Game Time - January 2017

2016 was a pretty good year for video games, but 2017 is going to be off the chain! Most of the time January is a slow month in terms of releases. Usually I would use the two months to catch up on my backlog, or go back to games I had missed from the previous year. This year I didn't get a lot of time to do that, because the releases are coming fast and furious already!

To kick off the new year I went on a trip to a fighting game tournament. Due to being on a plane I busted out my Vita and tried to see if I could finish Danganronpa 2. I started it when it came out years ago, but for some reason or another I didn't get very far. Upon returning from the trip I played it to completion. I don't think it's as good as the original, but it's still a decent product.

Halfway through the month, the new games started to flow. Gravity Rush 2 was the first one I picked up. It's a lot like the original, but better in almost every facet. The jump to PS4 did the game justice and it's doubly cool because now it will reach a wider audience. Sadly I have not finished it yet, because there is so much content and I have a problem where I need to complete every sidequest.

Yakuza 0 came out shortly after and it's just what you'd expect. It's a Yakuza game, but set in the 80's. All the goofy side missions and deathly serious Yakuza drama are back! I've had very little time to play it so far, but I have enjoyed myself so far. I set it aside to play Digimon World: Next Order, but that's a story for next month!

I've been buried in games, and I need to talk about them. However, this month I am going to try and keep each game to around three paragraphs. While I normally try and talk about each game for around sic or seven that can get a bit too wordy. I think I'll enjoy writing these a lot more when they're shorter, but we'll see!

Danganronpa 2

The original Danganronpa wasn't even on my radar when it released a few years ago. Mainly because I didn't know what it was. The cover had the franchise mascot Monokuma on the cover art. So seeing a weird looking anime bear I wrote it off as a bad game and didn't look up anything about it. Somehow I stumbled across video of it and ordered it immediately. It's a visual novel, so there's a lot of text. However, you can walk around the map freely as opposed to moving through menus. The concept is that children are being held captive in an area and if they want to leave their captor says they must kill each other. So inevitably murders occur and then you have to have a trial in order to figure out who the murderer was. This is where it turns into a more frantic version of Ace Attorney with a bunch of weird mini-games.

The first game takes place in a school, while the second takes place on an island. Danganronpa 2 is a direct sequel. At first it doesn't seem like it, but by the end there's so much about the first game they assume you know I don't know if you'd understand anything without playing it. To me, that's a bummer because I really didn't like the overarching plot of the first game. So when it carried all of that baggage over I was a bit bummed out. The part about Danganronpa I like is getting to know all of the characters and seeing their interactions. The class trials are great too. Solving the murders feels good, with the exception of a few frustrating mini-games. So when the plot dealing with the world outside the murders comes in I can't help but roll my eyes. The last chapter of Danganronpa 2 gets so far up its own ass that half the dialogue is intelligible to the average human.

Who's going to get murdered!?

If the last chapter of the game didn't exist I would recommend it to anyone wholeheartedly. However, now I have to tell people about it with the caveat that the plot falls apart at the end. I absolutely love the core of the franchise, and am glad that it is continuing into a third game. What gives me hope about the third game is that it drops all of the plot from the first two games and is a completely different things. There is still going to be kids murdering each other, and I honestly hope that's all.

Gravity Rush 2

As you may have seen I beat the original Gravity Rush in December. Gravity Rush 2 is obviously a direct sequel that takes place shortly after the events of the original. The gravity controlling girl Kat and her police officer friend Syd were caught in a gravity storm and taken far away from their home in Hecksville. Initially you don't have control over gravity, but after a lengthy intro sequence Kat is able to do almost everything she was before. I've seen a lot of people criticizing the opening, but I personally didn't really mind it. Walking around the mining town without gravity powers makes them feel all the more special when you do get them back. As the game goes on you receive two more styles that change how your powers work. I only got the lunar style, which allows you to jump ridiculously high and fly at ridiculous speeds. It's a fun addition.

Lunar Style lets you go stupidly fast.

