Game Time - June 2017

June seemed like it went on forever. Somehow I managed to play the three games I'm going to talk about and about 60 hours of Final Fantasy XIV. The new expansion dropped, so I decided to get back in on the MMO action. I'm having more fun than the last time I played, but we're not here to talk about that.

2017 is shaping up to be a big year for fighting games tons of stuff is coming out and I'm playing all of it. I bit the bullet and got ARMS on the Switch. I had to know what it was all about, and I'm glad I did. The concept is really cool, even if I don't like playing it very much. On the other hand I also got Tekken 7 and it rules. I don't think Tekken can be bad.

After all the fighting games I needed a change of pace and picked up Hollow Knight. I enjoyed the journey even though it was filled with sadness and despair.

It was an interesting month, so let's start talking about it. It's game time!

ARMS

I did and still really want to like ARMS. Every time Nintendo creates a new IP I feel obligated to try it out. While I do find the character designs to be charming, I don't particularly enjoy the combat. It's not necessarily bad, it just doesn't really do it for me. The concept of ARMS is pretty simple. One day people woke up and had stretchy arms. They thought it would be a good idea to fight with their new arms, so they made a tournament. So yeah, you might with your arms in ARMS...

The character designs in ARMS are really cool. 

When the game was revealed there was a large emphasis on motion controls, which is the way I personally prefer to play the game. To play you hold a joycon in each fist in a punching grip. To punch you thrust out the respective arm, or both of them to grab your opponent. Movement is controller entirely by tilting in the desired direction. Jumping and dashing are performed with the bumpers, which can feel a bit awkward when you're tilting to move. The motion controls don't always work as intended, but they work just well enough. Traditional controls can be used as well, but I didn't find them to be particularly great.

By nature ARMS isn't as crazy as most other fighting games. Due to the fact that you're slowly stretching out your limbs to hit opponents there aren't really any combos to be seen. This means that the game is almost all about movement. Patience pays off, and I am certainly not a patient person. What bums me out is that there isn't a lot of content in ARMS. Really the only thing I can do is fight the AI, or get absolutely decimated by people online. Nintendo came up with a bunch of really cool characters, but they have almost no story or development behind them. Thankfully Nintendo is taking the Splatoon approach and will be updating the game for free over the course of its lifespan. It' s an interesting game, I just don't know if it's worth it in its current state.

Hollow Knight

When I first saw a screenshot of Hollow Knight I didn't find it interesting. However, after seeing it in motion I suddenly understood what it was all about. It has a stop-motion quality to it that I now can't get enough of. I wanted to wait and get it for the Switch, but the development of that version seems like it will be a little while longer.

Hollow Knight is a metroidvania style game where you play as a little bug dude with a nail. Your goal is to explore the ruins of a forgotten underground kingdom. Gameplay is relatively simple at first blush. You jump around and swing your nail at enemies. As you beat bosses more and more abilities are added to your arsenal until you are an unstoppable bug killing machine. The basics of combat are simple, but precise timing is often required of you. If you get injured in combat you can focus the stolen souls of your enemies to slowly regain health. This means that even though combat can be tough, it's not impossible to recover from most situations.

It's like you're playing a sad painting!

The atmosphere in Hollow Knight is universally bleak. You're exploring a defunct kingdom filled with sadness and death. Everything is drab and dismal, but in a way that I really appreciated. The color palette, music, and art all fuse together to make something that's appropriately depressing, but also interesting to explore. I really enjoyed my time with the game, even if it felt a little too difficult in spots. I also could have done without the Dark Souls-like mechanic where you have to run back to your body upon death. However, things like the simple yet-rewarding combat kept me interest throughout. I may even give the game a second go when it finally does release on the Switch.

Tekken 7

I really like Tekken as a franchise and Tekken 7 is no exception. The combat I've come to know and love is back again. Characters still have a billion moves each, there's a bunch of juggle combos, and the walls are super deadly. It's Tekken, but this time there's a cinematic story mode.

Everyone's favorite Tekken character the volcano returns!

