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!

All the Streams

In case you were not aware I have been streaming much more frequently these past few weeks. This past Saturday started the real stream extravaganza, and there's a good reason for that.

I've been saying for months that I was going to get a capture card for my European 3DS in order to stream a whole bunch of Inazuma Eleven. I sent the 3DS in a week ago, and got it back this past Friday. I was amazed to find out that it works much better than I expected it to. As you may have heard I have a lot of trouble with my El Gato Gaming Capture HD. The video feed is always a few seconds delayed, and audio sync is a complete nightmare.

I got my 3DS capture card installed from www.3DSCapture.com. The guy who does it goes by Loopy and I've got to give him major props. This capture card works like a dream. A thin, black box is integrated into the back of the 3DS. A micro USB port is then used to hook it up to the computer. From the website all I had to do was download a driver, and some basic capture software. I then opened OBS and it started right up. You just capture the windows of the capture software and it goes. There is no delay and I can actually hear the audio through my headphones!

With my hot new capture card I've been streaming the majesty that is Inazuma Eleven. It's anime soccer. You should really check it out.

The reason I'm writing this is to tell you all what and when I will be streaming, because this week I've got a lot going on.

Tonight, mere minutes after I finish typing this, I will be streaming Inazuma Eleven until I beat the story. That should take me about two hours. That's mainly because I've streamed it for over 12 hours since Saturday...

After tonight I will be taking a break from streaming Inazuma Eleven until some unspecified time next week. I will then be starting the second game in the series.

For the past few weeks I haven't been streaming Thursday Throwback, but I am now starting it again. This past Thursday Landers, Noukeo, and I streamed Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO. This coming Thursday we will be doing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. We're getting back on track, so look forward to some hot action every Thursday for the foreseeable future.

If neither of those interest you, then perhaps you'll want to show up on Saturday when I stream a full playthrough of Grim Fandango Remastered. I streamed myself playing the original a few months ago for charity, but this time it's not. I've played it a bit so far, and it seems pretty awesome!

So yeah, that's what's going on with my Twitch channel. I'm trying to do a lot, and I hope it works out.

Go to www.twitch.tv/drac96 and witness all the magic! Make sure to follow me on twitter @Manatron to see when I go live.

Top Ten Games of 2014

Since I've started this blog I've posted my top ten games of the year in text format. I'm going to continue doing that, but this year I also recorded a podcast where I discuss each choice a little more in-depth.

Keep in mind that these are my personal opinions, which may differ greatly from your own top ten picks for 2014. As usual I will start with the number ten game on my list and work my way to what I thought. If you want to read some more in depth thoughts on each game just click its name.

Let's this list going!

10. Transistor

The second game coming out of SuperGiant games, which shows they know how to make a good game. You play as Red, a singer who has lost her voice in a cyberpunk world. Armed only with a talking sword she must travel through the deserted city in order to find out what's going on.

The soundtrack, atmosphere, and combat blend together to create an unforgettable experience. I can't wait to see where SuperGiant goes from here.




9. Mario Kart 8


Mario Kart games don't really change much from year to year, but it's easy to tell when one is a quality product. Mario Kart 8 is certainly a quality product. It's the first HD iteration of the series and it looks beautiful. Nintendo has proven time and time again that they have the best art direction around.

On top of it looking beautiful it plays well. The karts have weight to them, and you actually have to slide in order to succeed. The game wasn't super surprising to me, since Nintendo knows how to make a solid kart racer. If you like Mario Kart, it's more of that!


8. Dark Souls 2

I got into the Souls franchise this year, and while the original Dark Souls is my favorite the sequel is pretty good too. It's more Dark Souls, but not necessarily as well thought out as the first. Still, you travel through numerous environment types and meet with infuriatingly difficult challenges.

With new mechanics it differentiates itself from the original, while keeping the experience fresh.




