Game Time - September 2012

September is over! It was an action packed month for me in terms of video gaming and the new releases are only going to keep coming. Now is not the time to look to the future though, it's a time to reflect on the games I spent the most time with this past month.

I finally got my hands on Tokyo Jungle, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, and Borderlands 2. All of which I had been looking forward to for months. I still haven't beaten Tokyo Jungle, but it's interesting enough that I think I'll end up coming back to it. One Piece is like every other Dynasty Warriors game, so you probably know how that it. I enjoyed playing both of the games quite a bit.

Borderlands 2 on the other hand I may have enjoyed a little too much. I guess you could say I lost my fair share of sleep because of the all-night co-op sessions I was having. It met and exceeded my expectations for what a new Borderlands could amount to. Let's just say I really like it. Due to the fact that I like it a lot, I also have an extraordinary amount to say about it. That means I won't be talking about it much here, but I will be doing a Game Time ID dedicated entirely to my love of Borderlands 2.

Every time I write a new one of these I become more aware of how terrible I am at writing intros for them. So without further adieu let's get into the discussion so I can cause minimal intro pain to both you and myself. It's game time!

Tokyo Jungle

Yeah, the game's just as crazy as this image.

Crazy Japanese games are nothing new, but they've been few and far between lately. Lucky for everyone Sony decided that they wanted to bring back the crazy by releasing Tokyo Jungle. Have you ever wanted to see a Pomeranian savagely kill a hyena in a single blow? How about a deer wearing some hot Hip-hop clothes? If either of those things sound like something you'd be interested in Tokyo Jungle has you covered.

The world is in a post apocalyptic state and animals have become feral. Now they all run amok on the streets of Tokyo which has become not unlike a jungle. Oh yeah, there are also Dinosaurs. The gameplay is focused around this idea. You choose an animal to play as and try to survive as long as you can.

Everything about the game is very arcade-like. You can choose either survival mode, where you survive for as long as possible, or story mode where you have set objectives. The story mode missions can only be unlocked by playing survival, so it's the mode you'll be playing the most. You start off by picking what animal you'll play as. Initially you can only play as a cute little Pomeranian, but completing specific challenges will net you more animals. Once you have picked your animal of choice you'll be thrust into the wilds of Tokyo.

Sights like this are commonplace in Tokyo Jungle.

You'll either be a carnivore, or an herbivore. As an herbivore you'll only be able to eat plants randomly generated throughout the world. The attack of herbivores is often very low, but they can double jump and move very quickly. You can still kill other animals if you want, but you won't be able to eat them. Then as a carnivore you have to viciously attack every animal you see and then eat their corpse. Eating keeps your hunger gauge filled up, while giving you calories. Certain calorie milestones make the animal rank up, so they become stronger. If you let it empty your health will start to slowly drain until you die. If there's nothing around to eat there are sometimes pools of water to stave off the hunger for a little bit.

Much to my surprise the controls of Tokyo Jungle aren't terrible. In fact, I think they're excellent and that mainly stems from the fact that they're simple. Movement is done with the right stick, but if you flick the left stick in a direction the animal will make quick movements. It's all very twitch. Moving around an enemy rapidly is easy, so you can get in to attack them a few times and get out before they even notice what's going on. This makes combat quick and exciting. Alternatively you can sneak up to an opponent and score a clean kill. If you wait near an unsuspecting enemy for long enough fangs will appear on them letting you know that you're ready for a critical strike.

An average round of Tokyo Jungle takes around twenty minutes to a half hour, but can end up going for an hour or more. A minute of real time is equivalent to one year. As time goes on the animals around the world get tougher and tougher, so you really need to push to get that next high score. In order to make the game have an even deeper challenge animals can only survive for fourteen years before they die, making it crucial to reproduce. In order to reproduce it's necessary to mark all points in any one territory by peeing on them. Once every spot has been "marked" mates will show up on the map. There are three levels of mate which are prime, average, and dirty. Prime mates require you to have eaten enough calories to get to boss rank, and average requires you to be a veteran. Dirty mates don't require a rank, which is why they will give you fleas. The better the mate the more babies they will make. When you get a mate you have to take them back to the nest, where you will mount them as the game fades to black. When everything comes back up you will be in control of a baby animals with some others following you. The other animals amount to extra lives.

You'll need to procreate in order to survive the harsh jungles of Tokyo.

It all sounds complicated, but it isn't in practice. Tokyo Jungle is an arcade survival game. You start off weak, but as you change generations and advance you become stronger. You can become even stronger than that by unlocking new animals (There are a TON of animals). That's actually my main gripe about the game is that it's a total grind to unlock more animals. Every animal has a specific challenge to unlock one other specific animal. It can end up taking a while to complete what you need to do, so it can become a bit tedious. It takes a whole lot of play time to get to the crazy animals like dinosaurs, so it really depends on how much fun you're having.

Lucky for me I do have a fun time playing Tokyo Jungle. There's something about trying to survive longer each and every run that I find to be entertaining. It helps that each subsequent animal is stronger than the last so you feel like you're actually advancing. It's just a super weird fun game, which helps overshadow the fact that it looks like a launch era PS2 game that barely has any music.

Weird games like this have been few and far between and it's even more rare for a  game like this to actually be any fun. It was a retail game in Japan, but you can download it for $15 on PSN here. I highly recommend you check it out.

One Piece :Pirate Warriors

I don't know what it is about Dynasty Warriors, but somehow I keep buying more games in the series.

Well, not exactly. I refuse to play any more actual Dynasty Warriors games, but I have been known to play it's anime spin-offs. Specifically Dynasty Warriors Gundam. As I've written about in the past I hate them, but at the same time I have an indescribable love for them. There's something about the totally mindless action that I can really get behind. So when I heard that they were going to be releasing a Dynasty Warriors One Piece game I basically lost my shit. To top it off, it was actually going to get a U.S. release, and it did!

I don't think I've ever mentioned it on this blog, but One Piece is one of my favorite TV shows. In the middle of high school I saw clips from the CP9 arc and decided that I needed to watch the entire series in it's original Japanese. I ended up doing that and I've never looked back since. Needless to say I love the show, so the ability to play as it's characters as they completely annihilate everything in their path sounded very appealing.

This is basically my reaction to the U.S. release of Pirate Warriors.

I'm happy to say that reality actually met up with my expectations on this one. I wasn't expecting anything ridiculously fancy, because well, it's a Dynasty Warriors game. A Dynasty Warriors game with One Piece characters is exactly what I got. There's a whole lot of mashing square while occasionally throwing in triangle or circle. It's not saying much, but this seems like the most advanced Musou game to date. Since all of the characters have moves from the anime they have most of them in the game, which makes for great combo variety. I think it also helps that there are only thirteen characters instead of the usual hundred or so. This means that each character has a chance to be unique instead of an exact copy.


