We lead in with hot news like The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter, the 2020 EVO Lineup, and numerous industry figures changing roles! We then transition into all the games Matt has been playing. It's possible I'll only play FFXIV for the rest of my life.
For part 3 we continue out look back at the current console generation by looking at Namco-Bandai. Get ready for a lot of one sided anime talk!
News - 00:48 to 43:30
What We Played - 43:31 to 1:36:19
Namco Bandai - 1:36:20 to 2:20:44
Specific Game Time Stamps
Wind Waker HD - 43:31 to 51:45
Saint's Row The Third - 51:46 to 59:19
COD: Advanced Warfare - 59:20 to 1:03:54
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - 1:03:55 to 1:13:25
DmC - 1:13:26 to 1:23:07
Steam World Heist - 1:23:08 to 1:27:27
KH3 REMIND - 1:27:28 to 1:36:19
Showing posts with label Namco Bandai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Namco Bandai. Show all posts
Friday, February 7, 2020
Friday, December 8, 2017
Game Time - November 2017
During the entire month of November I didn't really play a whole lot. I kind of just lounged around and let the Holiday season wash over me. I don't even really know what I did other than watch a whole lot of Adventure Time.
That doesn't mean I didn't play games, it just means I didn't finish any... It's game time!
Battle Chef Brigade
Years ago I saw a pre-release video of Battle Chef Brigade and it immediately caught my eye. It's an interesting mix of an action RPG and a match three puzzle game couched inside a fantasy Iron Chef. If what I just said sounds crazy, it's because it is. You play as Mina, a chef. She has run away from home to enter the tournament to become a member of the battle chef brigade. In the game world chefs are apparently super powerful and protect the land.
In order to join the brigade she must win a series of matches without losing three times. The game has you start your day by doing odd jobs for your teachers around town. This doubles as a way to get money and learn advanced game mechanics. You can do fun puzzles where you need to create specific patterns in the match three game, fight enemies, and make orders ads fast as possible in a busy restaurant. When you're all set you can find a fellow chef and challenge them to a battle. You than travel to a battleground and start the cool chef fight.
Initially you're introduced to the judge for the event and they let you know what element they like the best and what the main ingredient of your dish should be. There are three elements earth, water, and fire. The more you have of the specific element the judge requests the higher you'll score. The buzzer goes off and then you need to get cooking! You have to run outside and kill monsters to collect their parts, which are made up on colored orbs. You need to drop the parts into your cooking pot and then match them. When you match three of a kind they fuse together into an upgraded flavor gem and you can repeat the process. Before the timer runs out you bring the dish to the judge and are scored accordingly. It has been a lot of fun the few matches I've played so far. It has a lot of charm, and I'm excited to see where the story and mechanics go.
Pokemon Ultra Moon
It's a well known fact that I love the Pokemon franchise. Despite that I can't bring myself to defend the newest duo of Pokemon releases. I have personally enjoyed my time with it so far, but it's hard to justify it as a purchase for people who played Sun and Moon last year. Game Freak billed this as an all new adventure with an alternate story, which is only a half truth. While there are new aspects to the story it is still largely the same as before. They made tweaks to the pacing so that things get going quicker, but a majority of the changes take place near and at the end of the game. I do think that it's a better overall package, but it just takes a while to see any of it.
Sadly I can't comment on any of the new story aspects other than the Ultra Recon Squad showing up every so often. When I last played the game I stopped right before getting to the wholly new story section dealing with the legendary Pokemon Necrozma. There is also additional content after the game is over where you fight against a new and improved Team Rocket which I am looking forward to.
In terms of gameplay it's pretty much identical. You fight with Pokemon in turn based battles. You capture Pokemon, level them up, and see them evolve. It's the classic gameplay that we all know and love from the franchise, but I hope that next time they can change it up even more. Sun and Moon were a nice departure from the previous games and tried a bunch of new things. Personally I hope that for future iterations they take the changes even farther. While I adore Pokemon I don't know how much longer they can get away with the current formula.
.hack//G.U. Last Recode
.hack//G.U. originally came out in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. I came into the three part franchise during its second outing in 2007. I played the second and third volumes a ton, and enjoyed them quite a bit. However, that was back then. The graphics were decent then, and the repetitive combat mechanics and melodramatic anime acting did it for me then. Now we're in 2017 and the games have been re-released in a collection on the PS4. What sets this collection apart from others of its type is that it adds a ton of cool features in addition to the improved graphics. On top of all that they created an all new volume 4, which I definitely have not played yet. It is really cool that this franchise has been revived in 2017, but I just am not having a good time playing it.
The combat is simple active combat. You run into a group of enemies and mach a button to kill them. As the games go on you receive more weapons to add variety, but in the opening hours there's little to no variety. You play as Haseo, who is a player in the MMO known as the world who is trying to find out what happened to his friend Shino. She was attacked by a mysterious character called Tri-Edge and was never seen again. Haseo learns he has special powers as all good anime protagonists do, and he goes on a journey while honing his skills.
Even in 2017 the concept of playing a video game about being inside a video game is pretty novel. It still freaks me out that you can "log off" the game and retire to a PC desktop to read email and download sick wallpapers. I still like .hack, but I just don't want to play through it again. I already saw the story once, and the combat actually puts me to sleep. I played three sessions of it and almost fell asleep each time. It would be hard to recommend it to someone who has no nostalgia for it, but it's really cool for fans that Namco put this collection out.
Tis the Season
Pretty much all I've been doing since the 1st of December is playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The Switch finally has the hot JRPG action I have been craving. Sometimes I feel like if I go too long without playing one I will wither and die. So far I like it a lot, but it certainly has its fair share of problems.
The Director's Cut of Night in the Woods comes out Tuesday and I'm totally going to play through that again, because I love it so much. Other than that I don't really have a whole lot of video gaming plans. I'm just going to chill for the Christmas season and get really stressed out at work! See you next time!
That doesn't mean I didn't play games, it just means I didn't finish any... It's game time!
Battle Chef Brigade
Years ago I saw a pre-release video of Battle Chef Brigade and it immediately caught my eye. It's an interesting mix of an action RPG and a match three puzzle game couched inside a fantasy Iron Chef. If what I just said sounds crazy, it's because it is. You play as Mina, a chef. She has run away from home to enter the tournament to become a member of the battle chef brigade. In the game world chefs are apparently super powerful and protect the land.
