Mega Man Battle Network 4 Typo Picture Gallery

I've been replaying the Mega Man Battle Network series with a friend. Together we're on the third game, but in my impatience I began to play the fourth game as well. For the fourth game in the series they decided to employ a new art style. Apparently when they were employing new techniques they decided that a horrible translation was also in order.

There are some pretty bad translations out there, but this one is just inexcusable. Especially when you take into account how there were very little problems with the previous three games in the series. The only typo I remember was in the second game and it was easy to miss. I'd give the fourth game a pass also if it weren't for the fact that there are so many errors it's bananas. Don't get me wrong the writing itself in these games is nothing special, but they should at least have proper grammar.

Since there were so many typos I decided to take a picture with my phone every time I noticed one so that I could share them here. Yes, the quality is terrible, but you'll at least be able to see the text.

Enjoy!

These are just the ones I specifically noticed or thought were worth taking a picture of. One of the ones I left out was that every time virus should have been singular it was the plural viruses instead. EVERY SINGLE TIME! They say viruses a lot in this series, because every enemy is a virus...

 I realize we're all prone to making typos of this nature, but it's just bananas that a game was able to be put out like this. I'm on the final boss of the game now, but there should be a lot of extra stuff to do afterwards. Perhaps I'll have a chance to share even more ridiculous typos.

Game Time - July 2013

July was pretty dead in terms of new releases. As always though I was resilient and found something to play in the absence of brand new video games for me to consume. The one new game I played was a 3DS downloadable title, which was surprisingly good. Attack of the Friday Monsters is surely one of the best downloadable offerings that the 3DS has at the moment.

As for the oldies I took the plunge into the critically acclaimed Saints Row the Third and didn't find it to be very enjoyable. Alternatively I played the not so special Warriors Orochi 3, but had a ton of fun.

I played some Mega Man Battle Network as well, but probably won't write about it until I finish all 6 games in the series again. I'm at the end of 4 already, so that time is close at hand.

So yeah, I played some video games. Let's get into it. It's game time!

Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale

Recently I was made aware of the series Boku no Natsuyasumi, which is a Japanese series exclusive to the PlayStation. Each game in the series focuses on the summer vacation of a child. Needless to say it's very much based around Japan and Japanese culture, so none of the games in the series have been released here. Then there's the fact that there isn't exactly a lot of gameplay. You walk around and play a few mini-games. From what I've seen the series basically amounts to a visual novel where you get to walk around, which sounds awesome to me. Which is how I ended up playing Attack of the Friday Monsters. The series creator of Boku No Natsuyasumi became part of level 5's Guild 05 project where developers make smaller download games for the 3DS. Seeing the game I got excited, but thought it would never see a translation. Much to my surprise the last time I booted up the 3DS store it was on there, so I purchased it immediately.

Attack of the Friday Monsters is just like the games in the Bolu no Natsuyasumi series. It's more or less a visual novel. However instead of focusing on summer vacation it revolves around a boy named Sohta who has moved to a new town. This new town has a television station where they film monster movies every Friday night. The kids and adults all gather at the top of the nearest hill and watch the battles play out, or at least that's what Sohta has heard. Since this game is only a story I won't give anything away. I will say that I think it was very well written though. The entire time the game keeps you guessing as to whether or not the monsters the villagers are talking about are real. Yes, there is a TV station, but that just makes you think the monsters are fake by default. As you progress you'll start to doubt that and ultimately find out what's true at the very end of the game.

Who could forget that the monsters come out on Friday!?

While the story is very well executed that doesn't mean this game was without flaws. All you do is walk around the town and talk to its various residents, which I loved doing. You get a sense of who everyone is and it's actually quite refreshing to be able to just leisurely stroll around. You need to find certain things or talk to certain people to advance the game, but the town is small enough where that's never an issue. Despite that the game gives you a glowing indicator of where you need to go at all times on the map which takes away any challenge. You're always going to know exactly where to go.

Apparently walking around and being immersed in the town wasn't enough for a downloadable title so they threw in a monster card battling game. That's all fine and good, but I feel that it actually takes away from the game. The way you collect cards is by finding a certain number of glowing "glims" on the ground. Once you have enough of the same color they'll form a card. When you have five cards you can battle the kids in town. If you lose to them you'll become their servant. They can cast weird spoken spells on you, but really all they do is make you fall down and stand back up if you lose or decline their invitation to battle. If you win however, you can do the same to them with the added bonus of them giving you any information you want.

