Game Time - April 2016

I played two "hard" games this month, so to balance them out I played a whole lot of an easy mobile game as well. It's crazy to think that this will be two months in a row I'm writing about a mobile game.

Normally I talk a lot of mess about at least one of the games I play each month, but this month I don't really have a lot of negative things to say. I truly enjoyed the three games I'm going to tell you about.

Hopefully this is a trend that continues!

Hyper Light Drifter

I've been following the Development of Hyper Light Drifter for a very long time. Needless to say I was very excited to finally be able to play it. Prior to its release I didn't really consume a lot of coverage about the game. I watched a combat video, and a few of the trailers, and just from that I knew I wanted to play the game as soon as possible.

It's weird, because the developer of the game describes it as a combination of Diablo and Zelda. I definitely agree with the Zelda, but not at all the Diablo. For starters it's not an RPG, and the weapons you get don't really have stats. You don't even really level up. I would however call it a faster paced Zelda. The crux of the game is that you are a dude with a sword. You can slash your sword, shoot a gun, and dash. The dash is super quick and allows for you to dodge incoming enemy attacks.

Think of it as a much faster Zelda.

At first I thought the combat was super hard, but eventually I got used to the pace of the game and started to do a lot better. You need to be careful, because enemies can shred your health when they get in a few hits. It's important to learn how to use the dodge early on, or you're going to have a lot of problems. Each enemy has a set attack pattern that they will repeat. Once you learn what it is you can dash appropriately to get around them and get in a few slashes. It's very important not to get greedy, because like I said the damage enemies dish out is severe.

Browsing gaming sites I've seen all kinds of opinions about this game. Some people think it's too hard, and others think that it focuses more on style than substance. Like I said, I don't think the game is super hard once you get used to the mechanics. It gives you all the tools you need to do well. Dashing and slashing are great, and the addition of your gun makes things a bit easier. The style versus substance argument is also one that I do not necessarily agree with. Yes, Hyper Light Drifter is a beautiful game with some amazing pixel art. While the combat isn't ridiculously complex, it is varied. There are quite a few enemy types in the game and they all move and hit differently. The game is rather short, but that doesn't mean it isn't a substantive game. It's filled to the brim with secrets and challenging combat.

The game is absolutely beautiful at times.

If there is one thing I could criticize Hyper Light Drifter for it would be the way it tells its story. To be honest I don't know what's actually happening in the story. There is no dialogue, only cutscenes. I believe that the main character has a disease that he is trying to cure by finding vials of antibodies around the world. I have no way of actually knowing this though. To make things more confusing at the beginning of the game there is text telling you how to dash, shoot, and slash. However, after that there is nothing. You have to figure out where to go and what to collect on your own. It's both frustrating and cool at the same time. Looking at the crazy map and figuring out where you need to go is fun at first, but if you miss something then it's super annoying to find. I'm of two minds on this. At first it's rough to figure anything out, but by looking at the environment you can form ideas about what's going on and what you need to do.

Hyper Light Drifter is a cool game. Dashing around and cutting down foes with a laser sword feels satisfying. It's only around eight hours long, but there are a ton of secrets to find. If you are a Zelda fan, then I recommend checking the game out. Right now it's only out on PC, but it should be coming to the PS4 at some point.

Dark Souls 3

You may have already seen it, but I recorded a podcast about Dark Souls 3 and my thoughts on the Souls series in general, which you can find here. I talked a lot about the game in general, but here I'll be talking about the Dark Souls 3 specific changes and how I felt about them. I want to preface this by saying that I enjoyed Dark Souls 3 a great deal and I can't wait for the DLC. It feels like a fitting conclusion to a series that has reached a ridiculous level of popularity. At this point in time most people have played Dark Souls, so I'm going to assume you have a base level of knowledge. If not, then you might want to skip this section.

