Game Time - December 2016

Just when you thought 2016 was behind you, here I come with the December edition of Game Time. I honestly meant to do this a few weeks ago, (when it was still 2016) however I got caught up in some other shenanigans. I then went on a trip for five days, and got myself a sweet cold! So for the past week I've either been gone or in bed. That's not a great excuse because I should have been done sooner, but that's the one I'm going with! In 2017 I'm going to try and be more on top of my blog posts!

Normally I use December as a month to finish up smaller games I missed out on earlier in the year. I did a bit of that, but for Christmas I also have myself the gift of an MMO addiction... I decided it would be a good idea to get Final Fantasy XIV on the steam sale and try that out. Now I'm deep down the MMO hole!

The short game I finished was SUPERHOT, and boy did I enjoy the hell out of that game. It's about two hours long, but those two hours were ridiculous and awesome. At some point I also bought Gravity Rush Remastered on a PSN sale and have been chipping away at that.

Let's talk about all of these video games! It's game time!

Final Fantasy XIV

I tend to not play MMO's because I have can get addicted to things very easily. I've gone pretty deep in the past, so I tend to stay away from the genre. It also helps that I generally move from game to game very quickly. I don't generally have a lot of time to stick with one thing for the amount of time an MMO requires. However, I have a few friends who really like FFXIV, and they had been wanting me to try it out. The cost of the game and expansion were $20 during the Steam winter sale, so I took the plunge.

At first I was really not enjoying the game. The story was so slow, and boring that I almost stopped playing. The thing that kept me going was the fact that leveling up makes me feel good. After playing for around ten or so hours the "real story" starts and the story actually got interesting. I started to do cool and challenging missions, and began to have a great time. I've played for around 30 hours and am currently at level 28 on my main job.

It's me, Manny Manatron!

If FFXIV was a traditional MMO in every sense I may have dropped it already. It does have the usual combat. The main attack is an auto attack, so you click on an enemy and your character starts to go ham. The real "challenge" comes from using your skills and managing their cooldowns. I chose a Pugilist, so I use my fists to attack. I chose the class, because you have to pay attention and use the skills in a certain order to get damage buffs. That way I don't just zone out forever while I play.

Where FFXIV differs from other games in the genre is that you can have every class at once if you want to. They all start at level 1, and can go up to level 60 if you have the expansion. Currently my highest level job is a pugilist, but I have also leveled up the rogue job to level 12. This means that at any time I can change to a rogue and use a completely different set or armor, weapons, and skills. The benefit to doing this is that each job gets specific skills and perks that carry over to other classes. It's a really interesting system that reminds me a bit of Bravely Default.

It looks and plays like an MMO

I guess I don't really have a lot to say about this game. I'm enjoying my time with it, but outside of my addictive personality and the job system there isn't a whole lot of unique stuff going on. I just wanted to give the game a shot, because I've been on a bit of a Final Fantasy binge lately. I'm going to keep playing it, but I don't know for how long. I want to try finishing the content in the game currently, but that's a crazy amount of time I could spend playing newer games. I just have a weird compulsion to do everything in MMO's even though most quests are absolutely worthless and don't give you good rewards.

SUPERHOT

You may be thinking the title should be Super Hot, but you're wrong. It's SUPERHOT, and boy is it something to behold. I initially saw someone try out the browser game that the SUPERHOT Team put out to show their initial idea. The game revolves around a simple concept that doesn't sound cool, but when you're experiencing it in practice it's one of the coolest things I've ever done. It's a first person shooter where time moves when you move, and moves very slowly when you stand still. This allows you to pull off amazing feats that never really get old.

Initially I thought that the browser game was a cool tech demo that wouldn't really be able to become something more. I was proven wrong on every level. The setup for the story is that you meet someone in a chatroom and they hook you up with SUPERHOT.EXE. It's a cool new game that everyone's playing. You boot it up to be greeted by white environments filled with red polygonal men who are trying to kill you. Depending on the level you may start with a gun, or nothing. If you have a gun, then you can shoot your foes until you run out of bullets. The best option when you run out of bullets is to throw your empty gun, which will cause your enemy to reel and throw their gun into the air, which you can then catch and use. That description probably doesn't sound very exciting, but imagine pulling off that string in slow motion, and feeling like a badass. Then when you've cleared the stage your character inexplicably chucks whatever they're holding and the words SUPER, then HOT, accompanied by chanting of said words will happen until you click to start the next stage. It's awesome.

Shoot your enemies.

Outside of guns you can also pick up objects in the environment to throw, or punch your enemies to death. A bullet will kill an enemy in one shot causing them to shatter. Throwing objects will cause them to drop their gun for you take take, the same goes for throwing your gun at them. There are various points where you will also get a sword, which can be thrown for one hit kills, or used to kill enemies by swinging until it breaks. In my opinion the sword, and other melee weapons like the baseball bat are the most fun to use.

When I use the words first person shooter to describe SUPERHOT I'm only using them to describe what you're doing. You're shooting people in first person. Despite that fact it actually plays more like a puzzle game due to the time mechanics. The fact that you can essentially pause time means that you can think your way out of most scenarios. If you're skillful enough you can dodge bullets, or even shoot them out of the air with your own. If you get hit and die, then you can start the level over almost instantaneously. Each level offers a completely new challenge.

Melee weapons are my favorite.

While the story is over in about two hours, it felt like no time at all because I was having so much fun. Once it's over you unlock challenges like katana only runs, and things of that sort. There is also an endless mode which you can use to test your skills. The story is interesting and will sometimes have you quitting the game to chat with the person who gave you the game, and then going back in. It takes some pretty weird turns, but it just adds to the game's extreme sense of style. Overall SUPERHOT is an experience I would recommend to anyone.

