Game Time - May 2016

Anime! This edition of Game Time has a lot of anime in it. I played both Gundam Breaker 3, and One Piece: Burning Blood. Well I guess Gundam Breaker 3 is technically a game about models, but you get what I mean.

Outside of all the anime I experienced I also played Uncharted 4. I liked it quite a bit. 

I have nothing else to add. It's game time!

Gundam Breaker 3

Within the past few years I have started importing a lot more games from outside the U.S. It has become increasingly easy to get import games at reasonable prices. A trend I find to be increasingly odd is that games are being released in English for territories in Asia. It was done with Phantasy Star Online 2, and has been done with a few Gundam games now. Due to licensing issues, Gundam Breaker games have not been released in the U.S. When I was told the game was completely in English I jumped right on it!

So Gundam Breaker is a series where you build Gundam models called Gunpla and have them fight other Gundam models. It's really cool. Gunpla models are very popular, and there are models of every single Gundam and mobile suit you can think of. This game has an insane amount of parts to choose from so that you can make your own custom Gundam. I love the concept of giant robots fighting, but have never really been able to get way into any of the anime series. I get it. They're all about war, but they don't have to be so incredibly self serious all the time. When I'm watching anime I'm not looking for political arguments and land disputes. I want to see giant robots destroy things with a gigantic laser sword. Gundam Breaker 3 delivers on that.

Someone built this awesome Gundam. 

The gameplay equates to Dynasty Warriors with slightly more nuance. You have regular attacks on square, and heavy attacks on triangle. Changing up the timing and holding directions when you attack changes up the combos drastically. It helps that there are a ton of weapon types that all play vastly different from one another. It's nothing special, but it's pretty fun.

There are an insane amount of Gundam models in the game, which means that there are hundreds of parts you accrue over the course of playing. You can mix and match any part to customize your ultimate fighting robot. It's also possible to color what you've made and apply decals. What makes the game a bit tedious is how poor the inventory screens are. You have so many duplicates of parts, but can't sell them more than one at a time. There have been sessions where I've spent over an hour just selling duplicates. That's insane. Luckily I think the core game is fun enough that I am still enjoying myself.

You have to blow up all the robots in this game.

Once you complete the story the only thing left to do is grind missions for parts you need in order to make yourself stronger. There are going to be DLC missions at some point, so I might hop back in then and see what they're all about. I don't really have a lot to say about this game. If you like building custom robots, then you're probably going to be way into this.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

The year that Uncharted 3 came out it made my top ten list, which is posted on this very blog. In the little blurb I wrote about it I said that I wanted more Uncharted, but in the time following something happened to change my mind. Uncharted is fun, but the third game wrapped everything up in a way that made me think we wouldn't see any more from Drake and his cohorts. Then Naughty Dog released The Last of Us and I finally realized that I didn't need another Uncharted. So when they announced that Uncharted 4 was in the works I was extremely skeptical. The franchise pushed the boundaries of what was possible on the PS3 hardware and proved that Naughty Dog was an incredible developer. Now that I've played and completed Uncharted 4 I'm glad that they let Drake out for one more romp.

I recorded a podcast about my overall impressions on Uncharted 4, so I'll try my best to keep my thoughts here concise. When Uncharted 2 came out it blew my mind. The graphical fidelity and the quality of the motion capture performances were nothing short of amazing. At the time I don't remember anything quite like it. Then Uncharted 3 came out and it was more of the same. I was fully expecting Uncharted 4 to tow the line as well, but after playing it I believe that it made a significant jump in quality. Many people, myself included, have been disappointed with the performance of games on the current generation of consoles. Uncharted 4 throws all the preconceived notions about the PS4's capabilities out the window and turns all the available knobs to 11. The game looks nothing short of breathtaking.  The vistas and action set pieces are a complete joy to experience, and look straight out of a blockbuster movie. There were points where I actually thought that Nate and Elena were real people. Their faces show emotion in a way that's amazing. The dead eyes and cold stare of most video game characters are not present in Uncharted 4.

The faces are very lifelike.

As for gameplay everything is fairly similar to what it has been in the past. It's a third person shooter, that makes you question if Drake is really a normal person or if he's a professional killer. For a guy who likes to hunt treasure he sure knows how to handle any kind of gun he comes across. Then there's the whole issue of him murdering hundreds of people in cold blood, but I think it's a little too late in the life of the franchise to really change how the core gameplay causes narrative dissonance. That's not to say that Uncharted 4 has nothing new in the way of gameplay. Yes, you'll still be climbing around cliff faces a fair amount, but now you also have a sweet grappling hook!

