Memorable Melodies: Magical Dreamers from Chrono Cross

Song: Magical Dreamers

Game: Chrono Cross

Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda

Chrono Cross gets a lot of hate, but I personally love it. It has a unique battle system, tons of characters, and a hot soundtrack. In fact, I think the one thing that everyone who plays the game agrees on is the fact that the soundtrack is awesome, because it is.

In case you ever want to play through the greatness that is Chrono Cross I won't spoil the story for you. This song plays during a pivotal moment during the game and has always stuck with me. It's super cool, because a play takes place while the song is playing. A story unfolds and gives life to the music. You learn the tragic past of star crossed lovers and the land where they fell in love.

Of course if you've played the game you know that Magical Dreamers is a remix of the Marbule island theme with way more electric guitar. Electric guitar is dope! 

It's super late and I can't really come up with any more coherent thoughts about the song. If you like this and have not or never will play Chrono Cross you should look up the scene where it plays in the game. It's probably in my top five video game scenes of all time,

Christmas Week Break

I apologize for the sudden lack of content.

On Wednesday I streamed Inazuma, but I did not put up an episode of Shame Time. I also did not do a Memorable Melody. I've been super busy making a Christmas present for someone and hanging out with friends and family for the holidays.

Everything will go back to normal next week with the hot addition of Game of the Year podcasts and lists. In addition I will be uploading an episode of Scrubbin' It Up when I go to sleep tonight.

Thank you for understanding!
Happy Holidays!

Memorable Melodies: Theme of Cody from Super Street Fighter IV

Song: Theme of Cody (Cody's Theme)

Game: Super Street Fighter IV

Arranged by: Hideyuki Fukasawa

Today I chose Cody's Theme from Super Street Fighter IV both because I think it's dope, and not a lot of people understand where it came from. At first you hear it and think that Hideyuki Fukasawa really knows how to make a sick jam, but if you listen closely you'll notice that it isn't an original piece at all. It is however heavily altered.

In the early 90's Capcom put out an arcade beat em' up called Final Fight. The two main characters of that game are Cody and Guy, who you may now recognize as Street Fighter characters. The mayor of Metro City, Mike Haggar, gets a call that the Mad Gear Gang has kidnapped his daughter. It's up to Cody and Guy to rescue her!

At some point Capcom decided it would be cool to have Cody and Guy transfer over to street fighter starting with the Alpha series. This is what makes Cody's theme doubly cool. It's an arrangement of the original Final Fight's opening theme.

If you watch the above video you'll be able to hear the sweet sounds of Final Fight. The soundtrack was contributed to by seven different composers, so credit for it could go to Manami Matsumae, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, Yasuaki Fujita, Hiromitsu Takaoka, Yoko Shimomura, Junko Tamiya, or Harumi Fujita.

Cody is my main in Street Fighter IV, and I love listening to his theme. It gets me super pumped up, so if I ever need to get things done I can always crank up Cody's Theme and get down to business. 

Note: In case you don't know anything about Street Fighter IV, there have been four major iterations of the game. Cody came in during the second iteration Super Street Fighter IV.

Memorable Melodies: Black Tar from Xenoblade Chronicles X

Song: Black Tar

Game: Xenoblade Chronicles X

Composer: Hiroyuki Sawano

Vocals: David Whitaker and MPI

I don't even know how to describe this song. I booted up Xenoblade Chronicles X and you're almost immediately thrust into the open world. The first thing I noticed was the music in battle. It starts off super intense, and then the lyrics kick in...

Seriously, almost every song in Xenoblade Chronicles X has lyrics. They're also insane. Watch the video above. The dude talks about killing his friends. What!?

I can't decide if I like this song, or hate it with a burning passion. It's so weird. It doesn't help that the music in the game is poorly mixed, so it's all super loud even in cutscenes. People are trying to talk and someone is yelling about killing his friends and black tar. 

This song certainly is memorable.

The Great Undertale Experiment

This past Monday I played Undertale to completion in two sittings. It took me approximately seven hours to get through the game. For those of you who don't know what Undertale is, it's an indie RPG made by Toby Fox with the help of a few other people. It has been widely praised since its release and has accrued quite a massive fan base. When these types of games blow up I tend to ignore them, because I often find myself disappointed by the hype. However, in the case of Undertale I found myself profoundly interested within the first few minutes.