7. Rayman Legends

Rock solid platformers are getting increasingly hard to come by. Lucky for me Rayman Legends came out on current generation consoles, so I could take a crack at it. The Ubiart engine renders a beautiful world, that is backed up by some incredible platforming.

Rayman feels weighty, but glides through the air just right. More platformers should feel as tight as this does. It helps that there are a ton of unlockable stages and characters to boot!



6. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

This game made the list predicated entirely on the nemesis system. The Lord of the Rings elements
are completely ancillary to the experience. The nemesis system allows for you to make your own enemies and rivals. You get into fights with unique enemies who will remember you and react with tons of unique dialogue depending on the situation.

Rarely do I hope that developers directly steal from other games, but in this case I do. The nemesis system is super cool and I'd really like to see it in more games.

5. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

Guilty Gear has finally made its return. It looks incredible and is super fun to play. The story mode is like watching an anime, and more fighting games should follow its lead.

Very rarely do I go into training mode and practice combos in a fighting game, but with this I have. The combat system has been brought back down to a level that the average person has a chance of breaking in to. I'm not saying I'm going to get good at Guilty Gear, but I'm sure as hell going to try.


4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U

Smash is back. I love Melee, and what Project M is trying to do is admirable. I think that I enjoy
playing the new smash more than a mod though. The speed is the right distance between the slow motion of Brawl and the hyper speed of melee. It's a perfect blend of what makes smash very accessible and competitive.

The game is so jam packed with content it's hard to see it all. Out of all the games I played this year this one had the most fun multiplayer by a mile. Smash continues to be one of my favorite franchises of all time.


3. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call

Curtain Call brings back everything I loved about the original Theatrhythm, but adds the ability to
play multiplayer, and use the buttons as inputs. I still love to use the stylus, but it's cool that there is another option now.

The amount of music in this game is staggering. It has all the songs from the original, plus all of the DLC from that game. They then decided to add around one hundred more songs, and continue to throw out DLC. If you like rhythm games, and Final Fantasy you need to play this game.


2. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Initially I wrote this game off as being another dumb visual novel. I saw some footage of the game and decided to try it out. It's a visual novel, where you go into Phoenix Wright style trials, play insane
mini-games, and forge relationships. It mixes so many elements I love.

The main character is a talking bear, who wants high school kids to murder each other! It's over the top in a way that I can really get behind, but is appropriately grounded when it needs to be. The sequel somehow came out this year as well, and I'm chomping at the bit to play it.


1. Inazuma Eleven

I don't have the appropriate words to describe how much I love Inazuma Eleven. It's anime soccer on the DS. This year it finally got released in the U.S. on the 3DS Eshop. I bought it on a whim and couldn't put it down. Shortly afterwards my obsession with the game spiraled out of control and now I've beaten every game released in English and imported a European 3DS.

It's an appropriate mix of action, strategy, fun characters, and cool moves. There's a lot of content in Inazuma Eleven, and it's fun to find all of it. You put eleven players on the field and draw lines with the stylus to lead them, or tap the screen to have them pass/shoot. If they intersect with someone, or shoot on the goal they have the opportunity to use a special move, most of which are amazing. Axel Blaze catches the ball ON FIRE!

Inazuma Eleven grabbed me in a way that a game hasn't in a very long time. You could say I became obsessed with it. It was consuming every ounce of my free time for around three months until I had completed all four of the games released in English currently. It's a blast to play, and I'm glad I found it.

     -Manny

GOTY 2014 Podcast

2014 has come to a close, which means that Game of the Year is upon us. As usual I have selected my top ten games. For a change of pace I got together with Noukeo and we recorded our talk about what we believe to be the top ten games of 2014. Our lists are both quite different but share many similarities.

The audio is a little weird for some inexplicable reason. At random intervals my mic will echo for a few seconds. It seems to be some kind of feedback from when Nouk and I talk at the same time. *Shrugs* It's not too bad, but it was enough for me to notice it.

