Game Time - March 2018

Note: I have been struggling to think of a new format for the monthly edition of game time, but I have finally settled on something. I'm tired of regurgitating story and gameplay descriptions. With that said the format won't change too much, but the text will be a lot more personal. I'm also going to try and do away with the intros and outros because I never knew what to say anyways. 


Game: DJMax Respect
Developer: Neowiz MUCA
Platform: PS4

The DJMax franchise has been around for quite a while, but only a handful have been released in the U.S. DJMax Respect is the first one to be released here since 2012 if you exclude mobile releases. What's cool about Respect is that it pays homage to all of the previous games in the franchise. The opening to the game is a spectacular animated scene that depicts all the previous DJMax games as grave stones that are being revived. Then to enter the game you need to press X to pay respect. It shows a love for the previous games in a way that I would never have expected.

This franchise can be notoriously difficult. Much to my dismay they even marketed it as "the Dark Souls of rhythm games." While I don't think it's impossibly hard it definitely has been giving me a hard time. Each song can be played with 4, 5, 6, or 8 buttons. As you'd imagine the songs get harder with more buttons, but I'm finding it fun to learn. I can do pretty well with 4 buttons, but 6 buttons is kicking my butt. Normally the repeated failures would make me frustrated, but I've persevered and am actually getting better. This game has given me skills that I can take over to other rhythm games too. I never really understood why people cranked up the speed of the notes in game, but it actually helps to space them out so you can see what's coming next. It's incredibly helpful, so now I try to play everything at 2X speed. At first it's really jarring, but now I can actually tell what buttons to push in super fast paced sections. 

It's really cool to see a developer make a product that shows a love for all the previous games in a franchise. At first I thought that Respect was just another one of their random subtitles like fever or Technica, but it's actually all about paying respect to the franchise. I am having an absolute blast with this game and will probably keep trying to get better at it. It's going to help when four DLC packs come out next Friday.

Videos: DJMax Respect - The Lowest Level Play
              DJMax Respect - Let's Get Good


Game: Ni No Kuni 2
Developer: Level-5
Platform: PS4

I absolutely loved the original Ni No Kuni. It came out at a time in my life when I could properly enjoy it because I was fresh out of college and didn't have a job. It left a lasting impression on me, so when the sequel was announced I got super excited. I'm currently playing through it right now and I think it's fun, but it's not blowing my mind like the original was.

Instead of the semi turn based combat of the original the sequel employs a much more action oriented system. It's more engaging in theory, but it ends up being too easy. I've seen people recommending to not use all of the tools at your disposal to make it more challenging, which is a ridiculous notion to me. I like being powerful, but at a certain point I'm just massacring enemies with reckless abandon. The part I'm digging the most is the kingdom building portion. The main character Evan was overthrown in the beginning so the entire crux of the story is that he's building a new kingdom called Evermore. You go around the game and recruit citizens to come and live with you. They have special abilities that take effect depending on what buildings you put them in. It's a cool system that gets a little bogged down by real time counters. Luckily the longest counter I've seen so far is 50 minutes, which flies by because there is so much to do.

What gets me about it so far is that I come to RPGs looking for an engaging story and well developed characters and so far Ni No Kuni 2 is not delivering that at all. So far it's moving at a lighting pace and none of the characters are really receiving any development. I love level-5 as a developer, but they have a real jack of all trades, master of none thing going on. They build huge games with tons of content, but no one thing stands out above the rest. They make such colorful and and fun games so it bums me out that they try to cram so many things into each one. I'm all for more content in games, but if it takes away from the quality of other content is it really worth it? Who knows, maybe I'll get to the end of this and feel differently, but right now I'm just having mindless fun.


Game: A Way Out
Developer: Hazelight Studios
Platform: PS4

The first game from Hazelight was Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, which received critical acclaim. I never ended up playing it, but heard nothing but positive things about it. It was trying to tell an emotional story, which isn't always the easiest thing to do in video games. I first became aware of the studio's second game A Way Out at EA's E3 press conference this past year. However, I think most people became aware of it  during the game awards when the director Josef Fares got a little rowdy and started yelling "fuck the Oscars." I just finished A Way Out a few hours ago and it definitely wouldn't have won any Oscars.

