Game Time - 4/29/2012

It's been another long week and Xenoblade has still managed to consume nearly all of my free time. Don't worry though, because I have a bit more to talk about. 

As most people have been made aware PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale the terribly named answer to Super Smash Bros. was announced on Thursday. I wrote a post on what was shown, but after thinking more about the game I've got a few things to say.

Stemming from this announcement I ended up playing Brawl with my brother and a few friends. It was a lot of fun, but I sucked it up something fierce.

With two games and a pretty cool announcement it was a solid week.

Xenoblade

After 100 hours of play time I still can't stop playing Xenoblade. I've completed almost every sidequest that has been thrown at me, but there are still a lot to go. After a ton of needless questing and leveling I'm sitting at the solid level of 87. The cap is 99, so after a few more hours of messing around I should be there. I could probably beat the final boss with my eyes closed, but due to the way I play games that won't happen for a while longer. 

The sidequests in this game suck. Straight up, they're not engaging. None of them are voiced, and the dialogue from your party is almost the same for every single quest. There's nothing to get invested in. It's a shame, because the rest of the game is so solid. Everything deals with killing a certain amount of monsters, or getting certain materials. While they give you decent experience the loot you get it almost never worth it. However, now that I'm at the end of the game that's no longer the case. The loot is awesome now, and I even got to see a fully voiced scene. 

It's refreshing to find almost all of a games characters to be genuinely interesting.

In the coming week I should be able to wrap up my time with Xenoblade. I'm really looking forward to the conclusion of the story. At first it seemed as if the game had nothing in common with Xenogears and Xenosaga, but now it's evident that they all share certain themes. I don't want to get too much into that though, because it would ruin the story.

For all the ragging I do on the sidequests I legitimately love the rest of the game. It does so many things right and I hope that more games do it like this in the future. JRPGs have been getting stale for a while now and Xenoblade tries to do as much as it can subvert that trend. 

Sony Smash Bros.

Yeah, I didn't play this game. I did however consume as much media as possible dealing with it and thought about it a whole lot.

This isn't exactly a name that rolls off the tongue...

My first thought was that PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale may be one of the worst names a video game has ever had. It's not catchy and it's far too long. I've decided that I'm going to call it Sony Smash Bros., because it looks very similar to Super Smash Bros. When the first footage of the game came on GTTV all I could think about was how much the game looked like Super Smash. 

I've been browsing a lot of forums and it seems that there are a lot of people who aren't down with this game at all. I've seen people calling it lazy and unoriginal due to how similar it is to Super Smash. While it's clear that this game is pulling a whole lot of inspiration from another franchise I don't think that's such a bad thing. I like Super Smash and I like Sony characters. If you put the two together that's something I could get down with and this game is my opportunity to do that. That's not the problem for me.

It's hard to defend against the Super Smash comparisons when you release a picture that has a Wii in it.

The place where it all got a little weird for me was when I read about some of the game mechanics. As most people know the goal of Super Smash is to knock your opponent off of the stage. That's not how this game works at all. That fact alone should appease all the haters right? Well no, because the way you score points sounds awful. Every character has three specials of varying power. The only way to score is by hitting opponents with a special in order to kill them. In that way it's like a timed super smash match. The issue I have with it is that if you get hit with a special it's an instant kill. 

On it's own that's not too terrible, but it brings up a lot of questions. Apparently SuperBot games recruited avid fighting game players to work on the game. They claim that the game will be easily accessible, but deep at the same time. It's like they're trying to tell me that this game will be super competitive if I want it to be. I don't want to be pessimistic, but I don't see how this mechanic is so deep. If all I need to do is fill a meter for a super what's the point of the characters even having moves other than supers? The only reason you'll be fighting is to get your super. 

With that mechanic in mind it changes my view of all the footage, because it means that the game is super unbalanced. It's clear that some supers are far better than others. It's caused me to be very skeptical about the whole game. I realize that this makes me sound like a super competitive asshole, but I assure you that's not what I'm trying to do. It's just that I like it when a game is balanced. I'll most likely be playing this game a lot with my friends and it'll be super annoying if it's not balanced properly. The game is still in development, so there's time for the mechanic to change, or for everything to get a lot more balanced.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

After talking a great deal about Sony Smash Bros. with my friends we decided to play some Brawl. As I've mentioned before Brawl isn't my favorite Smash Bros. game, but I still find it enjoyable. The controls are floaty and it's not as fast as Melee was. Regardless of my feelings we played for a few hours and it was really fun.

We haven't played Super Smash in a long time and it was good to get back to it. For some reason it's the only game series that I've ever practiced enough to get good at it. It's just fun and that's awesome. When I got done playing it I realized that I was ready for a new Super Smash game. I'll be able to get my fixes fairly soon. Sony Smash Bros. should be coming out before the year is out and Nintendo claims that there is a Smash game coming for the 3DS and the WiiU. 

SSX DLC?

This Tuesday we're rolling into May and that means that the SSX DLC will be hitting digital stores. My friends haven't been competing with my scores lately, so hopefully they'll be brought back into the fold. I really want to play more SSX, but it's hard to find the motivation when I have nothing else to work towards. 

