Game Time - June 2016

This month I didn't play very many games. I was traveling around, going to concerts, getting sick, and building a hot new PC.

That's right, I built a PC and it works very well. I'm typing this up on it as we speak. Potentially I will now be able to play all the shiny new PC games that are released over the next few years. I'll tell you all about my build experience and what I got.

I did play a few games as well. I was trying to save money this month, so I ended up selling my tablet and used that money to buy the PS4 remaster of Odin Sphere. I also played Mighty No. 9. I backed the Kickstarter years ago and now it's finally out. Whether or not that's a good thing I don't really know yet.

It was an exciting month, so let's get right into it. It's game time!

I Built a Real PC

I've been saying for years that I was going to build a PC, but a few things were holding me back. The first, and most important was the money aspect. While you can build a relatively affordable desktop that's got a lot of power now $1,000 is still a lot of money. I set out with the goal of building everything I wanted on a budget of under $1,000. I ended up doing just that. All of my parts and the operating system cost me around $930. So far I've been very pleased with the results. I don't want to just sit here and list the parts, but the important pieces are that I got a 3.3 Ghz quad core I5, a GTX 970, and 8GB of ram. It's a solid build.

So, I've been putting money aside for this PC for a long time. The other reason I didn't end up building it until now is that I was scared to build it. That sounds dumb, but I've never built a PC before. Normally I'd be totally up for a learning experience, but if I somehow blew up a $350 video card I'd be totally screwed. Despite that crippling fear I decided to buckle down and build the thing anyways. I ordered the parts and they arrived within three days, which is insane. With all my parts gathered I watched no less than six build tutorials to make sure I didn't screw anything up.

In the end it wasn't really that bad. You just need to make sure you're not statically charged. You can get anti-static bracelets for super cheap. Overall it's just knowing where to plug everything into. It's kind of like super complicated Legos that you can totally destroy if you're not careful. I had a laptop handy so I could look stuff up any time I had a question or didn't really understand what I was doing.

After being stressed for like an hour I now have a fully functional desktop that can totally play video games. Well, I guess it didn't all go so well. One of the USB ports doesn't work. I am going to look into that at some point. Still, it's the first gaming ready PC I've had since around 2008! That's eight whole years without a proper PC. So obviously I'll be able to play all the hot new games, but it will also help out immensely with streaming. My streams will be able to look a bit better, and I can actually have chat open on the PC and not have it run my CPU off the charts. Praise be!

Now to close it out I've got some hot pictures. Note: I didn't really do any cable management.

Front view.

Side view, with my reflection in the glass.

Mighty No. 9

When the kickstarter for Mighty No. 9 showed up in 2013 I was excited. I was so young and naive then. Only now in 2016, has this game finally been delivered. It was delayed multiple times due to quality concerns. At first the delays were frustrating, but they eventually became comical. To make matters even worse every trailer put out for the game somehow made it look worse. Everything culminated in the trailer Deep Silver put out for the game a few months ago. There was an over the top announcer that would make anyone cringe, but on top of that the game looked bad.

Before I go any deeper into this I want to say that the game isn't awful. It's been getting railed on in reviews, and the beatings it has been taking are well deserved. Even I joined in to beat on it a little bit as I streamed my entire playthrough. I don't think it's a good game, but I can see what it was going for. It's disappointing that it turned out the way it did, but sometimes things go wrong in development. You'd think that a spiritual successor to Mega Man made by series creator Keiji Inafune himself would be a slam dunk, but it isn't. 

"Hey, it's me. Not Mega Man!"

That's what Mighty No. 9 is. It's an unabashed Mega Man wannabe. You play as Beck, who is Mighty No. 9. Instead of fighting robot masters you fight the other mighty numbers, who are robots. They used to be good, but have been infected by some kind of virus. It's your job as Beck to purify them. In doing so he gains their power, just like in Mega Man! Normally I wouldn't make this big a deal out of it, but the similarities are endless. Here, I'll list a few.