Gravity Rush Remastered

Gravity Rush is one of the Vita only games that I was interested in playing. When I got one I tried to play the game for a few hours, but had to put it down. I loved the characters and the world, but using the gyroscope to control the main character Kat's gravity power was not something I wanted to do at all. Lucky for me the game was re-released on the PS4, but I almost let that pass me by as well. The only reason I'm playing it now, so far after its release is that Gravity Rush 2 comes out in a few short weeks and it looks amazing. In order to be ready for it I decided it was time to play through the original.

Gravity rush follows the amnesiac Kat who finds herself in the unfamiliar town of Hecksville with her gravity controlling cat Dusty. The central crux of the game is using gravity powers to traverse the world and destroy floating enemies called the Nevi. I really enjoy the gameplay now that I don't have to move the Vita around like a moron. On the PS4 you can just push R1 to activate Kat's abilities and then aim a reticle with the right stick to get you where you need to go. You're traversing a lot of floating islands and going to high areas, while upside down. It's like a super intense version of Mario Galaxy. There are often times where I forget if I'm actually on the ground or not so I have to look at Kat's scarf for reference.

The gravity powers are fun to use.

Throughout the world there are crystals you can collect that are used as the currency for upgrading your abilities. These crystals can also be gained by completing challenged like racing through checkpoints, or defeating a ton of enemies. It seems like none of the upgrades  are necessary to complete the game, but they sure make things a lot more fun. You can upgrade things like your falling speed, kick attack, and gravity meter. It's always good to be able to use your powers for longer.

The thing that strikes me about Gravity Rush the most is the world and its characters. The models and the world of Hecksville look beautiful. There are a lot of bright colors. Each district of the city has its own style, so the visuals change greatly over the course of the game. As a character Kat is very charming. Despite the fact that she's lost her memory she is very witty and genuinely funny. A lot of games recently get a little too heavy on the Internet humor and memes, but Gravity Rush is able to be funny in its own right.

For a remaster of a Vita game, this looks incredible.

I am about 3/4's of the way through now and the story is really heating up. New characters have introduced themselves and I actually don't really know where the story is going to end up, but I'm happy to go along for the ride. There's something about Gravity Rush that's super endearing to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Yes, the world and characters are great, but there's something about the package as a whole that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside while I'm playing it. I look forward to the second game!

2017

We're a few weeks into 2017 now, and I have yet to do any serious gaming, Like I said I've been on a trip for the majority of it and now I have a stupid cold. As we speak I'm hacking up a lung and it's very unpleasant.

In two weeks I will start my 2017 gaming binge by diving into Gravity Rush 2, and Yakuza Zero. I am super excited for all the games coming out this year. The Nintendo Switch is going to be detailed tomorrow night, and I'm getting super hype about it. I set my money aside as soon as the NX was announced, and the rumors are that it'll be cheaper than the $500 I put aside for it. If that's true it means I'll be able to get more games at launch than I anticipated!

Man, this year is going to rule and I seriously cannot wait!

Game Time - November 2016

As with every year November is when the holiday season really begins to ramp up; It's the busiest time of year for me at work, and my family and close friends start coming around a lot more frequently. It's an awesome time of year that brings me a lot of warm feelings.

Part of why I enjoy November so much is because games I want to play tend to come out. This year it was especially true. Pokemon games come out semi-annually now, but it's not every time that a new generation begins. Rumors of the 7th generation of Pokemon have been swirling for over a year now. It didn't help my excitement that when the demo came out in October almost the entire game leaked onto the Internet....

So yeah, I played a whole ton of Pokemon. Somehow I also ended up engaging with a decent amount of Watch Dogs 2, despite telling myself I wasn't going to get it. I have way too many games I started this year, but didn't finish. I guess I was too interested in seeing how it turned out. I'm not done with it yet, but I think it's an okay game. Not amazing, just okay.

Then you have the crown jewel of this month, which is Final Fantasy XV. The troubled development cycle made it take around ten years to come out. To be honest I never thought I'd actually get to play it, but here I am playing it. It's actually running on the TV next to me right now.

Oh yeah, I bought a sweet 50' 4K TV on Thanksgiving. It was on sale for $328 and I just couldn't pass it up. Now I can actually take advantage of my PS4 Pro, which is really neat.

There's so much I have to say about these games. I could actually spill out thoughts about FFXV until I explode, but I'll save you from that tragic fate. Instead I will outline my basic experiences here and then write up a Game Time ID when I have finished the game. I still have a bunch to say now though, so let'e get into it. It's game time!

Watch Dogs 2

I actually didn't think the original Watch Dogs was a terrible game. It was an open world game. Like all open world games it was mostly about shooting your foes, but you could also hack things with your phone to take them out as well. More often than not that meant incapacitating people by exploding things near them. It was a novel idea, but it didn't have much depth. The real issue with the game was the main character Aiden Pierce and the story surrounding him. He's a completely unrelatable character and an all around asshole. He uses his own sister as bait at one point. It didn't help that everything was hyper serious. There was absolutely no comic relief, which left me with a very sour taste.