I am still trying to fully process my feelings on this game. It's ambitious as hell, but it just doesn't work as intended. The entire game has to be played in co-op, so the game takes place entirely spit-screen. During certain scenes the screen real estate will change depending on which player has the more important thing going on. It's a cool effect, but it makes the actions of the other player seem meaningless. In fact, most of the actions feel kind of lifeless and meaningless. It starts out as a simple adventure game with the most basic button prompts, but by the end it's a poorly controller third person shooter.

It was a fun experience, but a lot of the game seemed to miss the mark. You can't have a super emotional game that's supposed to leave a lasting impact on the player with the quality of voice acting in the game. A lot of the line deliveries fall flat, and it's a huge bummer. It also doesn't help that it has a lot of goofy video game stuff in it. Janky looking walk animations are enough to take you right out of an "emotional" scene. It was around a six hour experience that I enjoyed while sitting next to a friend. I don't really know that it left a lasting impression, but I think that the kind of cinematic approach it was taking is admirable. It's cool, but don't playing it expecting some kind of life changing story.

Game Time - March 2017

Here we are on the precipice of April, and 2017 is already shaping up to be an incredible year for video games. However, I feel that while March had some incredible highs for me, there were also a few lows. To start, the Nintendo Switch came out alongside Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I love Zelda with very few caveats. Nintendo took a rick and tried something new. The payoff was a video game that's completely on another level. I recorded a podcast with my thoughts on the game, but it's always good to document them in text form as well.

Then there was Horizon: Zero Dawn. It released on the last day of February, so I only played it for a few days before moving over all of my time to Zelda. What's a bummer is that I don't know if I'll ever go back to it. Personally it didn't really grab me, which seems to go against the grain.

Finally, we have Mass Effect: Andromeda. This game causes me to get upset just thinking about it. It has so many issues, but somehow I can't seem to pull myself away from it. Perhaps my love for the original trilogy is clouding my judgement?

There's a lot to talk about, so let's get right into it. It's game time.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo is a company that is famous for rehashing a lot of its ideas. While that has brought them a lot of success in the past I feel that myself and many others have been craving something new. I got my first taste of new Nintendo goodness with Splatoon and now they have followed it up with Breath of the Wild. Initially I was skeptical that Nintendo would be able to pull off a compelling open world, but somehow they nailed it.

See that mountain? YOU CAN TOTALLY GO THERE!

I feel like I say this all the time, but Ocarina of Time is the game I can point to as the one that got me to continue playing video games. The sense of adventure I felt while traversing that world is something that has stuck with me. Now they have replicated that with Breath of the Wild. You can go literally anywhere in the game with some effort. If you can see a place, then you can definitely go there. Link can climb up almost any surface, and stamina is essentially his only limitation. The world is vast, and filled with areas that are exciting to explore. While there certainly is a lot of empty space, there are also many hidden villages and treasures to be found.

In terms of combat and plot, Breath of the Wild isn't spectacular. At first the weapon durability annoyed me, but in the end I grew fond of it. Since every weapon is breakable it encourages you to use a ton of different kinds. It's functional, but exploring the world was the main draw for me. If you want to hear me babble on for close to an hour about the game and all of its systems I recorded a podcast, which you can listen to here.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Have you every felt left out, because you don't love something that everyone else loves? That's how I feel with Horizon. Initially I was super excited to see Guerilla games making something new. The reviews hit a bit early for the game as well, and they were all glowing. I still hear people talking about Horizon with a reverence that I don't know if I'll ever be able to understand. I would have chalked it up to being tired of open world games, but then Zelda came out and I absolutely loved that. I feel like I'm missing out on something and its very frustrating.

