Party Game Sundays: Monkey Mischief! Party Time

A few weeks ago we played a Coldstone Creamery themed game, which was developed by Zoo games. This week we played another hot Zoo release, but this time it was about Monkeys instead of ice cream. It was also quite a bit of fun and had much better control explanations than the Coldstone game.

I'll be real honest; I thought this game was going to be terrible. Normally when we play these weird themed mini-games they're not super great. Since it was developed by Zoo my expectations were even lower, because they flooded the market with all kinds of bullshit games for the Wii. Instead my expectations were exceeded when it turned out to be a halfway decent game.

Everyone loves math!

You start off by picking one of four monkeys and then you head straight to the mini-games. Some of them were locked, because we needed to play single player to unlock them. Obviously this is Party Game Sundays, so no one was going to spend the time to unlock the rest of the games. We had around 15 games to play still. They were not really related to monkeys at all.

For some reason almost every single game you had to use the Wii-mote like a crank. A lot of them had us aiming at the screen as well. The first game we played had us shooting fruit at a monkey in a tire. It was a weak start, but it got much better from there. The games were surprisingly varied in their objectives. We did tons of stuff ranging from throwing hippos to playing dodgeball.

Monkeys aren't the best at painting. That's why it's funny!

It also had the classics that are apparently in every single mini-game collection like Simon Says. It wanted us to shake the Wii-mote like the monkey in the middle of the screen. I felt like I was doing the actions exactly, but I missed around half the time. It's entirely possible that I was distracted by the crazy sounds that our characters were making. One of them seemed to be barking like a dog, and everyone else sounded like they were trying to talk while heavily sedated.

Normally this wouldn't be a compliment, but it was good that the game actually explained what the hell we were doing. The previous game we played developed by Zoo didn't have that. In fact a lot of the games we've been playing recently haven't really had instructions. I feel like people complain a lot about tutorials in games, but they're a necessary part of the experience. Games like this don't need a full blown tutorial, but they at least should have a picture of what buttons we need to press and what they do.

Simon says shake the Wii-mote like an idiot!

This game like many others we've played doesn't have a proper versus mode. Instead it just has a menu where you can play the mini-games individually. Someone wins each game, but it takes away a lot of the competitive fun when someone doesn't win overall. It also gives us a lot of downtime, because the game had to load before and after every game. This isn't quite as bad when there's something going on in the loading screen, but in this case it's a poorly drawn monkey swinging on a tire swing with no sound. Not exactly the most uplifting thing ever.

Monkey Mischief wasn't a great game, but we had a lot of fun playing it. I always feel weird for saying this, because in the context of good video games this one isn't very good at all. In fact you could easily say it's a bad game. However, it's a lot better than the shit we've seen when playing games for Party Game Sundays.

     -Manny

Party Game Sundays: Acme Arsenal

The time has come for me to talk about a truly awful game. Most of the time bad games can be funny, but in this case it was just kind of sad. Normally when you take a beloved franchise like Looney Tunes and make a game out of it there is some base level of quality. I realize that most of the time these licensed games are rushed out, but generally they're halfway decent. That was not the case with Acme Arsenal.

When we decided to play I didn't have very high hopes. It was described as a multiplayer shooter, with melee combos on the box. That's what it was. When we got into the game we discovered that it was a third person shooter. We also discovered that on the stage we had chosen we could see absolutely nothing. Sure, our characters and weapons were there, but as for the stage itself it was pitch black. We ran around aimlessly trying to find one another for a minute or so before exiting to see if we could find some kind of brightness setting. There wasn't one...

All the screenshots I can find of this game are from the 360 version. It looks marginally less awful

We then decided to go into a different map. We could see in that one, but it didn't help the experience too much. We could find each other and different weapons. I found the spawn point for a crazy rocket launcher and kept picking that up the entire match. I tried to use the melee combo system for a bit, but it seemed to do far less damage that the basic gun with infinite ammo.

For some reason we kept going and chose the third map. Luckily we set the timer to one minute, because we could only see on half the stage. Then we did the same thing for the fourth map, where we could no longer see anything. We then decided to not play anymore.

Yeah, it looked nothing like this... Were Wii ports really that bad?