The remaster of the original looked fine, but having 2 be developed from the ground up on the PS4 did a lot for it. Now there is much more to the world, and a whole lot more people roaming around on the streets. The new town introduced early in the game feels very lively, and looks beautiful. As with the remaster you no longer have to control anything with the gyro in the controller. You can still move the camera that way, but it would often make me spin out of control. I turned all gyro off as soon as I could in the menu.

With that said I think that the game feels better as a whole. Now that it isn't designed around a Vita specific feature it's much better off. The game seems better as a whole outside of control as well. It characterizes all of the characters worlds better than the original, and actually tackles classism in a tactful manner. I've already played it for a long time, and I don't think I've even halfway. Whether or not the game can continue to hold my attention until the end remains to be seen. The developer said that this game would end Kat's story and as of right now I don't have any idea how they can do that. I guess a lot more has to happen in the story still. I just hope they don't cram it all in very poorly at the end. Video games tend to do that.

Yakuza 0

Yakuza has always been a niche franchise and I don't really know why. Yes, it's very Japanese, but it has a lot of things that popular western developed games have. It's one of the earliest open world franchises I can think of. I mean, sure, the world is just a sub-section of a city, but it's still open. It took me until Yakuza 3 to get on the train, but ever since then I've been singing the praises of Yakuza everywhere I can. So I find it very odd that now that this entry is being widely praised here in the U.S. Perhaps it's because it's a prequel? I guess coming into a franchise five or six entries deep is a bit daunting, but the gameplay stays largely the same between them all. Regardless of how it happened I'm not complaining, because maybe now we won't have to wait years for each new entry to be localized.

I was going to pass on Yakuza 0 until I say this image. No joke.

So now you're saying what is Yakuza all about? Well, it's about Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. They're tough guys who take no guff and have tattoos that cover most of their body. You play as Kazuma Kiryu in all of them, however in Yakuza 0 you also play as Majima Goro (Another series regular). Yakuza is essentially the evolution of old school beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage. You get into a fight and just beat the living hell out of your opponents. You can grab weapons and your opponents with them, or just throw a flurry of blows and grapples. Eventually your character have blue flames emanating off them, which allows you to push triangle for a heat action. These actions are brutal finishers that do a ton of damage. They're all over the top and a pleasure to see every time. The combat has been largely the same for a majority of the franchise so its refreshing to see Kiryu get some different styles to use. It seems that there are four styles and I've gotten one that allows me to punch people so many times they can no longer block. It's awesome.

I'm only around 2 hours in, but this feels like some Yakuza ass Yakuza. I have seen a lot of melodrama, and even a few men take off their shirts before challenging me to a fight. It's all happened before, but it's still fun. The fact that it's set before all the other games during an economic boom is Japan is really cool. Everyone has a ton of money and is trying to make their mark on the city. So far everything has been pretty tame by Yakuza standards, but I'm sure it'll ramp up as I get farther in. I guess what I'm saying is that you should really check out Yakuza. There's never been a better time to get in on the action.

All I can see are Digimon

On the last day of January Digimon World: Next Order came out and It's pretty much all I've been playing since then. Something about it grabbed me in a way that I could not shake off. Following its release I had two days off and I completely destroyed my sleep schedule by staying up until 7 AM two consecutive days. So next month you can look forward to me spouting off all about what a wonderful game it is.

Other than that the only other game due out in February is Horizon Zero Dawn, the much lauded robot animal hunting game from Guerilla games. It's nice to see them making something that isn't Killzone for once, especially something that looks really cool.

I'm sure something else will pop up for me to talk about, but I'll have to wait and see. I've had a fun time chatting, but it's time for me to get back to Digimon now...

Game Time - October 2015

As I mentioned in the last edition of Game Time, my two most anticipated games of 2015 came out in October. That's right, Rock Band 4 and Disgaea 5 hit me on the same day! To no one's surprise those were really the only two games I played last month, and while I "beat" them I'm still playing the crap out of both of them. 

There's not much introduction to be done here, so without any further dawdling we're going to get right into it. It's game time!

