams will end up very lopsided. If you get into a match and see all of your teammates running off doing their own thing, prepare to lose. The game gives you a message if you quit out of a match early, stating that you will be penalized by being put into a queue with other quitters, making it harder to find a match. I don't know how this works, but I didn't want to test it so I stuck out out all of the terrible matches. Finding a match was never too bad, usually finding a game in under 2 minutes but I'd imagine that if you frequently rage quit that this time could be much longer.

Bleeding Edge is an online-only game, featuring multiplayer battles of 4v4 going at it in 2 different events. It's recommended to play through the brief tutorial when you first load the game up and there is also a practice mode that lets you mess around with the characters. In order to enter into a game, you select fight from the menu and then play the waiting game while a search is conducted. This usually took no longer than a minute or two before you're loaded into a game. Unfortunately, there's no way to select which type of game mode you'd like to search for, so you've got to take what you get.

The first game mode is objective control, where players fight to capture three capture points. These points only appear for a limited time and it randomizes it up so different points will be active throughout a round. The team that holds the capture points the longest wins. The other game mode is called power collection, where the first part of the round spawns a bunch of canisters scattered around the map. Once you bust these canisters open they'll drop a power cell. Once all of the power cells have been collected or the timer runs out, a point (or sometimes multiple points) will open up on the map where you can deposit your power cells. The first team to reach 50 wins the match. Eliminating an enemy player also gives points and if you take out somebody before they drop off their power cells, they'll drop them upon death. It takes a few seconds to deposit the power cells, meaning you can interrupt a player doing this with an attack. Power collection can be extremely frustrating when you die and lose a bunch of power cells, but it can also be quite gratifying to kill an enemy and steal all of their cells. Both modes will vary in enjoy-ability, depending on how competently you function as a team. A king of the hill or capture the flag style of game mode would work well with this style of gameplay and hopefully there are some new game modes added in the future.

Bleeding Edge is off to a decent start in several aspects, but there's certainly lots of room for improvement. There needs to be some additional game modes as only having 2 gets repetitive in a hurry. Also, after playing a round you have a summary screen that lists stats and can view highlight plays, but the timer is so short on this screen you'll hardly have a chance to look at it. After the summary screen times out, you're kicked back to the main menu. Why is there no option to stick with the players you have and keep playing? Having the game load into another round after playing would surely tempt more players to stick around for another match.

An option to play with bots would have been nice, both to help new players get more comfortable with the game and to have something to play once the inevitable server shutdown happens in the future. Another minor nitpick is that you can't view the scorecard during the match, only once the round has finished. All of my other issues were already mentioned: takes too long to unlock stuff, a bad team means a bad time and there need to be more game modes/maps. In the end, Bleeding Edge features some nice graphics, some cool character design and can be a good time if you get placed on a team that sticks together. However, your fun is directly correlated to your team, so if you have a bad team it can get rough.

Note: This review was submitted on April 30, 2020 and therefore is reflective of how the game was at that point in time. There will no doubt be new features, characters and tweaks added to this title over the coming months/years, but this review should at least provide a general idea of whether you should check this one out and perhaps I'll write a follow-up review if the game sees massive changes.

Final Verdict: Bleeding Edge is a team-focused, class-based 4v4 online brawler. While still early in its life, the game shows some promise and can be fun if you get placed with team-minded players. Worth checking out on Game Pass if you're into brawlers/hack 'n slash gameplay.

Purchase Links:
Buy Bleeding Edge - Microsoft Store
Buy Bleeding Edge - eBay
Game Pass - Microsoft Store

Related Links:
Bleeding Edge - Official Site
Ninja Theory - Official Site
Xbox Game Studios - Official Site
Bleeding Edge - Metacritic
Bleeding Edge - GameFAQs
Bleeding Edge - True Achievements
Bleeding Edge - Xbox Achievements

Protect Me Knight (XBLIG, 2010)

Protect Me Knight
Developed by Ancient
Released for XBLIG (5/2010)

Protect Me Knight (also known as まもって騎士 Mamotte Naito) was a true hidden gem in the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace. It was listed in the store by it's Japanese title only and due to this was extremely hard to find in the massive library of games available, even if you knew what you were looking for. The game was developed by Ancient, a company founded by veteran music composer Yuzo Koshiro and co-founded by Tomo Koshiro, Yuzo's mother. Yuzo Koshiro is well known to retro gaming enthusiasts, as he composed music for classics like the Streets of Rage series, ActRaiser and Shenmue just to name a few. While Ancient was conceived way back in 1990, they typically just worked on soundtracks for various developers and as far as I can tell Protect Me Knight was the first game I've been able to find released under the company's name.