Around the time of the game's release I watched a video of the first hour or so on the video game website Giant Bomb. Not knowing anything about the game I wanted to check it out. I watched the entire video and got a grasp of what was happening in the game. In case you can't tell I'm being purposely vague here. It took me a while to get to the game, but when I did I was hooked, as I previously mentioned. On my first playthrough I got to the end of the game and it was possible for me to view the game's "true ending," which I did. Many video games do this, and I often find it annoying. It's normally frustrating, because you have to do a very specific set of tasks in order to see the best possible ending and the game doesn't let you know what those are.

Due to the fact that I had seen the advertising for Undertale, and the first hour of gameplay I was able to discern the path to the true ending. I absolutely loved playing through the game, and the ending is something that will stick with me long after other games I've played recently fade from my mind. Despite that I felt like I cheated myself out of discovering the true ending of Undertale naturally. I wondered how someone playing through the game with little to no knowledge would fare. Would they be able to do it? How quickly would they lose the ability to see the true end?

I reached out to a friend who I knew would be interested in the game. I made sure he knew nothing of the games marketing and hadn't seen anything about it. He agreed to let me watch him play through the game, which he would be doing completely unaware of the games mechanics. Below I will document my failed experiment.

If you're intrigued by this then I implore you to go on steam and purchase Undertale. You can play through it relatively quickly, and I think it's a truly worthwhile experience. The writing is excellent, and the gameplay mechanics are fairly unique. If you're not interested in playing the game, or just really want to read about the experiment, then please continue past the game's logo below.

I'm going to spoil the game's mechanics, and tell you how to get the true ending. You have been warned,

The basic plot of Undertale is simple. Long ago there was a war between humans and monsters. The Humans drove the monsters underground and created a barrier to seal them inside. The Monsters have been living underground since then, and are trying to make the best of it. You play as a human who falls down a hole in a mountain only to find that they are now trapped in the land of the monsters.

The steam page gives you a similar brief synopsis, and also has a list of bullet pointed features. It lets you know that you can date a skeleton, see a bunch of dogs, and hug a volcano. There are many bullets, but the first one states that killing is unnecessary. This is the key to Undertale. So, someone who stumbles across the game on steam will have this message implanted into their brain before they even boot up the game. For me it was taken a step further, because I watched that video of the first hour of the game.

Like many old school RPGs, Undertale has random encounters. You'll be walking around when all of a sudden you'll be pulled into battle. All you see in front of you is your enemy, and four options to choose from. In order from left to right they are FIGHT, ACT, ITEMS, and MERCY. Almost every turn based RPG I can think of has a fight command, which is generally the best way to start any combat scenario. In Undertale when you choose FIGHT a bar appears on screen and a white cursor moves back and forth on it. The closer you stop it to the middle the more damage your character will dish out.

Next up we have what is actually the most important command and that is ACT. In order to properly explain it I'll need to use an example. Let's take an enemy you fight a little way into the game. It's a deer that has been decorated by some local teens, and it is upset about it. IF you go into act, you'll be given a few more options. The first one will always be "check," which lets you see the attack, defense, hp, and a brief description of the enemy.  The other options are enemy specific, but in the case of the deer you have the options to decorate or un-decorate. If you decorate you can add more to the deer's burden. However, if you un-decorate it enough it will become thankful. Whenever you meet the requirements to make an enemy happy their name will become yellow. This means that you can go to the   MERCY command. Under MERCY you can either spare or flee. When an enemy's name is yellow you can spare them, which will make them leave the fight. You get zero EXP from this, but will receive some money.

This is what it looks like when you choose FIGHT.

Yes, I know I left out ITEMS, but it's not really important. You just use items to heal, there's nothing special about the command. Since all of these things take up a turn you'll have to defend against enemy attacks. This means that once you fight or act if the enemy is still in play you'll be transitioned to a defensive scenario. A box appears in the middle of the screen and a red heart is inside. This is the heart of the main character. Various white attacks will appear in the box and try to hit the heart. You have to use the analog stick to make the heart dodge the attacks. After a few seconds you'll be able to choose another action.

