Top Ten Games of 2016

When I thought back on 2016 I couldn't think of any amazing games at first. I honestly feel like the beginning of the year was an eternity ago, and I have a pretty bad memory. However, upon looking at my list of completed games I realized that this was a banner year for video games. So many great products were released, and a few of them actually blew me away. 

As always I will be listing these games in descending order from ten to one. Keep in mind these are my opinions, and are based on video games I completed in 2016.

10. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End 

I was originally upset that there was an Uncharted 4, but seeing it in action put my mind at ease. This game gave the franchise the ending it deserved, and boy is it a great ending. 

The gameplay is improved vastly over the previous iterations, and the graphics and facial animations are unparalleled in video games. Naughty Dog really knows how to draw everything they can out of Sony platforms, and I can't wait to see them improve even more.

9. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

Namco Bandai finally started to bring Digimon games to the west again, so now I can finally play the games I crave once again.

The story of Cyber Sleuth is an anime trope nightmare, but the gameplay is the compelling turn based strategy and Digimon evolution festival I really needed early in the year. If you like seeing cool monsters change into cooler monsters and grinding for EXP, then this game is totally for you!

8. Final Fantasy XV

After ten years Final Fantasy XV made it to market against all odds. What should have been a horrific mess of development hell actually came together into a fairly enjoyable game. 

While the story was an absolute train-wreck I found myself loving exploring the open world. The combat might not be my favorite, but it was fun enough to pull me through. I'll definitely return to it when the DLC is released.

 7. Street Fighter V

SFV got a lot of shit from the press and general gaming populace. While a lot of it is undeserved, Capcom also did a lot wrong. The game launched without a lot of features, and they even managed to put a root kit in the PC version for a day.

Despite all that the fighting at the core of the game is in my opinion better than it has ever been. I played it a ton its first few months of release, and still return to it occasionally. 

6. The Last Guardian

Like the Team ICO games before it the Last Guardian is a puzzle puzzle game. However now you have the added bonus of hanging out with Trico the dope bird-dog. As an animal lover I felt a bond with Trico that I can't even really describe. I tried to talk to him like I would my dog. The AI is amazing and acts like a real animal.

I can not praise Tric's mannerisms enough,

5. Dark Souls 3

It's closer to the original than it is to 2, but it never reaches the highs of the original. It's another one of those games, and it's great. I didn't like the fast paced action of Bloodborne, so I was glad to return to my slow and methodical play style.

My favorite part was discovering the world while talking to a friend about it. There's something about discovering the secrets along with the rest of the Internet that is absolutely magical. 

4. Stardew Valley

I've always loved Harvest Moon, and Stardew Valley is an improved version of old Harvest Moon games. It's an amazing game made by a single person. 

You can farm, mine, fish, gather, and make tons of friends. You can really tackle the game however you want, and it never discourages any play style. It even manages to make the villagers deep and meaningful characters,

If you like Harvest Moon, then you absolutely need to play this game.

3. Pokemon Sun/Moon

Nintendo managed to actually change up the Pokemon formula a bit and the result is one of my favorite games in the franchise.

It actually had a real story, and the world they created feels lived in by both Pokemon and people. I hope each new Pokemon game continues on this trend.

2. Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

Ace Attorney 6 manages to add in new gameplay elements to the courtroom that change things dramatically. Trying to find contradictions in a seance is both interesting and weird.

On top of that the game manages to tell a compelling narative that gives Apollo his time to shine. The end result is a solid end to the second Ace Attorney trilogy. 

1. Overwatch

I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer games, and I'm even less of a fan of first person shooters. Somehow Overwatch managed to pull me in with a strength I still don't quite understand. I love everything about the game.

The game only surfaces positive data, so I feel good about my performance and the game in general. On top of that the characters are all super colorful and have a ton of personality. 

Blizzard solved some magic formula to make any game they touch into a cultural phenomenon, and Overwatch continues that trend.

Podcast Episode 22 - Final Fantasy XV

It's been a while since I posted anything here, because of the holiday season. However, it is now over and the content flow can resume. I am starting off by posting this podcast about Final Fantasy XV.

Listen in wonder as I rant and rave about this flawed gem.

Game Time - November 2016

As with every year November is when the holiday season really begins to ramp up; It's the busiest time of year for me at work, and my family and close friends start coming around a lot more frequently. It's an awesome time of year that brings me a lot of warm feelings.

