Game Time - February 2016

February happened, and I am somehow still standing. I played a few of my most anticipated games of 2016, and had a wonderful time. Sadly I didn't end up beating any of them yet, but I will get there eventually. I am right at the end of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and I guess you can't really beat Street Fighter V. Well, I did beat the story mode, so I guess that counts? Who knows!

Cyber Sleuth came out at the beginning of the month and I streamed it a whole bunch, so if you want to see any of that check out my YouTube channel for all kinds of Digimon content. 

Right now I'm playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and it is kicking my ass. They weren't kidding when they said it was hard. It's especially rough, because I never want to let anyone die.

Street Fighter came out too and I've been playing that at least once a day. I'm trying to get moderately good at it, but I am not quite to that goal yet. Spoilers, it's a fighting game!

Okay, let's talk about video games now!

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

Digimon is one of my favorite franchises of all time. I love the anime series, and a majority of the games have been pretty good. At some point Namco Bandai stopped localizing the titles, so here in America we missed out on quite a few solid Digimon Games. One of which was Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on the Vita. Fans started a petition that got a crazy amount of signatures to bring it out in English. Now a few years later it has finally come out on both PS4 and Vita.

Digimon games have changed a lot over the years. On the DS they began to take the form of something more like Pokemon than previous iterations. You run into Digimon in battle and scan them. Once you've run into them enough you can reform them and have them as your own. Once you have them in order to Digivolve them you have to meet specific stat requirements. If you reach max level and can't meet the requirements to digivolve you can de-digivolve them. This makes it so that they have a higher max level.

I've been grinding to get these guys. I'm so close!

Combat is turn based, and uses a similar weakness system to Pokemon. There are virus, vaccine, and data type Digimon that all have their own respective weaknesses. Cyber Sleuth follows the same pattern as the 3DS games, but the requirements to digivolve are way less annoying. They are exclusively based on stats and not how many battles you've fought. There are a ton of Digimon to collect, and the battles are fun.

The core gameplay is fine, but the rest of the game doesn't always hold up. The game starts very stylishly, and moves along at a decent clip. However, after the first few hours the pacing begins to fall apart. Many chapters don't involve any tie to the main story, and instead have the main character running around doing pointless garbage. It doesn't help that almost all of the games environments are introduced fairly early on, and then are repeated for the rest of the game.

Every area in the game looks like this.

It's a solid game, but the repetition of areas and random quests can be a little grading. It doesn't help that the translation is a bit spotty, so when the story does happen its not always the best. Seriously, the main character is only a silent protagonist sometimes. They make jokes about him being silent and not talking very much, but there are numerous scenes where he talks to people directly. What!? It's a good thing that the battling and collecting Digimon aspect of the game is good, or I don't know that I would be as into the game as I am.

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

Fire Emblem games are always very similar. They are turn based tactics games with tons of generic anime characters. The reason I come to FE games is the combat. It's challenging and fun, and to me the permanent death of characters adds an extra layer to that. I personally have to restart every time someone dies. I don't care that people say this is cheating, or "un-pure." I want to do the best tactically, so when someone does die it's enough punishment to start the map over again.

I'm saying this because I've been starting over in Conquest a whole bunch. In case you don't know about Fire Emblem Fates it comes in three versions. Birthright is supposed to be the easier game for newcomers. You can level up your units easily by completing challenge maps. Money is also easier to come by. Conquest is meant for veterans of the series and is very challenging. There is limited money, and the experience you get in each chapter is all you get. There is a third version called Revelation as well, but I don't know what's different about that. Obviously with each version you get different characters, but I don't have any idea what the gameplay difference is in Revelation.

Which game will you be playing?

 It's odd, because the last FE entry was originally going to be the last in the franchise due to poor performance of previous entries. The development team put every popular feature in the game as a sendoff to the series. It ended up selling very well, so Nintendo decided to keep the franchise going with Fates. Instead of adding anything new to the game they kind of just decided to make three games instead of one. Sure, weapons don't have durability and you can change the field a little bit with weird dragon magic, but it still feels like Fire Emblem. It's not "new." I like FE in general, so I'm okay with this, but it might be why I feel so underwhelmed by the game.

The tactics you know and love are still there, but some of the charm is gone. It doesn't help that all of the characters are boring to me. Normally FE characters are generic anime archetypes, but they have interesting quirks. Everyone in Fates is generic and that's it. I don't really have any interest in any of the characters. It feels like Waifu Simulator 2016. It's a game about tactics, not anime wives. 

Waifu simulator 2016.