To top things off the ending screen of a match doesn't say who won. It shows three completely indecipherable icons instead. The first was a grave stone, the second was a face with x's for eyes, and the third was a target. We assumed that the target was how many hits you got, because it was always high. The other two we couldn't decide if they were kills or suicides, because they didn't match up with either.

I normally want to go into a game and give it a fair shake, but when it's immediately unplayable due to brightness issues it's kind of hard. Going around as Marvin Martian shooting Foghorn Leghorn should have been a fun experience, but instead it was a broken mess. Don't play this game. I guess it was also for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2, so maybe just the Wii version was terrible? Who am I kidding, all versions of this game are probably terrible.

     -Manny

Game Time ID - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

A few weeks ago Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair was released for the Vita and I was super excited to play it. I got through the first chapter and got distracted by other new releases. Today I started playing it again and remembered how much I loved the first game. I came here to my blog to see what I had written about it at the time and discovered that I had never finished writing a post! That's why I'm here now. The world needs to know how amazing I thought Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc was.

The name is quite a mouthful and as far as I can remember doesn't really have anything to do with the game. It sounds like it would be some kind of crazy Japanese shoot-em-up, but instead it's an insane Japanese visual novel. The best way I can describe the game to you using previously established franchises is that it's like Persona mixed with Phoenix Wright.

In Dangonronpa you play as Makoto Naegi, who is a high school student attending Hope's Peak Academy. The school is only for the most gifted students known as the Ultimates. Each character has something that they are the best or "ultimate" in. For example Makoto is the ultimate lucky student. Every year one average kid is given the opportunity to attend the prestigious academy and in this case it was Makoto. His ability is a tad lame when you compare him to the ultimate affluent progeny, the ultimate baseball player, and the ultimate martial artist. Including Makoto there are 15 ultimate students each of whom have their own very unique personalities.

Time for Despair

When you start the game everything seems relatively normal. Makoto shows up for his first day of classes, but ends up passing out. He finds himself in an empty classroom with bars on the windows. He wanders around the school until he finds all of the other ultimate students in the entrance hall. He recognizes them all, because he had researched each and every one of them online so that he could make good first impressions. It turns out that all of the windows in the school are barred, and all of the exits to the school are locked.

Just when everyone starts to wildly speculate a voice comes over the P.A system and instructs them to meet in the gymnasium. This is where things start to get a little weird. A black and white colored bear named Monokuma introduces himself as the schools's headmaster. Yes, he's a talking bear. He then informs them all that they cannot leave the school unless they start killing each other. Then the real game begins!

These are the characters you'll be getting to know throughout the game.

Monkuma lays out the rules for his killing game, which I will probably butcher here. If a student kills someone they will become known as the blackened. They don't want anyone to know that they did it, so they need to try and set up the murder in a way that makes them look innocent. Once a few students find the dead body Monokuma will announce over the loudspeaker that a body has been found. At that time everyone must start investigating. Everyone will want to do a good job of investigating, because if they don't the blackened will be able to leave the school and everyone else will be killed.

After Monokuma thinks enough facts have been found he will call together the class trial. This is where all of the students gather in a courtroom underneath the school and have to figure out who the murderer is. You debate with one another, until the trial is over. At the end all the students vote on who the killer is and if they're right the killer is then killed by Monokuma. There's a whole lot of killing in this game.

It's an interesting concept that takes a close look at human nature and the limits of people's willpower. In any ordinary setting human beings would never kill each other. Monokuma also makes it quite clear that if they don't kill one another then they will be able to live safely within the school forever. As time wears on though people begin to crack and think that they need to leave. Monokuma obviously wants the killing to occur, so throughout the game he gives everyone new motives. It starts out simple with him showing each student a video of their families, but it quickly escalates from there. His entire goal is to create and spread despair.

As the game goes on the killings escalate and it's easy to see the characters lose their sanity. It's scary to see how people can turn when they feel they have no options left. Monokuma eventually gets to them, but Makoto and a few others vow to find a way to escape the school. The way I play games I tend to forget a lot about them once I'm finished, but I can still clearly recall most of Danganronpa. It's an intriguing premise that's backed up by great writing.