When I first completed the story I left off with positive thoughts, but after some time to reflect I don't think it was that great. Yes, it has all the elements you'd want in a Tekken "story" like people being thrown into volcanoes and turning into devils, but it just didn't go as far as it could have. For starters a ton of new characters are introduced in this game and only three of them are even IN the story. What's up with Lucky Chole, and Shaheen? Who knows, because they're certainly not in the story. What really drives me up a wall is the narrator. He's a reporter who is trying to tie together all the random CG scenes as you play through them. His voice actor sounds like a robot. Every line is delivered as flat as possible. So you're getting all hyped up as you see people get punched through walls, but then you transition into a man talking super slowly with no emotion. It's a jarring transition that never works.

However, I will say that Tekken 7 still rules. Fighting in Tekken always makes me feel good. It's cool because beginners can play and have fun, but the level of depth in Tekken is nuts. I'll never be truly good at Tekken, but I'll at least have fun messing around with each character. The new additions to the cast are all fairly unique, which is always nice to see. I'm always down to play more Tekken.

Splatoon?

The summer lull is finally upon us. The only full retail product I will be purchasing is Splatoon 2 on the Switch. I'm eager to play new stuff on it, so that's cool. I'm just worried it won't be different enough from the original to justify its existence.

Supergiant Games new release Pyre is coming out as well and I'm pretty excited about that. It's like some weird NBA Jam and RPG hybrid. At this point I will play whatever the studio puts out.

Other than that I'm going to keep picking away at FFXIV. I completed the base game and am now moving into the first expansion. It's a lot more fun when its not just a series of bad fetch quests. We'll see how long my enthusiasm for it keeps up.

That's all I've got for now. I'll see you all next time!

Game Time - November 2016

As with every year November is when the holiday season really begins to ramp up; It's the busiest time of year for me at work, and my family and close friends start coming around a lot more frequently. It's an awesome time of year that brings me a lot of warm feelings.

Part of why I enjoy November so much is because games I want to play tend to come out. This year it was especially true. Pokemon games come out semi-annually now, but it's not every time that a new generation begins. Rumors of the 7th generation of Pokemon have been swirling for over a year now. It didn't help my excitement that when the demo came out in October almost the entire game leaked onto the Internet....

So yeah, I played a whole ton of Pokemon. Somehow I also ended up engaging with a decent amount of Watch Dogs 2, despite telling myself I wasn't going to get it. I have way too many games I started this year, but didn't finish. I guess I was too interested in seeing how it turned out. I'm not done with it yet, but I think it's an okay game. Not amazing, just okay.

Then you have the crown jewel of this month, which is Final Fantasy XV. The troubled development cycle made it take around ten years to come out. To be honest I never thought I'd actually get to play it, but here I am playing it. It's actually running on the TV next to me right now.

Oh yeah, I bought a sweet 50' 4K TV on Thanksgiving. It was on sale for $328 and I just couldn't pass it up. Now I can actually take advantage of my PS4 Pro, which is really neat.

There's so much I have to say about these games. I could actually spill out thoughts about FFXV until I explode, but I'll save you from that tragic fate. Instead I will outline my basic experiences here and then write up a Game Time ID when I have finished the game. I still have a bunch to say now though, so let'e get into it. It's game time!

Watch Dogs 2

I actually didn't think the original Watch Dogs was a terrible game. It was an open world game. Like all open world games it was mostly about shooting your foes, but you could also hack things with your phone to take them out as well. More often than not that meant incapacitating people by exploding things near them. It was a novel idea, but it didn't have much depth. The real issue with the game was the main character Aiden Pierce and the story surrounding him. He's a completely unrelatable character and an all around asshole. He uses his own sister as bait at one point. It didn't help that everything was hyper serious. There was absolutely no comic relief, which left me with a very sour taste.

Now it's a few years later and we have Watch Dogs 2. The good news is that the characters and story are worlds better than the original. You play as Marcus, who is a young hacker trying to change the world in a positive way by taking on big data. He's a regular guy who loves technology and bad movies. He's relatable and interacts with the other characters in the world in a fun way. The game's tone overall is a lot less self serious, which is exactly as it should be. The game knows it's goofy and uses that to its advantage. The issue I have is that the story is very disjointed, much like most Ubisoft games are now. You learn a lot about Marcus and his crew at DedSec, but the overarching story jumps all over the place. The game constantly introduces new characters with no explanation of who they are, and then proceeds to not really clue you in afterwards. It's frustrating, but the characters make me forget about the seemingly non-cohesive plot.

Marcus is a pretty likable guy.