I'm planning on finishing up Xenoblade in the next few days, so I'll be moving on to a new game. So far I don't know what that's going to be, but I've been thinking about Zak and Wiki. I started it a long time ago, but didn't end up sticking with it. I liked what I played, so I hope it'll stick this time around.

We'll have to see what goes down in the coming week.

     -Manny

And Then There Was PlayStation All-Stars : Battle Royale

Rumors of a new SONY game have been swirling for months. A supposed member of the development team leaked screenshots of the game,which looked an awful lot like Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series. There were screenshots of Sweet Tooth, along with some code, but like most leaks nothing could be confirmed.

In the following weeks it became more likely that the game was legitimate. In early April SONY sent out a poll that asked if SONY All-Stars: Battle Royale would be a good name. On top of that a domain for All-Stars Battle Royal was registered.

There is now no more question that the game is the real deal, because it was announced on Gametrailers TV. It is being developed by the newly formed studio SuperBot Entertainment. The studio was formed under SONY Santa Monica and Battle Royale will be their first game. Judging by what they're showing it seems that they've gotten off to a solid start.

Now that video of the game has actually been shown there is no denying that this game is a riff on Super Smash Bros. The two games look eerily similar, except for the fact that the character design is a bit less cartoony. Four characters will duke it out on a 2D plane. The gameplay wasn't explained in the videos, but there were a few things that were clear. Each character will have a super bar at the bottom of the screen, you don't die from falling off of a stage, and there will be a timer. It's been stated on multiple websites that the only way to score is to kill enemies with super moves. As of right now this seems fairly unbalanced, because super moves instantly kill anyone they come into contact with. Hopefully this mechanic changes somehow, or at least gets balanced.

Just like Super Smash, All-Stars: Battle Royale is filled with well known SONY characters. Kratos (God of War), Colonel Mael Radec (Killzone), Fat Princess (Fat Princess), Sly Cooper (Sly Cooper), Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal), and Parappa (Parappa the Rapper) were all shown to be playable. When the president of the studio was asked about third party characters he said that third party characters are a huge part of SONY, so we can only guess that the game will feature a whole bunch of third party characters. He also said that they think the game has huge DLC potential, so I think it's safe to expect a whole ton of DLC.

As you'd imagine each character has their own move set. There were four characters continuously beating on each other the whole time, so it was hard to discern any specific moves from what was shown. What was visible were the supers. Every character has three super moves level 1, 2, and 3. When activated the character will start their over the top animation and rain down destruction on their opponents.

SONY franchises are also going to be getting in through the stages. Only a handful of stages were talked about, but some of them were easily recognizable. I noticed things from Ratchet and Clank, God of War, Jak and Daxter, Little Big Planet, Buzz, and Patapon. Every stage will have multiple franchises mashed together. One such example is Little Big Planet and Buzz. It also seems as if stages will have gimmicks. On the Buzz stage Buzz himself will come in every so often to begin a quiz. If the players don't get the answer right they'll be shocked.

While this does have a very Super Smash vibe around it, it looks different enough to stand on its own two feet. For starters it seems that they're trying to make it like a fighting game. They were stressing that avid fighting game players were hand picked to be on the development team. To be honest I'm surprised that it took SONY this long to make it. Now that the game is known you can bet that they'll be showing more of it off at E3.

As excited for the game as I am, that doesn't rule out all worry. Like I stated above the scoring mechanic seems very unbalanced. It's clear that some super moves are stronger than others. On that same note it almost makes the fight entirely about gaining meter to instantly kill everyone else. However, I have faith that SuperBot will overcome this and show us an entertaining game.

The President of SuperBot said that we can expect the game to be released this coming holiday, so expect news to trickle out until then.

Update: This video was posted on the SONY blog for your viewing pleasure.

     -Manny

Game Time - Xenoblade Edition - 4/22/2012

I really like JRPGs, so it's no surprise that Xenoblade Chronicles was the only game I played this past week. At the cost of decent sleep I managed to put in around 50 hours of gameplay. Thinking back I have no idea how I put that much time into the game, but I've come to the conclusion that I really like it.

Since I only played Xenoblade this past week I decided to make this a special edition of Game Time to share my impressions. I'm trying to do everything I can, so it's going to take me around 70 more hours to get what I want out of it. You read that right. There's an estimated 120 hours of gameplay in Xenoblade. If I play the way I've been playing it's going to be a while before I get around to a review, so this will be a placeholder in the meantime.

Welcome to the special Xenoblade edition of Game Time.

What's This All About?

Xenoblade Chronicles was originally just known as Xenoblade in Japan. It was released to critical acclaim in 2010. As time passed people wondered if it was going to be localized for other territories. Since it was published by Nintendo they themselves would have to approve of the game's release. To everyone's surprise Nintendo of America said they weren't going to release it. They even held their ground after a European release happened the August of 2011.