Now it's a few years later and we have Watch Dogs 2. The good news is that the characters and story are worlds better than the original. You play as Marcus, who is a young hacker trying to change the world in a positive way by taking on big data. He's a regular guy who loves technology and bad movies. He's relatable and interacts with the other characters in the world in a fun way. The game's tone overall is a lot less self serious, which is exactly as it should be. The game knows it's goofy and uses that to its advantage. The issue I have is that the story is very disjointed, much like most Ubisoft games are now. You learn a lot about Marcus and his crew at DedSec, but the overarching story jumps all over the place. The game constantly introduces new characters with no explanation of who they are, and then proceeds to not really clue you in afterwards. It's frustrating, but the characters make me forget about the seemingly non-cohesive plot.

Marcus is a pretty likable guy.

The gameplay has both changed quite a bit, and not very much at all. What I mean by that is that Watch Dogs 2 is still an open world game. You can drive cars, take cover, and shoot at a bunch of people. My issue with the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2 is that the shooting feels much worse than the original game. I eventually got used to the combat, but Marcus doesn't feel powerful like Aiden did. Before I could go into any situation guns blazing and come out unscathed, whereas with Marcus I go down almost instantly. I guess this fits with the character, but it's still frustrating when I get caught in a stealth section and can't really do a whole lot about it.

The cool changes come in the form of hacking. You can still hack nearby objects with your phone nothing has really changed in that regard. There are some cool new features like the ability to call gang hits on enemies. This makes is so that gang members come in and start shooting, which alleviates the need for you to shoot yourself. What's really cool though is that you can complete every mission without having Marcus enter the mission area himself. He is equipped with a small rover and a drone. The rover can jump, and do physical hacks in place of Marcus. The drone can fly around buildings and hack anything that doesn't require physical contact. This means that as long as you're not seen by the enemy you can do everything with these two tools at your disposal. The only downside is that if they get shot down or blown up, then you have to wait an oddly long amount of time before you can bring them out again. Regardless it's a really cool concept that works well.

The rover adds a whole new way to tackle each mission.

I was personally hoping for Watch Dogs 2 to be a huge step above its predecessor. Instead it takes incremental steps forward. It makes me worry for the future of the franchise. I don't really know where they go from here. So far I'm really enjoying my time in the game, and think I'll actually try to finish it. Initially I wasn't really digging it, but as I got more skills and access to the drone I began to have a much better time. It's definitely a lot better than the original.

Pokemon Sun/Moon

Pokemon is one of those magical franchises for me that will never get old. Despite the fact that you essentially do the same thing in each iteration I can't get enough of trying to capture all of the little critters that I can. However, this time the adventure is actually quite different. Prior to release I was a bit skeptical, but now that I've put 60 hours into the game and completed it I can safely say that Pokemon Sun and Moon are great games that do a lot right! Long running franchises like Pokemon walk a razor thin line where they need to try new things to pull in new people, while not changing the things that long time fans will get upset about. Obviously someone always gets upset, but I honestly think that Game Freak did a wonderful job this time around.

This time around you play as a Pokemon trainer who has just moved from the Kanto region to the beautiful island paradise of Alola. Surprise, it's basically Hawaii! The journey takes you across four different tropical islands, which are all very different in terms of what they have to offer. It's cool, because large cities take a back seat for more lush natural environments. I feel stupid every time I say this, but it's the first time that the world feels like it's actually inhabited by both humans and Pokemon instead of it just being a world where humans live and Pokemon are their battle slaves. You interact with Pokemon in the wild, and see them walking around way more than in any other entry in the franchise and I love that!

People and Pokemon live in harmony in the Alola region.

For those of you who have played Pokemon before you know what the goal is usually to collect eight gym badges and then take on the Elite Four. In Alola that is not the case, because they have not established their Pokemon League yet. Instead you travel across the islands in search of trials. Some trials are battles with powered up wild Pokemon, while others have you collecting items. It's a nice change of pace. Each trial you complete awards you with a Z-crystal, which allows you to use Powerful new Z-moves. Normally Pokemon have four moves, but if they are holding a Z-crystal of their type then they can use a powerful Z-move once a battle to do a ton of damage, or increase the buff they receive. It sounds simple, but it adds a whole new layer of strategy just as mega evolution did in the last generation.

The plot is slightly different from standard Pokemon fare, in that it's actually a real story. Since Black and White Game Freak has been trying to make their stories have more depth, but I think they truly succeed in Sun and Moon. You're introduced to a host of interesting characters over the course of the game such as the lovable Professor Kukui, the shirtless professor, who I genuinely was interested in by the end of the game. While the central plot ends up being essentially the same as other entries in the franchise it builds up the characters and world they live in, in a way that has yet to be seen in a Pokemon game to date.

Battle's look better than ever before.

The number of new Pokemon is around 80, which is low compared to previous generations. I think that the level of quality is slightly higher this time around though. That can just be said for the games in general as well. The visuals are better than ever before and everything is done with a flourish. It's funny, because as I'm writing this and thinking about the game a smile is creeping across my face. I have always loved Pokemon and it warms my heart to see the franchise continue to move forward instead of stagnate. If you've never played a Pokemon game before there has never been a better time to jump in and immerse yourself in the world.

P.S. Team Skull is the best

Final Fantasy XV

In the ten years since the announcement of Final Fantasy Versus XIII I tempered my expectations. At the time I was beyond excited, but as the years drew on and the game wasn't really shown I tried to ease my excitement. Years went by with no news, and then in 2013 the game re-emerged as Final Fantasy XV. At that point it had been so long I was no longer able to hype myself up. I just didn't believe it was every going to actually come out. Now we're here in 2016 and I'm playing the game. I still can hardly believe it, but I definitely am playing it. However, much to my dismay I am not enjoying it as much as I wanted to. It's a very interesting game. There are a lot of great ideas, and a lot of horrendous ones intertwined into what is a pretty good game.