The gameplay has both changed quite a bit, and not very much at all. What I mean by that is that Watch Dogs 2 is still an open world game. You can drive cars, take cover, and shoot at a bunch of people. My issue with the gameplay in Watch Dogs 2 is that the shooting feels much worse than the original game. I eventually got used to the combat, but Marcus doesn't feel powerful like Aiden did. Before I could go into any situation guns blazing and come out unscathed, whereas with Marcus I go down almost instantly. I guess this fits with the character, but it's still frustrating when I get caught in a stealth section and can't really do a whole lot about it.

The cool changes come in the form of hacking. You can still hack nearby objects with your phone nothing has really changed in that regard. There are some cool new features like the ability to call gang hits on enemies. This makes is so that gang members come in and start shooting, which alleviates the need for you to shoot yourself. What's really cool though is that you can complete every mission without having Marcus enter the mission area himself. He is equipped with a small rover and a drone. The rover can jump, and do physical hacks in place of Marcus. The drone can fly around buildings and hack anything that doesn't require physical contact. This means that as long as you're not seen by the enemy you can do everything with these two tools at your disposal. The only downside is that if they get shot down or blown up, then you have to wait an oddly long amount of time before you can bring them out again. Regardless it's a really cool concept that works well.

The rover adds a whole new way to tackle each mission.

I was personally hoping for Watch Dogs 2 to be a huge step above its predecessor. Instead it takes incremental steps forward. It makes me worry for the future of the franchise. I don't really know where they go from here. So far I'm really enjoying my time in the game, and think I'll actually try to finish it. Initially I wasn't really digging it, but as I got more skills and access to the drone I began to have a much better time. It's definitely a lot better than the original.

Pokemon Sun/Moon

Pokemon is one of those magical franchises for me that will never get old. Despite the fact that you essentially do the same thing in each iteration I can't get enough of trying to capture all of the little critters that I can. However, this time the adventure is actually quite different. Prior to release I was a bit skeptical, but now that I've put 60 hours into the game and completed it I can safely say that Pokemon Sun and Moon are great games that do a lot right! Long running franchises like Pokemon walk a razor thin line where they need to try new things to pull in new people, while not changing the things that long time fans will get upset about. Obviously someone always gets upset, but I honestly think that Game Freak did a wonderful job this time around.

This time around you play as a Pokemon trainer who has just moved from the Kanto region to the beautiful island paradise of Alola. Surprise, it's basically Hawaii! The journey takes you across four different tropical islands, which are all very different in terms of what they have to offer. It's cool, because large cities take a back seat for more lush natural environments. I feel stupid every time I say this, but it's the first time that the world feels like it's actually inhabited by both humans and Pokemon instead of it just being a world where humans live and Pokemon are their battle slaves. You interact with Pokemon in the wild, and see them walking around way more than in any other entry in the franchise and I love that!

People and Pokemon live in harmony in the Alola region.

For those of you who have played Pokemon before you know what the goal is usually to collect eight gym badges and then take on the Elite Four. In Alola that is not the case, because they have not established their Pokemon League yet. Instead you travel across the islands in search of trials. Some trials are battles with powered up wild Pokemon, while others have you collecting items. It's a nice change of pace. Each trial you complete awards you with a Z-crystal, which allows you to use Powerful new Z-moves. Normally Pokemon have four moves, but if they are holding a Z-crystal of their type then they can use a powerful Z-move once a battle to do a ton of damage, or increase the buff they receive. It sounds simple, but it adds a whole new layer of strategy just as mega evolution did in the last generation.

The plot is slightly different from standard Pokemon fare, in that it's actually a real story. Since Black and White Game Freak has been trying to make their stories have more depth, but I think they truly succeed in Sun and Moon. You're introduced to a host of interesting characters over the course of the game such as the lovable Professor Kukui, the shirtless professor, who I genuinely was interested in by the end of the game. While the central plot ends up being essentially the same as other entries in the franchise it builds up the characters and world they live in, in a way that has yet to be seen in a Pokemon game to date.

Battle's look better than ever before.

The number of new Pokemon is around 80, which is low compared to previous generations. I think that the level of quality is slightly higher this time around though. That can just be said for the games in general as well. The visuals are better than ever before and everything is done with a flourish. It's funny, because as I'm writing this and thinking about the game a smile is creeping across my face. I have always loved Pokemon and it warms my heart to see the franchise continue to move forward instead of stagnate. If you've never played a Pokemon game before there has never been a better time to jump in and immerse yourself in the world.