Horizon centers on a girl named Aloy who is born as an outcast. At a young age she finds a device called a focus, which is essentially a Bluetooth earpiece that shoots AR things around that explain the world to her. The world of Horizon takes place after the apocalypse where machines have taken over and humans have gone back to a much more tribal state. Things like the focus that Aloy found are considered forbidden relics from the metal age of humans past. The people of the world seem to believe that humans in the past ruined the world. I find all of this to be interesting, but in what I played it never really took off.

I hope you like shooting robots with a bow.

The gameplay takes place in third person and focuses around a bow. You can get different kinds of arrows, which will affect the machines in different ways. You gain other tools as well, but the bow seems to be the number one way to take down your foes. The combat seems to be the thing that most people praise above all else, but I personally find it to be tedious. Where I am right now the bow does too little damage, so I find myself running up to enemies and using a melee attack until they die. Eventually I'll get back to this game, because I honestly feel like there has to be something I'm missing. Hopefully the plot picks up in a way that I can get behind.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

I love the original Mass Effect trilogy. I'd be willing to go so far as to say that Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. As a huge fan of Star Wars it was awesome to see Bioware essentially create a new Star Wars RPG without the Star Wars license. I immediately found myself enamored with the universe and its characters. Yes, the ending of Mass Effect 3 is awful, but it was not enough to taint the journey I had along the way.

Now we come to the 4th entry in the franchise, Mass Effect: Andromeda. If you've never played the original trilogy then the conceit of Andromeda might not make sense to you. Without spoiling the whole plot, let's just say that things in the Milky Way went sideways, and a few of the races decided to try and settle a new galaxy, Andromeda. A little bit of me feels for Andromeda while it's being railed on by almost everyone. When you're making the 4th thing in a franchise beloved by many, it's automatically going to be hard for it to succeed. Even if the work stands on its own it will always be held up against the original trilogy. Despite that, Andromeda feels like a straight to DVD sequel that no one really wanted.

All the familiar elements are here, but it just doesn't feel right.

If Andromeda felt new, I would feel a little more hesitant to criticize it. The main issue I have is that every character and many of the locales are trying to be things from the original trilogy. For example, the Citadel was a space station in the Milky Way where many alien races gathered. It was a central hub where you got to experience all kinds of interesting scenarios. In Andromeda it's the Nexus, which is almost the EXACT same thing as the Citadel! The characters are the same, they each fit into an archetype of characters from games past. So far I've had fun talking to them, but no one seems particularly interesting. Hell, even the plot is about finding ancient alien tech again.

The one praise I'll give the game is that the combat is fun. It's essentially the same third person shooting of the original trilogy, but it adds a lot of mobility through the jet pack. You can jump and dash, which adds an additional layer to combat scenarios. It's fine, but that might be the only place that the game is "fine." I feel bad saying this, but Andromeda is the buggiest AAA game I've ever played. Yes, some of the animations are bad. I don't think that's a bug though. I've had issues ranging from not being able to talk to someone because their prompt won't show up to not being able to interact with literally anything in the game. It's crazy. Most of it is the kind of stuff that would never get through QA. I had the game literally become unplayable, how is that okay? Even with the bugs aside, the underlying game seems uninspired. I'm going to see it through to the end, but that's really only because of my love for the franchise.

IT'S HAPPENING!

My level of excitement if through the roof today! Persona 5 comes out in four days! I have been waiting for this game for years. Usually games I wait this long for don't live up to my expectations, but I knew from the very first trailer that Persona 5 was going to offer everything I wanted from it. I have been craving a JRPG with a compelling plot for a while now and now it's finally here.

There's a slight chance that I'll talk about something other than Persona 5 next month, but like I said it's a very slim chance. The estimated time to beat is currently hovering around 150 hours so I don't know that I'll have much time to do anything else. Find out what happens next month!

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!

Game Time - March 2014

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't spend a majority of this month playing Dark Souls 2. In fact I'm taking a break from it right now in order to write this. I've decided to not write anything about Dark Souls 2 yet, because I haven't beaten it. I have a feeling I'm very close to the ending, so when I get there you can bet I'll have a whole lot to say about it.