Pirate Warriors also switches it up with the single player, but it isn't necessarily for the better. At times the maps will turn into a third person action/adventure game. Every level like this you'll be required to use Luffy, since he's the main character. You'll go around and obliterate all of your enemies like normal, but sometimes you'll have to swing around with Luffy's rubber arms or solve puzzles. At first it makes for a nice change of pace, but after the second or third time it starts to get in the way of what I expect from a game of this type. It becomes especially tedious, because Luffy says the same thing every time he does an action. It's fine every so often, but it happens constantly in these sequences, which is enough to drive me mad. It's easy to see where Namco Bandai was going with this, but it definitely didn't come out as intended.

At it's core Pirate Warriors is just another Musou game.

In case you couldn't already tell One Piece: Pirate Warriors isn't for everyone. For starters it's pretty much necessary that you like One Piece. This game targets a very specific audience and Namco Bandai realized this. Here in the U.S. it was only released as a downloadable with just the Japanese voices. So when I say you have to like One Piece, you have to REALLY like it. Even with that extreme love it's still kind of hard to justify even at the discounted price of $40. The single player campaign is only around eight hours long and there isn't much to do after that.

All I know is that I had a fun time playing this game.

Borderlands 2 addiction?

I still have to beat Tokyo Jungle, but I think it's going to be a while before I get around to it. Borderlands 2 has basically been consuming my life. Normally when I beat a game I throw it to the side and move on to the next thing, but I can't do that with Borderlands 2. There's something about it that keeps drawing me in for more. There are a lot of people who don't seem to like it very much, but I can't really understand why. It improves on the original in almost every way possible.

Next month is another big month for releases. I'll be getting Pokemon White 2, Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracles, and Asaassin's Creed 3. I've already pre-ordered all of them thanks to the magic of Amazon Prime. Maybe I'll be over Borderlands before Pokemon comes out, but at this rate I highly doubt it.

Well, that's all for this edition of Game Time. See you all next month.

     -Manny

Game Time - August 2012

Now that it's the end of August I have returned to tell you all about my various gaming exploits. I managed to fit in a decent bit of gaming despite the fact that I started and finished watching Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. It was surprisingly good, but this isn't a blog about anime. It's all about the video games.

As you already know I played a fair bit of Persona 4 Arena, which you can read about here. Even though I played it a whole bunch more my thoughts on it didn't change a whole lot. So if you want to hear about it go read what I already wrote.

The games I spent the most time with were Kingdom Hearts 3DS, and The Last Story. That's right, The Last Story finally stopped getting delayed long enough to come out! Since these are both fairly sizable games I have a lot to go off about.

I haven't done one of these in a long time, so I'm anxious to get all of these thoughts out. Let's not  waste any more time. It's game time!

Kingdom Hearts 3DS

I've been a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series since its inception. I really liked it back then, but with each passing game I find myself growing more apprehensive about the series. For some reason Square thinks it's a good idea to keep releasing non numbered Kingdom Hearts sequels. I understand that the series makes them a literal ton of money, but now it's getting out of control. It wouldn't bug me so much if each new entry in the game didn't seem to factor heavily into the overall plot of the series. To make it even worse they're all on different consoles.

Originally it seemed to me that Nomura had an overall plan for the series that he was following very closely. With each passing game however, I feel that he's making everything up as he goes along. A lot of the time it's not even necessarily making the overall plot better, but more convoluted. That's where the true issue with all of these non-numbered sequels lies. How the hell is anyone going to know what's going on in Kingdom Hearts 3 if and when it ever comes out if they haven't played all these games? I've played most of them and read wiki pages on the games and I still barely understand what the hell is going on half the time.

A lot of the Kingdom Hearts 3DS story is kind of like a fever dream.

I liked Kingdom Hearts 3DS, but it took the plot of the series and made it infinitely more convoluted. I'd go into more detail about it, but it would basically spoil the entire game and I never want to do that. On top of that the story itself is told in the most convoluted way ever. Instead of showing things linearly a lot of the important cut scenes are shown as optional flashbacks, which could have easily been shown chronologically. On op of that you're switching between two plot lines every twenty minutes against your will, but more on that later.

So it probably sounds like I hate everything about this game right? Well now that I got all of my grumpy complaining out of the way I'm glad to let you know that I actually did like it. What's it all about you ask? Here, I'll let you in on the basis of the plot.

Yen Sid thinks Sora and Riku suck, so they need to become TRUE keyblade masters.

Turns out Sora and Riku aren't strong enough to take on Master Xehanort (See, if you didn't play Birth by Sleep on the PSP you don't even have any idea who that is). Since his impending return is short at hand they need to take every chance to power up. In order to do that Mickey and Yen Sid have decided that they must take the Mark of Mastery Exam in order to become true Keyblade masters. In order to do this they are sent into a dream world to find the keyholes of sleeping worlds in order to awaken them. This is pretty much old hat in the Kingdom Hearts universe.

As you may have guessed you will be travelling from world to world fighting monsters. This time they're rainbow colored things called Dream Eaters. Since you'll be playing as Sora and Riku in a dream world they don't have partners. In order to remedy that you'll be crafting your own Dream Eaters, which is where you'll be getting your skills from. If you want to get extra crazy you'll be able to pet and feed your Dream Eaters much like Nintendogs.

The Cyber Yog is just one of many Pokemon knock-offs you can pet.

The gameplay itself doesn't stray much from the rest of the series, but it most closely resembles the gameplay in Birth By Sleep. Sora and Riku each wield keyblades, which you can swing with the push of a button. Chaining hits together will get you into a combo. When you add skills into the mix the combat gets a fair amount deeper. A set amount of skills can be equipped to your command deck, which you will be able to cycle through in battle. Some of them are special keyblade attacks, while the others are magic. Combining all of this stuff together makes for a fun combat system that has a reasonable amount of depth for those looking to find it.

Sora and Riku don't fight very differently, but have totally different plot lines that end up converging in the end. In an attempt to have two simultaneous stories someone came up with the drop system, which absolutely sucks. Every twenty minutes no matter what you're doing the game forces you to switch between the two characters, which makes the story even harder to follow for absolutely no reason. When this happens in battle you'll have to do the entire thing all over again, which is a serious pain in the ass. Sure, you can up the time limit a little bit, but it never stops it from getting in the way of the experience. I don't see why they couldn't do what Birth By Sleep did where you just do one story at a time. Then again, I'm not a game designer.

I had a fun time playing Birth By Sleep and it got me super pumped up for Kingdom Hearts 3. What I had issues with were all of the things that the series seems to be actively doing to make itself obtuse. Let's just hope that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the next game and not another random non-numbered sequel.