Wii and RPG fans cried out in agony. They wanted a US release to happen as well. A letter writing campaign called Project Rainfall was started. People wrote letters to Nintendo of America asking for them to release Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower. Nintendo didn't comment on whether or not the campaign had any success, but we finally got the Xenoblade we asked for.

I can't exactly tell you why Xenoblade is so well liked, but I have a few ideas. Taking it down to its most base level you could call it a single player MMO, but that's not doing the game any justice. The battle system is fun, the story is fairly good, and to top it off it's on the Wii. It looks incredible for a Wii game. While there are spots there are places it doesn't look so great, but it's all due to the technical limitations of the system. Monolith wasn't afraid to push the console to it's limits and it certainly pays off.

They Live On Mechs!

JRPGs always have the most ridiculous stories and that's one of the things I love about them. They may have a boatload of cliches, but when they do new things they're absolutely nuts. Xenoblade takes place on a giant mech called Bionis. In the times of old it was locked in constant battle with another mech known as the Mechonis. Now they're both defunct, but the continuous battle begins. Bionis is brimming with sentient life, while Mechonis is home to evil robots called the mechons. It's an interesting concept, but when you think about it too much it begins to fall apart. The places you travel on Bionis seem like they'd be impossible to traverse, but it's a video game so whatever...

Bionis is the one on the right with the giant laser sword.

The main character's name is Shulk. As is the standard with all JRPG main characters he's a little emo, but it's okay since he's special. He is one of the few humans who can wield the laser sword known as the Monado. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and assume that it's the Xenoblade, but that hasn't been established yet. I don't want to talk too much about the plot, because it's chock full of twists. I couldn't believe a few of the twists that were thrown my way, which isn't normally the case with these types of games.

Something that makes the game feel even more unique is the British voice acting. Since I live in the U.S. it's interesting to hear all of the acting with a different accent. The problem is that the voice acting isn't exactly the greatest. Sometimes it's totally fine, but there are other times where it feels flat. There are points where the voices are completely emotionless when they should at the very least be screaming. It's not enough to make me dislike it, but it certainly draws attention.

Also, Yasunori Mitsuda did the music and it's amazing. I'm contemplating buying the soundtrack.

Single Player MMO

I feel bad every time I compare Xenoblade to a MMO, but it's an apt comparison. To start with you get quests from NPCs who have exclamation points over their heads. They're never inside, because you can't ever go inside. Instead you'll be traversing huge environments. They're varied and very large. Sometimes they're so large they become annoying to traverse.

The way it's most like an MMO is in the battle system. You control a single character. A skill bar is shown on the bottom of the screen and you can pop off skills while auto attacking. Once you use a skill it's put on cooldown for a set amount of time depending on the skills level. The amount of damage a skill does depends on your characters position. Certain skills will do bonus damage from behind and some have certain effects from the side. Positioning becomes very important early on.

Yup, that looks like an MMO.

If that doesn't sound enough like an MMO for you wait a second because I've got more. In battle players draw aggro. Yes, it's actually called aggro. You can have up to 3 party members at a time. The one who's attacking the enemy the most will draw the most aggro, so they'll be targeted. This leads to very MMO like strategy. The roles are very clearly similar to a DPS, tank, and medic. The tank will draw aggro, while the DPS attacks, and the medic heals. Not every character fits these exact archetypes,  but they're all fairly similar.

A Completionist's Nightmare

For the first ten or so hours of Xenoblade I didn't have very much fun and it was entirely my fault. There are a ridiculous number of quests available. They give a lot of experience points, but the items and rewards you get are rarely worth it. To top it off they almost never have a worthwhile plot. It's almost always kill so many monsters, or collect to many of a certain item. In the beginning of the game they're easy to complete, but later on when you need to get rare drops it becomes incredibly frustrating.

Take this amount of quests and multiply it by a hundred or two. That's how many there are.

I freaking tried to do every single quest I could. At certain points in the game there are time limited quests. For some reason I'm always scared of missing content in games, so I try to do all the quests I can as soon as possible. This led to me becoming extremely overpowered. It was so bad that I hardly ever took damage and didn't die until I was about 30 hours into the game. I didn't need to use any type of strategy, because I could literally annihilate enemies while auto-attacking. The difficulty of the game has completely turned around now. Even with my extreme leveling the enemies are posing a threat now. It's actually fun to plan out what I'm going to do and co-ordinate with my other party members.

Since the quests aren't exciting or anything it's easy to burn out on the entire game. I've burned myself out twice already and come back around. If anyone is planning on playing this game, I recommend you only do a quests before advancing in the story. I've read countless forum threads about people getting burned out on the game and I can totally understand why. I recognize that it's completely my fault, but they could have at least made the plots worth the time.

Xenoblade is chock full of content. With 120 hours of gameplay time to do everything there is no shortage on stuff to do. It's all about finding the right balance. I think this is why I like Xenoblade so much. I love playing MMO's, but I can never play them for very long. I need a story to sustain me and Xenoblade delivers that with all the trappings of an MMO.

How do I feel?

I really like Xenoblade, but I still haven't managed to gather all of my thoughts on it. This past week has been a complicated jumble of work, Xenoblade, and sleep. In that order. It's all been a blur. All I know is that it's been an enjoyable blur. Every spare moment I've been playing Xenoblade.