As with most RPGs you can level up, in this case it's called LV. So you need a certain amount of EXP to get more LV. This is where the game turns everything you know about RPGs on its head. You actually don't want any EXP, or you can't get the true ending. Near the end of the game a character judges you based on your actions. He explains that EXP stands for Execution Points, and that LV stands for Level of Violence. In order to see the true ending of Undertale you can't kill anything for your entire playthrough. I did this on my first way through, because I knew you could spare monsters. I just didn't know why I would want to do it.

This is where the final judgement happens.

This is where my experiment came in, but like I said it definitely failed. My friend started playing, and was a little way through the tutorial. The first combat scenario has you fighting against a training dummy. The game has you talk to it by using the ACT command. In the next room the first "random" encounter happens against a frog monster called a Froggit. My friend hit the attack command, and killed it in one blow. I didn't say anything when he did it.

A few rooms later there is a pedestal with a bunch of candy on it. A sign in the game says to take one. He took one, and then another, and another. When you take too much candy the stack falls over and the candy litters the ground. He felt bad about it and told me he wanted to load his save. At that point I could no longer hold back, because I'm a big softie. I mean shit, he felt bad because he took too much candy. Imagine how he'd feel if he got to the end of the game and realized he was executing innocent monsters. I asked him if he wanted to get the true ending, to which he replied yes. I followed up by asking him if he knew why he could no longer get it.

This is the Froggit in question.

At first he thought it was because of the candy, but I assured him it wasn't. He kept guessing until he said "I killed the frog." He then asked if he wasn't supposed to kill anything. I didn't answer, but he definitely knew at that point he shouldn't kill anything. I totally botched my experiment a few minutes in, but it was worth it.

I asked him why he attacked the frog, and he said it was because it attacked him first, which is actually not the case. When combat starts you go first. He attacked the frog first, but that's just because every RPG since the dawn of time has wanted you to kill your enemies. It's just the first thing your mind goes to. Does that mean we're all malicious killers? No, it just means that video games rarely have us question our actions.

He ended up playing all the way through the game without killing anyone and saw the true ending just as I did. From what I could tell he really enjoyed the game, which was cool to see.

There's something special about the way Undertale handles itself. Yes you get the "good" ending for not killing anything or anyone, but you totally can kill pivitol characters. You can strike down boss monsters and then they're completely gone from the game. It's cool that the game tries to give you hints so that you don't kill those characters, but it might not always catch on. Puzzling out the solution to resolve conflicts peacefully was often very stressful for me, but that made it more rewarding in the end.

It's probably a good thing I'm not a scientist, because I'd be super bad at keeping the experiment under wraps. I am still glad I tried it out though, because it yielded the results I wanted it to. I had a feeling that someone who was unaware would kill the first monster they met. It's funny, because even if he had figured out not to kill anyone else that one tiny frog would have kept him from seeing the true ending unless he started all over once he got to the end of the game. Instead of stopping him from seeing what I think is one of the best video game endings I've ever seen I had him restart before he got too far.

Undertale is special. Very rarely do I have so many emotions when playing through a game. I laughed out loud, smiled, and even teared up at one point. I tried my best not to tell you about any of the characters or scenes so that you could experience them for yourself if you haven't already. It's definitely not for everyone, but at the very least I think it's worthwhile to see the game's mechanics in motion.

Thank you for reading all about my failed experiment!

Party Game Sundays: Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival (Part 1)

When I first saw the announcement of Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival I thought that it could be cool. Mario Party is fun to play with a group of friends, and I really like Animal Crossing. To make things even better the game was supposed to be a free download, and you'd just need Animal Crossing Amiibo to play. Well, that's not what ended up happening. Nintendo decided it would be better to have consumers pay $60 for the game, and two Amiibo. I inexplicably bought Mario Party 10 for $60 so, why not this game where I get two Amiibo as well? I regret everything.

Man, this game is not good. It's not bad either. It might be the most mediocre video game I've ever experienced in my life. I hear you asking "Is it like Mario Party?" My answer to you is yes, it's exactly like Mario Party, except with all the parts where you interact with the game stripped out. It's essentially a digital board game. You roll dice, and that's really it.