The Last Story

Earlier in the year we saw the release of Xenoblade Chronicles here in the U.S. Now, a mere four months later we are finally seeing another Wii title targeted by Project Rainfall. Once again, we don't know if the release of the game and the mass outcry related to Project Rainfall were related, but I'd like to think that they were.

I'm going to go on record here and say that Xenoblade wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be. Sure it was a pretty good game, but it wasn't some super next level game or anything. Yes, it did do some awesome ideas on how to make JRPG gameplay better and more efficient and I appreciate that.

Considering the way I feel about Xenoblade I wasn't expecting a whole lot from The Last Story, but what I got was pleasantly surprising. The plot is that of a standard JRPG, but the gameplay is something else entirely. By that I mean that the combat is interesting, but not exactly super great. Have you ever wanted to play a third person cover based shooter, but instead of having guns all of the characters have swords? Perhaps you wanted some of them to cast magic? If so, then The Last Story is the game for you.

You'll be in cover often during battle.

Yeah, that's right. The Last Story is a third person cover based JRPG. You control the main character Zael who has gained the mysterious power of The Outsider. In battle the power allows him to glow blue, which pulls all aggro towards him. In the beginning all you can do is attack with your sword, duck behind cover, roll, shoot a bow, and use the power of The Outsider, which doesn't really leave room for a whole lot of strategy. Therefore you have to go buck wild on the enemy with your sword until they die.

As the game progresses Zael will gain abilities that make the battles much more interesting. Your magicians, along with the enemies leave behind magic circles when they cast spells. If you hold down the attack button you will be sent to a bird's eye view of the battle, where you have been turned into a targeting reticle. If you target a magic circle Zael will use his Gale Slash to break it. Depending on what type of magic was cast various buffs and debuffs will occur.

Eventually you'll be able to issue orders to your party members. It's a shame that you can't give them strategies, because you can only have them use skills or run away. Zael gets more skills, but none of them are super useful. He is able to run up walls, but I think I only ended up doing that a total of three times in the game and it was during a boss fight where I had to. The reason I say the gameplay isn't super great is because it shoots for strategic combat, but misses entirely. Strategy is very rarely, if ever required to win a battle. I often found myself mashing my sword attacks until the enemy was dead, while occasionally breaking magic circles. It's weird, because there was a lot of setup for a very strategic game it's just not executed properly. Almost as if the designers didn't know how to make the battles strategic.

Should we break the magic circle, or break the magic circle? Strategy!

I had a lot of fun fighting battles in The Last Story, although I guess a lot of people didn't. The game defaults to having you auto attack as soon as you get near an enemy. I did that for the first battle, and it sucked. It made it feel like I had absolutely no control over what was going on. That's why I think that anyone thinking about playing the game should switch the controls to manual. It makes the game a whole lot more enjoyable.

Outside of the battle system I really liked the first half of the game. For some reason the chapter format and color scheme reminded me a lot of Resonance of Fate, another JRPG with interesting battle mechanics. However, unlike Resonance of Fate the story of The Last Story makes sense. Zael is a part of a band of mercenaries. It's their overall goal to become knights. Early on in the game Zael falls in love with a mysterious girl (SURPRISE!) and from that moment on his life changes. The game's plot eventually sees Zael and crew entering the castle and mingling with all of the nobles. Also there's war (SURPRISE AGAIN!).

The plot starts off innocent enough, but then like most JRPGS the plot gets needlessly convoluted and totally stupid near the end. This is something I've been noticing a lot lately and it's really starting to annoy me. Where the plot of The Last Story does right is in it's characters. They all feel very real and that's not something you get very often in games these days. It sort of helps that they all have british voice actors, because just like in Xenoblade it makes everything feel more foreign than it actually is and that's refreshing. To top it off the game looks incredible for a Wii game, but the frame rate is a total disaster. So maybe it wasn't worth having it look so good?

The Last Story could have benefited from the higher specs of the PS3 and the 360.

Oh yeah it's also got some multiplayer.... It's uhhh not so great...

NEXT MONTH IS GOING TO RULE!

Thus concludes another segment of Game Time. I hope that you enjoyed my complaint riddled descriptions. If these games weren't exciting enough for you, then perhaps September will have more to offer. I know for certain that I'll be playing an obscene amount of Borderlands 2, along with Tokyo Jungle. I'm most certainly going to throw in some One Piece Pirate Warriors for good measure. So look forward to that.

See you in a month for another one of these and probably before that with something entirely different.

     -Manny

Game Time ID - Persona 4 Arena

Who can't think of good names for features? The answer is me! As I mentioned in the previous post I wanted to change up the Game Time feature a bit, while still keeping it's original form as a monthly thing. I am now going to attempt to do that. 

This new incarnation is called Game Time ID, or in-depth if you want to get a little wild. This week I'll be sharing my thoughts on the time I've spent with Persona 4 Arena with you. Will this new iteration of Game Time stick around? I don't really know, but let's find out together.

It's Game Time!

When I first heard that there was going to be a Persona 4 fighting game I didn't really know what to think. My skepticism subsided as soon as I heard it was being developed by Ark System Works. I love Persona, and I love Blazblue as well as Guilty Gear, so Persona 4 Arena naturally started to sound like a great idea. Persona 3 and 4 characters in a fast paced anime fighter? I was ready to take the plunge into whatever AKSYS was going to offer me.

This past Tuesday Persona 4 Arena was released in America and I have barely stopped playing it since.

Round 1...FIGHT!

I'll admit I went into Persona 4 Arena expecting it to be Blazblue with a Persona skin over it, but that definitely isn't the case. Sure, it's still a fast anime fighter with a bunch of odd systems thrown on top of it, but it doesn't feel the same to me at all. For starters it's much more accessible.

Everyone wants to do a cool looking combo when they're playing a fighting game, but it's not always super easy to pull off. In P4A they make sure that you can do at least one. By pressing square repeatedly you can do a pre-set auto combo, which is actually pretty good. At first it takes a while to get used to that concept, but after a while it becomes an integral part of the game. Another option good for beginners is pushing L1. It will do your DP attack, which is almost always invincible on start-up and it happens instantly. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's basically a move that makes you invincible while it's starting and it happens instantly. It comes in handy, but it is often abused. It can easily be overcome once you know what to look for.

I know that when some people hear the words auto, or easily accessible in conjunction with fighting games they cringe. However, those things are not at odds with the skill level that can be achieved in this game. Sure it's easier than most AKSYS games to get into, but it can get insane pretty quickly. If you want to practice up and do some super long combo that takes away half your opponents health then you can still do that. What I'm saying is that you'll probably get decimated during online play at some point unless you practice up on your Persona skills.

This is Mitsuru's DP. AKA the bane of my existence.

P4A controls slightly different than other AKSYS fighting games and I guess any other fighting game except Jojo's Bizzare Adventure. That's because each character in the game is a Persona user (Kind of like Stands in Jojo). Everyone has a normal and a heavy attack with their weapon, but they also have a normal and heavy attack with their Persona's. AKSYS characters tend to have a lot of variety, but because each character has both a Persona and a weapon this game seems to stand out even more. 