Card battles are pretty boring.

The way you play is painfully simple. The game is literally ro-sham-bo. Each card is either rock, paper, or scissors with an attack value assigned. Each player throws down 5 cards face down. The game will tell you if two of your cards win, lose, or draw and give you the option to switch the places ot two of your cards. When both players do that all the cards are flipped over. If there are any draws the monster with more attack power takes the win. The person with more wins is the winner.

The card battles end up padding out the game unnecessarily. It's especially dumb, because if you yourself use the same magic spell as your opponent then they'll go easy on you, which basically means they let you win. Other than the card battles I really liked the game. It's not the kind of thing that gets released in the US often, so I was more than happy to support it. I could use some more visual novels that are more game than novel.

Saints Row The Third

This past year it was impossible to go without hearing how awesome Saints Row the Third was. Everyone seemed to love its stupidity, but seemed to agree that there was something special about the game. However, my brother who absolutely loved Saints Row 2 did not and still does not share that same opinion. He says that the campaign is too short and none of the jokes are funny. If prompted I can get him to go off on quite a rant about just how bad he thinks it is. He tends to exaggerate quite a bit and I think his hatred of this game is a bit too strong, but I do agree with him when he says he doesn't think it's anything special.

A lot of people were upset when GTA IV was a great deal more realistic than its predecessors. I was not one of those people. I liked the fact that GTA wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, but kept true to its kind of goofy roots. GTA IV still has its fair share of weird and childish stuff in it, but it takes a little more digging to get to. Saints Row on the other hand starting with Saints Row 2 went in the complete opposite direction. They threw out almost any realism the series had in favor of pure ridiculousness. What I do like about Saints Row the Third is that you're basically invincible in order to make the game more fun.

Right from the start you're more or less invincible. As the game progresses and you do side missions you'll earn money and respect which you can use to gain more abilities. I'm not at the end of the game yet, but I'll bet that by the time I am it'll take a serious amount of enemies to even make a dent on my health. I can rocket out of a car's windshield and walk away basically unscathed already.

Yeah, this is basically what the game is all about.

The issue I have with Saints Row the Third is that I don't have fun while I'm playing it. I might be a fool for feeling this way, but I play GTA games to go through the story. I usually don't mess around and cause as much destruction as possible. Saints Row the Third let me know right off the bat that it wasn't really the game for me though. It starts ridiculous and continues to gets even weirder. They do an amazing job of setting the tone. In fact some of those moments are the ones I enjoyed the most. Shooting up a mansion full of enemies while Kanye West's Power is playing is actually pretty funny. The fact that there is a pimp who speaks exclusively in an auto-tuned voice is probably my favorite part of the game. These things alone can't make me truly enjoy the game though.

The story missions revolve around trying to take down an evil syndicate that for some reason has it out for the Saints. What I really don't like is that so far I've been playing for around six hours and almost every mission is just an introduction to one of the far too many side activities. I have no problem with side activities it's just that I don't find any of the ones in this game fun. So learning how to do them just to unlock another mission where I do the same thing isn't very rewarding. Perhaps when I'm no longer relegated to this side mission tutorial hell the missions will begin picking up.

I feel like I don't need to say that the combat isn't very great, but I will anyways. It's the same type of third-person shooting that these types of games have always had (GTA included). I feel like there should have been some kind of vast improvement to the system by now, but there really hasn't been. You auto-lock on to your targets until they're dead. Or if you want to kill everyone way faster auto-lock and then flick the stick up a tad to aim perfectly for a headshot. It's something that I really hope is better in GTA V, because I don't find the combat to be any better in GTA.

Zimos is the best character in the game.

Saints Row the Third just isn't really the game for me. As I said it made it clear right from the start. Regardless I still don't think it's the masterpiece that everyone made it out to be, but that's just my opinion. But hey, if it's the kind of thing you're into the fourth one is coming out in a few weeks and it seems to be basically the same game but even more insane.

Warriors Orochi 3

I was trying to get my mind off of a few things, but didn't want to concentrate on what I was doing too much. What better way to play a game, but not have to pay attention than to boot up a Musou game. I quickly realized that I had Warriors Orochi 3, but had never played it.Knowing nothing about it I booted it up, because I thought it was just another Dynasty Warriors clone. Little did I know it literally was a Dynasty Warriors that crossed over with the other musou games like Samurai Warriors. You know what, this game is not good, but I had a damn fun time playing it.

