Prior to leaving I purchased Murdered Soul Suspect and played that for a few hours. I don't think it's nearly as bad as it's been made out to be, but it's definitely not anything spectacular. I also made sure to pick up the inexplicably localized Tomodachi Life for the 3DS. It's kind of like Nintendo's weird Mii-centric version of The Sims. It's not so much a game as it is a thing you watch to see what crazy shenanigans happen.
When I returned home I began purchasing games from the summer Steam sale. It's hard not to when everything is between five and ten dollars. The game I made the most use of though was Rogue Legacy. I've been wanting to play it for a long time, but had never really gotten around to playing it. I've also been dabbling in Ultra Street Fighter IV, but there's not much to say about that one. I still suck at fighting games.
It's been a weird disjointed month in terms of what I've been playing, but that's generally how early summer is. Normally nothing at all comes out. Luckily I have a bunch to talk about, so let's get down to it. It's game time.
Murdered Soul Suspect
Last year I remember hearing about this game during pre-E3 coverage. It was described as a game where you play as a ghost who is trying to solve their own murder. The concept sounded alright with me, so I decided to keep an eye on it. After months of seeing nothing I began looking for any kind of information on the game. I ended up coming across a video that showcased the first twenty or so minutes of the game and decided to pre-order it. What they showed in the video looked like an adventure game, which I enjoy quite a bit. The fact that I had to go looking for any information on the game is never a very good sign though. It seems that Square-Enix decided fairly early on that the game wasn't going to be very good, because they put almost no advertising behind it.
Normally when a publisher decides to send a game out to die it's terrible. What's weird about Murdered is that it's not a terrible game, it's just a little rough around the edges. What really did the game no favors were the people who got their hands on it early and thought it was terrible, which is something I don't understand. Telltale has been throwing out adventure games for the past few years now and everyone seems to be fine with those. Murdered is essentially a Telltale adventure game with better controls, a higher budget, and ghost themed mechanics. You can walk through most walls, possess people to see through their eyes, and mess with electronics. Sure, Telltale games are five dollars a piece, while this one was fifty at launch, but that doesn't make the gameplay any different.
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| This is Ronan, he got shot a lot. |
You play as a cop named Ronan from Salem Massachusetts, who gets killed in the opening scene of the game. Ronan becomes a ghost, and decides to hunt down the man who killed him, the Bell Killer. The dude is a serial murderer, who the cops have been investigating for a very long time. Ronan has to learn how to utilize his new ghostly form in order to solve his own murder.
When you're first given leave to walk around the world it's super jarring. All of the models and objects have no collision, so Ronan can walk right through everything and everyone. In order to curb this madness a little bit they don't let you walk through the outsides of buildings. Apparently the residents of Salem are super paranoid about ghosts getting into their homes, so they have people come and bless the walls or some weird thing. So in order to get into buildings you have to wait for the right opportunity. Once inside a building it takes a bit to get used to, because once again you can walk through everything, including the inner walls. It makes it a bit hard to get your bearings.
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| Investigating is sometimes a little too easy. |
In order to investigate you'll have to do all kinds of ghostly trick. The most commonly used trick is possession. You can go inside individuals to listen to their thoughts, and influence their thoughts. This is commonly done to have people move objects, because being a ghost you can't move anything. A lot of the time clues and collectibles will be out in the open. You can go into ghost vision mode and have all the objects around highlighted for you, which is super handy.
The one blemish on what is otherwise a fine game is the combat. I'm of the mind that there shouldn't be any combat in adventure games, but I guess they thought a full retail product needed it. It's technically not even combat, it's more like a stealth quick-time event. You have to sneak up behind the ghosts and hold the correct button to kill them. If they see you, then you die and load from the last checkpoint. This is the only real challenge in the game, because it clearly wasn't built for it. Everything else is basically handed to you with infinite tries.
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| One hit deaths are the worst. |
The game is interesting, but I can't help but feel like it could have been so much more. I don't know if their funding was cut short or if they just didn't have enough time to make it into something more. It's fairly obvious that this game had quite a troublesome development. It's shame that Airtight Games, the studio that made the game, was closed just a week after it's release. The team definitely had some talent and could have made something super cool.
Tomodachi Life
Months ago I followed the release of Tomodachi Life in Japan. I watched tons of videos and live streams, just to try and understand what the madness that Nintendo had put into the world. Now that I've played quite a bit of the game myself I still don't fully understand any of it. All I know is that it's one of the weirdest "games" I've ever played. I put game in quotes, because I don't really know if this is a game or not. There's not really a whole lot of playing going on. All you do is wait for crazy things to happen.