Okay, so I didn't really like Bloodborne very much. I think it was a great game, but it just wasn't for me. While it was similar to Dark Souls in many ways it forced you to play as a light character and dodge all the time. In Dark Souls I like to play as a walking tank man with a great sword. Tank through most fights and obliterate the enemy with a ton of damage. You couldn't make a build like that in Bloodborne, which is why it was less appealing to me. Much to my dismay Dark Souls 3 took some of the things I didn't like about Bloodborne and it really bummed me out. For starters armor doesn't really matter in Dark Souls 3. Yes, some has better defense than others, but not enough for it to really matter, The extra weight makes you fat roll, so you have less invincibility frames when rolling. In the previous games in the series that didn't matter to me. I could still roll well enough and if I got hit I could tank through it. Dark Souls 3 makes armor more cosmetic, because you can't upgrade it at all. This meant that I had to drastically change my play style to beat some of the games bosses.

Even this guys armor is straight out of Bloodborne!

I tried to be my tanky build for as long as I could. When I reached a certain boss I could no longer continue to play the way I used to. The boss was too fast, and I would get obliterated again and again. I took off most of my heavy armor and switched to a lighter sword and beat the boss without getting hit. That sucks. I shouldn't have to change my play style. The issue is that many of the enemies in Dark Souls 3 are faster than they were in the previous games. The changes to armor make it a lot rougher for a build like mine. However, I still managed to make it through the game easy enough.

Other than that I liked Dark Souls 3 a lot. I felt that the bosses were more unique than they were in 2, and the areas were a lot more open as well. Dark Souls 2 felt too contained to me, so it felt good when 3 opened everything up a lot more. It's still very linear, but the areas are wide enough to feel like the game isn't just leading you down a singular path. I actually feel like the linearity of the game fits with this being the final game in the trilogy. You're being pushed towards a conclusion.

So much fan service! *Squeeee*

Dark Souls 3 would be a good place for people to enter into the franchise, while at the same time it is filled to the brim with things that only people who have played since the beginning will understand. In my opinion this iteration teaches the player what they need to do better than any of the others. It's entirely possible that I only feel this way because I've played all the other games in the series though. I am sure about all the fan service though. There were multiple times where I entered a new area, or got a new set of armor that had me squealing in delight.

It's the same type of game that we've all come to love over the past few years. It's hard, and can get very frustrating. If you didn't like any Souls games prior to this, then Dark Souls 3 won't change your mind. It's a fitting conclusion to what is in my opinion a brilliant series. I just can't decide whether or not I think it;s better than two. I might have to wait until after the DLC comes out before I can find the answer. Regardless, the original will always be my favorite.

Kingdom Hearts Unchained

I am normally not a fan of mobile games, which makes it odd that I'm talking about another mobile game this month. I fully expected Unchained to be a shallow cash grab, but instead ended up finding something that I enjoy quite a bit. Yes, it is still trying to get you to pay cash, but I think that it's really bad at doing that. Like most mobile games that have come after Puzzles and Dragons, Unchained uses a stamina system to gate how long you can play. The issue is that everything in the game costed half stamina for the duration of April. This meant that I could play a ton of the game at a time and level up rapidly, which refills the stamina bar.

The game plays a bit like Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. However, instead of cards you put medals into five slots on your Keyblade. When in a battle with heartless your medals will appear in order. You can do one of three things to attack. If you tap an enemy you will focus all of the damage on the enemy you tapped. If you swipe across the screen the damage will be split across all the enemies. Finally you can swipe on your current medal in order to do its special attack. Each medal has a different special with a cost between one and three. As you defeat heartless you regain some of your special meter. It's a simple system, but it works. There are also some interesting wrinkles to the regular mobile game formula like leveling up stamina, and health through cosmetic items.

I really like the title screen for some reason.

It's only been a month, and I've become one of the top 2,000 players in the game. The fact that everything was half stamina allowed me to fully level up most of my medals, which normally wouldn't be able to happen. Now that we're in May and everything is back to its original stamina cost I'm going to have to slow down a lot, which is a bummer.