There were a few things this month that tore me away from Dark Souls 2 though, which is what I'll be telling you all about in this installment of Game Time. InFamous: Second Son came out, which I believe to be the first true next generation game for the PS4. It looks incredible for a console game.

I finally got around to playing Fez too, now that it has been released on PlayStation consoles. I bought the PC version for like $2 a while back during a Steam sale, but only played it for an hour or so. This time I downloaded it on the PS4 and actually completed it. I now understand why people praised it so highly when it originally came out.

I also played the newest addition to the BlazBlue franchise, but I'm not very enthused with it. It's another BlazBlue game and I find it harder and harder to get excited about the franchise. It's even harder now that ARC System Works has shown Guilty Gear Xrd Sign. It just made me realize how much more I like Guilty Gear than BlazBlue. That's not to say that BlazBlue is bad, I'm just not as into it as I once was.

Welcome to Game Time.

InFamous: Second Son

When a new console comes out, I find myself wanting to show it off. When the PS4 came out this past November there really weren't any games I could do that with. If I was going to do that now though I would definitely use InFamous: Second Son. For a console game it looks incredible. The graphics are amazing, but they're accentuated by the ridiculously awesome motion capture of all the actors. Delsin Rowe, the main character of Second Son is a Native American in his early to mid twenties. The way his body and face move it's almost like he's a real person. It's weird though, because it doesn't have an uncanny valley feeling that games like Heavy Rain had. It probably helps that he's actually a decently well written character while Cole, the protagonist in the previous 2 games, was generally pretty awful.

Second Son takes place in Seattle, Washington. The city itself is nothing special, but it sure looks good. It's like any other open world city really. You traverse the world in order to go from mission to mission while random events take place. Like the previous games you can choose to be either good or evil and the events will help you work towards either side. What really impressed me about the city is that the textures on everything didn't look like total shit. If you walk up to a sign you're actually going to be able to read it and it's not even blurry, which is some next level stuff.

Look at the texture on Delsin's hat. That's true next generation right there!

I wish I could say that InFamous: Second Son had a whole lot to offer outside of its awesome visuals, but I just can't. In terms of story it's the same kind of thing that always happens when super powers are involved. Some people think they're really cool, while other people feel that anyone who has them is evil and should be imprisoned. In the InFamous universe people with powers are called conduits, but the people who fear them call them bio-terrorists. Delsin discovers that he's a conduit when he comes into contact with a conduit who has the power of smoke. Turns out Delsin can take the powers of other conduits and use them himself.

As you may have guessed since Delsin can steal powers he receives a few different powers throughout the course of the game. He has to seek out new powers so that he can fight an evil lady with cement powers who is imprisoning conduits. Oh yeah, he also wants to get the cement shards out of his family and friends so they can walk again. I don't want to spoil the powers, but I will say that they're all pretty cool. You start off with smoke, which lets you go through vents to get up buildings, dash through fences, and shoot fire from your hands. It all handles very well and makes you feel like a proper superhero. You can get up buildings easily and move around with little effort, which makes traversing the huge city of Seattle fun. It feels a lot more smooth than the other InFamous games, which is nice. The only downgrade is the climbing. Previously you could just mash the jump button to climb up a building, because you'd stick to almost any ledge. This is no longer the case, so climbing is rarely ever an option.

Smoke is a cool power, but I like the second power you get the best.

I really like InFamous: Second Son, but at the same time it's extremely disappointing. The story was pretty good for the first half and then it starts to go downhill. The second half has a few missions that don't really seem related and then all of a sudden the final showdown is happening. The whole second half felt very rushed and the ending is super abrupt. What's even more disappointing though is that the only really cool thing about this game is that it looks awesome. Sure that's great and all, but I want the PlayStation 4 to bring new gaming experiences to the table. I realize that this is very early in the console's life cycle, but Second Son is just more of the same with a new character who has a different set of powers. Yes, it does control better, but that would have come with iteration anyways.