In order to join the brigade she must win a series of matches without losing three times. The game has you start your day by doing odd jobs for your teachers around town. This doubles as a way to get money and learn advanced game mechanics. You can do fun puzzles where you need to create specific patterns in the match three game, fight enemies, and make orders ads fast as possible in a busy restaurant. When you're all set you can find a fellow chef and challenge them to a battle. You than travel to a battleground and start the cool chef fight.
 |
| If only it was this easy to cook in real life. |
Initially you're introduced to the judge for the event and they let you know what element they like the best and what the main ingredient of your dish should be. There are three elements earth, water, and fire. The more you have of the specific element the judge requests the higher you'll score. The buzzer goes off and then you need to get cooking! You have to run outside and kill monsters to collect their parts, which are made up on colored orbs. You need to drop the parts into your cooking pot and then match them. When you match three of a kind they fuse together into an upgraded flavor gem and you can repeat the process. Before the timer runs out you bring the dish to the judge and are scored accordingly. It has been a lot of fun the few matches I've played so far. It has a lot of charm, and I'm excited to see where the story and mechanics go.
Pokemon Ultra Moon
It's a well known fact that I love the Pokemon franchise. Despite that I can't bring myself to defend the newest duo of Pokemon releases. I have personally enjoyed my time with it so far, but it's hard to justify it as a purchase for people who played Sun and Moon last year. Game Freak billed this as an all new adventure with an alternate story, which is only a half truth. While there are new aspects to the story it is still largely the same as before. They made tweaks to the pacing so that things get going quicker, but a majority of the changes take place near and at the end of the game. I do think that it's a better overall package, but it just takes a while to see any of it.
 |
| The games bring back Team Rocket, but not until very late in the story. |
Sadly I can't comment on any of the new story aspects other than the Ultra Recon Squad showing up every so often. When I last played the game I stopped right before getting to the wholly new story section dealing with the legendary Pokemon Necrozma. There is also additional content after the game is over where you fight against a new and improved Team Rocket which I am looking forward to.
In terms of gameplay it's pretty much identical. You fight with Pokemon in turn based battles. You capture Pokemon, level them up, and see them evolve. It's the classic gameplay that we all know and love from the franchise, but I hope that next time they can change it up even more. Sun and Moon were a nice departure from the previous games and tried a bunch of new things. Personally I hope that for future iterations they take the changes even farther. While I adore Pokemon I don't know how much longer they can get away with the current formula.
.hack//G.U. Last Recode
.hack//G.U. originally came out in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. I came into the three part franchise during its second outing in 2007. I played the second and third volumes a ton, and enjoyed them quite a bit. However, that was back then. The graphics were decent then, and the repetitive combat mechanics and melodramatic anime acting did it for me then. Now we're in 2017 and the games have been re-released in a collection on the PS4. What sets this collection apart from others of its type is that it adds a ton of cool features in addition to the improved graphics. On top of all that they created an all new volume 4, which I definitely have not played yet. It is really cool that this franchise has been revived in 2017, but I just am not having a good time playing it.
The combat is simple active combat. You run into a group of enemies and mach a button to kill them. As the games go on you receive more weapons to add variety, but in the opening hours there's little to no variety. You play as Haseo, who is a player in the MMO known as the world who is trying to find out what happened to his friend Shino. She was attacked by a mysterious character called Tri-Edge and was never seen again. Haseo learns he has special powers as all good anime protagonists do, and he goes on a journey while honing his skills.
 |
| Haseo is back and edgier than ever! |
Even in 2017 the concept of playing a video game about being inside a video game is pretty novel. It still freaks me out that you can "log off" the game and retire to a PC desktop to read email and download sick wallpapers. I still like .hack, but I just don't want to play through it again. I already saw the story once, and the combat actually puts me to sleep. I played three sessions of it and almost fell asleep each time. It would be hard to recommend it to someone who has no nostalgia for it, but it's really cool for fans that Namco put this collection out.
Tis the Season
Pretty much all I've been doing since the 1st of December is playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The Switch finally has the hot JRPG action I have been craving. Sometimes I feel like if I go too long without playing one I will wither and die. So far I like it a lot, but it certainly has its fair share of problems.
The Director's Cut of Night in the Woods comes out Tuesday and I'm totally going to play through that again, because I love it so much. Other than that I don't really have a whole lot of video gaming plans. I'm just going to chill for the Christmas season and get really stressed out at work! See you next time!
Friday, October 7, 2016
Game Time - September 2016
The crisp fall air is upon us, and so are tons of video game releases! As I said in last month's Game Time I had started playing God Eater 2 right at the end of August. I played it a whole bunch, but Sadly didn't finish it. I might go back to it at some point.
On September 6th Trails of Cold Steel 2 came out, and I tried to play it as much as possible. However, the Legend of Heroes series is known for having its games be ludicrously long. I played Trails of Cold Steel a few months ago and it took me around 60 hours to finish. The second game is a lot more open, so I have a feeling it's going to take me a whole lot longer.
On September 9th Ace Attorney 6 came out, so I put Trails on hold. Over the course of a week I put 40 hours into the game, and completed it. At first I was worried, because the game wasn't really grabbing me, but by the end I was super into it.
Now that we're in the heat of fall video games are coming out at a rapid pace. It gets even more crazy, because I actually want to play a bunch of them. I'm using up a great deal of my spare time, and money. Since there's a bunch I should be playing let's get right into this. It's game time!
God Eater 2
I initially played God Eater Rage Burst on the PSP. I played it for hours and hours with a friend. His PSP's analog nub broke and we never ended up finishing all the extra content. I definitely did enjoy the hell out of it though. That was before I had gotten into Monster Hunter, so I was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy God Eater 2 because of that. After playing the real thing I fell out of love with all the less complicated Monster Hunter clones I came across. Luckily God Eater 2 is just different enough to hold my interest.
At the most base level you could call anime Monster Hunter. That's mostly true, but it definitely plays a lot differently. You play as a person called a God Eater. God Eaters are essentially the protectors in a post-apocalyptic world that has been overrun by monsters. The monsters are essentially gods (duh). They were experimented on and given a wrist band called a God Arc. This allows them to summon a huge weapon, which is powerful enough to slay the beasts threatening humanity. These God Arcs can actually eat the monsters to gain power, which is one of the core game mechanics. If the monster you're fighting is alive and you bite into it you'll be powered up. If the monster is down and you eat it that's how you harvest its part.
