Game Time - January 2018

I decided to take December off from writing and now I'm back to start 2018 with a bang! 2017 was a stellar year for Video games, and 2018 looks like it's going to be great as well. 

To start I'll talk about Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which is the last game I started playing in 2017, but the first game I beat in 2018. It's the first new expansive RPG for the Switch and it delivered in all the ways I wanted it to. 

As for some hot new 2018 releases I've got Dragon Ball FighterZ and Monster Hunter: World. Sadly I have only played a bit of DBZ, but it seems like it's actually a good fighting game. Monster Hunter on the other hand has pretty much consumed my life since its release. Boy do I love me some Monster Hunter. 

It's game time!

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I played the original Xenoblade Chronicles for over 100 hours before getting burned out. I forced myself to do everything I saw, until I just couldn't do it anymore. I came back to it a few months later and finished it. For my initial 100 hours of play I loved that game. The MMO like combat pulled me in deeper than I ever would have expected. The real draw for me was the interesting story though. That's why I bounced off Xenoblade Chronicles X. There was barely any narrative whatsoever, but Chronicles 2 brings it back.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 returns to the originals narrative heavy roots.

I don't even really know where to start with this game. The combat system is a more simplified version of the original with a ton of complex and slightly convoluted systems are layered on top of it. To start the original game had you using a fairly large pool of skills that once used would go into a cooldown state. Depending on your style of play you could swap out skills when you needed. Chronicles 2 cuts down drastically on the skills known as artes and each character only has three they can use in battle at a time. Each character auto attacks like an MMO and then you use skills to do more damage and inflict status effects. At first it sounds more simple until you get into the combo system.

The world of Chronicles 2 revolves around beings called blades. They are essentially sentient weapons. The characters you control are called drivers, who bond with crystals to make the blades appear. Once summoned they are bound to the driver and you can use them in battle. They each have different elements, which leads us back to the combo system. Each driver can have three blades equipped. In addition to their three skills they have a special attack that can level up from 1 to 4 by using skills. Once you use a special a combo meter will start and a branching path will appear on screen. You then need to find the next element in the chain in order to continue the combo. Once you complete a full tree which takes three special attacks an orb will begin floating around the enemy with the color of the last element you used in the chain. You can then "burst" by filling another meter. Once you do that you get a chance to break the orbs you have on an enemy in order to do massive damage.

The UI is just as overwhelming as the battle system!

Confused? I certainly was for the first few hours of the game, because the tutorials are not super great and you can't really review them. The entire system revolves around working to built these combo chains, which takes a long time. Due to that even battles with weak enemies can take upwards of ten minutes because your meant to do a ton of damage with your burst. At first it seemed tedious but once I got the hang of it every battle seemed like a puzzle. The battle system is the core of the game. Overall the game is fun, but man does it have some huge flaws. The map is atrocious, and getting blades revolves around random chance, but the entire experience as a whole was something I greatly enjoyed. It's the first real AAA rpg for the switch and it's at least worth a look.

Dragon Ball Fighterz

I'm going to be real here, I've played this game three times. Twice during betas, and once to get trounced by my brother and a few friends because I focused all my time on Monster Hunter instead. What I have played of the game is very fun though. I kind of knew what to expect from a DBZ fighting game made by ARKSYS, but I have been pleasantly surprised by it. Just like Xrd the game looks beautiful in motion and in stills it looks just like the anime. In terms of gameplay it was a lot of intricacies you'd expect from.an ARKSYS game, while remaining assecible for the average player. If you just want to have some fun with DBZ characters you can mash one of three attack buttons to do cool looking auto combos. On the other hand if you want to go wild with super long combos you make yourself it's got you there too.

Like Guilty Gear Xrd before it FighterZ is a beautiful game. 

I'm excited to really dive in and see what the story is all about. It introduces a new Android character (21) and she seems pretty cool. You have to beat the story to unlock her as a playable character so I haven't seen much of her on streams. So far people seem to really like the game and I hope it succeeds in a huge way for ARKSYS.

Monster Hunter World

Monster Hunter World came out last Friday. I have played 80 hours since then. I have killed monsters for approximately two full work weeks now and I don't regret a single moment of it. As some of you may know I fell down the Monster Hunter rabbit hole for the first time with Tri Ultimate on the Wii-U. The thrill of the hunt caught me and since then I have put over 1,000 hours into the franchise as a whole. What's a bummer is that most of the time people are dismissive about the franchise because it doesn't do a good job of explaining a lot of it's systems and it can get overwhelming fairly quickly. Now we have Monster Hunter World, which does a lot to try and make the series appeal to a wider audience, and for the most part I think it succeeds.