I think one of the reasons that Danganronpa left such an impression on me is that the characters are all very well developed. You know what they're the best at, but you eventually learn their likes, dislikes, and fears as well. Much like in Persona 3 and 4 you can choose to hang out with characters at certain points in the game. You can chill with any of the ultimates, and through each interaction you learn more about them. It eventually becomes like a Persona social link in that the interactions won't necessarily happen every time. In order to advance each scenario you may need to give out gifts in order to gain more affection.

These interactions fill out each characters report card, which is essentially their bio. Sadly it's not very easy to max out your relationship with every character. That would require an advanced knowledge of who is going to die and when. The characters who die first have less interactions than those who live for the entire game, so depending on who you hang out with you might be able to figure out who's going to die.

Gameplay?

Most of the time when I think of a visual novel I think of things like the Ace Attorney series where you don't really have direct control over the game. You tend to choose from a series of menus and have minimal influence over the actions going on in-game. Danganronpa is still essentially a visual novel, but you have a lot more control than most other ones I've played. The game does a good job of trying to get you involved.

For starters you don't just select from a text menu in order to move from place to place. You actually control Makoto in a first person view when you're in the hallways of the school. Sure, you can fast travel to places you've been previously, but I enjoyed running through the halls of Hope's Peak Academy. When you enter rooms the game transitions to a more traditional visual novel style. You control a cursor, which you can use to interact with characters and specific objects in the room. Sometimes searching an object will get you a coin, which you can use to purchase gifts at the school shop. The running around is a cool addition, but there's no incentive to do it.

First person looks pretty good.

The main gameplay portion of the game is the class trials. The investigations themselves are fairly simple. You go to all the places available to you and examine things. The trials themselves are where the game gets truly batty. It's like a trial in Ace Attorney, but on speed. All of the students are arranged in a circle to facilitate debate. The dead characters still have seats, but a sign with their face that has an X through it sits in their place. The trial starts by everyone throwing out what they know, so the camera rotates like crazy to get to the person talking. Your job as the player is to point out contradictions. Everything the characters say shows up on screen in large lettering. Certain words will be a different color, and those are the ones you want to focus on. If you find one that's incorrect, or you have evidence that contradicts the statement you can shoot a truth bullet at it.

Each piece of evidence you have is what's called a truth bullet. Certain pieces of evidence will be loaded up depending on what section of the trial you're in. You then choose which one you want to shoot at the incorrect statement. This will cause the statement to shatter and the trial will advance. It's not always easy to hit the statement though, because small floating statements known as white noise will show up from time to time. If you hit the white noise nothing will happen, so you need to touch the screen in order to get rid of it. If you shoot something other than white noise you'll take damage so you need to be careful.

Sometimes there is a lot of white noise.

Most of the trials play out as a series of back-and-forths where you need to present evidence and truth bullets. On some occasions you'll need to do what the game calls Hang-Man-Gambits. These have the screen fill up with all kinds of floating letters, which you need to shoot in order to fill in a statement. These tend to happen a few times per trial and aren't exactly my favorite part of the game. In these sections I often had trouble figuring out what the game wanted me to spell out. The logic the game uses isn't always readily apparent.

Once you figure out who the murder is, you enter a mini-game where you need to get them to crack. In order to do so you have to press them on the beat of a song. That's right there's a rhythm mini-game in Danganronpa. The character who's being accused will be freaking out and yelling all kinds of things at you. You need to much the X button to the beat the game is giving you and then alternate to another button on the beat to get rid of the statements. After you've done this for long enough you'll shoot a final truth bullet at them and they will admit to what they have done.

All you need to do is shoot the letters.

The trial still isn't over at that point though. You then need to go over the whole murder scenario. This has you filling in a comic book with blank pages. It's not the most exciting thing ever, but it does a good job of recapping everything that happened with the murder. Sometimes what happened didn't make a whole lot of sense until this scene, so it kind of pulls everything together.

On to the Second Game

It's hard for me to sound excited when talking about Danganronpa in this context. Most of what blew me away about the game was related to story and characters. The whole magic of a visual novel is experiencing that for yourself since it's basically the whole purpose of the game. Trust me when I say that the writing is way better than I expected it to be. Even the general anime stereotypes present in most of the characters are not as obnoxious as they normally are. I guess I really like the psychological aspect to the game and its plot. There's something both amazing and horrifying to see how perfectly normal people turn into horrific murderers with the right provocation.