All special moves in the game are done using one or two quarter turns forward or back. Some of Mitsuru's moves need to be charged, but she's an exception. This makes everything relatively simple to pull off as opposed to the 360 degree rotations and half circles these kinds of games often get crazy with. 

I could go on for a good long while about all the other crazy systems this game has going on. In fact most characters have some special bar or meter involved with their moves. However, I'll settle for describing for a few of the overall systems. The burst from Blazblue makes a return, but with an interesting variation. If you're in a combo you can press square, triangle, and circle at the same time to burst out of the attack. Once you burst a B will slowly start to charge up underneath your characters health meter. If it refills you can burst once again. In a Persona reference you can also burst in order to cancel your own moves to continue on a combo. This is called one more burst, which is a reference to the one more attack you get in Persona when you attack an enemies weakness.

There are 13 characters in P4A and they're all unique.

Another reference to Persona is the all out attack. Your character will rush towards the enemy and if they hit you'll enter a cartoon-like scuffle. Mashing buttons will increase the damage, but when you push triangle you can launch the enemy into the air. This allows for some pretty good combos and it's a reference to the source material, so it's doubly cool.

P4A plays great. Like all AKSYS games the animation is outstanding and the movement flows so nicely. Everything happens super fast and still controls great.  

Story Mode

I come to the Persona series for it's strong characters and plot lines, so I was naturally excited for the story mode in Persona 4 Arena. Like Blazblue P4A takes the visual novel approach to story telling. P4A leans much more heavily on the novel part of visual novel. I'm not kidding, it's like reading a novel. It's actually to the point where there is too much text to read.

The story takes place two short months after the Story of Persona 4. The main character Yu Narukami has come back to Inaba for Golden Week. As you can imagine things don't exactly go as planned and everyone ends up in the TV world again. The midnight channel started airing again and all of the playable characters from Persona 4 were featured on it. For some reason they were all said to be taking part in a tournament, which is what ends up happening in the TV world.

They're all ready to take on the P-1 Grand Prix.

This is where the problem I have with the story mode comes into play. It's only been two months since the events of Persona 4. Not a whole lot has changed, so they have to rely heavily on the use of internal monologues for each character. As events happen text will load up the screen with each individual story characters thoughts. Have you ever wanted to get inside Chie's steak filled mind? Well now is your chance! These internal thoughts are broken up by a whole lot of voiced dialogue and around six fights per story.

That sounds pretty awesome right? Well, it starts to grate on you. As interesting as each character's internal thoughts are there are only so many times a different take on the exact same situation can be exciting. Each character goes through four fights in the P-1 Grand Prix, and then there are three fights after that, which I don't want to spoil. The problem is that the same thing happens every single time. There are some slight variations, but none of them are interesting enough to go through multiple times. Blazblue gets away with this style, because the same thing is happening over and over, but it happens differently every time. 

Can you handle this for around 20 hours?

Each character's story took me around an hour and a half to complete when I was actually paying attention to what I was reading. That time inevitably sped up as I began to care less and less. Overall the story will take around twenty hours, which is huge for a fighting game. As I said though it's not exactly the most exciting thing you can do with your time, but it does have some interesting parts and there are certainly some implications about what Persona 5 could be. 

I'm going to go ahead and say that if you don't have a vested interest in the Persona universe, then there is absolutely no way you should play the story mode in Persona 4 Arena. The enjoyment you'll get out of the story completely depends on how much you care about the universe.

Persona references for everyone!

Persona 4 Arena is an interesting game. It will obviously appeal to people who are invested in the Persona universe. It will also appeal to avid fighting game fans who have no knowledge of the characters and world. Then you have people like me who are fans of both and in that case the game is amazing. I honestly have no idea how people who aren't very fond of either would feel about it.

In that case I'd have to guess that it wouldn't be very great. The story would be super boring, but the fighting could still become a draw. It's odd, because a few years ago this would have been a very niche title. It was only within the past few years that the Persona franchise skyrocketed in popularity.

As common sense would dictate people who are into Persona will derive much more pleasure from this game. ATLUS made sure that this game was chock full of the stuff you want to see. It's basically made of fan service (No, not nudity). I main Yosuke and in his opening animations he falls down from a rope, and crashes his bike. People who haven't played Persona 4 would have no idea why I smile every time those animations happen. It's little things like that, that make this game so special to me. It feels like ATLUS is really in touch with it's fans. AKSYS translated that love and made an amazing game.

This kind of game doesn't normally turn out as well as P4A. Everyone should check it out, unless of course you don't like the Persona franchise, or fighting games. In which case you would be CRAZY!

     -Manny

Possible Changes To Game Time

As you may have noticed I haven't done an installment of Game Time in two weeks. Now it is a brand new Sunday and I haven't yet made the new installment either. This mainly stems from the fact that I don't think my weekly game time segments should continue to exist as they do.

For those who don't know for the past few months I've been describing my gaming exploits week by week. While it's interesting as a sort of time capsule for myself, I feel like that's all it is. I want to be able to give people interesting and informative looks at games. The way Game Time is set up now I don't get to go into a huge amount of detail. It works sometimes, but I want more out of it.

I'm going to take some time off from doing Game Time in order to figure out what exactly needs to change.

I do know that I personally still enjoy doing Game Time in it's current form, so I will continue to do it, but on a less frequent basis. I don't always have a ton of time anymore, so doing it once a week can sometimes become tedious. I don't always play different games from week to week, so there tends to be some overlap. Now I'll be doing it at the end of the month. That way I can pick and choose what games I played that I think would be cool to talk about.

As of right now I'm thinking that I'll have two versions of Game Time. The monthly version I just mentioned and another weekly one focused on a single game. Now that big new releases are starting to trickle out again  I think it would be much more informative to give my impressions on one of those each week.

So let's recap

-No Game Time this week
-Game Time in it's current form will return once a month (So at the end of August)
-A new version of Game Time focused on a single game will most likely start up next week

Thank you to anyone who's been reading

     -Manny

Game Time - 7/15/2012

I played a whole bunch more Final Fantasy VIII and I like it far more now. I can now safely say that it doesn't deserve all the shit it got back in the day. I fully stand by my observation that people were still high off of Final Fantasy VII, so they didn't like it very much. While it may be a whole lot different than previous entries in the series it was trying to do some interesting things. They don't all work, but they're certainly interesting.

Other than that this week was a bit light on the gaming. The Steam summer sale is now underway, but sadly my laptop isn't good enough to play a lot of the games I'd like to get. Despite that fact I was finally able to pick up Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. The unique puzzle gameplay always looked interesting to me. I had been waiting for it to go on sale on PSN, but it never ended up happening. So now I have the PC version and I think it's pretty rad.

