Game Time - November 2014

I feel like it's been a lifetime since I did the October edition of Game Time. Since that time I have "completed" a let's play and done a whole bunch of streaming. In case you missed me flooding this page with Bayonetta 2 episodes, you can now watch the entire playthrough with the exception of a chapter that got destoryed... Since I posted so much about it on here I won't be taking about it here.

Instead, I will be talking about Assassin's Creed Unity and how it straddles the fine line between being average and terrible. I did however, end up playing two excellent games this month, which were oddly enough both Nintendo games. As you might imagine I played a whole lot of the Wii-U version of smash brothers, but I also miraculously made time to complete Alpha Sapphire!

This month actually made me realize that I'm pretty much an adult now, which is both cool and depressing. I've been thinking a lot about how my gaming habits and time have changed over the last few months, which is why I'm going to be recording a podcast about it tomorrow. So you can look forward to that, but until then it's game time!

Assassin's Creed Unity

The first Assassin's Creed I played was Brotherhood. I watched my brother play through all of the first game, and a college roommate play through most of the second. I ended up really liking it and got hooked on the series. Assassin's Creed 3 let me down a great deal, but I was willing to give the series another go. When Black Flag came out I absolutely loved it, because who doesn't love pirates?

That brings us to Assassin's Creed Unity. Let's just say that just like Assassin's Creed 3 this entry in the series has shaken my faith. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Unity to a certain extent, but it could have been a whole lot better. In fact, it should have been a lot better. A disconcerting trend in modern gaming is that games come out busted and that's not something that should be happening. A lot of games this fall have been totally bunk. Unity wasn't totally busted, but it's certainly not the best.

ohh noo my spine!

The game takes place in revolutionary Paris, so there are tons of people rioting in the streets. With the current generation of consoles Ubisoft wanted to show off how awesome their crowd tech is, so they have the street lines with tons of people. The problem is that every time you run through a crowd the frame rate tanks. For some reason it's not just when there are crowds either it happens frequently. If you can't get the frame rate up with tons of useless npcs on the screen maybe you shouldn't have so god damn many? To make it even worse they claim that the game runs at 900p instead of 1080p to keep the frame rate up. What the hell was it like at 1080p!?

That's only the tip of the iceberg. I had some npcs half into the world, and a corpse fly away and freak out on me. That's the normal kind of jank I expect from an open world game though. My friend Noukeo actually fell through the game world multiple times, and that's a bug that's being reported very frequently. For some reason the faces of characters seem to be melting off for a lot of people too. Ubisoft has issued numerous patches to address these issues, but I've already completed the game, so it's too late for me.

THIS IS IN A SHIPPING VIDEO GAME. OH MY GOD.

It's a real bummer that even if this game ran perfectly it would still be kind of lame. You play as Arno Dorian, who is obviously an Assassin. The overall plot and big bad guy are both pretty lame. There is a lot of good character interaction from Arno and his childhood love, but that's really the best part of the game. You're generally running around assassinating people who are loosely explained by the plot. Since Brotherhood I feel like the plots in these games have been super disjointed with a lot of time skips for no reason. Now that they seem to care so little about the real world plot it's becoming much more apparent.

For some reason I felt like the general gameplay mechanics were worse as well. Personally I didn't like the combat at all. Unity moves away from the free-flow combat and unlimited counter kills of its predecessors in favor of a more challenging system. You can still parry your opponents, but you need to continue hitting them repeatedly. This isn't too bad once you get used to it, it just makes every encounter a chore. It doesn't help that if you have more than two guards on you you're basically toasted. For some reason when you're being ganged up on other guards will run up and just shoot you in the face real quick, which is infuriating. The climbing didn't seem to be as fluid either. I got stuck on geometry way more in this game and had a much harder time jumping where I needed to.

At least the glitches are funny?

To be fair to Unity it tried really hard to be good. The assassination missions in the past few games basically involved running up to a guy, fighting 500 guards, and then just walking away. In Unity they're at least a bit more elaborate. You need to get into locations, which have set entrances and exits. There are events to help you out if you complete them. Sadly the assassination missions alone weren't good enough to make me like Unity.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

Since Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby came out the same night as Super Smash I wasn't planning on playing right away. However, I couldn't resist the allure of reliving my Sapphire nostalgia. I still have very vivid memories of playing the original on Gameboy Advance. I was so into the game that I hid my progress report from my parents, because I knew they wouldn't let me play for a while. I had a 40 in math at the time, so I got the brilliant idea of hiding it behind the couch. It worked out for around a month, but I forgot I had hidden it and my mom found it while cleaning. So I was able to beat Sapphire, but I ended up not being able to play any video games for over a month. It was totally worth it.