I could list the quality of life changes World makes, but that's not going to mean anything to a lot of people. What I can tell you is that there has never been a time to start playing the series. For once it has a tutorial that is serviceable enough to get you into the swing of things. It is by no means perfect and misses a few things, but at least it does enough to get prospective players started.

The scale of the monsters and the world are much larger than ever before.

Just in case you don't know what Monster Hunter is, the title says it all. You hunt large monsters and use their parts to craft weapons and armor. This is all done in service of hunting more monsters! There are 14 weapon types which are all very different, and I equate them to different characters in a fighting game. At first glance their movesets seem very limited, but under the surface they are all very nuanced. Finding the true potential of a weapon is a large part of the fun I find in the game.

In previous iterations you would travel around various maps and travel through loading zones to attack monster. In World each map is one contiguous zone, and there is an emphasis on everything being more like actual nature. Everything is lush, and the monsters interact both with the environment and each other. Capcom took a calculated risk by moving Monster Hunter from handhelds to home consoles, but after selling 5 million copies worldwide in just three days I think their gamble paid off. The franchise is seeing success on a global scale like never before and I can't wait to see what kinds of updates this new formula receives. It just might be the best Monster Hunter yet.

2018 is Going to Be a Banger

Every time a new Monster Hunter comes out I get sucked in for a long time. In my extreme hype for World, i decided to import Monster Hunter XX for the Switch. Going to back to a game without all of the improvements and quality of life changes that World made has been rough so far. Despite that I've been sticking with it and continue to play two Monster Hunter games at the same time...

When I get completely burned out of Monster Hunter I'm going to transition back to playing the new Digimon game. I have a lot of thoughts about it... As a turn based RPG I like it a lot, but as a story based game I can't stand it. It's the equivalent of playing a filler episode from an Anime.

Most of the new releases on the horizon that I care about are in March. So it's entirely possible that I'll just continue to play a whole lot of Monster Hunter.

Game Time - January 2017

2016 was a pretty good year for video games, but 2017 is going to be off the chain! Most of the time January is a slow month in terms of releases. Usually I would use the two months to catch up on my backlog, or go back to games I had missed from the previous year. This year I didn't get a lot of time to do that, because the releases are coming fast and furious already!

To kick off the new year I went on a trip to a fighting game tournament. Due to being on a plane I busted out my Vita and tried to see if I could finish Danganronpa 2. I started it when it came out years ago, but for some reason or another I didn't get very far. Upon returning from the trip I played it to completion. I don't think it's as good as the original, but it's still a decent product.

Halfway through the month, the new games started to flow. Gravity Rush 2 was the first one I picked up. It's a lot like the original, but better in almost every facet. The jump to PS4 did the game justice and it's doubly cool because now it will reach a wider audience. Sadly I have not finished it yet, because there is so much content and I have a problem where I need to complete every sidequest.

Yakuza 0 came out shortly after and it's just what you'd expect. It's a Yakuza game, but set in the 80's. All the goofy side missions and deathly serious Yakuza drama are back! I've had very little time to play it so far, but I have enjoyed myself so far. I set it aside to play Digimon World: Next Order, but that's a story for next month!

I've been buried in games, and I need to talk about them. However, this month I am going to try and keep each game to around three paragraphs. While I normally try and talk about each game for around sic or seven that can get a bit too wordy. I think I'll enjoy writing these a lot more when they're shorter, but we'll see!

Danganronpa 2

The original Danganronpa wasn't even on my radar when it released a few years ago. Mainly because I didn't know what it was. The cover had the franchise mascot Monokuma on the cover art. So seeing a weird looking anime bear I wrote it off as a bad game and didn't look up anything about it. Somehow I stumbled across video of it and ordered it immediately. It's a visual novel, so there's a lot of text. However, you can walk around the map freely as opposed to moving through menus. The concept is that children are being held captive in an area and if they want to leave their captor says they must kill each other. So inevitably murders occur and then you have to have a trial in order to figure out who the murderer was. This is where it turns into a more frantic version of Ace Attorney with a bunch of weird mini-games.

The first game takes place in a school, while the second takes place on an island. Danganronpa 2 is a direct sequel. At first it doesn't seem like it, but by the end there's so much about the first game they assume you know I don't know if you'd understand anything without playing it. To me, that's a bummer because I really didn't like the overarching plot of the first game. So when it carried all of that baggage over I was a bit bummed out. The part about Danganronpa I like is getting to know all of the characters and seeing their interactions. The class trials are great too. Solving the murders feels good, with the exception of a few frustrating mini-games. So when the plot dealing with the world outside the murders comes in I can't help but roll my eyes. The last chapter of Danganronpa 2 gets so far up its own ass that half the dialogue is intelligible to the average human.

