Game Time - November 2013

As of right now I'm playing way too many games at once. I can barely handle it. Amazon had a deal on the Vita, so I finally got one of those. Now I have all the free games from PlayStation Plus to play on the thing in addition to Persona 4 Golden. I still haven't finished 2 of the 3 PS4 games I got and now the Starbound beta is out and I need to be playing that. I don't know. There are so many games I've been playing that I can't even think of them all. It has definitely contributed to how late this installment of Game Time is. Man, I do this later every month. It really didn't help that I went to the fighting game tournament NEC 14 this past weekend. Now I have a raging cold and it totally sucks.

Luckily for me most of what I just went on about has happened in December. As you know this past month I got the PlayStation 4. I think it's pretty cool. You can read more about that here if you like. So as you may have guessed I've been playing the thing a fair bit. I played some of both Need for Speed Rivals, and Lego Marvel. Perhaps I'll get around to beating them at some point, but with my current amount of games to play I don't know that I will. Both games are pretty fun though. I'm not going to talk about Lego Marvel today. It's another open world Lego game.

I did however play all of Assassin's Creed IV, and it was awesome. I don't know how you can go from having III be such a disaster to having IV be so well put together. Being a pirate and sailing the open seas is a magical experience that I highly recommend.

At some point I bought Super Mario 3D world, because I decided I wanted to play another Wii-U game. At this point I can safely say that Super Mario 3D world is the best Wii-U game out there. Somehow the Super Mario Galaxy team can spin straw into gold time and time again. They should probably be allowed to make every Mario related game from here on out if they keep doing such solid work. I couldn't stop myself from playing until the end of the game in two sittings. I still have a lot of collectibles to find and I'm eager to jump back in and get them all.

Also, sorry if this becomes an incomprehensible mess.

Ready, set, video games!

Need for Speed Rivals

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit was an amazing game. Every Need for Speed game since then has not been. You could even say that they were kind of bad. Rivals gets so close to bringing back what I loved about Hot Pursuit. It has a lot of potential, but it's held back by some of it's own mechanics.

Much like Hot Pursuit, Rivals is a good old fashioned game involving cops and racers. If you choose a cop you have to try and take racers off the road using any means necessary. You also get time penalties if you drive dangerously, which totally sucks. If you choose a racer you just race and try not to get taken down by the cops. In my opinion playing as a racer is much more fun. Being penalized for getting knocked around isn't something I want happening to me in a racing game. Especially when other cars are constantly smashing into you.

Races start out simple enough, but the cops ALWAYS show up to ruin them.

When it comes down to it Need for Speed Rivals is a competent racing game. You drive around an open world and go from event to event. The terrain is extremely varied. One moment you'll be in the desert and then all of a sudden you'll be on a mountain with snow all around you. As you race around the world and complete events you'll get speed points, which happen to be the games currency. You'll use it to purchase new cars, power them up, and purchase power-ups. You get them for doing almost anything, what's hard is keeping them. In order to get the speed points to keep you need to bank them at a hideout. If you get taken down before that point you lose them all. This is a huge risk-reward scenario. The longer you stay out the more speed points you get. When you complete an event you get a multiplier, but it's nearly impossible to stay alive for more than an event.

Normally the game will throw you into a server with around 8 other players. It doesn't tell you if they're cops or not. When you're with other humans you'll almost surely die very quickly, because they actually know how to be efficient. Normally I turn off the internet so I live a bit longer. The problem is that so many computer players spawn. Playing as a racer doing almost anything will trigger a chase. Then before you know it you have a million cops on your ass. It ends up getting pretty frustrating. Sometimes I just want to do an event in peace, but that just can't happen. At least in Hot Pursuit you knew which events would have cops in them before starting. Since Rivals is in an open world the cops are everywhere all the time!

On average this many cops are chasing you...

It wouldn't be as bad if the open world was put together better. If you want to race with friends you really can't unless you challenge them to a head to head race. This requires that you find them on the map first, which is kind of hard, because everyone is driving as fast as possible. If you want to do events with other players you might as well forget about it. That would require all the necessary players to be at the event starting position. On top of that you have to not get killed on the way there, or you'll have to start super far away from the event again. I wish there was some type of party system in the game or something to make multiplayer a little more playable. As it is right now it's basically a single player game where other players happen to be in the same world for their single player experience.

Oh yeah, there's a story too. Surprise, it's not good. Every story scene consists of a computer screen with video of racers or cops on it and some weird chat. In the background a racer or cop is spouting off nonsense about freedom or justice. It's all super self righteous bullshit, but in a funny kind of way. There's a racer named F8 in the story, which is pronounced fate. That's edgy I guess? The story seems to be trying way too hard to be something it's not. Need for Speed the Run taught us all just how terrible stories in Need for Speed games can truly be. So I guess I should be thankful it's not that awful.

At least it's not this game.

As a racing game it's fine. It handles how you'd expect it to. That's what makes it mediocre. With an untapped open world and bad multiplayer mechanics Rivals is kind of disappointing. If you're looking for some free roam racing you'd probably be better off playing something like Forza Horizons, or better yet Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

I really liked the real world plot of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Then Assassin's Creed 3 happened and killed it for me. I don't really know where it went wrong, but it went horribly wrong. On top of the real world plot being destroyed, the in animus plot wasn't very good either. It felt very disjointed and there were way too many time skips for absolutely no reason. Connor was a decent character in the beginning, but unlike Ezio in the previous games he was a major bummer. Assassin's Creed 3 was a disappointment on many levels for me and it almost made me stop playing the franchise.

The first few trailers of Assassin's Creed IV looked interesting to me. I'm a huge fan of pirates, so that helped out a lot. I had originally decided not to purchase it at all, but Watchdogs got delayed and I needed a game to play on the PS4 at launch. Much to my surprise it even got excellent reviews. I ended up liking AC 4 a whole lot. It somehow managed to reinvigorate my interest in the franchise.

You'll be stabbing lots of people in AC IV.

As you may have guessed you play as an Assassin in Assassin's Creed IV. Well, he's not actually an Assassin to start with, but he sure is good at assassinating people. You play as Edward Kenway, who is the grandfather of Connor from Assassin's Creed 3. Edward is a happy go lucky pirate trying to make his way in life. The best part about Edward is that he's a fun character. He doesn't really have a whole lot going on except for the fact that he wants to find treasure and have fun. Sure, he's not the deepest character ever, but he's just fun to play as. He's a pirate and he acts like one. He still dons the Assassin's robes and stabs fools from behind, but he can also sail a ship on the high seas.

While Connor could sail a ship in Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed 4 expands on that concept quite a bit. In order to get from place to place Edward must sail across the ocean in his ship the Jackdaw. It's an open world game, so there are tons of places to explore and things to do. You can fish, take over naval bases, battle other ships, and sing some sweet sea shanties. On land you can do the same things as you could in every other Assassin's Creed game. There are additions, but none of them are really worth nothing.

Edward is a fun character who's a bit of a badass.

The overall story isn't anything to write home about. Edward is looking for a place called the observatory, because with its power he will be able to get rich. It's an interesting enough tale, but it really starts to feel like a slog in the middle section of the game. It felt like one of the longest games I've every played, but that might be partially due to the fact that I was trying to do all the side activities. There are way too many side activities.