Normally I'd play a mobile game until I hit a wall with leveling up, but there's something that keeps me going in Unchained. When I started the game I created a Party, which is essentially a guild. Including me we have about six active members. Each week the game ranks parties based on how much experience all of the party members have gotten. We managed to make it into the top 500 parties, which is insane. All of the people around us had the maximum of 30 members. That's insane! For some reason I like the feeling of seeing our party succeed with so few members. It keeps me coming back to the game on a daily basis.

The gameplay is simple, but I enjoy it.

It helps that the game has been out in Japan for a long time now, so they can add in "new" content to the version I'm playing at a quicker rate. This means that something new is happening on a weekly basis as opposed to a monthly basis. I don't like waiting, which is why I've stopped playing a ton of other mobile games. Also, I have yet to hit a bullshit paywall. I was able to get high strength medals and get to a high level without paying anything. I'm probably going to keep playing this game for the foreseeable future.

War Isn't About Being a Hero

For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to import Gundam Breaker 3 from Asia. It's a Gundam game where you build custom gundams and then battle other gundams. It seems really cool, and I can't wait to play it. Since I ordered a physical copy from PlayAsia I have no idea when I'll actually get it. It could come any time between this Friday and three weeks from now.

Other than that I will be getting Uncharted 4. I'm looking forward to seeing how Naughty Dog wraps up the series. Then at the end of the month I'll be getting the One Piece fighting game Burning Blood. It looks terrible, but I love One Piece too much not to get it.

Those will be the three games I chat with you about next month, so look forward to that!

Game Time - March 2016

This month I messed around with three very different games. One on PS4, one on my phone, and one on PC. I have them listed below in that same order, which also ends up being how much I enjoyed them from least to most.

The past few months I haven't really been finishing any games and this month is no different. I did play quite a bit of each of these, but have definitely not finished any of them. Maybe if I beat them my thoughts would change, but I highly doubt it.

The Division

I played the first Division beta and I enjoyed myself greatly. Now that I've played the full game I no longer enjoy myself greatly. I want to preface this by saying that I think The Division is a solid game, but it's just not for me. I find it to be supremely boring. Everything is so plain, and the mission objectives are almost all the same. There's nothing fantastical at all. You're fighting looters and a PMC in New York City. It's a generic looking city at Christmas time. The occasional holiday lights give the world personality on occasion, which it desperately needs.

I don't want to be reductive, but The Division is very similar to Destiny. It's a shooter RPG that's trying to be an MMO. However, like Destiny it doesn't do a good job of actually being an MMO. The game world is quite large, but it's barren. You never see other players out in the world. They're only encountered in safe areas. You run into random enemies, and sick people on the streets. You'll be traveling from place to place a lot and the only thing you can do other than shoot people is shut car doors. Why aren't other people around? You have to be constantly connected to the Internet. What's the purpose if you never see anyone? Yes there is the Dark Zone, but that's technically a PvP zone. You do see other people there, but you're choosing to go into that area.

Everywhere looks exactly like this. It's realistic, but not exciting.

The Division is a third person shooter. You pick up guns and armor, which you equip. It's an RPG in the sense that your guns do damage based on their stats and your current level. The enemies are almost all bullet sponges. You're going to be shooting people a lot before they go down. You can get headshots for more damage, but it's still going to be a chore. What sucks even more is that you never truly get strong enough to take enemies down with ease. The game scales with you, so most enemies end up taking the same amount of bullets. Shooting guys takes a long time, and that's all you're doing the entire game.

The two most interesting elements of The Division for me are the base building and the dark zone. For the story missions you're building The Divison HQ. There are three wings and you get specific supplies for each one. When you have enough of each supply you can buy upgrades to the wing that give you new perks. It's too bad none of it is very meaningful. On the other hand the dark zone is very meaningful and I think it's the best part of the game. It's a quarantined area that has better gear than the regular areas. In order to get it you have to extract it by helicopter. The caveat is that other human players can kill you and take your loot. So you have to call in a chopper and survive long enough to get your loot onboard. It's interesting, because you always have to be worried about other players in the vicinity jacking your loot. It's a cool concept that sadly gets old fairly quickly. Especially since you're getting better loot to take back into the regular boring gameplay. It needs something like the raids in Destiny.