I'm thinking about starting Final Fantasy VI, but I'm thinking I should finish VIII first. I don't know what I'm doing with my gaming time anymore. It's getting out of hand. I have to start finishing the games I buy. 

Anyways, it's game time!

Final Fantasy VIII

Last week I finished off my Final Fantasy VIII talk with how I didn't really like the story or the characters. Now that I'm about 40 hours into the game my feelings have changed. The story is now fairly good, while I still don't like any of the characters. They were all unappealing to me before, but now I at least understand why they act the way they do and that's a pretty huge thing. The character development has actually allowed me to understand the characters. 

The only character who's really "changed" at all is Squall. He started off as a total asshole and now he's uncomfortably emotional. I am now truly able to understand why people say he's the most emo Final Fantasy character. I have not personally experienced all of the characters in every game, but I think it's safe to say Squall takes the cake.

EMO!

I still find the battle system and mechanics as interesting as I did before, but now I have a much deeper understanding of them. With that being said, the system is really easy to break. You can farm 100 of a spell very easily, which will make most stats go up a whole bunch. It gets even more crazy if you equip the correct spells to each stat. Correctly junctioning spells makes the characters crazy strong, so when you use that in conjunction with the GF summoning it's almost impossible to lose. At 40 hours in I'm nearing the end of the 3rd disc and I'm unbelivably strong. I've been taking out most bosses in a few turns, which seems a little too easy. 

On the other end of the spectrum I can see how this game could be very hard. The junction system isn't exactly the most easy thing to understand, so if you're not doing what you're supposed to things could go south fast. Luckily I checked out a bunch of stuff on the internet before getting too deep, or I could have been in that same boat.

What does ST-A/D mean? I couldn't tell you.

Now that I've had some more time to think about it I really like Final Fantasy VIII. Despite that fact, I don't think I'm going to be finishing it for a while. I have a problem when it comes to Final Fantasy games that often carries over to other games (*cough* XENOBLADE *cough*). What happens is I'll get to the end, or very close to the end and just stop playing the game. I have no idea why. I can already feel myself nearing that point with VIII. I'm trying as hard as I can to push myself forward, but now I really want to play VI.

It's not even that I get stuck. In IX I did almost every sidequest. I could probably crush the final boss into oblivion. I just choose not to. It's a serious issue that I hope I can fix in the future.

Clash of Heroes

Clash of Heroes is not really like any other Might and Magic game. Instead of being a first person game, a strategy RPG it's a puzzle game. I don't exactly know why Ubisoft decided to produce it, but they did and it's actually pretty cool. It was originally on the DS, but it was later ported to PC and consoles with some DLC. I managed to purchase the PC version and it's DLC for just under $5.

So what's the deal with this puzzle game you ask? Well, it's all about battling. So far I've played through some of the campaign, which sets you up with a Hero who controls a select group of forces that they bring into battle. When a battle starts both sides spawn units on an 8x6 grid. There are three types of units, basic, elite, and champion. At first you only start off with basic units who will be one of three colors. The way you make them attack is by matching 3 like units of the same color (Just like Bejeweled!). Depending on the unit they'll have to charge for a few turns and then run straight to the other side of the screen for a set amount of damage.

Battles in Clash of Heroes generally look like this.

Elite units act a bit differently. Once again they'll be one of three colors, however in order to activate them you'll have to put two basic units of the same color behind them. They do more damage and take up more space than basic units, but you can only have up to ten of them in your party. Once they die, they die permanently, so it's a good idea to use caution when it comes to elites. It's possible to buy at monuments on the map, but they can be a bit pricey.

Champion units are basically the same as Elites, but it takes four basic units of the same color to make them attack. This isn't exactly the easiest thing to pull off, so they do crazy amounts of damage. I personally don't like to use Champion units, because as I said they take forever to charge. I usually end up getting worked before they charge up. Each hero has a certain amount of HP, which is lowered when units reach the back of the field.

This is what the game looks like outside of battle.

The part that makes this more like a puzzle game than a turn based battle system is that you have so many moves per turn. You can either move a unit from one place to another, or get rid of a unit. Calling for more units will also use a move. You can just go crazy and moves things around, but you can end up getting a lot more done. If you delete units in order to create matches then you'll get a move back so you can do a bit more.

What I don't like is that the battles are a bit random. Depending on how your units come into the battle you'll either be in a good situation or a bad one. There's never a set way the battle is going to go. I lost more than a few battles due to poor unit placement, which is kind of annoying. It would have been cool if each battle was set up in a certain away, because then each individual battle could have been a puzzle. This is why i like the puzzle challenged you can find around the map. They give you certain units and you have to figure out how to win in a single turn.

If you create multiple groups of the same color they form links.

Hearing me describe this puzzle game probably isn't the best way to figure out the intricacies of the game, but I did the best I could. I like what it's done so far and I'm interested to see where it's going.

PFFFFFT

I feel like I haven't played a brand new game in forever, which isn't true because I played Theatrhythm last week. Sadly this coming week isn't going to have any new games in store for me. The next release I'm looking forward to is Kingdom Hearts 3DS on the 31st. I would have been pumped about The Last Story, but they decided to delay it again. It's been out in Europe for a while, so I have no idea what's up with that.

I guess this is my way of saying that next week is going to be pretty lame. I'm going to be gone for a few days so I don't know if I'll get much gaming in.

See you next time!

     -Manny

Game Time - 7/8/2012

There haven't been a ton of interesting games released on the 3DS so far. I've bought almost all the first party games, but I've been looking for some interesting third party games. When I saw that Square was going to be releasing a Final Fantasy rhythm game I got kind of excited.

Final Fantasy Theatrythm was released this past Tuesday and I wasn't really expecting much from it. It's a rhythm game with Final Fantasy songs. I originally thought it was only going to be good for nostalgia, but it ended up being a whole lot more fun than I expected. I never thought I'd have racked up more than twenty hours on a handheld rhythm game (especially in such a short time span).

I've at least tried to play most of the Final Fantasy games. I even played a two week trial of XI. Somehow I ended up skipping over VIII though. I remember there being a whole lot of hate for it on the internet. Looking around now though I think that the hatred may have misplaced. VII was so loved that I think VIII could only have been a disappointment to fans of the series.

Playing the Final Final Fantasy VIII songs in Theatrhythm made me curious about what it had to offer. My curiosity got the better of me, so I ended up purchasing Final Fantasy VIII on the PlayStation Network. I've only played a few hours of it so far and I don't really know what to think. The battle system diverges greatly from the previous entries in the series while trying to keep the same overall feel. There are a lot of things going on and they're not all apparent at the start.

Somehow I ended up having a very Final Fantasy filled week without even intending to. Unexpected gaming can sometimes be the best kind though.