Part of why I enjoy November so much is because games I want to play tend to come out. This year it was especially true. Pokemon games come out semi-annually now, but it's not every time that a new generation begins. Rumors of the 7th generation of Pokemon have been swirling for over a year now. It didn't help my excitement that when the demo came out in October almost the entire game leaked onto the Internet....

So yeah, I played a whole ton of Pokemon. Somehow I also ended up engaging with a decent amount of Watch Dogs 2, despite telling myself I wasn't going to get it. I have way too many games I started this year, but didn't finish. I guess I was too interested in seeing how it turned out. I'm not done with it yet, but I think it's an okay game. Not amazing, just okay.

Then you have the crown jewel of this month, which is Final Fantasy XV. The troubled development cycle made it take around ten years to come out. To be honest I never thought I'd actually get to play it, but here I am playing it. It's actually running on the TV next to me right now.

Oh yeah, I bought a sweet 50' 4K TV on Thanksgiving. It was on sale for $328 and I just couldn't pass it up. Now I can actually take advantage of my PS4 Pro, which is really neat.

There's so much I have to say about these games. I could actually spill out thoughts about FFXV until I explode, but I'll save you from that tragic fate. Instead I will outline my basic experiences here and then write up a Game Time ID when I have finished the game. I still have a bunch to say now though, so let'e get into it. It's game time!

Watch Dogs 2

I actually didn't think the original Watch Dogs was a terrible game. It was an open world game. Like all open world games it was mostly about shooting your foes, but you could also hack things with your phone to take them out as well. More often than not that meant incapacitating people by exploding things near them. It was a novel idea, but it didn't have much depth. The real issue with the game was the main character Aiden Pierce and the story surrounding him. He's a completely unrelatable character and an all around asshole. He uses his own sister as bait at one point. It didn't help that everything was hyper serious. There was absolutely no comic relief, which left me with a very sour taste.

Now it's a few years later and we have Watch Dogs 2. The good news is that the characters and story are worlds better than the original. You play as Marcus, who is a young hacker trying to change the world in a positive way by taking on big data. He's a regular guy who loves technology and bad movies. He's relatable and interacts with the other characters in the world in a fun way. The game's tone overall is a lot less self serious, which is exactly as it should be. The game knows it's goofy and uses that to its advantage. The issue I have is that the story is very disjointed, much like most Ubisoft games are now. You learn a lot about Marcus and his crew at DedSec, but the overarching story jumps all over the place. The game constantly introduces new characters with no explanation of who they are, and then proceeds to not really clue you in afterwards. It's frustrating, but the characters make me forget about the seemingly non-cohesive plot.

Marcus is a pretty likable guy.

The gameplay has both changed quite a bit, and not very much at all. What I mean by that is that Watch Dogs 2 is still an open world game. You can drive cars, take cover, and shoot at a bunch of people. My issue with the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2 is that the shooting feels much worse than the original game. I eventually got used to the combat, but Marcus doesn't feel powerful like Aiden did. Before I could go into any situation guns blazing and come out unscathed, whereas with Marcus I go down almost instantly. I guess this fits with the character, but it's still frustrating when I get caught in a stealth section and can't really do a whole lot about it.

The cool changes come in the form of hacking. You can still hack nearby objects with your phone nothing has really changed in that regard. There are some cool new features like the ability to call gang hits on enemies. This makes is so that gang members come in and start shooting, which alleviates the need for you to shoot yourself. What's really cool though is that you can complete every mission without having Marcus enter the mission area himself. He is equipped with a small rover and a drone. The rover can jump, and do physical hacks in place of Marcus. The drone can fly around buildings and hack anything that doesn't require physical contact. This means that as long as you're not seen by the enemy you can do everything with these two tools at your disposal. The only downside is that if they get shot down or blown up, then you have to wait an oddly long amount of time before you can bring them out again. Regardless it's a really cool concept that works well.

The rover adds a whole new way to tackle each mission.

I was personally hoping for Watch Dogs 2 to be a huge step above its predecessor. Instead it takes incremental steps forward. It makes me worry for the future of the franchise. I don't really know where they go from here. So far I'm really enjoying my time in the game, and think I'll actually try to finish it. Initially I wasn't really digging it, but as I got more skills and access to the drone I began to have a much better time. It's definitely a lot better than the original.