You better like cover shooters if you're going to play The Division.

I feel bad bringing up Destiny when talking about The Divison, but it's a very reasonable comparison. However, I think one plays well and the other is boring. For as much shit as I give Destiny I think it plays like a dream. The shooting feels good and the guns have meaningful differences. The Division doesn't have that. All the guns feel the same, and it's just another generic cover shooter with the added bonus of RPG elements.

Nothing about The Division stands out to me. The city is bland, and the gameplay is totally average. At least Destiny has the space setting to make everything seem interesting and varied.

Pokemon Shuffle

I don't know exactly when this game came to mobile platforms, but it definitely did. I remember when it first came out for the 3DS and I had no interest in playing it. Now that I have it on my phone I can boot it up for quick sessions. It's good that I'm looking for quick sessions, because the way the game is designed they have to be quick. You can only play five stages before you run out of stamina. It's a serious bummer.

Pokemon Shuffle is a classic match three game. You have a four Pokemon party, and those four Pokemon's heads will fill the play field. You want to match three or more, which you do by switching the places of two heads. Each stage features a Pokemon that you have to defeat. There's an extra layer of strategy above just matching three, because the typing still matters. If you're fighting a grass Pokemon your fire Pokemon will do more damage. As you defeat enemies your Pokemon level up in order to do more damage. When you beat a stage you have a chance to capture the Pokemon and add them to your arsenal. Your score and remaining turns add up to give you a capture percentage. If the capture fails then the game will increase the chance a bit and allow you to pay coins to use a great ball and try again. If that fails as well, then you just have to beat the stage again in order to capture.

Gotta match em' all.

A big component of Pokemon shuffle is that the head of your party is a mega Pokemon. If you match them enough, then they will mega evolve. If you match them in their mega form they will clear out large swaths of the field. The way they clear the field depends on the mega.

I really enjoy playing it, but I feel like the game tries to stop me at every turn. You only have five stamina, so you can play five stages. That takes about five minutes on average. Once you're done you have to wait hours in order to get five tries again. You can pay real money to get more stamina, but it's only one time use. I would pay upwards of $15 to get rid of the stamina requirements, but sadly I can't do that. To make matters even worse the game artificially gates you every so often. There will be points where you can't proceed unless you've caught so many Pokemon. So if you don't have enough you have to go back to old stages and waste your stamina to try and catch something you've already fought.

I'm going to keep playing it, I just wish it wasn't such a cash grab. It's never a good sign when I want to play a game more, but can't.

Stardew Valley

I recorded a whole podcast about Stardew Valley, which you can find here. Despite the fact that I talked about it at length there I'll still tell you all about how much I love it here.

Over the past few years everyone's favorite farming simulator Harvest Moon has gone downhill. The good old days of the SNES and N64 Havest Moons have long passed and we've been left with an empty shell of what the series used to be. However, one man decided that the world needed a new Harvest Moon style game and took it upon himself to make a game in a similar vein, but improve upon what once was and make a much more compelling product. That man calls himself Concerned Ape, and the game he made is Stardew Valley.

Virtual farming is all the rage these days.

At its core Stardew Valley is the same as Harvest Moon. You're a dude (or lady) who inherited a farm. Now it's up to you to plant crops, and get to know the villagers. You need to till the ground and plant seeds. You have to water the crops every day until they mature, at which point you sell them for money to get more crops. It sounds boring, but it's oddly compelling. It definitely helps that farming isn't all Stardew Valley has to offer. You can also mine, fish, and forage for nature's raw goods. There are many paths you can take, which sets it apart from the games it's paying homage too.