Much to my surprise the game actually has a story outside of the animus as well. All of the terrible events of Assassin's Creed 3 have still happened, but somehow the setting manages to be interesting. You are a faceless employee at Abstergo Entertainment, which is a video game company the Templars use as a front. They develop games for the animus. You are a developer on their newest pirate game, which is why you're playing as Edward. You can get out of the animus and walk around the offices in first person. It's really weird, but in an interesting way. There is still an overarching plot, but it's nothing special. I think they're floundering after what happened after AC3 and decided to just keep an overarching plot, because the series has always had one.

Sailing the high seas is surprisingly fun.

Assassin's Creed IV is another Assassin's Creed game. The difference is that it's actually good again like Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed 2 were. The gameplay is largely the same as it was in previous iterations with the addition of boat combat on a much larger scale than in Assassin's Creed 3. I played it on the PlayStation 4 and the graphics were incredible. The topical environments look very vibrant, but the water in the ocean is absolutely mind blowing. If you have any interest in the Assassin's Creed franchise still you should probably give Assassin's Creed 4 a chance.

Super Mario 3D World

Video games have become much more complicated over the past few years. In most cases games put complex systems and graphics over the gaming experience itself. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but sometimes it just gets tiring. Sometimes I just want to sit down with a game and have fun. That's exactly what happened with Super Mario 3D World. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with Nintendo recently, but for a brief moment they've done something beautiful. The Wii-U now has a game that I'd say makes buying the system worth it.

I didn't buy New Super Mario Bros. U, or Super Luigi U. My stance on 2D Mario games that take around 4 hours to beat and cost a full $60 is that they're a load of bullshit. While it might be a great game for those four hours it's just another rehash of the New Super Mario Bros. formula that Nintendo thinks is the greatest thing ever. Truth be told I'm kind of over 2D traditional Mario games now. I think 2D Mario games died when Super Mario 64 came out. If I want to play classic Mario I'll bust out my Super Nintendo and play some classic Mario.

I'm pretty much over 2D Mario games.

Nintendo has always been able to make the most out of the hardware they have. Even though the Wii-U is on par with the PS3 and 360 I thought it would be left behind in graphical potential. Much to my dismay I'd say that 3D looks far better than anything I played on the PlayStation 4, which is a next generation console. Much like Pikmin 3, 3D world uses its art style to its advantage. I would be willing to go so far as to say that 3D world is the best looking game I have played this year.

What's funny is that it's looks don't really mean that much, because it's just straight up fun to play. In essence it's the same game as Super Mario 3D land for the 3DS. Despite that it doesn't seem like a rehash, because there's enough new content to keep things interesting. Every single level is unique, and there are quite a few levels that introduce mechanics only used for that specific level.

Many levels use mechanics that are never seen again.

Much like Super Mario Bros. 2 you have the option to play as multiple characters who each have their own special abilities. Mario plays exactly how you would expect him to play. Luigi can jump a little higher and flutter his legs to get farther. Peach can float for a while, which allows her to get much farther with her jumps than other characters. Toad's ability to pick stuff up super fast in Mario 2 wouldn't really help him in this game, so now he just has the most mobility. Once he starts running he can fly through the stages with incredible speed. You can also unlock Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy once you complete the main levels. She can jump a second time by spinning, which wasn't very impressive to me. Much as I do in all Mario games that allow me to I stuck to using Princess Peach. Her floating ability makes precision jumps so much easier.

When I first saw the trailer for 3D world I didn't know what to think. Mainly because the new suit turns you into a cat. The pick-up is a bell, which then puts the person who picked it up into a colored cat suit. It allows you to slash and run straight up walls. I don't like cats, but the cat suit is amazing. It pretty much breaks the game and makes it easy to get anywhere. I often found myself going back to the first level to pick it up.

Princess Peach was my character of choice for most of the game.

What I don't like about it is that it's meant for four players. The levels start off super wide and seem a bit empty, because four people could be there. This also makes the starting levels a little bit easier than I'd like. I don't think that games that involve precision platforming should be multiplayer. It just makes every level pure bedlam, because everyone dies all the time when someone gets ahead. Lucky for me the later levels get very challenging and I can't even fathom how you'd be able to get through them with multiple people. There are a ton of levels in the game, and you can unlock extra worlds and levels by getting all of the collectibles. Each level has three green stars and most of them have a Miiverse stamp to collect. You will also want to reach the top of every flagpole, which seems easiest to do with Peach.

Super Mario 3D World is fun. I can't say that enough. The game controls amazingly. When mixed with the truly incredible visuals and jaunty orchestrated soundtrack something truly memorable is born. I want to get back to collecting everything the game has to offer, but with so many other games I need to play I sadly might not get to for a while.

Christmas is Almost Here

It's almost Christmas, which means that this edition of Game Time is horrendously late. I'm going to warn you that the December edition of Game Time will probably be horrendously late as well. I've already played a ton of games this month and I'm sure to get a whole bunch more to play on Christmas. Perhaps by Christmas I'll be able to breath out of my nose again!

Since I have so many things to talk about I'm thinking I might do two editions of Game Time to be able to fit everything in. Perhaps I'll just write up a thing about the Vita and how awesome it is. It's a real shame that Sony isn't helping it sell at all.

I don't know. I have a lot of games to be playing, so I'll see you next time.

     -Manny

Game Time ID: PlayStation 4

On Friday when I first got my PlayStation 4 I felt like I had to put something up right away. I rushed it out in excitement of my shiny new console. Now that it's been a few days I feel like I can say a lot more about the system as a whole. I've played many hours of Assassin's Creed 4, Lego Marvel Heroes, Need for Speed Rivals, Resogun, and Warframe. All of them have been quite fun. Since all of these games are either for PC and/or the previous generation of consoles the most interesting part about the system right now is the operating system.

I mentioned in my quick impressions that I liked the UI. I still do to a certain extent, but not as much as before. In an attempt to make everything much more simple the operating system lost a lot of basic functionality. For example, every time you put in a game it's added to a list of recently used applications. They show up in a row as fairly large squares. As far as I can tell there's no way to get rid of any of them, and there's absolutely no way to sort them. Right now it's not that big of a deal. but when there are a bunch of downloadable titles it will be a huge pain to find what you're looking for. At least on the PS3 you could sort things into folders. Hopefully some type of sort option will be patched in at a later date.

It doesn't seem like it will be too hard for Sony to patch things in either, which is nice. One major complaint I had has already been fixed. For some reason games won't patch until the first time you open them. As soon as they boot the patch is pulled, which is kind of dumb since you can't play anything online unless the game is up to date. This means that you have to quit the game to install the patch and then boot back into it. This is still an issue. What Sony did fix however is the fact that there was no way to differentiate between a game and a patch. I downloaded Resogun from the store. That was listed in my downloads as Resogun. Then it tried to patch and the patch was in the downloads also as Resogun. Last night Sony pushed the firmware update 1.51, which now lists patches you've downloaded as game updates. Not a huge change on it's own, but it's good to see that they can change things if they need to.