As I've said many times in the past I really like Musou games. They're kind of mindless, but for some reason I find them to be fun. I don't really like Dynasty Warriors itself though. The character designs of the ancient three kingdoms just aren't outlandish enough for me. I don't want to beat down thousands of enemy soldiers with normal swords. I want something that's a little more crazy. So what if you added in Samurai Warriors? Apparently that's exactly what you need to get me on board. Warriors Orochi doesn't just bring the Samurai Warrior franchise on board though it also brings in the likes of Ryu Hyabusa from Ninja Gaiden and even Ayane from Dead or Alive. There are a ton of characters made just for the Warriors Orochi series as well. There are well over 100 different fighters in the game and most of them have insane weapons.

Her sword is electric. I'd say that's insane enough.

Unlike other Musou games this one lets you use three characters at a time. You can switch between the three at any time by using the triggers. If any one of the three dies you lose. When not being used the characters will restore health and constantly generate energy for their special attacks. It doesn't seem like a huge change but it makes the gameplay a bit more fast paced and exciting. With this new gameplay mechanic the ways you can beat down your enemies become so much more varied in a single combat scenario. They try to get change your character up in battle, because each character needs to actually participate in order to get experience.

Oh yeah, there's a story too I guess. The evil Hydra has killed almost everyone, except for the three main characters. They magically get sent back in time by this creepily pale girl in order to save all the other warriors and find a way to win against Hydra. You get to go through a bunch of huge battles where you fight all the characters because they either hate you, or are being possessed by demon magic. Once you defeat them they will usually join your cause. Sometimes you have to go back and beat the same exact map again, but it's been altered slightly. All that matters is that you have a ton of characters to choose from and most of them are pretty interesting.

Why wouldn't Ayane be in the game?

It's not a good game by any means. It's pretty tedious and barely has a story. Regardless I enjoy beating down thousands of soldiers with a single warrior. It's satisfying. Another version of this game is coming out later this year called Warriors Orochi Ultimate. They're adding even more characters to the mix, so I might have to pick it up if it comes to the US. By then though I may have had my fill since One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 is coming out on the 20th of August, which I'm unrealistically excited for.

Summer is Ending!

This summer was front-loaded with games and it seems that the back end is going to be pretty game heavy as well. Next week I'll be picking up the first true Wii-U release otherwise known as Pikmin 3. I hope for Nintendo's sake it's as good as they've been hyping it up to be. The Wii-U is already selling like a pile of poo though, so I'm sure the release of a unique first party game will do nothing but increase the consoles sales.

On the 6th Tales of Xillia will arrive at my door which is awesome, because I could use a solid JRPG. At the end of the month both Dive Kick and One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 will be on the PlayStation store, so look forward to hearing about the stupidly fun time I plan on having with both of those.

I'm getting hyped up just thinking about the coming month. If I start to think too far ahead though my brain might explode, because we've got GTA V and new consoles just around the corner! It's an exciting time!

Peace out.

     -Manny.

Game Time - June 2013

There's always a period after E3 where I'm super excited about the video game industry. Tons of new games are on their way and this time there are even new consoles. That excitement quickly wears off as the realization dawns on me that the games I'm excited for won't be coming out for four months to a year from E3. Without fail it happens every year.

Luckily this year the summer isn't a barren wasteland of games, like it is most other years. Well, I guess it might be in July, but June has been a pretty good month so far. Due to these releases my post E3 slump has been somewhat brighter than in previous years.

I had pre-ordered Remember Me, and Project X Zone a very long time ago. I'm still currently playing Project X Zone, and I've taken a break from Remember Me. It's not that I don't like the game it's just that I took a break and haven't really wanted to go back to it. The main reason for that is The Last of Us. I told myself I didn't want to play another zombie shooter, but the positive reviews swayed me. I picked it up at midnight don't regret it at all. While the reviews may have been a tad too positive compared to my experience it was still an excellent game.

I've also played a ludicrous amount of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but I have no idea how to distill my thoughts into words yet. I enjoy my virtual world so much, but I still have no idea why. Hopefully I can figure it out, or at least be able to profess my love in a sensible manner.

So without further ado, it's game time!

Remember Me

I really like cyberpunk worlds, so I was immediately interested when I first saw footage of Remember Me. It takes place in a future version of Paris where memories have been made into a commodity. People can share there memories with others, which is something I've always thought about doing in real life. The world is very cool and I enjoy exploring as much as I can. The game is fairly linear, so there isn't a whole lot of time to look around, but if you take the time to look around you'll be able to find out a whole lot more about the world.