P.S. Team Skull is the best

Final Fantasy XV

In the ten years since the announcement of Final Fantasy Versus XIII I tempered my expectations. At the time I was beyond excited, but as the years drew on and the game wasn't really shown I tried to ease my excitement. Years went by with no news, and then in 2013 the game re-emerged as Final Fantasy XV. At that point it had been so long I was no longer able to hype myself up. I just didn't believe it was every going to actually come out. Now we're here in 2016 and I'm playing the game. I still can hardly believe it, but I definitely am playing it. However, much to my dismay I am not enjoying it as much as I wanted to. It's a very interesting game. There are a lot of great ideas, and a lot of horrendous ones intertwined into what is a pretty good game.

Yes, I realize I said I wasn't having a very good time and that's true. Personally when I go into a Final Fantasy game, or really any JRPG I'm looking for a semi-compelling story with well developed characters. Final Fantasy XV has one of those things so far, and that's compelling characters. Prince Noctis starts off as a spoiled brat, but seems to be opening up and realizing that he has a responsibility as the crown prince. It helps that the central focus of the game is traveling around the world on a road trip with your bros. The story on the other hand is a disjointed mess that has yet to pull me in. As of right now I'm halfway through, so I'll wait to pass judgement until the very end. However, I can't really see it shaping up. For starters if you didn't watch the prequel movie (Kingsglaive) you would have literally no idea what's going on in the game and understand next to nothing about the world it takes place in. That sucks. I get that sometimes supplemental material is cool, but when something is an integral part of understanding the story of your 40+ hour JRPG maybe put it in the game... I'm saying this as someone who watched the film. Then on top of that the game itself starts off with little to no introduction. That's okay though, because there's a 40 page prequel novel PDF that you can download to see what happened beforehand....

These are the characters you'll be seeing the most of. (Left to right: Gladio, Ignis, Noctis, Prompto)

Aside from the ancillary content I don't think the story in FFXV is told very well, but that's not entirely the game's fault. See, because it's an open world game. I like open world games, and think that they can tell good stories, it's just that most of them don't. Instead they focus on making the open world compelling while putting the story on the back burner. This causes pacing issues right off the bat. I did the first two story chapters which took about 2 hours, and then did sidequests for about six. That means that instead of doing the super urgent story matter I needed to attend to I messed about collecting monster bits for people at a diner. That's my own fault though. Let's look at a different scenario now. I finish my sidequesting and do the main plot again. I end up doing three story chapters in the course of 20 minutes with little to no explanation. The pacing is all over the place. I'm not even going to get into how half the story chapters come out of nowhere and seem like they're remnants from a completely different game. That's a story for a different time.

What about the gameplay you ask? I want to be joking when I say that for combat you essentially hold a single button to win, but it's true. You hold the attack button to do combos, and if you hold it forever Noctis will keep going until he gets hit. The longer the combo the more damage you do, and you'll eventually stagger the enemy and break parts of its body. The fun part of combat comes from Noctis' ability to teleport and change weapons rapidly. He has special powers, because he is one of the chosen kings in a destined line. This means that he can throw his weapons and teleport directly to them. You can lock onto an enemy and push the warp button to do a warp strike at them. This uses mana, which can be recharged by standing still or hanging from a warp point. Warp points are scattered around the battle, and act as ways to rapidly recover both HP and mana. This mechanic feels cool, and looks awesome, but isn't totally necessary. So far I have been able to get through every battle by holding circle and occasionally dodging. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if you hold the dodge button you can essentially dodge every single attack forever. This trivializes all combat, and it doesn't help that if you don't mainline the story and do sidequests you become over leveled immediately. Despite all this there is actually some depth to the system for those who are willing to look for it, but there's really no reason to unless the post game bosses are absolutely insane.

Sadly battles are not very challenging.

I feel so conflicted about Final Fantasy XV. On the one hand I find the story to be a disjointed mess, and combat to be a dull slog. However, on the other hand I like exploring the world, driving along the roads listening to the radio, and camping under the stars with my bros. It's a beautiful and flawed game that has a lot of heart at its core. The open world and the story often seem at odds with each other, and remnants of what the game used to be still remain. Keep in mind I'm only halfway through the game and it apparently stops being open world at some point and becomes completely linear. I don't understand how such a shift could possibly happen, but I can't wait to find out how it's done. I'm enjoying myself enough to keep playing, but it's definitely not the masterpiece I was secretly hoping for after ten long years.