I hope that you enjoy our discussion! If you're not a fan of Podcasts I will be posting a text version of my list within the next few days.

Game Time - August 2014

I played a whole lot of the Inazuma Eleven series over the past two months. In fact, I beat all four games in the series that have been released in English so far. So far I've probably played for a grand total of 300 hours, and I still have so much more left to do. So yeah, I played through all of Inazuma Eleven 3: Bomb Blast, and Inazuma Eleven GO: Shadow this month.

Other than that I played through a majority of Xillia 2, and I keep changing my opinion of it. One minute I feel like it's a decent game, and the next everything about it really upsets me. Hopefully by the time I beat it I'll have a solid opinion.

Since the Inazuma Eleven games are long, and Xillia 2 is a million hour long RPG I didn't play a whole lot of other stuff this month, but I did manage to play a little bit of the InFamous: Second Son DLC. I like it so far, but I don't know how much longer I'll feel that way... It's got some interesting design choices.

InFamous First Light

I thought that Fetch was an amazing character in InFamous: Second Son. She was pretty much the only character besides Delsin that had solid development. She had gotten into some trouble with drugs, but was recovering. Plus, her neon powers were amazing. So it's only natural that I'd purchase the DLC where you play as Fetch and learn more about her backstory. Somehow I feel like I got swindled out of $15...

Yes, First Light has you playing as Fetch. It takes place months before Second Son when Fetch was first brought to Curdun Cay, the conduit prison. She's being trained to control her powers and in the process of doing so she's forced to tell the story of what happened to her brother. You get to play those sequences, and those are the best part. You get to run around Seattle as Fetch, who unsurprisingly has the same Neon powers that Delsin stole from her. The story is what I like, not so much the playing part...

At least it has a sick logo?

When doing missions in Seattle you can do side missions, just like in Second Son, except that they're all super lame. In order for Fetch to get skill points you have to collect neon gas. You can just run around and collect it, or you have to chase it during race events. You can also do some sweet neon graffiti. It's not exactly the most stellar content, especially when it's been taken almost directly from the main game. Delsin couldn't run races, but who would want to do that anyways, because it's lame. Running around Seattle is lame, but the story missions almost make up for it.

What really throws me off about this DLC is that when Fetch isn't telling her story you have to play through battle arenas in Curdun Cay. Enemies will show up, and sometimes you'll need to run over a hostage in order to rescue them. These types of battle arenas are generally bad filler content in games, so the fact that they're one of the main pieces of content in this DLC is more than a little upsetting.

Fetch can make some awesome neon graffiti.

I can see this being an amazing DLC for people who don't own Second Son, because it's standalone. If I hadn't done all of this same stuff as Delsin for around 12 hours earlier this year I might think First Light was an amazing purchase for just $15. However, since I did play Second Son when it first came out this just seems like a quickly thrown together cash grab I was tricked into getting because Fetch was a solid character in the main game. I'm interested in seeing her story through, but I can guarantee I won't be doing all the optional missions, and I'll fight in the battle arenas as little as possible.

Tales of Xillia 2

I had a lot of problems with the first Tales of Xillia, which you can read all about here. A lot of the problems I had with the first game are still present in Xillia 2. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the areas are wide open (They're literally the same areas), and you're always told exactly where to go. On the other hand the characters are all marginally better, and the battle system is still super fun.

To me Xillia 2 feels like it's either cut content from the original game, or a very large story expansion. It has a brand new main character named Ludger Kresnik. For some inexplicable reason he can't talk. I'm a fan of silent protagonists in games, but in this case it's very out of place. All the other characters talk a whole lot. It wouldn't be as weird if characters didn't speak directly to him in ways that warrant a response. Apparently there's a story reason he doesn't talk, but I have seen no evidence of that and I'm around 40 hours in.

Ludger can't talk, but he can sure shoot pistols.