Who's going to get murdered!?

If the last chapter of the game didn't exist I would recommend it to anyone wholeheartedly. However, now I have to tell people about it with the caveat that the plot falls apart at the end. I absolutely love the core of the franchise, and am glad that it is continuing into a third game. What gives me hope about the third game is that it drops all of the plot from the first two games and is a completely different things. There is still going to be kids murdering each other, and I honestly hope that's all.

Gravity Rush 2

As you may have seen I beat the original Gravity Rush in December. Gravity Rush 2 is obviously a direct sequel that takes place shortly after the events of the original. The gravity controlling girl Kat and her police officer friend Syd were caught in a gravity storm and taken far away from their home in Hecksville. Initially you don't have control over gravity, but after a lengthy intro sequence Kat is able to do almost everything she was before. I've seen a lot of people criticizing the opening, but I personally didn't really mind it. Walking around the mining town without gravity powers makes them feel all the more special when you do get them back. As the game goes on you receive two more styles that change how your powers work. I only got the lunar style, which allows you to jump ridiculously high and fly at ridiculous speeds. It's a fun addition.

Lunar Style lets you go stupidly fast.

The remaster of the original looked fine, but having 2 be developed from the ground up on the PS4 did a lot for it. Now there is much more to the world, and a whole lot more people roaming around on the streets. The new town introduced early in the game feels very lively, and looks beautiful. As with the remaster you no longer have to control anything with the gyro in the controller. You can still move the camera that way, but it would often make me spin out of control. I turned all gyro off as soon as I could in the menu.

With that said I think that the game feels better as a whole. Now that it isn't designed around a Vita specific feature it's much better off. The game seems better as a whole outside of control as well. It characterizes all of the characters worlds better than the original, and actually tackles classism in a tactful manner. I've already played it for a long time, and I don't think I've even halfway. Whether or not the game can continue to hold my attention until the end remains to be seen. The developer said that this game would end Kat's story and as of right now I don't have any idea how they can do that. I guess a lot more has to happen in the story still. I just hope they don't cram it all in very poorly at the end. Video games tend to do that.

Yakuza 0

Yakuza has always been a niche franchise and I don't really know why. Yes, it's very Japanese, but it has a lot of things that popular western developed games have. It's one of the earliest open world franchises I can think of. I mean, sure, the world is just a sub-section of a city, but it's still open. It took me until Yakuza 3 to get on the train, but ever since then I've been singing the praises of Yakuza everywhere I can. So I find it very odd that now that this entry is being widely praised here in the U.S. Perhaps it's because it's a prequel? I guess coming into a franchise five or six entries deep is a bit daunting, but the gameplay stays largely the same between them all. Regardless of how it happened I'm not complaining, because maybe now we won't have to wait years for each new entry to be localized.

I was going to pass on Yakuza 0 until I say this image. No joke.

So now you're saying what is Yakuza all about? Well, it's about Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. They're tough guys who take no guff and have tattoos that cover most of their body. You play as Kazuma Kiryu in all of them, however in Yakuza 0 you also play as Majima Goro (Another series regular). Yakuza is essentially the evolution of old school beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage. You get into a fight and just beat the living hell out of your opponents. You can grab weapons and your opponents with them, or just throw a flurry of blows and grapples. Eventually your character have blue flames emanating off them, which allows you to push triangle for a heat action. These actions are brutal finishers that do a ton of damage. They're all over the top and a pleasure to see every time. The combat has been largely the same for a majority of the franchise so its refreshing to see Kiryu get some different styles to use. It seems that there are four styles and I've gotten one that allows me to punch people so many times they can no longer block. It's awesome.

I'm only around 2 hours in, but this feels like some Yakuza ass Yakuza. I have seen a lot of melodrama, and even a few men take off their shirts before challenging me to a fight. It's all happened before, but it's still fun. The fact that it's set before all the other games during an economic boom is Japan is really cool. Everyone has a ton of money and is trying to make their mark on the city. So far everything has been pretty tame by Yakuza standards, but I'm sure it'll ramp up as I get farther in. I guess what I'm saying is that you should really check out Yakuza. There's never been a better time to get in on the action.

All I can see are Digimon

On the last day of January Digimon World: Next Order came out and It's pretty much all I've been playing since then. Something about it grabbed me in a way that I could not shake off. Following its release I had two days off and I completely destroyed my sleep schedule by staying up until 7 AM two consecutive days. So next month you can look forward to me spouting off all about what a wonderful game it is.

Other than that the only other game due out in February is Horizon Zero Dawn, the much lauded robot animal hunting game from Guerilla games. It's nice to see them making something that isn't Killzone for once, especially something that looks really cool.