Friends

The PlayStation 3 will only let you have 100 friends on your list. The PlayStation 4 on the other hand will let you have 2,000. Why you would want to do that I don't know, but you totally can. I only have around 30 friends on my list right now and the list is super annoying, so I can only imagine how it must be for people who have more than that. Friends are split into 2 categories of Online and All. Online obviously shows you everyone who's online and what they're playing. All shows every one of your friends. What sucks is that both lists are in alphabetical order and there's absolutely no way to sort them. In the end it's almost easier to search for the username you're looking for with the new search function. I'm sure they'll patch this in the future to change how all of this is displayed.

When you first log in with your PSN account you'll be asked if you want to integrate it with Facebook. If you choose to, which I did, it pulls your real name and profile picture. I chose not to use my profile picture, because I like my PSN icon of Cody from Street Fighter just fine. It is super weird to see my real name all over everything though. Your friends won't be able to see your real name unless you send them a name request. This doesn't really have any bearing on anything, but it's an interesting feature.

What's cool is that you can see what game your friends are playing and what system they're playing it on. Even if they're playing on Vita you can see what they're playing, which is something that you can't see on the PS3. The same profile features from the PS3 carry over as well, so you can see their brief introduction and what languages they speak. Their level and how many trophies they have are displayed prominently on their profile page and you can easily compare if you want to.

Messaging is a little better now, because you can send voice messages. As you may have heard there is also party chat now. These are both things that the Xbox 360 had, so it's nice that the PS4 is at least on par with that now. I chatted it up with a friend today while playing Need for Speed Rivals. It worked quite well. I used the pack in mic, which sounds a whole lot better than I thought it would. I might be able to get away with using it for a while longer.

Trophies

Trophies are now a staple of the PlayStation, so it's good to see that they're integrated into the system and not tacked on and poorly implemented like on the PS3. Once you log in to PSN all of your trophy data comes right down. On a new PS3 I had to wait 20 minutes or more for my trophies to pull down since I have almost 4,000 now. This makes viewing trophies a much more pleasant experience. Apparently it's not too bad on the Vita either, but I don't have one of those yet.

When I first heard that the trophies still had to sync all the time I got a little worried. It's not nearly as bad as I thought, but it's still kind of annoying. Sure it takes hardly any time at all to sync them up, but there's no reason that I should have to go to my trophies in order for them to do so. Achievements show up automatically on the Xbox, so it's a little weird that people can't see what I've gotten since I last synced my trophies manually. Trophies are supposed to sync automatically like they did with PlayStation Plus on the PS3, but they aren't for me. I'm probably supposed to leave the system in standby mode, but I don't.

There are two new things with trophies that I think are really cool. The first is that if you view a game it separates out the trophies from the main game and each different DLC set. This doesn't really matter, but it's cool to see regardless. What's interesting is that all of my PS3 games are separated out in this way and some even have custom art to go along with the DLC packs. It's weird that these games all have the same treatment, but it's only when being viewed on the PS4.

The other feature is actually super awesome. When you view a trophy list there is a rarity next to each and every trophy, which ranges from common to ultra rare. It takes into account how many people have played the game and have gotten that trophy. It even shows what percentage of that games players got that trophy, which is pretty neat. It adds a little more depth to a system that I care less and less about with each passing day.

Internet/Store

I'm happy to report that the PlayStation store doesn't run like garbage on the PS4. As I mentioned in my quick impressions it's the exact same store as the PS3 had with a lot less on it. As the PS4 gets more games I'm sure they'll do away with the huge advertisement like panels in favor of something that's a little less frustrating to navigate just like on the PS3 store. That part doesn't even really matter though, because the download speeds don't totally suck! I was able to download Resogun which is over a GB in a little under ten minutes. Game patches took hardly any time to download as well.

What sucks is the way the PS4 handles downloads. If you're downloading multiple things at once they don't queue up and instead all download at the same exact time. What's worse is that you can't pause the downloads, or at least there was no option that I could find. It's crazy, because the PS3 both allowed you to pause downloads and it only did one at a time. I guess that's the trade-off for reasonable download speeds.

I'm also happy to report that I'm not having stupid connection issues when playing games online either. With the PS3 I couldn't connect with my friends 90% of the time even though I have a NAT 2 connection. I still have hard times finding matches in any online PS3 game as well. With the PS4 I had absolutely no problem finding games and connecting with other players in Assassin's Creed, Warframe, and Need for Speed Rivals. Maybe this means I won't have to try and mess around with my connection every single time I want to play a game with a friend.

Sharing

In the past few years recording video games with commentary has become a big deal. The same goes for streaming video games out live as they're being played. Both Sony and Microsoft realized this and now the PS4 and Xbox One have built in streaming. I myself have wanted to get into the world of streaming and recording video games, but it's not exactly the easiest thing to do. My previous laptop wasn't exactly a powerhouse, so it wouldn't have been able to do it very well.

As of right now I'm very disappointed with the PS4's sharing features. Yes they make it very easy to do things that previously weren't, but it could be a lot better off the bat. Some of the things that aren't included make it feel rushed out, which it probably was. The Xbox One won't have it's streaming until 2014. Perhaps the PS4 should have been the same way.

It is very easy to start up a stream. When you push the share button you get three options, which are upload video clip, upload screenshot, and broadcast gameplay. Hitting boradcast will prompt you  to stream on Twitch or Ustream and then you're pretty much ready to go. The quality is relatively high and you can even show some of the chat at the bottom. What makes me upset about it is that you can't archive broadcasts yet, so everything you do will disappear into the ether. This wasn't even apparent until I looked it up and found out on Twitch itself. Archiving will never be available on Ustream. It's kind of weird that this stuff would be omitted at launch. It's even weirder that they'd never say anything about it. Maybe they did, but if so, I never heard about it.

The ability to take an in game screenshot is cool too, but the resolution is so low it's not really worth it. Even then you can only upload it to Twitter or share it on Facebook. Hopefully in the future you can upload the images to Flickr or even Instagram. You know, an image hosting site.

Gameplay videos are also interesting in theory, but right now I have no interest in making them. The system will always record up to 15 minutes of your gameplay, so if you see something awesome you can hit record and grab it. This is good if you're just trying to show off a glitch or a cool sequence of gameplay. What's really lame is that it doesn't pick up any microphone inputs so I can't even talk over videos of my gameplay. If I wanted to do that it would be the most convoluted process ever. First I'd have to upload the video to Facebook, then I'd have to find a way to rip the video from Facebook. Following that I'd have to record my voice and re-encode the video. Finally I would have to re-upload it for everyone to hear. I don't really want to go through all that so I'm just going to wait until archiving is available.

This feature has so much potential and I was looking forward to it so much. That's the reason why I sound so angry about the whole thing. You can't even upload videos to YouTube! What kind of video sharing service can't upload to YouTube! These are all things that I'm sure will be fixed in the future, but right now it's just frustrating.