The main character of the game is a woman named Nilin. She is what's known as a memory hunter, who ironically had her memory taken from her. I guess it makes sense for the protagonist to have problems with memory in a game about memories, but I'm still not a huge fan of amnesia as a plot device. In the beginning you escape from a terrible government facility in order to continue working for your old boss Edge. Edge is the leader of a revolutionary group and he seems to have a lot of faith in Nilin. He needs her steal some memories and take down hoards of enemies in hand to hand combat!

I hope you like doing combos!

Initial reviews of Remember Me were quite negative. They mainly cited the voice acting and combat as points of contention. I can understand the voice acting, because it's not exactly the best. It's especially annoying when the characters say things like "remember you soon" instead of see you soon. You know, because it's a game about memories, so you obviously must make reference to that as much as humanly possible. It can be a bit grading, but it's not game ruining.

Combat on the other hand I have absolutely no problem with. Sure, at first it seems a bit stiff. Once you get past that initial hurdle though it's really not that bad. Remember Me has a melee combat system that's very similar to the Arkham games (I guess most melee combat is these days). You equip various punches and kicks to make combos. In order to do so you're given a set of attacks called pressens. Each pressen is either a punch or a kick that has special properties. You then equip them in order to form combos. The attacks will always look the same, because the button combinations are pre-determined. The only thing you're changing are the attack properties.

Customizing combos actually matters quite a bit.

Once I got going I found it very easy to chain combos on enemies. I also found myself tinkering with the combos in order to get the most damage or health back in a single combo. It's actually quite gratifying once you get the hang of it. What starts to get annoying is that there are so many enemies, and that's all you do is run from one combat scenario to another. It gets kind of repetitive. That might be terrible in a 20 hour game, but according to my completion progress upon booting up the game it's only around 6 hours long. Sadly I haven't completed those few hours yet, but I'm going to go back soon. It's always nice to see new IP this late in the console cycle. It's a fun game and I don't regret the purchase.

The Last of Us

I tried as hard as I could to resist buying The Last of Us, but I couldn't do it. I caved and bought a third person shooter that revolves around zombie-like monsters. I say zombie-like, because the creatures in The Last of Us are not actually zombies. They're humans whose brains have been affected by crazy fungus spores. Most zombie or monster focused stories like this aren't really about the monsters/zombies anymore, they're about the people who are trying to survive. That's what makes The Last of Us so compelling. You play as Joel the hardened survivor who knows how to kill. He finds himself in the company of a young girl named Ellie. Much like Elizabeth and Booker in Bioshock Infinite the core of the game is the relationship between these two characters. The performances were motion captured, which makes a lot of the stuff that happens a lot more heavy hitting than it would have been otherwise. There were a few moments where I got teary eyed. One of the moments I''ll probably remember forever.

I don't want to give away a lot, because this game is something that I feel everyone who has a PS3 should experience for themselves. It's not the most groundbreaking story ever told, but it's definitely something that will stick with me for a long time. It's just depressing. Some of the things that happen in the world are so messed up that it's hard to believe. Despite that you'll want to push through to see what happens to Joel and Ellie next. At first I didn't see what all the fuss was about. The story took quite a bit to really get going, but once it got up to speed it just kept on trucking right to the ending. I guess the main thing slowing it down for me was the actual playing of the game.

You get to know Joel and Ellie very well over the course of the game.

The game play of The Last of Us is actually better than I would have expected. It focuses largely on stealth. You can go through the whole game choking both the infected and humans to death from behind. In fact, it's probably better to do that. To make it a bit easier to do you can throw bricks and bottles, which the enemies will react to, because shooting everyone in the face isn't viable. As is appropriate with any apocalyptic world your resources are limited. Bullets don't show up every three seconds, or even every time you kill an enemy with a gun. The combat scenarios were fun for a while, but I eventually saw them as road blocks to keep me from seeing the next awesome story sequence. It doesn't help that some of the infected can instantly kill you when they get all up on you. Eventually you can craft shivs to make it so you get a second chance at life, but it still really doesn't help very much.