Prior to this entry the franchise had been standard adventure fare. Drake would find out about some treasure and go after it. Rarely was there any kind of "real" character development. We learned about the personality of Drake and all of his compatriots, but never anything about who they really were and where they came from. Uncharted 4 actually had a narrative that I was personally invested in outside of having a fun romp in foreign locales. Nate and Elena's relationship is very well realized, and so is his relationship with his long lost brother.

There is still a whole lot of gun play in Uncharted 4.

It's not an overly long game, but it does overstay its welcome in the final few chapters. I clocked in around thirteen hours of play time, which I did in two sittings. The game was great and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. However, I think that this has to be the end of the franchise. It ties up in such a way that I will actually get upset if they decide to make an Uncharted 5. I get the feeling that Naughty Dog wants to move on though, and I hope that they do.

One Piece: Burning Blood

Burning Blood came out on the last day of May. Normally I wouldn't have enough time to play a game and spit a bunch of game about it, but I beat the story mode in three hours the same day I got it... For some reason it only covers the Paramount War arc from multiple perspectives. There aren't a whole lot of fights to do, and the only reason it even took me three hours was because some of the enemies can kill you in a few hits. Even with that artificial padding, the mode was still ludicrously short. Since it's a fighting game I was excited to jump online and mess around, but was quickly disappointed with how shallow the game truly is.

Burning Blood is an anime fighting game. Obviously. One Piece is my favorite anime, so obviously I was very excited to play this game. It has a wide variety of characters, and their animations are all really fun to see in action. Normally I go into anime games expecting them to be shallow and filled with fan service for fans of the series. It's what I've become accustomed to. What changed this about Burning Blood was the fact that I kept seeing people talk about how much hidden depth the game has. In order to find it I went into training mode when I had finished the story mode. I messed around for about an hour and still couldn't figure out where the "depth" was.

If you want to see your favorite One Piece moves, then this is for you!

The majority of the combat amounts to mashing square. If you push square rapidly you'll do a combo and then a finisher to blow the enemy away. What bugs me most about this is that you can't even time your button presses. You literally have to mash as fast as possible or the character will give up mid combo. This means that you can't push square for a few hits and then use a different move in most scenarios. You can however throw a guard break into the regular square combo to break an opponents guard. This will crumple them so you can continue to combo. If you hold L1 and push one of three buttons the character in play can use one of their three special moves. Generally you just mash square and then follow up with one of these moves, or just do it raw. Since it's a 3D game you can also sidestep your opponents attacks, which is why some of moves attack in an arc in front of you.

There are a few other character specific things, like Logia guarding. In the anime characters eat devil fruits which give them various powers. People with Logia powers can turn their bodies whole bodies into an element, like fire or ice. If you hold R1 with those characters they can't be hit by anything but a guard break. This makes these characters very powerful in comparison to others, which can get kind of annoying. Reading this is probably sounds like there is a lot going on, but I assure you that in practice it is exceedingly simple. Most characters have one or two combo stings that allow for very little variation. Since it's a tag team game you bring three characters into battle, and can switch between them. This adds a a few more hits to combos if you switch to someone else mid-combo. However, the game has an infuriating mechanic that makes characters you're hitting flash white and fall out of your hits.

Kizaru will probably fall out of this combo and punish Marco. 

Normally this kind of mechanic is used to prevent infinites. For those uninitiated in fighting game mechanics infinites are combos you can get your opponent into that don't end until they're dead. Systems to prevent them are put into place for the good of the game, but in this scenario it makes no sense. It's horribly inconsistent and ruins every combo that could potentially be cool in any way. When you smash square the combos in this game end on their own, so switching to someone should allow you co continue mashing square until the new character is done with their combo. In most cases they hit twice and the enemy drops out and they can immediately start a combo on you while you're still trying to do yours. WHAT!? It makes even less sense, because it costs three bars of your meter in order to use! You can't do it over and over. In most matches you'd be able to do it once! It makes no sense and takes all the fun out of trying to find new and interesting combos, because if you do find something it will assuredly not work.