The Newest Black Box

I don't really like the way the PlayStation 4 itself is shaped. Sure it's flat so I can set things on top of it, but why couldn't it have just been a literal box. Instead it's slanted in the front and back. The slanted front is fine, but the back makes it hard to find where you need to jam all of your cables. Also for some reason the top left of the console is made of that stupid glossy plastic that gets super dirty. I don't get why companies insist on putting that stuff on devices that people are going to touch a lot. With time I'm sure I'll get used to it, but as of right now I like the look of the PS3 a whole lot more. Specifically the slim. The original fat PS3 was a beast, and the new cheap PS3 looks like garbage.

The buttons on the front kind of bother me as well. They're both super tiny and at first I didn't even realize they were buttons at all. Above the disc slot is a super thin power button and below it there's a super thin eject button. They're barely recognizable as buttons unless you're looking for them. The good thing is that theoretically you'd only need to use the power button the first time you turn on the console. After that you could use the controller to turn the system on and off and eject the discs from the system level menu.

While the box itself hasn't impressed me all that much outside of it's internal hardware I've absolutely fallen in love with the DualShock 4. Yes, it looks like a weird version of the DualShock 3, but it's so much more. Almost everything about it is better with the exception of the d-pad. As of right now it seems like the D-pad is worse, because it doesn't give me any feedback on my movement. It barely moves at all. I'll need a fighting game to qualify that statement though. Overall though the whole thing is incredibly comfortable. It has grips on the bottom of both sides and the analog sticks have an indentation to rest your thumbs. The triggers feel excellent compared to the awful ones that were on the Dualshock 3. Perhaps now shooters will use the same controls on both the Xbox and PlayStation.

It's odd to have a touch pad in the center of the controller. It might not be as weird when games utilize it more though. In Assassin's Creed you can use it to navigate the map, but it works super poorly. There's no way to know where your finger is on the pad, so I kept sliding off of it. On top of that the movement speed and accuracy were both much worse than if I was using a controller. That's just a product of the game itself though, so hopefully in the future games will put it to better use.

Greatness is Here

Upon re-reading this post I sound very angry about the PS4, which was not my intent. I'm just being overly critical, because this is a new console generation. When it can't do some of the basic things a PS3 can, or things that were promised it's more than a little frustrating. The sleep mode feature they talked up so much isn't in the system yet, but that's one of the first things they announced. Yes, most of the things I have issues with will be fixed, but that time isn't here yet.

The PlayStation 4 as a gaming machine is excellent. I can put games in, they play, and they look excellent. I can't wait until games like InFamous come out in March so I can see the system at its full power.

The next generation of gaming is finally here and it's very exciting. It's just going to take it a while to get off the ground. With the Xbox One launching this coming Friday I hope it lights a fire under Sony's ass. With any luck we'll be seeing many firmware updates in the months ahead.

March will probably be when these systems finally take off and show us what they can really do. The Xbox One will be getting Titanfall. Both systems will be seeing Destiny in that time frame, and the PS4 will be touting InFamous Second Son. Those are the first true next gen games and I'm super excited to play them.

     -Manny

Quick PS4 Impressions and Thoughts

I received my PlayStation 4 earlier today. I'm busy playing it at the moment, but I thought that I'd share a few things.

The first is that I will probably not be posting any videos of myself playing games any time soon. Turns out that Twitch archiving is something that's going to be patched in. On top of that I can't even record myself talking over 15 minute chunks of gameplay to upload, because the headphone jack on my controller doesn't work right. It will only recognize anything if it's pretty much hanging precariously out of the controller, which totally sucks. I would just exchange the console normally, but since it's from Amazon I can't really do that. It doesn't help that I spend a fortune on games, so I can't really justify spending another $60 on a fully functioning controller at this time.

Edit as of 12:40 AM 11-16-13: Turns out I just suck at life. I had to shove the cord into the jack as hard as I could until I heard a pop. Somehow it wasn't in all the way on any of the headphones I tried. So maybe now I can actually post some videos haha.

Luckily, that's the only thing I have to bitch about here. Everything else has been great. People were bummed to find out that you still need to sync trophies, but it goes super fast and you don't even notice when the console is syncing everything. In fact, everything about the console is very seamless. I did manage to stream to Twitch while trying to get my mic to work. It came through in good quality, so I'm pumped for when I get a working controller and they patch in archiving.

Part of what makes everything seem so quick and seamless is the fact that the UI doesn't totally suck anymore. Everything is categorized so most things are fairly easy to find. Messages, trophies, and everything friend related are right at the surface level. The one thing I haven't gotten a chance to mess with yet is party chat, because of my stupid controller.

Going to the XMB in a PS3 game will often send everything to a grinding halt. That is not the case with the PS4. When you push the PlayStation button you can access everything at the system level and go right back into the game with absolutely no issue. I paused Assassin's Creed 4, went to the PlayStation Store to download Resogun, changed my router settings, and was able to get right back into the game as if I had never left it. It's awesome and it'll be even cooler when they add in the sleep feature.

Everyone can rejoice, because the PlayStation Store doesn't run like total garbage on the PS4. In fact it's the exact same as the PS3 store, which means they were just testing it out before. What does suck right now is navigating the store. There isn't much out yet, so everything seems like a gigantic banner ad, which makes scrolling through everything kind of annoying.

So far I've played a bunch of Assassin's Creed IV, which is incredible. I don't know if the PS3 and 360 versions are super incredible looking, or if the PS4 version has some serious graphical improvements. Everything about it looks beautiful. The rain in the opening scene blew my mind! I also played some Resogun, which was pretty cool as well. At the end of a level everything blows up into thousands of tiny particles, which would have crippled the old consoles.

Oh yeah, the controller itself is very comfortable. It feels great. The triggers are a huge improvement over the Dualshock 3. What's going to take getting used to is the fact that there are no start and select buttons. Instead it's the share and options buttons separated by a rather large touch-pad that doesn't do a lot.

I'm pretty into this thing so far. As I become less infatuated with playing it every waking moment I'll be sure to post more!

     -Manny

Game Time - October 2013

October was just about as awesome as I expected it to be. That is the main reason why it's now November 5th and I'm writing the October edition of game time. I've been pretty late on these the past few months, but that's a good thing. I've been busy playing awesome games.

In terms of awesome games this month was a doozy. On the 8th I picked up Disgaea D2 in store, because I hadn't pre-ordered it yet. For some reason I thought it was coming out at the end of the month, which was when I had planned on making time to play it. Due to my miscalculation I haven't played as much of it as I would have liked. I'm a solid 8 or so hours in and so far it hasn't grabbed me as much as I was hoping it would have. However, there's still plenty of time for that to happen.

The real reason I didn't play much Disgaea is because Pokemon X and Y came out a short four days later. In order to play as much Pokemon as humanly possible I requested off from work on the 12th and 13th. In those two days I played over 24 hours worth of Pokemon X. It was awesome, and the game continues to be awesome after 78 hours of play. I've still got a lot to do and I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

On the 24th the 5th game in the Ace Attorney franchise was released as a downloadable only title on the 3DS. I still wish it would have been a full retail release, but I understand that the franchise hasn't exactly had the most stellar sales in the west. Hopefully this game makes up for that and all future games in the series are localized. I'm up to the 5th and final court case in the game and shit's getting very real. I'll probably end up finishing it tonight or tomorrow. All I know is that Phoenix Wright made his return to the courtroom well worth my time.

I have so much to say about these games, so I better get into it. It's game time!

Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness

At some time in my high school career I picked up a copy of Disgaea 2 not really knowing what it was. I played through the first few chapters just as I would any strategy RPG. I still remember the map where everything changed for me. It was in a swamp and for some reason I had to fight Etna. She was level 1,000 or higher and my characters were barely 20. I was decimated, but found out I was supposed to be. It became my new goal to get strong enough to beat her. Little did I know that I would be able to get my characters to level 9,999 multiple times through insane level grinding with exponential experience. I played the living hell out of Disgaea 2 and from that point on I was hooked. Eventually I went back and played the first game, and since then I have played and been horribly addicted to each new iteration.

After going back and playing Disgaea 1 it became my favorite game in the franchise. For some reason I really like the main character Laharl, even though he's an egocentric whiner. Perhaps it's his lack of a shirt and the bad-ass laser sword he uses that make me like him so much. He ends up being my most used character in every game despite not being heavily involved in any of the main stories aside from the original game. With Disgaea D2 he makes his triumphant return as the main character.

Laharl turns into a lady during D2. I really like the character design!

I still love Laharl, but D2 has made me realize how little I like Etna and Flonne. There are only so many times you can joke about not having any boobs before it becomes upsetting. I don't want to be mean, but Flonne is too dumb for me to handle. I realize she's an angel who was kicked out of heaven and she's super innocent and naive, but it's just annoying. I didn't like the part she played in Disgaea 4's story either. In fact, I think she detracted from the overall feel of that story. This is what bugs me about D2 the most. It's a direct sequel to the story of the original game, so it focuses on the original three main characters. In theory that would be awesome, but for some reason the only other story character you get is a little girl who claims to be Laharl's sister. I don't like her at all either, so I'm stuck using the generic characters, Laharl, and the three story characters I find to be annoying. Once I get to the post game I can unlock the characters I liked from Disgaea 4, but I feel like that's a long way to go with a lackluster set of characters.

The story seems weak, which is putting me off a bit. It's a shame though, because everything else seems so well done. It eases you into the combat and teaches you a lot better than previous iterations of the franchise did. I want to beat the game so I can get sucked into the endless grinding and loot progression that I so desperately crave. Hopefully I can get past the characters I don't like and focus on how awesome Laharl is to get me through the game. Now that I'm winding down on Ace Attorney I should be able to play, or at least try to play a bit more.

Ace Attorney 5: Dual Destinies

I don't care what anyone says; Apollo Justice was a great game. Sure, he may not be Phoenix Wright, but that's okay. The original Ace Attorney trilogy ended in such a way that I didn't mind that Apollo had taken his place as the main character. With that said I'm glad that Phoenix is back as a playable character and back in the spotlight. Even though this time he's sharing his spotlight with Apollo and the fresh out of law school Athena Cykes.

Ace Attorney 5 plays just like the previous entries in the series. It's essentially a visual novel, but at certain points you'll need to explore crime scenes for evidence and present said evidence in court at the right time. What's nice is that everything is easier this time. When searching for evidence you control a cursor shaped like a hand pointing with it's index finger. When an area can be investigated a circle will appear over the index finger. To make things easier on the player the circle will turn into an X if you've already searched that area or object. It makes the investigations less frustrating, because you can easily see if you're missing anything. In a similar vane you can travel anywhere at any time. In the previous games you could only move to certain places if you were close to that place, which was terribly annoying. You'd have to backtrack through several screens for no reason whatsoever.

Look at how badass Apollo looks!

All of the character models are now full fledged 3D. You can see Phoenix yelling objection as a glorious 3D model instead of his regular old 2D sprite. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it looks really good and allows for a much wider range of motion. It's only really noticeable with the 3D turned on though. For some reason without it everything looks very flat. Without it the characters look painted on the background. With the 3D on everything looks like it was much more depth. Each background has several layers, and certain objects are accentuated. It reminds me of how I thought Kingdom Hearts 3DS had better graphics with the 3D on. It probably isn't the case, but it sure looks a lot better to me.

If the addition of 3D models isn't enough for you then perhaps you might enjoy some anime cutscenes. They're interspersed throughout the game and add to the story in a way that wasn't previously possible. The part that cuts the anime down for me a bit is the fact that's it's voice acted. It's not exactly the best voice work that I've ever heard. What makes it worse is that it's at odds with the rest of the game, which isn't voice acted at all. They could have easily gotten away with having no voice acting, because the scenes mostly show actions as opposed to conversations. The actors aren't even necessarily bad, they just don't fit the characters very well in my opinion. Since there have been 4 previous games in the franchise where the only spoken words were hold it, take that, and objection the voiced scenes are generally off-putting.

Witness Phoenix in all his 3D majesty!

The good news is that in regular Ace Attorney fashion the new characters are very well done. Athena Cykes is a brand new lawyer that Phoenix hired. I'm in the final case now and I still don't know exactly what her deal is, but she's an interesting character so far. She's easily excitable, but knows when she has to get serious. Just as Phoenix has his magatama, and Apollo has his magic bracelet, Athena has a robotic talking necklace named Widget. Widget will say what Athena is thinking, but he also allows her to sense discord in people's emotions. In the court room this adds a brand new way to cross examine. Occasionally she will sense discord and launch into an emotion detection sequence. As the witness speaks there are four emotions that they can be feeling. You must figure out what emotion doesn't fit with the testimony in order to bring out the truth and enact justice.

As is common with each game there is also a new prosecutor. Prosecutor Blackquill is a prison inmate who for some reason is allowed to work in a court of law. He was convicted of murder seven years prior to Ace Attorney 5. I have yet to find out what he was convicted for, but I'm super pumped to find out. He's generally very calm and collected, but becomes angry when he feels like his time is being wasted. Like the other prosecutors he is fairly hostile towards any opposing lawyer. He often sicks his pet bird on people, and throws knives across the court room. You know, things that are totally legal. He's a great opponent, because it seems that he believes in justice as opposed to only caring about a guilty verdict.

The anime scenes would be so much better without the voice acting.

As I mentioned previously I have just started the final case and I can't wait to see what happens. In the beginning though I wasn't very interested in the story. The first case failed to grab me, but it's importance isn't clear until the third case. I can't tell if it's the way this game is written, or if I'm just not used to the logic of the series anymore, but I keep finding myself not knowing what to do. Generally the series has it's own internal logic, but there have been numerous occasions when  I just have no idea what evidence I'm supposed to present in court. I've found myself getting much more frustrated than I did in previous titles despite the fact that everything is much more streamlined. Part of that may have been due to the fact that the story hadn't picked up yet. So while the experience has been frustrating it's been great to see Phoenix take up being a lawyer again after his supporting role in Apollo Justice. Overall it feels like an Ace Attorney game that's super streamlined, but slightly more frustrating than it used to be.

Pokemon X

Pokemon is and always has been one of my favorite franchises. Even though it doesn't change a whole lot with each iteration, it changes just enough to keep me coming back for more. This time Game Freak changed much more than usual and the result is amazing, which makes this the best generation of Pokemon yet.