Pokemon Sun/Moon

Pokemon is one of those magical franchises for me that will never get old. Despite the fact that you essentially do the same thing in each iteration I can't get enough of trying to capture all of the little critters that I can. However, this time the adventure is actually quite different. Prior to release I was a bit skeptical, but now that I've put 60 hours into the game and completed it I can safely say that Pokemon Sun and Moon are great games that do a lot right! Long running franchises like Pokemon walk a razor thin line where they need to try new things to pull in new people, while not changing the things that long time fans will get upset about. Obviously someone always gets upset, but I honestly think that Game Freak did a wonderful job this time around.

This time around you play as a Pokemon trainer who has just moved from the Kanto region to the beautiful island paradise of Alola. Surprise, it's basically Hawaii! The journey takes you across four different tropical islands, which are all very different in terms of what they have to offer. It's cool, because large cities take a back seat for more lush natural environments. I feel stupid every time I say this, but it's the first time that the world feels like it's actually inhabited by both humans and Pokemon instead of it just being a world where humans live and Pokemon are their battle slaves. You interact with Pokemon in the wild, and see them walking around way more than in any other entry in the franchise and I love that!

People and Pokemon live in harmony in the Alola region.

For those of you who have played Pokemon before you know what the goal is usually to collect eight gym badges and then take on the Elite Four. In Alola that is not the case, because they have not established their Pokemon League yet. Instead you travel across the islands in search of trials. Some trials are battles with powered up wild Pokemon, while others have you collecting items. It's a nice change of pace. Each trial you complete awards you with a Z-crystal, which allows you to use Powerful new Z-moves. Normally Pokemon have four moves, but if they are holding a Z-crystal of their type then they can use a powerful Z-move once a battle to do a ton of damage, or increase the buff they receive. It sounds simple, but it adds a whole new layer of strategy just as mega evolution did in the last generation.

The plot is slightly different from standard Pokemon fare, in that it's actually a real story. Since Black and White Game Freak has been trying to make their stories have more depth, but I think they truly succeed in Sun and Moon. You're introduced to a host of interesting characters over the course of the game such as the lovable Professor Kukui, the shirtless professor, who I genuinely was interested in by the end of the game. While the central plot ends up being essentially the same as other entries in the franchise it builds up the characters and world they live in, in a way that has yet to be seen in a Pokemon game to date.

Battle's look better than ever before.

The number of new Pokemon is around 80, which is low compared to previous generations. I think that the level of quality is slightly higher this time around though. That can just be said for the games in general as well. The visuals are better than ever before and everything is done with a flourish. It's funny, because as I'm writing this and thinking about the game a smile is creeping across my face. I have always loved Pokemon and it warms my heart to see the franchise continue to move forward instead of stagnate. If you've never played a Pokemon game before there has never been a better time to jump in and immerse yourself in the world.

P.S. Team Skull is the best

Final Fantasy XV

In the ten years since the announcement of Final Fantasy Versus XIII I tempered my expectations. At the time I was beyond excited, but as the years drew on and the game wasn't really shown I tried to ease my excitement. Years went by with no news, and then in 2013 the game re-emerged as Final Fantasy XV. At that point it had been so long I was no longer able to hype myself up. I just didn't believe it was every going to actually come out. Now we're here in 2016 and I'm playing the game. I still can hardly believe it, but I definitely am playing it. However, much to my dismay I am not enjoying it as much as I wanted to. It's a very interesting game. There are a lot of great ideas, and a lot of horrendous ones intertwined into what is a pretty good game.

Yes, I realize I said I wasn't having a very good time and that's true. Personally when I go into a Final Fantasy game, or really any JRPG I'm looking for a semi-compelling story with well developed characters. Final Fantasy XV has one of those things so far, and that's compelling characters. Prince Noctis starts off as a spoiled brat, but seems to be opening up and realizing that he has a responsibility as the crown prince. It helps that the central focus of the game is traveling around the world on a road trip with your bros. The story on the other hand is a disjointed mess that has yet to pull me in. As of right now I'm halfway through, so I'll wait to pass judgement until the very end. However, I can't really see it shaping up. For starters if you didn't watch the prequel movie (Kingsglaive) you would have literally no idea what's going on in the game and understand next to nothing about the world it takes place in. That sucks. I get that sometimes supplemental material is cool, but when something is an integral part of understanding the story of your 40+ hour JRPG maybe put it in the game... I'm saying this as someone who watched the film. Then on top of that the game itself starts off with little to no introduction. That's okay though, because there's a 40 page prequel novel PDF that you can download to see what happened beforehand....