The Wait is Over

The Sony exclusive The Last Guardian was announced right around the same time as FFXV. Similarly people thought it was never going to come out, but in just a few short hours UPS will be delivering it to me. It's crazy that two games that have been in development hell for almost a decade will have come out within two weeks of each other.

While I have enjoyed Team ICO games in the past I am cautiously optimistic about The Last Guardian. While FFXV seems to have changed greatly from what it originally was, The Last Guardian seems to have kept the old PS2 style gameplay it was shown off with originally. All I know is that I love how lifelike the weird bird-dog animal is and I want to give it a hug. I really hope you can hug it!

With that said look forward to another exciting edition of Game Time next month! I'll be putting it up right around the same time as my game of the year list and podcast, which you won't want to miss!

Game Time - October 2016

This month I'm a bit behind schedule, because I went on a short trip and streamed for Extra Life. For the trip I visited a friend halfway across the country which gave me a few hours on airplanes to play World of Final Fantasy. During Extra Life I played a bunch of multiplayer games with my friends, so nothing new to report there. We did however end up raising $269.69 for the Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital in Syracuse, New York. That's over double what we did last year! I always have a lot of fun doing it. The archive will be up on YouTube eventually, but I have to do some magic to get a 24 hour video up there. If for some reason you still want to donate it should still be up through December at www.extra-life.org/participant/gtwm.

Now let's talk about the hot new games I've been playing! I started off the month with the always hot Yo-Kai Watch 2. Level-5 churned out the second game here in the U.S. less than a year after the first one. It's a marked improvement over the first in almost every way. I played it way more than the original because of that.

Then a few weeks later I jumped right back into single player Rock Band, with the release of Rock Band Rivals. I still play multiplayer almost every week with a few friends, so the new modes were cool to check out. I do think that the single player additions are the true draw with this expansion though.

Finally, against my better judgement I ordered World of Final Fantasy on the Vita. I have been trying to be better with saving money recently, but I really wanted something new to play on the plane to my friend's house. I played the demo on PS4 and caved almost immediately. I think the game has a lot of charm, but the Vita version is pretty rough in spots.

It's game time!

Yo-Kai Watch 2

As most people know by now Yo-Kai Watch took Japan by storm a few years ago. It's popularity has waned a little, but it's still popular on a level that most games can only dream of reaching. For those who aren't familiar with the series you are a child with a magical watch (or pendant if you're playing as a girl) that allows them to see Japanese ghosts known as Yokai. The game revolves around you befriending the Yokai and using them in battle against other Yokai.

This game got railed in reviews for being too similar to the original game, which is certainly a valid criticism. In fact the first few hours are almost exactly the same as the original game, which is kind of a bummer. For the sake of this post I will be referring to the main character of the game as a male named Nate, because that's what I played through the game as. To start off, Nate gets the Yokai Watch stolen by two evil witches. He then forgets everything he knew about Yokai. In a strange turn of events he gets the watch back and relives the first few hours of the original game. He befriends Whisper the Yokai butler, and Jibanyan the cat who has a personal vendetta against cars. It's frustrating, because I just wanted to get to the new stuff. It's definitely good for people who have not played the series before though, because it allows you to get used to the town. You're forced to learn your way around, because you have to hoof it around town on foot until you unlock fast travel quite a ways into the game.

There are trains now. They're painfully slow!

The play area in Yokai Watch is the town of Springdale. It's not an exceedingly large area, and you get used to it quickly. Each area is very memorable and filled with detail. That's one of the things I love about Level-5 games. The places they make are just as big as they need to be and aren't filled with useless fluff. There are a few new areas in the game, but I didn't think they were super great. The crux of the story revolves around time travel, so you have access to almost every area in both the past and present.