What's even better about Stardew Valley is that the town of the same name is very much alive. It changes over time and is filled with very compelling people. You can talk to them and give them gifts in order to learn what their deal is. Unlike Harvest Moon where everyone is a quirky anime style character the denizens of Stardew Valley are gritty and real. How many games have you played where someone is struggling with alcoholism? How about extreme depression? It's cool to see people struggling with real issues in a video game. You're just a humble farmer who moved out to the country. You're not a super human who's duty it is to fulfill a prophecy and save the galaxy. It's a refreshing change of pace.

April Showers

For some reason I was thinking that I was going to take a video gaming break in April. I was under the impression that nothing I wanted was going to be released. Then I remembered that Dark Souls 3 comes out next week and I got super excited. I love Dark Souls, and I can't wait to play the third and final entry in the trilogy.

I don't know what else I'll be playing, but I will definitely be playing a whole lot of Dark Souls 3. So look forward to that next month!

Game Time - February 2015

I only played two new games in February. Sure, I played a whole ton of Inazuma Eleven 2 and 3 on stream, but this month I'm here to tell you all about the hot new releases I played!

Well, I guess the first one isn't so hot. It's technically not new either... I'm almost ashamed to say that one of the two games I played a ridiculous amount is One Piece Treasure Cruise. It's a mobile game, and it's not exactly what I would call an amazing game. It's not even that fun to play. I sure played the hell out of it though, and will probably continue to do so.

The game I played the most in February was just as I predicted in the last edition of Game Time, and that was Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I pre-ordered the New 3DS XL bundle from GameStop. The way GameStop does pre-orders for exclusive bundles is stupid, so I thought I wasn't going to get it until the 23rd. However, it came a week earlier than I had expected which afforded me a great deal of extra time to hunt monsters.

This month we only have two games to talk about, but I definitely have a bunch to say about both. It's game time!

One Piece Treasure Cruise

While browsing Siliconera I found an article about a stealth release of One Piece Treasure Cruise here in the U.S. Being a huge One Piece fan I downloaded it, no questions asked. I had nothing better to do, so I ended up playing it a whole lot the night it came out. Normally I download mobile games and expect them to be minor time killers, or something I'll play for a week and then give up on. It's surprising, but I genuinely like One Piece Treasure Cruise and will continue to play it for the foreseeable future.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's a great game. It's not. In fact, it borrows heavily from the Puzzles and Dragons formula. You collect units, some of which are generic pirates and marines, while many units are One Piece favorites like Luffy and Zoro. You build a team of six units in order to battle. In order to battle you need to tap the screen at the right time. Words fly around the character being attacked and eventually converge in the center of the enemy. If you tap your next unit right when the words converge you'll get a "perfect." You'll do more damage and be granted a multiplier for future attacks. 

The part where it's like Puzzles and Dragons is outside of battle. The way you keep your units, level them up, and evolve them are all ripped right out of P&D. Each unit has a stat and color associated with them. For example Luffy is red, which is the color for strength. As you play you'll collect units which you can feed to the units you use frequently. If you feed Luffy other red characters he'll get bonus experience for the color match. Once a unit reaches their max level you can evolve them, which obviously makes them stronger. 

In order to evolve a unit they must be max level. In addition you need to have the proper "evolution" type units. It's the same as in P&D, except the evolution units take the form of crabs, seahorses, dragons, and penguins. Each day of the week there are special levels where you can collect the things you need in order to evolve your units. Each unit you feed to another one costs in game money. The higher the level of the unit you're feeding, the higher the cost is. That's why you want to try to get turtles, which grant a ton of experience.

The team in this picture is nuts. No way they started with that...

Yeah, it's a mobile game. Each stage takes a certain amount of stamina and when you run out you have to wait for it to recharge. If you want you can pay 0.99 for a rainbow fruit. You can use them to refill your stamina, try to recruit special units, increase the amount of units you can carry, and come back to life when you lose in battle. So far there has been absolutely no reason for me to even think about throwing money at the game. They were having a launch event that gave a rainbow fruit every day. Now there's a new event for the game reaching 1 million downloads, which is also giving one fruit a day. Currently I'm sitting at 30, which is a ton. Shit, that would cost $30!