Second Son is a fun ride that looks pretty, but it's short lived and ultimately the same as the previous 2 entries in the franchise. If you have a PS4 it's definitely something you need to check out, but I have a feeling that once more games are released for the console it won't be remembered for very long.

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

I'm not good at fighting games. This is something that I've come to terms with over the past few years. I'm decent at Super Smash Brothers Melee, but that's a very different beast from your traditional fighting game like BlazBlue. The only fighting game that I ever got remotely good at was the original BlazBlue. I could actually do a combo, which is something that I certainly can't do anymore. I used to like buying new fighting games to try them out and have fun, but I can't really do that anymore. A lot of the people around me are on a much higher level than I am, so there isn't ever really a period where we're on a level playing field. I get destroyed on the regular and don't really have any fun doing it. The last fighting game I really had fun with was Jojo's All-Star Battle, but since it's not a competitively viable fighting game no one will play it with me.

Despite knowing all of this I bought BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma anyways. I mainly got it for the story, which I suppose I'm still interested in. The entire series I've been waiting for my favorite character Jubei to become playable. He's a cat-man with a huge sword and I think he's awesome. Somehow, despite being a main character in the story he's still not playable and it's killing me! Somehow they can make up totally new characters who are playable in each game, but leave out a previously existing character who plays a major role in the story!

I just want to play as Jubei! *Weeps*

So far I haven't played a whole lot of the story, but I do enjoy it. It's in the form of a visual novel. High-res character art of two characters appear on either side of the screen with a text box. It's all voiced and fairly well done. At times it can be a bit unbearable though, which is what's really bogging me down. Sometimes the game can be just a bit too Anime. The characters interactions can be super dumb. It gets even worse when you stumble onto a joke ending. I don't think they're funny and I find it had to believe that anyone thinks they're funny, but I'm sure someone must otherwise they'd stop doing them. I hope they stop doing them.

I'm going to enjoy the story. I just don't know why I keep buying these games. I don't enjoy fighting the computer and get frustrated with my general ineptitude. Hopefully I can re-ignite my passion for fighting games. Guilty Gear Xrd Sign might be the game to do that, because it looks amazing. Also I really like Guilty Gear.

Fez

I wasn't a part of the Fez zeitgeist, but after playing it I wish that I was. The game is amazing. I thought this was going to be one of those indie titles that I finally get a chance to play and then find out it was blown way out of proportion. For Fez that certainly wasn't the case. Everything is awesome whether it be the music, art style, or gameplay mechanics. Everything in the game congeals to make a completely unforgettable game. Fez is the epitome of a polished video game. You can tell that every fiber of Phil Fish's being was put into creating this awesome game.

Fez at first glance is just a 2D platformer, but the protagonist Gomez quickly gets the power to rotate the world with his magical Fez. He is given the knowledge that the world is truly 3D, which makes the game very interesting. In order to make it so that Gomez can get to his destination you must rotate the world, which is in actuality 3D. When you rotate the world you can use new objects as platforms. If you see somewhere you don't think you can get to there is a high probability that you can actually get there if you rotate the world just right. Describing it makes it sound sound really boring, but in action it's really something amazing. It adds something to a genre that's been done to death.

It blows my mind that this image is just one of four possible options of this game state.

In order to advance in the game you need to collect golden cubes. You can also collect anti cubes although they're much harder to get. Golden cubes you can get by picking up bits of cube, or by completing platforming sections. Anti cubes require you to go a layer deeper into the game and figure out its ridiculously deep secrets. For one of the anti cubes I got I had to download a QR code reader on my tablet that gave me a button combination to enter on the controller. What's nuts is that that's one of the easier things to figure out. A lot of them have to do with a language derived from what look like Tetris blocks.