Mega Man - Rock and Roll
Mega Man - Dr Light and Dr, Wily

Mighty No. 9. - Beck and Call
Mega Man. - Dr. White and Dr. Blackwell

I mean seriously, he might has well have just named them the exact same thing. I'm not going to get into the fact that the DLC character Ray looks exactly like Zero to the point where it might as well be copyright infringement. The point is that Mighty No. 9 is like Mega Man. There is one major differentiating factor though. Beck has a dash ability, which is the core of the gameplay. If you shoot enemies enough they will glow and Beck can dash through them to absorb them. Doing this will proper timing will net you a high score, and give you a bit of a power boost. You want to do this to every enemy and not get hit so that you can "combo". The higher your combo the more points you get, and the longer you keep your power-ups. It sounds cool, and sometimes can even look cool in practice. It falls short when you mess up. The fast paced action immediately stops and you're slowed down to a glacial pace. I bet speed runs will be really fun to watch though.

To make matters even worse I don't think that the level design is very good at all. I often found myself dying because I had to make blind jumps, or enemies started shooting me before I could even see them. Mega Man had instant deaths as well, but at least I felt like I could have prevented them. The difficulty in Mighty No. 9 is all over the place. Sometimes I'd struggle to complete the level only to annihilate the boss on the first or second try. The best part is that if you die, then you get to hear all of the cringe worthy dialogue again! Boy is all of the dialogue terrible!

This is a game that came out in 2016! Look at these graphics!

What's even more baffling is that the game looks like a 360 launch title. It's running on Unreal Engine 3, which is one of the most highly optimized video game engines at this point, yet somehow it still manages to run like garbage. This game should run at 60 frames per second at all times, but it doesn't! It sometimes slows down to 40 or below for seemingly no reason. However, what I think Mighty No. 9's biggest crime is that it isn't really trying to be its own thing. It's one thing to pay homage to Mega Man, it's a completely different thing to try and BE Mega Man. Mighty No. 9 has a solid foundation, but its execution falls short on almost every level. If they do end up making a sequel I hope they try to make it its own thing other than a soulless Mega Man clones. I also hope it looks and runs a whole lot better...

Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

Odin Sphere originally came out on the PS2 in 2007. Back then I really wanted to try it out, but never got around to it. A few years ago they re-released it as a PS2 classic on PS3. I picked it up, but couldn't get into it. While the game looked beautiful and handles like a dream the frame rate just couldn't keep itself together. In many fights the game would slow to a crawl, and I just couldn't take it. That's why I was super excited to see that Atlus decided to remaster the game completely and bring it out again as Odin Sphere Liefthrasir. Thanks to this new release I was able to experience the game without and hitching whatsoever, and the combat was even made to be a little bit more user friendly.

Developer Vanillaware is known for making beautiful hand drawn games. Odin Sphere is probably their most well known work to date and for good reason. The art is incredible. It looks like a story book that has come to life. It helps that Odin Sphere is just that, a fairy tale. The plot relies heavily on Norse mythology.

No game about Norse mythology is complete without Odin.

Initially I thought I was going to have a lot to say about Odin Sphere, but now that I'm here I'm kind of drawing a blank. It's an action RPG that takes place on a 2D plane. You use your weapon and skills in order to hit enemies. Skills and hits chain together for more damage, and everything flows together very nicely. You play through the game as five different characters and the events of their stories all overlap. At first it's novel, but by the third person I was already tired of retreading the same story over and over. The voice acting is all excellent, and the visuals never stopped being a pleasure to look at.

It's a well put together package, but I don't think that the combat ever really evolves enough to hold itself up for the 30-40 hours it takes to complete the game. Each character controls differently and learns quite a few skills. However, I ended up finding a few skills that worked well for me in order to shred through enemies as quickly as possible.

The visuals in Odin Sphere are quite spectacular.

I had a lot of fun playing through Odin  Sphere, but I definitely think it went on for a bit too long.

Monster Hunter Returns....

Normally the summer is a bit barren when it comes to video game releases. July doesn't have a whole lot to offer in terms of things I want to purchase except for Monster Hunter Generations...

Now that Monster Hunter seems to have gained a bit more popularity in the West I feel like we'll end up getting every new release that Japan gets, which may be devastating for my social life.