If you're a fan of One Piece and you're looking to play as some of your favorite characters and mash the living hell out of some buttons, then this game is for you. However, if you're looking for even a bit of nuance or longevity, then you're going to want to skip out on this game. Sadly I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of those two camps. I love One Piece and think that this game is fun on a basic level, but as soon as I try to improve my gameplay I get frustrated to no end. I apologize if this was a bit technical and a slog to read, but I needed to get my frustrations out. It's a solid game that has mechanics holding it back from being something a lot better.

JUUUUUUUNE!

It's June, which means that my birthday is happening near the end of the month. It also means that Guilty Gear Revelator, and Star Ocean 5 will be coming out. I'm not super excited for Guilty Gear, but I've been craving the JRPG action of Star Ocean for a long time.

I was also very much looking forward to playing No Man's Sky as well. However, it has now been delayed until August. I can't really get upset about delays anymore, because I want games to come out as good as they possibly can. I am disappointed, but it's probably for the better.

There's also a very good chance that I will be building a real PC soon, so I may be able to write more about PC games in the future. If anything it will vastly improve the quality of my streams. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I'm 90% sure that I will be making a hot new PC.

I have a lot on my plate for June, so I hope it turns out well! See you next month.

Game Time - August 2015

As August and Summer draw to a close I still have a few games left to talk about. Even though I was visiting various cottages and playing Ultra Street Fighter 4 at Summer Jam 9, I actually found time to play video games. Most of which were new!

One such game that I won't be talking about here is the Rare Replay Collection for Xbox One. It collects 30 Rare developed games from the past 30 years. Obviously games like Donkey Kong Country can't be featured, but fan favorites such as Viva Pinata, and Banjo Kazooie are. All I want to say about this is that all companies releasing a game collection in the future should take note. This is how you collect games into a package!

As for brand new releases I picked up LBX or Little Battlers Experience for the 3DS. It's a robot fighting game from Level 5, the makers of Inazuma Eleven. It has as much charm and content as most other Level 5 games.

Next up we have the game I wish I didn't pay $60 dollars for, but had to have, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3. It's Dynasty Warriors, but with One Piece characters...for the third time!

Last but certainly not least I finally got around to playing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. It's not new, but I did break the seal on my disc copy. That makes it new, I guess? I had to prep for the true Metal Gear Solid V, so it was going to happen sooner or later. Speaking of MGSV I'm in the process of playing through it right now and I need to get back to it.

It's game time!

LBX: Little Battlers Experience

For some reason Level 5 decided that they wanted most of their franchises to be pan-media. They started with Inazuma Eleven and have continued on to LBX and Yokai Watch. Inazuma just had a game and an anime, while LBX and Yokai watch have expanded into the toy realm as well. With all of their franchises the games come first. However, in the case of all of these franchises they take a while to see the light of day outside of Japan. For example, there are three LBX games in Japan and the first one is only just coming out here now when it was first released in 2011.

In Japan the success of these games leads into an anime, while here in the U.S. it was the opposite. LBX was dubbed and shown on Nickelodeon. It was actually quite popular, despite the fact that half of the episodes were cut out for audiences outside of Japan. That's right. This show about battling tiny robots was too violent and professed ideas not suitable for American children! To be honest it is kind of crazy some of the stuff that takes place in this game. No joke, I had to stop a tiny robot from assassinating a prime minister, None of this makes sense without context though, so let me give you some.

Now that the cardboard is reinforced no one will get hurt!

Tiny robot toys called LBX were released to the public, but their battles proved to be too dangerous. After some kids got hurt they were banned. After a few years someone invented a super strong cardboard box for the robots to battle in. I can't make this up, it's called reinforced cardboard! Even though they're still super dangerous outside of the cardboard, because you can use them to kill people... Anyways, now kids love controlling these hot toys with their phones.

The gameplay is relatively simple. You control your customized robot in battle in third person. It can hold two weapons that each have a basic attack. Each time you attack it costs stamina. Running and jumping also decrease stamina. The game is essentially all about stamina management. If you run out you're left vulnerable and your attack decreases. After a few seconds it recharges, but the battles in LBX tend to last only 20 or 30 seconds. Every second and point of damage is crucial.

All the kids love a good LBX battle!