It's definitely not a masterpiece, and it's normally not even the kind of thing I'd play. However, I love me some One Piece so that's helping out quite a bit. The one thing that bothers me is how little content there seems to be in the game currently. It only goes up to the fight with Arlong, which is almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. For some reason they've decided to release one island a month, which is cool, except for the fact that the Japanese version of the game is way farther along. I know they need to try and sell each new batch of units, but it seems like they could have thrown it all out at once and had people going insane to buy a chance to get their favorite character. I'm not a mobile business man though, so what do I know?

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

In April of 2013 I found myself deep in the clutches of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I tried the demo and for some reason that I can't truly explain it hooked me. Since then I've played over 400 hours of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which is by far the most played game on my Wii-U. Eventually the game's grip on me loosened and I moved on with my life. When I saw that Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate would be coming stateside I was ecstatic. My body was ready to dive deep into the Monster Hunter universe again.

A few weeks prior to the game's release I began to feel some apprehension. I began to think about whether or not my love for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was something that could be repeated. See, this past year I played Dark Souls and loved it immensely. I actually think that Monster Hunter allowed me to appreciate Dark Souls, whereas I wouldn't have previously. I will reiterate, I love Dark Souls. It is now one of my favorite games of all time. Dark Souls 2 on the other hand I did not like quite as much. It wasn't as well put together as the original, and it was trying to emulate something I had played a loved. This is why I thought of Monster Hunter. Each iteration is very similar in terms of mechanics and general gameplay. What if my love of Monster Hunter 3 couldn't be replicated?

The Gore Magala is an awesome new monster.

I'm glad to let you know that my love of Monster Hunter 3 can, and has been replicated. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is everything I had hoped it would be and more! It's the same monster hunting action I loved before, but it has so many new elements that make it even better. For starters you can totally jump now. That might sound like a seriously mundane thing, but it completely changes the game. You can run off of edges, and in a Zelda-like fasion your hunter will fling themself into the air. In the air you can attack, ad if you manage to knock the monster down you can mount it! This triggers an animation of your hunter holding on for dear life. You have to repeatedly stab the monster until a bar fills up. The monster will struggle, so at specific times you need to stop attacking and hold on. If you succeed the monster will fall and you'll have free reign to beat it down for a few moments. It's pretty brutal, but very effective.

There are tons of nuances that people who've played the series will pick up as they go. There is one major change that benefits the series greatly though and that is the addition of a proper tutorial. Normally I wouldn't celebrate the addition of a tutorial, but for Monster Hunter it makes all the difference. If I hadn't looked up tutorial videos for the previous entry in the series I never would have been able to pick it up. There is so much that the series just assumes you know and at times it can be very frustrating. Now that's not really something new players need to worry about. Since the game has a legitimate story now there are characters who will tell you what to do as you go on hunts. There are tons of missions in the beginning of the game that are dedicated to teaching you all the basics, and even a bunch of later missions that teach you some sweet advanced techniques. There are even tutorial missions for each of the weapons that tell you what they do and what attacks are effective in what situations! It's crazy that it took the developers so long to put a basic tutorial in, but now new players can ease into the game. I'm sure there are a bunch of hardcore fans who are upset by this addition, but personally I think it's a huge step forward.

I still use the Great Sword exclusively.

Just like with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate I've played this game a whole lot so far. I think I'm sitting at around 85 hours right now. It's cool, because it seems like I still have a lot of content to get through. Somehow there are even more monsters in this than there were in 3, and there were a whole boatload in that. You can bet that when I'm not streaming Inazuma Eleven, I'm playing Monster Hunter. If you've never played the series before or are scared to try it you should read the thing I wrote when I first played it here.

And Then There Were Games

March will finally be the month when I begin to buy a ton of new games each month. Off the top of my head I can think of Final Fantasy Type-0, Mario Party 10 (*Barf*), Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stones, and Bloodborne. At some point I will be streaming all of these except for Mario Party, because no one wants to see Mario Party, including me...

Anyways, I need to get back to playing Monster Hunter. I'll see you all next time.