Other than Ludger's weird silence the story characters are all pretty good. One of the new characters the game introduces is a little girl named Elle. Normally children characters in games are obnoxious, but something about Elle makes her very endearing. She is lost and was separated from her father, but is constantly trying to fulfill a promise to him. It helps that she carries around Ludger's super obese cat Rollo, who I am absolutely in love with.

What bothers me about Xillia 2 the most is that the writing in it is super inconsistent. The game had a strong beginning, but a few hours in everything fell apart. It was almost like a completely different set of writers were put on the game for a few hundred pages of the script. At some point the characters start throwing out all kinds of terms as if you should know them when in reality you don't know what the hell is going on at all. Within the past few hours it has gotten better, but I still feel like there's something missing. It doesn't help that the game has serious pacing issues. It's separated into chapters and at the beginning and end of each you're given a ton of sidequests to do. People like me will do them all, which takes around two to three hours. So you're taking breaks from the main story for hours at a time when you don't even know what's going on in the first place.

All hail our lord and savior, Rollo.

Just like with the first game this makes it sound like I totally hate Xillia 2, when I don't. The battle system is super fun and action oriented, but everything surrounding that needs a lot of work. The fact that Ludger can switch between dual blades, a sledgehammer, and dual pistols is cool, but it doesn't change anything drastically. All of the exploration and sense of discovery is gone, which is something I really hope they fix in the next Tales game. It will help that they're not going to be reusing all the same assets again...

Inazuma Eleven 3/GO

I played and beat the first two Inazuma Eleven games in July. I then continued to play Inazuma Eleven 2 until all of my players were level 99, which took around 85 hours. For some reason I then decided to import a 3DS from England in order to play Inazuma Eleven 3, and Inazuma Eleven GO. Inazuma Eleven 3 continues the story of the first two games and acts as a finale to the trilogy. It's mostly the same as the previous two, but layers a few new mechanics on top of everything. Players get tired more quickly and the amount of TP players have for special moves was greatly decreased. It also added the ability to chain shots together, which was very handy in a lot of situations.

My favorite part about 3 though is that it's about an international soccer tournament, so you get to see the game's representation of countries other than Japan. The British team is super fancy, the American team stays in a junkyard, and the Italian team all sound like they're trying to impersonate Mario. It's an amazingly harmless view of the world's countries that only comes off as slightly offensive. It helps that since it's pretty much an anime version of soccer, so it takes itself very seriously. There's no chance they were trying to make subtle jokes or anything.

In Inazuma Eleven 3 the story team is the best!

From Inazuma Eleven 3 I moved right on to Inazuma Eleven GO, which focuses on a mostly different set of characters. Ten years passed after the original trilogy, so now all the characters I thought were cool from the first game have grown up and are around my age (24). What's cool is that they are actually an integral part of the story, because they have to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of players. What sucks is that I'm not really a fan of most of the new characters. The main character in particular I find to be insufferable. His name is Arion Sherwind, and he's super upbeat like Mark was. Unlike Mark however, Arion is super emotional. He truly believes that soccer as a sport has feelings, so he's always worried about making soccer sad. Yeah, that's a real thing.

There are a few characters I like though like Viktor Blade, who inexplicably has a Russian accent. In fact all of the characters talk with accents. These kids all live in Japan, so why does each one have a different accent? Maybe they were like that in the original Japanese, but even then it still wouldn't make sense. It also helps to make the voice acting extra awful, when it wasn't even that great in the first place.

I really wasn't feeling the players in Inazuma Eleven GO...

Inazuma Eleven GO changes the series completely, because it was the first game made specifically for the 3DS. Instead of being sprites everything is completely in 3D. It makes everything look awesome, but there are far less special moves for your players to learn. I've heard that Inazuma Eleven GO 2 has a whole lot more special moves, so I hope the lack in this game is because of the hardware switch. Due to the shift to 3D the actual soccer matches feel and play a lot differently as well. You can no longer pass to anyone, because the ball won't pass right through opposing players. You have to hold the stylus down in order to kick it over their heads. They also added a mechanic that gives certain players access to fighting spirits. They are literally spirits that the players summon in order to become much stronger.