Right off the bat the game lets you know this is going to be a throwback to the days of gaming past. Upon booting the game up you'll be greeted to a first-person view in front of a television screen, blowing on the cartridge trying to get it start but it keeps loading up a pixelated mess. You'll pop the cartridge back out and press the A button to blow on it and re-insert it, only to be greeted with the same mess of pixels. Anybody who used to game on the old Nintendo Entertainment System will definitely remember these days, and already right from the get-go Protect Me Knight gives you a nice feeling of nostalgia. You can press the start button to skip past this screen at any time and as far as I've been able to tell no matter how many times you blow on the cart it never loads up properly.

Once you press start you'll be greeted to a title screen composed of nice bright pixels and some appropriate chip-tune music. The graphics have a much higher pixel count than the old 8-bit classics, but they still feel like something that came from that era of gaming. The sound is also very true to it's 8-bit roots as well and the presentation on the whole has a very authentic feel to it. If you leave the game idle at the title the game will display profiles for each of the characters, complete with poorly translated "Engrish" to even further cement the retro feeling (these can be viewed here).

Protect Me Knight shares elements of a tower defense and hack 'n slash game. Although there are no actual towers here, you'll be building and maintaining barricades to keep the princess safe from harm. It's up to you to attack the monsters that will try to break through the barricades by utilizing your attack and special attack (called the "killer shot"). You can also guard by pulling the triggers while being attacked. You have the ability to build new barricades at the cost of "love points."  Love points will be gained for taking down enemies and racking up big combos. When you attack next to a barricade it will repair it and if you hold down the build button the barricades can be upgraded. When a barricade is fully upgraded it turns into a catapult that the player can get on and launch boulders at the enemies, taking out groups of enemies if they're bunched together. You don't want to use up all of your MP on building barricades because at the end of each round you'll be able to spend them to upgrade your skills in four different categories: attack, speed, killer shot and defense.

Protect Me Knight has four different classes: fighter, ninja, amazon and mage. Each has their own killer shot attack that can be utilized with the B button, which will consume some of your MP. The fighter throws tomahawks, the ninja drops decoy bombs, the amazon tosses a boomerang and the mage can shoot fireballs. Each of these killer shots are effective in battle and will get better as you level them up. Your regular attacks will also improve as you level them up, and what started as a 1-hit attack will end up as a lethal 3-hit combo. The enemies you'll be defending the princess from come in a nice variety, including goblins, ghosts, minotaurs and dragons to name a few. Some of the boss enemies are pretty huge and the detail in the pixel sprites is quite impressive.

Before starting a game in Protect Me Knight, you have the option to listen to all the music and adjust the volume or you can go ahead and select your character and color. Once you've chosen your character there are two different modes to choose from: arcade and survival. In arcade mode you'll fight your way through ten stages, while in survival you'll face an endless horde of monsters to see how long you can hold out. Both modes support up to four players who can join in at any time. There are also four difficulties: easy, normal, hard and hell. While arcade mode is relatively short and ends after only ten rounds, the replay value is rather high with having four unique characters and also four difficulties to choose from. While some may view the games shortness as a problem, I personally thought it was just right. There's no option to resume your game at a later time and the short length makes it very feasible to complete a game in a sitting. You also can't die, since when you run out of HP you'll respawn back in after a few seconds. You can still lose however, as at the bottom right corner of the screen you'll see the HP of the princess, and if this is depleted then it's game over, but the game is generous enough to allow you to continue from the beginning of the round you died on. The additional difficulties are a nice challenge, but I wouldn't count on beating hell solo so try to have some friends over if you plan to attempt that one!