Yes, I realize I said I wasn't having a very good time and that's true. Personally when I go into a Final Fantasy game, or really any JRPG I'm looking for a semi-compelling story with well developed characters. Final Fantasy XV has one of those things so far, and that's compelling characters. Prince Noctis starts off as a spoiled brat, but seems to be opening up and realizing that he has a responsibility as the crown prince. It helps that the central focus of the game is traveling around the world on a road trip with your bros. The story on the other hand is a disjointed mess that has yet to pull me in. As of right now I'm halfway through, so I'll wait to pass judgement until the very end. However, I can't really see it shaping up. For starters if you didn't watch the prequel movie (Kingsglaive) you would have literally no idea what's going on in the game and understand next to nothing about the world it takes place in. That sucks. I get that sometimes supplemental material is cool, but when something is an integral part of understanding the story of your 40+ hour JRPG maybe put it in the game... I'm saying this as someone who watched the film. Then on top of that the game itself starts off with little to no introduction. That's okay though, because there's a 40 page prequel novel PDF that you can download to see what happened beforehand....

These are the characters you'll be seeing the most of. (Left to right: Gladio, Ignis, Noctis, Prompto)

Aside from the ancillary content I don't think the story in FFXV is told very well, but that's not entirely the game's fault. See, because it's an open world game. I like open world games, and think that they can tell good stories, it's just that most of them don't. Instead they focus on making the open world compelling while putting the story on the back burner. This causes pacing issues right off the bat. I did the first two story chapters which took about 2 hours, and then did sidequests for about six. That means that instead of doing the super urgent story matter I needed to attend to I messed about collecting monster bits for people at a diner. That's my own fault though. Let's look at a different scenario now. I finish my sidequesting and do the main plot again. I end up doing three story chapters in the course of 20 minutes with little to no explanation. The pacing is all over the place. I'm not even going to get into how half the story chapters come out of nowhere and seem like they're remnants from a completely different game. That's a story for a different time.

What about the gameplay you ask? I want to be joking when I say that for combat you essentially hold a single button to win, but it's true. You hold the attack button to do combos, and if you hold it forever Noctis will keep going until he gets hit. The longer the combo the more damage you do, and you'll eventually stagger the enemy and break parts of its body. The fun part of combat comes from Noctis' ability to teleport and change weapons rapidly. He has special powers, because he is one of the chosen kings in a destined line. This means that he can throw his weapons and teleport directly to them. You can lock onto an enemy and push the warp button to do a warp strike at them. This uses mana, which can be recharged by standing still or hanging from a warp point. Warp points are scattered around the battle, and act as ways to rapidly recover both HP and mana. This mechanic feels cool, and looks awesome, but isn't totally necessary. So far I have been able to get through every battle by holding circle and occasionally dodging. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if you hold the dodge button you can essentially dodge every single attack forever. This trivializes all combat, and it doesn't help that if you don't mainline the story and do sidequests you become over leveled immediately. Despite all this there is actually some depth to the system for those who are willing to look for it, but there's really no reason to unless the post game bosses are absolutely insane.

Sadly battles are not very challenging.

I feel so conflicted about Final Fantasy XV. On the one hand I find the story to be a disjointed mess, and combat to be a dull slog. However, on the other hand I like exploring the world, driving along the roads listening to the radio, and camping under the stars with my bros. It's a beautiful and flawed game that has a lot of heart at its core. The open world and the story often seem at odds with each other, and remnants of what the game used to be still remain. Keep in mind I'm only halfway through the game and it apparently stops being open world at some point and becomes completely linear. I don't understand how such a shift could possibly happen, but I can't wait to find out how it's done. I'm enjoying myself enough to keep playing, but it's definitely not the masterpiece I was secretly hoping for after ten long years.

The Wait is Over

The Sony exclusive The Last Guardian was announced right around the same time as FFXV. Similarly people thought it was never going to come out, but in just a few short hours UPS will be delivering it to me. It's crazy that two games that have been in development hell for almost a decade will have come out within two weeks of each other.

While I have enjoyed Team ICO games in the past I am cautiously optimistic about The Last Guardian. While FFXV seems to have changed greatly from what it originally was, The Last Guardian seems to have kept the old PS2 style gameplay it was shown off with originally. All I know is that I love how lifelike the weird bird-dog animal is and I want to give it a hug. I really hope you can hug it!

With that said look forward to another exciting edition of Game Time next month! I'll be putting it up right around the same time as my game of the year list and podcast, which you won't want to miss!

Game Time - October 2016

This month I'm a bit behind schedule, because I went on a short trip and streamed for Extra Life. For the trip I visited a friend halfway across the country which gave me a few hours on airplanes to play World of Final Fantasy. During Extra Life I played a bunch of multiplayer games with my friends, so nothing new to report there. We did however end up raising $269.69 for the Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital in Syracuse, New York. That's over double what we did last year! I always have a lot of fun doing it. The archive will be up on YouTube eventually, but I have to do some magic to get a 24 hour video up there. If for some reason you still want to donate it should still be up through December at www.extra-life.org/participant/gtwm.

Now let's talk about the hot new games I've been playing! I started off the month with the always hot Yo-Kai Watch 2. Level-5 churned out the second game here in the U.S. less than a year after the first one. It's a marked improvement over the first in almost every way. I played it way more than the original because of that.

Then a few weeks later I jumped right back into single player Rock Band, with the release of Rock Band Rivals. I still play multiplayer almost every week with a few friends, so the new modes were cool to check out. I do think that the single player additions are the true draw with this expansion though.