While most people disagree, I actually like the combat in Yokai Watch, and the second game makes that a bit deeper. You have six Yokai in battle at a time. Three in the front and three in the back. The front row is attacking, while the back row is doing nothing unless they have special abilities. Your Yokai will attack and do spells on their own based on their personality and abilities. They're all on a wheel which can be rotated to fit the situation you're in. Bosses are my favorite part, because they test your mettle in ways the regular battles do not. You have the ability to place pins on specific enemies or boss parts, which makes your Yokai focus their attacks wherever the pin is. In boss battles this system is crucial, because you need to attack specific parts to stop special attacks or open up weak points. During the story your watch gets upgraded and adds some new abilities. Normally you can do special moves called soultimates, which expend a Yokais soul gauge to do a special attack. You have to successfully complete a mini-game in order to do the attack. With the new watch you can choose to do a moxie attack, which makes you complete the same mini-games but it expends the soul gauge of the two surrounding Yokai as well in order to power up the attack. I'm going to be honest, I never did this a lot. What I did end up doing is poking the enemy a whole bunch. If your enemy has a status effect you can poke it to do any one of the following: Increase affection, get more money, or do damage. These may seem like small additions, but they add a lot to the gameplay.

There are tons of new Yokai to befriend. Lie-in-Heart is my favorite.

The story is what doesn't really do it for me. The first quarter is a rehash of the original game. Once it moves to the time travel stuff it ends super quickly. It then transitions into a bunch of filler until you randomly have to go back in time again, which quickly leads up to the final boss who has no real motivation to be evil as far as I can tell. What bothers me about the story of Yokai Watch is that there are never any great interactions. Yes, Nate can talk to Yokai and control them , but there is no one else like him. Nate is experiencing all of this stuff and no other human (with a few rare exceptions) knows what's going on. I'm pretty sure something along these lines happens in the third game, so I'll have to wait for that.

I like Yokai Watch 2, but I now more than ever don't think it'll catch on in the U.S. like it did in Japan. It's a cool game, but I feel like a lot of the designs are holding it back. One of the main reasons I feel this way is that I don't remember most of the Yokai's names other than the main story related ones. The names are often lame puns that just didn't stick with me. I think that Yokai Watch has a lot of charm, and a great amount of detail, but its frustrating elements outweigh the positives a lot of the time. It's a pain in the ass to befriend Yokai, post game leveling takes too long, and the story is about as lame as it can get. Perhaps the third game can change all the issues I had with it and elevate it to a whole new level of popularity.

Rock Band Rivals

I've been playing Rock Band 4 on an almost weekly basis since it was released. Every Friday a few of my friends and I get together and rock out. For the past few months I've really only been playing the multiplayer with them and given up on single player. Rivals added a whole bunch of awesome features that got me right back into single player.

I'm going to be honest here. I love Rock Band 4, but it was a technical mess. Menus stuttered and everything took way too long to load. I literally couldn't stay connected to the in game store for more than five minutes and the leaderboards wouldn't update with my score half the time. When I first booted up Rivals my mind was absolutely blown. Everything ran silky smooth! The menus and in game store worked as intended, and even the animations when playing a song were smoother than they were before.

Getting together a crew is my favorite part of Rivals.

So previously I had beaten every show in the career mode, so there was literally no other content for me to play alone other than playing songs for high scores. I do enjoy that, but it eventually wears thin. With the Rivals expansion everything I do earns me EXP which is the best way to get me more interested in something. Now I level up just for playing songs! That's cool! The game also now measures your skill level on an instrument from 1 to 1,000. It made me feel good when my rating on guitar was 850. You can also now make a crew and gain experience by completing certain challenges and playing certain songs. These Rivals Crews give new life to the competitive Rock Band scene. Now people can recruit up to 29 other players for their crew and compete to get high scores every week. It gives new reason to try and get good scores on songs, which is really cool.

There is also a new story mode called Rockudrama, which I didn't end up liking very much. It's a documentary about the band you've created that follows their beginning to their eventual fade out from glory. It's presented in FMV sequences that are supposed to be funny, but I rarely laughed. There's something about FMV that really rubs me the wrong way. In old games it was trying to be serious, but since it was so low budget it ended up being hilarious. When it's in modern games I feel like it's often trying way too hard to be campy and funny, but it never really lands for me. Rocudrama is no different. It's a long series of people trying to make jokes work, but instead I found it to be really painful. At least it was fun to have a goal and unlock new venues and items.

This is Cool Terry. He's a character in Rockudrama. This is what you can expect.