Once you beat Fez the journey isn't over, but it might be for me. There are all kinds of secrets to be discovered and the additional powers you get from completing the game allow for you to do some pretty crazy stuff. It makes you realize that nothing in Fez is just an art choice, or a piece of the background. Everything means something and it's up to you to figure it out. When the game first came out I remember the internet collectively working to figure out how to unlock all the secrets the game had to offer. I don't know if I'll ever get around to decoding the games crazy Tetris language, but it's cool to know it's there. I'm thinking about looking up a FAQ just to go through the insanity that happens after the game is "over."

I love the Fez Soundtrack so much.

I feel weird talking about Fez because it's so old now. I can't believe it took this long for it to come to PlayStation consoles and I don't know why I never bought it on the Xbox 360. It's a very immersive game. I originally planned to play it for an hour or so, but ended up not stopping until I had beaten it, which probably took around 6 hours. Most people have already played Fez, but if you haven't then you really need to. At least look up some of the amazing tracks on the soundtrack.

What's coming out?

I don't think I have any new games I'll be purchasing in April, which is good because I need to catch up with the ones I already have. As I mentioned at the top I'm still deep into Dark Souls 2. I've also started playing the HD remaster of Final Fantasy X for some reason despite the fact that I hate Tidus with every fiber of my being. It's even more annoying that they pronounce his name Tee-dus.

I'm sure I'll play a whole bunch of stuff, so we'll meet back here next month to talk about it.

    -Manny

Game Time - March 2013

Get ready for a long one folks, because I played a ton of video games this past month. In fact, I played more games than I can talk about here. I chose three games to talk about here, because I needed to get my feelings about them down before my thoughts dissipated into the ether.

Those three games are Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, HarmoKnight, and Bioshock Infinite. Trust me when I say I have a whole lot to say about these games, so prepare yourself for what's to come. If you only care about a certain one just do a fancy search and skip right to where you want.

We'd best get started, because there's a whole lot going on. It's game time!

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3

I am a huge fan of the Ultimate Ninja Storm series. While I did not play through the story of the first game myself I saw a lot of it played and participated in my fair share of multiplayer matches. I bought the second game and loved almost everything about it. CyberConnect2 created a beautiful looking game with tons of characters and awesome boss fights. I'd be willing to guess that a lot of the boss fights from this series were what inspired the creation of Asura's Wrath, but I don't know that for sure. I played the second game for the ludicrous amount of time it took to complete everything and nab every single trophy. I'm not even a Naruto super fan. The only way I know the story and characters is through these few games and the PS2 games.

Then they released Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations. They had a slightly larger character roster, but a significantly cut down story mode. I played some multiplayer with my friends, but didn't end up purchasing it. This franchise is known for it's insane spectacle, which Generations was lacking. I was willing to cut CyberConnect2 a break, because it could have been considered an in between game. Obviously Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 would pick up where 2 left off and be just as awesome. Right?

Wrong. I was wrong to think that. Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is one of the few times that I've been legitimately disappointed with a game in a long time. I don't think the game is bad, I just think that it could have been a lot more. I feel more like a parent that's disappointed in their child for making poor choices.

Much like Sasuke CyberConnect2 made some poor choices...

At the surface Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is still a fairly shallow fighting game. Each game in the series has played almost exactly the same with minor tweaks. One thing this iteration gets right is that it tries to make the fights a little more balanced. Generations took a step forward in that department by making it so that you can't spam substitutions to get out of every single attack. Storm 3 takes it one step further by nerfing the insanely overpowered awakening modes. Previously when each character would lose so much health they could power up into a ridiculously strong form with borderline invincibility and no penalty at all. Now there are multiple ways to awaken. You can still do it from low enough health, but now you can get hit out of it with ultimate moves. Alternatively you can flick the right stick and awaken immediately  but your chakra bar used for special jutsu moves will be shortened for the duration of the transformation. They're honestly trying in that regard.

However, the story mode is nowhere near as good as it was in the second game. The ultimate adventure mode is the main attraction of this series. Previously in the series you could roam around the ninja world in between story fights and complete side missions. That is no longer the case. There are one or two side missions you can take on before the story is over, but for the most part the exploration seems like a hold over from the previous game, just because it was there. After each story fight you'll be thrown into an open field just so you can run through it to the next battle. Yes, it opens up after you beat the game, but at that point there's no point in completing them. To make it more annoying you can get every trophy and "complete" everything without buying or experiencing any of the extras.