I'm only on the second chapter of the second game, but it seems like an improved version of the first game. The class trials are even more involved than before. There are also a few more incentives to walking around as opposed to fast traveling everywhere. So far I don't like the characters or setting quite as much, but I imagine my opinions will change the further into the story I get.

If you have a Vita I highly reccommend Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. I can say without a doubt that it is my favorite Vita game. Sure, there are barely any games unique to the platform, but I don't say this lightly. Danganronpa is a unique experience and if you like story based games I promise you're going to love it.

Party Game Sundays: "Cold Stone Creamery: Scoop It Up"

The last time I wrote something for Party Game Sundays I regaled you all with tales of the decent Home Depot game. This time I am coming at you with another hot licensed property. This time it's the sweet ice cream chain Cold Stone Creamery. That's right, we played Cold Stone Creamery: Scoop It Up."

When I heard that there was a Cold Stone game I actually thought it was going to be pretty good. However, upon booting up the game I knew that was no longer going to be the case. I guess it's not bad, but it certainly is lackluster. To start off it's only a 2-player game. You can choose either the career mode, or the versus mode. 

We chose versus mode, and were thrown right into the mini-game action. That's not even a clever segue. There were absolutely no controls given, or introductions. It was just a loading screen and then the game was going. In each one we had to figure out what to do. Absolutely none of them were complex and all involved simple movements. Shaking the Wii-remote put sprinkles on some ice cream, and chopped fruit. You had to twirl the Wii-remote to mix things together. There were only about seven games and they all took about 30 seconds tops. We played versus a few times, and it took about five minutes...

Mixing the batter is much less fun than she's making it out to be.

As a party game it wasn't the worst. It was just some manic fun, but there was next to no content. In order to get a more fully realized picture we decided to play some two player in career mode. It was essentially 2-player Diner Dash. Customers would walk by the store very slowly with their specific ice cream orders over their heads. We would then have to scoop the ice cream into the proper cone and put the correct toppings on. Whenever anything would run out we'd have to play the mini-games from the versus mode. It was all quite boring.

I don't really know what to say about this one. The game costs like $10 on Amazon now, but even that price might be too high for a game that's a ripoff of Diner Dash with around ten mini-games in it. It's not a bad game, it just isn't a very good one!

Game Time - August 2014

I played a whole lot of the Inazuma Eleven series over the past two months. In fact, I beat all four games in the series that have been released in English so far. So far I've probably played for a grand total of 300 hours, and I still have so much more left to do. So yeah, I played through all of Inazuma Eleven 3: Bomb Blast, and Inazuma Eleven GO: Shadow this month.

Other than that I played through a majority of Xillia 2, and I keep changing my opinion of it. One minute I feel like it's a decent game, and the next everything about it really upsets me. Hopefully by the time I beat it I'll have a solid opinion.

Since the Inazuma Eleven games are long, and Xillia 2 is a million hour long RPG I didn't play a whole lot of other stuff this month, but I did manage to play a little bit of the InFamous: Second Son DLC. I like it so far, but I don't know how much longer I'll feel that way... It's got some interesting design choices.

InFamous First Light

I thought that Fetch was an amazing character in InFamous: Second Son. She was pretty much the only character besides Delsin that had solid development. She had gotten into some trouble with drugs, but was recovering. Plus, her neon powers were amazing. So it's only natural that I'd purchase the DLC where you play as Fetch and learn more about her backstory. Somehow I feel like I got swindled out of $15...

Yes, First Light has you playing as Fetch. It takes place months before Second Son when Fetch was first brought to Curdun Cay, the conduit prison. She's being trained to control her powers and in the process of doing so she's forced to tell the story of what happened to her brother. You get to play those sequences, and those are the best part. You get to run around Seattle as Fetch, who unsurprisingly has the same Neon powers that Delsin stole from her. The story is what I like, not so much the playing part...

At least it has a sick logo?

When doing missions in Seattle you can do side missions, just like in Second Son, except that they're all super lame. In order for Fetch to get skill points you have to collect neon gas. You can just run around and collect it, or you have to chase it during race events. You can also do some sweet neon graffiti. It's not exactly the most stellar content, especially when it's been taken almost directly from the main game. Delsin couldn't run races, but who would want to do that anyways, because it's lame. Running around Seattle is lame, but the story missions almost make up for it.