Overall Rivals has impressed me a lot, except for the issues I've been having in multiplayer. The game ran and still runs perfectly for me alone. However, once we add in more instruments everything goes to shit. In case you've never played a rhythm game before, being on rhythm is very important. You know what ruins that? Constant hitching! For some reason the game randomly begins to hitch in multiplayer! We'll be playing, then the graphics will just freeze up and then skip ahead a little bit. This is absolutely unacceptable in a game where timing is literally everything. It makes the game unplayable. Restting the console works for a little bit before it starts happening again. I asked on the Rock Band Reddit if this was happening to anyone else, and it absolutely is. I really hope they fix this soon, or no one is going to want to play this with me anymore, which is a total bummer.

World of Final Fantasy

When I first saw World of Final Fantasy I convinced myself that I hated it. There's something about weird little chibi characters that really rubs me the wrong way. Then I found out that it's basically Pokemon, but with Final Fantasy monsters and fan service. Much to my chagrin I played the demo on PS4 and really liked what I played. You play turn based battles where two sets of three monsters are stacked on one another. The main characters are twins Lann and Reynn. They can be regular human size, and weird chibi size. There are three sizes of monsters you can get, small, medium, and large. When the twins are small they are medium size, and when they're big they are large. Each monster stack consists of one small, one medium, and one large monster. When the monsters are stacked they are stronger, because their skills, stats, and resistances pool together. The enemies are also stacked on occasion, so certain skills can be used to knock them down and attack them individually. The monsters can do the same to you, so you need to be careful.

In terms of combat it's pretty standard JRPG fare. I guess even the collecting of monsters is pretty standard now in most games. They're called mirages, I guess I should have mentioned that before. Collecting them is actually the entire goal of the game. Lann and Reynn wake up to find that everyone in their world is gone and they are alone. A god-like figure comes and tells them that they're lost their memories. In order to get their memories back she tells them that they have to go to another world called Grimoire and collect as many mirages as they can. Apparently they used to be crazy powerful mirage masters. I don't know if that's true or not, because I haven't beaten it yet.

They're so cute it sickens me!

So, most people in Grimoire are small. but the mirage masters are bigger and are referred to as Jiants. Yes, with a J. This means that the main characters often hide their true form, but you can switch between the two whenever you want. It's weird, because this game reminds me a lot of Kingdom Hearts, but with just Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy characters are scattered throughout the world, and they help out the twins in many different ways. Certain characters can actually be called upon in battle to perform powerful attacks. Generally a piece of music from their game plays when they show up, which is awesome as a fan of the franchise. Most monsters will be familiar too, which is always fun to see.

I don't have a lot to say about the game, mainly because I don't feel very strongly about it. I'm kind of shuffling through it in small chunks just to get to the end. I think it's interesting and I occasionally get pangs of nostalgia, but it's just alright. The plot isn't very interesting to me yet,  but I'm also only a handful of hours in. Hopefully it ends up blowing my mind, but right now it just seems like standard JRPG fare.

You battle as sweet stacks!

The thing that does drive me nuts is how bad the Vita version is. Man, does it not run well. Initially I played the demo on PS4 and it was totally fine. The Vita demo came out a few days later and it was noticeably not fine. The models are a lot more jagged as you'd expect from a Vita game, but it also doesn't run at a steady frame rate. In most parts of the game it runs at below 30FPS, and it gets even worse when your characters are big. It's nothing too horrendous, but it just doesn't feel good. What really bums me out is that the menus run slow. Often times I'll want to pop in and look at something only to have it hitch for a bit longer than it should. I get it, because it's on Vita, but man this should run better. However, the most egregious thing to me is that the voice acting isn't on the cartridge. That's right! You have to download the voices! For getting the day one edition you are given a code to download the Japanese voices. I was fine with this, because VO takes up a lot of space. Lots of games only offer English voices to save space. I booted up the game and quickly discovered something was wrong. Turns out you had to download the English voices too! Yes they're a free download, but I wasn't warned before starting the game that there would be no VO and to make it even better the download wasn't available on the store yet when I started playing! AGHHH! The download is just under 1GB, and Vita memory cards still cost a ridiculous amount. Do yourself a favor and buy the PS4 version.

It's happening!

I don't really know what I'll be playing this month, but I do know that Final Fantasy XV comes out on the 29th. To be honest I might wait a week into December and just write a thing about Final Fantasy XV, because man does it look awesome. I've tried so hard to keep my expectations down, but everything I've seen recently looks very impressive.

EDIT: I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT POKEMON! MAAAN, POKEMON IS GOING TO BE DOPE!

I am also getting the PS4 Pro on the 10th, so I can tell you all a little bit about that as well.

See you next time!