Every time I think the Wii is done an awesome new game gets released. It's a shame that all of these games are coming at the end of the systems life cycle, because it means that a whole lot of people are going to miss out on it. I'm here to say that you shouldn't miss out on this game. Unless you don't like JRPGs or MMOs and in that case you'll want to steer clear of this game like it's the plague.

I'll be back next week and I'll hopefully have more concise thoughts on the game. On top of that I'll actually try to play some other games, or else next week's game time is going to be pretty lame.

See you next time.

     -Manny

Game Time - 4/15/2012

Another week has passed and it's time for another issue of Game Time.

Much to my dismay I still do not have Xenoblade. Nintendo and UPS both claim that it will be arriving tomorrow, so I hope that's true. However, my dismay was not enough to keep me from playing a few other games.

This entry is going to be a bit short, because I ended up playing a lot of what I played last week. SSX and Kid Icarus are still at the top of my gaming list, but I also got in a whole bunch of Skullgirls.

Skullgirls


My brother loves fighting games. Prior to this week he was watching all the Skullgirls streams that he could possibly consume at once. By the time Tuesday rolled around he was basically losing his mind with excitement. Personally I was on the fence about Skullgirls, because I wasn't convinced by what they were showing.


My brother plays on 360, so he was going to have to wait until Wednesday. I decided to buy it, because indie fighting games are few and far between. We both ended up loving the game. The initial reason that I didn't want to buy Skullgirls was because of the art style. It's a combination between 1940's Disney cartoons and hyper-sexualized anime. It really weirds me out when cartoon girls have their boobs spilling out over their tops.

Valentine is exactly what I don't like about the art style, but I use her anyways. 

While I still don't like the art of Skullgirls, I like almost everything else about the game. What's cool about the game is that it was built by extreme fighting game fans for fighting game fans. Mike Z, one of the main people who worked on the game plays Blazblue at tournament level. Due to this fact the game does a lot of things that people who really like fighting game fans will go bananas over, but casual players won't care about at all.

In fighting game tournaments if the pause button is pressed the perpetrator loses. This can totally break up the match, so the penalty is completely justified. Sometimes the button can be pressed on accident and Skullgirls totally gets around that. In order to pause the game you have to hold start. To the average gamer this might be frustrating, but it;s a very cool feature. The game is chock full of little things like that to make it feel polished. You can edit the buttons from the character select screen, there's a system to protect against infinites, and a whole lot more.

There are only eight characters in Skullgirls, but they're all unique.

I play a lot of fighting games, but I'm not super hardcore like my brother. The reason I like Skullgirls is because I really like how it plays. Games that have 1 frame links like Street Fighter IV make it hard to do combos. Skullgirls is all about pushing the buttons fast, so I can actually do fairly decent combos. It doesn't make me feel like a failure and that's cool.

On top of all that the game has a great tutorial that does a pretty good job of teaching the basics. The skills that the game teaches can be applied to all fighting games. It's really the first real tutorial seen in a fighting game and it's something that a lot of games could learn from.

SSX


It's been a week and I still think SSX is awesome. Even though I beat the campaign and reviewed the game I still had to keep playing. It definitely helped that one of my friends bought the game. SSX has a system called Rider Net, which is essentially the auto-log from Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. If your friends beat your scores in global events or explore mode drops you'll be challenged.

For some reason I had to beat every single challenge that I was given, which ended up being 50 or so. Some of them were crazy, but I still ended up beating them. The competition is prolonging the life of the game for me. Normally I would have moved on, but the challenges are keeping me coming back for more. Since I the challenges keep going back and forth I'll most likely be doing this for a long time, especially since I'm still having a boatload of fun.

Tomorrow EA is going to announce what the first SSX dlc is, so my fun might be extended. They released a promo picture that looks a whole lot like SSX Tricky. I can only hope that the SSX Tricky mountain is being added as DLC. It would be even better if they threw in some new clothes that were reminiscent of the Tricky costumes.

This looks a lot like SSX Tricky. 

Kid Icarus: Uprising

I really wanted to have a review of Kid Icarus up last week, but I didn't end up finishing it. Initially I thought it was super short, but it ended up being much longer than I expected. The first few chapters flew by and only took twenty minutes at most. Now the chapters are taking an hour or more a piece to complete and I'm not complaining. I'm just saying it's way longer than I thought.

Initially I thought the overall plot of Kid Icarus was basically non-existent. It seemed to be a bunch of referential jokes and a whole lot of witty banter. I'm nearing the end of the game and all of that is still there, but now there is an overarching plot and I'm really liking it. There were a few plot twists that I didn't see coming. While the plot may not be a masterpiece I think that it's got a lot of charm. Iwata's sense of style really shows in this game.

Last week I talked about how uncomfortable I thought the controls were and I'm going to have to take that back now. At a juncture that I can't pinpoint I felt totally fine playing the game. The controls even began to feel right. I'm no longer having trouble doing what I want and I'm dying far less often, which is weird because I'm getting farther into everything while slowly ratcheting up the difficulty.