It's an absolute shame how overlooked Protect Me Knight was, mostly due to being listed only by its Japanese title and probably not reaching most of its target demographic having been released onto XBLIG. This is yet another case where Microsoft should have stepped in and gave the game a promotion to XBLA (online co-op support would have been great!). It's a unique tower-defense/hack 'n slash hybrid and sets a prime example of how to really nail the retro aesthetic. Protect Me Knight is easily one of the finest titles released for XBLIG, the music is outstanding as you'd expect from Yuzo Koshiro and the gameplay is incredibly fun. There's solid replay value thanks to the variety of the characters, the various difficulty settings and the option for up to four-players to join up is an excellent bonus. It's also worth noting that Ancient would release a sequel for the Nintendo 3DS in 2014, titled Gotta Protectors.

Final Verdict: Protect Me Knight is a fantastic mix of tower-defense and hack 'n slash with a true retro presentation. Easily among the best games ever released on XBLIG!

Related Links:
Protect Me Knight Profile Screens - Xbox Overview
Ancient - Official Website
Protect Me Knight Trailer - YouTube
Protect Me Knight Article - Wired
Protect Me Knight - GameFAQs
Protect Me Knight - Hardcore Gaming 101
Protect Me Knight Review - xblig.co
Protect Me Knight - Giant Bomb

 Alternate Japanese Artwork

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage (Xbox 360, 2010)

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage
Developed by Koei
Published by Koei Tecmo Games
Released for Xbox 360 (11/2/2010)
Also on PS3

There have been several efforts over the years to make a video game from the popular anime/manga series Fist of the North Star, but most were either disappointing or never left Japan. Koei seems like a good candidate to develop the game, given their track record with the long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise. Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is incredibly faithful to its source material. If you are a fan of the story and characters you will definitely find something to appreciate here. There's a sizable cast here and all are easily recognizable, the story remains true to the original and the voice acting is quite good in both the English and Japanese variations.

The menus, stage and character select screens are all well composed and attractive. The in-game graphics themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. The characters are well detailed and look nice, though you will tire of beating up the same handful of thugs hundreds of times over. The environments are somewhat detailed, though suffer from some drab design which we'll get into shortly. The gore effects are quite detailed and are pleasing to look at, as you'll constantly see groups of thugs exploding into blood and guts in appropriate Fist of the North Star fashion.

The gameplay in Ken's Rage is basically a beat 'em up, or hack 'n slash as they like to call it these days, but that term feels a bit out of place as you'll be pulverizing your enemies with your fists here. You beat up everybody in a particular area and then move on to the next area where you'll beat up some more dudes. Every now and then the game has some light platforming or random obstacle but it always reverts back to beating up waves of thugs quickly. You have punch, kick and jump attacks in addition to your spirit meter you'll fill up as you hand out beatings. Once you have enough spirit meter you can activate a signature move or go into "spirit aura" mode where your attack is temporarily boosted.

The bulk of Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage lies in the legend and dream modes. There is also a tutorial, challenge and gallery mode option as well. Legend mode follows the story of the original manga and will let you select from Kenshiro, Raoh, Toki, Rei and Mamiya. Dream mode features new "what-if" stories based on the manga characters, and allows you to select from Kenshiro, Raoh, Toki, Rei, Mamiya, Jagi, Thouzer and Shin. Some of these are fun and it's interesting playing from the side of some of the villains. Challenge mode offers two different challenges, one where you'll face off against the guardians of Hokuto and the other where you'll take on the five guardians of Nanto. These feature ranked leaderboards so you can compete with other Xbox 360 players for high scores. The gallery mode will let you look at an encyclopedia which has entries for all of the game's characters, moves, locations, etc. There is also a movie and music gallery which you'll unlock content for as you play. Options allow you to tweak the difficulty, adjust subtitles, change the violence level, turn the life gauge on or off and change the voices between English and Japanese. Overall, the game provides a wealthy amount of content particularly for a game of this nature.

Both legend and dream mode feature cut-scenes before and after each level explaining the plot. These are all quite well done but the amount of them can become a bit overbearing at times. Luckily they can all be skipped with a press of the start button. Dream mode differs a bit in that there are way more characters on the battlefield at once, resulting in some clutter and frame-rate stutters here and there, but nothing game-breaking. Dream mode also offers two-player coop.