Next month you can expect me to talk about Monster Hunter, and maybe Overwatch? I don't know. We'll see when we get there.

Memorable Melodies: The Concept of Love from Jet Set Radio Future

Song: The Concept of Love

Game: Jet Set Radio Future

Composer: Hideki Naganuma

JET SET RADIOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

There was a point in time when Sega was putting out awesome video games. That time has largely past, but that doesn't mean that their old games are gone. The Dreamcast may have tanked, but in my opinion it was ahead of its time. Sega put out a ton of good stuff on the platform and its early demise was a complete shame. When I first saw gameplay of the original Jet Set Radio (Jet Grind Radio in the U.S.) it completely blew my mind. It was a game with attitude. Roller-blading rebels who used spray-paint against their oppressive environment took the forefront. 

When Sega put the Dreamcast to bed they transferred the work from a majority of their working projects onto the original Xbox. One such game that made the transition was Jet Set Radio Future. I didn't own an original Xbox, so I never ended up playing the game until quite a bit after its initial release. I was going through a phase in college where I wanted to buy a bunch of games I had missed out on, so I picked it up cheap. It's the only original Xbox game I own.

The cel-shaded graphics and gameplay actually hold up. However, the thing that really stuck out to me about the game was its music. It's essentially all funk, and hip-hop. At first it's kind of weird, because a majority of video game music doesn't have any lyrics. However, once I heard each song a couple of times I was bobbing my head along to the beat as I performed dope skate tricks.

I still listen to the JSRF soundtrack on a regular basis. I love all the songs in the game, so it was hard for me to choose one to feature here. However, I think the most recognizable song is The Concept of Love. On top of being a great song it's also a solid question.

Man, Jet Set Radio Future is such an awesome game. I think an HD re-release of the game would be incredible, and it seems that series creator Hideki Naganuma feels the same way. The series has a defined sense of style, and I love it. 

Memorable Melodies: Song from Trails of Cold Steel

Song: I have no idea what it's called, and I did as much research as I possibly could. They released an official OST for this game, but I can only find the track listing in Japanese. I am led to believe it's the 21st track on the album, but the name in English track listings does not match the song. It plays during summer. That's all I know.

Game: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Composer: Can't find one. 

I honestly tried to look up all the info I could on this song. Due to the fact that I couldn't find anything I thought about not using this killer jam for Memorable Melodies. However, It's been in my head for weeks, so I decided that it needed its time in the spotlight. Just so we're clear it's from The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. For some reason information about this game is very scarce, I have yet to beat it, but I might just write down all the information in the credits and dump it onto the internet. I can't even find a list of the English voice actors. As for the composer, it may be the same as the other Legend of Heroes games, but I didn't want to make an assumption.

For the past few weeks I've been playing through Trails of Cold Steel with a friend. I am very close to completing it, and can't wait to see how it wraps up and sets things up for the sequel. It started off very slow and I didn't know if I was going to be able to get into it, but I ended up growing to like it quite a bit. You play as Rean Schwarzer a student who is attending Thors Military Academy. He and his classmates were chosen to take part in a special new class. Since it's a smaller class each character ends up being very well characterized over the course of the game. There's a lot of classism, and military conflict to be had. 

The music in this game is killer, which is why it makes me so angry I can't find any information about it. A lot of the battle music is well orchestrated and makes encounters feel epic. Then, when you're at school you get catchy pop-like songs like the one I;m featuring here. The first time the song plays is during the summer months. It played a lot then, but now plays much less frequently. It's got a lot of xylophone in it, and I'm all about the xylophone. There's also some flute stuff going on, which accents everything perfectly. 

So yeah, sorry I can't tell you what it's called or who made this amazingly catchy tune. Definitely check the video out though. If you know any of the info I'm missing please hit me up. I will gladly edit the post.