Rock Band 4

There was a time around 2008 when video games centered around the playing of plastic instruments were very popular. The craze started with the original Guitar Hero, and Peaked around the time Rock Band 2 came out. Rock band was, and is a lot of fun to play in a large group. If you have all the equipment you can have a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and singer. Most songs only take a few minutes to complete, so it's super easy to switch people out as needed. I personally remember having like twenty people over to my house on a weekend I came home from college, and it was a complete blast. Much to my dismay that was around the time Rock Band 2 released, and that was when the plastic instrument fueled games started to burn out. Their decline was completely understandable, because there were over six guitar hero games, and at least 5 Rock Band Games. What made it even more upsetting was that Guitar Hero stopped focusing on guitar and started encroaching on Rock Band by adding drums and vocals in order to properly compete. The sheer amount of games being released at an insane clip caused the genre to collapse in on itself.

This is why Rock Band 4 has me so excited, because the plastic instrument genre can return once again. It's crazy, because Guitar Hero is also making a comeback, but they have returned to their guitar only focus, which means that it's not "directly" competing with what Rock Band has to offer. I feel weird saying that, because I really only play guitar in Rock Band, but that's fine. The reason I am so down with Rock Band 4 is because I can use all the DLC I bought when the series was at its peak, and I didn't have to buy new instruments either!

Man, there are no exciting Rock Band 4 pictures huh?

I've seen a lot of people complain that Rock Band 4 is a bare bones product, which it is. However, when you consider what the game is accomplishing behind the scenes I feel like the fact that it exists at all is a miracle. For the previous entries in the franchise Harmonix teamed up with EA and WB in order to get their games out. Now Harmonix is more or less a fully independent studio, and they did not get a major publisher for Rock Band 4. They instead partnered with Madcatz who is a hardware manufacturer to get the game out to the masses. This is extra cool, because Madcatz produced brand new higher quality instruments for the game. Even though I didn't need to I purchased a new guitar, and it's amazing. The strum bar is much sturdier than the previous ones, and it makes playing a lot more comfortable.

Now, this is where Rock Band 4 gets crazy. Not everyone is aware, but licensing music is a nightmare. Obviously Harmonix had to go out and license new music to put in Rock Band 4. What's insane is that they also went back and re-licensed almost every single DLC track from the previous entries. Over time they put out over 1,800 songs, and only a handful are not available for purchase anymore. So this means that since I bought some songs on PS3, that I was able to download those songs on the PS4 for no additional cost! It doesn't stop there though. It hasn't happened yet, but all the previous disc based games excluding Beatles Rock Band will be exportable to Rock Band 4 as well. The catch with those is that you had to have exported them into Rock Band 3 previously. In the case of Rock Band 3 you will have to have played it on your account so that they can verify your purchase of the game when the export becomes available. This only works going from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, and PS3 to PS4, which makes sense. Wait though, it gets even better! If you still have your old instruments lying around you can plug them into a PS4 and have them go right off the bat. The Xbox One makes it a little more complex, because you need to buy an adapter, but at least you can still get everything to work.

Rock Band 4 still looks like Rock Band!

Seriously, Harmonix went above and beyond in bringing Rock Band and all of its content to the current generation of consoles. The main game doesn't have much in the way of features right now, but it will gain more over time. See, Harmonix is going to use the game as a platform, which will have free updates over the course of the games life. All it really has right now is a career mode, super limited character creator, and quick-play. It's basically a vehicle to play your old content on the current generation of consoles, and it works very well for that. On top of all of this they have spun up the old DLC machine, and are releasing three new songs every week.

So far I've had a ton of fun playing songs every Friday with my friends. I'm not the best player, but I just enjoy playing the game. I'm not upset about the missing features that many others seem to be upset about, because they'll probably make it into the game eventually. There is a huge update patch already planned to come out in early December. Harmonix did a lot of work to get everything to work on the current generation of consoles and I seriously respect it.