Storytelling as a whole seems to have taken a hit in this iteration as well. Fans of Naruto have already seen these scenes in the anime, so they're reliving them for fun. In that case you'd think that they would spice them up, or cut out the fluff. Instead I got to watch Naruto's dying mom talk to him for a half hour about eating his vegetables and brushing his teeth. Even more upsetting is the fact that the amazing boss fights with beautifully animated quick time events are so few and far between. There are one or two long battles that I thought were awesome, but then all the other battles had one or two quick time events and were over in a minute. It's not like they were lacking for cool battles to animate, because they're in the middle of a ninja world war where literally everyone is fighting all the time!

Awesome animated fights like this one are few and far between.

I don't like to call developers lazy, because I don't know the full extent of everything that goes into developing video games. I do still feel like CyberConnect2 is really phoning it in for this series now. I know that they can use this engine to good effect with good storytelling, because they did it in the first two Ultimate Ninja Storms. I know they'll make another one, because the franchise is basically made of money so I hope that they can pull out the magic for me one last time.

HarmoKnight

I played the demo of Harmoknight and didn't really like it at all. I found it frustrating, because the timing seemed kind of off. Despite my initial reaction I paid $15 dollars to see what was up with the final version of Game Freak's 3DS rhythm game. Sometimes I feel like GameFreak stumbled into Pokemon's success, so now Nintendo locks them in a room and whips them until a new Pokemon game comes out. So I gave $15 of my hard earned dollars to buy a game I don't like very much.

Grab the notes and try not to get super frustrated like me!

So in case you didn't know HarmoKnight is a rhythm game where you play as a doofy looking kid with a musical note staff that he swings like a baseball bat. You push the a button to swing the staff and b to jump. As you run across the stage you hit enemies, and instruments in the background. Every action produces a sound that goes along with the background music. One of the reasons I don't like the game very much is because the music doesn't sound appealing to me. There are a whole bunch of weird beeps and boops that don't sound very good musically. Also, I feel like the timing is off, but it could just be that it's is super strict and I have bad rhythm.

So far I'm on the fourth world out of what seems to be five worlds. I've gotten a few other characters that switch up the gameplay a bit, but it's still nothing special. I was hoping that GameFreak would bring their A game to the first non-pokemon game they've made in a while, but instead I got a super generic rhythm game with a lame story. It says something when I enjoy the Pokemon music bonus stages more than the original tracks written for an entirely music based game.

Bioshock Infinite

I'm going to admit here that I never finished the original Bioshock. I bought it on clearance for the PS3 years after it's initial release. I played through about half of it and lost interest, because I had already been told about the plot twist multiple times. I enjoyed everything that I experienced, but for some reason I couldn't get absorbed by the world of rapture. For that very reason I've been super excited about Bioshock Infinite. These types of games are much better to experience during their initial Zeitgeist, so unlike the initial Bioshock I got to do that this time.

Unlike the previous two games I talked about this month, my excitement in Infinite was not even remotely misplaced. I don't like playing first person shooters at all, but I thought that Bioshock Infinite was incredible. Ken Levine and the writers at Irrational did not disappoint. It takes place in the sky city of Columbia where the citizens worship the founding father's of America like gods. You play as the unsavory character Booker Dewitt. He got himself into a bit of debt, but was given a way out. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." is a quote that you'll be hearing quite a bit throughout the game. Booker was given a picture of Elizabeth and tasked with finding her and then bringing her back to New York. He's told to keep a low profile, but like any good story that doesn't happen and he's forced to mow down countless foes to reach his goal. It is a first person shooter after all!