God Eater 2 plays very much like the original, but now there are more monsters and a few more weapon types. Unlike Monster Hunter, God Eater tends to be very forgiving. While animation priority is still a thing, it doesn't matter very much. You can take a lot of hits, and your teammates can easily heal you. I'd describe this as a very arcadey experience. You don't always have to use a lot of strategy and can often just mash your way to victory. Obviously the difficulty ramps up over time, but it never gets anywhere near as hard as Monster Hunter.
One thing God Eater has over Monster Hunter is an actual plot. The first game was great and had a lot of deep characters to interact with. So far the second game is interesting but has not quite hooked me yet. There's a lot of creepy characters in this one, and a ton of religious symbolism. It's interesting, but very little is actually happening. At least it's diving into the back story of every character, but it goes a bit too slow for its own good. There have been times when the story starts going somewhere, but then immediately takes a sharp turn into some weird filler stuff.
Overall I think that God Eater 2 is a solid game. At the time of writing this you can also get the first game for free when you purchase the second, so it's a good way to get on board with the series. It's a competent hunting game that deals with style over substance. It's not the most complex game around, but it's fun to hold its own.
Trails of Cold Steel 2
Trails of Cold Steel 2 is hard to talk about. The first game takes a hard turn at the end, so any information about the second game, even trailers, spoil a ton about what happens in the first game. The last few hours of the original game absolutely blew my mind. I saw almost none of it coming, so if for some reason you want to play the original, then do not ready any further. You have been warned!
Spoilers start here:
A friend of mine played Trails of Cold Steel at the beginning of 2016 and absolutely loved it. The issue he ran into was he loved it so much, but had no one to talk to about it. That led to me playing through the whole game while he watched. At first I was a little iffy on the game, but in the end it ended up growing on me, The first game focuses on a group of kids at Thors Military Academy that are chosen for a special class called class seven, They were chosen because they come from vastly differing backgrounds. You spend most of your time at the school, but go on field studies as well. Throughout the course of the game you learn a ton about each character in your class. The reason I ended up liking the game so much is that each character is characterized very well. It's not like most JRPGs where only a few characters are built upon, which is great.
We're here to talk about the second game though, and man is it a lot different. The end of the first game has the main character Rean Schwarzer essentially getting his own Gundam. Seriously, he receives a giant humanoid robot, which he can then pilot. So now outside of the regular turn based battles of the original game you also have to fight in your robot, Valimar. These battles differ in that you can attack the enemy robot in one of three places. If you attack the weak point, then you do more damage and can perform a follow-up attack. Yes, there were two of these battles at the end of the first game but you do them much more often now.
No longer are you at school, because now the nation is engaged in all out war. The noble faction has raised its own army, which is trying to take over the entire country. They assassinated Chancellor Osbourne, who was a proponent of making everyone equal at any means necessary. It sounds good at first, but you find out that he's actually done some pretty heinous stuff in the name of equality. It's a good old fashioned class struggle and class seven is at the center. Instead of learning in a classroom you need to travel around the country and try to keep everyone safe. Class Seven decides to remain neutral in the war and just try to keep civilians safe. This means that you go around the country and try to recruit other students from Thors to your cause.
What's crazy is that I've already played the game for 50 hours and I don't think I;m even halfway through the game. While the original was more or less linear, this game allows you to travel pretty much anywhere at any time. It takes a bit to open up, but once it does there is almost too much content.
The issue that I'm having with the game is that it's not always holding my interest. The first game was paced rather slowly in order to learn about everyone, so I thought that the second game would have awesome stuff popping off all the time. That isn't necessarily the case. I've taken two breaks from playing it to complete other games, because I don't want to burn out. There are so many new characters that seem cool, but so far they haven't done a whole lot. Things are picking up where I am now, but it's still not making me as excited as I would like. Hopefully there's an insane third act plot twist in this one as well. I enjoy the game's battle system and characters, so I'm excited to eventually finish this game.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirits of Justice
I absolutely love the original Ace Attorney trilogy. I had always wanted to play the franchise, but the DS cartridges got pretty expensive back in the day. Capcom decided to re-release them on the Wii virtual console and I was able to net all three for a reasonable price. Prior to that I had never really played any visual novels, but ended up getting sucked right in. Ace Attorney may be mostly reading, but you actually have to use deductive reasoning and interact with the game. It has gotten me to try out a bunch more visual novel series and I am very grateful for it. However, even after playing other games like it I still think that Ace Attorney is my favorite.
The original trilogy is incredible. It ended in a way that gave me a feeling of closure. However, at the time I started playing the games the 4th entry in the series Apollo Justice had already been released. Most people really didn't like it, so I was hesitant to play it. In the end I did and ended up being one of the few people who really likes Apollo Justice. It seemed like the series was done for, but Capcom decided to try and revive the series with a 5th game. It brought Phoenix back to the forefront, but also had Apollo. It ended up being successful enough for a 6th game to be released, which is why we're here now.
Spirits of Justice is the end of the second Ace Attorney trilogy, and like the first trilogy it did not disappoint. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Ace Attorney is a game about lawyers. Phoenix Wright runs an agency where he hires people who have special talents. It turns out that included his magician daughter Trucy, and two defense attorneys Apollo Justice and Athena Psyches. Apollo has been around for a bit, but Athena was introduced in the previous game. She's still a bit green, but she seems like she's coming into her own now.
The original trilogy dealt a lot with spirit mediums, spirit channeling, and fantastical things in general, Apollo Justice, and the 5th game moved away from the spirit obsession, but the 6th game i right back at it, I guess with a name like "Spirits of Justice" you probably already figured that out. It's a bit hard to explain if you've never played the series, but Phoenix used to have a partner named Maya Fey. She's a spirit medium in training, She is the head of a village of spirit mediums called Kurain Village. Spirits of Justice opens with Phoenix going to the country of Khura'in to see Maya who is almost done with her spirit training. In order to truly run her village she must master spirit channeling. This sounds really stupid, but Kurain and Khura'in are two different places. Khurai'in is a different country in the world of Ace Attorney.
Almost as soon as Phoenix steps off the plane into the distant land of Khura'in he gets ropes into a murder trial. He quickly finds out that the legal system doesn't quite work the same in the foreign land. The royal priestess performs a seance with the deceased, which allows her to see their final moments. From that they determine whether or not the accused is guilty. However, due to a ludicrous thing called the Defense Culpability Act there are no lawyers. This is because under the act defense attorneys are given the same punishment as the accused should they lose. Phoenix being the upstanding guy he is ends up doing the trial anyways, and ends up getting the first not guilty verdict in 23 years!