I've always liked the Pokemon series, but I think Ruby and Sapphire were where my love of the series solidified. Before they were fun distractions, but my obsession truly started with Ruby and Sapphire. One night a few weeks ago before I went to bed I decided to start Alpha Sapphire, and I couldn't stop. I have now completed the main story and am on the cool new post game story.

Mega Blaziken is pretty awesome.

In case you were wondering it's basically the same old Ruby and Sapphire from back in the day, but now it has hot 3d graphics like Pokemon X and Y. That doesn't mean it's exactly the same though, there are quite a few new interesting features. The first being that Pokemon actually appear in the grass. So if you're in the grass a shadow of a Pokemon will appear. If you sneak up on it by walking slowly you'll fight it. These hidden Pokemon are generally stronger than the ones you'll randomly find in the grass. You can actually search for pokemon you've run into in the grass as well, and the more you come into contact with them the better they will be.

I try to force myself to go through every game with Pokemon caught entirely during my playthrough. This time I was lucky enough to get two shinies. The first is the shiny Beldum, which everyone can get through wifi from Nintendo. The second is a shiny Magikarp, which came up on my first attempt to fish in the game. I really wanted a Gyrados to go through the game with, so now I have two shiny Gyrados'.

Secret bases are probably my favorite part of the new games.

I wish I had more to say about the game. It's an excellent recreation of the original games. Secret bases are awesome and make their triumphant return. I don't know it's Pokemon. I thought this would be the one that finally made me get sick of Pokemon, but it wasn't. As long as Nintendo keeps putting them out I'll keep buying them.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U

My level of hype for this game was unbelievable. The night it came out I was planning on staying up all night and streaming it, but that didn't end up working out. For some reason my local Gamestop didn't receive the Gamecube controller adapters, so I couldn't play locally with Noukeo. So instead we were sitting in my house playing online, so that we could both use our Wii-U game pads. Using a wii-mote is awful for smash. I don't recommend it to anyone. Around 4:30 AM I started to feel like my stomach was going to explode, so I ended up going to bed. The following days I played a ton of Smash, but didn't stream very much of it.

So as it turns out I really like Smash on Wii-U. It looks incredible. It still blows my mind that Nintendo puts out games that run in 1080p at 60fps and games on PS4 can't even handle running most games at 30fps! It helps that Nintendo has killer art direction in all of their games.

Princess Peach is my boo! Seriously she's the greatest.

I stopped playing the 3DS version weeks ago, which I now think was a good decision. While the 3DS game is good the Wii-U version is so much better. As I mentioned previously the graphics are amazing. On top of that there's a ton more content. Instead of every stage having two songs they all have a minimum of five, and there are at least extra unlockable songs! Almost any Nintendo song you can think of is in the Wii-U version to enjoy.

The main thing I like about this version is that I can use a Gamecube controller. I know I sound like some kind of weird hardcore Smash player when I say that, but it's really not the case. I find the Gamecube controller to be very comfortable and it's what I'm used to playing Smash with. Unlike the 3DS I'm not worried that I'm going to rip the analog stick off and I feel much more comfortable hitting the buttons with force. I tend to dodge a lot more and shield better when I'm using a Gamecube controller. It shows that Nintendo is trying to understand their fan base, because most companies wouldn't put out a USB adapter for a two generation old controller.

I kill myself with this move all the time.

The new characters in this generation of Smash are all pretty cool. While I think it's lame that the Ice Climbers are gone, new additions like Little Mac, Rosalina, and Mega Man are awesome. I think Little Mac is my favorite newcomer. I've always thought he would be a cool character and I was right! He's super fast, does a ton of damage, and wears a hoodie. He's like the perfect character for me, except that he has the worst recovery ever. Seriously, if he's like three feet away from the stage he can't get back. It's no good for me, especially since I main Peach who has the best recovery ever. Rosalina is cool as well with her little star friend luma. She's super strong as well, but I just don't want to learn how to use both of them in unison in order to maximize damage.

I really like this version of Smash, and I hope to stream more of it soon. One of the reasons I've hesitated streaming Smash is because I don't think I'm very good at it. Sure I can be competitive with my friends, but I don't think I'm amazing or anything. So when I think about the amount of pro players who stream Smash I get a little apprehensive about putting my play out there. Over the past few days I decided that I don't really care about the skill level of the play I put out there. I just want to stream and have fun, which is what Smash is all about. Hopefully you can look forward to more Smash streams in the future.