I want my Xenoblade

I have been wanting to play a new JRPG for quite some time, so its great that Xenoblade should be coming tomorrow. If all goes as planned it will consume my gaming life for the next week. If I can tear myself away from it for long enough (If it even comes) I'll try to finish up Kid Icarus and throw up a review, but I promise nothing.

That's what I played this past week. Get ready to hear about a whole lot of Xenoblade next week. I'm starting to get pretty excited about it. What's not to get exited about? It's a recent Wii release that doesn't suck. 

With that final thought I leave you to pursue another week of video gaming.

     -Manny

Game Time - 4/8/2012

Happy Easter everyone! While it may be a holiday that doesn't change the fact that it's game time.

Last week I dipped into my backlog of games to try and clear some of them out. I wasn't expecting to get anything new until Xenoblade (Which I still don't have). Much to my surprise I was able to pick up two new games this week thanks to an awesome Best Buy sale. I've been waiting for Kid Icarus and SSX to go on sale, so it was great to get them for $30 each.

Needless to say I spent most of my free time playing both of them. While I'd like to say I played them both equally, I didn't. SSX turned out to be way more fun than I expected, so Kid Icarus had to take a back seat.

Oh yeah, I played a bunch of Skyrim too. Let's break it down!

Skyrim

My Skyrim madness continued into this week. I truly did get hooked on Skyrim again. Initially I only wanted to beat the main quest line, but it ended up being much more than that. I did beat the main quest line and I didn't think it was that great overall. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I'll just say I had to kill a bunch of Dragons. For some reason it seems like an Elder Scrolls tradition to have the guild quests far outshine the main quests. You'd think that it would be completely the opposite, but you'd be very wrong.

Once I beat the main quest I couldn't stop for some reason, so I decided to try and get every trophy in the game while doing a whole bunch of random stuff.  I'm not exaggerating at all. I literally did completely random things and I had fun while doing them. I got married, became obsessed with collecting books, ran to every place on the map that I hadn't explored, stole from everyone I saw, learned shouts, crafted weapons, and did some sidequests. There's something awesome about running around a huge world as a cat man dressed like Batman and doing whatever the hell I want.

My cat man married Aela. She can't die, so that's pretty cool.

The thing that draws me to Skyrim is that you actually can go anywhere you want. It's a living, breathing world that my character can truly influence. It's easy to get immersed, because there's just so much to it. It's hard to imagine that there is so much lore to read into. There's an actual history to the land of Tamriel and I really love that. It's one of the reasons I get so easily sidetracked in the game. It's constantly throwing so much at you that it's hard to focus on a single task. I don't mean that in a bad way. Unlike most games I find the totally random quests to be interesting. While they may not reward you with the best gear there's always that chance that you could get something.

So yeah, I got sidetracked in Skyrim. It's still awesome. I didn't get all the trophies, but I'm damn close. I've got some new games now and I've completed the main quest, so I won't come back to it for a while. However, I will certainly return to Skyrim when I have the time, or when they release the inevitable DLC.

SSX

I bought SSX on Tuesday and threw up my review on Friday. Somehow I managed to cram in a ridiculous amount of SSX into four days. Since I wrote a review I don't want to rehash my experience too much, but there are some things I feel need to be said about SSX.

I'm going to come right out and say that I think SSX is awesome. It's one of the most purely fun games I've played in a long time. Longtime fans of the series seem to have mixed feelings on this reboot. The crazy characters and locales have been toned down quite a bit for this brand new entry in the series. While I can see how that's a bad thing, it's not necessarily the worst thing ever. In games like SSX specifically I think the gameplay is the most important part of the game and SSX delivers in that department.

In real life this stunt could only end in tragedy.
This is SSX, so it can only end in awesome.

Like I said, SSX is fun. I played a whole shit ton of it. I beat the campaign, completed half of the drops, competed against my friends times/scores, and competed in global events. Most of the events I played were basically the same, but I had fun playing every single one of them. There's something almost magical about speeding down a snow covered mountain at full speed tricking off of everything. The game has a great sense of speed and it controls very smoothly. Almost everything about the movement and handling of the game defies reality, but that's what extreme sports games are all about. I'm sure someone out there would prefer a snowboarding game that parallels reality, but I'm not that person so I love everything about how SSX handles itself.

To enhance the experience even further the music goes along with everything you're doing while going down the mountain. The music changes tempo, volume, and even adds in some crazy bass. I still don't quite believe it, but this works amazingly well even with custom soundtracks. It's like having a DJ remix your songs, but it's the game and it doesn't sound like total shit. Somehow it manages to make any kind of music sound like it fits in with the game.

In case you didn't notice I think SSX is awesome. I highly recommend it.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

As a kid I never had a NES. I never played Kid Icarus. My first exposure to the series was when Nintendo decided to put Pit into Brawl. All I really knew about the game was that there was an eggplant wizard, but I had never seen it. Despite my lack of knowledge I wanted to pick up Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS, which I did.

