I went quite a bit without playing video games this month, because I went on a week long vacation. Somehow, despite all the relaxation I managed to play a whole lot more in August than I thought I did.
Originally I expected to be playing a whole ton of No Man's Sky. However it didn't turn out to be as captivating as I wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a really cool game, but the "gameplay" aspect of it leaves a lot to be desired. That's why I ended up playing a whole ton of Starbound, which finally exited early access with its official 1.0 release.
Before I get into all the space video game talk let me regale you with tales of how I got homebrew to work on my 3DS and imported the newest Taiko Drum Master! It's game time!
Taiko no Tatsujin: Dondon! Mystery Adventure
Nintendo has been region locking their consoles forever, which is a total bummer. It's especially odd since both Sony and Microsoft have given up on the practice. There are a ton of games, especially on Nintendo platforms that don't make it outside of Japan. I've known of ways to make the 3DS region free for a long time, but the easiest and most common method required a cartridge that costs a ton. Somehow on the newest version of the 3DS firmware an exploit was discovered in the web browser that would let you run unsigned code by visiting a certain website. It's incredibly easy to do. I don't want to get into the specifics here. If you're interested look up 3DS browserhax and menuhax.
Now that my 3DS can play games from any region I made the choice to import a game that I've been wanting for a long time. Long time readers may remember that the last game I imported was Taiko Dum Master V Version for the Vita. The series releases on one console at a time, and for the most recent release it happened to be the 3DS's turn. V version introduced RPG battles to the classic rhythm game formula, but this new game takes it a step further. Instead of just battling Myustery Adventure adds a whole RPG adventure. You still battle enemies, but you also get to walk around an overworld and interact with various characters.
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| Explore the world as a friendly talking drum! |
The core gameplay is the same as it has always been. Red notes indicate head hits and blue notes indicate rim hits. If you're large they require you to hit two buttons of each type. It's easy to learn, but crazy hard to master. It still has the ridiculous Oni difficulty, which I don't know how anyone can realistically do.
Since the whole thing is in Japanese I don't really know what's going on in the story. This means that I get the most satisfaction from just playing the rhythm portion of the game. In the story mode you get into random battles as you walk around. This is fun until you realize that you're going to be hearing the same song over and over in each battle. Eventually the songs change as you advance, but the battles happen with such frequency that you'll grow to get annoyed by the songs rather quickly. Outside of that the battles are interesting. You collect monsters to fight alongside you and they all have their own unique skills. Luckily the google translate app works with pictures now, so I can loosely know what each creature does.
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| Recruit all kinds of monsters to do your bidding in battle! |
So far I like the game quite a bit, but I always like the core gameplay of Taiko Drum Master. It's cool that they're trying to add in more replayability as they continue on with the series, but I don't how valuable it is in the end. Yes, you're doing "different" things in the game, but in reality you're still just playing a Japanese rhythm game. That's totally fine by me.
No Man's Sky
When I first heard about No Man's Sky I became very excited. The thought of exploring a procedurally generated galaxy with all kinds of interesting planets. Then I realized that the team making the game was the same team that had made Joe Danger. For those who are unfamiliar Joe Danger is a sidescrolling motorbike game where you try to do tricks. It controls well and is a lot of fun. As you may have surmised it is vastly different from No Man's Sky in almost every single way. It was because of this that I tempered my expectations. Hello Games had made games before, but nothing on the scale of No Man's Sky.
Apparently most people who bought No Man's Sky didn't adjust their expectations as I did. The backlash I've seen for this game is bonkers. I'd like to say that it's totally undeserved, but it isn't. While I don't think No Man's Sky is a great game I do think that it's a technical feat. While they delivered a sprawling galaxy for players to explore it isn't necessarily "fun" like I wanted it to be. Yes there are technically a Quintilian planets, but when there's nothing to do on them other than mine for resources so you can get to other planets it doesn't make for a very compelling loop.
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| Who likes to mine resources? |
See, that's what happens in the game. You're stranded on a planet and you need to find the resources to fix your downed ship. You can go off on your own, or follow the path of Atlas and be guided to where you need to go. Once you get the resources you can move off the planet and go to another one. Then you, just kind of do the same thing over and over until you get to the center of the universe. You collect resources so that you can upgrade your equipment and collect more resources. There's a little more to do than that, but I'm largely being serious when I say all you do is collect resources.
This wouldn't be so detrimental to the experience if you started off with an appreciable amount of inventory space. Instead you'll be full up within minutes of starting the game. Inventory management isn't fun! Items don't even stack. If you get some carbon, you'll be able to carry a stack of it, but if an NPC gives you a magic ball you can only keep one per inventory slot. You can upgrade your personal inventory and get larger ships with more space, but you still need to be constantly looking in your inventory because there are other systems that require you to do so. You have life support systems that need to be replenished with resources, and your ship's fuel needs to be refilled as well. It's all a bit tedious.