I'm sure something else will pop up for me to talk about, but I'll have to wait and see. I've had a fun time chatting, but it's time for me to get back to Digimon now...

Game Time - January 2016

Despite the fact that no games I wanted to play came out in February, I didn't catch up on the games I left behind in December. Instead I celebrated the new year of 2016 by watching all of the episodes of Steven Universe, and I don't regret anything.

I tried to play both Fallout 4 and Xenoblade Chronicles X again, but ended up bouncing off both of them. Fallout made me angry with the sheer amount of bugs I encountered, while Xenoblade was a lot more daunting and expansive than I wanted to deal with at the time.

I kept my experiences light in terms of video gaming to prepare myself for the 900 million titles I'll be playing in February. I started the month by playing Amplitude, which took me about two hours to beat. Then for some reason moved on to Tales of Hearts R on the Vita, which I had bought over a year ago. Finally I finished up by smashing my head against Jonathan Blow's new game The Witness.

Let's do it!

Amplitude

When Harmonix announced that they were kickstarting a new Amplitude I was psyched and backed it immediately. Apparently the public hunger for new rhythm games isn't super high, because it barely made its goal. I guess Amplitude is kind of a niche game though. In their early days Harmonix made a rhythm game called Frequency, which had the player moving between different tracks in a song while pushing buttons to the beat. The tracks were all in a circle, so moving between them looked insane. They followed it up with Amplitude, which still had the different tracks, but moved everything to a flat plane.

A couple of my friends played both Frequency and Amplitude in high school, and I always thought ithey were interesting. For some reason I never got into it myself, so I figured this new version would be the time. Very early in the month the game was released to backers, but I haven't really heard anything about it since then.

Still looks like old Amplitude.

This seems like a game that will not see a whole lot of sales outside of the people who backed the game. It's essentially the same as the original Amplitude on PS2, but without licensed tracks to back it up. Since Harmonix is essentially indie now they didn't necessarily want to go out and license tracks for the game. This means that most of the music was done in house. Thankfully it still has Freezepop. It's also good, because now there won't be outside copyright claims on YouTube videos of people playing the game.

All of the music is techno/electronica, which fits the games theme of traveling along neural pathways to fix a patients brain. The story is a light wrapper to give what you're doing context and isn't really fleshed out more than a few 3D renderings of a brain with a robot voice talking. Luckily no one is coming to Amplitude for the story.

Sadly once you've played all the songs there isn't a whole lot left.

The gameplay of Amplitude holds up. You switch between tracks and push one of three buttons to the beat. It starts easy, but you can ramp it up to insane levels of difficulty. The issue is that this kind of game isn't destined to sell very well. Since Harmonix isn't putting out any DLC for the game it has around 30ish songs in it. Once you master the songs there isn't really anything else for you to do. However if you like rhythm games, or were a fan of the original Amplitude you'll enjoy this for sure.

Tales of Hearts R

I bought this game when it first came out, I pre-ordered it from Gamestop, and an employee lied to me about not receiving any copies. I texted my friend who was excited about it to tell him they didn't get any copies, and he informed me that he had already gotten his copy from the same store! I called back and got mildly upset and they admitted that they hadn't received enough copies, but more would be coming the next day. Why not tell me that at first? It's a freaking Vita game. I would have understood. Anyways, we're not here to talk about Gamestop!

I was in the mood for a JRPG, so I decided it was time to try Tales of Hearts R. It's okay, but it made me realize two things. The first is that all Tales games have been a lot worse since Tales of Vesperia. The second is that the plot of every single Tales game is the same. Warning, I'm going to spoil every single Tales game right now. There is always an overly emotional main character. There is also always an evil organization that is being used by another evil organization. Finally there is always a party member who betrays you, but then betrays the people they betrayed you for less than a half hour later. Seriously, these happen IN EVERY ONE!

Can you guess who betrays you!?

The plot doesn't really matter though. Tales games are always of a certain level of quality. The characters are normally the draw and some have more pull than others. The characters in Tales of Hearts R are nothing special. Normally I love at least one character per Tales game, but this time I don't feel overly enthusiastic about any of them. They're all a little too typical .

On top of the familiar story the gameplay is familiar as well. The combat is as always the main draw of a Tales game. They're entertaining action RPGs that take place on a two dimensional plane that you can move in 3D on if you so choose. The combat is generally what evolves the most with each iteration of the franchise and this one falls somewhere in between Vesperia and Xillia. The combat is relatively simple like Vesperia, but has a bit more combo potential when using skills. The added mechanics of Hearts R make it so that you can teleport around and rack up huge combos. It's not quite as robust as Xillia in that regard though. It's okay overall.

Teleporting all around is super fun.