When you have a fighting spirit summoned on a player it's almost impossible for them to lose the ball, and their shots are far stronger than they normally would be. The downside is that the players can only have the spirit summoned for a certain amount of time, and while the spirit is summoned they become tired much more quickly. It adds a new dimension to the game, because you not only have to worry about the stats and elements of an opposing player. You now also have to worry about the stats and element of the fighting spirit that player has as well. When you go against the computer the AI isn't the best, so you can usually steamroll them with whatever you have. However, I think that once I can play a human being the fighting spirits will be much less effective.

Fighting spirits are a cool new addition to Inazuma Eleven GO.

I have now beaten all of these Inazuma Eleven games, but I am still leveling up my teams in both 3 and GO. You'll probably hear me talk about the games a lot more in one form or another, because I still think about the series far too much for my own good.

The Storm Begins

It's a good thing I beat all the Inazuma Eleven games, because the fall game storm is upon us. From September up until around March there is a nonstop stream of games coming out that I don't know I'll be able to keep up with.

I still haven't beaten Xillia 2 and Dangonronpa 2 for the Vita will be arriving at my house tomorrow. Then a week after that I'll have Destiny. The trend continues from there when a new game comes out weekly, and sometimes two games come out a week. It's going to be an action packed fall and I'm very excited for it.

I'd keep going on, but I really have to get on Xillia 2 or it's never going to get finished. See you all next time!

     -Manny

Game Time - July 2014

July was an insanely good month for gaming. It somehow turned into ridiculous anime game month even though I didn't mean for it to.

I started off by playing Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn for an unhealthy amount of time. It came out on the 1st, so I was able to start the month off with a real banger. I blew up over 100,000 robots and it was glorious! The games in the Dynasty Warriors Gundam series will forever hold a special place in my heart. There's something magical about decimating thousands of robots with little to no resistance.

After I started winding down from my Dynasty Warriors Gundam high I played a bit of One Piece Unlimited World Red. I intended to play it more than the two times I did, but became distracted by what is now one of my favorite franchises of all time.

I don't remember when in the month it was, but I decided to check the E-shop on the 3DS. That was when I noticed that Inazuma Eleven was on sale because of the world cup. It was only $10 and I had been wanting to try it for a long time. I don't really like soccer, but I am way into anime and games with RPG elements. I promptly downloaded it and ended up playing it for hours. I now have a new obsession that consumes most of my waking thought...

Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn

I don't know that there's a whole lot I can Say about this game. It's another Dynasty Warriors Gundam game. It's the fourth one to be exact. You play as Gundam pilot controlling a Gundam. You walk around a map and push square about a billion times and all the enemy robots around you blow up. It's great! If you don't know anything about the series I wrote up something about the previous game, which you can check out here.

So while I don't really need to describe its appeal I should talk about what's different with it. Obviously there are new Gundams and pilots, but the game itself is actually a bit different as well. The main difference comes with the way you upgrade the Gundams themselves. In the third game you just got blueprints after a battle. In this you still get blueprints, but now they're for specific parts like arms, legs, torso, and head. You can combine them in order to make complete blueprints with all the parts. The combining is actually kind of confusing and I'm still not quite used to it. Each body part can only have two stat boosts, so you need to be careful when combining or you'll often end up making your Gundam worse than it previously was.

This image perfectly captures the spirit of Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn.

The way you unlock characters and Gundams is a bit different as well. The game uses a card based system. There is a list of cards in the game and they all have an objective on them. So for example some cards may say you need to beat a specific mission in order to unlock the card. Once you do that you'll gain the card and whatever benefits come from it. This means you'll often need to go to the card list to see what you need to be doing. Some of the stuff is insane, so I don't know if I'll ever be able to 100% this game like I did the last one. To get all the cards you have to be every Gundam and Mobile suit in the game at least five times and blow up at least 2,000 enemies with each, which is bananas. There are so many more Gundams in this game than the previous entry, which was already an insanely large roster.