I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of the gameplay, but it's not bad, My enjoyment comes from collecting the hundreds of robot parts and weapons. I've always liked any game where you can customize robots for battle. Custom Robo and Gotcha Force on the Gamecube are two excellent examples of this. While I like those games better LBX definitely has an interesting story to back it up. I'm almost done with the story, so I'll wait to make a final judgement until the end.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3

I don't want to type a lot about this game. It's the same as Pirate Warriors 2, but with ten new additional characters. You mash square and triangle in order to decimate hordes of enemies. I enjoy it, but it's not for everyone. As opposed to basic gameplay I'll talk about the new systems they implemented.

In the previous game you equipped coins in order to increase your stats. Now you can spend coins permanently to upgrade your stats. This works out a lot better, because you don't have to mess around with changing out coins. You get coins by completing various missions, and each time you defeat officers in battle. If you defeat an officer with a special attack you get even more coins.

These are all the playable characters! (There are many non-playable characters on  here)

The other main change is the Kizuna Rush system. Each map you will be given specific partner characters who you can freely switch between. As you fight the bar next to the partner will fill up across three levels. At level 1 you will be able to push either square or triangle after you end a combo to have the partner attack as well. If the partner kills enemies they will be counted as ! kills. What sucks is that ! kills are one of the three things you're graded on each level and I've only ever gotten it to S rank one time.

Once the kizuna gauge is filled you can push R2 to power up. This will make your character stronger for a limited time. You can push circle to unleash a special from both characters. You can also chain Kizuna specials up to 3 times. So if you enter the powered up R2 state with two characters, the third time you do it and execute a special everyone used so far will attack in unison with you. It's super powerful.

Gotta destroy all the enemies!

Pirate Warriors is a lot different, but mostly the same. I like when they try to make refinements to the generic gameplay and test out new mechanics. It's always hard to try new things, so they get a kudos for trying.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

When I saw a disc based copy of Ground Zeroes on amazon for $5 dollars I jumped right on it. It's been sitting on my shelf for approximately six months now. I decided to pop it in on August 31st, because I wanted to prepare for the release of the true Metal Gear Solid V the following day. After playing Ground Zeroes I now agree with everyone who said it was an overblown tech demo, because it is. It took me an hour to complete, and only had story in the beginning and end.

As a Metal Gear game it was kind of disappointing, but as an open world stealth playground it was amazing. It makes sense that this is how Metal Gear would transition to the new generation of consoles, but I can imagine it won't sit well with most fans.

It's a sneaking mission.

My issue with a lot of stealth games is that once you're caught you're completely screwed. With the new non-terrible controls in Ground Zeroes it's easy to gun down everyone once you're caught. Sure you won't get a very high score, but at least you'll complete the mission. Even better is that you have a lot of options. There are tons of ways to approach any given scenario. It's fun to figure out a plan and then execute on it, but the scale is just too small.

I don't really have much to say about Ground Zeroes to be honest. It's a fun sandbox with almost no content. Sure you can do side missions, but it all takes place on the same military base. It's more or less a proof of concept for the full game. I actually would have been angry if I paid $30 for it. After playing MGSV proper I can say that the scale of the game is much larger than anything Ground Zeroes had to offer,

Metal Gear!?

I don't know what to think about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain yet/ I do know that it has started off September with a bang though. It certainly doesn't have as much story as the previous entries in the franchise, but so far the gameplay makes up for it. I really liked MGS 1-4, but I was not a huge fan of the controls. Most of the time I felt like I was struggling with the controls to make it to the next story beat.

That said, I'm going to keep playing V to see what happens in it. Maybe the open world stealth will wear thin, but it definitely hasn't happened yet. Next Friday I'll be picking up Super Mario Maker for Wii-U as well, and on the 29th we'll all get to witness the magic of Persona 4 characters dancing.

The games are going to start coming fast and furious, which means that I need to get playing! See you guys next time!

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.

Game Time - July 2014

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

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

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

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

Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn

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

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

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

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

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


One Piece Unlimited World Red

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

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

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

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

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

The game is all about making this town better.

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

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

Inazuma Eleven

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

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

Welcome to my new obsession!

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

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

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

HIS LEG CATCHES ON FIRE AND IT'S AWESOME!

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

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

So Much More Inazuma Eleven

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

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

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

     -Manny

Game Time - September 2012

September is over! It was an action packed month for me in terms of video gaming and the new releases are only going to keep coming. Now is not the time to look to the future though, it's a time to reflect on the games I spent the most time with this past month.