CAN YOU FEEL THE EXCITEMENT!?

The quintessential mode in the game is called Board Game. In order to play you need at least two Animal Crossing Amiibo. If you only have two Amiibo you can still have up to four players, but the other two will have to be villagers. On top of that they'll also be at a distinct disadvantage. See, the entire point of Amiibo Festival is to have the most happiness points at the end of a month. You pick a month, and each time every player goes that counts as a day. Every single turn you have to tap your Amiibo to the game pad in order to roll the dice. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs a swift kick in the head, because it means you have to either pass the game pad around the room, or sit right on top of the other players.

Once you roll you get to choose where you want to move. Each time someone who is using an Amiibo rolls they get a single point of happiness, people using villagers don't, because they didn't bring an Amiibo to the Amiibo Festival. If you land on a pink space you'll see an event and get some happiness. If a money bag is on the same space you'll also earn money. Alternatively if the space is purple you'll lose happiness and money instead. There are also special event spaces that change every turn, which have you button through a lot of text for little to no payoff. So, yes you roll a die, and then read an event. Something happens and you arbitrarily gain or lose happiness and money. Sounds fun right!? It's not.

Digby's hype meter if off the charts!

To try and add more depth to the game it layers on a few other mechanics. There is a gyroid at each corner of the map, and if you reach them they'll put a stamp on your stamp card. This nets you a large amount of happiness, especially if you collect all four stamps. My personal favorite part of the game happens on Sundays. Joan the Boar comes and sells turnips, which allows you to play the stalk market. You are allowed to purchase turnips in groups of ten, and then sell them for a profit. Every space has a price that turnips sell for. Sometimes it's high and sometimes it's low. It's like the stock market...

This is all there is to the game. No excitement, just reading. I often just use all of my money to buy turnips and hope they sell high just so I can feel alive while playing. At the end of a game every 1,000 bells you have (Animal Crossing's currency) you get one happiness point. The happiness points tally up and then the game is over. If you have an Amiibo the happiness points are saved to it unlocking new outfits you can wear during the board game...*sigh*

Each Amiibo has six outfits to unlock.

There actually are mini-games, but they're totally separate from the board game mode. After playing through a board mini-games unlocked. In order to play them you need to use Amiibo cards. Thankfully the game comes with three so you can try them out. Each game is relatively similar and has you swiping the card on the game pad for a terrible random thing to occur. There are about 7 games and none of them are fun or take skill.

What's insane is that I played the board game mode three times. Each session takes over an hour, and nothing really even happens. On top of that the events started repeating IN MY FIRST SESSION! They didn't even write a wide variety of reasons for your character to get happy or sad! How is that possible!? What's even more insane is that after the third session I unlocked the ability to edit the game board. So now I can add buildings to the board to make different events happen. They didn't think that would be a good thing to have from the start? I have yet to see what the game is like with that new addition, but sadly I will find out. I have agreed to play the game once a month with the Sunday crew, so that's great.

This image looks so fun. Why isn't the game?

I will be back for a second part to let you know if the game gets any better with the addition of new event spaces. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it doesn't.

Game Time - November 2015

I played a lot of stuff in November, but didn't really complete as much as I want to. So now I'm stuck trying to beat 5 more games by the end of the year. Yes, that's right. I was able to cross one game off of my 6 game list in a mere 2 days. I liked Undertale so much that I beat it in 2 sittings! However, I won't be talking about that in here. I have some Undertale related stuff in the queue though, so look forward to that in the coming days. I promise it will be cool.

Oh yeah, I also beat Yo-Kai Watch!, which was interesting. I enjoyed myself quite a bit. Instead of talking about it here I recorded a podcast about it. It's the 10th episode, so check it out right here.

The reason we're here this month is to talk about the games I played, but didn't complete. Well, I guess you can't really complete Battlefront. I did only play it once though... First person shooters just aren't my thing. I'll play it again, but I have a ton of other stuff to do. I definitely didn't beat Yoshi's Wooly World or Fallout 4 though. I still have so much to do, so let's start this edition of Game Time!

Yoshi's Wooly World

I don't want to generalize here, but many modern video games have a lot of violent imagery. Are video games too violent for you? If they are then boy have I got the game for you! A GAME WHERE LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS MADE OF YARN AND MAKES YOU FEEL WARM AND FUZZY INSIDE!