There's a good variety of characters to choose from as you play through Ken's Rage, each of them featuring their own expansive skill tree. As you progress through the game, you'll earn spirit points that you'll use to unlock skills, perks and upgrades for your character. Each skill tree is massive and I'd estimate it'd take upwards of 20+ hours to max just one of them out! This is a bit overboard and I really wish your characters would start off with at least some of the skills unlocked. You do start off with a single signature move at least, but all the rest is up to the player to upgrade themselves. It seems more like a cheesy way to try to force replay value out of the game, which really isn't necessary, since if the gameplay is good enough people will keep playing it.

The stage design is probably the weakest aspect of Ken's Rage. The surroundings are all composed of drab browns and grays, which is intentional as the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. However, hardly any of the levels are discernible from one another so none of them really stand out. The stages are rarely linear, and while you do have a mini-map that will point out where your objectives are, most levels are filled with branching paths with power-ups laid out to reward exploration. I feel that the length of the levels in general is a bit too long, and some tightening up in the stage design aspect would have benefited the game a lot. In general it will take anywhere from 30-60 minutes just to clear a single scenario, which add ups to a really long game when you take into account how many different stages are offered.

While I enjoyed my time with Ken's Rage, it's not a game I'd recommend to everybody. Hack 'n slash and Fist of the North Star fans should definitely give it a look, but outside of that I couldn't see many others playing it through to the end. It's repetitive nature definitely makes it a good game to play inebriated, where you can just kind of zone out with all of the body parts and blood flying all over the place as you beat down wave after wave of punks. The game is well-designed in the sense that it never froze or glitched on me at any time which is a bit of a rarity these days. The main knock against Ken's Rage is that it's extremely repetitive and very grindy by nature, but if you enjoy these types of games that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Final Verdict: Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage will definitely appeal to fans of the anime/manga and beat 'em up/hack 'n slash junkies, but most others will likely find it far too repetitive.

DLC

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage would receive seven additional DLC packs, some featuring new characters and missions with others featuring new costumes for existing characters. Overall the grand total is just under $40 if you wish to access all the extra content. This is quite ridiculous and in previous generations this is the type of content would have been included in the base game as a bonus for meeting certain conditions. While it's cool that they added additional characters (Heart & Outlaw) and new costumes for several characters, by the time I'd achieved 100% on the base game I'd honestly had my fill and certainly didn't want to invest any additional money into the game as I'd rather just move on to the sequel (which will be covered later when I get around to snagging a copy). There is no additional gamerscore attached to this DLC so you won't need it to unlock all the of the game's achievements.

Purchase Links:
Buy Ken's Rage (Digital) - Xbox Marketplace
Buy Ken's Rage (Disc) - eBay

Related Links:
Koei Tecmo - Official Site
Ken's Rage - Metacritic
Ken's Rage - GameFAQs
Ken's Rage Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Ken's Rage - True Achievements
CGR Reviews Ken's Rage - YouTube

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Xbox One, 2014)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Developed by Monolith Productions
Published by Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment
Released for Xbox One (9/2014)
Also on Linux/Mac/PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor was developed by Monolith Productions and released in 2014. I remember buying this on a black Friday sale that same year on the cheap and just recently got around to giving it a go (roughly around four years later!). I'd been told by many people over the years to try this game out and to be honest I'm not sure why it took me so long to give it a look, but I'm definitely glad I did!

Much of the gameplay in Shadow of Mordor will be instantly familiar to fans of the Batman Arkham series and the Assassin's Creed games as well. The combat and stealth feel pretty much just like the Batman games, which is not a bad thing when it's done as good as it is here. Counters are easy to execute and it feels good slaying waves of Oruks, which are the orc-like creatures that inhabit Mordor. Unlike Batman, your character in this game uses his sword, so stabbings and decapitations will occur at a very high frequency. You are also equipped with a bow, complete with Max Payne style bullet-time slow-mo action. Your character is possessed by a spirit, which brought back some memories of Prey and also helps to somewhat explain how your character continuously rises back from the dead after being slain. The game also has a few various beasts roaming about the land, which you'll eventually gain the ability to tame and ride and add some welcome variety to the gameplay. Some areas have beasts in cages that can be released by shooting an arrow at the lock, which will break out and attack nearby enemies.

