Blade & Soul at G-Star 2009 game festival in Busan, South Korea!

All I can say is "Holy Shit". It looks like a must-own MMORPG.

I did a little blurb on Blade & Soul a few months back, (here), when it caught my attention with a beautiful video trailer of the world, the premise of the game (Asian myth and martial-arts), and the freaking fantastic artwork by manhwa artist Hyung-Tae Kim. (Blade & Soul is the only game with Hyung-Tae Kim as it's character illustrator where the characters actually look like their illustrations).

I was very much impressed.

At the G-Star game event in Busan, South Korea, NCsoft revealed two major trailers, one which you can see on Examiner.com, and another which was shown in a press conference, which is pretty shitty quality as it looks like it was filmed on a cell-phone.

Nonetheless, the viewable trailer (again, click here to see it, but be sure to come back) shows us four races total, the Jin and Gon, as well as the slender, graceful new Kun race, and the tiny fox-kids, the Lyn.

In addition, four playable classes were announced, the Sword Masters and Kung-Fu Masters (which we already knew about) plus the new Force Masters (gravity and energy type mages) and Destroyers, the massive axe wielding tanks of the game.

Man, the game looks too fucking awesome to pass up. I can't wait for actual gameplay videos to hit Youtube when the game hits open beta.

God Of War III Vs. Bayonetta; a comparison piece by David A.

A recent article on thesavepoints.com caught my eye. It was a lengthy comparison of the God of War III demo gameplay with the gameplay found in Bayonetta.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"I really wanted to see the contrast between both games, as I’m sure a lot of people will skip Bayonetta simply because God of War III is coming out just a bit later in 2010. In my opinion, that’s a shame, because from what I’ve experienced from the demo, Bayonetta is a much better experience."

"Wait Dave, are you comparing a full game to a demo? I guess I’ll have to call guilty to that one. But wait! I was a strong defender of the Bayonetta PS3 demo before the game came out in Japan, as I believed that the subpar demo was an issue of it being an in- development built. And I was right. So I’m not going to judge GoW III fully before the full game is out either. I’d be too much of an hypocrite to do so. But we can still take a look at design choices for both games and compare them."

"First and foremost, God of War III’s graphics are one of its high point. We can all assume that even as good as it looks running right now, it’ll look better when the game hits us this spring. Nothing to doubt here. The game’s engine is stunningly better at rendering than Bayonetta. Oh, I haven’t looked much at the 360 version of Bayonetta, so I’m always speaking of the PS3 version."

Interesting stuff. Read the full article here.

I'm definitely looking forward to Bayonetta, simply because it's fun. I haven't had this much fun with an action game since God Hand. The entire game exhudes polish, and while God of War is just as polished (if not more so), the gameplay in Bayonetta looks like a brilliant combination of everything great about action games. God of War's combat simply isn't as deep or satisfying.

In honor of Bayonetta's release in Japan...

Yes, Bayonetta is out and about in Japan. Don't know the exact figures, but I read she sold over 100,000 copies on her first day, outselling Tekken 6. Pretty badass. Looks like Hideki Kamiya has developed a game that struck the right chord with Japan (who, for whatever reason, aren't usually as into his games as Americans are).

Good for her, and good for Hideki Kamiya and all of Platinum Games. I would be more excited, but since I have to wait two extra fucking months for the game, I'll sulk a bit, if you don't mind.

Anyway, to commemorate the re-defining of the action genre with Bayonetta's release, I've embedded a little music from the game to whet you're appetite. Here is the Jeanne's boss-fight music.

Track uploaded by wishyyy

I've actually been looking for this track for some time now. Great music.