These are the characters you'll be seeing the most of. (Left to right: Gladio, Ignis, Noctis, Prompto)

Aside from the ancillary content I don't think the story in FFXV is told very well, but that's not entirely the game's fault. See, because it's an open world game. I like open world games, and think that they can tell good stories, it's just that most of them don't. Instead they focus on making the open world compelling while putting the story on the back burner. This causes pacing issues right off the bat. I did the first two story chapters which took about 2 hours, and then did sidequests for about six. That means that instead of doing the super urgent story matter I needed to attend to I messed about collecting monster bits for people at a diner. That's my own fault though. Let's look at a different scenario now. I finish my sidequesting and do the main plot again. I end up doing three story chapters in the course of 20 minutes with little to no explanation. The pacing is all over the place. I'm not even going to get into how half the story chapters come out of nowhere and seem like they're remnants from a completely different game. That's a story for a different time.

What about the gameplay you ask? I want to be joking when I say that for combat you essentially hold a single button to win, but it's true. You hold the attack button to do combos, and if you hold it forever Noctis will keep going until he gets hit. The longer the combo the more damage you do, and you'll eventually stagger the enemy and break parts of its body. The fun part of combat comes from Noctis' ability to teleport and change weapons rapidly. He has special powers, because he is one of the chosen kings in a destined line. This means that he can throw his weapons and teleport directly to them. You can lock onto an enemy and push the warp button to do a warp strike at them. This uses mana, which can be recharged by standing still or hanging from a warp point. Warp points are scattered around the battle, and act as ways to rapidly recover both HP and mana. This mechanic feels cool, and looks awesome, but isn't totally necessary. So far I have been able to get through every battle by holding circle and occasionally dodging. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if you hold the dodge button you can essentially dodge every single attack forever. This trivializes all combat, and it doesn't help that if you don't mainline the story and do sidequests you become over leveled immediately. Despite all this there is actually some depth to the system for those who are willing to look for it, but there's really no reason to unless the post game bosses are absolutely insane.

Sadly battles are not very challenging.

I feel so conflicted about Final Fantasy XV. On the one hand I find the story to be a disjointed mess, and combat to be a dull slog. However, on the other hand I like exploring the world, driving along the roads listening to the radio, and camping under the stars with my bros. It's a beautiful and flawed game that has a lot of heart at its core. The open world and the story often seem at odds with each other, and remnants of what the game used to be still remain. Keep in mind I'm only halfway through the game and it apparently stops being open world at some point and becomes completely linear. I don't understand how such a shift could possibly happen, but I can't wait to find out how it's done. I'm enjoying myself enough to keep playing, but it's definitely not the masterpiece I was secretly hoping for after ten long years.

The Wait is Over

The Sony exclusive The Last Guardian was announced right around the same time as FFXV. Similarly people thought it was never going to come out, but in just a few short hours UPS will be delivering it to me. It's crazy that two games that have been in development hell for almost a decade will have come out within two weeks of each other.

While I have enjoyed Team ICO games in the past I am cautiously optimistic about The Last Guardian. While FFXV seems to have changed greatly from what it originally was, The Last Guardian seems to have kept the old PS2 style gameplay it was shown off with originally. All I know is that I love how lifelike the weird bird-dog animal is and I want to give it a hug. I really hope you can hug it!

With that said look forward to another exciting edition of Game Time next month! I'll be putting it up right around the same time as my game of the year list and podcast, which you won't want to miss!

Game Time - March 2015

There have been many months recently where it's easy for me to choose three games to talk about. Mostly because I only played a few games. However, this month I played so much that I couldn't even to begin to get it all down in a post of reasonable length.

As most people probably already know I definitely purchased and played Inazuma Eleven GO 2 Chrono Stones. It's the newest European release in the Inazuma Eleven franchise and I streamed the whole game, well at least the story. If you want to watch that you can check out the archives on my YouTube channel. I am continuing to stream my post-game adventures on Twitch if you interested in that as well. There's been enough of that though, so I'll wait a bit before I talk about it on here.

