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

Game Time - 4/1/2012

I've had this blog for quite a while now. It's awesome to see the viewers roll in when I post new content, so it makes me feel a little guilty when I don't post anything for a while. Take this past week for example, I didn't post anything. That was super lame and I apologize. My lack of blogging was partially due to the fact that I started a job this past week, and partially due to a lack of new games in my life. I've been pretty busy, but I still managed to get some gaming in.

Even when I'm busy I still find time to play video games, which means that I can find the time to blog as well. This is where I came up with the idea for a series called Game Time. It's more or less a weekly update, but I felt like calling it a weekly update would be equal parts lazy and lame. A name like Game Time is arguably just as lazy and lame, but I like it. Perhaps in the future I'll change it. Especially since it is easily confused with the name of the blog itself! Regardless of your feelings on the name, Game Time is now officially a thing.

What the Hell is Game Time? 

Every week I play a ton of stuff and I don't necessarily write about it on here and that's about to change. Now when Sunday rolls around I'm going to set aside some time to make sure that I write about my gaming exploits from the last week. This way I get some quality content and people who come here to read can actually do that. It's a win-win for everyone involved. 

Today, April 1st marks the first Game Time. Although it is April Fools Day this is not an April Fools joke, because I don't have nearly enough followers yet for that to matter at all. Let's get into it!

Skyrim

I bought Skyrim a week or two after its release. I tried to tell myself that I didn't want to buy it, which was mostly true before the game came out. See, I wasn't really too keen on Oblivion, but on the other hand I loved Morrowind. I was pretty apprehensive going into the Skyrim launch, because I didn't want to be disappointed like I was with Oblivion. Upon seeing Skyrim played live and in front of me I knew that I had to have it, so I immediately rushed off to pick it up.

Now here I am months after it's release and I still haven't reviewed the game and I'm never going to. While I try to review every game I beat it doesn't always end up happening. Sometimes life gets in the way and I just don't have the time. In the case of Skyrim, Skyrim got in the way. When I review a game I want the experience to be mostly fresh in my mind, so if I take a break for a few months and come back to a game I'm most likely not going to review it.

My Kajiit is ready to roam Skyrim once more!

The reason I took a break from Skyrim was because I made the mistake of buying the PS3 version. As most people probably know the PS3 version of Skyrim was busted, especially if you played it for a long time. For the first month I had a great time with Skyrim. I completed most of the guild quests and my play time was up to around 50 hours. The problem with Skyrim on the PS3 is that the more you do, the larger your save file size is. Once it got up to around 10mb the frame rate would often slow to a crawl, making the game more or less unplayable. I was lucky and managed to avoid it for a long time, but my game eventually slowed down too. I stopped playing the game until they released a new patch, which only made the problem worse. Instead of a ridiculous frame rate drop the game decided that locking up the entire system would be a better option. Fed up with all the issues I decided to shelf Skyrim, until this past Thursday.

Bethesda has released quite the cavalcade of patches and the game works great for the most part now, so I decided to finish the main quest. Turns out I only had a few more quests to complete, so the rest of the main story only took me a little while. The story of the main quest was pretty disappointing, so I was glad to get back into the random questing and world immersion that makes Skyrim so awesome to me. After playing for a few hours my previous anger about how broken the game was faded into nothingness. Now I'm pretty much hooked on Skyrim again.

Metroid Other M

On Black Friday I made the mistake of going out to Best Buy. My original intent was to buy Babysitting Mama for $5 as a joke, but they didn't have it. Instead I walked out with a copy of Pac-Man Party and a highly discounted copy of Metroid Other M ($5!). I left Metroid in it's shrink wrap, because I didn't really intend to play it. I just wanted to marvel at the fact that I payed $5 for it when it was being sold for $50 everywhere else. Now that I'm in kind of a new game drought I broke the seal and popped that sucker in my Wii last night.

I only played it for a few hours, but it was enough play to know that the game is really weird. Metroid Prime was something that I never really liked. For some reason I couldn't get behind a first-person shooter version of the sidescrolling games I used to like a whole lot. So when Metroid Other M takes the Metroid I don't like and marries it with the Metroid I do like the final product is just plain weird. To make things even more crazy it's made by the team that makes Ninja Gaiden.

Since Other M is made by Team Ninja Samus can so some crazy stuff

So far the story doesn't seem very good. It takes place directly after Super Metroid and sees Samus exploring a pretty messed up bottleship with some of her old alliance friends. Flash backs happen every so often and they're filled with a whole lot of talking. I've never been too interested in the Metroid fiction, so I guess I'm not the right person to judge what's going on without seeing the whole picture. The voice acting isn't helping me accept the story either. No one is doing a very good job and Samus sounds like an emotionless robot, which she isn't.

The gameplay has been the most interesting part so far. Movement is odd, because it's 3D on a 2D plane. It's because of this that all of Samus's shots are auto-aimed at enemies, which doesn't always work right. For the most part it feels pretty good though and I'm looking forward to seeing how everything progresses. My main problem with the gameplay is when you have to go into first person mode. If you aim the Wii-mote at the screen Samus will jump into first person mode. You have to go into first person mode to scan objects in the environment, which doesn't control well at all. I especially don't like when the game forces you into first person to scan for objects that seem to be a pixel in size. 

It's still too early to tell how I really feel about this. All I know is that I payed $5 for it!

There Was Multiplayer in There Somewhere

For the past two days I've been trying to play Fortune Street with a friend. That Monopoly/stock market hybrid will forever puzzle me. It's fun to play with friends, but infuriating to play against computer players. I have some deeper thoughts on the game that I'm going to try and post later in the week. 

So there you have it, this has been the first installment of Game Time. I hope you enjoyed reading about the games I played in the last week. Sadly I won't be getting a brand new game until the 6th when Xenoblade arrives, which I'm pretty hyped up for. Why can't Nintendo just release games on Tuesdays like everyone else? Until then I'll have to make due with what I've got already. 

     -Manny