What really sets Mordor apart from the rest is the nemesis system. There is a hierarchy of Oruks and when one of them kills you, they rank up and get tougher. Things start to get interesting later on when you gain the ability to brand soldiers and take command of your enemies. For example, you can brand a captain and command him to start a fight with another Uruk Warchief. The nemesis system is a great concept, works rather well in execution and was easily my favorite aspect of the game. There are standard story missions which mostly serve the purpose of introducing new abilities. I must be honest, I never really got into the Lord of the Rings books or movies, so I had a bit of a hard time getting invested into the main storyline. There were a few missions that stood out, but for the most part I found the main quest a bit forgettable. In Mordor's case this is fine because the nemesis system and enjoyable combat was more than enough to keep me playing. Graphically the game looks good and runs at a smooth framerate for the most part, and while I found the environments weren't terribly interesting in appearance (one area I feel the Arkham games are superior in) they are very well-designed, detailed and give you several options as to how you'd like to attack your targets. The enemy Oruks look quite menacing and there is a pretty decent variety of them so it doesn't feel like you're slaying the same guys over and over.

Shadow of Mordor is a great game, but its not without a few faults so lets quickly address a few of the games issues. During a battle with a warchief I had one instance where my profile spontaneously signed out and kicked me back to the title screen. This was jarring as it happened in the middle of a big fight but luckily it only occurred once in around 40 hours of gameplay. The main story missions give you an option to restart when you fail, but the side objectives don't, meaning you have to hoof it back to where the mission marker is to retry every time you fail one of them. I don't really understand this decision and implementing a quick restart would have made many of the side missions much more enjoyable. Another gripe is the way your character sticks to walls which can be annoying when you're trying to make an escape but your player insists on hanging and climbing the walls.

Overall, despite having a story I found uninteresting, Shadow of Mordor has such solid gamplay I'd consider it a fantastic experience. If you missed out on this one when it came out like I did, then I'd definitely recommend going back and giving it a look! Unfortunately I only had the original release of the game and it's just not in the budget to get the DLC right now, but I hope to revisit this title in the future if I can get the additional content at a reasonable price.

Final Verdict: Shadow of Mordor is an excellent open-world game with some very satisfying hack 'n slash and stealth action!

Purchase Links:
Buy Shadow of Mordor (Digital) - Microsoft Store
Search Shadow of Mordor (Disc) - eBay

Related Links:
Shadow of Mordor - GameFAQs
Monolith - Official Site
WB Interactive Entertainment - Official Site

Jumper: Griffin's Story (Xbox 360, 2008)

Jumper: Griffin's Story
Developed by Red Tribe
Published by Brash Entertainment
Released for Xbox 360 (2/12/2008)
Also on PS2/Wii

Based off the cinematic flop that was Jumper and developed by Red Tribe, the same folks that brought you the Space Chimps game, comes the video game adaptation to your home console. This game is very much a by-the-numbers brawler of the most boring variety. Beat up a few dudes, move to the next area, rinse and repeat. This could be said of most brawlers but good game designers are able to make it less redundant.

I recall a co-worker lent me this movie to watch back in the day, but I honestly can't remember a single detail from it other than it had sand-hating dude from the Star Wars prequel movies and Samuel L. Jackson in it. So with a completely forgettable movie, the story and characters of this game were obviously of no interest to me. The controls work good enough, and at first it is kind of cool teleporting all over the place but you can only use it while in combat and the novelty wears thin in quite the hurry; plus you can't help but wonder why the protagonist doesn't just teleport to whoever the head dude in charge is and take him out but I suppose there would be no game then.

The visuals are definitely sub-par for the Xbox 360, let's just say you can definitely tell this title was also designed with the PS2 and Wii in mind and didn't do much to advance the graphics beyond the levels of those consoles. It's rare that I find a game that I wouldn't really recommend to anybody, but this would have to be one of those. Jumper: Griffin's Story is just a completely forgettable attempt to cash in on a movie franchise.

Final Verdict: Unless you're looking to grab a quick and easy 1000 gamer score or you're a huge fan of the film there is really no reason to play Jumper: Griffin's Story as it's a very mediocre game.

Purchase Links:
Buy Jumper: Griffin's Story - eBay

Related Links:
Jumper: Griffin's Story - Metacritic
Jumper: Griffin's Story - GameFAQs
Jumper: Griffin's Story Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Jumper: Griffin's Story - True Achievements