I have a ton of feelings on Kid Icarus: Uprising and I've yet to sort them all out. What stands out the most to me is how uncomfortable the game is to play. When I first heard the game came with a 3DS stand I thought it was a joke. The game actually comes with a stand, because apparently they realized how uncomfortable the entire thing was. The 3DS isn't very ergonomic to begin with and it doesn't help that I have giant hands. You're expected to hold the 3DS with your left hand to use the circle pad and the L button. With your right hand you use the stylus to control the camera and aim Pit's shots. The pad is supposed to help take the pain out of holding the 3DS, but it seems useless unless you're at a desk. When you get used to the controls they're not awful, but I still haven't ever found myself in a comfortable position.

Outside of the control I generally like the game. It's just straight up weird. Pit and the Goddess Palutena are trying to take down the evil Medusa, who's apparently back from the first game. While you're fighting enemies everyone will talk constantly. I'm not even kidding I don't think there has been a point in the 5 hours I've played the game where someone wasn't talking. Normally that would make me want to smash a game into a million pieces, but the dialogue is actually entertaining. Self referential jokes are constantly being made. Games and game mechanics are referred to and joked about, which leads to some interesting dialogue. It seems like the witty banter it going to continue for the whole game, so hopefully I won't get sick of it.

While playing Kid Icarus: Uprising I've been getting pangs of nostalgia, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why until earlier today. Nintendo mainstay Masahiro Sakurai was the mind behind this game and coincidentally he was behind Kirby as well. When I thought about that it all started to make sense. It's got so many similarities to Kirby's Air Ride! Both games look similar graphically (At least I think so), both games have unlock grids, and both games have grind rails. In Kirby's Air Ride you're primarily piloting stars. In Uprising there are vehicles that handle very much like the stars in Air Ride! Even the menus look alike. Maybe I'm crazy, but they seem like they have a lot in common to me.

Parts of Kid Icarus have looked a whole lot like this...

All I know is that Kid Icarus is a crazy game. It's got a butt load of content and it's chock full of style. I'm certainly going to finish it, so hopefully I'll be able to review it in the near future.

I Didn't Play Xenoblade...

Xenoblade Chronicles was finally released in America this past Friday the 6th. Many people have been playing it, sadly I am not one of those people. I pre-ordered my copy from Nintendo's website long ago. I thought that it would be nice to order directly from Nintendo, but apparently that was dumb. My order still hasn't shipped and I get the feeling it won't for a while. I thought about cancelling the order and picking it up at Gamestop since they apparently got a ton of copies, but that didn't quite pan out. Nintendo has already charged my card for the game... Hopefully I get it soon, because it looks amazing. I could use a solid JRPG to play.

Other than not playing Xenoblade I played a bit of Skylanders this week. While at Best Buy I picked up Stealth Elf. For some reason I told myself I wasn't going to play any more Skylanders until I got one of every type. I only needed a life type and I had my heart set on Stealth Elf. Lucky for me she was one of the most sought after toys, so she was always sold out. I think she looks cool and now that I've got her she's my favorite Skylander. I leveled her up a bit and I'll probably end up finishing the game sometime this week.

She's clearly the best Skylander. She fights with teeth.

In the midst of a game drought I somehow managed to pick up a bunch of new stuff. Perhaps it's good that Nintendo decided not to ship my copy of Xenoblade when they were supposed to. Now I can finish Kid Icarus and mess around with Skylanders some more.

Well I hope you enjoyed this week's Game Time. See you next week.

     -Manny

Review of SSX

This review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of SSX.

Score: 4/5

Twelve years after its inception the SSX series has been rebooted with the highly creative title of SSX. Fans of the SSX franchise have been waiting five years to test their gravity defying snowboard skills on a new game and it has finally arrived. With the death of EA Sports BIG, EA Canada has attempted to breathe new life into the series. The result is a game that feels very familiar, while feeling completely new at the same time. Some changes made may upset long time fans, but there’s no denying that the final product is jam packed with insane snowboarding action. 

When the new SSX teaser first debuted during the 2010 Spike Game Awards the reaction was tepid at best. It was going by the name SSX: Deadly Descents. It depicted players dropping from helicopters onto real mountains trying to escape hazards like avalanches. In the past every slope was custom made and memorable, while all the characters were basically overblown caricatures. Those things paired with the insane snowboarding made SSX iconic.  The Deadly Descents trailer looked very dark and realistic, which garnered a lot of negative reaction.

The final product is halfway between the SSX of old and the Deadly Descents teaser. It’s not quite as over the top as it used to be, but it’s not overly realistic either. Familiar characters such as Mac, Zoe, Elise, and many others return in a much more muted form. They don’t talk very much during gameplay and aren’t as cartoony so a lot of their personalities aren’t totally apparent. The same thing can be said about the drops. They’re all based off of real mountains with procedurally generated jumps and grind rails. While they function well enough in the game they don’t feel very unique. The reboot tries to strike a balance between realism and the SSX style of old. It ends up straddling an odd line that makes me wish they went farther in either direction.

Franchise mainstays like Mac return in a much more muted form.