I'm actually surprised that this game made it to the U.S. Handheld versions of these games rarely leave Japan, because they just don't sell well enough. The fact that they need to pay for a lot of voice acting is most likely why as well. That's why I imagine that this is the only Tales game released in the U.S. that uses the original Japanese voiceover. However, I am led to believe that at one point the game was going to be dubbed into English. The main reason for this is that in Japanese the main character's name is Shing Meteorite. In the sub titles he is named Kor Meteor. Why? All the voice acting is in Japanese, so they literally say Shing Meteorite constantly. It's not even like they made it a more western name. I have no idea.

In the end I probably won't finish it for a long time. It filled the JRPG shaped hole in my heart, but now I've had my fill. It's fun enough, but definitely not one of the best games in the series,

The Witness

Initially I wanted nothing to do with The Witness. All I knew is that it was a puzzle game with insane scope made by "Braid" creator Jonathan Blow. I saw some gameplay and was intrigued. It's a puzzle game where you mostly draw lines on weird looking touch screens. As you go the puzzles get gradually more complex and introduce new rules. What I find to be frustrating is that the game never directly tells you anything. It's all supposed to be intuited, or taught to you in a series of tutorial puzzles. However, since the game is non-linear you can easily come up on puzzles you have not been taught yet. I've also thought I figured out a puzzle element only to find out in the next puzzle I only figured out the previous one by accident.

People are going wild for this game in a way that I am not. It does feel good when you figure out a puzzle, but then I just get pissed off when I'm stuck on one for more than an hour. I guess I might not be as smart as everyone else on the Internet who I've seen talking up this game. I've probably solved around 80 puzzles and played for five or so hours. I want to go back to it, but I get so frustrated. I could just look up the solutions to all the puzzles, but I'm trying very hard not to do that. Since the game is all puzzles I feel like that would cheapen the experience.

It takes place on an island and there are no people. The landscape and environment types on the island vary greatly. It looks super nice, but everything is empty. I am led to believe that when you get further in the game there is some type of crazy reveal about the nature of the island. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get there though. It's definitely a cool game, but it might not be my cup of tea. I'll keep chipping away at it over time.

It's Time

Digimon came out today, but Amazon didn't have release day shipping. Normally I'd get it Thursday because of that, but by some miracle I will be able to play it tomorrow! My excitement for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is unreal. A good Digimon game hasn't come out in the U.S. for too long. It helps that this one looks exceptional. You can bet I'll be streaming it as soon as it shows up.

The following week Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 hits the U.S. as well. For some reason that I can't really fathom I will also be streaming that piece of garbage!

Then... the next week starting on the 16th it's all over. Street Fighter 5 is finally out for real! I'll be playing that a ridiculous amount. Finally three days after that I'll be getting both Fire Emblem games! IT'S GETTING OUT OF CONTROL! There is too much happening in February, so I guess it's good I didn't play a whole lot of video games for a month huh?

If I make it out of February alive I'll see you at the end.

Game Time - January 2015

January is always a slow month for new releases, and this is one January where I am totally okay with that. I have a lot of games in my ever increasing backlog... Good thing I'm not playing them and have opted to play a ton of old games instead!

So, as you may have noticed, I've been streaming a lot more often lately. I am trying as hard as possible to share my love for Inazuma Eleven. I streamed all the way through the first game in less than a week and now I've moved on to the second. You can always check that out at Www.twitch.tv/drac96

I'm still working my way through Sunset Overdrive, but my interest is waning as the game goes on. That's the only "new" game I've been playing. I've spent a lot of time replaying old games this month. I replayed Pokemon Snap a few nights ago, and have been going through the original Super Mario. However, I will be writing here about the Donkey Kong Country series. I had never beaten the second one before, but now I have.

To go along with my more frequent streaming I did a playthrough of the Grim Fandango Remaster. Even though I played through it a few months ago for Extra Life, I still felt the need to play through the Remaster twice this past week. On my first playthrough I just wanted to see what it was all about, so I went through the game to get all of the trophies and listen to the director's commentary. I then went through it again on stream and beat it in under five hours.

Buckle up, it's game time!

Sunset Overdrive

It's official. I have been stricken with open world fatigue. Open world games are cool, but there is rarely anything compelling to do in the large open world, and the mission structure is almost always boring. Sunset Overdrive isn't really any different.

Yes, it has a whole load of style, but I just can't really ever get into it. The game is at its best when you're traveling seamlessly throughout the world. In terms of movement it reminds me of Jet Set Radio Future, but without roller-blades. For some reason the main character has magical shoes that allow him to grind on all surfaces, and he can inexplicably dash through the air. To me that's the best part of the game. The movement mechanics feel great, and make me as a player feel like I'm doing some legitimately cool stuff.