The tactical portion of the game is genuinely good from what I've played in Conquest. The maps aren't all the generic kill everyone maps that I've become accustomed to from the series. There are actual different objectives that make combat feel a lot more varied. I've had to survive for a set amount of turns, defend a point, and escape the field. It's not all good though, because it makes some of the stages feel gimmicky. Like right now I'm stuck on a chapter where wind blows my guys around. People keep dying because they get blown into a group of enemies. I'm sure there's some strategy I haven't thought of yet, but as of right now the map just seems shitty for the sake of killing your units. 

Street Fighter V

I like fighting games, and I love Street Fighter V. I knew months before the games release that I loved it. I played every single beta for hours. It's a Street Fighter game. It's faster than Street Fighter 4 and adds in some new mechanics. V-skills are used by pushing medium punch and medium kick at the same time. Depending on the character it does something cool. Ryu can parry, Birdie eats food, and Ken can dash. Once you use the V-Skill enough you can push both heavy punch and kick to activate V-trigger. Once again it does something different depending on the character, but it's always cool. Ryu, Ken, and Cammy power up, while characters like Nash teleport around. It's an interesting mechanic that makes the characters feel way different than their SF4 counterparts,

When the game came out the servers crashed under the load of people who were trying to access the game. This happens quite frequently to online based games when they launch, but people always forget that. This means that the backlash to the game has been quite strong. People weren't able to play the game online for a whole two days! I understand why this upsets people, but local play is where fighting games shine anyways. There's no input delay at all! Where SFV gets a little rough is that if you're connected to the server while in an offline mode and lose connection you are kicked back to the main menu. Seriously, I was in a local versus match and the game booted us out of it. That was shitty,

Cammy activating her V-skill.

Since the first two days of the games release it has worked flawlessly for me. I've fought hundreds of online matches, and none have had a bad connection. The net-code is very solid. It's based on rollback, so if the connection is rough the characters will teleport around a bit. You definitely want to be wired in to the router if you're going to be playing SFV online.

The main gripe people have with Street Fighter V is that there is almost no single player content whatsoever. Story mode is a series of fights that took me about an hour to beat. All you do is see some poorly drawn art and then do a one round fight where you have full meter. It's lame. Other than that you can do training mode, or survival. In survival you fight against the AI, and keep the same health after each round. You can spend points after each round to get stat bonuses, and regain health. It's also lame!

Play fighting games to fight, not for single player story.

Street Fighter V is amazing. The fighting is incredible. It's easier to link things, so doing combos isn't as ridiculously hard for me as it used to be. I am also a huge fan of the new V system. I get why people are upset the game has no single player content, but they also probably weren't super into Street Fighter to begin with. It's a fighting game. You are supposed to fight other people. I get that not everyone wants to do that, so if you don't want to do that don't buy the game.

March

Pokken Tournament comes out next week, I feel like I should be super excited about a Pokemon fighting game, but right now I'm not excited at all. Hopefully I get more hype as the date gets closer.

Before Pokken, the Division comes out. I played the beta and liked it a lot. I'd describe it as a more enjoyable version of Destiny. The final release could deliver on what the beta promised, or totally ruin everything. I guess we'll just have to find out!

See you next month!

Top Ten Games of 2013

2013 is over and done with, which means that it's time for yet another top ten list. I have made a sweet list of what I believe to be the top ten games released in 2013. Every game on this list was released this year and I played and beat each one to completion. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, so we may disagree. A lot of great games came out this year and I had to make some hard cuts, but that seems to happen every year.

As always we'll be starting with number ten and working our way up to the prestigious number one spot. If you want to read my more in depth thoughts on each of these games just click on their names (Except Fire Emblem). See you at the top.

10. Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V may not have been the greatest story ever told, but it sure was ambitious. The new Los Santos Rockstar created is one of the most elaborate open worlds ever seen in a game. It doesn't have quite enough to do in that open world, but it sure is detailed. On top of that you play as not one, but three characters. Each of which is very memorable in their own right.

I don't really know where open world games can go from here, but I hope that Rockstar keeps trying to take them to the next level.


9. BioShock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite seems to have lost a lot of support since its initial release, but I for one will not abandon this great game. Yes, the combat wasn't the greatest, but it certainly wasn't the worst. In fact it improved upon the combat of the original in some very meaningful ways. Plus jumping around on the sky rails is pretty freaking sweet.

I came to Bioshock Infinite expecting an interesting story and that's exactly what I got. If you think about it too much everything completely unravels, but that's the case with almost any science fiction. The ending of Infinite continues to blow my mind months after having completed the game. If you haven't you should really check it out.

8. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle Royale

This was the first game I have ever imported and I couldn't be more happy about that. The cel shaded graphics make everything look ripped straight from the manga. Cyber Connect 2 put so much care into every single aspect of this game's animations in order to keep them true to the source material. This is a must own game for fans of the Jojo series and in my case made me a fan.

The fights are fun, but not super deep. It may not have a long life on the tournament scene, but Jojo's ASB is still one of my favorite fighting games of all time. If you're not crazy enough to import it you can just wait for the US version to come out later this year. I will definitely be buying it again.

7. Super Mario 3D World

Super Mario 3D World is the best looking game I have played this year. Mario has made an amazing transition into HD and I couldn't be happier. This game is actually innovative in a way that many Nintendo games just aren't anymore. I don't really know why Mario and friends can don a cat suit, but it's certainly an excellent addition to the Mario suit repertoire.

Super Mario 3D World is just plain fun, which is something I can't say about a lot of games these days. If you're one of the three people who have a Wii-U this is something you have to buy.

6. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies

Phoenix Wright has returned to the court room once again and I couldn't be happier about it. This is coming from someone who actually really liked Apollo Justice. The game is largely the same as it was before, but with snazzy new 3D models and fully voiced anime cutscenes. I could do without the voice acting, but other than that everything is streamlined for the player's convenience.

I loved to hang out with Phoenix and Apollo again. It seems like Capcom is already hard at work on the 6th entry in the series. Hopefully this one sold well enough in the US to make them keep bringing these over here. I love this series and it seems to only be getting better.

5. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

I didn't understand the Monster Hunter craze before I played this game. Somehow it sucked me in and I got lost in my hopeless Monster Hunter addiction for hundreds of hours. I have finally escaped, but I still get that sweet craving sometimes.

There's something magical about hunting a fearsome beast with your friends. Even though the game is very unforgiving to new players if you take the time to figure the game out it's a whole lot of fun. You just have to know what you're getting into. Perhaps someday you too will be one of those crazy people who understands the seductive power that is Monster Hunter.

4. The Last of Us

I will never forget the ending of this game. Naughty Dog created some of the most memorable characters ever seen in a video game. Joel and Ellie feel like real people. Their voice acting is impeccable and their facial expressions and movements are very lifelike.

The survival gameplay is serviceable and really makes you feel like you're living in a post-apocalyptic zombie mushroom world. It's a horrifying place, which is backed up by brutal depictions of violence. If you haven't played this game you need to. I wasn't into it at first, but once you start to see the relationship between Joel and Ellie unfold you'll be hooked.

3. Pokemon X/Y

Everyone always complains that Nintendo never changes anything, but this time they have. The world of Pokemon on a handheld has been brought to the third dimension. Battles look great, because each Pokemon has their very own detailed 3D model.

It might not seem like a big deal, but the introduction of fairy Pokemon completely changes the way Pokemon's battle system works. On top of that some Pokemon can even mega evolve now to become super powerful. This iteration changed so much. Hell, you can move diagonally for god's sake! Nintendo has finally changed Pokemon in some very meaningful ways and I can't wait to see where they go next.

2. Fire Emblem: Awakening

I really like strategy RPGs. One of the things that always bug me about them is that you get so many characters and never really get to know any of them. That's not the case with Fire Emblem Awakening. The excellent translation paired with the social system makes each character feel like they have an identity.

Awakening takes all of the best elements from each Fire Emblem and mashes them all into one game. You can get certain characters married and then use their children in battle. The children inherit skills and have increased stat gain, so they tend to be super beastly. It's a really cool feature. Fire Emblem Awakening is a truly deep game with a whole lot of content. I fully recommend it to anyone who owns a 3DS.

1. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

The days of the 50-80 hours RPG are almost dead and gone. Ni No Kuni however allowed me to revisit the days of old when RPG worlds felt magical and full of whimsy. Everything about Ni No Kuni is very charming and it does an incredible job building its fantasy world. The Wizard's Compendium is a literal book inside the game that's chock full of information about the world.

Ni No Kuni is one of those games with a ridiculous amount of side activities to do and secrets to find and I did almost everything. The monster collecting aspect had me hooked immediately and the lively battles kept me interested. At first glance it seems like a game for little kids, but the combat gets to be quite challenging.

Ni No Kuni is a special game to me, because it made me feel like a kid again. It made me feel like there's still hope that the type of grand RPG adventures I used to have as a kid will keep coming out. I loved Ni No Kuni and I hope that you'll check it out as well.