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| You're going to be refilling your ship's fuel a lot. |
When you're not foraging for resources you may come across one of a handful of events. There are settlements you can come across that will either have a person inside, a "puzzle" to solve, or a weird plant infection. I'm not exaggerating these are the three events you can have happen when you come across a settlement. Talking to NPCs is interesting, because at first you don't understand their language. As you explore plenets there are obelisks to find that will teach you a single word of the local alien language when you approach them. So far this has been my favorite part of the game.
Planets will also be inhabited by flora and fauna too. You can scan them and then upload the discoveries to the server for a reward. Each discovery grants some currency you can use to buy more resources. If you want you can name each discovery, but I found myself uploading them with their default names most of the time.
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| No planet I visited looked as cool as this. |
No Man's Sky is really cool. The procedurally generated animals, plants, and landscapes are fun to see. However, that doesn't mean that you'll want to be doing it for long periods of time. This is why people are unhappy with the game. There isn't a lot to do other than explore. The lead on the game Sean Murray gave plenty of interviews prior to the games release and talked about tons of features they were planning. Not all of those features are in the final game, or have not yet been implemented, so now people are accusing Hello Games of false advertising. While I'd normally say this is ludicrous I do think that the marketing campaign behind this game could have been handled better For a very long time most people had absolutely no idea what the game even was. All they heard was that it had almost unlimited content through procedural generation and their minds filled in the rest. No one told them they were wrong, and instead the hype around the game grew to epic proportions. Like I've said a few times, the game is cool. I honestly think that with a few content patches this game could get a lot better, but right now it's just not doing it for me.
Starbound
Years ago I started to play Terraria with my brother and a few friends. I liked it better than Minecraft because it had a clear progression and minute to minute goals. I'm not the kind of person who can just build and have fun for hours at a time. I need clear and directed goals, which Terraria has. One night my brother showed us that a "space Terraria" was in development, which happened to be Starbound. It purported to be a Terraria-like game, but it took place in space with procedurally generated planets. At that time the game was in pre-production, but it eventually came out in early access and has now been fully released.
I played Starbound when it first came out in early access and enjoyed it to a certain extent. I began to tire of seeing the same prison colony on almost every planet and decided to give the game a rest. However, it did what an early access game is supposed to do. It showed me what the base gameplay would be like, so I knew what to expect when the game was completed. Now that the game is released officially I do like it a whole lot more.
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| Building is always more fun with friends. |
To start I don't think that Starbound should be compared directly to No Man's Sky despite the fact that they are both procedurally generated space games. Starbound is meant to be a building game like Terraria and Minecraft. Hell, it looks exactly like Terraria because the lead artist is the same on both games. The comparison I will make though is that Starbound has a whole lot more going on with its planets than No Man's Sky does. To be fair it is a lot harder to make 3D content than it is to make a ton of 2D sprites.
Starbound is almost literally Terraria in space. I know I've said that a few times, but it's 100% accurate. While in Terraria you have a single world, Starbound gives you an insane amount of planets to travel to. You can build on a planet, but you also have your own ship that you can place objects on. Since you'll be traveling across the galaxy it's best to store all of your resources and crafting tables on the thing you'll have with you everywhere. Starbound has an actual story progression to it, which I find to be refreshing. In Terraria all you did was beat bosses in order to unlock the next tier of ore and armor, but here you're on a quest to save the universe from a great threat.
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| This is Earth before it gets totally wiped out. |
In order to save the universe you'll be visiting various planets and scanning objects that pertain to each of the game's races. Once you've done enough you'll be able to enter a mission, fight a boss, and then move on to the next mission. You don't have to though. If you're one of those people who's all about building and crafting sweet items you can do that as well. The story isn't a requirement and you can access everything without interacting with it.
When I find something cool on a planet in Starbound I get genuinely excited. Eventually I started to see some repeating areas, but then there are still new items to discover in chests as well. I feel bad comparing No Man's Sky to a much smaller 2D game, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to like exploring in No Man's Sky. In Starbound there is sweet loot to find, but in No Man's Sky all you can really find are new resources to mine and that's lame!
It's Time For More Cold Steel
God Eater 2 Rage Burst came out a few days ago and I've been playing a ton of that. Ir's the only Monster Hunter-like game that I still enjoy for some reason. Perhaps it's because the extreme anime edge the game has. It also helps that the combat is less nuanced than Monster Hunter, so I can mash like an idiot if I really need to. I've already played it for like 20 hours, so expect more on this anime hunting game in the next edition of game time.
You can also expect me to regale you with tales of Ace Attorney 6 and the 10 billion hour long RPG, Trails of Cold Steel 2. I played through the first game a few months ago with a friend and had a great time with it. It has one of the craziest ending twists that I've ever seen in a video game. I did the bare minimum and it still took me around 60 hours to get through, so I expect the second game to be similar in length. I don't know if I'll have enough time to beat it, but I will definitely be pumped to talk about it regardless.
It's been nice ranting at you all, but it's 4 AM now and I really need to get to sleep. See you next time!