From there the story spools out into a crazy adventure. Since it's a visual novel finding out the story is the entire game, so I'll refrain from giving away anything else. The adventure runs about 40 hours long, which is almost twice as long as the 5th game. I rarely got stuck, but it does suffer a bit from the classic Ace Attorney logic leaps. Sometimes you can see what the game wants you do do, but you're five steps ahead. It's always a bit annoying, but now you can get hints from the game if you get stuck for too long. That eases the pain of being stuck forever and having to look up a walkthrough.
In terms of actual gameplay Spirits of Justice has a lot more going on than the previous games. This is because it uses almost every gameplay system from previous games. Phoenix can tell when people are lying with his Magatama, Apollo uses his magic bracelet to see nervous ticks, and Athena uses her psychology to find inconsistencies, When in Khura'in you have to watch the divination seance, which adds a whole new layer to cases. It's essentially a video that can be used as evidence. It doesn't sound too cool at first, but when you can see a crime from the victims point of view it opens up a ton of new things to look at. They even bring back the forensic science of Emma Skye. There's a lot more going on than than in any other Ace Attorney game, and I don't think that any mechanic outstays its welcome. It's another great end to a trilogy and I can't wait to see where they take things next. The ending means that a lot is going to have to change, which I'm very excited about.
Rocktober
Somehow a year later I am still playing Rock Band 4 at least once a week. What's even more amazing is that Rock Band 4 performed well enough to deserve an expansion. You can bet that I'll be playing that on October 18th.
I'm also kind of interested in trying out the PlayStation VR. One of my friends is getting it, so I'll at least be able to try it out. Hopefully it's good, otherwise I don't know if VR will continue to be a thing in the coming years. Only time will tell.
I took a break from playing Trails of Cold Steel 2 to mess around with Yo-Kai Watch 2 and I've been enjoying myself so far. Originally I was interested in Yo-Kai Watch! from an academic perspective, but now I am genuinely into it. Hopefully I can beat both of them this month, but I don't know if I'll have enough time. It's weird to be playing games that are 40 hours or more back to back.
Somehow I'll make it work! See you next month!
On September 6th Trails of Cold Steel 2 came out, and I tried to play it as much as possible. However, the Legend of Heroes series is known for having its games be ludicrously long. I played Trails of Cold Steel a few months ago and it took me around 60 hours to finish. The second game is a lot more open, so I have a feeling it's going to take me a whole lot longer.
On September 9th Ace Attorney 6 came out, so I put Trails on hold. Over the course of a week I put 40 hours into the game, and completed it. At first I was worried, because the game wasn't really grabbing me, but by the end I was super into it.
Now that we're in the heat of fall video games are coming out at a rapid pace. It gets even more crazy, because I actually want to play a bunch of them. I'm using up a great deal of my spare time, and money. Since there's a bunch I should be playing let's get right into this. It's game time!
God Eater 2
I initially played God Eater Rage Burst on the PSP. I played it for hours and hours with a friend. His PSP's analog nub broke and we never ended up finishing all the extra content. I definitely did enjoy the hell out of it though. That was before I had gotten into Monster Hunter, so I was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy God Eater 2 because of that. After playing the real thing I fell out of love with all the less complicated Monster Hunter clones I came across. Luckily God Eater 2 is just different enough to hold my interest.
At the most base level you could call anime Monster Hunter. That's mostly true, but it definitely plays a lot differently. You play as a person called a God Eater. God Eaters are essentially the protectors in a post-apocalyptic world that has been overrun by monsters. The monsters are essentially gods (duh). They were experimented on and given a wrist band called a God Arc. This allows them to summon a huge weapon, which is powerful enough to slay the beasts threatening humanity. These God Arcs can actually eat the monsters to gain power, which is one of the core game mechanics. If the monster you're fighting is alive and you bite into it you'll be powered up. If the monster is down and you eat it that's how you harvest its part.
 |
| There are new weapon types like the scythe in God Eater 2 |
God Eater 2 plays very much like the original, but now there are more monsters and a few more weapon types. Unlike Monster Hunter, God Eater tends to be very forgiving. While animation priority is still a thing, it doesn't matter very much. You can take a lot of hits, and your teammates can easily heal you. I'd describe this as a very arcadey experience. You don't always have to use a lot of strategy and can often just mash your way to victory. Obviously the difficulty ramps up over time, but it never gets anywhere near as hard as Monster Hunter.
One thing God Eater has over Monster Hunter is an actual plot. The first game was great and had a lot of deep characters to interact with. So far the second game is interesting but has not quite hooked me yet. There's a lot of creepy characters in this one, and a ton of religious symbolism. It's interesting, but very little is actually happening. At least it's diving into the back story of every character, but it goes a bit too slow for its own good. There have been times when the story starts going somewhere, but then immediately takes a sharp turn into some weird filler stuff.
 |
| This is the crew you'll be rolling with for the duration of the game. |
Overall I think that God Eater 2 is a solid game. At the time of writing this you can also get the first game for free when you purchase the second, so it's a good way to get on board with the series. It's a competent hunting game that deals with style over substance. It's not the most complex game around, but it's fun to hold its own.
Trails of Cold Steel 2
Trails of Cold Steel 2 is hard to talk about. The first game takes a hard turn at the end, so any information about the second game, even trailers, spoil a ton about what happens in the first game. The last few hours of the original game absolutely blew my mind. I saw almost none of it coming, so if for some reason you want to play the original, then do not ready any further. You have been warned!
Spoilers start here:
A friend of mine played Trails of Cold Steel at the beginning of 2016 and absolutely loved it. The issue he ran into was he loved it so much, but had no one to talk to about it. That led to me playing through the whole game while he watched. At first I was a little iffy on the game, but in the end it ended up growing on me, The first game focuses on a group of kids at Thors Military Academy that are chosen for a special class called class seven, They were chosen because they come from vastly differing backgrounds. You spend most of your time at the school, but go on field studies as well. Throughout the course of the game you learn a ton about each character in your class. The reason I ended up liking the game so much is that each character is characterized very well. It's not like most JRPGs where only a few characters are built upon, which is great.