To really shake things up Game Freak added in a whole new type. Dragon Pokemon are generally known to be overpowered. They are almost always very strong and have few weaknesses. In order to combat that Fairy type was added in order to take Dragon type down a few notches, because as we all know faeries are a dragon's only true weakness. What's insane is that fairy Pokemon are totally immune to Dragon moves. This addition might sound like a small thing, but it totally changes the entire basis of Pokemon battles. It's going to shake up competitive battling in a major way. I use a fairy Pokemon on my team and it's pretty awesome.

Sylveon is my favorite fairy Pokemon. It's a beastly special defense tank.

As if adding a whole new type wasn't enough Mega evolution is now a thing. Certain Pokemon can now mega evolve by holding a special stone. For example Tyranitar can turn into mega Tyranitar when holding Tyranitarite. When a Pokemon mega evolves it gets better stats and in some cases new typing, and a new ability. There are only around 20 Pokemon that can mega evolve, which means that a lot of people are going to start using those Pokemon. You're only allowed to have one Pokemon go Mega in a battle, so you can't just run a team of all super powered megas and steamroll everyone.

The most mind blowing change in X and Y is that everything is fully polygonal. All the models in the game are 3D and it's incredible. The overworld and characters don't look like anything special, but battles are amazing. The detail in animation of every single Pokemon and attack are unmatched! Since every main line Pokemon game prior to this has been fully sprite based this is a big change and a large step forward for the series. The only tradeoff is that the frame rate doesn't always hold up in battle, especially if you utilize the 3D of the 3DS. More often than not if you have the 3D turned on in battles the frame rate will drop by half during each attack animation. It's disappointing, because it all looks so good! The models still look good though, so it's just as nice to see the models without the 3D cranked all the way up.

The Pokemon models look very good for being on the 3DS.

Everything seems to happen faster in X and Y as well. You can immediately run, which is normally an ability you have to earn. Then after the first gym you gain access to the roller blades, which almost double your movement speed. Battle text scrolls faster by default as well making battles move quicker. It seems to me that leveling up your Pokemon takes less time too. For some reason you still gain Exp even if you capture a wild Pokemon now. The main reason leveling is faster though is due to the Exp. Share. While this has been an item in every single game it now shares the experience between every Pokemon in your party as opposed to just one. To make it even more mind blowing it's not even an item that a Pokemon has to hold anymore. Instead it's a key item that you can turn on or off at your discretion.

All around it seems that the series is trying to become more accessible. You get right into the game much faster than you did before, and it's a whole lot easier to level up and move around. Even the previously intense meta-game of your Pokemon's stats has been made easier. I don't want to get into the intricacies of EVs and IVs here, but I will say that they're now both easier to control. EVs have been completely trivialized, because now you can just play a soccer-like minigame for an hour or so completely max out the EVs you need on a single Pokemon. Breeding for IVs used to be overly complicated and take a good amount of luck, but I was able to breed a Pokemon with perfect stats in just a matter of hours. Sure, I got fairly lucky, but it's still way easier to do now. This all means that more people can get into Pokemon now, and people who previously found the competitive aspect too daunting can now get into it much more easily. This will be the first generation where I have a competitively viable team to use online.

Competitive battles might be much more prominent this generation.

Many people complained that there were only 70 brand new Pokemon, when there has been at least 100 per generation previously. I was upset at first too, especially since most of the designs are kind of poor. Now that I've played the game I no longer have any complaints. With less Pokemon it was much easier for Game Freak to add in all kinds of new features and make the Pokemon we all know and love into something much better than it was before.

I've been playing Pokemon since the original games came out over a decade ago and I've liked each and every iteration of the franchise since then. I can say without a doubt that this generation is the peak of the entire series. Game Freak has hit an all new high and I hope that they can top it with the next iteration. People complain that these games are too similar every year and for the first time this entry is actually very different. I love Pokemon so much. It's one of my favorite franchises and it makes me so happy that it's still so awesome after all these years.

A New Age is Dawning

This console cycle is coming to an end. On November 15th the PS4 will be here and with it an all new era of gaming will begin. While there may not be many exclusive games coming out for the thing it's still very important. The week after the Xbox One will be out and then we're truly into the next generation of console gaming.

I pre-ordered the PS4 and it will be at my door on the 15th. Since I can no longer get Watch Dogs until June of 2014 I am going to have to settle for Assassin's Creed 4 instead. I'll probably type up a whole bunch of stuff about the PS4 as I use it. Also expect me to post some videos of myself playing video games over the next few months. The PS4 allows for direct streaming to Twitch, which I can't wait to try out.

The next edition of Game Time will take place in an entirely new era of gaming!

     -Manny

Game Time ID: Grand Theft Auto V

Note: It took me so long to write this, because I was waiting to see what GTA Online was all about. As of writing this I still have not had a chance to properly do that. For some reason I can't connect to other players with any regularity. I can't tell if it's because it's still horribly busted or if it's because my internet connection is terrible. I'll keep trying it out every so often, because it seems interesting. It just isn't fun by yourself. Especially when almost any of the missions require 2 people to play. With that said this will only be about the single player.

Starting with Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation 2 Rockstar essentially created the modern open world sandbox game. With each successive entry in the series it got increasingly crazy and impressive. San Andreas was the last in the PS2 trilogy and it's still to this day one of my favorite games. When they moved to the current generation of consoles with Grand Theft Auto IV they also went for a more realistic world. Not everyone was very receptive to it, but that's the direction they went down. With Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar kept the realism of IV, while injecting the humor and zaniness of the PS2 iterations.

Somehow Rockstar always outdoes themselves with this franchise and I promise you that Grand Theft Auto V is no different. Initially I was expecting it to be earth shattering and filled with new ideas to reinvigorate the genre. That's what I thought I wanted. Instead what I got was what I essentially see as the apex of open world gaming. Rockstar has in my opinion perfected the formula for open world games and I don't know where they can really go from here. All I know is that GTA V was one hell of a game.

Epic Crime Saga

Unlike previous entries in the franchise GTA V has you take control of not one, but three main characters. When described it sounded like you would be able to seamlessly switch between any of the three characters at any time and they would be going about their regular everyday lives. In reality it doesn't work exactly like that, but it's close enough. Using the right stick you can switch to the character of your choosing. The camera zooms out above the city and within ten seconds it zooms back in onto your newly selected character. They'll be doing something random. They're all pre-coded events, but they give the illusion that the characters are living out their everyday lives when you're not using them. It's a really cool effect.

You take on the roles of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. Michael is a middle aged man who lives what most would consider a life of luxury. He has retired from bank robbing, but longs to have that same kind of excitement in his life again. Franklin is young hood who wants to get into some legitimate crime and with the help of Michael he's able to do that. Last but not least there's Trevor and he's quite literally a psychopath. He used to run jobs with Michael before their whole operation was put to rest. The story revolves around these three characters and their series of elaborate heists. 

You get to know Trevor, Franklin, and Michael very well by the end of the game,

These three unlikely friends are amazing characters. They may be caricatures, but they're extremely well realized caricatures. I often find that when games try to tell this kind of story they fall flat. However, that's never been the case in the GTA games for me. I think that the high quality of the voice acting is one of the major factors that sets this franchise apart from so many others. You'll meet all kinds of characters throughout the game and very few of them even give sub-par performances. The story really drags you in and it's hard not to keep going from mission to mission just to see what's going to happen next. It's an epic crime saga that's truly exhilarating to experience. It has everything you'd want in a crime story. 