The crafting system isn't very in-depth, but it's nice to have. You can craft shivs, health packs, and even Molotov cocktails from things you find in the environment. There is also a perk system where you can spend supplements on upgrades. They never make you a whole lot better than you currently are, but they do help incrementally to make combat more manageable. As I mentioned previously the game play is fine, it just seems to get in the way sometimes. It didn't help that I got stuck in the environment multiple times with no way to advance. Twice I was supposed to be given a button prompt to move on that just wouldn't show up, which really kills any sense of momentum. I forged ahead though and came away with an awesome gaming experience. This is definitely a game I think people should play.

Project X Zone

I remember watching every twenty minute trailer for Project X Zone before it was released in Japan. I had no idea what the hell was going on, but it looked insane. So many characters I know and love rendered as beautiful 2D sprites comboing the living hell out of a single enemy. While watching those trailers I told myself that there was absolutely no way it would leave the shores of Japan. Copyright is much different in Japan than it is in America. I thought that having a crossover between Sega, Namco, and Capcom make it here was impossible, especially after Namco X Capcom for the PS2 didn't make it over. Instead Namco Bandai made me eat my words by bringing Project X Zone to the US.

The game is now in English and I still have a very wavering grasp of what's going on in the game. Most crossover games like this have the characters either randomly transported to other worlds for some reason, or they all have amnesia and must work together to get back their memories. Project X Zone has the random transporting, but I'm over halfway through the game and still have no idea why it's happening. To make it even more confusing most of the characters seem to know each other for absolutely no reason. Why does everyone know that Pai from Virtua Fighter is a movie star? Why in god's name does Jin from Tekken know that Chun-Li is a cop? In the context of the game it seems that most of the characters are aware of each other despite the fact that they all exist in different worlds.

Complete and utter madness.

I haven't taken the time to research this, but I'm pretty sure that this is a direct sequel to the PS2 game Namco X Capcom. Mainly because, the two main characters from Namco X Capcom are in this game. It's entirely possible that the story is just terrible though, which is to be expected from this type of thing. Like I said I'm over halfway through the game and there still isn't a central enemy. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of enemies, but they aren't really cooperating and if they are the reasons why are not clear. In my opinion it would have been better if there wasn't a story.

So what is Project X Zone you're probably asking yourself. It's a strategy RPG. You move the characters on a grid and have them attack enemies. Where this differs from other SRPGs is that each unit it actually two characters. For example Chun-li shows up on the map, but in reality it's Chun-Li paired with Morrigan from Darkstalkers. When you choose to attack an enemy you are then put into a battle. If you've seen any footage of the game this is the part you would have seen. The enemy is on the left, while your team is on the right. In order to attack you have to push A by itself, or pair it with a direction. All of the attacks are shown for you on screen. To start each pair has three different attacks, and can attack three times. You can mash out the same attack three times, but if you use each different attack once then you get to attack once more.

Most battles look like this, but with 800,000 more enemies on screen.

What's cool is that the battles are actually very active. If you just mash out the attacks you're going to do very poorly. You want to keep your combo counter going up by keeping your enemy in the air. This means that you have to time your attacks to keep juggling the enemy. If you want to do critical hits you have to hit the enemy just before they hit the ground from your previous attack. It's much more engaging than your average SRPG. To add  in more fun there are solo characters you can send in to help out and if you're standing near another one of your units you can call them in for a single attack as well.

I love Project X Zone, but I also find it supremely frustrating. Since the story barely exists all I have to look forward to is the combat. The combat is fun, but only up to a certain point. At first the battles only take around a half hour to complete, but now they take me an hour or more. Battles start with a ton of enemies, but inevitably more enemies show up on subsequent turns. That would be fine, but sometimes there are 40 or 50 enemies to fight at a time. Once you think you've won a billion more enemies show up with an entirely new boss, because why the hell not? It gets super annoying. I've played for 23 hours already and I'm apparently just about halfway through the game. I'm all for long games, but at some point it has to stop. There's no reason for this game to go on for so long. I'm fighting the same bosses over and over again to reach a nonexistent goal. It's a good thing the combat is really addicting or there would be absolutely no reason for me to continue on.

What's Next?

I'm going to be real honest when I say I don't know what I'm going to write about for next month. There aren't really any games I want coming out. Dive Kick is the only thing. It's supposed to come out before EVO, but who knows when it's actually going to be released. I ordered the Japanes only Wii game Captain Rainbow as well, but you know it's in Japanese.

I bought every single one of the Mega Man Battle Network games for some reason too. So maybe that? I don't really know. It's summer and I'll do what I want.

Until next time.

     -Manny