Game Time - January 2014

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

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

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

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


The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skylanders Swap Force

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

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

I think Grim Creeper may be my new favorite.

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

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

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

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

Soul Sacrifice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard Games

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

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

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

    -Manny

Game Time - 4/8/2012

Happy Easter everyone! While it may be a holiday that doesn't change the fact that it's game time.

Last week I dipped into my backlog of games to try and clear some of them out. I wasn't expecting to get anything new until Xenoblade (Which I still don't have). Much to my surprise I was able to pick up two new games this week thanks to an awesome Best Buy sale. I've been waiting for Kid Icarus and SSX to go on sale, so it was great to get them for $30 each.

Needless to say I spent most of my free time playing both of them. While I'd like to say I played them both equally, I didn't. SSX turned out to be way more fun than I expected, so Kid Icarus had to take a back seat.

Oh yeah, I played a bunch of Skyrim too. Let's break it down!

Skyrim

My Skyrim madness continued into this week. I truly did get hooked on Skyrim again. Initially I only wanted to beat the main quest line, but it ended up being much more than that. I did beat the main quest line and I didn't think it was that great overall. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I'll just say I had to kill a bunch of Dragons. For some reason it seems like an Elder Scrolls tradition to have the guild quests far outshine the main quests. You'd think that it would be completely the opposite, but you'd be very wrong.

Once I beat the main quest I couldn't stop for some reason, so I decided to try and get every trophy in the game while doing a whole bunch of random stuff.  I'm not exaggerating at all. I literally did completely random things and I had fun while doing them. I got married, became obsessed with collecting books, ran to every place on the map that I hadn't explored, stole from everyone I saw, learned shouts, crafted weapons, and did some sidequests. There's something awesome about running around a huge world as a cat man dressed like Batman and doing whatever the hell I want.

My cat man married Aela. She can't die, so that's pretty cool.

The thing that draws me to Skyrim is that you actually can go anywhere you want. It's a living, breathing world that my character can truly influence. It's easy to get immersed, because there's just so much to it. It's hard to imagine that there is so much lore to read into. There's an actual history to the land of Tamriel and I really love that. It's one of the reasons I get so easily sidetracked in the game. It's constantly throwing so much at you that it's hard to focus on a single task. I don't mean that in a bad way. Unlike most games I find the totally random quests to be interesting. While they may not reward you with the best gear there's always that chance that you could get something.

So yeah, I got sidetracked in Skyrim. It's still awesome. I didn't get all the trophies, but I'm damn close. I've got some new games now and I've completed the main quest, so I won't come back to it for a while. However, I will certainly return to Skyrim when I have the time, or when they release the inevitable DLC.

SSX

I bought SSX on Tuesday and threw up my review on Friday. Somehow I managed to cram in a ridiculous amount of SSX into four days. Since I wrote a review I don't want to rehash my experience too much, but there are some things I feel need to be said about SSX.

I'm going to come right out and say that I think SSX is awesome. It's one of the most purely fun games I've played in a long time. Longtime fans of the series seem to have mixed feelings on this reboot. The crazy characters and locales have been toned down quite a bit for this brand new entry in the series. While I can see how that's a bad thing, it's not necessarily the worst thing ever. In games like SSX specifically I think the gameplay is the most important part of the game and SSX delivers in that department.

In real life this stunt could only end in tragedy.
This is SSX, so it can only end in awesome.

Like I said, SSX is fun. I played a whole shit ton of it. I beat the campaign, completed half of the drops, competed against my friends times/scores, and competed in global events. Most of the events I played were basically the same, but I had fun playing every single one of them. There's something almost magical about speeding down a snow covered mountain at full speed tricking off of everything. The game has a great sense of speed and it controls very smoothly. Almost everything about the movement and handling of the game defies reality, but that's what extreme sports games are all about. I'm sure someone out there would prefer a snowboarding game that parallels reality, but I'm not that person so I love everything about how SSX handles itself.