Traversing the world is fun, but shooting isn't.

Where it falls apart for me is that it is just another third-person shooter that takes place in an open world. Insomniac is great at creating zany weapons, but in the end you're still just shooting energy drink crazed monsters (basically zombies) with guns. It's even more frustrating, because almost every mission is a fetch quest, or deals with defending a single point. That sucks.

It's a shame the gameplay makes me feel this way, because I think Insomiac had some great ideas. The movement is amazing, and the world is filled with color and interesting characters. Normally these kinds of games keep me occupied, but I'm just getting a bit tired of them. I haven't played it in a few weeks, so hopefully when I boot it up later toady I'll feel refreshed. If not, I'll just have to take a break from open world games. It doesn't help that almost every release in recent memory has been open world...

Donkey Kong Country

During the SNES era I didn't personally own a lot of games, but I did rent a whole lot of them. I remember renting Donkey Kong Country one and two quite often. I personally was able to beat the first game, but never got a chance to do the second. For Christmas one year I was given Donkey Kong Country 3, which I still have now. I was also able to complete that.

New Years Eve Noukeo, Landers, and I were going to try and complete all three games on stream. However, Landers got sick, so we didn't go through with it. A few weeks later Landers and I decided to sit down and try to play through them all. We beat the first two games, but it took us nearly ten hours. We then went through the third game another day and that probably took us around two hours.

This isn't your Grandpa's Donkey Kong!

Just as I remember, these games are fairly difficult. Donkey King Country 2 is especially devious. The first two games took us a long time, because we weren't used to how the series handled at that point. If we did another run through, I'm sure we could do it much faster.

Prior to these play sessions I didn't like Donkey Kong Country 2 very much, but I've come around to it now. The music in it is incredible, possibly moreso than the other two entries in the series, which also have great music composed by Dave Wise. In fact, I'm listening to the song Klomp's Romp from the first stage of the game as I type this!


I feel that this series gets a lot of undeserved flak. People seem to think that the platforming hasn't aged well, and that the graphics look terrible. I still think the graphics look good, and they were top notch for their time. It's even more impressive when you think about how all three games were made within such a short time frame. The platforming is still some of the most satisfying I've ever played as well. It's something that's easy to learn, but hard to master. The series certainly ramps up in difficulty too. The first game starts easy and gets very hard. The second game starts easy and then immediately becomes punishingly difficult. We lost around thirty lives on a single level. After that we really had to step up our game. By the time we got to the third game I couldn't tell if it was much easier, or if your skills had just evolved from playing two.

This series is one that I have very fond memories of, and it was nice to see that reality matched up with my nostalgia for once. We're still planning on streaming it sometime, but we don't have any solid plans yet.

Grim Fandango Remastered

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, Grim Fandango is one of the greatest video games ever made. There are two games I attribute my continued video game obsession with, and they are The Ocarina of Time, and Grim Fandango. I first played Grim Fandango when I was around ten years old. It came out in 1998, and I played it a few years later. I was obsessed with Manuel Calavera and his journey through the Land of the Dead.

My dad worked in a computer store, and I would visit him there all the time and play a bunch of games. They mostly built computers and sold components, but they always had a shelf of software. It rarely ever sold, so the same games would mostly be there. One box that always caught my eye was Grim Fandango. Eventually I convinced them to let me play it, and I ended up with a burned copy of Grim Fandango. My dad left that job, but eventually went back to it a few years later. When he returned Grim Fandango was still there, and they decided to just give it to me. Sadly, I don't have the box, but I do have the original game discs.

I love all Grim Fandango related art.

It's been seventeen years since the game's original release, and now it has been remastered. The original publisher LucasArts was shut down when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. In a recent deal brokered by Sony the studio headed by Grim Fandango's writer Tim Schafer was given permission to remaster the game.

While I've played Grim Fandango countless times, many people have not. To make matters even worse it doesn't run easily on modern PCs. It only works, because fans have made programs and patches to get it to run. However, now anyone with a modern PC, PS4, or Vita can get in on the action. I've seen a lot of people complaining about this as a "lazy" port, but that's just plain wrong. As someone who's played this game recently I can tell you that the character models look a whole lot better. A whole bunch of lighting was added, you can play in 16:9, there are new camera-related controls, and director's commentary. Most important of all it's now available to many people in an easily approachable format.

I still think this would be the coolest tattoo ever.

I can't stress enough how much I think people should play this game. It is legitimately one of the best video game narratives I have experienced, which is helped by the fact that it's 90% narrative! The whole world comes together so well. Hell, it had incredible voice acting even in 1998! If you haven't checked this game out, you definitely should. At the very least you should watch my Extra Life stream where I played it.