In all seriousness though, have you seen gameplay of Yoshi's Wooly World? Everything in the game is made of yarn, sequins, buttons, and felt. It's the most twee video game conceivable by modern man. The visuals are astounding, but the gameplay isn't on the same level. It's okay, but nowhere near as tight as the original Yoshi's Island was. However, it's clear that Nintendo is going after a different audience with this product.

*SQUEEEE*

Good Feels, the developer behind this game also produced Kirby's Epic Yarn a few years ago. The issue I had with Kirby's Epic Yarn was that it was too easy. By the time I got halfway through the game it took all of my willpower just to stay awake. Wooly World isn't quite that easy, but it's challenge comes mostly from looking for hidden collectibles. This is something that a lot of recent Nintendo games have done to cater to both hardcore fans and those who are less into crazy challenging gameplay. It's a system that works, but it leaves me yearning for more.

As you may expect you control the lovable dinosaur Yoshi on a quest to rescue his friends from danger. It plays a lot like the original Yoshi's Island, but everything is a lot slower. You still shoot eggs (balls of yarn in this case) at enemies with a moving reticle, but there's never any urgency to it. You do have to hit things, but you can take your sweet time doing it.

This is real, I assure you.

To be fair to the game I'm only about halfway through the game, so it could get a lot more challenging in the later half, but I'm not expecting much of a change. I am definitely not finding every collectible though and I'm okay with that. In fact Wooly World may have too many collectibles in each level. To get 100% completion you need to find five hidden pieces of yarn, five flowers, twenty stamps, and have max health (20 HP) at the end of a level. For those of you keeping track that's fifty things per level. That's crazy, and super daunting. Everything is pretty well hidden, so I had to give up on my completionist nature on the third or fourth level to continue having fun with the game.

I am actually having fun with it, and the visuals consistently make me squeal in delight. I just wish that I could have a cute Yoshi video game and a challenge at the same time. Sadly it doesn't seem like Nintendo is going to be offering that to me any time soon.

Star Wars Battlefront

Guys, I don't like first person shooters. That means that I only played Battlefront the first day I got it and pretty much had my fill. I might try it out a few more times, but I just don't have a whole lot of fun playing competitive first person shooters. I don't think they're bad or anything, they're just not for me.

With that said I think that Battlefront is a technical marvel. There are all kinds of arguments about the season pass being priced at $50 dollars and whether or not there is a lack of content in the game, but I think everyone needs to stop and look at the game. Literally just look at it, and I guess listen while they're at it. It's ridiculous how authentic every battle feels.

It's super fun to take these down.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most people who watched Star Wars as a kid wondered what it would be like to battle on the snow planet of Hoth. Battlefront is the closest you're going to get to experiencing that battle. The visuals are top notch, and the sound design is superb. DICE is known for their excellent sound design in Battlefield games, but with Battlefront they turned it up to eleven.

It's not just Hoth though. Every battle looks and sounds awesome. You spawn quickly and run out into the fray, and it feels like an accurate representation. The blasters sound just like they do in the movies as their shots whiz by your character's head and explode behind you. Everything is chaotic in a way that feels accurate to the Star Wars universe and I think that's important. This game is and always was supposed to be Star Wars fan service. DICE delivered on that.

I don't like playing as Luke.

Yes, you can complain about a lack of maps, and sometimes unbalanced matches, but in the end DICE made an authentic Star Wars Game. It plays well, and it's one of the best Star Wars games out there. There are a lot of Star Wars games out there, but a vast majority of them are not quality products. If this is the benchmark for quality in new Star Wars games going forward I will buy every single one of them without hesitation.

Fallout 4

Every single time I play this game my feelings about it change drastically. Sometimes I lose myself for hours in the post apocalyptic wasteland, and others I want to throw my controller at the wall. I thought Fallout 3 was okay, which is apparently at odds with the thoughts of everyone else on the planet. I think Fallout is an okay franchise, but I'd much rather play The Elder Scrolls. To the surprise of no one Fallout 4 is just a whole lot more of Fallout 3 on new platforms with newer graphics. This is why I am often unable to deal with how janky the game is. It's largely more of the same. Sometimes to a fault. The game takes a little time to explain to you the games new systems, but leaves you out to dry with all of the old ones. It doesn't even explain how to get into VATS or what it does. Seriously? People who didn't play Fallout 3 will pick this one up and have no idea what the hell is going on.