To enhance the experience even further the music goes along with everything you're doing while going down the mountain. The music changes tempo, volume, and even adds in some crazy bass. I still don't quite believe it, but this works amazingly well even with custom soundtracks. It's like having a DJ remix your songs, but it's the game and it doesn't sound like total shit. Somehow it manages to make any kind of music sound like it fits in with the game.

In case you didn't notice I think SSX is awesome. I highly recommend it.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

As a kid I never had a NES. I never played Kid Icarus. My first exposure to the series was when Nintendo decided to put Pit into Brawl. All I really knew about the game was that there was an eggplant wizard, but I had never seen it. Despite my lack of knowledge I wanted to pick up Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS, which I did.

I have a ton of feelings on Kid Icarus: Uprising and I've yet to sort them all out. What stands out the most to me is how uncomfortable the game is to play. When I first heard the game came with a 3DS stand I thought it was a joke. The game actually comes with a stand, because apparently they realized how uncomfortable the entire thing was. The 3DS isn't very ergonomic to begin with and it doesn't help that I have giant hands. You're expected to hold the 3DS with your left hand to use the circle pad and the L button. With your right hand you use the stylus to control the camera and aim Pit's shots. The pad is supposed to help take the pain out of holding the 3DS, but it seems useless unless you're at a desk. When you get used to the controls they're not awful, but I still haven't ever found myself in a comfortable position.

Outside of the control I generally like the game. It's just straight up weird. Pit and the Goddess Palutena are trying to take down the evil Medusa, who's apparently back from the first game. While you're fighting enemies everyone will talk constantly. I'm not even kidding I don't think there has been a point in the 5 hours I've played the game where someone wasn't talking. Normally that would make me want to smash a game into a million pieces, but the dialogue is actually entertaining. Self referential jokes are constantly being made. Games and game mechanics are referred to and joked about, which leads to some interesting dialogue. It seems like the witty banter it going to continue for the whole game, so hopefully I won't get sick of it.

While playing Kid Icarus: Uprising I've been getting pangs of nostalgia, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why until earlier today. Nintendo mainstay Masahiro Sakurai was the mind behind this game and coincidentally he was behind Kirby as well. When I thought about that it all started to make sense. It's got so many similarities to Kirby's Air Ride! Both games look similar graphically (At least I think so), both games have unlock grids, and both games have grind rails. In Kirby's Air Ride you're primarily piloting stars. In Uprising there are vehicles that handle very much like the stars in Air Ride! Even the menus look alike. Maybe I'm crazy, but they seem like they have a lot in common to me.

Parts of Kid Icarus have looked a whole lot like this...

All I know is that Kid Icarus is a crazy game. It's got a butt load of content and it's chock full of style. I'm certainly going to finish it, so hopefully I'll be able to review it in the near future.

I Didn't Play Xenoblade...

Xenoblade Chronicles was finally released in America this past Friday the 6th. Many people have been playing it, sadly I am not one of those people. I pre-ordered my copy from Nintendo's website long ago. I thought that it would be nice to order directly from Nintendo, but apparently that was dumb. My order still hasn't shipped and I get the feeling it won't for a while. I thought about cancelling the order and picking it up at Gamestop since they apparently got a ton of copies, but that didn't quite pan out. Nintendo has already charged my card for the game... Hopefully I get it soon, because it looks amazing. I could use a solid JRPG to play.

Other than not playing Xenoblade I played a bit of Skylanders this week. While at Best Buy I picked up Stealth Elf. For some reason I told myself I wasn't going to play any more Skylanders until I got one of every type. I only needed a life type and I had my heart set on Stealth Elf. Lucky for me she was one of the most sought after toys, so she was always sold out. I think she looks cool and now that I've got her she's my favorite Skylander. I leveled her up a bit and I'll probably end up finishing the game sometime this week.

She's clearly the best Skylander. She fights with teeth.

In the midst of a game drought I somehow managed to pick up a bunch of new stuff. Perhaps it's good that Nintendo decided not to ship my copy of Xenoblade when they were supposed to. Now I can finish Kid Icarus and mess around with Skylanders some more.

Well I hope you enjoyed this week's Game Time. See you next week.

     -Manny