We're here to talk about the second game though, and man is it a lot different. The end of the first game has the main character Rean Schwarzer essentially getting his own Gundam. Seriously, he receives a giant humanoid robot, which he can then pilot. So now outside of the regular turn based battles of the original game you also have to fight in your robot, Valimar. These battles differ in that you can attack the enemy robot in one of three places. If you attack the weak point, then you do more damage and can perform a follow-up attack. Yes, there were two of these battles at the end of the first game but you do them much more often now.
 |
| Valimar, the Ashen Knight. |
No longer are you at school, because now the nation is engaged in all out war. The noble faction has raised its own army, which is trying to take over the entire country. They assassinated Chancellor Osbourne, who was a proponent of making everyone equal at any means necessary. It sounds good at first, but you find out that he's actually done some pretty heinous stuff in the name of equality. It's a good old fashioned class struggle and class seven is at the center. Instead of learning in a classroom you need to travel around the country and try to keep everyone safe. Class Seven decides to remain neutral in the war and just try to keep civilians safe. This means that you go around the country and try to recruit other students from Thors to your cause.
What's crazy is that I've already played the game for 50 hours and I don't think I;m even halfway through the game. While the original was more or less linear, this game allows you to travel pretty much anywhere at any time. It takes a bit to open up, but once it does there is almost too much content.
 |
| All of Class 7 gets hot new clothing! |
The issue that I'm having with the game is that it's not always holding my interest. The first game was paced rather slowly in order to learn about everyone, so I thought that the second game would have awesome stuff popping off all the time. That isn't necessarily the case. I've taken two breaks from playing it to complete other games, because I don't want to burn out. There are so many new characters that seem cool, but so far they haven't done a whole lot. Things are picking up where I am now, but it's still not making me as excited as I would like. Hopefully there's an insane third act plot twist in this one as well. I enjoy the game's battle system and characters, so I'm excited to eventually finish this game.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirits of Justice
I absolutely love the original Ace Attorney trilogy. I had always wanted to play the franchise, but the DS cartridges got pretty expensive back in the day. Capcom decided to re-release them on the Wii virtual console and I was able to net all three for a reasonable price. Prior to that I had never really played any visual novels, but ended up getting sucked right in. Ace Attorney may be mostly reading, but you actually have to use deductive reasoning and interact with the game. It has gotten me to try out a bunch more visual novel series and I am very grateful for it. However, even after playing other games like it I still think that Ace Attorney is my favorite.
The original trilogy is incredible. It ended in a way that gave me a feeling of closure. However, at the time I started playing the games the 4th entry in the series Apollo Justice had already been released. Most people really didn't like it, so I was hesitant to play it. In the end I did and ended up being one of the few people who really likes Apollo Justice. It seemed like the series was done for, but Capcom decided to try and revive the series with a 5th game. It brought Phoenix back to the forefront, but also had Apollo. It ended up being successful enough for a 6th game to be released, which is why we're here now.
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| OBJECTION! |
Spirits of Justice is the end of the second Ace Attorney trilogy, and like the first trilogy it did not disappoint. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Ace Attorney is a game about lawyers. Phoenix Wright runs an agency where he hires people who have special talents. It turns out that included his magician daughter Trucy, and two defense attorneys Apollo Justice and Athena Psyches. Apollo has been around for a bit, but Athena was introduced in the previous game. She's still a bit green, but she seems like she's coming into her own now.
The original trilogy dealt a lot with spirit mediums, spirit channeling, and fantastical things in general, Apollo Justice, and the 5th game moved away from the spirit obsession, but the 6th game i right back at it, I guess with a name like "Spirits of Justice" you probably already figured that out. It's a bit hard to explain if you've never played the series, but Phoenix used to have a partner named Maya Fey. She's a spirit medium in training, She is the head of a village of spirit mediums called Kurain Village. Spirits of Justice opens with Phoenix going to the country of Khura'in to see Maya who is almost done with her spirit training. In order to truly run her village she must master spirit channeling. This sounds really stupid, but Kurain and Khura'in are two different places. Khurai'in is a different country in the world of Ace Attorney.
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| The new prosecutor Nayuta is from Khura'in |
Almost as soon as Phoenix steps off the plane into the distant land of Khura'in he gets ropes into a murder trial. He quickly finds out that the legal system doesn't quite work the same in the foreign land. The royal priestess performs a seance with the deceased, which allows her to see their final moments. From that they determine whether or not the accused is guilty. However, due to a ludicrous thing called the Defense Culpability Act there are no lawyers. This is because under the act defense attorneys are given the same punishment as the accused should they lose. Phoenix being the upstanding guy he is ends up doing the trial anyways, and ends up getting the first not guilty verdict in 23 years!
From there the story spools out into a crazy adventure. Since it's a visual novel finding out the story is the entire game, so I'll refrain from giving away anything else. The adventure runs about 40 hours long, which is almost twice as long as the 5th game. I rarely got stuck, but it does suffer a bit from the classic Ace Attorney logic leaps. Sometimes you can see what the game wants you do do, but you're five steps ahead. It's always a bit annoying, but now you can get hints from the game if you get stuck for too long. That eases the pain of being stuck forever and having to look up a walkthrough.
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| The divination seance is a large component of trails in this game. |
In terms of actual gameplay Spirits of Justice has a lot more going on than the previous games. This is because it uses almost every gameplay system from previous games. Phoenix can tell when people are lying with his Magatama, Apollo uses his magic bracelet to see nervous ticks, and Athena uses her psychology to find inconsistencies, When in Khura'in you have to watch the divination seance, which adds a whole new layer to cases. It's essentially a video that can be used as evidence. It doesn't sound too cool at first, but when you can see a crime from the victims point of view it opens up a ton of new things to look at. They even bring back the forensic science of Emma Skye. There's a lot more going on than than in any other Ace Attorney game, and I don't think that any mechanic outstays its welcome. It's another great end to a trilogy and I can't wait to see where they take things next. The ending means that a lot is going to have to change, which I'm very excited about.
Rocktober
Somehow a year later I am still playing Rock Band 4 at least once a week. What's even more amazing is that Rock Band 4 performed well enough to deserve an expansion. You can bet that I'll be playing that on October 18th.
I'm also kind of interested in trying out the PlayStation VR. One of my friends is getting it, so I'll at least be able to try it out. Hopefully it's good, otherwise I don't know if VR will continue to be a thing in the coming years. Only time will tell.
I took a break from playing Trails of Cold Steel 2 to mess around with Yo-Kai Watch 2 and I've been enjoying myself so far. Originally I was interested in Yo-Kai Watch! from an academic perspective, but now I am genuinely into it. Hopefully I can beat both of them this month, but I don't know if I'll have enough time. It's weird to be playing games that are 40 hours or more back to back.