Finally, against my better judgement I ordered World of Final Fantasy on the Vita. I have been trying to be better with saving money recently, but I really wanted something new to play on the plane to my friend's house. I played the demo on PS4 and caved almost immediately. I think the game has a lot of charm, but the Vita version is pretty rough in spots.

It's game time!

Yo-Kai Watch 2

As most people know by now Yo-Kai Watch took Japan by storm a few years ago. It's popularity has waned a little, but it's still popular on a level that most games can only dream of reaching. For those who aren't familiar with the series you are a child with a magical watch (or pendant if you're playing as a girl) that allows them to see Japanese ghosts known as Yokai. The game revolves around you befriending the Yokai and using them in battle against other Yokai.

This game got railed in reviews for being too similar to the original game, which is certainly a valid criticism. In fact the first few hours are almost exactly the same as the original game, which is kind of a bummer. For the sake of this post I will be referring to the main character of the game as a male named Nate, because that's what I played through the game as. To start off, Nate gets the Yokai Watch stolen by two evil witches. He then forgets everything he knew about Yokai. In a strange turn of events he gets the watch back and relives the first few hours of the original game. He befriends Whisper the Yokai butler, and Jibanyan the cat who has a personal vendetta against cars. It's frustrating, because I just wanted to get to the new stuff. It's definitely good for people who have not played the series before though, because it allows you to get used to the town. You're forced to learn your way around, because you have to hoof it around town on foot until you unlock fast travel quite a ways into the game.

There are trains now. They're painfully slow!

The play area in Yokai Watch is the town of Springdale. It's not an exceedingly large area, and you get used to it quickly. Each area is very memorable and filled with detail. That's one of the things I love about Level-5 games. The places they make are just as big as they need to be and aren't filled with useless fluff. There are a few new areas in the game, but I didn't think they were super great. The crux of the story revolves around time travel, so you have access to almost every area in both the past and present.

While most people disagree, I actually like the combat in Yokai Watch, and the second game makes that a bit deeper. You have six Yokai in battle at a time. Three in the front and three in the back. The front row is attacking, while the back row is doing nothing unless they have special abilities. Your Yokai will attack and do spells on their own based on their personality and abilities. They're all on a wheel which can be rotated to fit the situation you're in. Bosses are my favorite part, because they test your mettle in ways the regular battles do not. You have the ability to place pins on specific enemies or boss parts, which makes your Yokai focus their attacks wherever the pin is. In boss battles this system is crucial, because you need to attack specific parts to stop special attacks or open up weak points. During the story your watch gets upgraded and adds some new abilities. Normally you can do special moves called soultimates, which expend a Yokais soul gauge to do a special attack. You have to successfully complete a mini-game in order to do the attack. With the new watch you can choose to do a moxie attack, which makes you complete the same mini-games but it expends the soul gauge of the two surrounding Yokai as well in order to power up the attack. I'm going to be honest, I never did this a lot. What I did end up doing is poking the enemy a whole bunch. If your enemy has a status effect you can poke it to do any one of the following: Increase affection, get more money, or do damage. These may seem like small additions, but they add a lot to the gameplay.

There are tons of new Yokai to befriend. Lie-in-Heart is my favorite.

The story is what doesn't really do it for me. The first quarter is a rehash of the original game. Once it moves to the time travel stuff it ends super quickly. It then transitions into a bunch of filler until you randomly have to go back in time again, which quickly leads up to the final boss who has no real motivation to be evil as far as I can tell. What bothers me about the story of Yokai Watch is that there are never any great interactions. Yes, Nate can talk to Yokai and control them , but there is no one else like him. Nate is experiencing all of this stuff and no other human (with a few rare exceptions) knows what's going on. I'm pretty sure something along these lines happens in the third game, so I'll have to wait for that.

I like Yokai Watch 2, but I now more than ever don't think it'll catch on in the U.S. like it did in Japan. It's a cool game, but I feel like a lot of the designs are holding it back. One of the main reasons I feel this way is that I don't remember most of the Yokai's names other than the main story related ones. The names are often lame puns that just didn't stick with me. I think that Yokai Watch has a lot of charm, and a great amount of detail, but its frustrating elements outweigh the positives a lot of the time. It's a pain in the ass to befriend Yokai, post game leveling takes too long, and the story is about as lame as it can get. Perhaps the third game can change all the issues I had with it and elevate it to a whole new level of popularity.

Rock Band Rivals

I've been playing Rock Band 4 on an almost weekly basis since it was released. Every Friday a few of my friends and I get together and rock out. For the past few months I've really only been playing the multiplayer with them and given up on single player. Rivals added a whole bunch of awesome features that got me right back into single player.

I'm going to be honest here. I love Rock Band 4, but it was a technical mess. Menus stuttered and everything took way too long to load. I literally couldn't stay connected to the in game store for more than five minutes and the leaderboards wouldn't update with my score half the time. When I first booted up Rivals my mind was absolutely blown. Everything ran silky smooth! The menus and in game store worked as intended, and even the animations when playing a song were smoother than they were before.

Getting together a crew is my favorite part of Rivals.

So previously I had beaten every show in the career mode, so there was literally no other content for me to play alone other than playing songs for high scores. I do enjoy that, but it eventually wears thin. With the Rivals expansion everything I do earns me EXP which is the best way to get me more interested in something. Now I level up just for playing songs! That's cool! The game also now measures your skill level on an instrument from 1 to 1,000. It made me feel good when my rating on guitar was 850. You can also now make a crew and gain experience by completing certain challenges and playing certain songs. These Rivals Crews give new life to the competitive Rock Band scene. Now people can recruit up to 29 other players for their crew and compete to get high scores every week. It gives new reason to try and get good scores on songs, which is really cool.

