I tried to play both Fallout 4 and Xenoblade Chronicles X again, but ended up bouncing off both of them. Fallout made me angry with the sheer amount of bugs I encountered, while Xenoblade was a lot more daunting and expansive than I wanted to deal with at the time.
I kept my experiences light in terms of video gaming to prepare myself for the 900 million titles I'll be playing in February. I started the month by playing Amplitude, which took me about two hours to beat. Then for some reason moved on to Tales of Hearts R on the Vita, which I had bought over a year ago. Finally I finished up by smashing my head against Jonathan Blow's new game The Witness.
Let's do it!
Amplitude
When Harmonix announced that they were kickstarting a new Amplitude I was psyched and backed it immediately. Apparently the public hunger for new rhythm games isn't super high, because it barely made its goal. I guess Amplitude is kind of a niche game though. In their early days Harmonix made a rhythm game called Frequency, which had the player moving between different tracks in a song while pushing buttons to the beat. The tracks were all in a circle, so moving between them looked insane. They followed it up with Amplitude, which still had the different tracks, but moved everything to a flat plane.
A couple of my friends played both Frequency and Amplitude in high school, and I always thought ithey were interesting. For some reason I never got into it myself, so I figured this new version would be the time. Very early in the month the game was released to backers, but I haven't really heard anything about it since then.
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| Still looks like old Amplitude. |
This seems like a game that will not see a whole lot of sales outside of the people who backed the game. It's essentially the same as the original Amplitude on PS2, but without licensed tracks to back it up. Since Harmonix is essentially indie now they didn't necessarily want to go out and license tracks for the game. This means that most of the music was done in house. Thankfully it still has Freezepop. It's also good, because now there won't be outside copyright claims on YouTube videos of people playing the game.
All of the music is techno/electronica, which fits the games theme of traveling along neural pathways to fix a patients brain. The story is a light wrapper to give what you're doing context and isn't really fleshed out more than a few 3D renderings of a brain with a robot voice talking. Luckily no one is coming to Amplitude for the story.
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| Sadly once you've played all the songs there isn't a whole lot left. |
The gameplay of Amplitude holds up. You switch between tracks and push one of three buttons to the beat. It starts easy, but you can ramp it up to insane levels of difficulty. The issue is that this kind of game isn't destined to sell very well. Since Harmonix isn't putting out any DLC for the game it has around 30ish songs in it. Once you master the songs there isn't really anything else for you to do. However if you like rhythm games, or were a fan of the original Amplitude you'll enjoy this for sure.
Tales of Hearts R
I bought this game when it first came out, I pre-ordered it from Gamestop, and an employee lied to me about not receiving any copies. I texted my friend who was excited about it to tell him they didn't get any copies, and he informed me that he had already gotten his copy from the same store! I called back and got mildly upset and they admitted that they hadn't received enough copies, but more would be coming the next day. Why not tell me that at first? It's a freaking Vita game. I would have understood. Anyways, we're not here to talk about Gamestop!
I was in the mood for a JRPG, so I decided it was time to try Tales of Hearts R. It's okay, but it made me realize two things. The first is that all Tales games have been a lot worse since Tales of Vesperia. The second is that the plot of every single Tales game is the same. Warning, I'm going to spoil every single Tales game right now. There is always an overly emotional main character. There is also always an evil organization that is being used by another evil organization. Finally there is always a party member who betrays you, but then betrays the people they betrayed you for less than a half hour later. Seriously, these happen IN EVERY ONE!
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| Can you guess who betrays you!? |
The plot doesn't really matter though. Tales games are always of a certain level of quality. The characters are normally the draw and some have more pull than others. The characters in Tales of Hearts R are nothing special. Normally I love at least one character per Tales game, but this time I don't feel overly enthusiastic about any of them. They're all a little too typical .
On top of the familiar story the gameplay is familiar as well. The combat is as always the main draw of a Tales game. They're entertaining action RPGs that take place on a two dimensional plane that you can move in 3D on if you so choose. The combat is generally what evolves the most with each iteration of the franchise and this one falls somewhere in between Vesperia and Xillia. The combat is relatively simple like Vesperia, but has a bit more combo potential when using skills. The added mechanics of Hearts R make it so that you can teleport around and rack up huge combos. It's not quite as robust as Xillia in that regard though. It's okay overall.
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| Teleporting all around is super fun. |
I'm actually surprised that this game made it to the U.S. Handheld versions of these games rarely leave Japan, because they just don't sell well enough. The fact that they need to pay for a lot of voice acting is most likely why as well. That's why I imagine that this is the only Tales game released in the U.S. that uses the original Japanese voiceover. However, I am led to believe that at one point the game was going to be dubbed into English. The main reason for this is that in Japanese the main character's name is Shing Meteorite. In the sub titles he is named Kor Meteor. Why? All the voice acting is in Japanese, so they literally say Shing Meteorite constantly. It's not even like they made it a more western name. I have no idea.
In the end I probably won't finish it for a long time. It filled the JRPG shaped hole in my heart, but now I've had my fill. It's fun enough, but definitely not one of the best games in the series,
The Witness
Initially I wanted nothing to do with The Witness. All I knew is that it was a puzzle game with insane scope made by "Braid" creator Jonathan Blow. I saw some gameplay and was intrigued. It's a puzzle game where you mostly draw lines on weird looking touch screens. As you go the puzzles get gradually more complex and introduce new rules. What I find to be frustrating is that the game never directly tells you anything. It's all supposed to be intuited, or taught to you in a series of tutorial puzzles. However, since the game is non-linear you can easily come up on puzzles you have not been taught yet. I've also thought I figured out a puzzle element only to find out in the next puzzle I only figured out the previous one by accident.
People are going wild for this game in a way that I am not. It does feel good when you figure out a puzzle, but then I just get pissed off when I'm stuck on one for more than an hour. I guess I might not be as smart as everyone else on the Internet who I've seen talking up this game. I've probably solved around 80 puzzles and played for five or so hours. I want to go back to it, but I get so frustrated. I could just look up the solutions to all the puzzles, but I'm trying very hard not to do that. Since the game is all puzzles I feel like that would cheapen the experience.
It takes place on an island and there are no people. The landscape and environment types on the island vary greatly. It looks super nice, but everything is empty. I am led to believe that when you get further in the game there is some type of crazy reveal about the nature of the island. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get there though. It's definitely a cool game, but it might not be my cup of tea. I'll keep chipping away at it over time.
It's Time
Digimon came out today, but Amazon didn't have release day shipping. Normally I'd get it Thursday because of that, but by some miracle I will be able to play it tomorrow! My excitement for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is unreal. A good Digimon game hasn't come out in the U.S. for too long. It helps that this one looks exceptional. You can bet I'll be streaming it as soon as it shows up.
The following week Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 hits the U.S. as well. For some reason that I can't really fathom I will also be streaming that piece of garbage!
Then... the next week starting on the 16th it's all over. Street Fighter 5 is finally out for real! I'll be playing that a ridiculous amount. Finally three days after that I'll be getting both Fire Emblem games! IT'S GETTING OUT OF CONTROL! There is too much happening in February, so I guess it's good I didn't play a whole lot of video games for a month huh?
If I make it out of February alive I'll see you at the end.
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