I finally got my hands on Tokyo Jungle, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, and Borderlands 2. All of which I had been looking forward to for months. I still haven't beaten Tokyo Jungle, but it's interesting enough that I think I'll end up coming back to it. One Piece is like every other Dynasty Warriors game, so you probably know how that it. I enjoyed playing both of the games quite a bit.

Borderlands 2 on the other hand I may have enjoyed a little too much. I guess you could say I lost my fair share of sleep because of the all-night co-op sessions I was having. It met and exceeded my expectations for what a new Borderlands could amount to. Let's just say I really like it. Due to the fact that I like it a lot, I also have an extraordinary amount to say about it. That means I won't be talking about it much here, but I will be doing a Game Time ID dedicated entirely to my love of Borderlands 2.

Every time I write a new one of these I become more aware of how terrible I am at writing intros for them. So without further adieu let's get into the discussion so I can cause minimal intro pain to both you and myself. It's game time!

Tokyo Jungle

Yeah, the game's just as crazy as this image.

Crazy Japanese games are nothing new, but they've been few and far between lately. Lucky for everyone Sony decided that they wanted to bring back the crazy by releasing Tokyo Jungle. Have you ever wanted to see a Pomeranian savagely kill a hyena in a single blow? How about a deer wearing some hot Hip-hop clothes? If either of those things sound like something you'd be interested in Tokyo Jungle has you covered.

The world is in a post apocalyptic state and animals have become feral. Now they all run amok on the streets of Tokyo which has become not unlike a jungle. Oh yeah, there are also Dinosaurs. The gameplay is focused around this idea. You choose an animal to play as and try to survive as long as you can.

Everything about the game is very arcade-like. You can choose either survival mode, where you survive for as long as possible, or story mode where you have set objectives. The story mode missions can only be unlocked by playing survival, so it's the mode you'll be playing the most. You start off by picking what animal you'll play as. Initially you can only play as a cute little Pomeranian, but completing specific challenges will net you more animals. Once you have picked your animal of choice you'll be thrust into the wilds of Tokyo.

Sights like this are commonplace in Tokyo Jungle.

You'll either be a carnivore, or an herbivore. As an herbivore you'll only be able to eat plants randomly generated throughout the world. The attack of herbivores is often very low, but they can double jump and move very quickly. You can still kill other animals if you want, but you won't be able to eat them. Then as a carnivore you have to viciously attack every animal you see and then eat their corpse. Eating keeps your hunger gauge filled up, while giving you calories. Certain calorie milestones make the animal rank up, so they become stronger. If you let it empty your health will start to slowly drain until you die. If there's nothing around to eat there are sometimes pools of water to stave off the hunger for a little bit.

Much to my surprise the controls of Tokyo Jungle aren't terrible. In fact, I think they're excellent and that mainly stems from the fact that they're simple. Movement is done with the right stick, but if you flick the left stick in a direction the animal will make quick movements. It's all very twitch. Moving around an enemy rapidly is easy, so you can get in to attack them a few times and get out before they even notice what's going on. This makes combat quick and exciting. Alternatively you can sneak up to an opponent and score a clean kill. If you wait near an unsuspecting enemy for long enough fangs will appear on them letting you know that you're ready for a critical strike.

An average round of Tokyo Jungle takes around twenty minutes to a half hour, but can end up going for an hour or more. A minute of real time is equivalent to one year. As time goes on the animals around the world get tougher and tougher, so you really need to push to get that next high score. In order to make the game have an even deeper challenge animals can only survive for fourteen years before they die, making it crucial to reproduce. In order to reproduce it's necessary to mark all points in any one territory by peeing on them. Once every spot has been "marked" mates will show up on the map. There are three levels of mate which are prime, average, and dirty. Prime mates require you to have eaten enough calories to get to boss rank, and average requires you to be a veteran. Dirty mates don't require a rank, which is why they will give you fleas. The better the mate the more babies they will make. When you get a mate you have to take them back to the nest, where you will mount them as the game fades to black. When everything comes back up you will be in control of a baby animals with some others following you. The other animals amount to extra lives.

You'll need to procreate in order to survive the harsh jungles of Tokyo.