One of the things that makes me wish they went farther is the story. For the campaign you’ll be following snowboarding team SSX as they attempt to conquer the world’s deadliest mountains, known as deadly descents. They’ve been dormant for a while, so they have to take on dangerous drops to get back into the spotlight. These deadly descents are an interesting new game type that sees you rider trying to survive as opposed to getting points or a fast time. The entire goal is to make it to the bottom alive, which is sometimes quite challenging. In order to do so you’ll need to equip the riders with specific gear. Armor will help you survive an avalanche, while a headlamp will allow you to see in pitch black caves. There are nine deadly descents to get through. Although they’re cool to experience once it’s much more appealing to play race and trick events. There isn’t enough of a story to make the campaign worth playing through multiple times.

Admittedly most people don’t come to SSX for its’ riveting story. The most important part of the game, the gameplay, is still great. You can choose from two control schemes. Classic is just like it used to be. The face buttons will be used to do tricks, while the shoulder buttons are used to boost. Alternatively you can use the right stick for all your tricking needs much like modern skateboarding games. It’s all about your preference and what’s the most comfortable. SSX is all about doing tricks. They’re almost always the key to success. In trick events they’ll obviously net you score and in race events they’ll get you boost to go faster. When you do a certain amount of tricks in a row you’ll enter tricky, which allows for unlimited boost. Chaining tricks together also boosts a multiplier, which combines with a trick counter in order to give you ridiculous amounts of points.

You're going to want to be tricking all the time.

In SSX it’s all about flow. When you’re going down the mountain at a super fast speed tricking off of everything it’s exhilarating. A cool feature of the game is the way it changes the music depending on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. The in game soundtrack will rise, fall, and distort in various ways as you move down the mountain. Somehow the game even does a good job of distorting custom music, this means that anything sounds good. I highly recommend putting your own music in, because it sounds great and adds a lot to the experience. When you wreck the music screeches to a halt along with your scoring capabilities.

While the gameplay is super fun and fast paced, it can often be just as unforgiving. Wrecking can be devastating and sometimes ruin an entire run. In an attempt to ease this problem a rewind feature was added, which might as well not even be in the game. If you rewind during a race your opponents will continue moving and if you rewind in a trick event you’ll lose a whole lot of score. It just doesn’t make any real sense to rewind, unless you want to place a geo tag. Geo tags are collectibles you can place only when rewinding to try and get in game currency. If you place them in a good spot you’ll get the maximum amount of credits. Since rewind is basically useless this means that doing the drops over and over for incremental improvement is necessary. In order to help this process along SSX has an interesting pseudo multiplayer.

When it was announced that the game wouldn’t have honest to goodness multiplayer fans were understandably upset. The alternative isn’t all that bad and is in fact quite fun. It’s all very reminiscent of the speed log from Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. Outside of the campaign in explore mode there are 149 or so drops to choose from. When you complete a run your ghost will be uploaded for your friends to compete against. When they lose you’ll gain in game currency. There are also massive global events to compete in. Some are free, while you have to buy into others. You’ll compete on a drop and try to do as well as you can. In the end you’ll be placed into a scoring bracket and you’ll be paid accordingly. 

You can choose any drop as a global event, but you might have to pay an entry fee.

So what’s good about in game currency? You can buy equipment for your character. As you doe events your characters will level up. Depending on what level they are you have access to buying certain gear. You can buy boards, mods, and equipment to help you do better in events. To make the system interesting an MMO style color coding system is used. If you’re the kind of person who likes a lot of loot then you’ll be right at home with this system. It’s a new concept for an extreme sports game.

Extreme sports have fallen off in recent years, so it’s nice to see this series getting a fresh coat of paint. For a reboot SSX tries quite a few interesting things. While they don’t all work, I think that they leave room for an interesting sequel should there be one. This iteration may not be exactly like the others, but it’s incredibly fun. Like I said SSX is all about flow. Speeding down a drop tricking off of everything while shooting for a perfect run feels incredible. A lot of the elements of SSX make it incredibly easy to get absorbed in competing with your friends.  Even if you don’t have any friends to play against SSX is still an incredibly fun game. There’s something magical about it and I can’t recommend it enough. 

The future of the SSX is bright and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

     -Manny

Game Time - 4/1/2012

I've had this blog for quite a while now. It's awesome to see the viewers roll in when I post new content, so it makes me feel a little guilty when I don't post anything for a while. Take this past week for example, I didn't post anything. That was super lame and I apologize. My lack of blogging was partially due to the fact that I started a job this past week, and partially due to a lack of new games in my life. I've been pretty busy, but I still managed to get some gaming in.

Even when I'm busy I still find time to play video games, which means that I can find the time to blog as well. This is where I came up with the idea for a series called Game Time. It's more or less a weekly update, but I felt like calling it a weekly update would be equal parts lazy and lame. A name like Game Time is arguably just as lazy and lame, but I like it. Perhaps in the future I'll change it. Especially since it is easily confused with the name of the blog itself! Regardless of your feelings on the name, Game Time is now officially a thing.

What the Hell is Game Time? 