What really throws me off about this DLC is that when Fetch isn't telling her story you have to play through battle arenas in Curdun Cay. Enemies will show up, and sometimes you'll need to run over a hostage in order to rescue them. These types of battle arenas are generally bad filler content in games, so the fact that they're one of the main pieces of content in this DLC is more than a little upsetting.

Fetch can make some awesome neon graffiti.

I can see this being an amazing DLC for people who don't own Second Son, because it's standalone. If I hadn't done all of this same stuff as Delsin for around 12 hours earlier this year I might think First Light was an amazing purchase for just $15. However, since I did play Second Son when it first came out this just seems like a quickly thrown together cash grab I was tricked into getting because Fetch was a solid character in the main game. I'm interested in seeing her story through, but I can guarantee I won't be doing all the optional missions, and I'll fight in the battle arenas as little as possible.

Tales of Xillia 2

I had a lot of problems with the first Tales of Xillia, which you can read all about here. A lot of the problems I had with the first game are still present in Xillia 2. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the areas are wide open (They're literally the same areas), and you're always told exactly where to go. On the other hand the characters are all marginally better, and the battle system is still super fun.

To me Xillia 2 feels like it's either cut content from the original game, or a very large story expansion. It has a brand new main character named Ludger Kresnik. For some inexplicable reason he can't talk. I'm a fan of silent protagonists in games, but in this case it's very out of place. All the other characters talk a whole lot. It wouldn't be as weird if characters didn't speak directly to him in ways that warrant a response. Apparently there's a story reason he doesn't talk, but I have seen no evidence of that and I'm around 40 hours in.

Ludger can't talk, but he can sure shoot pistols.

Other than Ludger's weird silence the story characters are all pretty good. One of the new characters the game introduces is a little girl named Elle. Normally children characters in games are obnoxious, but something about Elle makes her very endearing. She is lost and was separated from her father, but is constantly trying to fulfill a promise to him. It helps that she carries around Ludger's super obese cat Rollo, who I am absolutely in love with.

What bothers me about Xillia 2 the most is that the writing in it is super inconsistent. The game had a strong beginning, but a few hours in everything fell apart. It was almost like a completely different set of writers were put on the game for a few hundred pages of the script. At some point the characters start throwing out all kinds of terms as if you should know them when in reality you don't know what the hell is going on at all. Within the past few hours it has gotten better, but I still feel like there's something missing. It doesn't help that the game has serious pacing issues. It's separated into chapters and at the beginning and end of each you're given a ton of sidequests to do. People like me will do them all, which takes around two to three hours. So you're taking breaks from the main story for hours at a time when you don't even know what's going on in the first place.

All hail our lord and savior, Rollo.

Just like with the first game this makes it sound like I totally hate Xillia 2, when I don't. The battle system is super fun and action oriented, but everything surrounding that needs a lot of work. The fact that Ludger can switch between dual blades, a sledgehammer, and dual pistols is cool, but it doesn't change anything drastically. All of the exploration and sense of discovery is gone, which is something I really hope they fix in the next Tales game. It will help that they're not going to be reusing all the same assets again...

Inazuma Eleven 3/GO

I played and beat the first two Inazuma Eleven games in July. I then continued to play Inazuma Eleven 2 until all of my players were level 99, which took around 85 hours. For some reason I then decided to import a 3DS from England in order to play Inazuma Eleven 3, and Inazuma Eleven GO. Inazuma Eleven 3 continues the story of the first two games and acts as a finale to the trilogy. It's mostly the same as the previous two, but layers a few new mechanics on top of everything. Players get tired more quickly and the amount of TP players have for special moves was greatly decreased. It also added the ability to chain shots together, which was very handy in a lot of situations.

My favorite part about 3 though is that it's about an international soccer tournament, so you get to see the game's representation of countries other than Japan. The British team is super fancy, the American team stays in a junkyard, and the Italian team all sound like they're trying to impersonate Mario. It's an amazingly harmless view of the world's countries that only comes off as slightly offensive. It helps that since it's pretty much an anime version of soccer, so it takes itself very seriously. There's no chance they were trying to make subtle jokes or anything.