It's one thing when an NPC doesn't face you when talking, or when they hover off of the ground a little bit. It's a completely different thing when the game crashes every time you try to leave a building, or has the frame rate drop to the single digits if more than three enemies try to fight you inside of a building. Yes, I realize that these things will most likely be fixed in later patches, but that probably won't make me feel any different about the game. There are only so many hours of looking inside of ravaged buildings for crappy items I have in me before I don't care any more.

Who likes the color brown!?

As I said initially there are times I love playing Fallout 4. The companions are mostly written well and the side quests I've stumbled upon have been pretty cool as well. I've only done a few steps in the main quest line though, and I don't think it could get much more boring. That tends to be standard fare with Bethesda RPGs though, the best writing is almost always found outside of the main quest. All you're doing is trying to find your kidnapped son, who probably doesn't even remember who you are.

I will say that the gun-play is a lot better this time around. In Fallout 3 VATS was a necessity, because even if you were pointing the barrel of a shotgun right at someones head it could still miss due to your stats. In Fallout 4 if you have someone in your sights your bullet will hit. VATS is still handy though, because you can get perks and things to do more damage with it. Bethesda also took the time to overhaul the leveling system so that there is no longer a cap. Instead now every level you get a single skill point, which you can put into one of your stats, or a perk. It makes things a lot simpler for leveling.

There are tons of perks to choose from. I think you need to be over level 200 to get them all.

I don't really know what to say about this game. If you liked Fallout 3, you'll like this too. You roam around the post apocalyptic Boston area and ransack buildings while shooting stuff. Sometimes you find cool loot, but most of the time it's worthless. I want to be super excited about this, but when other super polished open world games like The Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V came out in 2015 I just can't give Fallout a free pass.

GOTY

I initially thought that 2015 wasn't a very good year for games. However after looking at the list of games I completed that came out this year I realized that I was 100% wrong! So many amazing games came out this year, and I haven't even completed a bunch of the ones I want to. As I said before I still have five more games I want to complete before the year is over. Even without those five games I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what my list is going to be.

The main issue I'm having is that I don't know what my GOTY actually is. Up until recently I was sure it was The Witcher 3, but as of right now I'm considering something else.... I don't want to get too much into it. As always there will be a written list and podcast to let the world know what my top ten games of the year are. In fact, I may even have multiple podcasts where I talk to my friends about what their favorite games of 2015 are.

There's a whole lot for me to get done by January 1st. I have a whole lot in the pipe. I'm going to start up Party Game Sundays again, so I need to write one of those by this coming Sunday. I'm going to try and record an Undertale Podcast, and write up something special involving it. I don't want to say what it is in case I don't get it done! I also am theoretically going to record two or tree GOTY podcasts. *sigh* I probably shouldn't have said any of this here, because now I'll feel obligated to get it all done...

See you guys next month!

Memorable Melodies: Undertale from Undertale

Song: Undertale

Game: Undertale

Composer: Toby Fox

There is something about this song that hits me right in the heart. All of the previous songs I've put up for Memorable Melodies have just been sick jams, or songs I often hum to myself. This one is different. This one is special. I'm twenty-five years old, and this song brought a tear to my eye. I guess it was  a combination of the song and what was happening when it played in the game. 

Undertale is mostly funny, but in that moment it was undeniably sad. You walk into an area and it's immediately familiar. At that moment I realized where I was and what the game was going to tell me. The only way to advance is to walk through the area as a decidedly soul crushing tale is recounted to you. It's done in a rather creative way. You then understand why the world of Undertale is the way it is, and have to find the strength to do what must be done in order to change it. It's heavy.

It probably sounds like I'm being hyperbolic here, but I'm honestly not. Sure, it may not hit you in the same way, but it certainly did hit me. If you have a passing interest in video games do yourself a favor and play Undertale. Even if you're not a fan, it is still something that's worth experiencing.

This song is so good!