Ohhh the fighting games!

I was going to apologize for being light on content this past month, but then I realized that I finished an entire Let's Play of Bayonetta 2, streamed a bunch of Spelunky, and made a whole bunch more videos. I think the fact that I work a shitty retail job has made the past three weeks seem much longer than they actually were.

However, now that it's December I'll have quite a bit of content. I'm going to be streaming as much Smash as I can in my free time. Then once Guilty Gear Xrd Sign comes out on the 16th I will be playing that as much as humanly possible. If you have ever wanted to see terrible Guilty Gear play, then this will be your premiere source for just that!

I've definitely been slacking in the podcast department, but this month I'll have at least two. I will definitely be recording one tomorrow and then later in the month Noukeo and I will be doing a game of the year podcast. I'm trying my best to get content out there and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

It's been fun, see you guys next time!

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 is Over

So, it turns out that Let's Plays aren't the best format for the way I play video games. I like to binge play games. With a Let's Play I had to stop and render videos after every chapter, which vastly slowed down the way I played Bayonetta 2. If I ever do anything like this again I'll probably just stream large chunks of me playing a game and then export it to YouTube.

I made a huge dump of episodes today, so that I could finish the series up. Sadly there were some technical difficulties though. The 14th episode mysteriously has no commentary, so that's just game audio. I am kind of against re-recording and making the same reactions again, so I left it as it was.

As if that wasn't annoying enough the 15th episode was not watchable. The video file freaked out halfway through and the frame rate halved. So you'd get to the end of the video in terms of audio, but it was only half of the actual video... Needless to say that wasn't something I wanted to upload. So I just left it out completely. It's the 14th chapter of the game, so if you want to see a mech punch stuff you can find that.

I liked Bayonetta 2 a lot, and I'm happy to post the entire playlist here so I can stop flooding this page with individual updates. Thanks!

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 10

In this episode the story really starts to draw me in as we fight a floating blue guy. In all seriousness though there are important plot points in this one that relate to both Loki and Bayonetta's past. It was awesome.

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 9

Who wants to see Bayonetta fight some cubes? What if I told you that the cubes transformed into monsters? If you like what you're hearing, then this is the episode for you!

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 8

Last episode took place falling down a tower, so why wouldn't this one take place inside a giant manta ray? Also, the thumbnail for the video couldn't have possibly been any better!

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 7

This is the shortest episode yet. It takes place mostly while falling from a tower. It's nuts.

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 6

Who's ready to transform into a giant water snake?

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 5

This time I tackle chapter 4. It's probably my favorite so far, just because I like fighting strong human sized enemies. Sure, it turns into a giant battle between two ridiculously sized creatures, but that's okay too.

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 4

The fourth episode of the ever-blurry Let's Play is upon us. In it Bayonetta does some surfing while dodging churches. It's pretty insane.

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 3

Episode 3 is up and ready to go, it's time to conquer chapter 2. This time I pick up the awesome katanas and start cutting stuff up!

Game Time - October 2014

This month marked the beginning of my foray into the video world. As you may have noticed I streamed quite a bit of Spelunky, and even played through the entirety of Grim Fandango for charity. I also started posting videos on my YouTube channel, like my Let's Play of Bayonetta 2. However, this is still a blog so I'm not going to stop typing up this kind of stuff.

Since you can just go and watch me playing through Bayonetta 2 we'll be talking about some different stuff here. Shadow of Mordor came out for the PS4 and it's just as amazing as I hoped it would be. A Lord of the Rings game with awesome combat? I never would have believed it a few years ago.

I also played through Dust: An Elysian Tail, which was finally released on the Playstation 4. I saw my brother play a lot of it on 360, so I'm glad I finally got to see it through to the end for myself. I'll finish up by talking about the few hours of Freedom Wars I played. It's kind of like Monster Hunter, but with an anime style prison. I need to get back to playing it, so without further ado, it's game time! 

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Arkham Asylum changed the way melee combat works in modern video games. Its system was so solid that now almost every single game with melee combat emulates. Shadow of Mordor is no exception, which is a good thing. I like the Batman combat, so when it's put into other games I tend to enjoy it. You can seamlessly go from foe to foe and use special abilities as the combo grows. This game is super brutal, more so than most games I've played in recent years. It's super easy to decapitate and maim foes, which is both satisfying and a little bit disturbing.