In Inazuma Eleven 3 the story team is the best!

From Inazuma Eleven 3 I moved right on to Inazuma Eleven GO, which focuses on a mostly different set of characters. Ten years passed after the original trilogy, so now all the characters I thought were cool from the first game have grown up and are around my age (24). What's cool is that they are actually an integral part of the story, because they have to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of players. What sucks is that I'm not really a fan of most of the new characters. The main character in particular I find to be insufferable. His name is Arion Sherwind, and he's super upbeat like Mark was. Unlike Mark however, Arion is super emotional. He truly believes that soccer as a sport has feelings, so he's always worried about making soccer sad. Yeah, that's a real thing.

There are a few characters I like though like Viktor Blade, who inexplicably has a Russian accent. In fact all of the characters talk with accents. These kids all live in Japan, so why does each one have a different accent? Maybe they were like that in the original Japanese, but even then it still wouldn't make sense. It also helps to make the voice acting extra awful, when it wasn't even that great in the first place.

I really wasn't feeling the players in Inazuma Eleven GO...

Inazuma Eleven GO changes the series completely, because it was the first game made specifically for the 3DS. Instead of being sprites everything is completely in 3D. It makes everything look awesome, but there are far less special moves for your players to learn. I've heard that Inazuma Eleven GO 2 has a whole lot more special moves, so I hope the lack in this game is because of the hardware switch. Due to the shift to 3D the actual soccer matches feel and play a lot differently as well. You can no longer pass to anyone, because the ball won't pass right through opposing players. You have to hold the stylus down in order to kick it over their heads. They also added a mechanic that gives certain players access to fighting spirits. They are literally spirits that the players summon in order to become much stronger.

When you have a fighting spirit summoned on a player it's almost impossible for them to lose the ball, and their shots are far stronger than they normally would be. The downside is that the players can only have the spirit summoned for a certain amount of time, and while the spirit is summoned they become tired much more quickly. It adds a new dimension to the game, because you not only have to worry about the stats and elements of an opposing player. You now also have to worry about the stats and element of the fighting spirit that player has as well. When you go against the computer the AI isn't the best, so you can usually steamroll them with whatever you have. However, I think that once I can play a human being the fighting spirits will be much less effective.

Fighting spirits are a cool new addition to Inazuma Eleven GO.

I have now beaten all of these Inazuma Eleven games, but I am still leveling up my teams in both 3 and GO. You'll probably hear me talk about the games a lot more in one form or another, because I still think about the series far too much for my own good.

The Storm Begins

It's a good thing I beat all the Inazuma Eleven games, because the fall game storm is upon us. From September up until around March there is a nonstop stream of games coming out that I don't know I'll be able to keep up with.

I still haven't beaten Xillia 2 and Dangonronpa 2 for the Vita will be arriving at my house tomorrow. Then a week after that I'll have Destiny. The trend continues from there when a new game comes out weekly, and sometimes two games come out a week. It's going to be an action packed fall and I'm very excited for it.

I'd keep going on, but I really have to get on Xillia 2 or it's never going to get finished. See you all next time!

     -Manny

Hot Podcast Action

I've been thinking about doing a podcast for a long time, but have held myself back for multiple reasons. The main one is that I recorded three episodes of a podcast in college with some of my friends, which wasn't exactly what I would call brilliant. It is no longer on Itunes, but I keep it on my computer as a constant reminder of how not to make a podcast.

The second reason is that I didn't know how I wanted to do it. You can go to any video game website and hear them rehash the weekly news. So I came up with the idea to talk about a different video game related topic, or specific video games each episode. That kind of specific and in-depth conversation would be interesting to me, so I hope it'll be interesting to other people as well.

Today I actually went ahead and recorded the first episode of the Game Time With Manny podcast. This past weekend my friends and I went to a fighting game tournament in Philadelphia, PA. Fighting game tournaments aren't something a whole lot of people have context for, so I thought it would be cool to talk about the experience for a bit.

I have embedded the podcast below for your listening pleasure. This is the first episode, so any criticism, comments, or suggestions would be extremely welcome. Also yes, I realize the audio quality is kind of bunk. My mic sounded fine, but Willy and Noukeo's weren't exactly the hottest. Next time I'll try to find new mics and mess around with the settings a bit more.