It all sounds complicated, but it isn't in practice. Tokyo Jungle is an arcade survival game. You start off weak, but as you change generations and advance you become stronger. You can become even stronger than that by unlocking new animals (There are a TON of animals). That's actually my main gripe about the game is that it's a total grind to unlock more animals. Every animal has a specific challenge to unlock one other specific animal. It can end up taking a while to complete what you need to do, so it can become a bit tedious. It takes a whole lot of play time to get to the crazy animals like dinosaurs, so it really depends on how much fun you're having.

Lucky for me I do have a fun time playing Tokyo Jungle. There's something about trying to survive longer each and every run that I find to be entertaining. It helps that each subsequent animal is stronger than the last so you feel like you're actually advancing. It's just a super weird fun game, which helps overshadow the fact that it looks like a launch era PS2 game that barely has any music.

Weird games like this have been few and far between and it's even more rare for a  game like this to actually be any fun. It was a retail game in Japan, but you can download it for $15 on PSN here. I highly recommend you check it out.

One Piece :Pirate Warriors

I don't know what it is about Dynasty Warriors, but somehow I keep buying more games in the series.

Well, not exactly. I refuse to play any more actual Dynasty Warriors games, but I have been known to play it's anime spin-offs. Specifically Dynasty Warriors Gundam. As I've written about in the past I hate them, but at the same time I have an indescribable love for them. There's something about the totally mindless action that I can really get behind. So when I heard that they were going to be releasing a Dynasty Warriors One Piece game I basically lost my shit. To top it off, it was actually going to get a U.S. release, and it did!

I don't think I've ever mentioned it on this blog, but One Piece is one of my favorite TV shows. In the middle of high school I saw clips from the CP9 arc and decided that I needed to watch the entire series in it's original Japanese. I ended up doing that and I've never looked back since. Needless to say I love the show, so the ability to play as it's characters as they completely annihilate everything in their path sounded very appealing.

This is basically my reaction to the U.S. release of Pirate Warriors.

I'm happy to say that reality actually met up with my expectations on this one. I wasn't expecting anything ridiculously fancy, because well, it's a Dynasty Warriors game. A Dynasty Warriors game with One Piece characters is exactly what I got. There's a whole lot of mashing square while occasionally throwing in triangle or circle. It's not saying much, but this seems like the most advanced Musou game to date. Since all of the characters have moves from the anime they have most of them in the game, which makes for great combo variety. I think it also helps that there are only thirteen characters instead of the usual hundred or so. This means that each character has a chance to be unique instead of an exact copy.


Pirate Warriors also switches it up with the single player, but it isn't necessarily for the better. At times the maps will turn into a third person action/adventure game. Every level like this you'll be required to use Luffy, since he's the main character. You'll go around and obliterate all of your enemies like normal, but sometimes you'll have to swing around with Luffy's rubber arms or solve puzzles. At first it makes for a nice change of pace, but after the second or third time it starts to get in the way of what I expect from a game of this type. It becomes especially tedious, because Luffy says the same thing every time he does an action. It's fine every so often, but it happens constantly in these sequences, which is enough to drive me mad. It's easy to see where Namco Bandai was going with this, but it definitely didn't come out as intended.

At it's core Pirate Warriors is just another Musou game.

In case you couldn't already tell One Piece: Pirate Warriors isn't for everyone. For starters it's pretty much necessary that you like One Piece. This game targets a very specific audience and Namco Bandai realized this. Here in the U.S. it was only released as a downloadable with just the Japanese voices. So when I say you have to like One Piece, you have to REALLY like it. Even with that extreme love it's still kind of hard to justify even at the discounted price of $40. The single player campaign is only around eight hours long and there isn't much to do after that.

All I know is that I had a fun time playing this game.

Borderlands 2 addiction?

I still have to beat Tokyo Jungle, but I think it's going to be a while before I get around to it. Borderlands 2 has basically been consuming my life. Normally when I beat a game I throw it to the side and move on to the next thing, but I can't do that with Borderlands 2. There's something about it that keeps drawing me in for more. There are a lot of people who don't seem to like it very much, but I can't really understand why. It improves on the original in almost every way possible.

Next month is another big month for releases. I'll be getting Pokemon White 2, Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracles, and Asaassin's Creed 3. I've already pre-ordered all of them thanks to the magic of Amazon Prime. Maybe I'll be over Borderlands before Pokemon comes out, but at this rate I highly doubt it.

Well, that's all for this edition of Game Time. See you all next month.

     -Manny