Final Fantasy Theatrhythm

As I mentioned previously I wasn't expecting much from Theathrhythm. Watching the trailers it looked like a standard rhythm game, and to top it off it looked super easy. If you're judging it from watching gameplay I'd highly recommend you try it out for yourself. The gameplay is a lot more entertaining than it looks and it gets viciously hard on the higher difficulties.

 What's interesting about Theatrhythm is that it tries to combine RPG elements with rhythm gameplay. You make a party of four Final Fantasy characters before you start playing any music. As you play the game they will level up and get stronger. Their stats and abilities won't change the gameplay very much, but they do make small differences. On top of that you can equip items for additional bonuses.

I wasn't expecting the RPG element of Theatrhythm.

At first glance it seems almost as if the RPG elements do absolutely nothing, but that's not exactly true. Sure, on the lower difficulties they don't really matter, but they do when you're trying your hand at harder songs and difficulties. When you mess up in a song you'll lose HP, so the more you have the more time you'll have before completely failing a song. Higher strength will allow you to defeat more enemies in battle, which will net you better and more frequent drops.

Yes, you heard me right. There are battles in this game and that's one of the cool things about it. There are three different game types that vary slightly in order to mix up the gameplay. They all revolve around the same basic concept. There will be one circle, or multiple circles on screen. Colored circles will fly at your circle and you have to tap, hold, or slide the stylus on the screen in time with the music. Red circles are for tapping, green for holding, and yellow for sliding. It's a simple enough concept, but once the notes start flying it can get pretty intense. Hitting notes perfectly will net you criticals, which give you the highest score.

Battles get a whole lot more difficult than this. 

The three game types are battle, field and event. In battle there are four circles (one for each party member) and the notes fly at each character. Each time you hit a note it will damage an enemy on the opposite side of the screen. As you may have guessed getting criticals does more damage. In field type your party leader is traveling across the world and you just have to tap along with the music. Event type is basically the same, except the notes all appear on a pre-made track while scenes from a Final Fantasy game appear in the background.

Theatrhythm is clearly trying to capitalize off of its immense nostalgia, which it does quite well. Where it truly got to me was that it had more depth than your average rhythm game. Despite the fact that it doesn't have a story and its cutesy art style makes me want to vomit I still keep coming back to it for more. There's just a lot to do. I want to unlock all of the characters and songs. For some reason I find it to be extremely fun. It's just an added bonus that I'm pretty good at it. I don't know how much longevity the game will have once I've played all of the songs a million times, but it's hitting the spot for me right now.

If you've been skeptical of this game I really think it's worth trying out. If you don't like Final Fantasy or it's music then this certainly isn't for you.

Final Fantasy VIII

Man, Squall is a serious douche. Before deciding to try out FFVIII I had only experienced him in Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia. Apparently neither of those games colored his character in a proper manner. He's just an outright asshole and on top of that he's super emo. He wants to be left alone and he doesn't want to hear what anyone has to say so far. He actually told someone to go talk to a wall instead of him. What a douche.

Aside from really disliking Squall (or Leon as every other game has tried to tell us) the game is up in the air for me. The battle system is a great departure from all of the previous games. While it's still turn based and has the same options a lot has changed that makes it feel very foreign. For starters it has a was bigger focus on summons. In previous games summons were just attacks used to do some heavy damage, but in VIII they do a whole lot more. They're called GF's and apart from being summoned in battle they make up most of a characters strength.

Not only do your party members level up, but your GF's do as well. They gain power and grant characters abilities. What's interesting is that by equipping magic to the GF's your character will gain stat increases and elemental damage. The fact that you can equip magic to a GF is another part of why VIII is so different. There is no MP, so you can potentially use spells unlimitedly. The catch is that you have to have them first.

There's a whole lot going on here.

When a character has a GF equipped they can use the ability called draw. At certain points in the overworld, or in battle characters can draw spells. This will give characters access to spells. When using draw you'll gain a set number of spell uses, so they're essentially like consumable items. This adds a whole different dynamic to battle, because you need to go in prepared. Spells are also the primary way characters gain strength. While leveling still increases their stats it's not very significant, or at least it isn't a few hours into the game. Equipping magic to the GF's does grant large stat buffs though.

On top of that there aren't very many weapons available. Each character only has a handful they can get throughout the game. Instead of acquiring them you have to upgrade a single weapon with materials acquired through battle or from shops. This makes the GFs even more important, because they're the main way to develop your party.

It's a whole lot different, but it seems like a cool concept. Square was trying to do something different and I can respect that. Learning to do everything is needlessly complicated, but it seems like there will be a ton of customization once I slog through all of the games lingo.

Maybe Squall gets better as the game goes on. At least I hope so...

As far as the story goes I have no idea what to think so far. Not a whole lot has happened. Squall goes to a school for soldiers known as SeeDs. Well, they seem more like mercenaries than soldiers. There is a war going on though and they're sent out on missions. That type of scenario seems ripe for cool characters, but everyone seems iffy so far. Hopefully everything picks up as the game goes on. It seems cool so far, so I'm going to keep on going with it.

EVO 2012

GET HYPE!

I took a break from watching this year's EVO in order to write this. The Super Street Fighter IV finals are on right now and I'm anxious to get back to watching. There's something awesome about the hype that surrounds fighting games. I almost lost my mind during the Marvel 3 finals. I really wanted Yipes to win, but sadly he was eliminated yesterday.


In fact, everyone I want to win gets eliminated during tournaments. Combofiend was doing fairly well, but he ended up losing to F Champ. I feel okay with F Champ taking the whole thing though, because at least it wasn't Chris G and his super lame Morrigan style.


It just occurred to me right now that most people will have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. For those that don't know EVO is the worlds largest annual fighting game tournament. It's intense, so if you haven't every seen it you should take a look.

My brother is super into fighting games so I've watched my fair share of tournaments with him. That's how I got to know about a lot of the people in the community. It's hard to explain, but it makes all of the matches way more exciting when you know who's playing.

Anyways, this has been another week in gaming. I have no idea what's coming up in the week ahead, but that's part of the fun.

See you next time.

     -Manny

Game Time - 6/3/2012

I'm back and it's way less hot, which means I'm far less irritable this week.

Last Game Time I mentioned that I ordered the DS RPG Radiant Historia. Everything I read or watched about the game couldn't have been any more praiseworthy. At first I was excited, but after playing it for myself I'm severely disappointed. I expected to be playing it nonstop, but I've been having to take frequent breaks. It just doesn't feel right.

During one of those breaks I picked up the 5th Humble Indie Bundle. If you haven't picked it up yet, I suggest that you do. Who doesn't want to get Amnesia, Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP, Limbo, and PSYCHONAUTS for the low price of whatever you want to pay? To top it off if you pay more than the average you'll also get Bastion. To be honest I only bought it to get the updated Psychonauts on Steam. I used to have it on disc, but it has since been lost.