Somehow I'll make it work! See you next month!
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Game Time - February 2016
February happened, and I am somehow still standing. I played a few of my most anticipated games of 2016, and had a wonderful time. Sadly I didn't end up beating any of them yet, but I will get there eventually. I am right at the end of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and I guess you can't really beat Street Fighter V. Well, I did beat the story mode, so I guess that counts? Who knows!
Cyber Sleuth came out at the beginning of the month and I streamed it a whole bunch, so if you want to see any of that check out my YouTube channel for all kinds of Digimon content.
Right now I'm playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and it is kicking my ass. They weren't kidding when they said it was hard. It's especially rough, because I never want to let anyone die.
Street Fighter came out too and I've been playing that at least once a day. I'm trying to get moderately good at it, but I am not quite to that goal yet. Spoilers, it's a fighting game!
Okay, let's talk about video games now!
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Digimon is one of my favorite franchises of all time. I love the anime series, and a majority of the games have been pretty good. At some point Namco Bandai stopped localizing the titles, so here in America we missed out on quite a few solid Digimon Games. One of which was Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on the Vita. Fans started a petition that got a crazy amount of signatures to bring it out in English. Now a few years later it has finally come out on both PS4 and Vita.
Digimon games have changed a lot over the years. On the DS they began to take the form of something more like Pokemon than previous iterations. You run into Digimon in battle and scan them. Once you've run into them enough you can reform them and have them as your own. Once you have them in order to Digivolve them you have to meet specific stat requirements. If you reach max level and can't meet the requirements to digivolve you can de-digivolve them. This makes it so that they have a higher max level.
Combat is turn based, and uses a similar weakness system to Pokemon. There are virus, vaccine, and data type Digimon that all have their own respective weaknesses. Cyber Sleuth follows the same pattern as the 3DS games, but the requirements to digivolve are way less annoying. They are exclusively based on stats and not how many battles you've fought. There are a ton of Digimon to collect, and the battles are fun.
The core gameplay is fine, but the rest of the game doesn't always hold up. The game starts very stylishly, and moves along at a decent clip. However, after the first few hours the pacing begins to fall apart. Many chapters don't involve any tie to the main story, and instead have the main character running around doing pointless garbage. It doesn't help that almost all of the games environments are introduced fairly early on, and then are repeated for the rest of the game.
It's a solid game, but the repetition of areas and random quests can be a little grading. It doesn't help that the translation is a bit spotty, so when the story does happen its not always the best. Seriously, the main character is only a silent protagonist sometimes. They make jokes about him being silent and not talking very much, but there are numerous scenes where he talks to people directly. What!? It's a good thing that the battling and collecting Digimon aspect of the game is good, or I don't know that I would be as into the game as I am.
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Fire Emblem games are always very similar. They are turn based tactics games with tons of generic anime characters. The reason I come to FE games is the combat. It's challenging and fun, and to me the permanent death of characters adds an extra layer to that. I personally have to restart every time someone dies. I don't care that people say this is cheating, or "un-pure." I want to do the best tactically, so when someone does die it's enough punishment to start the map over again.
I'm saying this because I've been starting over in Conquest a whole bunch. In case you don't know about Fire Emblem Fates it comes in three versions. Birthright is supposed to be the easier game for newcomers. You can level up your units easily by completing challenge maps. Money is also easier to come by. Conquest is meant for veterans of the series and is very challenging. There is limited money, and the experience you get in each chapter is all you get. There is a third version called Revelation as well, but I don't know what's different about that. Obviously with each version you get different characters, but I don't have any idea what the gameplay difference is in Revelation.
It's odd, because the last FE entry was originally going to be the last in the franchise due to poor performance of previous entries. The development team put every popular feature in the game as a sendoff to the series. It ended up selling very well, so Nintendo decided to keep the franchise going with Fates. Instead of adding anything new to the game they kind of just decided to make three games instead of one. Sure, weapons don't have durability and you can change the field a little bit with weird dragon magic, but it still feels like Fire Emblem. It's not "new." I like FE in general, so I'm okay with this, but it might be why I feel so underwhelmed by the game.
The tactics you know and love are still there, but some of the charm is gone. It doesn't help that all of the characters are boring to me. Normally FE characters are generic anime archetypes, but they have interesting quirks. Everyone in Fates is generic and that's it. I don't really have any interest in any of the characters. It feels like Waifu Simulator 2016. It's a game about tactics, not anime wives.
The tactical portion of the game is genuinely good from what I've played in Conquest. The maps aren't all the generic kill everyone maps that I've become accustomed to from the series. There are actual different objectives that make combat feel a lot more varied. I've had to survive for a set amount of turns, defend a point, and escape the field. It's not all good though, because it makes some of the stages feel gimmicky. Like right now I'm stuck on a chapter where wind blows my guys around. People keep dying because they get blown into a group of enemies. I'm sure there's some strategy I haven't thought of yet, but as of right now the map just seems shitty for the sake of killing your units.
Street Fighter V
I like fighting games, and I love Street Fighter V. I knew months before the games release that I loved it. I played every single beta for hours. It's a Street Fighter game. It's faster than Street Fighter 4 and adds in some new mechanics. V-skills are used by pushing medium punch and medium kick at the same time. Depending on the character it does something cool. Ryu can parry, Birdie eats food, and Ken can dash. Once you use the V-Skill enough you can push both heavy punch and kick to activate V-trigger. Once again it does something different depending on the character, but it's always cool. Ryu, Ken, and Cammy power up, while characters like Nash teleport around. It's an interesting mechanic that makes the characters feel way different than their SF4 counterparts,
When the game came out the servers crashed under the load of people who were trying to access the game. This happens quite frequently to online based games when they launch, but people always forget that. This means that the backlash to the game has been quite strong. People weren't able to play the game online for a whole two days! I understand why this upsets people, but local play is where fighting games shine anyways. There's no input delay at all! Where SFV gets a little rough is that if you're connected to the server while in an offline mode and lose connection you are kicked back to the main menu. Seriously, I was in a local versus match and the game booted us out of it. That was shitty,
Since the first two days of the games release it has worked flawlessly for me. I've fought hundreds of online matches, and none have had a bad connection. The net-code is very solid. It's based on rollback, so if the connection is rough the characters will teleport around a bit. You definitely want to be wired in to the router if you're going to be playing SFV online.