Disgaea 5

Disgaea is a crazy franchise. It takes the regular strategy RPG genre and makes it infinitely more complex by throwing as many systems as it can on top of it. They all end up working together in the end, which makes this one of my favorite franchises of all time. I picked up Disgaea 2 on a whim in high school and ended up playing it and trying to figure out what the hell was going on for weeks. I stayed up like 18 hours a day at a friends house as we played through it and dabbled in the madness. What's cool about Disgaea is that it gets better with each iteration. I'm not talking about the story, but the gameplay. In each successive game the mechanics are explained better, and streamlined to make everything less frustrating.

None of this means anything if you've never played a game in the franchise, or you haven't watched it before, so let me explain a little bit. Strategy RPGs generally have you send around ten characters into battle. You then move them one-by-one on a grid. If they move up to an enemy they can attack, or use a skill. Disgaea plays like that as well, but it takes the level cap and cranks it up to 9,999. You can then start your character over by reincarnating them, and bringing them to 9,999 again at which point they will have higher stats. You can do that until the character is technically 186,000. This isn't exactly how it works in Disgaea 5, but it was like that in the previous games. As if getting to 186,000 wasn't crazy enough you can also go inside of your weapons and fight monsters in order to make them stronger. Everything can level up, and eventually you can do it ridiculously fast, which feels amazing! Disgaea is all about leveling and doing insane damage with overblown stats.

I did actually like these drawings.

You don't really see how crazy the franchise can get until the story is over, which in my opinion has been the worst part of Disgaea 5 so far. I streamed most of my playthrough of the game, which is now archived on YouTube. Near the end I started to get very impatient, because the story went on way too long for its own good. Most of the time the story doesn't bother me, but in 5 the overall plot is super generic. The only thing saving it is the characters interacting with one another, but sometimes even that is super awful.

The main character is Killia, who is a cool looking demon who likes to eat a lot. In the first scene of the game he saves princess Seraphina, and she "makes" him help her take down the evil Void Dark. Void Dark has been taking over netherworlds and generally being evil, and on top of that Seraphina's dad is trying to make her marry him. Obviously she doesn't want to do that, and for reasons not initially apparent Killia wants to take him down too. Through a series of events they meet more characters who are going against Void Dark and form a rebel army to take him down. It sounds alright, but the plot is the one of the most generic revenge plots I've ever seen. It doesn't help that the game is at least twice as long as all the other games were. Like I said previously the characters are cool, but even they wear thin. By the end of the game they had repeated the same lines and reasoning for so many hours that I just didn't care at all anymore. Every time anything would happen I would call it beforehand on stream, because all of the conflict in the story and between characters was so predictable. Like, if Killia hadn't been funny and cool then I might have stopped playing the story all together. If the characters had been allowed to interact without the stupid revenge plot getting in the way all the time it might have been an enjoyable story.

I thought this so many times during the story!

My favorite part of Disgaea games is when the story is over. That's when you unlock all the cool extra characters, and challenge stages. You don't really get to level like a crazy person until you get the proper maps to do it on. I am now in the process of going insane and leveling my characters to the best of my ability. There's always a point when you beat the game where you're too strong to level on the stages you have, but too weak to beat the enemies that let you level up super quickly. I'm stuck in the middle ground, but am on the cusp of breaking through.

If you want to see what Disgaea 5 is all about then head over to my YouTube Channel, and keep an eye on my Twitch account. All my streams are archived, and I've been recording videos of myself playing through the games many pieces of DLC. Even if you don't have any interest in playing, I recommend you check out what the game is all about anyways. It has a lot of interesting concepts that you don't see very often in  strategy RPGs.

Just When You Thought It Was Over

Even though my two most anticipated games of the year have come and gone, November is going to have some crazy stuff! For starters Yo-Kai Watch! the Japanese sensation is finally coming out in English on the 6th. Then, just four days later Fallout 4 is coming out. I feel weird about Fallout, because I'm not excited for it. I would like to be, but I feel like my mind can't comprehend that it's actually coming out so soon after its announcement. 

Then, as if Fallout wasn't going to be huge enough, Battlefront comes out the following week! How the hell am I going to play Fallout 4 and play multiplayer with my friends in Battlefront!? I want to cry, because my time management skills recently haven't been the best. That's not something to talk about here though.

Trust me, I'll find a way to play everything and then write about it next month. See you on the other side.