Buying the Humble Bundles always makes me feel good. I get a ton of great games for a solid price and donate to charity all in one fell swoop. The part that makes me feel not as great about it is my terrible laptop. It used to overheat all the time for absolutely no reason, but no longer! When playing Psychonauts my laptop overheated and I completely lost my cool. In a fit of rage I disassembled the piece of garbage and found out that my heatsink was 100% clogged with dust. I removed it and now my laptop doesn't overheat at the slightest provocation! It was an exciting time to say the least.

Mission accomplished! It's Game Time!

Radiant Historia

I watched a handful of videos on Radiant Historia before I purchased it. In almost all of them the person speaking claimed that it was the greatest JRPG they had played in years. More than once it was compared to Chrono Trigger in the scope of it's greatness. As you may have heard Chrono Trigger is my favorite game, so the claims obviously piqued my interest. After playing I'm fairly confident in saying that the only thing the two games have in common is that their plots both feature time travel.

When I started Radiant Historia I liked it a lot, but the further I got into it the more I began to dislike what was going on and it's only getting worse. You take control of a character named Stocke. He's basically a secret agent for the kingdom he lives in. When he gets sent on a mission he's given a special book called the White Chronicle that allows him to travel back and forth to certain events in time. He uses the book to access a land called Historia where he talks to these two little kids who no one else can see.

This is the game's box art. Surprise, you get all of these characters in your party. 

Without getting too deep into a plot summary I'm just going to say that it's Stocke's job to fix certain events in time. There is one true timeline and it's being tampered with. This concept it pretty cool, but it's either executed super poorly or I'm missing something. I think the part where it gets weird is that there are two time lines that you have to jump back and forth between. You start the game in one and play for a while. Something bad happens that can't be avoided, so the only solution is to go to the other timeline where you'll do something to fix it. Once it's fixed you go back to the original timeline. This process repeats over and over, which makes the plot seem extremely disjointed.

You're forced to switch time lines just when the plot is actually getting interesting, so it kills almost all of the stories momentum. By the time you get back to the previous time line you've forgotten almost all about what the hell was going on, or at least I do. Stocke is the only one (at least so far) who knows about the time traveling, so it's almost like there are two completely different plots going on in the game. I guess what I don't like is that the entire game feels so segmented. If the game had just gone linearly going back and forth between the time lines I may feel better about it, but instead you're just not allowed to progress until you get farther in the other one.

This is what the timeline looks like. except without the Japanese. 

There are some interesting things going on in the plot, but I just don't know what to think. People are turning into sand spontaneously and I want to know all about that, but I almost don't want to keep playing. Normally I can look past this kind of issue with a plot, because the characters are interesting. In this case they're not, which is frustrating. All of the characters have so much potential, but it seems as if it won't be fully realized. I'm around 13 hours into the game and all of the characters still seem super flat and I'm willing to bet it's due to the way the time travel works. Stocke is the same person across the whole game, but even he seems like an empty shell. He acts cold towards everyone, but he secretly cares. Now, one would expect that to be the basis for his character, which would be expanded upon throughout the course of the game. Surprise, it still hasn't been expounded upon THIRTEEN HOURS INTO THE GAME. You know what I know about him? He's cold towards people, everyone inexplicably thinks he's the coolest, his best friend has a robot arm, and he doesn't really question what the deal with his time travel powers are.

Despite my displeasure with the plot I do enjoy the battle system. Unlike most turn based RPGs it's more focused on strategy than strength. While your levels and equipment do matter the way you approach each battle matters a whole lot more. The reason for that may be because it's a mashup of a turn based battle system and a strategy RPG (Final Fantasy Tactics-esque games). The three party members you have chosen appear on the right side of the screen, and the enemies appear on the left side on a grid. Using skills the enemies can get pushed around, which allows for a whole lot of strategy. Pushing enemies onto one another makes it so they can be attacked at the same time. You can target one foe at a time, or try and be more efficient by attacking them all at once. In order to do that you need to have your party do all of their skills in a row. This isn't always possible, so there is also an option to give up a characters turn so they can go multiple times in a row later. The best part is that I've leveled a lot, but I've never gotten overpowered. Instead of gaining ridiculous amounts of strength and defense the characters seem to learn more skills so that you have more options in battle.

It's possible to attack all of the enemies in the battle at the same time. 

I want to like this game, but so far I just haven't been able to do it. The distaste I've felt so far is something I haven't been able to shake. I'll probably end up putting it down for a few weeks and coming back to it. Perhaps I just need a palette cleanser.

Psychonauts

As I mentioned in the intro I played Psychonauts around the time of it's release in 2005. Since then I've lost the disc, so I was excited to get the new and improved Steam version. At first I was worried that the game wasn't going to be as good as it was when I was fifteen, but thankfully I was wrong. Psychonauts is still as good today as it was back then.

I'm a huge fan of Tim Schafer's work, so it's not surprising that I like Psychonauts so much. On top of Schaefer's influence it probably helps that Eric Wolpaw was writing for the game, because it's just funny. Humor is something that I think is hard to get right in a video game, but Wolpaw clearly knows what he's doing. Between Psychonauts and Portal he's made some genuinely funny games. They're not going out of their way to be funny, they're just doing it.

I guess there is something inherently funny about Psychonauts, because the concept is unconventional. It's all about a kid named Rasputin (Raz) who's run away from home in order to attend a summer camp for psychic children. A summer camp full of psychic kids gives plenty of opportunity for some pretty weird situations. They're all being trained so that they can learn to advance their powers and become international secret agents known as Psychonauts (Hence the game's name).

Look at these campers! I wouldn't be able to resist going to Whispering Rock! 

I think one of the reasons I like the game world so much is because I always wanted to experience a real summer camp. I only went to a day camp, which I hated with a burning passion. All of the kids at Whispering Rock are all cooler than the lame group of people I went to camp with. I guess Whispering Rock is the camp I wish I had gone to. Although my camp sadly would have had marginally less psychic kids. The world of Psychonauts immediately pulls me in and I love that.

In recent years I've heard a lot of people complaining about the platforming in the game. Playing it again I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's a platformer from the mid 2000's with some psychic powers thrown in as abilities. Nothing around that controlled super well. I didn't have any trouble with the controls when I was younger and on a much worse computer, so maybe people have higher standards than I do. While the controls can be annoying at times they've never pulled me out of the experience.

Psychonauts is a game that I think everyone should play. It's the definition of a cult classic. It was released to critical acclaim, but it completely bombed in stores. That may be due to the fact that the PS2 and Xbox ports were horribly broken, but it still should have done better than it did. If you were one of the people who played those awful versions of the game you should pick up the new and improved steam version. You just have to know what you're getting yourself into.