There is also a new story mode called Rockudrama, which I didn't end up liking very much. It's a documentary about the band you've created that follows their beginning to their eventual fade out from glory. It's presented in FMV sequences that are supposed to be funny, but I rarely laughed. There's something about FMV that really rubs me the wrong way. In old games it was trying to be serious, but since it was so low budget it ended up being hilarious. When it's in modern games I feel like it's often trying way too hard to be campy and funny, but it never really lands for me. Rocudrama is no different. It's a long series of people trying to make jokes work, but instead I found it to be really painful. At least it was fun to have a goal and unlock new venues and items.

This is Cool Terry. He's a character in Rockudrama. This is what you can expect.

Overall Rivals has impressed me a lot, except for the issues I've been having in multiplayer. The game ran and still runs perfectly for me alone. However, once we add in more instruments everything goes to shit. In case you've never played a rhythm game before, being on rhythm is very important. You know what ruins that? Constant hitching! For some reason the game randomly begins to hitch in multiplayer! We'll be playing, then the graphics will just freeze up and then skip ahead a little bit. This is absolutely unacceptable in a game where timing is literally everything. It makes the game unplayable. Restting the console works for a little bit before it starts happening again. I asked on the Rock Band Reddit if this was happening to anyone else, and it absolutely is. I really hope they fix this soon, or no one is going to want to play this with me anymore, which is a total bummer.

World of Final Fantasy

When I first saw World of Final Fantasy I convinced myself that I hated it. There's something about weird little chibi characters that really rubs me the wrong way. Then I found out that it's basically Pokemon, but with Final Fantasy monsters and fan service. Much to my chagrin I played the demo on PS4 and really liked what I played. You play turn based battles where two sets of three monsters are stacked on one another. The main characters are twins Lann and Reynn. They can be regular human size, and weird chibi size. There are three sizes of monsters you can get, small, medium, and large. When the twins are small they are medium size, and when they're big they are large. Each monster stack consists of one small, one medium, and one large monster. When the monsters are stacked they are stronger, because their skills, stats, and resistances pool together. The enemies are also stacked on occasion, so certain skills can be used to knock them down and attack them individually. The monsters can do the same to you, so you need to be careful.

In terms of combat it's pretty standard JRPG fare. I guess even the collecting of monsters is pretty standard now in most games. They're called mirages, I guess I should have mentioned that before. Collecting them is actually the entire goal of the game. Lann and Reynn wake up to find that everyone in their world is gone and they are alone. A god-like figure comes and tells them that they're lost their memories. In order to get their memories back she tells them that they have to go to another world called Grimoire and collect as many mirages as they can. Apparently they used to be crazy powerful mirage masters. I don't know if that's true or not, because I haven't beaten it yet.

They're so cute it sickens me!

So, most people in Grimoire are small. but the mirage masters are bigger and are referred to as Jiants. Yes, with a J. This means that the main characters often hide their true form, but you can switch between the two whenever you want. It's weird, because this game reminds me a lot of Kingdom Hearts, but with just Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy characters are scattered throughout the world, and they help out the twins in many different ways. Certain characters can actually be called upon in battle to perform powerful attacks. Generally a piece of music from their game plays when they show up, which is awesome as a fan of the franchise. Most monsters will be familiar too, which is always fun to see.

I don't have a lot to say about the game, mainly because I don't feel very strongly about it. I'm kind of shuffling through it in small chunks just to get to the end. I think it's interesting and I occasionally get pangs of nostalgia, but it's just alright. The plot isn't very interesting to me yet,  but I'm also only a handful of hours in. Hopefully it ends up blowing my mind, but right now it just seems like standard JRPG fare.

You battle as sweet stacks!

The thing that does drive me nuts is how bad the Vita version is. Man, does it not run well. Initially I played the demo on PS4 and it was totally fine. The Vita demo came out a few days later and it was noticeably not fine. The models are a lot more jagged as you'd expect from a Vita game, but it also doesn't run at a steady frame rate. In most parts of the game it runs at below 30FPS, and it gets even worse when your characters are big. It's nothing too horrendous, but it just doesn't feel good. What really bums me out is that the menus run slow. Often times I'll want to pop in and look at something only to have it hitch for a bit longer than it should. I get it, because it's on Vita, but man this should run better. However, the most egregious thing to me is that the voice acting isn't on the cartridge. That's right! You have to download the voices! For getting the day one edition you are given a code to download the Japanese voices. I was fine with this, because VO takes up a lot of space. Lots of games only offer English voices to save space. I booted up the game and quickly discovered something was wrong. Turns out you had to download the English voices too! Yes they're a free download, but I wasn't warned before starting the game that there would be no VO and to make it even better the download wasn't available on the store yet when I started playing! AGHHH! The download is just under 1GB, and Vita memory cards still cost a ridiculous amount. Do yourself a favor and buy the PS4 version.

It's happening!

I don't really know what I'll be playing this month, but I do know that Final Fantasy XV comes out on the 29th. To be honest I might wait a week into December and just write a thing about Final Fantasy XV, because man does it look awesome. I've tried so hard to keep my expectations down, but everything I've seen recently looks very impressive.

EDIT: I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT POKEMON! MAAAN, POKEMON IS GOING TO BE DOPE!

I am also getting the PS4 Pro on the 10th, so I can tell you all a little bit about that as well.