Let the Hunt Begin!

There may have been no new games this month, there will be one in February. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate comes out on February 13th. Due to GameStop sucking, I won't be getting it until at least the 23rd. I won't get into it, but there's some stupid reason that they had to order the Monster Hunter 4 New 3DS bundle through their website. So I had to pay in full and get screwed on shipping!

I don't really care when I get it, because I'll get plenty of use out of it no matter when it comes. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was my first entry into the series and I played it for almost 400 hours. This game has more content, and new mechanics! I bet I'll play it for even longer than Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I'm very excited.

Next month be prepared for some serious Monster Hunter 4 talk. See you guys next time.

Game Time - January 2014

During the previous Game Time I mentioned how I had gotten a Vita and was playing a ton of games. At this moment I am still playing a ton of games, which is why I decided to forgo the December 2013 edition of Game Time. Christmas happened and now I'm being further drowned in video games. I even bought a few games that I know I won't get a chance to play for a long time. Anyways, there's a good chance that I won't talk about some of the games I'm playing. I will give you a handy list of all the games I've tried out and purchased.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Shin Megami Tensei IV (Haven't played)
The Wonderful 101 (Haven't played)
Devil Survivor 2 (Haven't Played)
Skylanders Swap Force
Gravity Rush
Soul Sacrifice
Persona 4 Golden
Spelunky
Starbound

Since I completed both A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS and the hot new Skylanders game Swap Force on the PS4 we'll talk about those. To round out this edition I also played a bunch of Soul Sacrifice on the Vita. It's super weird and kind of creepy. You'll probably love hearing about it.

It's a brand new year and it's time for the first edition of game time in 2014! It's going to be an exciting year. I can totally feel it already.


The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

When Nintendo announced that they were going to make a sequel to Zelda: A Link to the Past I didn't quite believe it. Nintendo has been doing a lot of crazy stuff lately though, so why shouldn't they create a sequel to a beloved SNES game that was released in 1991. This kind of game always gets me worried, because there's almost no way it can live up to the original game.

I played A Link to the Past when I was fairly young. It was before I had gotten super deep into video games, but I remember liking it quite a bit. I still remember playing it for an entire weekend, because I needed to complete it before Video King required me to return the cartridge. So my nostalgia for the original game isn't particularly strong, but I do have it.

It looks oddly similar to the original, but different enough to stand on its own.

The last time I played it was over ten years ago, but the intro to the new game still made me super excited. The title screen is almost exactly the same as the original. When the triforce appeared on screen and the music swelled I knew Nintendo had done something right. It may not be as good as the original, but I think that they did a good enough job of following up a true classic.

As you may have guessed A Link Between Worlds is very similar to its predecessor. You play as Link in a top down isometric world. It's weird, because the world is very similar to what it was before, but just different enough to feel fresh. The music is all excellently remixed, and the sounds of sword hits and enemies are almost the exact same. Normally Nintendo would just cash in on nostalgia, but instead they tried to do some new things as well. The main new feature is that Link can turn himself into a painting to merge with walls. This allows for you to traverse very large gaps and adds a whole lot of new puzzle elements.

I'm not a fan of the way Link looks as a painting.

The other new thing is that Instead of traversing the dungeons in a certain order you can do them in any order you want. A freaky rabbit merchant takes up residence in Link's home. He will rent you all of the equipment you need in order to complete the dungeons. If you die while you're renting the merchants pet bird will swoop down and take your items back, so you need to be careful not to die. The game isn't super difficult. I was able to complete it without dying once. Late in the game you can buy the items and keep them, but it doesn't really matter.

In the end it's still largely like the original game, but it has changed in some key ways. You still travel between the light and dark worlds while defeating bosses in dungeons. In a way though, this entry seems to be a way of testing out new ideas for the franchise. Hopefully they learned something, because the Zelda franchise has been getting a little stale lately.

Skylanders Swap Force

I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden I found myself deep into Skylanders Swap Force. The desk in front of my television is completely covered in Skylanders. For the original game I only had 8 figures, but now I have 22 Skylanders and it's out of control. I liked the original Skylanders well enough, but I felt like I had my fill of it. I skipped Skylanders Giants, but something pulled me back in. Perhaps it was the fact that I desperately want games to play on the PS4.

Anyways, Swap Force is a great game for what it is. Yes, it's a game built to sell children toys, but that doesn't make it any less cool. I mean come on, you put a toy on the portal of power and then you're playing as that character in the game! It's mind blowing technology. What's even cooler is that it's a halfway decent dungeon crawler. You hack and slash your way through each level gaining experience, skills, and collecting sweet loot. It starts off easy, but actually gets fairly challenging.