Tomodachi means friend in Japan, so the title of the game is roughly friend life. The title does a fine job of explaining what the game is all about. What you do is take Miis from your 3DS system and make them live in an apartment on an island. The idea is that you'll add your friends to see what they'll do. In my case I added a bunch of my friends and celebrities. That way there's a chance my Mii can get married to Katy Perry.
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| I don't even know what to say. |
To start off you add in your own personal Mii. From that point on all the Mii's refer to you personally as the lookalike of that Mii. You as the player are seen as some omniscient god who rains food and clothes from the sky in order to keep the islanders happy.That's essentially what you do. The Miis you add will have problems, which you need to solve. They'll have a scribble over their head and that's how you know they need help. Sometimes they'll want food, or clothing. Other times they'll want you to tell them what to say when they feel certain emotions.
Oh yeah, they talk, which is super creepy and awesome. All of the text onscreen will be spoken by your Miis. It sounds like a speak and spell, but with different annunciation and pitch depending on what you set for the Mii. You also set their personality, which will determine what types of things they like and who they'll want to be friends with.
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| Even my Mii knows that free pizza is the best. |
All the fun of Tomodachi Life comes from seeing what the Miis do. The game has all kinds of events like Rap Battles for you to view, but random things can happen to. Miis will fall in love, but when going to confess someone else might show up to steal their thunder. They can get married, and have babies. They'll hang out with each other and do the weirdest things. You can make them perform songs and dances, which are pretty funny too. When I think about things that are Japanese, Tomodachi life oozes all of it. Its humor is super weird and everything about it is just off-putting enough for it to be hilarious. One thing the game does is let you take pictures at any time, so I've accumulated quite a bit. If you want, you can view them all in my separate Tomodachi Life screenshots post. It's a super funny game, that for not being a real "game" is pretty fun.
Rogue Legacy
Back when the PS4 was announced Sony said that Rogue Legacy was coming to the platform. Now it's halfway through 2014 and it's still not there! I decided that I had waited long enough and purchased it for a whopping three dollars during the Steam sale. In fact I bought a bunch of indie games that are still supposed to come to the PS4, because they were super cheap. I never used to do this, because my laptop sucked and had a propensity for overheating. Now I have a new laptop that's not super hot, but it can play indie titles just fine.
Rogue Legacy has you exploring a castle filled with monsters. It's a rogue-like, so once your character dies they're dead for good. However, in Rogue Legacy their legacy lives on in their children. Upon dying you'll be whisked away to the character select screen where you can pick one of three descendants to be. They'll be different classes, who have differing traits. Some of the traits will be good, like they can't be knocked back. Others will be bad, like they are far-sighted which makes the screen all blurry. Getting attached to your character is not recommended, because you'll be dying quite a bit and you're supposed to be.
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| In order to beat bosses like this you'll need to power up. |
In order to advance you'll actually need to die. When in the castle you'll be collecting gold, which can be used after you die in order to buy new classes, stat upgrades, and other bonuses. Once you re-enter the castle you'll lose all or at least most of your gold as a fee for entering. Your goal in the castle is to defeat the four bosses and make it into the throne room, which is no easy task. In order to do so you'll need to collect a whole butt-load of money. In order to make it more challenging the whole castle is randomized, so it will never be the same twice. You can pay gold in order to visit the same castle again, but it's a hefty sum.
Once you die, you can get back into the game super quick, which makes it very addicting. I found myself saying "one more run" many times, but would end up going for ten or fifteen. It helps that the controls feel good. I was playing with a dualshock 4 plugged in and it picked it up right away. I like the game enough that I might actually buy it again if it ever does truly come out on the PS4.
All Gundam All the Time
On July 1st, Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn was released. Being the fourth entry in the series you'd think that I'd be sick of playing what is essentially the exact same game with more Gundams, but you'd be wrong. I still unconditionally love the series, despite hating myself for it. I am actively taking a break from playing it right now, which is good, because I've been having 9 or more hour play sessions. You can look forward to hearing about how much I love it next month!
I can't promise I'll play anything other than Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn, bit I'll at least be buying the new One Piece game, Unlimited World Red. Maybe this will just be my terrible/awesome anime game month. I can't really think of anything else that's being released this month. It seems like everyone decided that they wanted to keep July a barren month, but make sure that August would be bountiful.
Well, I really need to get back to mashing the square button for hours on end, so I'll see you all next month.
-Manny
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