See you next time!

Game Time - September 2016

The crisp fall air is upon us, and so are tons of video game releases! As I said in last month's Game Time I had started playing God Eater 2 right at the end of August. I played it a whole bunch, but Sadly didn't finish it. I might go back to it at some point.

On September 6th Trails of Cold Steel 2 came out, and I tried to play it as much as possible. However, the Legend of Heroes series is known for having its games be ludicrously long. I played Trails of Cold Steel a few months ago and it took me around 60 hours to finish. The second game is a lot more open, so I have a feeling it's going to take me a whole lot longer.

On September 9th Ace Attorney 6 came out, so I put Trails on hold. Over the course of a week I put 40 hours into the game, and completed it. At first I was worried, because the game wasn't really grabbing me, but by the end I was super into it.

Now that we're in the heat of fall video games are coming out at a rapid pace. It gets even more crazy, because I actually want to play a bunch of them. I'm using up a great deal of my spare time, and money. Since there's a bunch I should be playing let's get right into this. It's game time!

God Eater 2

I initially played God Eater Rage Burst on the PSP. I played it for hours and hours with a friend. His PSP's analog nub broke and we never ended up finishing all the extra content. I definitely did enjoy the hell out of it though. That was before I had gotten into Monster Hunter, so I was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy God Eater 2 because of that. After playing the real thing I fell out of love with all the less complicated Monster Hunter clones I came across. Luckily God Eater 2 is just different enough to hold my interest.

At the most base level you could call anime Monster Hunter. That's mostly true, but it definitely plays a lot differently. You play as a person called a God Eater. God Eaters are essentially the protectors in a post-apocalyptic world that has been overrun by monsters. The monsters are essentially gods (duh). They were experimented on and given a wrist band called a God Arc. This allows them to summon a huge weapon, which is powerful enough to slay the beasts threatening humanity. These God Arcs can actually eat the monsters to gain power, which is one of the core game mechanics. If the monster you're fighting is alive and you bite into it you'll be powered up. If the monster is down and you eat it that's how you harvest its part.

There are new weapon types like the scythe in God Eater 2

God Eater 2 plays very much like the original, but now there are more monsters and a few more weapon types. Unlike Monster Hunter, God Eater tends to be very forgiving. While animation priority is still a thing, it doesn't matter very much. You can take a lot of hits, and your teammates can easily heal you. I'd describe this as a very arcadey experience. You don't always have to use a lot of strategy and can often just mash your way to victory. Obviously the difficulty ramps up over time, but it never gets anywhere near as hard as Monster Hunter.

One thing God Eater has over Monster Hunter is an actual plot. The first game was great and had a lot of deep characters to interact with. So far the second game is interesting but has not quite hooked me yet. There's a lot of creepy characters in this one, and a ton of religious symbolism. It's interesting, but very little is actually happening. At least it's diving into the back story of every character, but it goes a bit too slow for its own good. There have been times when the story starts going somewhere, but then immediately takes a sharp turn into some weird filler stuff.

This is the crew you'll be rolling with for the duration of the game.

Overall I think that God Eater 2 is a solid game. At the time of writing this you can also get the first game for free when you purchase the second, so it's a good way to get on board with the series. It's a competent hunting game that deals with style over substance. It's not the most complex game around, but it's fun to hold its own.

Trails of Cold Steel 2

Trails of Cold Steel 2 is hard to talk about. The first game takes a hard turn at the end, so any information about the second game, even trailers, spoil a ton about what happens in the first game. The last few hours of the original game absolutely blew my mind. I saw almost none of it coming, so if for some reason you want to play the original, then do not ready any further. You have been warned!

Spoilers start here:

A friend of mine played Trails of Cold Steel at the beginning of 2016 and absolutely loved it. The issue he ran into was he loved it so much, but had no one to talk to about it. That led to me playing through the whole game while he watched. At first I was a little iffy on the game, but in the end it ended up growing on me, The first game focuses on a group of kids at Thors Military Academy that are chosen for a special class called class seven, They were chosen because they come from vastly differing backgrounds. You spend most of your time at the school, but go on field studies as well. Throughout the course of the game you learn a ton about each character in your class. The reason I ended up liking the game so much is that each character is characterized very well. It's not like most JRPGs where only a few characters are built upon, which is great.

We're here to talk about the second game though, and man is it a lot different. The end of the first game has the main character Rean Schwarzer essentially getting his own Gundam. Seriously, he receives a giant humanoid robot, which he can then pilot. So now outside of the regular turn based battles of the original game you also have to fight in your robot, Valimar. These battles differ in that you can attack the enemy robot in one of three places. If you attack the weak point, then you do more damage and can perform a follow-up attack. Yes, there were two of these battles at the end of the first game but you do them much more often now.

Valimar, the Ashen Knight.

No longer are you at school, because now the nation is engaged in all out war. The noble faction has raised its own army, which is trying to take over the entire country. They assassinated Chancellor Osbourne, who was a proponent of making everyone equal at any means necessary. It sounds good at first, but you find out that he's actually done some pretty heinous stuff in the name of equality. It's a good old fashioned class struggle and class seven is at the center. Instead of learning in a classroom you need to travel around the country and try to keep everyone safe. Class Seven decides to remain neutral in the war and just try to keep civilians safe. This means that you go around the country and try to recruit other students from Thors to your cause.

What's crazy is that I've already played the game for 50 hours and I don't think I;m even halfway through the game. While the original was more or less linear, this game allows you to travel pretty much anywhere at any time. It takes a bit to open up, but once it does there is almost too much content.