Memorable Melodies: On the Champs - Désolés from The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine

Song: On the Champs - Désolés

Game: The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (DLC)

Composers: Marcin Przybylowicz, Mikolai Stroinski, and Piotrek Musial 

The final expansion for The Witcher 3 came out a few weeks ago and I've been playing it nonstop ever since. I played the base game for over 100 hours, and absolutely loved my time with it. Rarely do video games depict a world doused in such profound sadness. Choices in this franchise are never binary good and bad choices. Everything sucks, but it's okay so you're playing as an emotionally devoid mutant killer, Well, Geralt isn't totally devoid of emotion, but he definitely isn't as animated as a normal person. He was made into a Witcher to hunt monsters, and that's what he does.

On top of the superb writing and world building The Witcher 3 has some incredible music. What's cool about the newest DLC Blood and Wine is that it has an entirely new score. On the Champs - Désolés is heard pretty early on in the DLC and got me very excited. The Duchess of Touissant and Geralt rush off as they realize that someone else is about to die to the monster plaguing the land. There's no build up to the song. It just starts up and you know things are popping off. There's a freaking accordion solo in the song! It's appropriately ominous and really got my blood pumping.

I thought it would only come up in story sequences, but the song also plays when Geralt is taking on some of the stronger monsters in the DLC. It comes in to signify a life or death scenario and I absolutely love it.

Game Time - May 2016

Anime! This edition of Game Time has a lot of anime in it. I played both Gundam Breaker 3, and One Piece: Burning Blood. Well I guess Gundam Breaker 3 is technically a game about models, but you get what I mean.

Outside of all the anime I experienced I also played Uncharted 4. I liked it quite a bit. 

I have nothing else to add. It's game time!

Gundam Breaker 3

Within the past few years I have started importing a lot more games from outside the U.S. It has become increasingly easy to get import games at reasonable prices. A trend I find to be increasingly odd is that games are being released in English for territories in Asia. It was done with Phantasy Star Online 2, and has been done with a few Gundam games now. Due to licensing issues, Gundam Breaker games have not been released in the U.S. When I was told the game was completely in English I jumped right on it!

So Gundam Breaker is a series where you build Gundam models called Gunpla and have them fight other Gundam models. It's really cool. Gunpla models are very popular, and there are models of every single Gundam and mobile suit you can think of. This game has an insane amount of parts to choose from so that you can make your own custom Gundam. I love the concept of giant robots fighting, but have never really been able to get way into any of the anime series. I get it. They're all about war, but they don't have to be so incredibly self serious all the time. When I'm watching anime I'm not looking for political arguments and land disputes. I want to see giant robots destroy things with a gigantic laser sword. Gundam Breaker 3 delivers on that.

Someone built this awesome Gundam. 

The gameplay equates to Dynasty Warriors with slightly more nuance. You have regular attacks on square, and heavy attacks on triangle. Changing up the timing and holding directions when you attack changes up the combos drastically. It helps that there are a ton of weapon types that all play vastly different from one another. It's nothing special, but it's pretty fun.

There are an insane amount of Gundam models in the game, which means that there are hundreds of parts you accrue over the course of playing. You can mix and match any part to customize your ultimate fighting robot. It's also possible to color what you've made and apply decals. What makes the game a bit tedious is how poor the inventory screens are. You have so many duplicates of parts, but can't sell them more than one at a time. There have been sessions where I've spent over an hour just selling duplicates. That's insane. Luckily I think the core game is fun enough that I am still enjoying myself.

You have to blow up all the robots in this game.

Once you complete the story the only thing left to do is grind missions for parts you need in order to make yourself stronger. There are going to be DLC missions at some point, so I might hop back in then and see what they're all about. I don't really have a lot to say about this game. If you like building custom robots, then you're probably going to be way into this.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

The year that Uncharted 3 came out it made my top ten list, which is posted on this very blog. In the little blurb I wrote about it I said that I wanted more Uncharted, but in the time following something happened to change my mind. Uncharted is fun, but the third game wrapped everything up in a way that made me think we wouldn't see any more from Drake and his cohorts. Then Naughty Dog released The Last of Us and I finally realized that I didn't need another Uncharted. So when they announced that Uncharted 4 was in the works I was extremely skeptical. The franchise pushed the boundaries of what was possible on the PS3 hardware and proved that Naughty Dog was an incredible developer. Now that I've played and completed Uncharted 4 I'm glad that they let Drake out for one more romp.