You play as Talion, who is a ranger. His family was killed by Sauron, and then he is possessed by a wraith. Surprise, it's a Lord of the Rings game! What's weird is that this game could pretty much be anything, but for some reason it has a Lord of the Rings skin on it. The story is absolutely secondary to the gameplay. It takes place in Middle Earth, but it could probably have taken place anywhere with any other protagonist. Sure, I like the Lord of the Rings universe, but it doesn't make any reasonable difference here,

Get ready to stab all the orcs!

The main draw to Shadow of Mordor is the nemesis system, which works exactly as advertised. Being a Lord of the Rings game you fight a lot of orcs. They have a hierarchy. So you have normal grunt soldiers, commanders, and a few other classes all the way up to the highest which is war chief. All of the elite units have names, traits, and weaknesses. What's insane is that they remember you and what you've done. So every time you come into contact with them they will remember the scenario. If you defeated them they'll want revenge, or if they killed you they'll call you out on it. On paper it doesn't sound exciting, but in game it creates a lot of cool scenarios. 

The hierarchy of elite soldiers change as you go through the game. So if you kill someone, then another orc will rise to take their place. If one of them kills you then they'll get promoted as well. This system is the main driving force behind the game. You can interact with the system in numerous ways. Events will pop up around the open world, so you can influence them. Sometimes the elites will throw parties and you can poison their booze, or two elites will be fighting and you can help one, or kill them both. Later on in the game you can use your wraith powers to control the minds of enemies. In doing so you can pit your minions against other elites and make huge waves in the overall hierarchy.

This is how you know what's happening with the nemesis system.

Shadow of Mordor was an excellent game. It's the first open world game in a long time where I actively tried to do all the side missions, because they were well implemented. The nemesis system kept me coming back, because I wanted to experience more of the game world. It's super cool to have grunts talk about you and specific things that you've done. It's even more cool when you build a personal grudge against an enemy that essentially doesn't have a story behind it. All you know is what you've done to them and what they've done to you.

When games have a good system other games tend to steal it. Much like this game borrows heavily from the Batman combat, I hope that future games borrow heavily from the nemesis system. It would work quite well in many other franchises, and it can still be improved upon. It ends up creating very personal game experiences and stories.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

This game came out for the Xbox 360 a few years ago and I've wanted to play it since then. My brother got it and I could have played it, but for some reason I never got around to it. So when I found out it was coming to PlayStation 4 and it would be free for Plus members I got super excited. It was basically made by one dude, which is insane.

In Dust you play as Dust, who is an amnesiac fox/dog man. I remember when the game first came out there were a lot of people who were super against it because all of the characters were animals. A lot of people thought that it looked like it was for kids, which always upsets me. I don't get why people need to attack things for being what they perceive as childish. Anyways, as Dust you're trying to recover your memory and learn who you really are. In the beginning he wakes up next to a tree with a talking sword named Arah. A weird furry bat/hamester named Fidget is there as well. The story is actually pretty solid and there are some shocking revelations and plot twists as it progresses. In fact, I had the game crash during a pivotal moment in the story!

Dust is a beautiful looking game.

The combat in Dust is simple, but fun. Dust can swing Arah to do basic melee combos. He also has the ability to swing Arah rapidly in order to create what is essentially a tornado. When you hit enemies with it you can easily juggle them. To add an extra layer to it Fidget can use various magic attacks. When the magic is hit by your crazy tornado move it has various effects, but they're all very damaging. You want to get as many hits in a combo as you can, because the damage you're dealing increases with the combo, so does the experience you gain. 

It's a Metroid style game with a melee combat system. There are various areas you can't access until you gain more abilities. You can also pick up quests from various characters in order to get upgrades. It's a cool little indie game that's extremely polished. Every time I look at it I'm consistently amazed that it was basically created by one man. 

Freedom Wars

I have been excited to play Freedom Wars for a very long time. I still don't know how I feel about it yet though. I know I like it, but I can't help but feel like the game is missing something. For those who don't know it's essentially Monster Hunter, but in a weird future prison. People who are considered to be a drain on societies' resources are sentenced to prison where they are forced to work off their sentence. In order to do so prisoners must fight abductors, which take citizens to other cities to work. It's okay though, because a friendly hologram bear talks to you all the time.