As you may have guessed Elizabeth is special to say the least. She has the power to open what amount to portals to other dimensions called tears. It's not immediately  evident why she can do this, but it scares everyone who knows about the ability. For that reason she's been locked away in a tower her whole life where she's protected by the very creepy Songbird. Due to Elizabeth's power and the fact that she's never been out of her tower she is a very interesting character. As she witnesses things for the first time and tries to reconcile the things she's doing you'll get to know her very well. This also makes for an interesting dynamic between her and Booker. Just running around they talk quite a bit, so you'll want to search every nook and cranny to watch their relationship develop as much as possible.

Elizabeth is an excellent character who you'll get to know quite well.

One thing that's great about Infinite's plot is that it plays off of your expectations. It assumes that you're trying to figure out it's plot the entire way through, so it tries to mess with your head as much as possible. Every time I thought I knew what what going on the game threw something new at me to blow my mind wide open. When the huge plot reveal finally happened I couldn't even comprehend what was happening. For that very reason Bioshock Infinite is worth playing. I can't tell yet if it's a classic that will be talked about for years to come, but it certainly is something special. At the very least it shows that good storytelling in video games is possible. It also shows that a game's setting is just as important as every other facet of the game.

My trip through Columbia was amazing. Much like Rapture in the original Bioshock, Columbia is very much alive. It's a world that's been lived in. It's unique and it adds to the story in a way that you don't really get very often. It's just an interesting world and it works in conjunction with what's happening in the story. It's filled with beautiful vistas and horrible racism. It always keeps you guessing, while still wanting to see what's waiting around every corner. I feel like a game hasn't done atmosphere quite as well as Bioshock Infinite since Arkham Asylum. If Columbia hadn't been as fully realized and interesting as it was the game would have been nowhere near as engrossing.

Despite everything good I've said about Infinite it's still a first person shooter. While the story is great, the gameplay isn't really anything special. Sure you can fly around on the sky rails at super speeds, but outside of that you just shoot hundreds of people with guns and powers. Like the previous Bioshock titles you gain special powers. In Columbia they're known as vigors. They're all pretty cool, but they're just a way to make killing everyone a little less tedious. The way I played the game was to shock enemies with my crazy lightning hands to stun them and then pump them full of lead until they died. That's my main issue with a lot of shooters is that the combat scenarios just aren't very interesting. In this game you enter a room, or closed off area to fight enemies. Once they're all gone you either move on to another combat scenario, or you go on to the next story sequence. In a game like this where the story is so compelling it's hard to see that type of combat as anything but a chore. It's just something you need to put up with in order to get to the next thing you actually care about. I hope that some game in the future can fix this problem, or just at least reinvigorate first person shooters.

Bioshock Infinite has a lot more dumping on fools that I wanted.

The gameplay itself is actually fine. In fact it's worlds better than the original Bioshock in terms of gameplay mechanics. It's competent, but you'll probably get sick of it midway through the game. Even though I'd say the gameplay is middling at best this is still an incredible game. It's definitely something that video game fans should play. Even if you're like me and don't like FPS's Infinite is still worth checking out. Sometimes video games are called out as being a bad medium for telling stories and Infinite proves that that's not true. Maybe it just takes five years and someone like Ken Levine and the writers at Irrational to make a great video game story. This is a story that everyone is going to be talking about. In fact, everyone already is talking about it. Get out there and play it before you end up seeing spoilers.

But wait...It's not over yet!

I knew that I was going to have a hard time juggling Bioshock Infinite, Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. They did all come out within the span of three days after all. What I didn't know was that I was going to become addicted to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, so I would play very little of my two new 3DS titles.

Due to my new found addiction I'm going to save Luigi's Mansion and Pokemon for next month. I didn't play enough of either to form any solid opinions about them. I did however play over 100 hours of Monster Hunter... I am going to write up something about Monster Hunter, because it really did take me by surprise. I can't promise that it will be any time soon, because I've been pretty busy lately. Which is also the reason that I still don't have the Game Time ID about Fire Emblem Awakening up. Maybe I should just stop saying I'm going to do ID's and just put them up when I actually have the time.

See you next month.

     -Manny