Every week I play a ton of stuff and I don't necessarily write about it on here and that's about to change. Now when Sunday rolls around I'm going to set aside some time to make sure that I write about my gaming exploits from the last week. This way I get some quality content and people who come here to read can actually do that. It's a win-win for everyone involved. 

Today, April 1st marks the first Game Time. Although it is April Fools Day this is not an April Fools joke, because I don't have nearly enough followers yet for that to matter at all. Let's get into it!

Skyrim

I bought Skyrim a week or two after its release. I tried to tell myself that I didn't want to buy it, which was mostly true before the game came out. See, I wasn't really too keen on Oblivion, but on the other hand I loved Morrowind. I was pretty apprehensive going into the Skyrim launch, because I didn't want to be disappointed like I was with Oblivion. Upon seeing Skyrim played live and in front of me I knew that I had to have it, so I immediately rushed off to pick it up.

Now here I am months after it's release and I still haven't reviewed the game and I'm never going to. While I try to review every game I beat it doesn't always end up happening. Sometimes life gets in the way and I just don't have the time. In the case of Skyrim, Skyrim got in the way. When I review a game I want the experience to be mostly fresh in my mind, so if I take a break for a few months and come back to a game I'm most likely not going to review it.

My Kajiit is ready to roam Skyrim once more!

The reason I took a break from Skyrim was because I made the mistake of buying the PS3 version. As most people probably know the PS3 version of Skyrim was busted, especially if you played it for a long time. For the first month I had a great time with Skyrim. I completed most of the guild quests and my play time was up to around 50 hours. The problem with Skyrim on the PS3 is that the more you do, the larger your save file size is. Once it got up to around 10mb the frame rate would often slow to a crawl, making the game more or less unplayable. I was lucky and managed to avoid it for a long time, but my game eventually slowed down too. I stopped playing the game until they released a new patch, which only made the problem worse. Instead of a ridiculous frame rate drop the game decided that locking up the entire system would be a better option. Fed up with all the issues I decided to shelf Skyrim, until this past Thursday.

Bethesda has released quite the cavalcade of patches and the game works great for the most part now, so I decided to finish the main quest. Turns out I only had a few more quests to complete, so the rest of the main story only took me a little while. The story of the main quest was pretty disappointing, so I was glad to get back into the random questing and world immersion that makes Skyrim so awesome to me. After playing for a few hours my previous anger about how broken the game was faded into nothingness. Now I'm pretty much hooked on Skyrim again.

Metroid Other M

On Black Friday I made the mistake of going out to Best Buy. My original intent was to buy Babysitting Mama for $5 as a joke, but they didn't have it. Instead I walked out with a copy of Pac-Man Party and a highly discounted copy of Metroid Other M ($5!). I left Metroid in it's shrink wrap, because I didn't really intend to play it. I just wanted to marvel at the fact that I payed $5 for it when it was being sold for $50 everywhere else. Now that I'm in kind of a new game drought I broke the seal and popped that sucker in my Wii last night.

I only played it for a few hours, but it was enough play to know that the game is really weird. Metroid Prime was something that I never really liked. For some reason I couldn't get behind a first-person shooter version of the sidescrolling games I used to like a whole lot. So when Metroid Other M takes the Metroid I don't like and marries it with the Metroid I do like the final product is just plain weird. To make things even more crazy it's made by the team that makes Ninja Gaiden.

Since Other M is made by Team Ninja Samus can so some crazy stuff

So far the story doesn't seem very good. It takes place directly after Super Metroid and sees Samus exploring a pretty messed up bottleship with some of her old alliance friends. Flash backs happen every so often and they're filled with a whole lot of talking. I've never been too interested in the Metroid fiction, so I guess I'm not the right person to judge what's going on without seeing the whole picture. The voice acting isn't helping me accept the story either. No one is doing a very good job and Samus sounds like an emotionless robot, which she isn't.

The gameplay has been the most interesting part so far. Movement is odd, because it's 3D on a 2D plane. It's because of this that all of Samus's shots are auto-aimed at enemies, which doesn't always work right. For the most part it feels pretty good though and I'm looking forward to seeing how everything progresses. My main problem with the gameplay is when you have to go into first person mode. If you aim the Wii-mote at the screen Samus will jump into first person mode. You have to go into first person mode to scan objects in the environment, which doesn't control well at all. I especially don't like when the game forces you into first person to scan for objects that seem to be a pixel in size. 

It's still too early to tell how I really feel about this. All I know is that I payed $5 for it!

There Was Multiplayer in There Somewhere

For the past two days I've been trying to play Fortune Street with a friend. That Monopoly/stock market hybrid will forever puzzle me. It's fun to play with friends, but infuriating to play against computer players. I have some deeper thoughts on the game that I'm going to try and post later in the week. 

So there you have it, this has been the first installment of Game Time. I hope you enjoyed reading about the games I played in the last week. Sadly I won't be getting a brand new game until the 6th when Xenoblade arrives, which I'm pretty hyped up for. Why can't Nintendo just release games on Tuesdays like everyone else? Until then I'll have to make due with what I've got already. 

     -Manny