Ready for some E3!

This coming week it's E3! It's one of the biggest events in gaming, so I get super excited for it every year. I want a lot of cool stuff to happen this year, but I doubt it's going to. Sony and Microsoft are a year off from their new consoles so they probably won't have much to show off.

Nintendo on the other hand has a whole lot to prove. The Wii U will be out this coming "holiday" or so they claim. The true potential of the system hasn't been shown, but we can only hope that they'll bring out some awesome games. My worst nightmare is that the system will have a launch lineup like the 3DS and Vita. You would have to pay me to buy a Vita right now, because there's only one game I even want to play.

I don't want to get too much into speculation, so I'll just slip out of this post quietly.

     -Manny.

Review of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

This review is based on my experience with the DS version of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Score: 5/5

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the newest game from Ace Attorney creator Shu Takumi. During the time he was writing Ace Attorney 3 he came up with the idea to create a new mystery game dealing with ghosts. The end result was Ghost Trick, which is an adventure/puzzle game combination. Unlike the Ace Attorney franchise the player has direct control over the main character, which allows for a more immersive experience while retaining the unique characters and charm of those games.

When the game begins you’ll take control of Sissel and much to his surprise he’s dead. Sadly he’s got amnesia, so he doesn’t remember much of anything except what he looked like, because he can see his corpse. He doesn’t have much time to lament though, because as he comes to he notices that a murder is about to take place. A blue skinned assassin is holding a red haired woman at gun point, but because he’s dead Sissel thinks he can’t do anything about it. Just when things seem at their worst a lively desk lamp named Ray lets Sissel in on the fact that he has special powers known as ghost tricks.

As you can imagine these tricks are the foundation for the entire game and the first scenario plays out much like the rest of the game. The red haired woman gets shot, but all is not lost. If Sissel touches her body with his spirit he can go back to four minutes before her death and save her. How can he do this though? Well, that’s where the actual gameplay comes in. Sissel’s main power is that he can possess intimate objects and manipulate them. In order to move about through objects you’ll first need to enter the ghost world.

The blue dots are image cores you can possess. The line is Sissel traveling between them.

Entering the ghost world is as simple as touching a button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. The world will turn red, objects will turn blue, and people will turn yellow. Anything you can interact with will have a circle in the middle known as a core. Sissel can move from core to core, but he can only reach so far, so making a path is often your goal. When inside an object its details will appear on the upper screen, including whether or not you can manipulate it. In order to manipulate an object you’ll need to return to the normal world and tap the trick button at the bottom right hand side of the bottom screen. The action performed depends on the object Sissel inhabits.

In order to solve each scenario you’ll need to use the objects in a specific order or way. It’s simple enough to achieve your goal. To me Ghost Trick has the perfect difficulty level, because it never gets super frustrating. While most puzzles need to be performed under a timer you can redo them as many times as you want, and each time the game will try to point you in the right direction. On top of that the puzzles are never extremely difficult. They get fairly challenging, but if you think about any situation long enough, then chances are you’ll figure out what to do. While nothing is overtly hard the game still makes you feel smart when you do solve the puzzle. Afterwards you’ll be rewarded with the next story sequence, which makes it all worthwhile.

The trouble with adventure games is that they don’t have a whole lot of replay value and sadly Ghost Trick is no different. The puzzles are entertaining, but unless the story grabs you, you’re not going to keep playing. In this case the story had no trouble drawing me in. It took me eleven or so hours to complete the game and I did it in just two sittings. I couldn’t stop once I had started, because I was so invested. When the game starts you’re thrown right into the action with very little explanation of who Sissel is, or why he has these special powers. It doesn’t help that he has amnesia, which is such a played out trope. I thought that the whole amnesia thing was going to bug me, but I feel like it’s handled quite well in Ghost Trick. Sissel doesn’t spend the whole time lamenting over his lost memories, he just gets down to business so he can figure out what the hell is going on.

I mean, just look at Sissel. He means business.

He figures out pretty early on that it’s a special night and that all of the people he meets are related to him in some way. It’s a classic one night mystery. Sissel is told he’ll cease to exist once dawn breaks, so he needs to find out before then. Finding out about who Sissel is and what he’s all about is the reason to play this game, but he wouldn’t be able to support an entire narrative on his own, so it’s good that he gets some help.

The Ace Attorney series is notable for it’s whacky and unique characters and Ghost Trick is no different. It just goes to show that Takumi knows how to make some compelling and varied case of characters. The hyperactive pooch Missile, the determined detective Lynne, and the smooth operating inspector Cabanela are just a few of the faces you’ll meet in game. Their stories are all compelling and their dialogue is excellently written,however I think that the animation used in Ghost Trick helped to make them larger than life.

In the Ace Attorney series the action is all based around static character portraits on a static background, the same is not true of Ghost Trick.  While they still have character portraits in conversation each character is also cel shaded, 3D, and fully animated on screen. When they move around it looks genuinely good. I want to say that it’s rotoscoped, but I don’t know that for sure. The movement looks genuinely good and it adds a lot to the games personality. Inspector Cabanela is known as the man who dances through life and he sure does do a lot of fantastic dancing. This animation paired with the characters makes them all feel very alive, which is one of the reasons I cared so much about all of them.

This video shows just how great Cabanela's dancing is.

The final ingredient of Ghost Tricks immersive world is the music. It was composed by Masakazu Sugimori the man behind the Ace Attorney and Viewtiful Joe soundtracks. His work on the original Ace Attorney soundtrack is argued to be his best work by his fans. To no surprise his excellent composing skills are back for Ghost Trick and he hasn’t lost his touch, if anything it’s gotten a whole lot better. Every song in the game compliments and adds to whatever is happening. I often found myself getting caught up in the music. For example, whenever Missile’s theme would play I would get a big goofy grin on my face. I’m even listening to the soundtrack as I write this, because it gets me so pumped up. Each song calls a specific moment from Ghost Trick to memory and that means the soundtrack did it’s job well.

Even after completing Ghost Trick I couldn’t stop thinking about it. At first I thought it was because of how the ending came together, which was immensely satisfying, but now I realize it was more than that. The game as a whole just fits together so well. Very rarely do I want to go back to a game immediately after completing it, but Ghost Trick was completely different, which is extra surprising given it’s an adventure game. The characters are memorable, the puzzles are fun and challenging, and the soundtrack is incredible. Very rarely do all the elements of a game come together as well as they do in this game.

I’m going to put it bluntly. Ghost Trick is a great game. If you can pick this game up I highly recommend that you do so. It’s only climbing in cost, so you should do it before it’s too late. Alternative there are versions for android and IOS now. The first few chapters are free and the remaining three chunks of the game you have to pay for individually. I don’t care which version of Ghost Trick you play, but I think that you should play at least one, if not all of them.

     -Manny