     -Manny

Game Time - February 2013

It's official everyone. We now live in a post PlayStation 4 announcement world. Sony caught the world of gaming on fire this past week when it showed off a whole bunch of next generation games and talked about what features the PS4 will have. I'm pretty excited about what they showed. The features sound great, but the games weren't exactly what I was looking for. If you're into video games you've probably heard about the PS4 announcement a fair bit by now, so I won't get too deep into my thoughts. Just know that I'm pretty pumped. The next gen is upon us!

Sadly the PS4 and the new Xbox are not with us quite yet, so I've had to spend my time playing games on the 3DS and the now seemingly super old PS3. On the 3DS front I played through the entirety of Fire Emblem: Awakening and am still continuing to play it. I'll post my thoughts on that when I'm finished with it.

On The PS3 front I played Sly 4: Thieves in Time. It's possible that I was one of very few people who knew about the game's release, because Sony did a terrible job marketing the game. It's almost as if they wanted the release to be a surprise. Sony seems to be doing this with most of their first party titles lately, which is a bit unsettling. Hopefully they're just focusing on PS4 development, because at this point they're almost sending games out to die at retail.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence had a fair bit of marketing behind it though. Every trailer was filled with maximum insanity and the game itself is not any different. There's a fair bit to talk about, so let's get right into it. It's game time!

Sly 4

I must admit I never played through any of the Sly Cooper games when they were originally released. I remember my brother playing through most of the second game when he rented it, but I didn't end up playing it myself. So when the Sly Cooper HD collection I decided it was time to play through them all. To my surprise I actually ended up liking the first two quite a bit, while I actively hated the third for adding terribly controlled mini games at every turn. Suckerpunch managed to create a likable band of thieves in Sly, Murray, and Bentley that I became quite attached to.

The problem with the Sly Cooper franchise is that it's very much a product of it's time. They were PS2 action/adventure games made in the early to mid 2,000's. Games of the original Sly Trilogy's ilk have fallen out of style on modern consoles, so I didn't really know what to expect from Sly 4. All I knew was that I wanted some more Sly Cooper. That's what I ended up getting, but Sly 4 is a bit too similar to it's predecessors.

Sly and the gang are back again, but this time it's full blown HD!

Once again you'll play as the crafty Raccoon thief Sly Cooper, the brainy turtle Bentley, and the brawny hippo Murray. Pages from Sly's ancestral tome the Thievius Racoonus are disappearing, so the gang has to go back in time to figure out what's happening to Sly's ancestors. You'll travel to various iconic eras such as feudal Japan and the wild west where you'll actually meet up with Sly's ancestors.

While Sly 4 throws some new elements into the old Cooper brew it's still very much like a PS2 game. Like the previous two games in the series each "episode" is like a relatively large plot of land that you can freely explore. I'm going to refer to it as open world exploration, but it's not necessarily on the scale of an open world game. Each time period also has a base of operations. From your base you can select missions, buy upgrades, and change the time period if you need to. You'll need to traverse the open world in each time period in order to get to your missions. Although if you want you can mess around finding hidden treasure and pick-pocketing guards in order to buy upgrades.

Sly's ancestor's are fun to play as for the most part.

As for the new elements there aren't very many. It's got decent looking HD graphics, but the major hook of the game is that you can play as Sly's ancestors. They control relatively similar to sly, but each will have a special ability that allows them to access special areas and cater to certain mission objectives. The way they change up Sly himself is by giving him costumes. In each era Sly will gain a new costume that gives him special abilities. In the end it still controls exactly like the previous games in the series, or to be more precise a PS2 game. The overall controls are still very stiff and can be quite frustrating at times.

In the end it's just a 3D adventure with anthropomorphic characters. These types of games are few and far between now and that may be for good reason.  It feels like a holdover from a bygone era, but that's okay with me. I had a fun time playing it. That may have been because I have a connection with the series though. The continued plot definitely helped me through it, because it lost a bit of it's luster partway through. It's just not different enough to be a hit, but it's still fun to play. The game ended with a cliffhanger that made me simultaneous pumped and anxious. I really hope that Sanzaru gets another stab at the series, because it could turn into something much more. Next time they might be able to diverge from the established formula.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence

You may have heard that Revengence is only four hours long. Well, the rumors were true. The story mode clocks in at around four, which doesn't count the cut scenes. Normally that kind of thing would be a deal breaker for me since it's a full priced retail release, but in this case I'm totally all right with it.