At first the game is super restricted, because as a prisoner you have few rights. Doing certain things will add years to your sentence. So initially you can't speak to people, leave your cell, sit down, or take more than five steps. You eventually gain these rights by purchasing them with points you get from missions. The missions are where the game is like monster hunter. There are numerous types of abductors, which are more or less monsters. There are tigers, dragons, and many more, but they all look like weird glowing robots. 

The abductors are ridiculously large and kind of scary.

Most abductors have hollow casings on their body where they hold citizens. In order to rescue them you can either defeat the abductor, or grab onto the part and slash it until it opens. Basic combat is like most other hunting games. You start with a sword, which has basic three hit combos, and strong attacks. There are numerous sword types like light and heavy, but you can also get crazy huge concrete blocks on a stick and lances. Secondary weapons are guns, which also vary greatly. I tend to use light assault rifles, but there are also  rail guns, rocket launchers, and a whole lot more,

The main differentiating part of the combat is the thorn, which is wrapped around the player characters arm. It's a thorny vine, which you use like a grappling hook. You point it at a target and then you can pull yourself to wherever it landed. Since you can't jump this makes up for it. It allows you to cling to enemies in order to hit them. There are three types of thorn, which are attack, shield, and heal. I personally use heal, because I like to have as much health as possible at all times. You can charge the thorn in order to do various things. Charging the heal allows you to heal allies, and create a tree to heal yourself as well. Just hitting someone on your team with it will heal them. Attack and shield vary in terms of charging, but their names are pretty self explanatory.

You can use your thorn to pull enemies down for easier attacks.

One of the main advertised points of the game is that you can fully customize your AI partner. They are called accessories and are essentially your parole officer. It's possible to fully deck them out in whatever clothing you've unlocked and weapons that you're not using. It's not nearly as cool as all the advertising and pre-release coverage made it seem.

There is a lot of faction based stuff going on, but I haven't really messed with it yet. When you begin the game you join a Panopticon, which is named after a real life place. Since I live in New York state, I chose New York. You can donate resources to help out the overall score, or play multiplayer matches in order increase the rank of your Panopticon. I assume you get rewards for doing so, but I don't really have any idea. 

Fight for your panopticon!

I like playing it a lot, but like I said earlier I feel there's something missing. Most games like this have you increasing your stats constantly through armor and weapons. You upgrade your weapons in Freedom Wars, but it's done through a menu and then you have to wait a set amount of time for it to finish. There is no armor either, so I generally feel like I'm not advancing at all. I'm going to continue to play it, because I'm enjoying it. I just hope that it grabs me a bit more.

November is Coming

I thought that this was a crazy month for games, but it's nothing in comparison to what's going to happen in November. On the 11th everything pops off with the release of Digimon All-Star Rumble, Assassin's Creed Unity, and Tales of Hearts R. Then the following week we have Little Big Planet 3, and Dragon Age Origins. Three days later the most important release of the year Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U comes out alongside Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. 

I have barely had enough time to play what I got this month, but I'm going to have to find a way to persevere. Going forward you can expect me to post a whole lot more videos!

It's going to be a crazy month, so I need t get cracking on the stuff I haven't finished from October yet!

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2 - Episode 2 - Squirrel With Bling

Surpriise, the video quality is still not great! With this, the second episode of my first Let's Play, I up the video quality just a bit. Now when I'm in battle you can actually tell what's happening as opposed to having the screen turn into several large pixels...

So I will continue to try and work out the kinks in my system. YouTube really has a knack for taking a high quality video and making it look completely awful!

Despite the issues I've been having this video turned out quite well. Join me as I play through Chapter 1 of Bayonetta 2!

Update: I uploaded a higher bit-rate file and the difference in quality was miniscule. The video is quite watchable, I'm just crazy and want it to be perfect. Since I've been messing with this for weeks I'm just going to have to accept the video quality of this fast moving game and move on with my life. Please look forward to the rest of the game!

 

Let's Play: Bayonetta 2

As you may have noticed over the past few years many people on YouTube play through video games in their entirety. These are generally known as Let's Plays and they are done in many separate parts. Now that I have proper recording equipment I decided to get in on the action.

For my first one I decided to play Bayonetta 2, because there aren't an insane amount of Wii-U's out there. Also I think Bayonetta was an amazing game. I have recorded the first episode, which you can find below. However, the quality of the video is not the best. The El Gato Game Capture HD I use does not do well with encoding high action sequences. So while the file looks incredible on my computer, once it's uploaded to YouTube the quality takes a major hit.

With the installments going forward I'll be using a different program to capture the footage. While the overall quality will probably not be as high, the action sequences should look much better. So please, enjoy the first episode.