Game Time - 5/27/2012

It's ridiculously hot right now. No exaggeration, I can feel the moisture in the air. 

It may surprise you, but I have a hard time thinking of ways to start these. Since it's sweltering hot I don't especially feel like putting in the extra effort for a good intro, so I'm just going to jump right into it.

This past week I bought Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble (Almost wrote Jumble!), and Ghost Trick. I also played the new Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC Requiem of the Goddess.

Game Time is here once more!

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Lightning: Requiem of the Goddess

Man, video game names have been pretty bad lately huh? I realize this is DLC for an already poorly named game, but it's just an awful mouthful. 

I went into this DLC fully expecting it to be a complete piece of garbage, so it was a pleasant surprise when it wasn't. Unlike most or perhaps all of the previous DLC for Final Fantasy XIII-2 it actually adds on to the story. The part that makes me mad is that the information given in this DLC about the story definitely should have been in the game to begin with. It makes the ridiculous stuff that happens at the end of the game make a little bit more sense. This takes place after the game ends and while it's ending. I'm not going to talk about it here, because I already shit all over the story in another post. If you want to spoil everything feel free to take a look at that.

So what's this DLC all about you ask? Well, it's all about Lightning fighting Caius and that's it. This DLC costs 5 dollars and all you do is fight Caius. Typing it out like that makes it sound terrible, but it's actually pretty fun. I'm willing to admit that the battle system is the most fun part of the game and this DLC focuses entirely on that. 

If you want to pay $5 to fight Caius over and over this DLC is for you.

Instead of the tradition roles Lighting has far stronger roles at her disposal. The only role she doesn't have any access to is medic. Instead, she only has access to ten potions and a single elixir to heal herself with. With all of these tools at your disposal you'll fight a super buffed up version of Caius. At the start he will completely wreck you, but you'll still get some crystarium points. Once you lose a few times Lightning will level up, which makes her stronger and gives her access to new roles. This DLC isn't meant to be very long, so Lightning can only get to a max level of ten.

All you need to do in order to complete the DLC is beat Caius super quickly. If you do it fast enough he'll turn into Midnight Bahamut. If you can best Midnight Bahamut then you'll be rewarded with some story for your troubles. Overall I'd say that this is just a challenge for people who like battling in XIII-2. Since battles were my favorite part of the game I had a fun time for about an hour. If you didn't feel like me, then there is absolutely no reason for you try this out.

Oh yeah, Midnight Bahamut is in the DLC too.

Viewtiful Joe : Red Hot Rumble

I still have four Gamecube controllers. Granted not all of them are fully functional, but I still have them. This is one of the reasons I actively look out for fun multiplayer Gamecube games. I guess it also helps that there are three other people around for me to play with most of the time. In case you were wondering where I was going with this, then you'll be happy to know that Red Hot Rumble is one such game.

I've had my eyes peeled for a decent copy of Red Hot Rumble for a while now and this past weekend I finally found one. It's not exactly what I expected, but I think that ended up being a good thing. For some reason I didn't look up any gameplay beforehand, so I was under the impression that it was basically super smash with Viewtiful Joe characters.

After playing the game I still feel that it's kind of similar to Super Smash., but it's actually quite different. Instead of just mindlessly beating the living shit out of everyone on screen there are actually objectives in Red Hot Rumble. No matter what stage you choose there will be a variety of objectives you're supposed to complete. The objectives are all over the place. You might be beating up enemies, collecting gems, staying alive, capturing the flag and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now. 

Defeating bosses is also an objective.

The way you win in Red Hot Rumble is to have the most V coins at the end of a stage. When you complete an objective you'll get about 1,000 V coins, but they'll also show up randomly. This makes staying alive just as important as completing objectives, because if you die you'll lose a whole lot of coins and that's never a good thing. 

One of the things I don't like about Red Hot Rumble is that sometimes it's really hard to tell what's going on in the match, especially if there are four people playing at the same time. The stages are already fairly busy, so when you throw in enemies, four players, and a bunch of objects it can become a little much. Adding to the problem are the famous powers from Viewtiful Joe. When people are using mach speed, slow down, and zoom all over the place it gets way harder to get your bearings.

Red Hot Rumble is a great multiplayer game. It's fast paced, competitive, and ridiculous. It may help that I like the Viewtiful Joe Universe a whole bunch, but I think it's a solid game regardless.

There's a lot going on here and it's super blurry. Welcome to Red Hot Rumble!

Ghost Trick

As you may be aware, I am a big fan of the Phoenix Wright series. So when Ghost Trick came out and I found out it was made by the same team I knew that I had to have it. Unlucky for me the game got kind of rare, so I couldn't find it online for it's normal price and it wasn't available in any stores around me. 

This past weekend when I was out looking for Red Hot Rumble I came across a $20 dollar copy of Ghost Trick at one of my local Gamestop's. There are three around here, which is kind of dumb. Anyways, I found Ghost Trick with it's case and instruction manual for $20, but I didn't get it. For some stupid reason I decided to see if I could find it cheaper. 

The next day I knew I would regret it if I didn't buy it, so I went all the way back to Gamestop and bought it. I was a bit worried I wasn't going to like it very much, but after playing the game for five minutes I knew that wasn't the case. 

The dead man is Sissel and he's pretty cool.

I don't mean to sound crude here, but I fucking love Ghost Trick. In fact I'm upset that I didn't play it when it first came out. It took me eleven hours to beat the game and that was in just two sittings. I literally played the game for five and a half hours twice, because I wanted to see the ending so badly. 

In case you're unaware you play as a ghost named Sissel in Ghost Trick. He has recently died and doesn't remember anything about himself other than his name. He finds out that he has special powers known as ghost tricks. This allows him to move from object to object and manipulate them. He can also use phone lines to travel long distances. These are the tricks that are used to solve puzzles.

Sissel's other trick is that he can bring people back from the dead. If he can get to their body he can go back four minutes before they died and save them. It's unique, and engaging, and I absolutely love it.

The flaming blue dot is the object Sissel is possessing. The others are where he can go.

I'm still coming off of my Ghost Trick high, so as of right now I'm basically only going to be able to say how much I love it. To save you that repetition I won't dwell on it. 

Lately I've been slacking on doing reviews. I've had a lot less free time and I've been trying to use it to play games. This means that I haven't been writing as much, which is just plain wrong. That is why I am going to make the promise that I will review Ghost Trick by next week. It was awesome and I need to write up a review. So if you want to hear more about Ghost Trick check back later this week for a review.

IT'S SO HOT!

After proof reading this I noticed that it wasn't my best work and for that I apologize. However, in my defense my brain is pretty much melting in the heat. I really hope that this summer isn't consistently this hot, or I may just spend the entire summer sweating into the couch.

E3 is almost here and I'm super pumped. In order to stave off my excitement I have acquired the critically acclaimed DS RPG Radiant Historia. Apparently it's amazing, but I haven't started it yet because I've been playing and thinking about Ghost Trick (Which I will be reviewing this week). 

Hopefully I'll find some other stuff to check out, or maybe I'll just melt away in the heat. There's absolutely no way of knowing!

This has been another edition of Game Time. See you next week.

     -Manny