I think Grim Creeper may be my new favorite.

The new figures for Swap Force are crazy awesome. Unsurprisingly they're called Swap Force figures. What's special about them is that they split in half. So for example the starter set comes with Washbuckler and Blast Zone. Washbuckler is a squid with two cutlass, and crazy tentacle legs. Blast Zone is a knight who throws bombs with rocket legs. All of the swap force figures get skills specifically for their tops and bottoms and the best part is you can swap them. Put Washbuckler's top on Blast Zone's bottom and you get a squid with sweet metal rocket legs called Wash Zone. I can't even imagine where they're going to go next.

The weird thing to me about the game is that the levels are so ridiculously long. There are around 16 levels and each one is an hour or longer, so you have to really commit if you want to play. So now that I've beaten the game I've been continuing to play. Once you beat it you unlock score attack and time attack for every level, which unlocks more rewards that make each of your Skylanders stronger.

Want to play as a skunk with rocket legs? You can totally do that!

Yes, I'm 23 years old, and yes, I play Skylanders on a regular basis. I'm not ashamed of it! It's an awesome series with a cool concept. A lot of the figures are cool looking and I like things that let you level up and purchase skills. Plus it's fun to play co-op with friends. I bet if you have children it would be super fun to play it with them. Sadly I do not have any kids, so I guess I'll just have to settle for playing it on my own, or with my friends who I can force into it.

Soul Sacrifice

One night recently I needed a game to play with a friend, and it just so happened that they own a Vita. We decided to give Soul Sacrifice a shot, because it was free on PlayStation Plus a few months ago. I had heard about the game, but I had never seen any gameplay. It's a super weird game. It's kind of like Monster Hunter and God Eater had a baby. It just turns out that the baby is into creepy monsters, blood, and talking books. Also, the creator of Mega Man Keiji Inafune was involved...

You start Soul Sacrifice in a prison cell waiting to be killed by the great sorcerer Magusar. I guess the world has ended and now Magusaur rules over everything. You see a prisoner next to you get taken and realize that you have very little time left. That's when a talking journal begs you to read it. He claims that it will give you insight into Magusaur and give you strength in order to defeat him. Each chapter in the book acts as a battleground where you'll need to defeat enemies as fast as possible. The monster designs are all super disturbing. They're normal animals that have been mutated by evil.

Yeah, just wipe away the book's tears. It's not creepy at all!

You're a sorcerer, which isn't the same in Soul Sacrifice as it is in other works of fiction. The are allowed to carry six spells with you and they all have a limited number of uses. For example I use an ice sword a lot. It lasts for about a minute and has five uses. If you use the spell the maximum amount of times it will break and you'll need to repair it after the battle. There's a wide variety of things from spectral weapons to healing herbs that you can use as spells. You're not totally screwed on spell uses during battles though, because you can sacrifice souls. You know, the name of the game.

For some reason sorcerers have crazy arms in the Soul Sacrifice universe. When you kill an enemy you can either save its soul or sacrifice it. If you sacrifice an enemy you'll gain evil experience and get back some of your spell uses. If you save a soul then you'll get good experience and regain some lost health. When you get enough experience with either alignment the arm will go up a level. Dark levels give you attack, while good levels give you defense and health. You can choose to keep both levels close to each other and have a neutral arm, but if you have one much higher than the other you can gain extra bonuses. If you have either a dark arm or a good arm you can carve special sigils into the arm to give you bonuses.

Will you have a creepy mutilated hand, or a glowing blue one?

The game is just really weird. There's a lot of blood all over the place and blood curdling screams can often be heard when selecting things on the menus. Also you can talk to the talking book and wipe tears off of its face, which can be used as a special currency to repair spells... I'm having fun with it, but it's just kind of creepy and a little off-putting. It's like a fast paced Monster Hunter.

Hard Games

I've started playing a fair bit of Spelunky recently. I've gotten okay at it, but I'm still not very good. I try to play at least once a day so I can get some practice. Perhaps someday I'll actually be able to make it to the end, but for right now I'm just having fun discovering strategies and ways to survive for longer. I've even been watching a weird amount of Spelunky get played on the internet so I can find out new stuff.

I used to think Spelunky was impenetrable, much like Monster Hunter. Now that I know it's not I've gotten it in my head that I want to have a go at Dark Souls. I've borrowed it from a friend and am thinking about starting it. Since the second one comes out soon I might just play that instead, but I just don't know. If I start it I'm going to have to finish it, which could become an issue. Bravely Default comes out for the 3DS in February and I think I might end up getting lost in that.

Either way February will be an interesting month. Like I said back at the beginning I think that 2014 is going to be pretty sweet in terms of video games, so we all need to get ready for it.

    -Manny