It also helps that the amount of detail in the game is unparalleled. The world is gigantic and every single nook and cranny of it is filled with minute details. There's a scene early on in the game where you go to a hackers house. You can walk all around inside and see readable papers lining the walls, anime figures, computer screens filled with information, and food littered all over the floor. It's all so intricately placed and it's only in the game for a scarce five minutes. I don't know if you can every go back inside the house, but regardless it's filled with a ridiculous amount of detail for such a short scene. That kind of thing happens all the time as well, it's not just that one scene.  

Look at the detail in that city!

With Rockstar's track record they can take as long as they need to make a game. They did take an awfully long time with GTA V, but you can actually see it. It's not like with most games where it's apparent that they were just throwing money at it to try and make the game better. They created a living breathing world heavily based off of California. Specifically the city of Los Santos is based off of Los Angeles. I've seen people claim that there are tons of landmarks, even tiny local restaurants in the game, which is a level of detail that most games just don't have. Hell, the venue for E3 is even accurately portrayed. What other games have full blown fake movies and TV shows you can watch? How about a fully featured fake internet that you can browse? The amount of content in the game is absolute madness. 

Open World Mayhem

One of the major issues with the GTA games in the past has been the gameplay itself. GTA games consist of two main activities, driving and shooting. Driving has always been fine, but in GTA IV they changed the handling to be closer to real life. In the end everything handled like an unwieldy boat and it was generally very unsatisfying. With GTA V the handling is much closer to what it was during the PS2 iterations of the franchise. It has a very arcade-like feel. You can get up to speed very quickly and the handling is loose, which makes it very easy to take sharp turns. 

Driving still takes up a majority of your time in GTA V. You'll have to drive to a mission marker, where you'll be given a mission and sent to drive somewhere else. More often than not you'll be sent to a location to shoot some guys. When you're done you'll then have to drive back. This didn't bother me so much, because I enjoyed the driving in the game. I know that some people do not though and it can get to be a bit tedious when missions are far away. Sometimes it can take upwards of ten minutes to reach your destination. In that case you can forgo driving yourself altogether and take a cab to your destination. It's not quite as beneficial though, because you won't be gaining any driving stat points.

You do a lot of driving, but the handling makes it fun.

Just like in San Andreas you can level up your stats in GTA V. You may not have to worry about getting fat, but you can increase your skill at driving, shooting, and many other things. For example the more you drive the better your driving skill will be. Some characters are innately better at things than others are. For example Franklin is good at driving, so he will automatically be able to handle cars much better than Trevor can. To add a little bit more flavor to each character they have a special ability to complement their innate skill set. Franklin can slow down time while driving in order to make hair-pin turns, Michael can go into a bullet-time state in order to take down enemies, and Trevor goes into a rage state where he takes almost no damage. They're not game breaking, but the abilities are nice to have in a pinch and help differentiate the characters a bit.

The shooting mechanics have been tweaked in a way that makes the act of killing enemies trivial. Rockstar apparently got the memo that their combat wasn't exactly the greatest. Previously you could target an enemy and switch to other targets with the push of a button. You had to be facing the enemy though. In GTA V you can just push the button to target and your reticle will automatically snap to the nearest enemy. If you flick the stick in the direction of another enemy it will move to auto target that enemy instead. This makes it super easy to pop out of cover and mow down every enemy in your path with little to no effort. It's not the most satisfying system, but it takes away a great deal of the frustration from previous iterations of the franchise. You can also free aim if you like, which works fairly well, but isn't anywhere near as efficient. I probably would have used free aim if I wasn't trying to complete combat scenarios as quickly as possible to see the next story beat. Plus you go down pretty easy, so I didn't find myself aiming for very long.

The auto aiming makes it very easy to take down helicopters.

While it is true that most missions just involve you driving and shooting GTA V is actually good about mission variety. Moreso than in past games you're sent to do things other than shoot someone in the face. An early mission has you buying clothes so you can sneak into the San Andreas equivalent of FaceBook to plant a bomb in their new prototype phone. One mission, which I found to be quite disturbing has Trevor torturing a suspected terrorist. You're given a choice of what torture device to use and then you have to perform button prompts to actually do the torturing. It did an excellent job of making me feel super uncomfortable. One of my personal favorites had me repelling down a building in order to kidnap someone.

The missions that truly shine in GTA V though are the heists. Apparently Rockstar heard that everyone really liked the bank heist in GTA IV, so they made a whole game based around large heists just like that one. At first you'll be tasked to stake out the area so that you can formulate a plan. Once you have all the information the game draws it all out on a whiteboard and makes you choose one of two ways to go about the heist. You'll get the opportunity to pick crew members you think will be able to help you out. Each crew member has their own unique stats and will take different shares of the money you get from the heist. If the crew members live through the heist their stats will increase, or they'll die on the job and be gone for good. 

The heists are easily the best missions in the game.

When you select how you're going to go about the heist you'll be sent to collect the supplies needed. The heists are probably the best part of the game, which makes it a shame that there are so few of them in it. During a job there's a sense of tension unlike anything I've felt in a video game before. They're very exciting, because you took the time to get everything ready and can see it all play out. Supposedly GTA online will have heists at some point, so maybe I can get my fix there when the time comes.

Outside of combat and driving there are many activities you can take part in. The sad part is that I didn't really take place in all that many of them. You can dive for treasure in a submarine, golf, do yoga, run triathlons, base jump, and a whole slew of other side activities. The only one that I did end up playing was tennis, just because I had to see what it was like. Surprisingly it was actually a serviceable mini-game, but not anything to write home about. It's cool that the world is populated with all of these things to do, but there's really no incentive to do them. They're just there to fill up space and give you something to do outside of the missions. I don't know that I'd say content just for the sake of having content is the best thing in the world.

Where Can They Go From Here?

It's hard for me to imagine where the Grand Theft Auto franchise can go from here. Rockstar created so many excellent characters and a compelling story. On top of that they created a world so rich in detail that I don't even have the time or wherewithal to see it all. They've taken everything they've learned since GTA 3 and laid it all out there. The level of realism they've reached is both technically impressive and somewhat scary at the same time. 

I don't really know that I want another Grand Theft Auto game after this one. I'm sure that if they release another one I'll jump all over it though. It just seems like at this point there's nowhere for them to go but down. I've seen a fair amount of people who disagree with this sentiment, but the internet is full of complainers. 

Grand Theft Auto V is undoubtedly one of the best games of this console generation. If you haven't played it you definitely should. The gameplay isn't the most compelling out there, but it's well worth putting up with in order to experience the world class characters and writing.

     -Manny

Game Time - September 2013

It took me a little over a week to complete the story of Grand Theft Auto V. Just as I suspected I had an incredible time going through it. What's weird is that I didn't feel exactly how I thought I would about it. Instead of being a ground breaking game with tons of new ideas it instead perfected a stagnating formula. In my opinion Grand Theft Auto V is the peak of the open world genre at this point in time. Open world games have been getting old, but GTA V shows that open world games can still be improved upon, but better yet they can still be well produced. Open world games are always filled with a certain amount of issues due to the sheer amount of processes going simultaneously. GTA V takes previously made conventions and polishes them to a never before seen luster.