I also got Bloodborne, which is incredible. It's exactly the kind of Souls game I was hoping it would be. The release of Chrono Stones really sidetracked me, so I haven't played as much Bloodborne as I would have liked to. Still, I played for around 15 hours and have loved it. Sure, I get incredibly frustrated dying to bosses over and over, but my deaths are well deserved. When I finish the game I'll definitely write up a Game Time ID and record a podcast with my thoughts, so look forward to that later this month!

With those two huge releases out of the way I still have a few games left to talk about. The first is Life is Strange, which is an episodic adventure game about rewinding time and high school life. So far I've only played the first episode, but it seems pretty great so far.

I've wanted to play Final Fantasy Type-0 for some time, but sadly it seemed like it would never be localized. Lucky for me it finally happened and I got it! To be honest I really only picked it up for the free copy of the Final Fantasy XV demo it was packaged with, but Type-0 is actually a really cool game. There's a lot going on and I haven't played a bunch of it, but what I have played I liked a lot.

Without further ado, it's game time!

Life is Strange

I tend to build up a lot of rewards points on my PlayStation credit card. I almost always spend the points on PSN cards. In this case I used the PSN card to buy the season pass for Life is Strange. It's an episodic adventure game about a girl named Max who discovers that she has the power to rewind time. She's attending a private highschool in her home town that she has recently moved back to. She doesn't really know anyone or have any friends. She is way into taking pictures, so you can snap photos of things around the world, which net you extra bits of dialogue and trophies.

This first episode is essentially to have Max learn about her special time-rewind power and introduce most of the characters, Each one of them seems pretty interesting and since it's an adventure game you'll want to talk to them as much as possible. The world seems really interesting, and I like a majority of the characters that have been introduced so far. I've seen a lot of talk on the Internet about how the dialogue is terrible, but I thought it was alright. I don't really know, but I'd assume it's hard to write natural dialogue for a high-school girl, or even guy for that matter. It's an awkward time in life.

Throw in the added bonus that Max has magic time travel powers and it gets even weirder. The time
rewinding mechanic is mostly used to solve puzzles. Any items you pick up will be retained when you rewind time, so it makes it easy to experiment with things. Where the mechanic kind of breaks down for me is that it makes choice somewhat meaningless. When given a major option you can rewind immediately afterwards, but once you leave the area you're stuck with the choice. Yes you have to live with the choice, but you can flip-flop beforehand making it less interesting.

I guess I don't have a lot to say about it other than I really liked the first episode. I played through it on stream, so if you want to check it out you can do that here. The second episode is out now, I just need to find the time to play through it.

Final Fantasy Type - 0 HD

It's no surprise that when you try to upscale a PSP game to an HD resolution it doesn't look so good. The textures in this game look absolutely awful, while the character models actually look quite nice. That's what I would have expected. I would not have expected that whenever you move the camera the motion blur is so severe it actually hurts my eyes! I'm not even kidding. Check out some videos of the game. I made one, which you can find here. I never get eye-strain or motion sickness when playing a game, but I sometimes have to look away from the screen or close my eyes while I'm playing.

That issue is a shame, because I think Type-0 is really cool! It's an action game where you play as a group of super powerful military students. There are 14 characters to choose from and each one has a unique weapon and fighting style. The game recommends you use everyone and keep them at a similar level so that's what I've been trying to do. The combat is simple, but fun. You essentially mash square Dynasty Warriors style and occasionally use triangle for magic abilities you can equip. It's not complex, but the act of figuring out how to do various combos is kind of fun. You can also absorb the souls of your fallen enemies, which can be used to upgrade things later.

The models look great, but the textures look like garbage!

Other than traditional missions to kill tons of dudes there are RTS style missions on the world map. You need to control and create various forces and direct them to attack enemy cities. You can run around the map as well and attack soldiers and infiltrate cities. So far this was probably my least favorite part of the game, because the controls are a bit clunky and nothing feels quite right.

What I do absolutely love is that you get to attend the military school when you're not on missions. There's a timer until the next mission and each interaction will make the counter tick down a bit. You can chat with students, tackle sidequests, or go to class and learn a bit. These character interactions are generally pretty interesting. The character interactions are my favorite part so far, because I really don't understand the story at all! Right off the bat they throw out about a million names of places and things and expect you to know what they are, when in reality it's all a bunch of gibberish. I'm going to keep trying to play the game, but the camera can be so off-putting that my play sessions tend to be rather short lived.

Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae

I've always said I wouldn't believe in the existence of Final Fantasy XV until I had a playable version of it in my hands. Now that it has happened I'm not nearly as excited as I was for a number of reasons. I'm still very excited for it, but most of my excitement has been replaced with apprehension.

See, this game has been in development for nine years. Games are known to get caught in development hell, but this specific instance is crazy. It started as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and years later is was re-branded to become XV. The whole time Square-Enix insisted it was still being developed even though the game had dissipated from all trade-shows and media coverage. What I'm worried about is that it's not going to be the same game it was originally intended to be. Hell, the demo is even vastly different than the trailer that was shown a few years ago at E3 when the title was changed to Final Fantasy XV.

That trailer made the game look incredible to me. The main character Noctis is flying through the castle throwing out tons of weapons and teleporting around in order to defeat enemies. There are tons of explosions and huge monsters. It looked like the Final Fantasy equivalent of an action movie. Prior to that when it was Vs. XIII they claimed that the game would be very bloody, dark, and gritty. All the trailers for Vs. XIII were super dark in terms of their color palette while everything for XV is insanely bright. Now, if you look at the demo and the things the game's director has been saying about the game I'm not so sure it's like a cool action game or dark and gritty. Well, it's certainly not gritty.

The demo starts with Noctis and his band of friends waking up in a tent in the middle of  a wide open plain-like area. A phone is vibrating and each character wakes up in a manner that lets you know what their character is like. Turns out the royal car has broken down and they're on a quest to hunt down a behemoth so they can get its horn and sell it for a ton of cash. So that's the entire goal of the demo. Other than the initial scene and a few where they're following the behemoth, and the closing cutscene there's little to no story involved with the demo. Sure, the characters will speak to you as you wander around, but that's really it. It's a shame, because all of the characters seem very interesting and all the information being released about the game make it seem like it's all about the group bonding as they travel across the land.

Hopefully these characters get the development they deserve.

A majority of the demo is dealing with combat. I like it, but I think that if it doesn't increase in depth it will get boring incredibly fast. For some reason Noctis has the ability to use thirteen different weapons, he can only use a few in this demo though. If you hold square, then he will kind of auto attack and do a basic combo. You can alternatively jam square if you prefer. In order to doge you have to hold L1 and you'll automatically dodge hits at the cost of some of your mana. Mana is also used to cast abilities, which are chosen from a menu similar to Kingdom Hearts battle system. Oh yeah, you can also parry blows by pushing L1 right before you get hit. What's weird is that it's kind of hard to die. If you lose all of your HP Noctis just kind of limps around holding his gut until one of his friends pats him on the shoulder. He then regains a fraction of his HP and can fight again. If you get hit enough in danger state you will then die, which only happened to me because there a billion enemies attacking at once.

Combat was fun, except for the part when you're fighting five or more enemies at once. My main complaint about the combat is that there are too many enemies in battle at once. You can lock on to a specific one to make things easier, but even then the camera kind of goes wildly out of control so it's not always worth doing. Focusing on a single enemy can work, but you tend to start getting hammered on by four or five others. It definitely doesn't help that your partners AI is horrendous and even if you stand directly next to them they won't always help you back up. The tons of enemies in a battle issue was compounded for me by how often enemies re-spawned in the overworld.

Check out all the nothing!

So now let's talk about the world. In this demo it was super bland. Like I said you're in a wide open plain. There are some sizable bodies of water and a forest with a lot of boulders but for the large part it's an open plain. You know what's exciting about an open plain? Nothing. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if the whole place wasn't so god damn huge. It takes forever to run anywhere. Yes I realize you can probably ride Chocobos around in the main game, but they definitely weren't in the demo so it was excruciatingly slow.

I will say the the game looks gorgeous despite having some real serious pop-in and frame rate issues. I'm sure all of that will be ironed out by the time the game is released though. What upsets me is that this game has been in development for nine years at least. I should realistically be praising everything about this game, but all I have to say is that I hope the full retail product is better than the demo. Sure, the combat is fun, but it got stale pretty quick. The full package will have more variety so I'm not super worried about that. The huge open world full of nothing is a very large concern to me though, because I hate that in games. There's no purpose to making a huge world if you're not going to put anything in it! Then there's the characters. For a game that's supposedly all about characters bonding and hanging out they sure didn't show off a whole lot of that! I don't know. I so desperately wanted to be in love with the demo, but I just couldn't do it. I hope that Final Fantasy XV is an excellent game.