The main gripe people have with Street Fighter V is that there is almost no single player content whatsoever. Story mode is a series of fights that took me about an hour to beat. All you do is see some poorly drawn art and then do a one round fight where you have full meter. It's lame. Other than that you can do training mode, or survival. In survival you fight against the AI, and keep the same health after each round. You can spend points after each round to get stat bonuses, and regain health. It's also lame!
Street Fighter V is amazing. The fighting is incredible. It's easier to link things, so doing combos isn't as ridiculously hard for me as it used to be. I am also a huge fan of the new V system. I get why people are upset the game has no single player content, but they also probably weren't super into Street Fighter to begin with. It's a fighting game. You are supposed to fight other people. I get that not everyone wants to do that, so if you don't want to do that don't buy the game.
March
Pokken Tournament comes out next week, I feel like I should be super excited about a Pokemon fighting game, but right now I'm not excited at all. Hopefully I get more hype as the date gets closer.
Before Pokken, the Division comes out. I played the beta and liked it a lot. I'd describe it as a more enjoyable version of Destiny. The final release could deliver on what the beta promised, or totally ruin everything. I guess we'll just have to find out!
See you next month!
Cyber Sleuth came out at the beginning of the month and I streamed it a whole bunch, so if you want to see any of that check out my YouTube channel for all kinds of Digimon content.
Right now I'm playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and it is kicking my ass. They weren't kidding when they said it was hard. It's especially rough, because I never want to let anyone die.
Street Fighter came out too and I've been playing that at least once a day. I'm trying to get moderately good at it, but I am not quite to that goal yet. Spoilers, it's a fighting game!
Okay, let's talk about video games now!
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Digimon is one of my favorite franchises of all time. I love the anime series, and a majority of the games have been pretty good. At some point Namco Bandai stopped localizing the titles, so here in America we missed out on quite a few solid Digimon Games. One of which was Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on the Vita. Fans started a petition that got a crazy amount of signatures to bring it out in English. Now a few years later it has finally come out on both PS4 and Vita.
Digimon games have changed a lot over the years. On the DS they began to take the form of something more like Pokemon than previous iterations. You run into Digimon in battle and scan them. Once you've run into them enough you can reform them and have them as your own. Once you have them in order to Digivolve them you have to meet specific stat requirements. If you reach max level and can't meet the requirements to digivolve you can de-digivolve them. This makes it so that they have a higher max level.
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| I've been grinding to get these guys. I'm so close! |
Combat is turn based, and uses a similar weakness system to Pokemon. There are virus, vaccine, and data type Digimon that all have their own respective weaknesses. Cyber Sleuth follows the same pattern as the 3DS games, but the requirements to digivolve are way less annoying. They are exclusively based on stats and not how many battles you've fought. There are a ton of Digimon to collect, and the battles are fun.
The core gameplay is fine, but the rest of the game doesn't always hold up. The game starts very stylishly, and moves along at a decent clip. However, after the first few hours the pacing begins to fall apart. Many chapters don't involve any tie to the main story, and instead have the main character running around doing pointless garbage. It doesn't help that almost all of the games environments are introduced fairly early on, and then are repeated for the rest of the game.
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| Every area in the game looks like this. |
It's a solid game, but the repetition of areas and random quests can be a little grading. It doesn't help that the translation is a bit spotty, so when the story does happen its not always the best. Seriously, the main character is only a silent protagonist sometimes. They make jokes about him being silent and not talking very much, but there are numerous scenes where he talks to people directly. What!? It's a good thing that the battling and collecting Digimon aspect of the game is good, or I don't know that I would be as into the game as I am.
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Fire Emblem games are always very similar. They are turn based tactics games with tons of generic anime characters. The reason I come to FE games is the combat. It's challenging and fun, and to me the permanent death of characters adds an extra layer to that. I personally have to restart every time someone dies. I don't care that people say this is cheating, or "un-pure." I want to do the best tactically, so when someone does die it's enough punishment to start the map over again.
I'm saying this because I've been starting over in Conquest a whole bunch. In case you don't know about Fire Emblem Fates it comes in three versions. Birthright is supposed to be the easier game for newcomers. You can level up your units easily by completing challenge maps. Money is also easier to come by. Conquest is meant for veterans of the series and is very challenging. There is limited money, and the experience you get in each chapter is all you get. There is a third version called Revelation as well, but I don't know what's different about that. Obviously with each version you get different characters, but I don't have any idea what the gameplay difference is in Revelation.
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| Which game will you be playing? |
It's odd, because the last FE entry was originally going to be the last in the franchise due to poor performance of previous entries. The development team put every popular feature in the game as a sendoff to the series. It ended up selling very well, so Nintendo decided to keep the franchise going with Fates. Instead of adding anything new to the game they kind of just decided to make three games instead of one. Sure, weapons don't have durability and you can change the field a little bit with weird dragon magic, but it still feels like Fire Emblem. It's not "new." I like FE in general, so I'm okay with this, but it might be why I feel so underwhelmed by the game.
The tactics you know and love are still there, but some of the charm is gone. It doesn't help that all of the characters are boring to me. Normally FE characters are generic anime archetypes, but they have interesting quirks. Everyone in Fates is generic and that's it. I don't really have any interest in any of the characters. It feels like Waifu Simulator 2016. It's a game about tactics, not anime wives.
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| Waifu simulator 2016. |
The tactical portion of the game is genuinely good from what I've played in Conquest. The maps aren't all the generic kill everyone maps that I've become accustomed to from the series. There are actual different objectives that make combat feel a lot more varied. I've had to survive for a set amount of turns, defend a point, and escape the field. It's not all good though, because it makes some of the stages feel gimmicky. Like right now I'm stuck on a chapter where wind blows my guys around. People keep dying because they get blown into a group of enemies. I'm sure there's some strategy I haven't thought of yet, but as of right now the map just seems shitty for the sake of killing your units.