I hated almost everything about the story. It takes place after Metal Gear Solid 4, so the patriots have fallen. At first it's kind of interesting to see how the world turns out, but for me at least I stopped caring almost immediately. Raiden works for a PMC and gets sucked into a conflict with another group called Desperado. They're making children into cyborgs and Raiden isn't pleased about that. So obviously he has to kill them. I wasn't expecting a lot from the story of this game, but what I got was even worse than I thought. Naturally a whole lot of it is completely nonsensical, but near the end it gets preachy in a way that pissed me off. I've seen a lot of people saying that they thought the final boss was amazing, while that was the point where I couldn't stand what was happening anymore and wanted the game to be over. Overall it's just dumb. It's a dumb plot. So don't expect a whole lot from that aspect of the game.

As you may know I'm all about plot, so why do I like this game? In this case it's entirely about the gameplay. The last Platinum game I played was Anarchy Reigns, which I wasn't so hot on. As a developer Platinum is known for their stylish action and this game does that a whole lot better than Anarchy Reigns in that regard. In fact I'd be willing to say that Revengence is made up completely of stylish action. You play as Raiden, and at this point in the Metal Gear Solid universe he's an unstoppable badass cyborg. It's cool, because he actually feels unstoppable. The combat isn't necessarily as deep and combo heavy as other platinum games, but it doesn't have to be.

Who wants to accurately cut up some watermelons?

This game is all about viciously attacking other cyborgs with your sweet ninja blade. When you come to an enemy you can mash the attack button to put the hurt on them. If you take pauses and hold directions Raiden will do all kinds of craziness. If you want you can keep doing that until your enemy violently explodes, or you can check out what the game is all about. After a certain amount of ass beating the enemies will turn green if you're using the special optics Raiden has available to him. At that point you can activate blade mode. Time slows down and you can accurately cut the enemy before you into hundreds of pieces. Using the right stick you can choose the exact points where Raiden cuts. There's a bar that dictates how much you can use blade mode, but it's super easy to refill, which is where Zandatsu comes in.

At a certain point in the story Raiden gets an upgrade that allows him to perform what the game calls Zandatsu. When you go into blade mode there will almost always be a square that indicates a vital point on the enemy. Any point after cutting through the square Raiden can then rip out the enemies spine and CRUSH IT IN HIS HANDS to absorb their electrolytes. Each time Zandatsu is performed Raiden regains all of his health and his blade mode meter completely refills (Man, I really like saying Zandatsu). It makes the game kind of easy, but it's super cool to see.

Revengence is all about being a cool cyborg ninja. It plays well and makes you feel cool, which is what video games should do all the time. It's fun enough that I can get past the stupid story. I'm even kind of glad that the game is only around four hours long. Since the combat isn't very deep, blade mode and zandatsu can only be fun for so long. Eventually it'll get boring, but after finishing the game I still feel like I might want to play it some more. It's always good to leave the player wanting more instead of making them never want to play the game again by bashing them over the head with the same combat situations over and over again. To make it even better the game has a fair amount of replay value. There are hidden things to find and tons of upgrades to purchase. I'm not someone who normally does that kind of thing, but since the game isn't super long it's not entirely out of the question that I'd do it again.

Cutting up enemies and crushing their spine is commonplace in Revengence.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence is a surprisingly good game. I honestly expected it to be terrible, but instead I had a lot of fun with it. As an action game it's great, but as a Metal Gear side story it's not exactly the best. Sure you can see some more of the universe, but it's not very meaningful. If you're looking for story perhaps you'd be better off waiting for Ground Zeroes. However, if you're looking to cut stuff up into hundreds of tiny pieces as you ninja run up walls then you should totally check out what Revengence has to offer.

March is coming...

I've really been struggling to push one of these out every month. That tends to stem from the fact that I wait until the very end of the month to start writing. It sucks, because I've noticed that my writing has started to suffer because of it. Sometimes I'm writing about things that I haven't played for weeks and that can be a bit frustrating when trying to recall my feelings or specific descriptions. That's why I've decided to start writing them ahead of time. As soon as I finish a game, or whenever I have important thoughts I'm going to pop them in a draft for the next months Game Time. Hopefully my writing and overall quality of the post each month will increase.

With that said March is going to be a big month in terms of game playing for me. Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is hitting at the start of the month. It will be followed by a couple week lull until Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Luigi's Mansion, and Bioshock Infinite will all be released within a 4 day period at the end of the month. I don't know if I want to try and juggle all three of them at once, or stick with one at a time. We'll find out on the next exciting installment of Game Time!

     -Manny