I'm impressed that Tecmo Koei somehow makes each game in this franchise bigger and better than the last. I was a bit disappointed they didn't dub this game into English though. One of my favorite things to do was make fun of the English voice acting, but this time I just have to settle for reading the corny lines. I'm just glad that they're still putting these games out in the U.S. at all, because I can't imagine they sell extremely well. Hopefully in a year or two I'll be able to once again tell you about my Dynasty Warriors Gundam exploits with a brand new game.


One Piece Unlimited World Red

I played Unlimited World Red twice, but they were two four hour sessions. I got a pretty good feel for what the game is and I like it. Initially when I heard about it people were describing it as a One Piece themed version of Monster Hunter. This isn't entirely accurate, but it's not super far off. It does have a lot of Monster Hunter Elements embedded in it. You do fight large bosses, some of which are creatures, but it's not the focal point of the game.

Most of the time you're wandering around various environments seen in the show. You'll be taken to such locales as Albasta, and Marineford. If you're a fan of the show you'll recognize everything, if not then you wouldn't be playing this game anyways. It's in the original Japanese with subtitles, so Namco Bandai clearly knows the audience that they're targeting with this release.

If you can name these four characters you'll probably want to buy this game.

In each locale you'll be collecting materials much like in Monster Hunter. You do this by breaking boxes, and hitting trees. You can also catch bugs and fish. The locales are generally wide open and you'll fight a bunch of smaller enemies as you traverse through them. The combat is akin to Dynasty Warriors where you do basic attack combos by pushing square and triangle. You also have special moves, which can be used to do things to the environment as well. In fact, the entire game seems kind of like it's just Dynasty Warriors where the enemies take more hits and you collect a bunch of items for crafting like in Monster Hunter.

The reason you're collecting stuff is so that you can make expand the hub town. You'll need various things in order to construct buildings and upgrade them. Buildings will give you access to new things to do, such as shop, play mini-games, and take on quests. The quests are very similar to Monster Hunter in that you have a rank, which will increase the more you do. There's even a restaurant, which grants stat bonuses through the combining of various foods.

The game is all about making this town better.

The plot is unique to the game. A pirate named Red is messing with Luffy and the crew. He is able to pull from their memories and bring their thoughts into physical space. Due to this ability most of what I played so far involves the Straw Hat crew reliving some of the more memorable fights from the anime. It seems like an excuse to put all the old enemies in the game while still technically having a "new" story.

I bought this game for two reasons. The first being that I am a die-hard One Piece fan. The second was so that I could play multiplayer with a friend. It turns out that the only multiplayer in the PS3 version is local, so I won't be doing any of that. I probably should have gotten the Vita or 3DS version of the game if I had known. I do still enjoy the game though. It's interesting, because it doesn't seem like a generic cash grab, which most anime games tend to be. It's trying to do something unique and while it doesn't entirely succeed it's still super interesting. If you're a One Piece fan you should definitely pick it up!

Inazuma Eleven

There was a time a few years ago when I started looking into the Inazuma Eleven franchise. It sounded super appealing to me. A game about a middle school soccer team in Japan who essentially have superhuman abilities. It even had RPG elements to boot! I thought it looked pretty cool, but much to my dismay the game had only been Released in Japan, and Europe. Since the first 2 games were on DS I could have imported them, but the price was a little more than I wanted to pay for a complete unknown.

Fast forward to a few weekends ago when I happened upon the original game for ten dollars on the 3DS eshop. Earlier this year Level 5 finally decided it was time to give the franchise a run in America. In order to do so they put an enhanced version of Inazuma Eleven on the eshop for $20. When I happened upon it the World Cup was going on, so it was only $10. I knew that I had to buy it. What I didn't expect was for the game to consume my every waking thought.