Street Fighter V
I like fighting games, and I love Street Fighter V. I knew months before the games release that I loved it. I played every single beta for hours. It's a Street Fighter game. It's faster than Street Fighter 4 and adds in some new mechanics. V-skills are used by pushing medium punch and medium kick at the same time. Depending on the character it does something cool. Ryu can parry, Birdie eats food, and Ken can dash. Once you use the V-Skill enough you can push both heavy punch and kick to activate V-trigger. Once again it does something different depending on the character, but it's always cool. Ryu, Ken, and Cammy power up, while characters like Nash teleport around. It's an interesting mechanic that makes the characters feel way different than their SF4 counterparts,
When the game came out the servers crashed under the load of people who were trying to access the game. This happens quite frequently to online based games when they launch, but people always forget that. This means that the backlash to the game has been quite strong. People weren't able to play the game online for a whole two days! I understand why this upsets people, but local play is where fighting games shine anyways. There's no input delay at all! Where SFV gets a little rough is that if you're connected to the server while in an offline mode and lose connection you are kicked back to the main menu. Seriously, I was in a local versus match and the game booted us out of it. That was shitty,
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| Cammy activating her V-skill. |
Since the first two days of the games release it has worked flawlessly for me. I've fought hundreds of online matches, and none have had a bad connection. The net-code is very solid. It's based on rollback, so if the connection is rough the characters will teleport around a bit. You definitely want to be wired in to the router if you're going to be playing SFV online.
The main gripe people have with Street Fighter V is that there is almost no single player content whatsoever. Story mode is a series of fights that took me about an hour to beat. All you do is see some poorly drawn art and then do a one round fight where you have full meter. It's lame. Other than that you can do training mode, or survival. In survival you fight against the AI, and keep the same health after each round. You can spend points after each round to get stat bonuses, and regain health. It's also lame!
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| Play fighting games to fight, not for single player story. |
Street Fighter V is amazing. The fighting is incredible. It's easier to link things, so doing combos isn't as ridiculously hard for me as it used to be. I am also a huge fan of the new V system. I get why people are upset the game has no single player content, but they also probably weren't super into Street Fighter to begin with. It's a fighting game. You are supposed to fight other people. I get that not everyone wants to do that, so if you don't want to do that don't buy the game.
March
Pokken Tournament comes out next week, I feel like I should be super excited about a Pokemon fighting game, but right now I'm not excited at all. Hopefully I get more hype as the date gets closer.
Before Pokken, the Division comes out. I played the beta and liked it a lot. I'd describe it as a more enjoyable version of Destiny. The final release could deliver on what the beta promised, or totally ruin everything. I guess we'll just have to find out!
See you next month!
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Party Game Sundays: Go Vacation
When we booted up Go Vacation I almost died of excitement. Normally on Party Game Sundays I mentally prep myself for terrible video games. This was the first time during a Party Game Sunday that I was immediately psyched up to play a game. Seriously, I mean check out this hot intro jam.
Everybody loves the word vacation!
Last week I did a quick google search for the best Wii party games. I saw a bunch of fools saying that Mario Party 8 and 9 were amazing, but what I saw most consistently was people singing the praises of Go Vacation. Noukeo decided to order it, and it showed up in time for this weeks session. I am so happy to report that the people on a random forum I looked at were totally right. Go Vacation is the pinnacle of mini-game collections on the Wii. Trust me, I've played a whole bunch of them.
As I showed you earlier it starts out with a super hot introduction theme song. Prior to that though you get control of the cursor, which was what drew me in initially. It was super responsive, and moved at a good pace. That may sound like a minor detail, but normally in Wii games it feels like you're moving the cursor through molasses.
When we actually started playing the game my mind almost exploded. You get to use your Mii, or create an in game avatar. We all opted for in game avatars, because they looked way cooler. I chose a kid, who had a sick afro and made him as large as humanly possible, He ended up looking like a giant baby. Landers opted for a super old Grandpa type who ended up looking like a raging stoner. Noukeo went with the younger father type, and went with more of a pervy style.
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| One island, four resorts, fifty activities. |
When we actually started playing the game my mind almost exploded. You get to use your Mii, or create an in game avatar. We all opted for in game avatars, because they looked way cooler. I chose a kid, who had a sick afro and made him as large as humanly possible, He ended up looking like a giant baby. Landers opted for a super old Grandpa type who ended up looking like a raging stoner. Noukeo went with the younger father type, and went with more of a pervy style.
All three of us were dropped onto a tropical island to freely explore. The screen was split handily into four sections and the frame rate was actually consistent. What's cool about Go Vacation is that you can actually play every single game with anywhere from one to four players. It's actually a co-op experience where you need to try and play every one of the 50 mini-games. Once you play a game you get a stamp in your stamp book. The game tries to direct you around the island by marking the recommended game on the map, but you can do whatever you want, You can drive around an ATV, a jet ski, or just walk around. Getting around the island is fun on its own. If you want there are all kinds of activities. We played capture the flag, and I got a dog named Hatchi to follow me around. I guess you can also unlock special outfits from hidden treasure chests. The map is huge, and that's just the first resort. There are 3 more areas that each have their own theme. We eventually went to the city where we got to ride skateboards and put on roller-blades.
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| Up to 4 player split-screen action! |
The majority of our time was spent on the tropical island. We played around 20 of the 50 mini-games and they were all incredibly varied. The first game had us racing between check points on a jet ski. You need to tilt the Wii-mote and nunchuck in the direction you want to go. Flicking them upwards while pressing B allows you to jump. If you get enough air you can go crazy on the analog stick in order to do flips and other various tricks. The same controls apply to all vehicles, but with things like skateboards you have to shake them both in order to gain speed.
We got to play volleyball, surf, sky dive, throw pies, do a triathlon, dance, and a bunch more. I was shocked to see that almost every game was unique and controlled well. The controls were fairly simple often involving shaking the Wii-mote with a button press, or just steering by tilting it. My personal favorite game was air hockey, which had us controlling the paddle with the analog stick and holding the Wii-mote sideways in our fist. In order to smash the puck we had to thrust the Wii-mote forwards and add B for a power shot.
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| Doing dope tricks is one of many things you can do in Go Vacation. |
I think one of the main reasons we all got so into the game was because it's co-op. A lot of mini-game collections want you to go through the single player in order to unlock all the games. There's nothing more sad and boring than playing a mini-game collection by yourself, so it's awesome when all of us can play through the game together and unlock everything. We didn't even get halfway through, but we'll definitely play Go Vacation to completion. It's a well put together package that's a ton of fun.
If you own a Wii and are looking for some fun multiplayer action Go Vacation is definitely something you need to check out. It's so good that I'm still in shock. How can a game themed around vacations be so good? I'm very afraid that we'll never be able to find another game to top this one. At least not another third party game.
It's just a great game! I'll leave you with the full version of the theme song. Remember, everybody loves the word vacation
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