I recorded a podcast about my overall impressions on Uncharted 4, so I'll try my best to keep my thoughts here concise. When Uncharted 2 came out it blew my mind. The graphical fidelity and the quality of the motion capture performances were nothing short of amazing. At the time I don't remember anything quite like it. Then Uncharted 3 came out and it was more of the same. I was fully expecting Uncharted 4 to tow the line as well, but after playing it I believe that it made a significant jump in quality. Many people, myself included, have been disappointed with the performance of games on the current generation of consoles. Uncharted 4 throws all the preconceived notions about the PS4's capabilities out the window and turns all the available knobs to 11. The game looks nothing short of breathtaking.  The vistas and action set pieces are a complete joy to experience, and look straight out of a blockbuster movie. There were points where I actually thought that Nate and Elena were real people. Their faces show emotion in a way that's amazing. The dead eyes and cold stare of most video game characters are not present in Uncharted 4.

The faces are very lifelike.

As for gameplay everything is fairly similar to what it has been in the past. It's a third person shooter, that makes you question if Drake is really a normal person or if he's a professional killer. For a guy who likes to hunt treasure he sure knows how to handle any kind of gun he comes across. Then there's the whole issue of him murdering hundreds of people in cold blood, but I think it's a little too late in the life of the franchise to really change how the core gameplay causes narrative dissonance. That's not to say that Uncharted 4 has nothing new in the way of gameplay. Yes, you'll still be climbing around cliff faces a fair amount, but now you also have a sweet grappling hook!

Prior to this entry the franchise had been standard adventure fare. Drake would find out about some treasure and go after it. Rarely was there any kind of "real" character development. We learned about the personality of Drake and all of his compatriots, but never anything about who they really were and where they came from. Uncharted 4 actually had a narrative that I was personally invested in outside of having a fun romp in foreign locales. Nate and Elena's relationship is very well realized, and so is his relationship with his long lost brother.

There is still a whole lot of gun play in Uncharted 4.

It's not an overly long game, but it does overstay its welcome in the final few chapters. I clocked in around thirteen hours of play time, which I did in two sittings. The game was great and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. However, I think that this has to be the end of the franchise. It ties up in such a way that I will actually get upset if they decide to make an Uncharted 5. I get the feeling that Naughty Dog wants to move on though, and I hope that they do.

One Piece: Burning Blood

Burning Blood came out on the last day of May. Normally I wouldn't have enough time to play a game and spit a bunch of game about it, but I beat the story mode in three hours the same day I got it... For some reason it only covers the Paramount War arc from multiple perspectives. There aren't a whole lot of fights to do, and the only reason it even took me three hours was because some of the enemies can kill you in a few hits. Even with that artificial padding, the mode was still ludicrously short. Since it's a fighting game I was excited to jump online and mess around, but was quickly disappointed with how shallow the game truly is.

Burning Blood is an anime fighting game. Obviously. One Piece is my favorite anime, so obviously I was very excited to play this game. It has a wide variety of characters, and their animations are all really fun to see in action. Normally I go into anime games expecting them to be shallow and filled with fan service for fans of the series. It's what I've become accustomed to. What changed this about Burning Blood was the fact that I kept seeing people talk about how much hidden depth the game has. In order to find it I went into training mode when I had finished the story mode. I messed around for about an hour and still couldn't figure out where the "depth" was.

If you want to see your favorite One Piece moves, then this is for you!

The majority of the combat amounts to mashing square. If you push square rapidly you'll do a combo and then a finisher to blow the enemy away. What bugs me most about this is that you can't even time your button presses. You literally have to mash as fast as possible or the character will give up mid combo. This means that you can't push square for a few hits and then use a different move in most scenarios. You can however throw a guard break into the regular square combo to break an opponents guard. This will crumple them so you can continue to combo. If you hold L1 and push one of three buttons the character in play can use one of their three special moves. Generally you just mash square and then follow up with one of these moves, or just do it raw. Since it's a 3D game you can also sidestep your opponents attacks, which is why some of moves attack in an arc in front of you.