Welcome to my new obsession!

The first night I played the game I only intended to try it out, but I ended up playing for six hours straight. Something about it hooked me immediately and it still hasn't let me go. What's crazy is that I don't really like soccer. However, when you take soccer and basically make it an anime I'm apparently all for it. Real soccer players can't call exploding penguins out of the ground, or make a soccer ball burst into flames because they kicked it so hard!

So what is Inazuma Eleven? I'm glad you asked! It's a soccer RPG developed by Level 5. There are now 6 games in the series, and an anime that follows the plot line of the games. All 6 are out in Japan, 4 of them are released in Europe, and there's just the original here in the United States. In the game you play as the Raimon Middle School soccer club. At first they're terrible and the club is in danger of being disbanded, but through a series of coincidences and hard work they turn everything around and end up thwarting and evil plan that threatens to ruin the soccer that they love so much!

I know this probably sounds like I'm messing around, but I'm not. I legitimately love this series. There are two kinds of soccer matches in the game. There are standard 11 on 11 matches, and then there are the 4 vs. 4 random battles. Yes, there are random soccer battles in this game! Yes, that is the best thing ever! You control your players with the DS stylus. Drawing lines from them will make them move and tapping the screen will make them pass the ball. Sounds pretty basic right? Well then you add in special moves. When your player comes into contact with an opposing player the game pauses and gives you some choices. If you have the ball you can either dodge, charge, or use a special move. Dodging will have a low success rate, while charging will have a higher success rate, but you're more likely to foul. Alternatively you could use a ridiculous special move that consumes TP, which is essentially this game's magic. The same thing happens if you're going against someone with the ball, but it changes to tackle and slide tackle. You can also do special shots!

HIS LEG CATCHES ON FIRE AND IT'S AWESOME!

As you play your team levels up and learns skills, and it's just the most magical time ever. To make it even better there's a Pokemon-like quality to the game. There are over 1,000 players you can recruit and they even have elements associated with them. Each played is either Fire, Wind, Wood, or Air and that determines what type of players they're strong against. The whole system was basically made for me, and the fact that it's all so over the top and filled with crazy characters makes it even better. Right now I probably sound like a mad man, and I feel like I'm just typing stream of consciousness like some kind of lunatic. I haven't enjoyed a game this much in a very long time. It's like someone made this series specifically for me.

Now as I said the first game is the only one that has been released here in the U.S. Lucky for me the second game was for DS, which was not region locked. I imported the 2nd game and have already played that for over 50 hours as well.

So Much More Inazuma Eleven

The third game in the series came out last year in Europe. While it was released for the DS in Japan it was sadly released for the 3DS in Europe. Much to my dismay the 3DS is region locked, so I had to import a European 3DS. Yes, that's right. I imported a 3DS from England so I could play the remaining 2 English Inazuma Eleven games I have yet to consume. In fact for the past few days I've been playing Inazuma Eleven 3 on my hot new European 3DS.

As we speak the first game in the Inazuma Eleven Go series (The 4th game overall) is en route to my house from jolly old England. Yes, I have played over 100 hours of this series over the course of 3 weeks. Yes, I have spend over $400 dollars purchasing these games and a 3DS. I regret absolutely none of it. I can't get enough of this series, and if my insane madman-like lunacy wasn't enough for you this week you can look forward to some other Inazuma Eleven related content in the coming weeks. I'm going to keep playing these games and it doesn't look like I'm going to be done any time soon.

In terms of other video games I'll be playing Tales of Xillia 2 when it launches halfway through August, and I'll also be getting the re-release of Disgaea 4 on the Vita, so that my Vita can finally get some love. I'll be back at the end of August to regale you with tales of those games and even more Inazuma Eleven!

     -Manny