MORTAAAAL KOMBAAAAAAT!

Despite the fact that I have to finish Bloodborne, and Type-0 I'll continue to play Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Chrono Stone as well. However, I'll obviously need to play Mortal Kombat X when it comes out in a few weeks.

I feel all talked out this time, so I'll just end it here. Have a good month, and see you next time!

E3 2013: Sony Press Conference

The future of the PlayStation

Sony didn't exactly do very well at the beginning of the current console generation. They had grand ideas that ended up falling quite short. They put a lot of stock into the cell processor, but it ended up making the console harder to develop for and much more expensive to produce. The $599 price reveal is quite an infamous moment in terms of E3 press conferences. That's all in the past though. A few months ago Sony announced the PS4 at a special event and talked about it's tech specs and showed a whole lot of video games. They started quite a buzz in the gaming community. People have been backing them recently. Especially after the announcement that the Xbox one would not support used games and would require an almost constant internet connection.

Sony stayed silent about their policies for used games and online connectivity until last night at their press conference. Sony pinpointed the weakness in Microsoft and struck with everything they had. In an honestly surprising move the PS4 will fully support used games. There is also no required online connection, so you can play your games offline all you want. When these two features of the console  were announced there was quite a bit of cheering from the crowd. During those cheers Jack Tretton started talking about PlayStation Plus and slipped in that you'll need it to play online multiplayer with the PS4. I'm actually glad that plus is required, because it means that maybe the online play won't totally suck on the PS4.

In another blow to Microsoft's body Sony announced that the PS4 will launch this holiday season for $399. The price seems crazy cheap compared to the Xbox One, but the One comes with Kinect while the PS4 does not come with the fancy new PlayStation Eye. The price point, being able to play used games, the fact that indie developers can self publish, and no necessary online connection are leading people to crown Sony the victor of this upcoming console generation already. I don't necessarily agree with that, but things do look very good for Sony right now.

Sony showed quite a few games at their conference as well. They live demoed Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Which froze), Watch Dogs, and Destiny. All three look very good. I wasn't convinced on Assassin's Creed 4, but before the demo froze it looked awesome. I was surprised by how good Destiny looked as well. It may be a first person shooter, but it has RPG elements and I love me some RPG elements.

Sony also showed off quite a few trailers. These are just a few of them.

• Transistor
• Infamous: Second Son
• Drive Club
• Batman Arkham Origins
• The Last of Us
• Beyond Two Souls

They showed off tons of indie games that will be coming to PS4, which all seemed pretty cool. The trailers and gameplay demos got me really excited for what's coming during the next gen. None of it really surprised me though, except for two games I have yet to mention. There are few video games that will make me jump up out of my seat and yell with excitement. Sony showed two of those last night.

I have been waiting since 2006 for Final Fantasy Versus XIII to be released. At this point I was just looking for any new about it's existence. There were a few CG trailers and one gameplay trailer floating around. The last real news about the project was from 2010. That all changed last night. Sony showed a video of the game's producer Tetsuya Nomura telling fans he was busy, but they should enjoy the trailer for Versus XIII.

I lost my composure during the trailer. It was amazing. The CG scenes were beautiful, but the gameplay looked even cooler to me. The main character Noctis was jumping around cutting fools with his sword. His movement was super fast, which was aided by his teleportation. When the trailer ended it was revealed that the game had been changed to Final Fantasy XV and it would appear on the PS4. I thought that by now the prospect of this game wouldn't excite me anymore, but as a die hard Final Fantasy fan I was proven wrong.

On top of that ridiculous reveal they also decided to show a brief teaser for Kingdom Hearts 3. I guess Square Enix just wanted to let fans know that it's finally in development. While it may be Kingdom Hearts 3, it's actually the tenth game in the series. This will be the end of the trilogy and it should be a great game. 

Even though it was reveled today that both of these titles will also be released on the Xbox One as well, Sony still got the initial reveals. It takes a lot to make me freak out with excitement these days, but Final Fantasy XV did just that. Sony had a lot of great news at their conference and it makes me very excited to purchase the PS4. In fact I pre-ordered it from Amazon moments after the price was announced. Sony is certainly off to a better start this gen than they were last time around. Let's hope they can make good on what they've promised.

     -Manny