All of Class 7 gets hot new clothing!

The issue that I'm having with the game is that it's not always holding my interest. The first game was paced rather slowly in order to learn about everyone, so I thought that the second game would have awesome stuff popping off all the time. That isn't necessarily the case. I've taken two breaks from playing it to complete other games, because I don't want to burn out. There are so many new characters that seem cool, but so far they haven't done a whole lot. Things are picking up where I am now, but it's still not making me as excited as I would like. Hopefully there's an insane third act plot twist in this one as well. I enjoy the game's battle system and characters, so I'm excited to eventually finish this game.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirits of Justice

I absolutely love the original Ace Attorney trilogy. I had always wanted to play the franchise, but the DS cartridges got pretty expensive back in the day. Capcom decided to re-release them on the Wii virtual console and I was able to net all three for a reasonable price. Prior to that I had never really played any visual novels, but ended up getting sucked right in. Ace Attorney may be mostly reading, but you actually have to use deductive reasoning and interact with the game. It has gotten me to try out a bunch more visual novel series and I am very grateful for it. However, even after playing other games like it I still think that Ace Attorney is my favorite.

The original trilogy is incredible. It ended in a way that gave me a feeling of closure. However, at the time I started playing the games the 4th entry in the series Apollo Justice had already been released. Most people really didn't like it, so I was hesitant to play it. In the end I did and ended up being one of the few people who really likes Apollo Justice. It seemed like the series was done for, but Capcom decided to try and revive the series with a 5th game. It brought Phoenix back to the forefront, but also had Apollo. It ended up being successful enough for a 6th game to be released, which is why we're here now.

OBJECTION!

Spirits of Justice is the end of the second Ace Attorney trilogy, and like the first trilogy it did not disappoint. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Ace Attorney is a game about lawyers. Phoenix Wright runs an agency where he hires people who have special talents. It turns out that included his magician daughter Trucy, and two defense attorneys Apollo Justice and Athena Psyches. Apollo has been around for a bit, but Athena was introduced in the previous game. She's still a bit green, but she seems like she's coming into her own now.

The original trilogy dealt a lot with spirit mediums, spirit channeling, and fantastical things in general, Apollo Justice, and the 5th game moved away from the spirit obsession, but the 6th game i right back at it, I guess with a name like "Spirits of Justice" you probably already figured that out. It's a bit hard to explain if you've never played the series, but Phoenix used to have a partner named Maya Fey. She's a spirit medium in training, She is the head of a village of spirit mediums called Kurain Village. Spirits of Justice opens with Phoenix going to the country of Khura'in to see Maya who is almost done with her spirit training. In order to truly run her village she must master spirit channeling. This sounds really stupid, but Kurain and Khura'in are two different places. Khurai'in is a different country in the world of Ace Attorney.

The new prosecutor Nayuta is from Khura'in

Almost as soon as Phoenix steps off the plane into the distant land of Khura'in he gets ropes into a murder trial. He quickly finds out that the legal system doesn't quite work the same in the foreign land. The royal priestess performs a seance with the deceased, which allows her to see their final moments. From that they determine whether or not the accused is guilty. However, due to a ludicrous thing called the Defense Culpability Act there are no lawyers. This is because under the act defense attorneys are given the same punishment as the accused should they lose. Phoenix being the upstanding guy he is ends up doing the trial anyways, and ends up getting the first not guilty verdict in 23 years!

From there the story spools out into a crazy adventure. Since it's a visual novel finding out the story is the entire game, so I'll refrain from giving away anything else. The adventure runs about 40 hours long, which is almost twice as long as the 5th game. I rarely got stuck, but it does suffer a bit from the classic Ace Attorney logic leaps. Sometimes you can see what the game wants you do do, but you're five steps ahead. It's always a bit annoying, but now you can get hints from the game if you get stuck for too long. That eases the pain of being stuck forever and having to look up a walkthrough.

The divination seance is a large component of trails in this game.

In terms of actual gameplay Spirits of Justice has a lot more going on than the previous games. This is because it uses almost every gameplay system from previous games. Phoenix can tell when people are lying with his Magatama, Apollo uses his magic bracelet to see nervous ticks, and Athena uses her psychology to find inconsistencies, When in Khura'in you have to watch the divination seance, which adds a whole new layer to cases. It's essentially a video that can be used as evidence. It doesn't sound too cool at first, but when you can see a crime from the victims point of view it opens up a ton of new things to look at. They even bring back the forensic science of Emma Skye. There's a lot more going on than than in any other Ace Attorney game, and I don't think that any mechanic outstays its welcome. It's another great end to a trilogy and I can't wait to see where they take things next. The ending means that a lot is going to have to change, which I'm very excited about.

Rocktober

Somehow a year later I am still playing Rock Band 4 at least once a week. What's even more amazing is that Rock Band 4 performed well enough to deserve an expansion. You can bet that I'll be playing that on October 18th.

I'm also kind of interested in trying out the PlayStation VR. One of my friends is getting it, so I'll at least be able to try it out. Hopefully it's good, otherwise I don't know if VR will continue to be a thing in the coming years. Only time will tell.

I took a break from playing Trails of Cold Steel 2 to mess around with Yo-Kai Watch 2 and I've been enjoying myself so far. Originally I was interested in Yo-Kai Watch! from an academic perspective, but now I am genuinely into it. Hopefully I can beat both of them this month, but I don't know if I'll have enough time. It's weird to be playing games that are 40 hours or more back to back.

Somehow I'll make it work! See you next month!

Game Time - August 2016

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!