There are a few other character specific things, like Logia guarding. In the anime characters eat devil fruits which give them various powers. People with Logia powers can turn their bodies whole bodies into an element, like fire or ice. If you hold R1 with those characters they can't be hit by anything but a guard break. This makes these characters very powerful in comparison to others, which can get kind of annoying. Reading this is probably sounds like there is a lot going on, but I assure you that in practice it is exceedingly simple. Most characters have one or two combo stings that allow for very little variation. Since it's a tag team game you bring three characters into battle, and can switch between them. This adds a a few more hits to combos if you switch to someone else mid-combo. However, the game has an infuriating mechanic that makes characters you're hitting flash white and fall out of your hits.

Kizaru will probably fall out of this combo and punish Marco. 

Normally this kind of mechanic is used to prevent infinites. For those uninitiated in fighting game mechanics infinites are combos you can get your opponent into that don't end until they're dead. Systems to prevent them are put into place for the good of the game, but in this scenario it makes no sense. It's horribly inconsistent and ruins every combo that could potentially be cool in any way. When you smash square the combos in this game end on their own, so switching to someone should allow you co continue mashing square until the new character is done with their combo. In most cases they hit twice and the enemy drops out and they can immediately start a combo on you while you're still trying to do yours. WHAT!? It makes even less sense, because it costs three bars of your meter in order to use! You can't do it over and over. In most matches you'd be able to do it once! It makes no sense and takes all the fun out of trying to find new and interesting combos, because if you do find something it will assuredly not work.

If you're a fan of One Piece and you're looking to play as some of your favorite characters and mash the living hell out of some buttons, then this game is for you. However, if you're looking for even a bit of nuance or longevity, then you're going to want to skip out on this game. Sadly I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of those two camps. I love One Piece and think that this game is fun on a basic level, but as soon as I try to improve my gameplay I get frustrated to no end. I apologize if this was a bit technical and a slog to read, but I needed to get my frustrations out. It's a solid game that has mechanics holding it back from being something a lot better.

JUUUUUUUNE!

It's June, which means that my birthday is happening near the end of the month. It also means that Guilty Gear Revelator, and Star Ocean 5 will be coming out. I'm not super excited for Guilty Gear, but I've been craving the JRPG action of Star Ocean for a long time.

I was also very much looking forward to playing No Man's Sky as well. However, it has now been delayed until August. I can't really get upset about delays anymore, because I want games to come out as good as they possibly can. I am disappointed, but it's probably for the better.

There's also a very good chance that I will be building a real PC soon, so I may be able to write more about PC games in the future. If anything it will vastly improve the quality of my streams. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I'm 90% sure that I will be making a hot new PC.

I have a lot on my plate for June, so I hope it turns out well! See you next month.

Memorable Melodies: City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2

Song: City Escape

Game: Sonic Adventure 2

Artist: Crush 40

Most people hate all of the 3D Sonic games. To be fair, a good majority of them are hot garbage. Despite that I think that Sonic Adventure 2 was and still is a great game. I am more than willing to fight anyone who disagrees, because it's one of my childhood favorites. You might be thinking that I'm blinded by nostalgia. However, I played the game a few short years ago with some friends and got A rankings on every mission. It's still good.

To be quite honest, City Escape is one of the main reasons I love the game so much. It's up to a game's first level to hook you, and City Escape does just that. It's the name of the level and the song. The stage starts off with a bang as Sonic escapes a prison plane and uses a piece of metal to start snowboarding down city streets to escape from his captors. Somehow the controls actually work well, and you have to time button presses off of huge jumps to do sick tricks in the air. This is all going on while one of the most dope jams around plays in the background.

City Escape is a dumb pop-rock song, and I love it. Crush 40 made a lot of my favorite Sonic songs, which feels kind of odd to say. I loved a lot of the songs so much that I would listen to them at full blast in the game's sound test mode. I have vivid memories of being in my friend Calvin's house blaring this song and rocking out. We also trained up our Chaos a whole bunch. Luckily City Escape was an easy level to run for getting Choa drives.

City Escape is a song that's dumb fun, and I absolutely adore it.