I absolutely loved GTA V, but I'm not going to talk about it in depth here. It deserves its own special time, which it will be getting some time in the next few days. I have to gather up my thoughts, because I have a whole lot of them.

Other than that I only really played two games for any reasonable length of time. I made the mistake of buying Pokemon Rumble U, and I had $60 of PSN credit so I ended up getting Dragon's Crown for free. I actually like it despite how some aspects of it make me sigh in disappointment.

Without any real GTA talk this edition will be a bit light, but that's okay. Video game talk is still video game talk. It's game time!

Pokemon Rumble U

Every time a new Wii-U game comes out I hope that my buyers remorse will go away. Pikmin 3 was a great game, but it left me wanting so much more. I really don't know why I was expecting anything different from Pokemon Rumble U.

Pokemon Rumble is now apparently a spin off series of Pokemon. The first game titled Pokemon Rumble was a downloadable title on the Wii. It introduced the concept that there are Pokemon Toys that come to life when no humans are around kind of like Toy Story, except with way worse animation. Also every one of them is windup and looks kind of like a blob. Anyways, it was a fun little co-op game. Each player controlled a Pokemon and could do one of two moves. As you progressed through the stages you would  randomly get new and more powerful Pokemon.

A 3DS sequel Pokemon Rumble Blast came along as a full blown retail release. It had a lot more content and an actual plot! Now we're here on the Wii-U and Pokemon Rumble U is stuck somewhere in-between its two predecessors. You don't traverse through levels. Instead you fight hordes of Pokemon in different arena settings, which isn't very exciting. None of the levels are very challenging either.

I don't really get what's ascetically pleasing about this art style.

The story exists, while simultaneously barely existing at all. In the beginning you're treated to what can barely be called a cinematic. Some Pokemon toys were dropped in the river on accident and they need to find their way back to the toy store where they belong. However, along the way they'll encounter Pokemon who have been brainwashed and don't want them to go back. These later scenes are played out by showing a picture on the screen with text that scrolls so slow it's painful.

I did have fun playing co-op with some friends. If I had played the game solo I don't know that I would have finished it. What blows my mind is that the game is $18. Let me be the first to say that, that's way too much money for the game. It's still a downloadable title like the original, but it costs more and has far less content. Sure you can play as every single Pokemon, but that doesn't matter if all you need to do is repeatedly use the same attack at the center of an arena. At least traversing the levels gave the feel of more interactivity.

Ohh nooo she dropped the Pokemon!

Maybe I would have liked the game a lot more if I had bought some of the NFC toys. Apparently you can pay in game money to level the toys up and buy them new moves, which you can not do with any of the in game Pokemon. I'd consider buying the Lucario figure, but putting down another $6 dollars to a price tag that's already way too high doesn't seem logical.

Things like this make me feel like the Wii-U is going to continue to flounder.

Dragon's Crown

Perhaps you've seen Dragon's Crown before. The game is entirely hand drawn and animated. It looks gorgeous both when it's still and in motion. Perhaps you've also seen the female wizard character with comically large breasts, or the Amazon warrior with the worlds most gross looking thunder thighs? Yeah, the art direction of this game is a little questionable.

Dragon's Crown was developed by Vanillaware. All of their games are hand drawn and beautifully hand drawn and animated just like Dragon's Crown. Muramasa, and Odin Sphere are just two examples. What's weird is that neither of those games have the insanely sexualized characters that this one does. I would forgive the game if it were just the two playable characters that were hypersexualized, but it doesn't really stop there. The game is set in medieval times and it does a very good job of setting that vibe. The narrator is amazing and gets you right into the correct mindset. Then you enter the magic shop and the shopkeeper's boobs are taking up over half the screen as she moans asking you what you'd like. It's not even funny, it's just kind of gross. Weird things like that happen in levels as well. A full screen mermaid appears at one point. She's half fish, but she still has a normal human butt. Also she's naked?

Is it safe to have boobs that large!?

It all comes across as immature. Most of the women in the game have a huge rack, or a huge butt. It's like what would come out of a middle school kid's mind. I'm also well aware that there are people who are way into that kind of thing. That would be fine and dandy if it weren't at odds with the rest of the game. That is to say it's a very well done loot driven, side-scrolling, beat-em-up game with many RPG elements thrown in for good measure.

I personally play as the archer, who is oddly the only female who looks like a normal human being. She has reasonable proportions and is covered up by a cloak. That's not really the point though. As a game Dragon's Crown is actually very fun. Yes it's a beat-em-up, but it's not the kind where you can really mash attack until everything dies. Technically you could do that, but it wouldn't end up working out very well later in the game. Pushing the attack button with different directions will result in different attacks. They can be chained together to juggle opponents. The better your combo the higher your score. Since score is your experience you want to get as high a score as possible. When you throw in different skills and characer specific abilities there are a ton of ways to mangle your foes.

This is what it's all about. Wailing on enemies and getting sweet sweet loot.

On top of being a competent playing game it looks incredible in motion. Juggling foes has never looked this fabulous with all of it's hand drawn goodness. Normally these types of games get stale after a few hours, but with all of the loot to collect and quests to complete there's a lot to do in Dragon's Crown. I haven't done it yet, but I can see myself continuing to play even after the main quest is over. It's a fun game. In fact I'm going to be playing it with some friends tomorrow.

What drags me down is how immature the designs of the women are in the game. I know I sound like some white knight protecting the sanctity of women, but that's not what I'm trying to say here. It's just a bad design decision that is at odds with the rest of the game tonally. It makes it seem like an immature waste of time and I bet a lot of people dismissed it when they first saw the sorceress character. People wonder why video games aren't taken seriously, and character designs like that certainly aren't helping. It can't even really be defended as a stylistic choice, because so few characters in Vanillaware's other games look like that.

The art looks insanely good in all Vanillaware games.

So yeah, the character designs aren't the best, but the game itself is superb and I recommend it, especially if you like playing co-op with friends. Surprisingly the online works well too if you want to play with some strangers.

The Holy Grail

I'm going to be typing up my thoughts on GTA V later this week, so look forward to that gem. This month was a bit light in terms of the games I played other than GTA, but that's okay. Next month is basically the holy grail for me in terms of video games.

Somehow three franchises that I love unconditionally all have games coming out in October. Disgaea D2, Pokemon X/Y, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies will soon be in my hands. I don't even know how I'll be able to choose which one I want to play at any given time. Just thinking about it makes me giddy.

All three are undoubtedly going to be awesome, but I'm looking forward to Pokemon the most. In case you haven't seen it there are some major leaks happening. People have gotten the game a few weeks early and are posting things at an alarming rate. The time before new Pokemon games always gets me so excited!

I promise you next months edition of Game Time will not be light on content. In fact it might be too long for its own good. Perhaps I'll have to make a few separate posts. I'll think more about that when the time comes though. In the mean time thanks for joining me for another installation of Game Time. See you next time.

     -Manny